Obama's "secret" Muslim & Palestinian connections

Scotsman.com reports some, um...intersting warnings about Obama from the Christian Anti Defamation Commission.

that an Obama victory would "change the course of history" and see Russian tanks overrunning eastern Europe, churches turned into homeless shelters and scouts compelled to take gay scout masters.

Forget the Russian tanks and gay scout masters; you know the world's in trouble when churches are turned into homeless shelters! Sheesh. I say it's about time that followers of the savior of the poor started helping out a little.

On a somewhat related note, the Christian Anti Defamation Commission published a long-winded 'argument' that Obama's a secret Muslim. Next thing you know, he'll be eating dinner with Muslims and getting some pals to hide the tapes of the meal.

At least that's what McCain and Palin are accusing the the LA Times of doing. Somewhere locked up in the Times vault, or whatever cool top secrety stuff they hide stuff in, is a video that reportedly shows Obama "paying tribute" to Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi at a going away party for Khalidi. Thankfully, for journalism's sake, the LA Times is resisting pressure from a political campaign known for its smears and attacks by playing a nanosecond of tape to "prove" the dangers of Obama. Instead, the Times editors are sticking to their guns, saying "they were ethically bound to abide by a promise to a confidential source not to share the video."

Palin's not making any friends in the press these days. If you're wondering why the so-called "liberal mainstream press" isn't doing her any favors, here's why.

"Maybe some politicians would love to have a pet newspaper of their very own," Palin said at a rally in Bowling Green, Ohio. "In this case, we have a newspaper willing to throw aside even the public's right to know in order to protect a candidate that its own editorial board has endorsed. And if there's a Pulitzer Prize category for excelling in kowtowing, then the L.A. Times, you're winning."

The McCain campaign is saying that Khalidi has ties to the Palestine Liberation Organization, and therefore believes the tape "might confirm Obama's ties to 'radicals.'" McCain himself said that he thinks William Ayres would show up on the tape too. As the LA Times reports,

McCain's contention that Ayers attended the 2003 party apparently stemmed from another news article, in which the New York Sun reported on the same dinner, given for Khalidi as he was departing Chicago to take a position at Columbia University.

But there's one last bit of information that McCain left out.

Democrats countered McCain's complaints by noting that the Republican has his own ties to Khalidi. The Arizona senator once headed a nonprofit group that gave grants to an institute Khalidi headed, money that was used to conduct polling in the West Bank.

Asked to comment on McCain's involvement with the Khalidi institute, campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb replied, "You all can get a response as soon as you hand over the videotape."

I wonder if anyone got McCain--not eating dinner with, but--handing Khalidi money on tape. Then we'd know for sure that McCain never thought Khalidi was a threat to Israel, and that the whole LA Times spectacle is just a last ditch effort at race bating the next president of the United States. Sadly, I guess we'll never really know, will we?

The real socialist in this campaign

Olbermann finally tracked down the true Socialist in this campaign. I won't ruin it for you. You've gotta watch it to believe it.




And guess which Socialist sympathizer is pro-slavery. This one may not be as difficult to figure out.

My comrade, Obama

I've figured out why it is I like Obama. It's those Socialist leanings I share with him, since, like Obama,

I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

via huffpo

My first electoral projection

Here's my first jab at projecting the electoral votes based on a few educated guesses. I figured PA has gone blue for the last 20 years, and I don't see any reason why my homestate would go otherwise. I put Florida and Ohio for McCain just to see what would happen if he got both, and he'd still lose. I'm leaning toward Obama for Missouri based mainly on the 100,000 people who showed up to see him in St. Louis not too long ago; but I could be totally micalling that. I have no knowledge of Missouri politics whatsoever.


This map can be found here. RealCelarPolitics' projection can be found here, where you can make your own map too.

Was Jesus a Socialist?

Last night I got an email from a friend asking if Jesus was a socialist. I wrote back a rough sketch of my impressions, and thought I'd share it here. So you know, I wrote this from the top of my head. I've been studying Christianity in undergrad and graduate school for almost six years, so I think I know a little bit about it, but I very well could have misinterpreted or forgotten something here (so don't use this as a source for research or anything, but look into it yourself). I'd be curious to get any feedback in the comments on this post. Let me know if I got it right, or wrong. Or ask questions. Here goes.

Jesus talked a lot about what the Jewish faith called the kingdom or reign of God. The idea, when it started a thousand or so years before Jesus, was that the ruler of Israel would in actuality be God, and any earthly rulers would be like bureaucrats doing the on-the-ground work of following God's laws. And God's laws were basically that everyone got a fair shake in terms of justice and economic security. Don't quote me on this, but I think it was sort of a redistribution of wealth, where the rich paid taxes to the king who then supplied everyone else with what they needed.

There was slavery, but there was a law that every seven years all debt (that drove people into slavery) would be forgiven. Every fifty years there was supposed to be the jubilee year, when all the slaves would be freed, and property would return to the original owners (family farms that got bought out would go back to the families, for example). So in that sense, there was a leveling of the playing field...in theory. There's no proof that the fifty year forgiveness of debt and return of property actually took place. So prophets came along and called on Israel to do it.

Jesus was in this line of prophets. He was critical of the rich and helped the poor regain their status in the community. There were some rich people, many of them women in fact, who Jesus liked because they gave a lot of their money to his movement that helped the poor. So he supported redistribution of wealth.

The government in Jesus' time was split between the Roman empire and the corrupt local Jewish authorities who were in the back pocket of Rome. I don't think Jesus said anything about expecting the rulers to buy up all the farms and money lenders. If the rich ever did buy up business, it would be so they could oppress the poor. Jesus wanted the debt-slaves to be freed from the abuse of the rich and the government, and maybe would have advocated the peasants buying up or squatting their own property (but I don't think he did--at least it's not recorded anywhere that he did, which I would think would make it into the stories about him if he said something as challenging as that) -- but that would bring the Roman army down on their head, which it was already doing so well, so he might have wanted to avoid more of that.

What I think Jesus supported was more of a welfare state from the macro view, where the rich and powerful would stop exploiting and enslaving the poor. Jesus was an artisan (carpenter) and his closest followers were self-employed fishermen. So it was probably closer to a market economy in which Jesus advocated everyone to be able to feed and care for themselves, preferably with as little interference from the corrupt government as possible.

Jesus was opposed to taxing the poor, or at least taxing them to the point where they were economically crippled even more because of the taxes. Since the Jerusalem temple was taxed by Rome for the "freedom" to stay operational, the temple passed the cost on to the people, charging extra when anyone offered an animal for sacrifice, or maybe even stepped on the temple grounds. In the countryside and small towns, there were Jews who exploited fellow Jews by collecting taxes for Rome and way overcharging to line their own pockets. Jesus spoke pretty clearly against both the temple tax and corrupt tax collectors because the taxes were so high they drove people even deeper into poverty, and they went to pay for their own oppression by Rome.

I don't know how the Jewish poor people were provided for. There were lots of beggars, so I would guess the local Jewish rulers weren't really doing their job in feeding them like they were supposed to. Jesus fed thousands of people at one time at least once (I would guess he did that on a somewhat regular basis since the story is repeated four more times in the gospels and the disciples collected money to buy food for the poor). I don't know if the Jewish synagogues were places where people got economic support, but again, I would guess it was likely since poor and sick people tended to hang around synagogues in droves (at least that's how the gospels portray it).

The first generation of the church after Jesus' death were well known for feeding the poor, especially widows and orphans. Eventually, the church competed with the Roman government for feeding the hungry (yes, Rome did feed lots of poor people, even as they oppressed them, probably from the viewpoint that starving subjects tend to revolt more, and one thing Rome was good at was keeping people just content--or scared--enough, most of the time, to prevent all-out revolution), and (I think) the church ended up doing a better job at it. At first, they were feeding the poor among their own members, and doing it on a pretty regular basis. If they expanded their feeding programs beyond their own membership, I'm not sure when or how that happened. I do know that one of the reasons the church gained members so quickly was that it helped its poorer members significantly.

Probably the closest Christianity came to being Socialist was very early on, church members started pooling their property (I don't think it was a requirement, but it happened on a fairly large scale, at least in the beginning), selling most of what they owned and donating the proceeds to the local congregation. The congregation would then use that money to help its members whenever they needed it. To what extent people relied on the church regularly for basic needs I don't know, but I don't think very many Christians went hungry if they were part of a church.

Later Socialist theorists (Marx maybe and some of his friends) claimed they had traced Socialism back to Jesus and the early church because of care for landless peasants, feeding the hungry and pooling property. I don't think the church bought up farms and small businesses (I don't really think there were large businesses to speak of then, but there were rich landowners who had lots of slaves to work their farms) though most of the basic infrastructure--roads, aquaducts, baths, sanitation--was provided by the Roman empire (but that wasn't Jesus doing it).

I think it's pretty likely that Jesus was in favor of

• small farmers and artisans
• fair treatment and payment of workers
• *preferential* treatment for the disenfranchised (women, widows, orphans, children, slaves, poor) (not equality-for-all, but actual raising the social status of the disenfranchised, and lowering the status of the rich & powerful)--whether this was for the eventual leveling of the playing field, where all would end up on the same level, or the poor would actually raise above the rich, I don't know. But then I don't know how far into the future Jesus was planning. He did think the world was coming to an end pretty soon, so he might not have been working out a new 20 year government plan.
• ethical, accountable and compassionate government and business
• and some form of wealth redistribution or social ownership that was probably more localized than nationalized (again, not so sure he was worried about convincing the government to completely reform; or that he wanted to tempt Rome to own even more than they already did. He probably wanted to keep as much of it in the hands of the people.)

To the extent that that is similar to socialism, then I would say Jesus was at least a partial socialist.

If you're interested in reading what Jesus said, I would recommend the gospel of Luke, which is the most economic and justice oriented of the 4 gospels. Also the book of Acts, by the same author, describes the pooling of resources.

the myth of 'fair and balanced' news

I've noted before that I don't mind biased news outlets; in fact, I expect them to be slanted in some direction or another. What bothers me is when they pretend to be, in the ironic words of Fox News, "fair and balanced." In the latest example, the Obama campaign accused Fox News, Drudge Report and John McCain of working together to smear Obama. Again, I don't think this is worth fighting about, especially so close to an election where perception is everything. News bias is a given, so I wish the Obama campaign would just let it go. They haven't yet, so Fox News called up Bill Burton, Obama campaign spokesperson, and had this interview.

R.I.P. GOP

Here's the latest of my headlines on the events around the Republicans crumbling from within.

MSNBC Election Results

Bank fail; grafitti for the win!

from Fail Blog

links on news bias

Here are some articles and blog posts that tackle the inevitable question of bias in news outlets. More to come later.

MSNBC Rebranding as Liberal News Network

MSNBC.com: Not Just Liberal or Conservative News (Dot Com)

A liberal's defense of Fox News

Biden faces conservative news anchor

Joe Biden was interviewed Thursday by a news anchor asking--seriously--how Obama was different from Marx. Huffpo is critical of the reporter's agenda, but I don't think there was very much wrong with it. Sure, a couple of the questions were a little out there, but since when is it wrong to be a conservative journalist? The problem I have is when journalists, no matter their political orientation, pretend to be nonpartisan and objective. I love MSNBC because they, at least Olbermann and Maddow, don't pretend to be anything but bleeding heart liberals. And as much as I have problems with FOX News, at least they know who they're speaking for (even if they're hesitant to say it outloud). It's too bad the Obama campaign felt they had to cancel future interviews on the channel. Anyway, in this video, Biden pulled off the best interview I've seen so far.
I happened to run across NewsBusters today, a blog that prides itself on “exposing & combating liberal media bias.” I don't know if I agree with everything they say. I tend to think most (not all, but most) news outlets are more in line with the status quo and the wealthy, but the blog might prove to be a worthwhile read. On the Biden interview, they say the liberal bloggers are "crying."

Palin: Obama's a Communist

On Saturday, Sarah Palin basically accused Obama of being a Communist. She didn't use that word, perhaps realizing that "Socialist" went a little too far, but she did have this to say:

"See, under a big government, more tax agenda, what you thought was yours would really start belonging to somebody else, to everybody else. If you thought your income, your property, your inventory, your investments were, were yours, they would really collectively belong to everybody...Higher taxes, more government, misusing the power to tax leads to government moving into the role of some believing that government then has to take care of us. And government kind of moving into the role as the other half of our family, making decisions for us. Now, they do this in other countries where the people are not free.

But as Huffpo points out,

Obama's tax plans are less progressive than those in place during the Clinton years. In fact, the rates that people making over $250,000 would have to pay would be the same as during the 1990s -- a time definitely not marked by the absence of freedoms.

It should be pointed out to McCain and Palin that paying taxes to care for one another is not what Stalin was known for. In the USSR, the government was not as much driven by compassion as it was by paranoia of supposed usurpers. The voice of the people was suppressed as they were fed lies and more paranoia (which sounds a lot like the last eight years). You'd have to stretch the truth pretty far to argue that this is Obama's agenda--but knowing what GOP operatives are capable of, it's not entirely out of the question. This blatant and slanderous dishonesty, and the hubris-filled refusal of people to pay a single cent more for the benefit of all, is what we should truly fear.

Wii using artifical intelligence?

From EngrishFunny

Obama up 52-39% but McCain could pull it off

Obama leads the world's vote 89%

Obama: No "equivalence between" Dem & GOP campaign tactics

Obama was interviewed by CBS yesterday. He discussed taking care of family, being tested in office, uniting the country, and, of course, campaign tactics. Here's what he said about the tone of the campaigns.

I don't think there's any equivalence between what we've been doing and what John McCain's been doing. ... Witness some of the comments that have been made just over the last several months, his last several weeks, 'Socialistic.' You know, 'Pals around with terrorists.' I mean, just - the kinds of stuff that - that I can't imagine saying about an opponent of mine.

Watch the full interview.

McCain: “Redistribution of wealth is the last thing America needs"

Unfortunately,the last thing America needs is an ever worsening economic crisis. In the same stump speech, McCain sounded confused about the way the government funds its programs. “Before government can redistribute wealth, it has to confiscate wealth from those who earned it.” I'm pretty sure that's called taxes, which I'd much rather pay than exorbitant interest rates, otherwise known as usury, one practice that could legitimately be called "confiscation."

McCain also said, "In these tough economic times, we don’t need government ‘spreading the wealth,’ we need policies that create wealth and spread opportunity.” What he doesn't get is redistribution of wealth is one policy that does "create wealth and spread opportunity," much more than pretending a single cent will dribble down into the bank accounts of the middle class and poor.

Palin thinks VP is "in charge of Senate"

Responding to a third-grader's request for a job description of the Vice President, Palin explained her possible future job in a way the Senate would likely have problems with. Palin answered the question,

[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.

Either Palin hasn't read the Consitution, or wants to unseparate the powers against the Constitution. Read what is actually the case at Think Progress, and watch the video of Palin's misunderstanding the role of the VP.

Faith, Fear, and Finances

Dan Ulrich, a professor of mine at Bethany Theological Seminary, gave a sermon in chapel on October 8 entitled “Faith, Fear, and Finances,” discussing the current financial crisis in light of the parable of the dishonest manager (Luke 16:1-13). The sermon showed up on God's Politics, the the blog of Jim Wallis, executive director of the progressive Christian organization Sojourners. Read the sermon, and the swarm of positive comments here.

MSNBC's Leftist news shows beat out CNN

The New York Times reports that MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, on the air only since September 8, has already beat CNN's Larry King Live in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic in average ratings for the 9pm primetime slot among the top three cable news channels. Maddow's show has doubled the channel's viewership for weekdays at 9pm. Previously MSNBC held an audience around 800,000 at that time slot, but with Maddow the average audience is 1.7 million strong.

I'm guessing this is the first time a thirty-something queer woman news anchor has gained such popularity, which is a great witness to the openness of the Left in this country. We still have further to go in reaching equality among talking heads and who audiences trust as sources in this informationally bloated society, but this is fantastic news. Also, I can't help but be amazed at how many young people give a damn about the political process in this election cycle. Keith Olbermann's Countdown, which runs immediately prior to Maddow, "now beats CNN in the 25-to-54-year-old demographic segment every evening," according the the New York Times article.

Fox News still beats MSNBC and CNN in the ratings war.

Fox News Channel’s O’Reilly Factor, the highest-rated hour on cable news, reached an average of four million viewers in September; it had two million during the same period a year ago,... [and] the 9 p.m. program on Fox News, Hannity & Colmes, garners more viewers than either of the other shows."

Even though there's really no such thing as nonpartisan news, CNN--or at least Larry King Live--seems to claim some ideological/competitive superiority over Fox's and MSNBC's 9pm news shows.

Ryan Jimenez, a spokesman for Larry King Live, said in a statement that the shows couldn’t be more different: “While our competitors have moved to partisan extremes, we continue landing the biggest guests because we embrace the vast middle and have a wider appeal,”he said.

The truth remains that, as MSNBC's president Phil Griffin said, "Maddow’s performance confirmed that cable news was 'a three-way race now.'”

Fox News calls Obama's dying grandmother "the 'white grandmother'"

In an otherwise respectful article about Barack Obama's ailing grandmother, Fox News still can't help themselves, and, in this news story, refer to Madelyn Dunham as "the 'white grandmother.'" Also, they hint that Obama's decision to leave the campaign trail for two days, to understandably care for his family, "could be a momentous one...with Election Day just two weeks away on Nov. 4."

Come on, Fox. Can't a person show love to their family without dragging along their race and speculation on the decision's effect on their campaign? Let the man care for his grandmother. After he returns to the campaign trail, he'll be fair game again. Your smears can wait.

McCain, not Obama, connected to voter registration fraud

John McCain has paid a particularly partisan, and--according to allegations--unethical firm to register voters.

Sam Stein reports on Huffpo,

According to campaign finance records, a joint committee of the McCain-Palin campaign, the RNC and the the California Republican Party, made a $175,000 payment to the group Lincoln Strategy in June for purposes of "registering voters." The managing partner of that firm is Nathan Sproul, a renowned GOP operative who has been investigated on multiple occasions for suppressing Democratic voter turnout, throwing away registration forms and even spearheading efforts to get Ralph Nader on ballots to hinder the Democratic ticket.

Read the whole article here.

In related GOP voter registration fraud news, the LA Times reported today,

The owner of a firm that the California Republican Party hired to register tens of thousands of voters this year was arrested in Ontario over the weekend on suspicion of voter registration fraud.

State and local investigators allege that Mark Jacoby fraudulently registered himself to vote at a childhood California address where he no longer lives so he would appear to meet the legal requirement that all signature gatherers be eligible to vote in California. His firm, Young Political Majors, or YPM, collects petition signatures and registers voters in California and other states.

Powell: Obama "transformational"

From Salon

Colin Powell destroyed the last hope John McCain had to defeat Barack Obama and become president...called the current economic crisis "a final exam" for both candidates, which McCain failed...GOP has "moved more to the right than I would like to see it"...called Obama "a transformational figure," praised his "inclusive" campaign, "intellectual curiosity," leadership...troubled by McCain's allowing rumors that Obama's Mulsim, says the "really right answer is: What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is: No, that's not America."

Palin as Palin on snl

Tina Fey still out-Palins her, but Mark Wahlberg steals the show as the First Dude.

UPDATE:

Here are the videos.

antiwar protesters attack fox news reporter

Although Obama supporters were recently assaulted at a McCain rally, conservatives aren't the only ones on the attack. Antiwar protesters accuse Fox News of partisanship, as if such a concept never existed in American journalism.

Joe & Sarah and the GOP: "the caricature of ordinariness rather than the actual real life ordinary people"

Chris Hayes, an editor from the Nation magazine, says about 5 minutes in to the following video, Joe the Plumber and Sarah McCain show that the Republican party, McCain campaign and the right wing are much more invested in "the caricature of ordinariness rather than the actual real life ordinary people."

debate doesn't stop McCainian violence

McCain dismissed Ayres, said his supporters sometimes go too far at his rallies, and yet, the day after, two Obama supporters are beaten up by older women at a Palin rally. And fortunately, the Secret Service is investigating shouts of "terrorist" and "kill him" aimed at Obama.

McCain's tongue, the real winner of the debate

Sorry, Joe the Plumber, a new winner of the debates have been announced. McCain's tongue!



As one blogger put it,

Who needs to pay attention to boring details about across-the-board spending freezes, word parsing, Supreme Court justice-appointing, health insurance coverage or tax cuts when you can just search for "McCain tongue"?

Or, you could make a lolmccain, like I did!


Anyway, here's proof of the tongue goof (and watch for one at the very end as well!).



And slow motion too!

Obama's true lineage

via fail blog

lolmccain

I just made this lol.


Pic from Pundit Kitchen.

for McCain, creepy air quotes bash women

I hate air quotes, but never as much as when McCain pulled them out last night in the debate while referring to concern for the "health" of pregnant women as somehow an extreme view.



On the lighter side, have some fun with huffpo's John McCain Ironic Air Quotes-O-Tron.

Joe, the most famous plumber since Watergate

Olbermann on McCain's rhetoric

Keith Olbermann rips McCain a new one regarding the Senator's violent rhetoric. Olbermann gets pretty worked up about it, but to me, it's perfectly understandable. There is no excuse for a presidential candidate to ignore shouts for the life of Obama at McCain's own rallies. I'll stop now before I get more worked up about it myself. (You can read what I've already said here and here.) For now, watch Keith.

more from Rachel Maddow on political violence

This time, she gets specific, naming instances of bombings and assassinations that supporters of McCain seem to be supporting.

McCain transition chief illegally lobbied for Hussein

With all of the accusations of associations in this presidential campaign, things are getting ridiculous. From huffpo, here's another (ironically) dirty lobbyist associate of McCain that's pretty hard to spin in his favor.

William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.

The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government.

During the same period beginning in 1992, Timmons worked closely with the two lobbyists, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, on a previously unreported prospective deal with the Iraqis in which they hoped to be awarded a contract to purchase and resell Iraqi oil. Timmons, Vincent, and Park stood to share at least $45 million if the business deal went through.

Timmons' activities occurred in the years following the first Gulf War, when Washington considered Iraq to be a rogue enemy state and a sponsor of terrorism.

...Presciently, Time's Scherer noted that McCain's own staffers had early concerns that appointing Timmons could prove detrimental to the Arizona Senator's presidential ambitions:

His [lobbying] registrations include work on a number of issues that have become flashpoints in the presidential campaign. He has registered to work on bills that deal with the regulations of troubled mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, a bill to provide farm subsidies and bills that regulate domestic oil-drilling.

By tapping Timmons, McCain has turned to one of Washington's steadiest and most senior inside players to guide him in the event of a victory -- but also to someone who represents the antithesis of the kind of outside-of-Washington change he has recently been promising. One Republican familiar with the process said the decision to involve Timmons could become a political liability for the campaign's reformist image, especially in the wake of the controversies over the lobbying backgrounds of other McCain staffers, including campaign manager Rick Davis. "It's one more blind spot for Rick Davis and John McCain," the person said.

Read the rest of the article here.

the great schlep for Obama

From Sarah Silverman and the Great Schlep:

The Great Schlep aims to have Jewish grandchildren visit their grandparents in Florida, educate them about Obama, and therefore swing the crucial Florida vote in his favor. Don’t have grandparents in Florida? Not Jewish? No problem! You can still become a schlepper and make change happen in 2008, simply by talking to your relatives about Obama.

At the very least, check out this video. You'll laugh your you know what off.

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

secret service should investigate the McCain-Palin campaign incitements to harm Obama

Huffpo's Charles Kearney blogs exactly what I've been thinking over the past few days:

The Secret Service should investigate the McCain-Palin campaign incitements to harm Obama.

McCain's racist rhetoric

Yesterday, civil rights leader and Representative John Lewis compared the rhetoric of John McCain to that of segregationist governor George Wallace.

"During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama."

Rather than backing off of their hate-filled rhetoric, McCain's campaign shot back on FOX News today, claiming the candidate's imprisonment in a POW camp was somehow comparable to the centuries-long oppression of African Americans.

"He was in a Vietnam prison camp serving his country with his civil rights also denied...Nobody knows sacrifice like John McCain does."

McCain's time in a POW camp may have allowed him to sympathize more deeply with people who suffer at the hands of their captors, but the connection to fighting for the civil rights of others seems to have been lost on him.

When it came time to protect the employment rights of racial minorities and women in 1989, McCain voted to back George H.W. Bush's veto of a bill that would have overturned a Supreme Court decision to roll back civil rights nearly twenty years. As Sam Stein reported at huffpo in April,

The act was a response to a series of controversial Supreme Court decisions made the year before. In those decisions, the court overturned a 1971 ruling that required employers to prove a "business necessity" for screening out minorities and women in its hiring practices. That burden of proof, the 1989 court said, should instead be placed on the plaintiff who alleged that his or her client had been unlawfully screened.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate, deeming this unjust, passed bills that would restore the old law.

...When a motion to override the veto came to the Senate floor, there was question as to whether it would receive the 67 votes needed to pass. The environment was so charged that white supremacist David Duke watched from one section of the Senate gallery while civil rights leader Jesse Jackson stood briefly at the chamber's other end.

Ultimately, the vote fell one short: 66 to 34. Prominent Republican Senators like John H Chaffe, John Danforth, Pete Domenici, and Arlen Specter, all chose to override the veto. McCain - who had earlier voted for a watered down version of the bill, one that didn't reverse the court's decision - backed the president.

This hardly makes McCain another Wallace, but with votes like this, he's hardly trying to advance racial justice either. If McCain expects Obama to "to immediately and personally repudiate [Lewis'] outrageous and divisive comments", McCain should agree to end his campaign's racially charged rhetoric.

McCain finally says don't fear Obama

MSNBC Countdown reported today that McCain was forced to confront supporters' rage at, and fear of, Obama, feelings that McCain himself has incited in these already anxious times. Sadly, these tactics appear to trouble no one more than they trouble McCain, who clearly appears troubled in these next clips.





Rachel Maddow talked about the attacks from McCain and his supporters, and wondered if he will bring up Jeremiah Wright at the next presidential debate. One one hand, McCain has said he won't go that route, and even asked fellow Republicans to pull ads doing just that. Laurence O'Donnell notes, however, that since McCain said it would happen, "it's a toss up" as to if he really will mention Wright next week.


I hope McCain sticks with his conscience on this question of the legitimacy of these rabid attacks. McCain should apologize publicly to Obama for the hatred hurled by McCain, Palin, and GOP members and supporters. No matter who one supports for the presidency, hate filled speech is unacceptable in the public arena. This is more than smearing. This is offensive fear mongering, and it must stop.

hateful gop rhetoric could lead to violence

If you've been paying any attention to the news this week, you're probably aware of McCain's attacks on Obama, and that they've become particularly enciteful. More than a few times, members of the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies have yelled epithets like "terrorist!" and "traitor!" while the candidates continue without correcting, or distancing themselves from these dangerous outbursts. Here's an short clip from Rachel Maddow of MSNBC with an overview.



ON CNN,conservative pundit David Gergen expressed concern that such hateful outbursts, and McCain's failure to address them could lead to violence.


MSNBC's Keith Olbermann goes more in depth into the prospect of violence in this video.


I've been looking for good conservative news outlets for a more balanced view, and I came across this video below from Fox News. Here a panel discusses whether McCain's focus on Obama's associates is politically wise for McCain. They completely ignore the likelihood of violence from such rhetoric, but the analysis is worth paying attention to.



Political violence has fortunately been relatively low in the United States, especially since the late 1960s. 1968 saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy. A year later, the Weather Underground Organization emerged with violence that Obama is now being associated with because Ayres and Obama crossed paths a few times. Now it seems that the GOP front runner is inciting political violence, or at least tolerating hatred from his supporters. It remains to be seen if 2008 will become another 1968; that decision is, at least in part, up to McCain.

lol star wars

lol politics

Liveblogging pres. debate no. 2: the purpose of a surge, in McCain's words

To help people lead normal social economic political lives, like they're living in Iraq right now. (paraphrase)

Liveblogging pres. debate no. 2: america as peacemaker

It may have been a fluke, but a question from the audience actually made it through the screening, about America's role as a peacemaker in the world.

The McCain doctrine:

"Bring troops home in honor, not defeat."
"America's greatest asset is America's blood."
"Use force, but talk softly, but carry a big stick."

Both vague, and grotesque!

So far, no mention of the Weather Underground. Maybe it's because McCain's realized they were a threat 30 years ago!

Liveblogging pres. debate no. 2: the good news according to John McCain

"America is the greatest force for good in the history of the world."

leaders in the hall

via pundit kitchen




via funny or die

enough said

via pundit kitchen

snl veep debate

What's it say when we'd rather watch satire than the real thing? Maybe that we can laugh at ourselves, or that we take it all as a big joke. Anyway, I bet you'll get more out of this short SNL sketch than 90 minutes of the real debate.

Did Palin really charge Wasilla women for rape kits?

At least her administration did for awhile. The McCain campaign denies that she was aware of the practice, and they could be right. I hope they are.

prayer on wall street

Reuters reports

As financial workers suffer through tumultuous times on Wall Street, some are turning to an old source of solace: religion.

One preacher on Wall Street reminded parishioners

"The economic financial crisis is a reminder that we cannot put our faith in riches, that we cannot put our faith in money."

He also told the reporter

"People are just sitting there, praying or crying and definitely exhausted. There has definitely been an increase in the number of people who have come in."

Another pastor said

"In the past couple of days there was high anxiety and trepidation. The situation we are faced with today by economic standards is very much unknown, uncharted territory and faith helps us deal with those situations."

And a Wall Street advisor said that

Wall Street would benefit if people applied the same morals they learned in church to the workplace.

There has been much talk about the distance between Wall Street and Main Street, and that Wall Street is making out like bandits in this 700 billion dollar bailout. It's also true that millions have been suffering for much longer. But it looks like big business is feeling more than a pinch. When it comes down to it, aren't we all from the same creator, praying the same prayer?

McCain's emotional town hall meeting

Biden's not the only candidate who can put his foot in his mouth. McCain credited an emotional town hall meeting to the fact that it was a women's town hall meeting. Given the gender of his running mate, shouldn't McCain be careful to avoid such blatant sexism?

Obama made at least a few sexist remarks about Hillary Clinton early in the campaign, though I don't know of any recent comments, so he may have learned from his mistakes.

As Anna Lisa found, Raplh Nader called out Bill Maher for callng Palin a bimbo.

Watch McCain's emotional moment:



video via huffpo

CNN's touch screen technology

Watching CNN after the debates, I saw the reporters using a large touch screen computer that allowed the user to magnify images and move them around, all with a few touches. I found out the system's called Perceptive Pixel from this blog post. Here's a video of the inventor playing around with it at a TED talk.

same sex rights for the next four years?

The VP debate went a tad off topic with a question about rights for same sex couples. It was an interesting conversation, seeing as both Biden and Palin seemed to completely agree.



Some highlights (transcript):

IFILL: Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples?

BIDEN: Absolutely. Do I support granting same-sex benefits? Absolutely positively. Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple.
...

IFILL: Governor, would you support expanding that beyond Alaska to the rest of the nation?

PALIN: Well, not if it goes closer and closer towards redefining the traditional definition of marriage between one man and one woman. And unfortunately that’s sometimes where those steps lead.
...

But...no one would ever propose, not in a McCain-Palin administration, to do anything to prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital or contracts being signed, negotiated between parties.

Palin continues with an interesting choice of words, given the subject of the question.

But I will tell Americans straight up that I don’t support defining marriage as anything but between one man and one woman, and I think through nuances we can go round and round about what that actually means.

But I’m being as straight up with Americans as I can in my non-support for anything but a traditional definition of marriage.

Besides the odd talk of being as straight as she can be in a conversation about queer people, how can she be straight, that is, honest and unambiguous in her speech, about "non-support"?

Unfortunately, the blunders continue, this time by Biden.

IFILL: Let’s try to avoid nuance, Senator. Do you support gay marriage?

BIDEN: No. Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically the decision...to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths the determination what you call it.

The truth is, as long as same-sex marriage is illegal, very few faith communities will openly allow it. Not to discount the religious importance of marriage, especially my own, marriage is largely a civil affair. When I got married, my wife and I applied to the county government for our marriage certificate, swore under penalty of law that we weren't related, signed the certificate after our wedding--which was performed by clergy allowed by the government to perform weddings, and returned the certificate to the county where they still hold the record of our marriage. We are no more married than those who walk into the courthouse and are married by a government official. Our faith community provided the clergy, who gave us premarital counseling, and performed and blessed our marriage, but without the state's sanction of the legitimacy of our relationship, we would never had married. Had we been two men or two women, it would have been very difficult to find clergy willing to perform our wedding, but it would have been impossible to be married in city hall. The choice of who marries and who does not, and whose marriage is recognized for the purposes of rights and protection, belongs to the government. To leave the choice up to "faiths and people who practice their faiths" is a cop out. If you're against marriage between people other than one man and one woman, say it, like Palin did. Don't leave the decision in the hands of those who don't hold the power to make the decision to begin with.

top ten quotes from tonite's veep debate

10. Palin: "positively affect the impacts"

9. Palin, on McCain: "He is the man we've got to leave."

8. Biden, on himself: "Joe Biden"

7. Palin, on energy: "flow those sources of energy into the hungry markets"

6. Biden, quoting McCain: "Quote, I'm paraphrasing..."

5. Palin, on the middle east, with an eerie grin: "building our embassy in Jerusalem"

4. Biden, on climate change: "We know what the cause is. It's manmade. That's what the cause is.

3. Biden, on Bosnians: "Bosniacs"

2. Palin, on a whole range of topics: "tapped into" "cutting off" "push hard" "early withdrawal"

1. Palin, on the words of Jesus: "We need to be that light on a hill, as Ronald Regan said."