Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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Aside from the duties of the vice president, what other basic tenets of American government are apparently unknown to Sarah Palin? How about the First Amendment?
ABC News' Steven Portnoy reports: In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by "attacks" from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.
Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.
"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."
Geez, so much stupid packed into such a tiny space. Let's review the relevant bit of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". Here's what it doesn't say: "The media shall make no judgment as to the veracity or unsavoriness of comments by a candidate for office." Seriously, what the hell is she talking about? How are her First Amendment rights even remotely affected?
Then this: "our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media." Translated: I have a right to attack an opponent (which indeed she does), but if the media calls it an attack then... HELP! I'M BEING ATTACKED! The media can't stop you from saying anything, crazy lady. At most, individual outlets can choose not to report it, but that really doesn't seem to be a problem right now, does it? And her implied solution is that the media shouldn't be allowed (by the government, one presumes) to express an opinion about a candidate's speech, which actually would be a violation of the First Amendment.
I am so ready for this election to be over so she can drag her ignorant ass back up to the tundra and take a remedial course on American government. She clearly slept through it the first time around.
I never stop being amazed that the people who are the most public about their Christianity seem to be the least familiar with the Bible.
You couldn't make this stuff up.
Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country's first black presidential nominee.
The middle child of 13, Jones, who is African American, is part of a family that has lived in Republican-leaning Bastrop County for five generations. The family has remained a fixture in Cedar Creek and other parts of the county, even when its members had to eat at segregated barbecue dives and walk through the back door while white customers walked through the front, said Amanda Jones' 68-year-old daughter, Joyce Jones. [...]
Amanda Jones, a delicate, thin woman wearing golden-rimmed glasses, giggled as the family discussed this year's presidential election. She is too weak to go the polls, so two of her 10 children — Eloise Baker, 75, and Joyce Jones — helped her fill out a mail-in ballot for Barack Obama, Baker said. "I feel good about voting for him," Amanda Jones said.
Jones' father herded sheep as a slave until he was 12, according to the family, and once he was freed, he was a farmer who raised cows, hogs and turkeys on land he owned. Her mother was born right after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Joyce Jones said. The family owned more than 100 acres of land in Cedar Creek at one point, she said.[...]
Amanda Jones says she cast her first presidential vote for Franklin Roosevelt, but she doesn't recall which of his four terms that was. When she did vote, she paid a poll tax, her daughters said. That she is able, for the first time, to vote for a black presidential nominee for free fills her with joy, Jones said.
Via.
You think the right wing is going crazy at the prospect of getting whacked next Tuesday? My friends, you ain't seen crazy.
Two days ago, I listened to a 9-6-08 message by Bree Keyton, a young woman evangelist who had just traveled to Kenya and visited Obama's home village and what she found out about his relations with his tribal people was chilling. And his "cousin" Odinga was dreadful. She said the witches, warlocks and those involved in satanism and the occult get up daily at 3 a.m. to release curses against McCain and Palin so B. Hussein Obama is elected.
Bree Keyton told the tribal "Christians" you are NOT Christian if you practice "tribalism" where they do voodoo to conjure up a goddess spirit or a "genie" and then come to church on Sunday to worship Jesus! What she discovered there is apparent in most churches around the world; namely, mixture in the church. Some renounced their devilish practices of blood covenant by killing sheep, goats, humans to be inducted into the tribe or to get a wife or to get revenge.
She said the current president of Kenya is a Christian. However, Obama's cousin Odinga ran aganist him and said he rigged the election and stirred up the masses to rape woman and boys, kill and burn and torture Christians, etc. until Obama contacted Condeleeza Rice and she granted Obama the right to contact Odinga and other ruling elders and he "convinced" them to stop terrorizing the Christians. Bree Keyton said the current Christian President was forced by our government (!) to "create" an office for Odinga (to make "peace") so he was made the Prime Minister (!) to make peace between the Christians and Odinga's Muslim religion!
Bree Keyton went and visited Obama's tribal people and she found out Obama is 75% Arab* and his family are Muslims. Odinga is strill trying to become the President of Kenya. If he does, he will make a law forbidding all public preaching and institute Sharia Law. Bree K. said Odinga has made a pact with satan.
Bree K. also said when Obama visited his tribe in '06 and as late as Jan. '08 he went to every elder's home which has a "shrine" inside to worship the genie and asked for their blessing. She was told Obama and Odinga were both "destined" before they were born to be president/leader of their nation. They say "he is the chosen one". She said Obama's grandmother sacrificed a black and a white chicken to the "goddess of the river" so both whites and blacks will vote for Obama. All Islam loves and worships Obama. The world is mesmerized by him. Oprah's 200 million followers are out to elect Obama. Also, Dick Morris of Fox News was sent to Kenya to help Odinga run his campaign! I find that unbelievable.
The occultists are "weaving lazy 8's around McCain's mind to make him look confused and like an idiot". Bree K. said we need to break these curses off of him that are being sent from Kenya.
I read a portion of "Obama Nation" book and looked at several websites and found most of this information to be true, all except the curses part, of course....
Teh. Awesome. Est. And just in case you think this is something less than literal, don't forget this special bit of lunacy. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go slaughter a goat and bathe in its blood while doing my magic Obama dance in order to extend Satan's ring of protection to North Carolina's ACORN chapter. Have you performed ritual for Obama today? THIS IS NO TIME FOR COMPLACENCY, PEOPLE!
*This is my favorite bit, since 50% of Obama's heritage is Kansas cracker. Which makes the 75% figure, umm, an interesting calculation. His father was from the Luo ethnic group in Kenya, which is not an Arabic-speaking nationality either. But then facts make the baby Jesus puke.
Thanks to magdalen for the tip.
Update: From Bree Keyton's website: "Dr. Bree Keyton began her career as a warm-up act for rock stars and traveled the country with her own nightclub act. One night, while the band was playing, Bree was shot in the head."
Well, that would explain a few things.
Aides to George W. Bush, former Reagan White House staff and friends of John McCain have all told The Sunday Telegraph that they not only expect to lose on November 4, but also believe that Mr Obama is poised to win a crushing mandate. They believe he will be powerful enough to remake the American political landscape with even more ease than Ronald Reagan did in 1980. The prospect of an electoral rout has unleashed a bitter bout of recriminations both within the McCain campaign and the wider conservative movement, over who is to blame and what should be done to salvage the party's future. [...]
Democrats lead in eight of the 12 competitive Senate races and need just nine gains to reach their target of 60. Even Mitch McConnell, the leader of Senate Republicans, is at risk in Kentucky, normally a rock solid red state. A private memo on the likely result of the congressional elections, leaked to Politico, has the Republicans losing 37 seats. Ed Rollins, who masterminded Ronald Reagan's second victory in 1984, said the election is already over and predicted: "This is going to turn into a landslide." [...]
The prospect of defeat has unleashed what insiders describe as an "every man for himself" culture within the McCain campaign, with aides in a "circular firing squad" as blame is assigned. More profoundly, it sparked the first salvoes in a Republican civil war with echoes of Tory infighting during their years in the political wilderness.
Delicious. The post-deluge battle line will be between the pragmatists who think the GOP has to move toward the middle, and the true believers who will say they lost because they weren't conservative enough. I expect the latter will win despite being badly mistaken. But my more immediate question is this: should the GOP be reduced to the smallest legislative minorities in decades, how many incumbents will decide it's time to retire and cash out?
Looking at the Senate seats up in 2010, there are a lot of GOP incumbents up that will be in their seventies or eighties, a few of whom have had bouts with cancer already. I wouldn't be surprised to see McCain call it quits after this term, what with not being much liked by his own GOP colleagues already, and relations likely to worsen if next Tuesday does turn into a bloodbath.
The more interesting analysis, however, is this by David Sirota.
Thanks to the Arizonan's polarizing economic message, millions of Americans will now walk into that voting booth with a very crystal clear question in mind: Do we vote for the deregulatory, free-market fundamentalism of business tax cuts, corporate welfare and everyone-for-themselves health care policies that McCain says is needed right now? Or do we vote against that, and for something McCain insists is very, very different? Yes, many people will cast a ballot thinking they are making a choice between Reaganism and socialism. After all, the latest CBS/New York Times poll shows Americans already see the race in these terms. And therefore, if Obama wins, it will be a huge rejection of Reaganism, a huge declaration that demonizing the Left with the argot of Soviet communism no longer works, and a huge endorsement of 21st century progressive economics, only years (or really, months!) removed from an era where if you even uttered the word "inequality," you were billed as a communist and written out of the debate by the media and political Establishment.
Of course, Obama's campaign platform is much less radical than McCain is claiming. Barack Obama is a lot of things, but he's hardly a socialist. That said, if you reject the myth of presidentialism that says presidents hand down change, and you instead believe that presidents are forced by election mandates to embrace changes they may not otherwise have embraced, then Obama's platform is not as important as the mandate McCain's presentation is constructing, should Obama win under these circumstances. McCain is framing the choice as one between a Republican presidency to the right of Ronald Reagan on economics or a Democratic presidency to the left of Franklin Roosevelt on economics - and if Obama wins, he will have as powerful an economic mandate as FDR received in the 1932 landslide election, because the voting public will be expecting - no, demanding - far-reaching economic change.
No. This. This is disgraceful.
She has managed to well and truly hurt the very people she purported to be helping, by going from volunteer to vigilante fabricator.
Ignorantly being concerned with the petty little electoral consequences of her stunt makes you not much better than her, Ms Ham.
Shit like this can very easily, in the xenophobic fervor of a desperate political campaign, result in "true hurt"... excuse me... Deadly Goddamned Violence against the next innocent black person encountered, isolated, and cornered by some band of goons.
The fact that you find her counterproductive electoral potential more disgraceful than that unthinkable horror speaks volumes about you and your values.
Early voting has been underway here for a week now, and will continue through November 1st. This DK diary has an interesting look at the numbers through last night. I filled in some overall demographic numbers for reference.
Overall
Registered voters in NC: 6,196,102
Ballots cast during the first week: 676,878 (10.92%)
Total votes for president in 2004: 3,447,525 (56-44 Bush)
Early voting numbers for 2004 were a bit over 700,000 ballots, but I haven't been able to pin down an exact number.
Party demographics
% of NC voters registered Democratic: 45.6
% of early votes cast by Democrats: 60.0
% of registered Democrats who have cast ballots: 14.4
% of NC voters registered Republican: 32.1
% of early votes cast by Republicans: 23.5
% of registered Republicans who have cast ballots: 8.0
% of NC voters registered independent: 22.3
% of early votes cast by independents: 16.5
% of registered independents who have cast ballots: 8.1
Racial demographics
% of NC population that's black: 22.2
% of early votes cast by black voters: 31.7
% of registered black voters who have cast ballots: 16.35
% of NC population that's white: 75.0
% of early votes cast by white voters: 64.5
% of registered white voters who have cast ballots: 9.60
In the normal way of such things, I happened across this news story:
A transsexual is complaining of a "phantom erectile penis" after having her genitals removed. The 52-year-old - who is now a woman after gender reassignment surgery - believes she can feel her old manhood even after it was cut off, according to the report Phantom erectile penis after sex reassignment surgery, published by Okayama University Medical School in Japan.
Following sexual reassignment surgery, it's reportedly common to suffer some phantom penis and erectile syndrome for the first few weeks, however in the case of this patient, she experienced the sensation of an erection for over six months and has undergone a second operation. The condition is thought to be related to nerves still intact in the patient which can be stimulated and send the brain a signal related to the organ they were previously connected to.
Okay, it's not really that interesting of a story and that's the entire text. What caught my eye, though, was the photo they chose to run with the story, carrying the caption "illustrative photo."
Well, I guess it is illustrative of something, but I'm not sure what, exactly.
Todd Palin at a Norm Coleman rally, holding a sign that says "Charles Manson was a community organizer." This is your Republican Party.
Via John Cole.
Update: Y'know, after looking at this, I suspect that's someone in the crowd holding the sign, and the perspective makes it look closer to Palin than it actually is. Still.
Awww yeah, people. Grab the mix, put on your dancin' panties, and go vote early. North Carolina starts tomorrow, and you can still register to vote throughout the early voting period. No excuses.
Click for full-size
Unfunkked 8: That Ain't Gravy, Lady
135 MB .zip file
01 Reuben Wilson - What the People Gon' Say
02 Solomon Burke - Hold On
03 All the People - Cramp Your Style
04 Darondo - Legs (Part 1)
05 General Caine - I'm the Man
06 Chocolate Milk - Chocolate Pleasure
07 Magnum - Evolution
08 Candi Staton - Main Thing
09 Bette Williams - A Feeling (For Someone Else Has Grown)
10 Al Hudson with Vitamin C - I Want You to Know
11 Buddy Miles - Memphis Train
12 13th Floor - Get Up
13 Commodores - Slippery When Wet
14 L.T.D. - Jam
15 Nytro - Give Me One More Chance
16 Brooklyn Funk Essentials - Blow Your Brains Out
17 The Lafayette Afro Rock Band - Darkest Light
18 Bobby Williams - Make Yourself Funky
19 The Soul Snatchers - Sniffin' and Snatchin'
Total time: 77:30
Tip of the hat to tengu for the cover picture.
If you're burning it to CD, as always, set the gaps between tracks to zero seconds and (if you're burning from iTunes) turn on Sound Check to equalize volumes. Earlier editions are here.
TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE! I'M RUBBER, YOU'RE GLUE! NYAH NYAH NYAH!
Pathetic.
Update: And further from TPM:
This afternoon on the campaign trail, John McCain began dialing back (or began trying to appear to be dialing back) the rising tide of hatred and verbal violence he and his running mate have been whipping up over recent weeks. After all we've seen over recent months, I think it would naive to conclude that McCain did this for any other reason but that the attacks appeared to be backfiring. Perhaps that's ungenerous. But to think so requires a leap of faith, a judgment not grounded in any evidence from the last year of the man's behavior. The aim of such a bludgeoning assault is to force the subject of Obama's relationship to Ayers back to the center of the campaign dialogue. But that's not what happened. By week's end that campaign narrative was all about the ferocity and recklessness of McCain's attacks.
There's something else to note too. Over the last 48 hours several name brand Republicans have come out and either chided or denounced McCain's borderline incitement. And given how taboo it is to level such criticism of your own nominee at this stage of the election you have to assume these criticisms were only the tip of the iceberg, with a far more intense and angry barrage of criticism voiced privately.
Or maybe from the Secret Service. I'm enjoying witnessing the implosion of John McCain, because this is going to absolutely enrage the crazy wing of the GOP. But the crazy wing is the Republican base: xenophobic, ignorant, hateful, and proud of it. The ones fed on a steady diet of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are actually the smart ones, you understand. They're outnumbered by the ones who don't even bother to get that much information, who just know that they hate hippies. Their psychotic leanings were on full display throughout the Clinton presidency and they've mostly kept it tamped down during the Bush years, but they haven't gone away. And if you can't win without whipping the worst elements of American society into something resembling German crowds in the 1930s, then you don't deserve to win.
I'm seeing the "sensible Republican" talking heads on the cable news say that this is an issue of a disconnect between McCain and his campaign. I happen to think this is crap; he could have stopped it with a word at any time. He's the guy in charge. But even if it was the case, a guy who can't even control his own campaign has no chance of controlling a presidential administration. And we've had quite enough of that, thank you very much.
So, I spent all morning at Duke Hospital getting an MRI for my 3-1/2 year old son to determine whether the hitch in his walk is indeed the result of slight cerebral palsy. No results for a few days, but I did learn a few things.
1. He's a total trooper about needles. No complaints at all about getting the PICC line placed.
2. That little fucker handles his sedation like a pro. It took several giant doses to get him to close his eyes rather than sitting up and babbling about the room moving and the birds in it. This, I suspect, will serve him well come college. Last one to pass out stays unpwned.
3. Even given massive amounts of fentanyl and phenobarbitol, he'll still come to before the MRI is over and require multiple more doses to get him back out again so the techs can finish the imaging. Somebody doesn't want to miss gettin' his preschool buzz on.
4. On the ride home, the absurdist stream-of-sorta-consciousness commentary is priceless. I wish I'd had some sort of recording device, but I didn't.
Also, the godawful GI bug that laid me out for the past couple of days seems to be mostly gone, thankfully. The onset, however, was perfectly timed to prevent me from getting my free flu shot at work. And now I'll spend all weekend trying to catch up from three missed days of work. Sigh.
Update: 5. It's great fun watching him sway like a happy drunk and slur his words, right up until the point he projectile vomits chicken nuggets all over the couch.
Update 2:
Took a good, hard look, especially at the second video. These are the "regular Americans" McCain is counting on to come out for him on Election Day. And they look kinda familiar, don't they?
The GOP long ago turned ugly and psychotic, at both the leadership and rank and file levels. But it appears that the threat of getting swamped has really peeled back the mask of rationality to expose the true lunacy and know-nothingness that animates the modern conservative movement. I fully expect they will turn to actual violence soon.
Update: See also Glenn Greenwald today.
Just look at the videotapes of the angry, hateful hordes attending these rallies — screaming that Obama is a socialist; that he’s both a Muslim and a terrorist as proven by his “bloodline” and his name; that his supporters are “commie faggots”; that he’s guilty of treason; underscored by increasing racial invective and even punctuated in one case by a call from an audience member for someone to be killed. These aren’t just isolated individuals; these sentiments are common at these rallies and becoming increasingly virulent and enraged.
This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.
In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.
In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.
It's snowing on Mars. And the possible implications are enormous.
Via Farber, who has lots more links.
A Middletown woman is accused of being disorderly in public -- while wearing a cow suit. A police report filed about the incident said Michelle Allen allegedly chased children in her neighborhood while wearing the suit on Monday evening. Allen also urinated on a neighbor's front porch, the report said, and was warned by officers to go home and stay there.
Allen was charged with disorderly conduct after an officer found her causing traffic problems on North Verity Parkway. The officer's report stated that Allen was verbally abusive to him on the trip to jail and smelled of alcohol. The report did not speculate as to why Allen was wearing the cow suit.
Thanks, KJ!
