Did Pelosi declare martial law?
Listen very, very carefully. 1:22, “I understand we are under martial law, as declared by the speaker last night.”
At about 20:50 Rep.Burgess confirms the speaker declared martial law last night. And listen to the question at 42:22, if you so desireth.
I leave you in peace, and, hopefully, not in pieces.
Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit.
The bobbLebot is not happy-eth. Why? Because the bobbLebot computes that this election is more than a little ridunKulous. It’s a friggin circus!!! We’ve got posterchild of feminism Moosey Lucy Goosey in one corner with the jabbity jabby Tina Fey/Amy Poehler skit in one corner, then we’ve got OWG, Rhetorical brilliance (and yes, that is con a capital ‘R’) with racist-arse buffoonery in the other.
This is not an election, this is made-for-TV! But – alas… when has America last had a “free” election, anyway. Que oxymoronic. <– not cynical, but critical.
Anywho, this robot’s Achille’s heel tends to be, “RACISM?! WTF??!!!” — and today’s case would be no different. Oh, identity politics, what you have doneth to me!
BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. Okay, the bobbLebot cannot help itself. But… on the other side of the coin, the bobbLebot is ethically opposed to voting. Besides, robots don’t have rights in this country anyway.
Move over, Aunt Jemima! There’s a new mix in town!
mmm... that's "sho good eatin'"
Meet Obama Waffles… with “change you can taste”. Oh, but wait — it gets better. Or so says Chip Berlet’s blog post:
The boxes of Obama Waffles for sale at the 2008 Values Voter Summit were certainly racist and offensive, and conference organizers did the right thing by shutting down the sales booth in their exhibit hall.
It was alternative journalists, including those working for Political Research Associates and People for the American Way, that first alerted the mainstream media to the offensive caricatures on the boxes with online posts from the conference.
This is what voting tastes like.
Patriotism at its finest.
Now, why would Rev Wright be MISSING?
Southern Subtext: because he's running from the law or because he got caught up in a lynching
Dudes. Racism can be offensive, racism can be completely moronic — and then there are times when racism is downright creepy.
Aaaaaaaand… the party doesn’t stop.
There is a side panel recipe for “Barry’s Bling Bling Waffle Ring” that features a “Recipe Rap” that begins with “Yo, B-rock here droppin’ waffle knowledge” with the rest of the ditty written in such an irritating White caricature of Black rap that even a White 1920s vaudeville blackface crooner would be embarrassed.
Open Border Fiesta Waffles!
Under the caricature of Obama as a Mexican, there is a recipe card for “Open Border Fiesta Waffles.” The recipe card depicts a perforated border between the U.S.A. and Mexico. The text under this says the “greatest danger of all is to allow walls to divide us”…The recipe card on the Obama Waffles box including ingredients such as goats milk and jalepeno peppers, and advises as a “Tip: While waiting for these zesty treats to invade your home, why not learn a foreign language.” The “Recommended Serving” is “4 or more illegal aliens.”
And the clincher’s just as dericious.
hm.
Though this blog post practically writes itself, there shall be commentary. As minimal as it will be.
The strategy of not directly addressing race, or to keeping it to a bare minimum has been a brilliant strategy. Why talk about race? The ground crew on both sides and in the middle of this issue will do the work for them. We’ve got Brown people talking about it, Yellow people talking about it — heck, we’ve even got White people talking about it… ALL THE TIME.
2 Reactions:
In any case, if that isn’t Change, this roboT don’t know what is.
::bLip!::
This is pretty disturbing…the GOP in Michigan is allegedly attempting to disenfranchise voters in Michigan who are having their homes foreclosed. The Obama campaign and the DNC have filed a lawsuit. The Michigan Messenger:
The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee have filed a lawsuit in federal court in Michigan over the Michigan GOP’s plan to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters at the polls, as first reported by the Michigan Messenger.
Bob Bauer, general counsel for the Obama campaign, and Mark Brewer, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, announced the lawsuit in a conference call with reporters this afternoon…
Bauer called the GOP plan to use foreclosure lists “a new and especially repellent version of caging.” Caging is a technique of challenging voters where they take lists of addresses, mail to them with a “do not forward” marking and if for whatever reason those mailings are returned, they use this as a basis for claiming that the voter no longer lives at the address at which they are registered.
Bauer noted that using foreclosure lists to challenge a voter’s address is “false and illegal” for several reasons. First, because getting a foreclosure notice is not evidence that the person’s address has changed…Second, because under Michigan law a person can vote at their old precinct if they lost their home within 60 days of the election.
Sort of amusing. There’s screenshots of some of her email, if you click on the link you’ll see some of that. Huffington Post:
Wired magazine reports:
The group known as Anonymous, which earlier took on Scientology, has published screenshots of e-mail messages and images that it says came from a private e-mail account belonging to Governor Sarah Palin at gov.palin@yahoo.com. The data has been published by WikiLeaks.
Threat Level has confirmed the authenticity of at least one of the e-mails.
The information includes five screenshots from Palin’s account, including the text of an e-mail exchange with Alaskan Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell about his campaign for Congress.
Tina Fey did an impeccable job imitating Gov. Sarah Palin, air rifle and all. This was seriously too funny. Watch this now on SNL.
And while we’re talking about Palin, read this great political profile from the NYT:
Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.
But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.
Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.
Not a great week for U.S. ambassadors in South America. Bolivia expelled the U.S. ambassador on Wednesday, and Venezuela followed suit on Thursday. NYT:
CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela said Thursday that he was expelling the American ambassador, Patrick Duddy, giving him 72 hours to leave the country. Mr. Chávez took this step after he said his government had discovered an American-supported plot by military officers to topple him.
He also recalled his ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Álvarez, and explained his decision by expressing solidarity with Bolivia’s embattled president, Evo Morales, who on Wednesday expelled the American ambassador there, Philip S. Goldberg, accusing him of supporting rebellious groups in eastern Bolivia..
“When there is a new government in the United States, we’ll send an ambassador,” Mr. Chávez said, using an expletive to refer to Americans…
…Mr. Chávez said Thursday that a plot to overthrow and assassinate him had been uncovered and that the Bush administration was behind it. Neither the State Department in Washington nor a spokeswoman at the American Embassy here would comment on the expulsion and the latest charges.
I need to think of a clever line in my obituary like this.
I started hanging out with Ken Swanborn when we were both living on Maryland Avenue in Dolton and attending St. Jude the Apostle in South Holland. We played on the same football and baseball teams, we shared a passion for the White Sox, and we loved watching late-night TV and listening to George Carlin, Bill Cosby, Cheech & Chong.
As a comic, Swanny didn’t reach the heights, but he always kept working. He was damn funny.
We lost him last week, without warning. Dozens of his friends raised a glass to him at Bogart’s in Homewood on Sunday night while cheering the Bears and remembering the many, many laughs over the years.
Just behind Ken’s love for his wife and his family and his comedy was his passion for politics. It wasn’t surprising that his notice in the Sun-Times ended with “In lieu of flowers, vote Democrat.”
Read why the Chicago Tribune didn’t run that line.
“Well, it was not intentional, but we do have protocols and we do have rules we have to follow.”
“We have guidelines.”
I just posted an article from Alternet about what McCain’s presidency might be like, here’s another article on the same topic from The Economist. It gives a different take…I’m like Fox News, fair and balanced.
When anything happens to remind Americans that the world is a dangerous place, Mr McCain’s stock rises. The murder of Benazir Bhutto in December probably helped him win the New Hampshire primary less than two weeks later. Russia’s recent invasion of Georgia made him look prescient. (Mr Bush once gushed that he looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and saw his soul; Mr McCain quipped that he looked into his eyes and saw “a ‘K’, a ‘G’ and a ‘B’.”)
But will foreign policy always be a strength? Deliberately misconstruing a McCain comment, Democrats have suggested that he wants to occupy Iraq for 100 years. In fact, the gulf between the two candidates on Iraq has narrowed since the end of the Democratic primaries. Mr McCain wants to make Iraq stable and then pull out. Mr Obama wants to pull out as soon as possible, provided that Iraq is stable. How far apart these positions really are depends on how differently you think each candidate would react to developments on the ground. Mr Obama would doubtless withdraw more American troops more quickly, but perhaps not much more quickly.
A more fertile area of attack for the Democrats might well be Mr McCain’s general bellicosity. Back in 2000, his keenness to stamp American democracy on the world made him the neoconservative pick ahead of the milder Mr Bush. Mr McCain, whose political hero is the warlike Teddy Roosevelt, would certainly be readier to bomb Iran than Mr Obama would. And although he has a much better record of getting on with allies than Mr Bush, his scheme for a League of Democracies has plenty of pitfalls.
On economics, Mr McCain’s record has been pretty sensible. He has favoured free trade, low taxes, light regulation and fiscal responsibility. He has consistently opposed wasteful pork-barrel spending while Mr Obama has indulged in it. Two problems, however, have emerged on the campaign trail.
First, he has lost some of his reputation for fiscal straight-talking. The man who condemned Mr Bush’s tax cuts as irresponsible now proposes irresponsibly to expand them. On the stump, he sometimes spouts populist piffle, suggesting for example that oil prices might be reduced by cracking down on speculators. (Mr Obama is guilty of this, too.) And sometimes he says things that make no sense at all, such as when he maintains that a cap-and-trade system for curbing carbon emissions would impose no costs on the American economy.
Second, when it comes to the details of economic policy, Mr McCain often seems out of his depth in ankle-deep water. Asked in July if he supported treasury secretary Hank Paulson’s plan to offer a line of credit to shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the ailing government-backed mortgage giants, he said: “I do.” Asked to flesh out his answer, he said: “I support it.”
Given Mr McCain’s weakness in this area, his choice of economic advisers matters a lot. His chief economics guru, Doug Holtz-Eakin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office, is widely respected. But two other advisers, Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, are businesspeople rather than economists…
…Another part of Mr McCain’s appeal is his record as a maverick. His opponent has never bucked his own party’s orthodoxy on anything important. Mr McCain often has. He pressed for action against global warming when many of his Republican colleagues were still dismissing it as a hoax. He joined hands with a Democrat to enact a campaign-finance reform many conservatives reviled. With Ted Kennedy, he sponsored a bill that would have granted illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, had congressional Republicans not howled it down…
…On social issues Mr McCain takes conservative positions, but without obvious gusto. He opposes gay marriage, but half-heartedly. He says he wants to ban abortion, but once let slip that, if his daughter wanted one, he would leave the choice to her. Such moderation, though appealing to swing voters, is anathema to those who equate abortion with murder. But social conservatives have nowhere else to turn. They might stay at home on polling day, but they are unlikely to vote for Mr Obama, who has a 100% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion-rights group.
In judging the shape of a future John McCain presidency, there are already plenty of dots that are easy to connect. They reveal an image of a war-like Empire so full of hubris that it could take the world into a cascade of crises, while extinguishing what is left of the noble American Republic.
McCain has made clear he would continue and even escalate George W. Bush’s open-ended global war on Islamic radicals. McCain buys into the neoconservative vision of expending U.S. treasure and troops to kill as many Muslim militants as possible…
…McCain’s global war strategy is as hawkish, if not more so, than Bush’s. In late 2001 and early 2002, McCain took the lead in pushing the neocon plan of a rapid pivot from the invasion of Afghanistan toward the prospective invasion of Iraq…
…the Bush-McCain-neocon neglect of Afghanistan has contributed to worsening instability in nuclear-armed Pakistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaeda are expanding safe havens and increasing influence…
Another casualty of McCain’s endless Middle East wars, which soon could include Iran, would almost surely be America’s volunteer army. Though McCain officially opposes a restoration of the draft, it is nearly impossible to envision how his multiple wars could be waged without one.
And McCain also had made clear that he favors a neo-Cold War confrontation with Moscow over another part of the neocon agenda — the encircling of Russia with pro-U.S. regimes and the placement of strategic missile systems near Russia’s borders…
…From the perspective of U.S. taxpayers, the neocon strategy of permanent global dominance means funding the military-industrial complex at levels never before seen, especially when one factors in the simultaneous costs of the “war on terror,” the Iraq War, the Afghan War and a possible Iran War.
The combined price tag for McCain’s military adventures, at a time when the federal government is already running about half a trillion dollars in debt, would mean that virtually every other national priority would have to be short-changed or neglected.
There will be little money left to address the energy crisis, global warming, retooling the auto industry, health care, Social Security, education, infrastructure repairs, etc., etc.
SOCHI, Russia (CNN) – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of orchestrating the conflict in Georgia to benefit one of its presidential election candidates.
In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Matthew Chance in the Black Sea city of Sochi Thursday, Putin said the U.S. had encouraged Georgia to attack the autonomous region of South Ossetia.
Putin told CNN his defense officials had told him it was done to benefit a presidential candidate — Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are competing to succeed George W. Bush — although he presented no evidence to back it up.
“U.S. citizens were indeed in the area in conflict,” Putin said. “They were acting in implementing those orders doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is theirleader.”
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino blasted Putin’s statements, saying they were “patently false.”
“To suggest that the United States orchestrated this on behalf of a political candidate just sounds not rational,” she said.
U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood concurred, and labeled Putin’s statements as “ludicrous.”
