I'm sick of the Republican rightwingers getting away with smearing our Democratic President over terrorism in ways that they would howl should it have been said by the left about George W. Bush right after, say 9/11. Excuse me, showboat Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Obama "got lucky" that the terrorist in the Times Square bomb attempt talked? How about, the asshole was apprehended within 54 hours of the attempt, albeit with a near loss of the suspect, and thanks to our non-torture policy, he's talking.
Is this fact supposed to somehow prove the counterargument -- that torture works, showboat Charles Krauthammer? This is simply smart -- i.e. the Obama approach, which is to say the traditional American approach pre-Cheney/Bush Administration -- vs. showboat. And by showboat I mean acting tough with the goal of spreading intimidation, even when tough is stupid.
Maybe the silliest showboat of all is weakie Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) who claims that Obama is "naive" about the Middle East, although he does stop short of calling our President a "domestic enemy." If anything, it's Cantor whose naivete led to his losing the health care reform debate.
If only he'd lose his upcoming re-election bid in November.
"We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada," Palin said in her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska. "And I think now, isn't that ironic?"
If she can spell ironic.
Meanwhile, big ol' Karl Rove is still peddling lies in his new "memoir." The summary (with full details at Media Matters):
A group of 19 prominent Bush administration officials and other lawyers launched an offensive Monday, attacking Liz Cheney for a recent ad by her group, Keep America Safe, that questioned the loyalties of Department of Justice lawyers that had represented Guantanamo detainees.
In a statement signed by nine former Bush officials and 10 other lawyers, critics condemned the ads as a "shameful series of attacks...both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications."
We'll see again if the Washington press corps takes the Cheney family's dictation on this one.
The young socialist, Barack Obama, spent serious capital on an infomercial on Wednesday night:
His half-hour program was seen by at least 33,600,000 Americans, which doesn't count any Internet viewing, never once mentioned his opponent, told four resonant stories of, uh, "real" Americans, and offered bold, clear solutions which he would implement if we choose him as our next President.
John McCain, on the other hand, has to bus school kids into his anemic events to fabricate a crowd and can't even deliver Joe the (rightwing nutbag) Plumber on cue:
Y'know, McCain likes saying we're all Joe the Plumber, but I'm not. If I can pick based on my own empathy, I'm Larry Stewart from Sardinia, Ohio, from the Obama infomercial, a great-grandfather who's wife's arthritis condition (and their lack of health coverage) has him out of retirement at a Wal-Mart and taking loans against their home. Except even if I were all those things, I wouldn't be as good a blues guitar player as Larry (my favorite reveal of the infomercial).
So McCain can't count on Joe showing up. Even a member of his New Hampshire Leadership Committee has come out endorsing Obama. And he's got his most moronic back-benchers going out to get humiliated in the media with their lies and scumbag innuendo:
The decision to finance a final advertising push is forcing McCain to curtail spending on Election Day ground forces to help usher his supporters to the polls, according to Republican consultants familiar with McCain's strategy.
The vaunted, 72-hour plan that President Bush used to mobilize voters in 2000 and 2004 has been scaled back for McCain. He has spent half as much as Obama on staffing and has opened far fewer field offices. This week, a number of veteran GOP operatives who orchestrate door-to-door efforts to get voters to the polls were told they should not expect to receive plane tickets, rental cars or hotel rooms from the campaign.
"The desire for parity on television comes at the expense of investment in paid boots on the ground," said one top Republican strategist who has been privy to McCain's plans. "The folks who will oversee the volunteer operation have been told to get out into the field on their own nickel."
Back on May 25th I wrote that by the time November 4th rolled around, casting a vote for Sen. John McCain "will seem like voting assisted suicide for America."
Hell is in the process of freezing over with Fox News blog headline: "As McCain Cancels, Obama Rallies":
CHESTER, PA - Dressed in blue jeans and a black jacket, Barack Obama braved the cold rain falling in Pennsylvania, and held his scheduled rally - outdoors. “A little bit of rain never hurt anybody,” he quipped to the 9,000 who showed up in ponchos and futilely holding umbrellas.
Just an hour away in Quakertown, the rival ticket cancelled their own outdoor rally due to inclement weather. Unfazed, Obama incorporated the conditions into his speech.
“I just want all of you to know if we see this kind of dedication on election day – there is no way that we’re not going to bring change to America,” he said as the soggy crowd cheered.
And the temperature in hell continues to plummet, as Shepard Smith debunks Joe the Plumbers lying smear about Obama's relationship to Israel.
Then there's chillmaster Florida Governor Charlie Crist, one of the Republicans on the McCain VP list who got passed over for poll-sinkin' Palin, and had the additional humiliation of McCain's team cutting his seven-minute video meant to play before the nomination acceptance speech. So he has ample reason to be pissed off at McCain and no reason to support his losing cause.
But that said, when was the last time a Republican Florida Governor made it easier for people to vote?:
Gov. Charlie Crist on Tuesday extended early voting hours across Florida to 12 hours a day.
The executive order comes after record early voting turnout has contributed to long lines at polling sites.
Current Florida law allows for early voting to be conducted eight hours a day each weekday and for a total of eight hours during the weekends.
With Crist's order, early voting sites will be open the rest of this week from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. They will be open a total of 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday, the last day of early voting.
''It's not a political decision,'' Crist said moments after signing the order, which declares a state of emergency in Florida. "It's a people decision.''
And if that isn't a palette cleanser after Jeb Bush/Katherine Harris controlled elections, how about this Dem vote booster:
Crist issued an executive order Wednesday that requires officials to include voter registration applications when they send out rights restoration certificates to convicts who have completed their sentences.
The order also provides convicts who have completed their sentences with better access to information about restoring their civil rights by posting more of it on the Internet.
The rights of Florida's nonviolent felons are automatically restored some time after release. Violent felons have to go through an application process. Thousands of ex-convicts have had their rights restored but don't know it, or don't realize they are eligible to register as voters. The state has been unable to notify them because it has lost track of them.
Who knows, maybe Crist's gunning for an Team of Rivals cabinet post. Or maybe he rising to the dignification Obama offers everyone in this election. Or maybe he's got the makings of a real statesman; there were once Republicans like that.
The Obama love has spread to Obama, Japan. A 109-year-old daughter of a slave just cast her mail-in vote for Obama, just imagine. And this video had me reaching for the Visine:
This one had me reaching for my bourbon:
I guess you just have to admire all the Obama supporters who showed up to make themselves heard, and withstood the violent language and threats (both implicit and explicit) of this crowd John McCain and Sarah Palin appear to be deliberately ginning up.
There's never been a clearer difference between how two campaigns have conducted themselves. There's a lot of talk that McCain has run the ugliest Presidential campaign in anyone's memory, but Nixon was dirty filthy tricks, Bush 41 was racist Willie Horton shit perpetrated by Lee Atwater, and the GOP swiftboating of military hero John Kerry was vile. But it's how on the up-and-up Obama's run his campaign that makes McCain's look so bad.
And what is he doing with the Red Smears like he's studied at the feet of Joe McCarthy? What kind of man is he to cry fire in a crowded building, or allow his running mate to pour gasoline?
Per the ironclad screenwriting rule: true character is revealed under pressure.
My, what an unexpected and nasty piece of work is Governor Sarah Palin. In her oratory and interviews, equal parts smugness, red-baiting and hypocrisy:
Decrying "socialism" in her snakey, dishonest, "I'm not the one saying", innuendo dripping, Wormtongue-ish way:
Grima used his skill with words and persuasion to influence the enfeebled King's decisions and policies.
Hmm, enfeebled king. Sound familiar?
The fact is that Palin is from the most socialist of states, Alaska, where every non-felon resident gets some redistribution of the oil wealth, for $5,522 between her and her husband in 2007. You know, the "pro-America" form of socialism.
But while the McCain campaign ran ads prior to Gov. Palin's selection that accused Sen. Barack Obama of being a "celebrity" the like of Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton, now it's his running mate who's dressin' like a star:
The Republican National Committee appears to have spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.
According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.
The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.
The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.
Hey, remember when John Edwards got a $400 haircut? Inflation.
And, as a conservative mavformrick she's also always been keen to help you decide what to do with your money:
Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.
The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.
In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters' 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.
Ah, well, what she lacks in honesty she can at least make up with knowledge:
Q: Brandon Garcia wants to know, “What does the Vice President do?”
PALIN: That’s something that Piper would ask me! … [T]hey’re in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.
Actually, no one is in charge of the U.S. Senate, and agenda is now by established tradition run by the Majority Leader, working with whatever degree of collaboration with the Minority Leader. The Vice President is also "President of the Senate" but rarely shows up since it's basically a gavel job, except to break a tie vote -- which has happened only 242 times since 1789 for an exact average of once a year.
It turns out that Palin's qualifications are actually the top reason (does there have to be just one?) why John McCain's poll numbers are plopping into the toilet:
Fifty-five percent of respondents now say Palin is not qualified to serve as president, a five-point jump from the previous NBC/WSJ survey.
In addition, for the first time, more voters have a negative opinion of her than a positive one. In the survey, 47 percent view her negatively, versus 38 percent who see her in a positive light.
That's a striking shift since McCain chose Palin as his running mate in early September, when she held a 47 to 27 percent positive rating.
According to another poll by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, opinions of Palin have flipped in the last month, especially among the female voters she was expected to attract to the McCain ticket.
Nearly half -- 49% -- of voters have an unfavorable opinion of her while 44% have a favorable view. A month ago, "favorable opinions of Palin outnumbered negative ones by 54% to 32%."
We've begun talking about how Sarah Palin is setting herself up for 2012 while shemping her King Lear-like running mate to wander confusedly and alone, but maybe she'll be poison even to her party by then. While Palin is meteoric celebrity in the world of the religious right who's working hard to get the anti-Union vote as well, she's actually an anvil not only on the topline GOP ticket but, by that very nature, on all the down-ticket races as well.
And now in a major humiliation, the kind of campaign expose that supposed to come out after a Presidential election is actually coming out in next Sunday's New York Times Magazine, and includes how Sarah Palin was vetted, I mean, chosen:
Having interviewed several of the Senator's chief aides, Draper details the process by which McCain ultimately chose his running mate (New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was surprisingly high on the list). And the decision may have been even more impulsive than initially thought. Gov. Sarah Palin, who had never been on the VP shortlist, was advanced at the last minute by Schmidt and Rick Davis, and was picked after a less-than-hour-long chat in with McCain at his ranch in Arizona.
In the end, if McCain does indeed lose this election, it won't be because of Gov. Palin or even, in a direct sense, Sen. Obama. McCain will have lost it for himself. They say that Presidential campaigns can build character -- we want to watch a new candidate grow, become, promise more for the future -- but they also reveal character. Obama is smart in many ways, from book-smart to game-smart to people-smart. He's sober in temperment and generous of spirit, without being anybody's fool.
What this campaign has revealed about John McCain's character, as set as it is for him at his particular flavor of age 72, might be read in a number of different ways, but heroic is not one of them.
First off, credit where credit is due. Kudos to some of the very reasonable, respectable McCain supporters (the kind he might have had more of, were it not for his catastrophic -- to his campaign -- choice of Sarah Palin as VP running mate) who take on (and drive off) the racist rightwingers who showed up with their printed hate:
If we all make it through this campaign and Obama is elected, there's a place at the table for these non-hating McCain voters. However, the candidacy of Barack Obama is bringing to light the ugly side of America, the side most Americans hope is behind us. Maybe it's hate that's not just tied to race but to political belief, but what grown up really believes that. Racism gives it the vicious, lethal kick.
A 74-year-old woman and a 46-year-old man with Obama signs in their front yards near the 600 block of South Villa Avenue received similar letters that had a Villa Park Village Hall return address. "Get the Obama signs off your property—now," the letter reads. "Failure to obey this order will result in the immediate death of all family members." Both residents said they will not remove their signs, though the man, who had voted Republican for 25 years before switching parties this year, said his wife is worried about letting their 7-year-old son play alone outside.
There's auto vandalism to Obama supporters in North Carolina:
Authorities say someone slashed tires on at least 30 parked vehicles while their owners were attending a Barack Obama rally in a North Carolina coliseum.
The tires were cut Sunday outside Fayetteville's Crown Coliseum, The Fayetteville Observer reported Monday.
My "Obama 08" bumper sticker was torn off the right rear bumper, a 20-lb rock was dropped through the back window, 2 stolen Obama yard signs were shoved through the gaping hole in the window, and a cryptic almost "OBAHA" (or something...) was scrawled in orange spray-paint on the drivers side front and back doors and windows.
Photographer Joe Eddins and I headed over to the closest one and found a steady line of voters hoping to cast ballots early. Most seemed to be Obama supporters and several had come from the rally. Nearly all the voters were black.
Also at the polling site was a group of loud and angry protesters who shouted and mocked the voters as they walked in. Nearly all were white.
As you can see from these videos, no one held anything back. People were shouting about Obama's acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word "terrorist." They also were complaining that Sundays are for church, not voting.
In an exclusive interview with 12 News, 58 year-old Nancy Takehara of Chicago says she was going door-to-door when she came across a disgruntled homeowner.
“The next thing I know he’s telling us we’re not his people, we’re probably with ACORN, and he started screaming and raving,” Takehara said. “He grabbed me by the back of the neck. I thought he was going to rip my hair out of my head. He was pounding on my head and screaming. The man terrified me.”
Maintenance workers reported about 7:45 a.m. finding a 75-pound bear cub dumped at the roundabout near the Catamount statute at the entrance to campus, said Tom Johnson, chief of university police.
“It looked like it had been shot in the head as best we can tell. A couple of Obama campaign signs had been stapled together and stuck over its head,” Johnson said.
Earlier Friday, ACORN told McClatchy that one of its senior staffers in Cleveland had received a death threat and that its Boston and Seattle offices had been vandalized sometime Thursday, reflecting the mounting tensions over the group's role in registering 1.3 million mostly poor and minority Americans to vote...
...Kettenring said that a senior ACORN staffer in Cleveland, after appearing on television this week, got an e-mail that said she "is going to have her life ended." A female staffer in Providence, R.I., got a threatening call from someone who said words to the effect of "We know you get off work at 9," then uttered racial epithets, he said...
...Separately, vandals broke into the group's Boston and Seattle offices and stole computers, Kettenring said.
The incidents came the day after McCain charged in the final presidential debate that ACORN's voter-registration drive "may be perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history" and may be "destroying the fabric of democracy."
Here's the scoop: it may be too late for McCain to save his reputation, and no matter what she says to try and cover her ass, Palin doesn't care -- this is her base. It's already on them. It's already on John McCain. Barack Obama -- and Joe Biden -- is running a campaign of inclusion. McCain is betting on division and his rhetoric for the past several weeks, as if taking a lead from his running mate, has centered on this in lieu of actual vision or statesmanship.
This appeal to division and, yes, racism, is going to be his last Hail Mary drive to squeak an Electoral College victory by focusing on (Western) Pennsylvania.
And, at this point, should a single Obama supporter lose their life to a McCain supporter, it will damn him -- and Governor Palin -- for eternity.
That's all that's left until November 4th, and today a few good things happened for the Obama campaign. He received Colin Powell's endorsement, he announced raising an earth-shattering $150,000,000 in September at an $86/contribution average and including over 600,000 new donors, and he had my eldest son on the phone here in Santa Monica calling Obama voters in North Carolina to urge their early voting and provide an 888 number for them to find out the One Stop Early Vote polling place nearest to them.
The Powell endorsement is incredibly sober, truly what Prof. Juan Cole (who's criticized Powell for his role, however neutered, in the Iraq War build-up) calls "Powell's Finest Moment." If you want to see it and haven't yet, here you go:
Powell undermines every argument for a McCain Presidency, including all the contradictory Ayers posturing. He was even harsher talking with reporters outside after the on-air, especially on the vile McCarthyite Congresswoman, Michelle Bachmann. (More on her shortly.) But one of the earmarks of this election is that the racists are making themselves known, specifically today Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan who both insult the hell out of Former General, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, and Secretary of State Powell by saying he only endorsed Obama because of their shared skin color.
Disgusting. Like McCain's new red-baiting strategy, drinking from the same filthy trough as Palin and Bachmann. And his level of rhetorical self-delusion is profound -- compare this two-faced defense of smear-fest robocalls, having hired the same firm that the Bush campaign used in 2000 to ruin McCain with targeted lies:
What an incredible slime McCain has become, a kind of political Dorian Gray where in return for a hoped-for point or two poll bounce his reputation becomes uglier and uglier. And his camp is now acting in tell-tale loserish ways, banking on division to eke out a tiny victory, easy to target stuff, as Joe Biden slams home like a rock star:
You know you're losing when even your latest drummed up diversion ditches you for Mike Huckabee -- who isn't even running anymore. You know you're losing when a company doing fake voter registration and affiliation switches for your Party gets arrested for trying to subvert democracy. When yet another dyed-in-the-wool conservative newspaper endorses your opponent, in large part due to your disastrous VP choice. You know your losing when attacks on patriotism by surrogates like this:
...leads to her opponent suddenly raising $450,000 from 9,000 donors in the ensuing 24 hours. And with a name like Elwyn Tinklenberg (yes, really), that's got to be an otherwise unattainable campaign warchest.
Complacency is a killer, but Andrew Sullivan has it right that at least Obama has built a machine -- and a message -- with the shot at a rare landslide victory. There is nothing wishy-washy about Obama at all -- he's in it to win it.
McCain goes hat-in-hand to Letterman. It's nice to see him admit a mistake. Twice. But he is so freaked out, you just can't imagine Obama acting like that, let alone getting himself into the situation in the first place. Note that the admission of screwing up is a bid for absolution, not a real admission that he screwed up by lying to Letterman. One doubts Obama would lie, at least so brazenly, or wouldn't have been on Katie Couric to run interference with a running mate he can't trust alone with a network news anchor.
Obama was right today, anyone who thinks it's okay to get complacent doesn't remember New Hampshire. However, I'm still thinking of last night's third and final Presidential debate, and how much it felt like we were watching the climax of John McCain's nervous breakdown. Pictures like these (oh especially that now-famous last one with his tongue hanging out in reptilian pose) don't help. But it's more like George Packer nails it in The New Yorker:
It made me sad, watching the tight-necked, pop-eyed, clenched-jawed, eyebrows-twitching, shoulders-heaving, ghoulish-smiling, rapid-blinking John McCain go from pale to translucent as he flailed away on TV last night, to remember the man I saw at a town-hall meeting in Salem, New Hampshire, last January—years ago. Back then he was witty, he was relaxed, he was appealingly combative, he was generous. For sheer talent at engaging with voters he had it all over both Obama and Clinton. The contrast now is so severe that it makes running for President seem like a personal disaster on the scale of a prolonged nervous breakdown leading to physical and psychological ruin. This campaign has done something terrible to McCain. And it’s entirely his own fault. Character is fate.
While Obama understood what he needed to do in the debates and delivered with profoundly together coolness, per Mark Kleiman (per David Gergen):
David Gergen made the most important point of the evening, one that related to all three debates and one that, I thought, Obama grasped and McCain didn't. These were only formally and secondarily clashes between Obama and McCain. The voters weren't really measuring them against each other. These debates were the final step in Barack Obama's job interview for the Presidency.
The voters (like those in 1980, as Ed Rollins pointed out yesterday) had already decided they'd had about enough of the ruling party. But they needed to be reassured that the opposition candidate wasn't a fool, a lightweight, or a kook. What mattered was whether the challenger could get above the bar, put himself in the voters' comfort zone. Once that happened, there was sure to be a landslide.
Obama's super-controlled performances were all aimed at that end. Unlike his opponent, he knows deep in his bones the difference between tactics and strategy.
Tonight Obama and McCain met again at the traditional Al Smith formal dinner in NYC, a big Catholic establishment event, as Al Smith was a failed 1920's Democratic Presidential candidate, smeared due to his then-unaccepted Catholicism. It's a foundation dinner as well, and the candidates are supposed to let down their hair with written comedic monologues that singe but don't burn, usually climaxing with a tribute to the other candidate, who's sitting right there at the dais table. This is the dinner where Al Gore was specifically not gracious about his opponent while then-Gov. Bush spoke kindly of Al as a family man, feeding into the Gore cold elitism disdain meme. So it's weird to watch McCain and then Obama speak in such a collegial setting, getting digs in but also honoring each other. I have to say that if McCain wins he'll be the most surprised guy in America, because you can see the acceptance, the this-side-of-tears resignation written all over his face.
It feels like he wants Obama to be his President. And it would certainly spare him the humiliation of his own first term. By the time this is over, he's going to be grateful to his opponent for winning, or maybe for winning in the honorable way he's on track to do.
But until then, you'll find John's navigating the gutter.
Just like I believed Obama's earth-shaking speech at the end of the Democratic National Convention, his call-out for McCain to show himself like a man, caused McCain to flinch and choose Sarah Palin as his running mate that night, so we see McCain has once again "blinked" (as Gov. Palin has admittedly trained herself not to do) and surely in response to old allies admonishing him through the media (and one assumes in private) Thursday and Friday morning, he is trying to stuff the evil genie of violent ignorance back into the bottle:
I've already had one disagreement over whether McCain is doing this out of recognized decency (note he repeats the "family man" description, reminding attendees that Obama has children to protect), I do think it's a good thing, and not only for Obama's safety. McCain is protecting his reputation, the one that follows past his death into the history books -- pure, cleansing fear. Maybe he's even angling for a role in Obama's America. The other night Michelle Obama told Larry King that should her husband win the Presidency, America will still need John McCain to join in the effort of saving our country, and maybe she and her "Team of Rivals" talkin' husband mean it.
My guess is that after Tuesday night's trouncing in the debate, it is starting to sink in with McCain that he will most likely lose on November 4th. With his wife, Cindy, has he had the "what if" conversation by now?
Yet today even as McCain does the right thing, his McCain wildly rudderless campaign lurches in to smear Michelle Obama, violating McCain's claim that families were off limits. I honestly don't know if McCain approved this one, but it sure as hell stinks of campaign managing thug Steve Schmidt, who trained at the feet of Karl Rove but doesn't seem to have an ounce of his, dare I say, finesse. After all, it was Schmidt who pushed Gov. Palin onto the ticket.
You know, the same Gov. Palin who "unlawfully abused her power as governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday."
Ah, more Sunday morning fodder for the commentators on the McCain circus. It's going to be TiVo-worthy.
The perfect storm includes a late-Friday rumor that the Republican National Committee is essentially pulling out of the McCain campaign -- stranding them on funding, i.e. joint TV ad money. Seems those precious resources might be better spent trying to save a House or Senate seat here or there. Plant for the future rather than throw good money after bad.
A perfect storm is when the McCain campaign suddenly realizes it has to fight for West Virginia (5 electoral votes). Or (no joke!) Georgia (15 electoral votes).
That's right, you have a conventional wisdom developing that Obama could do well enough to beat McCain maybe 359 to 179 in the Electoral College, a major landslide. But I'm going to go further:
Barack Obama (D) 440 John McCain (R) 98
FDR/Herbert Hoover territory. You read it here first. The economic collapse, the endless Iraq War, the absolute failure of the Republican Party, it's all a perfect storm, to be sure, but it's not just anybody at the top of the Democratic ticket and the core reason for this landslide will be the once-in-a-lifetime leadership qualities of Barack Obama.
After all, he not only predicted the error of the Iraq War and the pending mortgage crisis, he predicted the very smear they would use against him, down to the exact wording:
Yep, this post's title is just a little over the line, but somehow "McCoward" didn't seem to go the distance.
Beginning with the non-vetted selection of blunt object Sarah Palin as his running mate and flowering with the desperate William Ayer smear injected directly into the bloodstream of his campaign this past week, John McCain has gone from the lesser candidate to national disgrace. His entire legacy is on the line, and as USArmyParatrooper explains at MyDD, it's looking grim:
If Obama wins he will forever be ingrained in history books on a level few Presidents share, if for no other reasons because he will be the first black President.
Since we live in such a media rich age his rise to power and his roadblocks will undoubtedly be well documented and retold throughout time. Because of this John McCain is destroying his legacy on an enormously long-term basis. 200 years from now our history books will talk about Barack Hussein Obama, the first black President and the country's reaction. It will be told how his political opponent went to great lengths to portray him as a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer, how in McCain rallies death threats were shouted. It will be told how many on the right tried to portray him as Muslim during a time when few accepted the Muslim faith in the land of the free. It will be told how John McCain and the right questioned his patriotism and his dedication to the troops. It will be told how they even shamelessly went after his wife, Michelle Obama. As our young students learn about American history they will look back on this period thinking, "how sad." Just like we view our wrongdoings in the past with regret, so will we in the future.
Just imagine during the Jetson era young children sitting in school watching beautiful, historic and inspirational Obama speeches, and then watching John McCain and the right's ugly rhetoric. McCain has been out to make his mark in history, but I don't think he's thought about what that mark will look like. Sad indeed.
The upshot is that McCain's attacks are exceedingly cowardly, as glaringly revealed by his lack of cajones on Tuesday night in not saying any of it to Obama's face. Which the Obama campaign has clearly taken up, calling McCain out in what I assume is a totally strategic move. It started with the boss himself (thanks to TPM):
Then Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack took up the charge:
“All of the things they said about Barack Obama in the TV, on the TV, at their rallies, and now on YouTube and everything else,” Biden said — referring to McCain and Palin tying Obama to Weatherman bomber Bill Ayers and accusing him of “palling around with terrorists.”
“John McCain could not bring himself to look Barack Obama in the eye and say the same things to him,” he said to cheers. “In my neighborhood, you got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.“
With McCain's famous temper, this could be an attempt to draw the foul and get him to bring it up in the next debate, where Obama will be just as ready as he was with his "don't understand" killer.
McCain's moral cowardice has been one of the subtexts of this campaign ever since he wound up the nomination and turned his attention to Barack Obama. But I did not realize it would reveal itself in such a physical dimension...
...He ever swaggered on for a couple days about how he was going to 'take the gloves off' when he met up with Obama in Nashville. But when the two of them were there in each others physical presence ... nothing. By a myriad of gestures and reactions Obama owned him...
...And now Obama can lightly taunt McCain with that very cowardice, his inability to just say it to his face. And if my take on the inner workings of McCain's mind at the moment is right that should simply unhinge him even more.
John McCain is not man enough to own his shit. John McCain will not openly confront Obama with his smears and lies and innuendo. John McCain will not come out and talk about Ayers, he has to be asked. That is why he goes to places like Fox News, so he can be asked. What a coincidence.
John McCain is a coward.
John McCain would rather hide behind his wife and Sarah Palin than say it himself.
John McCain just wants to throw shit out there, and “raise questions” about Obama, and hope his supporters connect the dots, because he is too much of a coward to directly push this toxic stew. He would rather hide behind right-wing bloggers, surrogates, and scummy websites staffed with wingnut welfare recipients like the NRO and the Weekly Standard.
This is what kills Presidential candidates the most: being seen as unmanly. Fair or not, it killed Gore and it killed Kerry. And now it's the skinny intellectual from Hawaii and Harvard who's looking like a real man in this contest.
Even the mainstream media is calling bullshit on the smear-by-association:
So how long until the term "coward" starts leaking into the mainstream media itself?
I predict Sunday morning they'll be debating whether it's fair to call John McCain a coward or not. And at that point, he's lost the issue.
There's that commandment prohibiting bearing false witness against your neighbor. For which John McCain, Sarah Palin and now Cindy McCain should all beg forgiveness from their deity, which would be today if they shared the same faith as me.
Happy Yom Kippur.
Joe Biden is telling them to repent. Campbell Brown is honestly exposing the racism of their tactics. The undecided voters are clearly telling them not to do it.
But they're stirring up their base. That's the "energy" Gov. Palin injects into the race, similarly corrupt Spiro Agnew-style. The base that just smashed windows at an Obama headquarters in Denver.
To paraphrase John McCain the night Obama cinched the nomination, "Now that's a Kristallnacht we can believe in!"
Think I'm exagerating? Then take a look at the base their inciting, the mob that McCain so desperately hired Palin to motivate, and leave a light on while you sleep tonight:
The McCain campaign says it has a newsmaker to surprise us with tomorrow morning. What new lie, smear or spurious guilt-by-association are they going to distract with this time? And distract they must -- the first official Alaska Troopergate report comes out on Friday. Oh, and McCain let slip that he's made us all prisoners (of his campaign, of his dirtiness, of his bucket list):
I just love the look on Palin's face when he calls us all prisoners. She's a mean, narcissistic, shallow but insatiably ambitious woman and every few days she thinks they might win the election, but the rest of the time knows she just has to make it alive to hopscotch over McCain's electoral corpse to a lucrative life on the Ultra-Right Tour and maybe a run at the GOP nomination in 2012, convictions-depending.
McCain spent the debate lying (repent!) about an overpriced "overhead projector" (remember those, Boomers?) that turns out to have been a planetarium projector, and making up a new late-inning economic ploy, lurching like both he and Hillary Clinton did to the desperation-reeking "gas tax holiday" back in the Primaries. Hey, as I remember, it didn't work for her (strategy, John, or haven't you learned the difference from tactics?) and this mortgage-buying jamboree tries to top the greased pander pole. Please give me a news cycle, please! pleads the wicked McCain, even as he scrambles his plan overnight and still manages to alienate fiscal Republicans.
So while McCain lurches from desperation rock to rock on the short road to Hades, Obama's countering with her very moving and relateable life story, like when he spoke of his mother's battle with the health insurance industry while dying of cancer, an American story.
Oh, and calling McCain out plainly as a coward for not saying his evil shit to his face Tuesday night.
Atone, McCoward. Lose with dignity. You know, put your country, not you sinning ambition, first.
The global financial system is melting down, John McCain is planning to cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits if he's elected President in 27 days, and as he stabilizes at around 8 pts. behind Obama in the general polls and slaughtered in the Electoral vote polls (Obama is preferred over McCain over a much wider spread of the country than any recent Presidential candidates, indeed redrawing the map), how does he sell himself to the American public?
By late-game, vicious and desperate character assassination against his opponent.
The net effect may be to dirty up Obama, or it may just boomerang back on McCain himself. But whether it decreases or increases Obama's margin over him, it threatens to permanently sully the reputations of both McCain and his ultra-enabler, Sarah Palin.
After John McCain delivered the central question of his speech today -- "Who is the real Barack Obama?" -- the first, and loudest, supporter seems to yell:
"Terrorist!"
...McCain seemed to pause, and didn't denounce the epithet. I'd argue that there's no way to arrive at a conclusive answer as to whether he heard it or not, short of asking him and getting a frank answer. McCain could have been pausing to admire the pith and artfulness of his smear, or to bask in the adulation it brought. And McCain is not responsible for what some whackjob yells at his rally.
That said, the moment is uncomfortably revealing: McCain is now dabbling in the tactics employed in the most viral smears of Obama, if not to the same degree. No honest observer would dispute that McCain's speech today was about sowing fears of Obama as a risky, unknown, and vaguely sinister "other," and this supporter, at least, read the subtext, intended or not, loud and clear. And when McCain delivered that line there was a gratified, even visceral roar from McCain supporters, as if this attack -- fear the alien in our midst! -- was the gloves-off moment they'd been waiting for.
You claim that you are the candidate people know, while your opponent is not who he seems to be. In fact, you argue, he has secret ulterior motives that he is trying to hide. You say he is a danger to all that the country holds dear.
The problem is that America has a history of political violence, particularly with regard to race as the ultimate other. Jerome Corsi is nosing around Kenya to try and smear Obama's father (my guess is as a Communist for having read some books as a student in 1950's Africa, like everyone else), Palin's introduced in Florida by a sheriff pointedly using Obama's middle name, a GOP columnist in Virginia is writing pure minstel show and fear-mongering racist "satire" imagining an Obama Presidency, and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania is emailing around "Obama is a Terrorist's Best Friend" (yeah, like Bill Ayres and he have been hanging out since Obama was eight).
The problem is that when they stir up fear, it stirs up hate. Per Glenn Greenwald:
And just now, John McCain -- speaking in New Mexico -- delivered one of the ugliest, nastiest, most invective-filled personality attacks a major candidate has ever delivered, blatantly designed to stoke raw racial resentments and depict Obama as a Manchurian candidate funded by secret Arab Terrorist sources -- a truly unstable and hate-mongering rant filled with lines like these, delivered with an angry scowl to screaming, howling, booing throngs, while Cindy McCain stood behind him shaking her head in disgust at each fact she heard about the Black Terrorist daring to challenge her husband:
I don't need any lessons in being honest with the American people, and if I did, I wouldn't seek it from a Chicago politician. . . . There's much we don't know about Senator Obama. For a guy who has authored two memoirs, he's not exactly an open book. Who is the real Barack Obama?
It's as if somehow the usual rules don't apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that . . . His campaign had to return $33,000 in illegal foreign funds from Palestinian donors, and this weekend, we found out about another $28,000 in illegal donations. Why has Senator Obama refused to disclose the people who are funding his campaign? Again, the American people deserve answers.
The problem is that it entirely encourages and leads to this:
"Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," Palin said.
"Boooo!" said the crowd.
"And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued.
"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.
"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.
When I referred to how McCain and Palin wish to leave their reputations, I didn't just mean should they lose after such vile speech, not just the choice of going rock bottom because you can't or won't or are incapable of debating the issues.
I meant should anything untoward happen to Barack Obama, any physical attack. Because if it were to happen, and if it were to be inflicted by anyone whiter than Osama Bin Laden, they'll be in a universe of boomerang pain.
Because unless they get off this tack immediately, should anything happen, the electorate, the nation and the world will hold them personally responsible.
So here's the question (and, yes, this is dangerously hubristic, but how often might we get a chance like this?):
What state will Barack Obama win that will surprise the living hell out of everybody?
Not Virginia, not now that he's consistently polling well there. Sure, he could lose there, and North Carolina, or even Ohio or Florida, but it won't be a surprise anymore if he wins all those states, because the polling supports the possibility of his winning each as we have now entered the final month.
But, assuming neither God nor McCain bring any gamechangers, it's all trending towards the winner, feeling kind of like 1932 except that Hoover's a mean, vindictive old man with a flirty young fascist at his side. Facing an eminent bloodbath, McCain has announced that he's going negative, with virtually 100% of his media spend now on smear ads. Which has given the Obama Campaign the opening to counterattack as it now appears they have been completely prepared to do -- hello again to the (Charles) Keating 5, the disgraced Senators from the hugest financial scandal to date, 1989, starring none other than the sole Republican in the gang, Greedy McFinance:
Gotta be good for a few news cycles, and a hell of a lot more relevant than the Swiftboaty smears against Obama.
So while Starburst Palin is about to get fried like moose in Alaska when seven state employees testify in her Troopergate game stopper, Obama's exposing McCain's dangerously erratic instability, using press and events in plain sight. This may be my favorite coffin nail, I mean, ad of the entire election:
So I have no prize except citing your chosen comment name, but what state will it be? Based on today's stats at Electoral-vote.com, some places where Barack is down by less than 10 points and might win, if he gets unheard of youth and out-of-the-woodwork votes, include Colorado(47/46), Missouri (48/47), Indiana (47/45) and West Virginia (50/44), but also Georgia (51/44) and Mississippi (52/44).
Oh, and my pick.
I'm betting Texas (53/43). Just because it would mean the most of all those -- 34 sweet Electoral votes and a repudiation of their very own George W. Bush.
He's going McNegative, with Winky McPalin leading the charge, bringing up the moribund accusation that Barack Obama hangs out with terrorists who don't see America as we do. She means Bill Ayers, now a respected figure in Chicago education, who did his evil deeds back when Obama was eight years old, and with whom Obama shared some brief board time. Not a close buddy.
Too bad McCain has no policies or program or vision to run on. If you want to monitor the preview of the upcoming bloodbath, check out Nate Silver or The Votemaster.
I'm looking forward to Obama's Monday morning jujutsu.
Time to get serious, folks. I you really want the GOP out of the entire Executive branch, if you want Supreme Court justices that won't roll back rights, if you want a foreign policy that's not destructive to U.S. global interests, if you want a President who doesn't believe that you're only rich at earning $5,000,000/year, if you want a President who knows how to use email and the Internet to glean information for himself and create new economic opportunities, if you want a President who's not in the pocket of the big huge oil companies, then it's time to stop bemoaning this or that little disagreement you may have about some position or tactic in the Obama campaign.
Because if the new Reuters/Zogby poll is right, McCain's negative attacks are working and he's moved into the lead.
Regarding the John Edwards affair, as this politician wasn't out selling hypocritical family values or God or any of those non-issues which make it so much more fun for Dems when a Republican is revealed for having done as he does but not as he says, I'd like to quote Bert Cooper, the fictional co-founder of the fictional 1960's advertising agency at the center of AMC's brilliant Mad Men, as he responded to the very truthful accusations by Pete Campbell about Don Draper's true identity:
"Who cares?"
And furthermore:
"This country was built and run by men with worse stories than whatever you've imagined here."
John McCain and his doppleganger Karl Rove are trying to turn this election on a fabrication about Barack Obama they want to shove down our throats and into our psyches, while the guy who blatantly cheated on and dumped his wife for a beer heiress, millionaire McCain's burgeoning bad judgment is revealed to again bode ill, having caused a huge loss of jobs in Ohio, and he's trying to chastise the Obama campaign for mentioning it -- a real issue.
McCain is worthless now. Here John Edwards, the only candidate amongst both parties, over 15 of them, who put tackling U.S. poverty at the top of his agenda. Multi-millionaire McCain doesn't care, except in the abstract. When was the last time he left one of his eight houses, got out of his private plane, and actually helped a poor person build a house, maybe on a visit with Jimmy Carter. He's not some benign alternative to Obama -- he's the aging side of the American oligarchy, and if he's their front man this year, so be it -- he'll say anything he has to, allow his Rovian campaign to run any lowlife ad it wants to and say he's proud of it, he'll do his job to keep the lid on investigations, true change..and true growth.
Beyond anything else, this country needs to grow. It can only grow in a sustainable way with change.
Russia just invaded neighboring Georgia. I'd think I'll do as Elizabeth Edwards asked today, extraordinarily quick, forthright and free of self-pity. Her husband isn't running for anything right now. Let private citizens be private.
There's a big week coming up, the last time for the candidates to dominate the news cycle before the two weeks of Olympic coverage. Bets are on for either Obama or McCain or both to announce VP running mates. Meanwhile, there's the wreckage of last week's "celebrity" attacks by McCain on Obama to deal with. Per Joe Trippi:
Ever since McCain’s NAACP speech that seemed to me to be directed at white swing voters and not at African Americans I have believed that the McCain campaign is adept at understanding how to raise race as an issue and use it to its advantage.
Is a pattern emerging?
With white voters, the attacks appear to be working -- so far. Per David Gergen:
Will there be long-term damage to the McCain campaign? Is John McCain actually the very thing he ridicules? Mark Kleiman says yes:
Something about the Britney/Paris video has been nagging at the back of my mind, and I finally figured out what it was. Comparing Obama to them is wrong because they're fading stars and he's a rising star. The Britney/Paris analogue in the race is McCain: he, like they, got rather far on extremely limited talent and huge amounts of marketing, and is now desperately trying to cling to celebrity with more and more extreme antics that get him ink but offend and sadden his fans.
And that explains the raw hatred that McCain and his handlers display towards Obama: it's the hatred of the has-been (especially a has-been who never was much in the first place, a mere celebrity, like Britney rather than an actual star, like Madonna) for the person (especially the person of egregiously superior talent) she passes on the rising escalator as she herself takes the long, long ride down to well-deserved obscurity and mall openings.
I've been asked again and again for my response to the now infamous McCain celebrity ad. I actually have three responses. It is a complete waste of the money John McCain's contributors have donated to his campaign. It is a complete waste of the country's time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States.
So stripping all the well-planned Rovian distraction away, the circus that may or may not decide the future leader of the free world, who is this John McCain in who's name this ad was run?
This guy:
Yep, Joe Lieberman may condescend to Obama as "a good young man" (tell me and my wife that we're young at roughly Obama's age and we'll dance in the streets), but his candidate is, at best, a "once-good old man."
It's not often that I run the opposition's dirty work, the smear material devoid of issues but filled instead with malignant innuendo, but here you go:
Yep, if ever there was a whiny petulant campaign ad in a Presidential race, this is it. Imagine -- Obama's popular, hence he must be wrong for America. But what's really wrong, per Chris Bowers:
Let's do a quick rundown of the identity politics at work in such a comparison:
Obama is a girly-man. The ad only compares Obama to female celebrities, which is a direct shot at Obama's "manliness."
Obama will sleep with your white daughters: Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears are known for their sexuality as much as anything else. That must go for Barack Obama, too. And the history of attacking African-Americans in association with white women is such a positive one.
Obama is too young: For a campaign that is hyper-sensitive to attacks on McCain's age, they certainly have no problem attacking Obama's age. Which is what comparing Obama to Spears and Hilton is.
Obama is a Hollywood liberal: This is also a run of the mill attack on Obama as a Hollywood, liberal elite, in line with decades of conservative backlash narratives.
This is really atrocious stuff, and trying to bring out all of the worst aspects of America in order to win an election. At this point, the McCain campaign is just hitting Obama with whatever it can think of, and seeing if Obama will respond.
Obama's response? Brilliantly flips McCain's tactics around and uses them to reinforce Obama's core message...:
..which can't help but leave you thinking as well about McCain's age. What makes it fair game is that McCain's low road strategy -- or that of the Bush campaign vets like Karl Rove running his media campaign -- is to make Obama "other" whether black or foreign or uppity. In response, Obama is essentially painting McCain as "other" -- someone we don't really know as well as we thought, someone from a dark past from which we're all straining to break free, come November 4th.
If McCain can't run on the issues and won't bow out, if his only chance is to make this election a referendum not on eight years of failed Republican policies but on Obama, and if he can successfully muddy his image, he'll lose for sure. Hillary Clinton tried some similar tactics and ended up losing anyway, behind where it counted from early in the race, just like McCain.
Obama is exponentially better organized than McCain -- finalizing plans to use his stadium speech as the world's largest phone bank at the Democratic National Convention, reaching out to Republicans currently in the shadows, and for the first time breaking 50% in a national poll. And McCain, who's shredding his clean campaigning pledge with his media attacks being labeled "childish" and self-reductive by his former confidante and ally, he's desperately trying to define Obama as out of touch?
Obama noted McCain had stepped up his attacks against him and questioned his approach.
"I don't pay attention to John McCain's ads, although I do notice he doesn't seem to have anything very positive to say about himself," Obama told reporters after visiting a diner in Lebanon, Missouri.
"He seems to only be talking about me," Obama said. "You need to ask John McCain what he's for, not just what he's against."
That's right. Everyone knows what Obama is running on: Change. That We. Can Believe In.
Today was a huge day politically for the U.S. and, after the Edwards endorsement and the West Virginia primary the day before that...I just think we have a lot more coming.
But today was something special.
It started with Sen. John McCain laying out his vision, i.e. a sci-fi style prediction of what the end of his first term will look like, chock full of promises but without any explication of how he will accomplish any of it. Welcome to 2013:
This is clearly meant to be a big re-branding moment for McCain, and he deserves credit for those places where he underlines his philosophical/operational differences with Bush, but as Joe Klein says (his writing actually much improved ever since getting lambasted by the blogs and actually responding to the criticism), it's all a bit, uh, hilarious:
No doubt, John McCain's attempt to lay out the goals of his prospective presidency was a worthy and honorable effort--but there was something deeply hilarious about it as well. Take his paragraph about Iraq:
By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced. Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders. The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.
And the tooth fairy will spread giggle-juice throughout the land, and the Mets will win the World Series and I will lose 20 pounds while continuing to consume vast quantities of Chinese and Italian food.
Poor Johnny. The ultimate result of his announcement on the evening headlines: stomped once again (shades of 2000) by that asshole who beat his ass back then. Bush goes to the Knesset and uses the somewhat solemn occasion of Israel's 60th Anniversary to attack Sen. Barack Obama with classic smeartalk:
President Bush used a speech to the Israeli Parliament on Thursday to liken those who would negotiate with “terrorists and radicals” to appeasers of the Nazis — a remark widely interpreted as a rebuke to Senator Barack Obama, who has advocated greater engagement with countries like Iran and Syria...
...The episode placed Mr. Bush squarely in one of the most divisive debates of the campaign to succeed him, as Republicans try to portray Mr. Obama as weak in the fight against terrorism. It also underscored what the White House has said will be an aggressive effort by Mr. Bush to use his presidential platform to influence the presidential election.
“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Mr. Bush said, in a speech otherwise devoted to spotlighting Israel’s friendship with the United States.
Firestorm. Obama hit back, Pelosi, Kerry, Dean, Emanuel, even Sen. Hillary Clinton.
“This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset … and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”
Biden has hit the same loosened up stage as Nelson Rockefeller in his later years when they couldn't hurt him anymore, like when Rocky flipped the finger back at a student who birded him during a campus speech. The fact that CNN et al had a censored word running through their crawls -- "bulls**t" -- in the context of criticizing Bush is just too sweet. It's not like we all haven't been saying it these past 8 years!
McCain, who seems like the most available guy on any campaign bus, bless him, heard about it from a reporter and agreed with Bush. Even though he's voiced having to deal with Hamas in the past. Even worse, he got it wrong on Ronald Reagan: Ronnie did negotiate with Iran.
It just minimized his whole vision thing and gave Obama the perfect opening to carry through the Fall -- now he can surely attack McCain by aligning him squarely with the current President and run against George (least popular ever) to beat John.
Ultimately, Matthew Yglesias get it right about McCain's saying that talking to our enemies somehow automatically confers a prestige onto them that actually makes a difference:
This is such a common talking point on the right that you'd think that somewhere out there you could find some kind of causal explanation of how this works. Obama takes office. The Iranians, having heard his campaign rhetoric, send a message through the Swiss or something about the possibility of arranging a summit. Our guys talk to their guys, the meeting happens, and this gives Khatami enhanced prestige in the eyes of whom? And what does this enhanced prestige allow him to do? What, in other words, are we afraid of?
So many kneejerk neoconik idiots out there who don't know the difference between talks and appeasement, even Chris Matthews is taking them down:
But if that's not enough, this is also a day where the House Republicans fell to pieces over an Iraq War funding bill, and House Judiciary Committee Democrats are preparing to have Karl Rove arrested.
But even neither of those score the biggest story of the day.
The California Supreme Court, striking down two state laws that had limited marriages to unions between a man and a woman, ruled on Thursday that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.
The 4-to-3 decision, drawing on a ruling 60 years ago that struck down a state ban on interracial marriage, would make California the second state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriages.
Right on right on. In 30 days, unless there's some sort of judicial stay, same sex couples will be able to get married like everyone else. There will be fireworks by those opposed, but the fact is that a majority of young people not only don't care, they're want to go to their gay friends' weddings.
It will likely increase tourism which is great because California has been hit with major budget shortfalls. Back when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom legalized gay marriage, the jewelers, florists, clothing shops or wedding planners in San Francisco had a banner year.
There will likely be a bit proposition battle this fall over a proposed CA constitutional amendment once again instituting a ban, and the fight could be tight. I'm hoping my state does the right thing. Because now that gay Americans can come out of the closet and be embraced by their parents, it really means something to be able to get hitched in the eyes of society and the law. From an email sent to Andrew Sullivan:
My Beloved, Samantha, just asked me to update my Facebook page to confirm that I'm engaged to her. My mother just called for the third time this morning and choked out through her tears, "I promise this is the last time I'll call this morning, but I understand that the proper protocol is that the mother of the bride pays for the wedding." I've left a message for our minister to see if he is available in 30 days to officiate our wedding.
Read the whole email and see a photo of the engaged and their two daughters here.
And please, dear Lord, let this year be the first official year of the 21st Century.
I didn't watch the Obama/Clinton debate tonight. From what I'm reading, that was a wise move. It turns out ABC News isn't interested in quizzing the candidates on any of the following policy issues:
The financial crisis The collapse of housing values in the US and around the world Afghanistan Health care Torture The declining value of the US Dollar Education Trade Pakistan Energy Immigration The decline of American manufacturing The Supreme Court The burgeoning world food crisis. Global warming China The attacks on organized labor and the working class Terrorism and al Qaeda Civil liberties and constraints on government surveillance
Evidently the first hour was mainly "gotcha" questions about old news like Rev. Wright, flag pins and Tuzla, with the majority of viewers feeling that Gibson and Stephanopoulos were gunning for Obama. Here's how Atrios scored it:
29 minutes in, not one policy question.
...32 minutes in...
...35 minutes in...
...38 minutes in...
...41 minutes in...
Charlie Gibson got booed by the audience right after the debate ended. ABC seems to have had to shut down the comments section of their website due to nothing but flame after flame.
By the way, Hillary on the Southern working class whites in 1995:
"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them."
Elitist?
And tonight, on whether Obama can win the White House this fall:
Hillary Rodham Clinton said emphatically Wednesday night that Barack Obama can win the White House this fall, undercutting her efforts to deny him the Democratic presidential nomination by suggesting he would lead the party to defeat.
"Yes, yes, yes," she said when pressed about Obama's electability during a campaign debate six days before the Pennsylvania primary.
So much for that leg of her campaign stool.
Yep, at times like these, you gotta check with the Boss.
