Who's the Mad Hatter?

"Empty suit" Charlie Crist gets national attention

I think this ad from the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee would be more effective if it pointed out that Crist is chicken to say anything about Sonia Sotomayor, but anyway, here it is.

Ask Sarah Palin about this

This has been shown on MSNBC, and should be seen by everyone thinking of voting Republican.

Guest blogger: What happens to nice guys?

Here's John Dodley with a dire view of the campaign. He may be right.

By John Dudley

The old cliché is that 'Nice guys finish last'. Senator Barack Obama is really a nice guy. I think Republicans would agree that he is a really nice guy. Republicans also believe that 'nice guys finish last'.

I don't think Barack gets it. Republicans do not believe that we can have a nice guy for President and they are going out of their way to prove it. Even Republicans are amazed that they can hurl the most undeserving insults and lies at Obama and he refuses to counterattack.

Republicans are in the fear campaign. With the fear campaign, you need a President that has no fear. He (John McCain) or she (Sarah Palin) will not hesitate to strike or attack even if America is unprovoked. Republicans are convincing Americans that we need an aggressive leader in a terrorist tyrant infested world. Why else would George Bush Jr. get a second term as President? America can trust that he is dumb enough to pull the trigger to protect us even if we aren't in harms way. It's better to be safe than sorry.

The campaign strategy that beat Hillary Clinton is not the same strategy that Obama can use to beat John McCain. This is Obama's pitfall. Saying a bunch of nice things about John McCain and Sarah Palin only reinforces the Republicans position. Every time Barack compliments his Republican opposition, it sways those undecided voters to their side. Republicans can say that even Barack thinks those who sided with George Bush can be President and even Barack thinks being a small town Mayor is an important job.

Surely, if Obama can't firmly, strongly, repudiate these erroneous barbs of the Republican Party, how can he defend us in the free world? Democrats are concerned. The party is getting restless. With everything that is going wrong with this country, this race shouldn't even be close. With that being said, Obama is the perfect person to run this country during this crisis. However, he is not the best person to run against the Republican Party.

Just like in sports, the best team doesn't always win. However, we cannot afford to lose. I saw some of his interview last night at the Presidential Forum and I just don't think he gets it. America welcomes his point of view. The world welcomes his views. Republicans and Independents don't. They only disagree with him because they don't respect him.

Joe Biden told a great story about his mother. The jest of the story is that when he was a kid he came home crying about someone picking on him in the neighborhood. Joe's mother told Biden to go out and bloody the nose of the other kid so that he can walk down the street with pride the next day. We need to see this kind of firmness from Obama.

Obama is a nice guy. I can't think of any nice guys that have won Presidential Elections. The fact that Republicans hate Bill Clinton is really a compliment. You know what I mean?

Flood of rumors

Let's calm down, folks, and think before we fire off those nasty emails about the Republicans. Your blogger here was duped by several otherwise wise friends who slipped me the photos of Sarah Palin in various costumes that had been supplied by the elegant dressers at iPhotoshoppe. Several of them have again tried to slip me the "list of books she tried to ban." Your blogger got slow this time and was saved when Snopes somehow intervened and told the true story: that she had indeed inquired about whether she could get books removed from the local library but the librarian resisted and nothing further seems to have happened.

So it's fair to say she's a potential book-banner and should not be elected to high office, but let's not publish a list of all the classics and say she wants to ban all of them by name, title and Dewey Decimal System Number. Your Snopes article for reference.

Here's the general Snopes link for Sarah Palin, which has four entries already and probably will grow like Topsy.

And the anti-McCain counterparts of the Swift-boaters also need to work on upgrading their attribution levels.

Guest blogger: Even the Republicans aren't Republicans

My pessimistic friend John Dudley, member of the Miami Beach Democratic Club, analyzes the other side:

As Republican Senator John McCain and Republican Governor Sarah Palin take the lead in the polls, Democrats are scratching their heads.  How could this happen?  America’s economy, healthcare, education and National Defense are in a severe decline and worsening.  Why would Americans vote for more hardship?

It will be all Americans, including Republicans, who will suffer when we get another four years of George Bush’s policies.  The only change that McCain/Palin will bring to the White House is a different set of conspirators.  It will be the same team, the same jerseys but different players, with the same outcome.

What’s even more appalling is that the Republicans aren’t even Republicans. 

·         What happened to Republican Christian values?  Instead of admonishing the parent, Sarah Palin, for not providing a good example on how to raise a teenage daughter, the Republican Christian Right is praising Palin’s daughter.  Bristol is unmarried, pregnant and still in high school.   Even the Christians aren’t Christians. 

·         John McCain is no exception.  He was married when he started dating his current wife, Cindy McCain.  Is the Republican Christian Right okay with this?  Apparently so.  Will the real Republican Christian Right please stand up?

·         Never mind presently serving Republican Senators David Vitter and Larry Craig.  Vitter, who is married with four kids, admitted nationally to visiting prostitutes.  Craig pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor from being accused of soliciting sex in a men’s bathroom at a Minnesota airport.  Boy, Republicans really have high moral standards.

·         Republicans believe in small government and free markets.  Republicans don’t believe in Socialism or entitlement programs to help the poor.  However, Republicans do believe entitlement programs for the rich.  Today, the Republicans bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which will costs American Taxpayers billions of dollars.  Earlier in the year, Republicans bailed out Bear Stearns to the tune of 30 billion dollars of taxpayer money.  With these Republican giveaways, this party doesn’t really believe in a free market.  They just like to talk about it.  Even the Republicans aren’t Republicans.

·         CNN’s Glen Beck openly calls Barack’s wife, Michelle Obama, a Marxist.  Marxism calls for a classless society.  Good ole Beck has a different definition.  He says that Michelle Obama’s Marxism includes taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor.  The reality is that Glenn believes in reverse Marxism, take from the poor and give to the rich.  The Republican Christian Right is silent on this attack on Obama’s wife.  Usually, Christians, expect the truth.  Apparently, there is truth and then there is Republican truth.  The Republican truth is L. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby or even better, ‘weapons of mass destruction’.

·         Republicans don’t seem to believe in fairness either.  Republicans are for the Republicans.  When the Republicans bailed out Bear Stearns to the tune of 30 billion dollars of taxpayer money, the CEO somehow managed to leave with millions of dollars in his pocket.  The employees and shareholders were left with the crumbs.  In a similar situation, the Republicans didn’t take issue with the collapse and buyout of Mortgage giant Countrywide Financial.  Countrywide’s CEO Angelo Mozilo took home over $115 million severance pay from the company’s failure.  Countrywide’s employees lost their jobs.  Mozilo got paid and a Bush tax cut to boot.  Where are those passionate conservatives?

·         How about the 2008 $152 billion Republican Economy Stimulus Package?  It was a handout and an entitlement to boost the economy.  But, the Republicans don’t believe in entitlements and government handouts.  Apparently, Republicans don’t even follow their own beliefs.  See, even the Republicans aren’t Republicans.

This fraud could go on.  The Republican Party isn’t who they say they are.  They don’t believe in what they say they believe.  Somehow, John McCain and Sarah Palin say that they are going to reform the Republican Party.  I believe they will.  The Republican Party will be more hypocritical than ever.  From McCain/Palin, we can expect the extreme right.  There is another word for that, Fascism.

Unless the Democrats and Senator Obama gets a backbone and attack these nefarious characters on the Republican ticket, we will suffer another 4 years of governmental chaos and possibly collapse.  In the last eight years America has failed at everything except for cutting taxes for the wealthy and making the rich richer.

One must give the Republicans credit.  They have successfully reached down in the gutter to discredit Democratic Senator Barack Obama.  And in the process, they have successfully contradicted everything they believe.  According to the polls, they have convinced Americans that Republicans have changed.  Forget about the last eight years, Republican Presidential candidates Senator McCain and Governor Palin are a new and different kind of Republicans.  With the help of Fox News, this will be the biggest fraudulent upset in Presidential history.

 

Jesus was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor

The line above was the thought that occurred to Jody Finver, an inventive creative worker in advertising, after Gov. Sarah Palin poured scorn on the world of community organizing. On Saturday the Obama grassroots in Miami – i.e. community organizers – celebrated the opening of a campaign office for Community Organizers for Change.

It’s at 3674 Grand Avenue in Coconut Grove, Miami, and the phone number is 305 447-1452, in case anyone wants to call and offer help.

Speakers at the opening were just about every one of the 40-plus who attended, led by C. C. Holloman, who claims the title of Community Organizer and nothing else. Featured was Miami City Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, along with Simon Rose, who’s backing the lease on the storefront office, and Jody Finver, who recited the sharp post she put up on DailyKos after the dust settled last Wednesday. You can read her piece at this link.

It turns out others had the same idea – so obvious that one wonders why all those ardent Christians at the Republican convention didn’t think of it – and at least one other post on DailyKos followed.

A revelation to me was the address of an Alaska website devoted to Palin, called Mudflats. Useful to keep in mind.

I guess this is what Barack Obama is referring to when he says, “John McCain just doesn’t get it.” The Republicans, led by Karl Rove, keep practicing what used to work for them, not knowing the rest of us have moved on. Their scorn and contempt are always off the mark.

We don’t get mad, we get even. We work harder. In Coconut Grove they’re working the streets more zealously now to register new voters and convince them to vote for Obama.

Thank you, Gov. Palin.

A coup by John Stewart clobbers Palin, Rove, O'Reilly, Hannity, Morris, McCain adviser

Sorry I can't make the usual video image appear. Blogger software quite perverse today, but click on the link to see the coup.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=sarah-palin-gender-card

Thanks to Markos of DailyKos for showing this and also pointing out that Rove was wrong (actually, lying) to say Wasilla is second-largest in Alaska -- more like fourth.

"Experience" and Barack Obama

After watching Sarah Palin’s sarcastic speech I needed an antidote, and there in my inbox was a submission by John Dudley, a fellow member of the Miami Beach Democratic Club. Thanks, John, for your artful reminder of all the wisdom that Barack Obama represents. Such a contrast to Republicans with their complete experience doing the wrong thing.

Subject: Experience and Barack Obama

By John Dudley

1377, from O.Fr. Experience, from L. experientia "knowledge gained by repeated trials," from experientem (nom. experiens), knowledge or practical wisdom gained from what one has observed, encountered, or undergone: a man of experience: active participation in events or activities, leading to the accumulation of knowledge or skill.

Much has been said about Barack Obama's inexperience. This is somewhat true.

• Barack has no experience in lying our Country into war. Barack has no experience in making military decisions where our brave soldiers have died or have been wounded as a result of misinformation.
• Barack has no experience in the failed economic policies that delivered the worst June U.S. Stock index decline since the Great Depression of 1930.
• Barack has no experience in presiding over a housing crisis with record foreclosures causing millions of Americans to lose their homes.
• Mr. Obama has no experience in supporting an administration that issues higher inflation for gasoline and food which are the staples for American working families.
• He has no experience presiding over an unacceptable high school dropout rate and still no healthcare coverage for millions of Americans.
• Barack Obama has no experience with supporting the failed governmental policies of the Republicans and the Bush/McCain Administration.

This 'experience' of the last eight years of our government should never be repeated. This 'experience' of a completely disastrous, inept, divisive Republican Administration is NOT what this country needs. It is because Barack Obama has no experience in these failures that he should be the next President of the United States.

New links for politics

There was so much fresh news in the NY Times blog The Caucus today that I'm adding it to one of the links boxes in the right-hand column.

First, I'll feature it here for starters. Scroll down to the entry by Kate Phillips where she quotes an Obama spokesman saying the idea that Sarah Palin has more experience than Barack Obama is "borderline ridiculous." But if it were true that executive experience was be-all-and-end-all, "maybe she should run for president and John McCain should run for vice president." 

Tough.

Also to be noted is that the DNC has a new website analyzing McCain-Palin as JustMoreoftheSame.com. In case you need ammunition in your arguments. This too will find a place in the links boxes. UPDATE: I just read through the Fact-check section and it skewers practically everything Thompson and Lieberman said in their Tuesday night speeches as false and misleading. Valuable stuff. This points to fiery debates. First stop is Ole Miss on Sept. 26.

There's a Palin bounce in the polls -- for Obama

Please browse on over to DailyKos to see the lovely blue and red lines of the polls diverging since the weekend news that Sarah Palin was the best John McCain could find.

My first reaction to the news last Friday was that McCain was giving up. Then I wondered whether this would be a move to capture a few dead-enders in the Hillary camp. Then I went back to thinking that McCain had given up.

We still must handle this right. Every sentence or blog post could be a minefield. Barack Obama himself said the family and children were outa bounds. I'm inclined to agree, though I just heard on an NPR program that the Republicans announced that the young father of Bristol Palin's pregnancy will attend the convention. Well, I guess that eases some of the restrictions, and so I'm opening the gate here to a submission by guest blogger David Cooper, whom I know through membership in Veterans for Peace.

Let 'er rip, David

Abstinence-Only Hits Home

 

With John McCain’s surprise selection of Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, to be his running mate, many blogs went into overdrive in an attempt to understand the decision. Rumors began circulating that the child was not Sarah Palin’s, but rather her 17-year-old daughter's. Palin’s statement that she began leaking amniotic fluid shortly before a speech in Dallas, and chose to continue boarding a plane for a 12-hour flight back to her home state to give birth, may be a more damning indictment of her judgment than the unsubstantiated rumors that she is not the mother of the child. When a pregnant woman’s “water breaks,” a clock begins running that has health consequences for both mother and child. Not to mention the potential impact on fellow passengers who may have been traveling to life changing job interviews, or visiting elderly relatives for the last time, or going to funerals, or weddings, many of who would be affected by an emergency landing in another city, delaying their plans.

 

Putting aside the judgment of the above decision, a larger question looms. The McCain camp has confirmed that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old un-married daughter is pregnant and has chosen to keep her child, which is consistent with their pro-life beliefs. Presumably, the pro-life and socially and religious conservative Sarah Palin subscribes to the abstinence-only policies of the conservative party she belongs to. A short look at the results of the abstinence-only policies says all one needs to know about her judgment as a political figure on the national stage.

 

Abstinence-only education does not work. Without comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education programs, ended by the Bush administration, teens are dangerously ill equipped to deal with their sexuality. A report prepared for Rep. Henry Waxman found that of the 13 most commonly used curricula for abstinence-only education, 11 used by 69 organizations in 25 states contain unproved claims, subjective conclusions or outright falsehoods. The federal government does not review or approve the accuracy of the information presented in abstinence-only programs. There is no oversight of your tax dollars for these programs. One inaccuracy is the claim that condoms fail to prevent HIV 31% of the time when in actuality a New England Journal of Medicine study failed to find one single case of HIV transmission between HIV-positive individuals and their HIV-negative partners who used condoms consistently, despite a total of 15,000 acts of intercourse.[i]

 

Moreover, a straight line can be drawn between economic concerns and an increase in abortion rates. Studies show that two-thirds of women who abort say they cannot afford a child. In the seven and a half years of the current administration, unemployment rates have increased, real wages are down, and minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation.  Half of all women who abort say they do not have a reliable mate. Men who are jobless usually do not marry. As male unemployment increases, marriages fall, unwanted pregnancy and abortion rise. Women also worry about health care for themselves and their children. Since millions more people have no health insurance now than before this administration—with women of childbearing age overrepresented in those millions—abortion increases. Researcher and professor of Christian ethics, Dr. Glen Stassen said, “Economic policy and abortion are not separate issues; they form one moral imperative.”[ii]

 

And, how does abstinence-only education address already sexually active teens? It doesn’t, which adds more numbers to unwanted pregnancy and abortion cases.

 

The Obama camp has stated that any of their people that attack Sarah Palin or her family on private issues will be fired. That is commendable, but questioning the judgment of a vice presidential candidate—a person literally one heartbeat away from the presidency—is a valid and necessary process. In addition, haven’t we had enough of an administration that does not allow facts to penetrate the politics, and is it not time for more sound fact-based policy and less politics?

 

Standing by a failed policy that has proven unsuccessful in one's own life is a clear sign of a person who does not exercise sound judgment.

 

Whether or not Sarah Palin is a good pick for McCain depends on what side of the political aisle one stands. For Obama supporters, it may turn out to be a great pick. From a qualification perspective, picking her raises questions about McCain’s judgment as well.

 

David Cooper

Oops, somehow David's footnotes didn't make the transition on first attempt. Here they are:

---

[i] From the The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Education Programs report prepared for Rep. Henry A. Waxman. www.Democrats.reform.house.gov/Documents/20041201102153-50247.pdf

[ii] Pro-Life? Look at the Fruits by Dr. Glen Harold Stassen. www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=041013 also see, Why abortion rate is up in Bush years by Glen Stassen and Gary Krane

Final Note: click here for the NY Times Caucus blog and its photos and story of McCain and his family getting together with the Palin family today at the Minneapolis airport.

Republican convention speeches inspire ... even this Democrat

(Crossposted on Florida Progressive Coalition blog)
UPDATE: Good comment available on State Rep. Dan Gelber's blog, too.

Thanks to a quick-ending meeting of the Miami Beach Democratic Club, I was able to listen on the car radio and get home to watch on TV most of the Republican speeches Tuesday night: Laura Bush, George W. Bush, Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman.

What a wash of crap!

May I quote the best one-word line from Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver: “Enough!”

But they will not stop. We face nine weeks of this until election day. It will be hard slogging, and few in the news media will step up to contradict the mean-spirited distortions that will be directed at Barack Obama and the inflated praise that will bathe the McCain-Palin ticket.

An example of this wishy-washy media performance on MSNBC a few minutes ago: After the speeches, U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) was interviewed by a floor reporter whose name I didn’t note and she lied blatantly about Obama’s vote on an abortion measure, declaring that he was willing to let “babies die.“ The reporter didn't challenge this. Thanks goodness that Anchor Keith Olbermann came on screen to declare that the issue had been quite different and that Obama had based his vote on the fact that laws already prohibited such an event. And, he declared, he was quite sure that Heather Wilson knew full well that was the case.

In other words, Ms. Wilson may speak with a gentle tone but she lies. Thank you, Keith Olbermann.

George W. Bush, speaking from Washington with what looked curiously like two crosses flanking flags in the background, startled me by running through John McCain’s time as a POW and then asserting, “If the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain’s resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry left never will.”

Huh? “Angry left?” Is that us? Are we trying to break McCain’s resolve? My aim is to elect Obama, and McCain’s morale is not on my radar.

Bush ran on about abortion and protecting against hurricanes and claimed much for his tenure, and then must have been put into a sound-proof cell while Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman creamed the Washington that Bush has nurtured for eight years. And where would the odiferous Dick Cheney have been secreted to keep him from hearing Thompson describe his Republican successor, Sarah Palin, as a “breath of fresh air?”

Thompson started off stepping on his own lines but warmed up and predicted that McCain-Palin would “drain the swamp of Washington.” (Listening, W?)

Olbermann was startled, apparently, when Thompson channeled Wes Clark and said that “Being a POW does not qualify someone to be president, but it does reveal character.” Olbermann, in the after-speech wrapup, asked several times about whether this was a little off-message, since Thompson described McCain’s service and captivity in excruciating detail.

Thompson, speaking with the help of a Teleprompter, derided Obama’s oratory as “a Teleprompter speech designed to appeal to America’s critics abroad.”

The hall was awash with two main signs: “Country First” and “Service.” Maybe that was another reason for keeping George W. Bush and Cheney away, famous for shirking service and having other priorities when others were fighting and dying. (I was an infantryman patrolling the Delta in 1967 when McCain was getting shot down.) Bush’s father, Bush 41, was in the hall and received a big-screen video tribute to his service. Another video idolized Ronald Reagan, who was pictured wearing a military service cap as if he’d had a warrior career. Jeb Bush, by the way, was not in the Bush box.

Olbermann introduced Lieberman’s keynoter entrance as “one of the great political reversals.” Indeed, once the Democrats’ VP nominee and now an escapee from McCain’s short list to be the Republican VP (Who would want to lose twice?), Lieberman worked for a few paragraphs like a Democrat to lay out massive problems deriving from two Republican terms. People out there “face big and real problems,” he said, naming fear of losing jobs, worry about health insurance, threats from abroad. Feeble applause as he stretched his face wider and declared that the people wanted solutions but Washington gave out nothing but “senseless partisanship.”

He went on to misquote George Washington on the issue, and here my notes give out, but Keith Olbermann later said the First President had not merely condemned partisanship but in fact thought all political parties were anathema.

Lieberman got a little more applause with this line of argument, though it seems faulty: If McCain would be so mavericky and non-partisan, what would he do with the restless genius of Karl Rove? But then Lieberman gave Bill Clinton favorable marks for passing welfare reform and trade agreements and for balancing the budget. Curiously, a few minutes earlier, Fred Thompson had claimed the same accomplishments as Republican triumphs during his one term as senator from Tennessee.

Finally, Lieberman did his assigned job, speaking to the camera to people “out there” who are “Democrats and independents and Republicans” and urging them to “vote for the best for the country, not for the party you happen to belong to.”

That’s where I hope this message falls apart. I do not happen to belong to the Democratic Party. It is a conscious and intelligent choice, and one of the things I dislike most about the Republicans is the two-faced behavior that disgraces their election campaigns.

I’m glad I watched and listened. Now to work harder.

One last note: earlier, as I was driving home I turned on NPR and heard a nominating speech by a woman whose name I didn’t catch. She started off seeming to claim a touch of heroism in her military career but then it turned out she’d come down with a circulatory ailment while on PR duty in Bosnia and had a leg amputated when things went wrong at Walter Reed. One can sympathize with her plight and still wonder why this downer was one of the nominating speeches for McCain.