I Want to Live in Obama’s America

From Victoria Jackson, a Saturday Night Live vet:

I don’t want a political label, but Obama bears traits that resemble the anti- Christ and I’m scared to death that uneducated people will ignorantly vote him into office.

You see, what bothers me most, besides being a Communist, and a racist . . . is that he is a LIAR. He pretends to be a Christian and he incriminates himself everytime he speaks about Christianity. To lie about being a believer in Christ is very dangerous. Lightning could strike him at any minute! But seriously, he doesn’t have a clue what the Bible says and yet he pretends to be a church-going Christian to win votes. That is sooooo evil.

ok, she’s an extreme wingnut and obviously not terribly bright. Here’s what McCain is saying:

I’m an American. And I choose to fight. Don’t give up hope. Be strong. Have courage. And fight. Fight for a new direction for our country. Fight for what’s right for America.

Fight to clean up the mess of corruption, infighting and selfishness in Washington.

Fight to get our economy out of the ditch and back in the lead.

Fight for the ideals and character of a free people.

Fight for our children’s future.

Fight for justice and opportunity for all.

Stand up to defend our country from its enemies.

Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. America is worth fighting for. Nothing is inevitable here. We never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history. Now, let’s go win this election and get this country moving again.

It’s very typical Republican rhetoric. “We have enemies and we must defeat them. Be afraid. Be very afraid.” McCain hinted that Obama is a socialist (“spread the wealth around”) but he doesn’t actually say it.

Palin isn’t so fussy:

Senator Obama says now he wants to spread the wealth, which means government taking your hard-earned money and doughing it out however the politician sees fit, and Barack Obama calls it spreading the wealth and Joe Biden calls higher taxes patriotic. Joe the Plumber said it sounded to him like socialism.

And again the standard Republican “be very afraid” rhetoric. Everybody knows a socialist is just someone whose too shy to call themselves a communist. They think they can win with this rhetoric. I really hope they keep it up. Every time they say the word “socialist” or “elitist” or “Muslim” or “terrorist” a Democratic angel gets her wings.

Fortunately it looks like they are burying themselves in their own big piles of steaming manure.

Here’s what Obama is saying:

I know these are difficult times for America. But I also know that we have faced difficult times before. The American story has never been about things coming easy – it’s been about rising to the moment when the moment was hard. It’s about seeing the highest mountaintop from the deepest of valleys. It’s about rejecting fear and division for unity of purpose. That’s how we’ve overcome war and depression. That’s how we’ve won great struggles for civil rights and women’s rights and worker’s rights. And that’s how we’ll emerge from this crisis stronger and more prosperous than we were before – as one nation; as one people.

The question comes down to which America you want to live in. I want to be what Barack Obama thinks I am and I want to live in his America.

Better than He Is

The quote below from The New Republic is a more expanded version of a “Quote of the Day” from the Dish:

Tyrants and génocidaires would sleep less soundly during a McCain presidency. And yet it is impossible any longer to ignore the contradiction between the nobility of his past and the ignobility of his present. He is abstracted, dispersed, out of focus, Stockdalesque, mentally undone. Often he sounds simply unintelligent. I would be more affected by his championing of soldiers and veterans if it were not also the championing of people like himself: solipsism is a common effect of solidarity, and McCain’s sense of reality seems to be narrowing. The financial crisis harshly exposed these limitations: it made McCain more dogmatic and more doctrinaire, with his wild refrain about tax cuts and his unmaverick-like refusal to examine his party’s cult of corporations. His economics refuted his compassion. McCain feels with his heart, but he thinks with his base. And when he picked Sarah Palin, he told the United States of America to go fuck itself. I used to think of my dilemma this way: Obama’s conception of America is better than he is, McCain’s conception of America is worse than he is. But McCain is looking more and more like his America, which is Bush’s America: a country of capitalists and Christians. I do not know how to explain what has become of him. But the more I regard him, the more I recall Gene’s ominous words. You vote for the man.

Though I like the “told the United States of America to go fuck itself” line very much, I thought the far more important line was the next one: “I used to think of my dilemma this way: Obama’s conception of America is better than he is, McCain’s conception of America is worse than he is.”

That, ladies and gentlemen, hits the nail on the head.

Why The Repubs will Lose. . .and why they should

I ran across this via MSNBC Political Cartoons of the Week:

This image completely captures the pointlessness of the McCain campaign. It’s now a cliché to say McCain is out of touch, but this man just doesn’t get it at a level beyond the imagination. Palin doesn’t know there’s an “it” to get.

It seems like the entire right wing is hysterical. They can’t figure out what in the hell is going on. Someone I know likes to say “reality is that which blithely ignores what you think about it.” Reality is that cartoon.

I do a lot of opposition research and came across this at the NRO:

That is to say, the continued association [with Ayers] is easily explained for anyone willing to look at the facts. The post 9/11 Ayers was exactly the same guy as the pre-9/11 Ayers. That’s what drew Obama to him in the first place. The media and our esteemed commentariat choose not to look at the facts — after all, Obama is such a fine writer and has such intellectual rigor. So we have the usual dismissal or complex rationalizations of something that is obvious and simple: Obama shares Ayers’s Leftist politics. Whatever distance Obama has imposed in the last couple of years is strictly a function of his electoral ambitions.

The truth is if Obama had any kind of association with Ayers, it would be screaming in the headlines. It’s not there. Obama served on a board with him along with a bunch of people including Republicans. Obama’s career was not launched in Ayers’s living room. That’s simply a bald-faced lie. Annenberg who gave millions to Ayers’s projects has endorsed McCain for president. Why did McCain accept an endorsement (and I assume a contribution) from someone who gave almost 50 million dollars to a terrorist?

The Ayers thing is steaming pile of bullshit. And it’s what the right wing–along with McCain and Palin–are all about.

Meanwhile this is what Obama is about (with thanks to The Dish):

Reaping the Whirlwind

Reaping the Whirlwind. Letting the genie out of the bottle. Opening Pandora’s box.

John McCain is starting something he may not be able to finish. He is whipping up a mob filled with hate and fear.

McCain in Kamakazi Mode

McCain is losing everywhere. If the election were held today they wouldn’t be able to find him underneath the crushing landslide.

So what’s he going to do? Dive! Dive!

He’s going negative. He’s going to start slinging the shit and hope some of it sticks to Obama.

I subscribe to Townhall.com’s daily email and received this today:

Defeat Obama with ‘Shock and Awe’

An Urgent Message from The National Republican Trust PAC

Dear Fellow American:

Never before in the history of our nation have we faced such a grave crisis: one of the most radical political figures ever to be nominated by a major party is just minutes away from becoming President of the United States.

That man is Barack Obama.

He promises to change America forever. If elected, he will do just that – but in ways
you may not like.
…
He even has terrorist friends he won’t denounce. One such man is William Ayers, a leader in the radical terrorist group the Weatherman Underground. The group bombed several government buildings, including the Pentagon, killing civilians and police officers.
…
Obama has even been endorsed by radicals such as Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan.

No one can deny hearing about Obama’s relationship with the America-hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

There should be little doubt that William Ayers and Louis Farrakhan and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright are rooting for Obama – because he is one of them.

In keeping with such friends, Obama has promised to meet with radical leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without “preconditions” even though Ahmadinejad has promised to “wipe Israel off the map” and “destroy” America .

Even radical Hamas terrorists have praised him.

“We like Mr. Obama and we hope he will win the election,” Ahmed Yousef, senior Hamas leader was quoted by ABC radio as saying.

Sleazy smears. That’s what they think “shock and awe” are. The truth? Who cares about that? This stuff is blatant lies and they think the American public is stupid enough to fall for it. Hate is all they have left, but hate is what they do best and they know it’s worked before.

Why is it that when Palin (or whoever) is criticized Democrats are warned that being nasty might backfire, but the right wing is NEVER warned about that? Could it be because they know it works? Could it be that they don’t have anything else?

McCain’s campaign is in major meltdown at the moment. Anything honorable McCain once stood for is now utterly gone, sacrificed to his naked ambition.

Chipper Chatter

Well, Palin didn’t shriek and faint nor did she wander off into Alzheimer-esque rambling.

In the first part of the debate Palin seemed to be channeling Alvin the Chipmunk. She calmed down as the debate wore on and I swear it was because of Biden’s thoughtful, reassuring manner. Biden calmed her down and got her to slow the chatter to something less than warp speed.

The CBS polls say Biden won. So did the CNN polls.

And the conservatives? Well some of them are over the moon, of course. She was chipper and can fake sincerity so well! John. J. Miller at The Corner had a more measured reaction:

I love her style, doggone it, and I sure was cheering her on—but I must say, with respect to all of the positive reviews, I think Sarah Palin really benefited from low expectations. No, she didn’t fall off the stage, as some had hoped or feared. Yet her nods to economic populism made me wince. . . .

I’m heartened that others are giving her a big thumbs up. I’m certainly not giving her a thumbs down. It might be said that she was good enough. But I want her to do better, for her sake and ours.

I’m glad this debate is over. Sarah Palin can go back into her box and not be heard from again for a while. She can tour Hate Radio, Republican fundraisers and churches and maybe dream of being Reagan in 2012. But for now, I think she’s finished.

Proud to Be an American

This man makes me proud to be an American and proud to be a human being.

Can you feel it? It feels like the winds of history are changing.

hat tip to The Dish

The Newest Phony Hissy-Fit

The right wing is having its most recent tantrum. Gwen Ifill, the moderator of the Veep debate, whom they have known about since sometime last summer, has written a book which will be released in January. This book, called The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, is about various young, up-and-coming black leaders.

That automatically means she’s going to be biased, right?

Somehow she’ll pick questions that Biden can answer and Palin can’t. Sneaky gotcha questions like “What newspapers do you read?”

Nate Silver at the New Republic says the Obama campaign should offer to replace her.

I’m going to watch the debate with great interest. I keep thinking Palin can’t be this dumb. Surely she’s just flustered, rattled, out of her depth. She’s been cramming for this exam so surely she’ll at least hold her own.

Surely.

Or it could be as cringe-worthy as her Katie Couric interviews. If it is bad/horrible/worse, then the right wing will have a tailor-made excuse already warmed up and ready to go.

Bye-Bye Giuliani

What a relief! Giuliani has taken himself out of the picture. If you think George W. Bush is authoritarian and secretive, Giuliani could teach both topics at the college level.

Bin Loony Speaks

A few days ago Huckabee said this in speech:

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And thats what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than trying to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.”
Watch the video over at Crooks & Liars.

My fellow bloggers are shrieking, wailing and gnashing their teeth over this. Is the Huckster advocating the death penalty for mixed-fiber clothing? No. He’s not. He’s kissing the ass of the religious right loonies who–for the most part–have acknowledged that the freedom to marry whom you please and the freedom to make decisions about your own body are not technically abridged by the US Constitution and they feel that’s scandalous. The only real and permanent way to rob you of your rights is to change the Constitution in regards to gay marriage and abortion. They are authoritarian. Robbing you of your rights is what they are all about. Huckabee may or may not give two farts in the wind for those issues, but there’s a certain amount of ass he must kiss to get votes and he knows it.

The speech played well to its audience, though. They hate the US Constitution and would give anything to rewrite a big part of it beginning with the 1st Amendment–that is definitely the first thing to go–and moving right along to the 14th Amendment and Article VI. Freedom of religion? Are you crazy? They know which religion is correct and you don’t have a right to be wrong. Free speech? Well, sure. They are perfectly free to speak and you are perfectly free to listen. You are also freely permitted to say things they approve of. Don’t abuse that freedom by saying stuff they don’t like and everybody gets to stay free! Get it?

Yeah, we get it. And if the American people vote this creep into office they will definitely get it, too.