Saturday, September 6, 2008

more lies from mccain and palin

"How many saw her speech a couple of nights ago? Wasn't it fabulous?" McCain said Friday during a campaign stop in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. "You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was purchased by her predecessor and sold it on eBay — and made a profit."

But it turns out the twin-engine Westwind II was a tough sell on the Web — and the state eventually pulled it offline and sold it through an ordinary brick-and-mortar brokerage, for a loss, a spokeswoman said Friday.


link: palin's jet didn't sell on ebay

Friday, September 5, 2008

what we know about palin - week 1

today is the one week anniversary of the announcement of sarah palin's appointment as the republican vice-presidential nominee.  i've put together a listing of bunch of information about palin that has come to light in the last week.

perhaps i'll start a weekly roundup of all the delightful information that comes to light about this ultra-conservative, anti-choice, oil-drilling, earmark-demanding, polar-bear killing, loyalty-demanding bully who's got a sneer that makes dubya look like a benevolent deity.

enjoy.

anne kilkenny, a concerned citizen from wasilla, alaska (palin's hometown - the one she was mayor of) who knows sarah palin well, wrote a letter on august 31, 2008 to a few friends which is now circulating wildly through the internet.

the mccain camp is trying to halt the "troopergate" investigation into palin's firing of walter monegan because of his failure to fire her sister's ex-husband (even though she'd been demanding that her ex-brother in law be fired for over a year!).  "there's a question as to whether [the investigation] should continue" said one mccain/palin advisor.  because she's a woman, no doubt.

palin attended five different colleges in six years before graduating from the university of idaho.  all five schools claim that the mccain camp contacted none of them during palin's background investigation and "vetting process."  it is as yet unknown why she had to switch colleges every year.

though she casts herself as a "fresh face" and "maverick," republican party officials say that she's been being "groomed for higher office" since her run for mayor of wasilla in 1996.

the anchorage daily news has the story about palin, upon securing the mayorship of wasilla in 1996, threatening and then firing the city librarian for refusing to ban books, as well as firing the former police chief, irl stambaugh, an action which violated civil rights laws that prohibit retaliation for politial activity.  she also fired 3 other city directors in the same sweep, and claimed, at the time, that the firings were simply loyalty tests.  

a group of citizens residing in wasilla discussed a recall of palin due to the controversial firings, but decided not to pursue it as they did not want to be "divisive."

politico.com talks about the 2006 research document put together by palin's opponent in the alaska gubernatorial race, describing her overzealous conservatism and micromanaging, bullying governing style.

the seattle times has a lengthy article reviewing many of the issues that have arisen upon palin's propulsion into the national spotlight, including her controversial firings, her vindictive nature, her firing of walter monegan, the public safety commissioner, for refusing to fire her brother-in-law, her rare, bizarre appearances at alaskan gubernatorial debates in 2006, and of course, her flip-flopping on the bridge to nowhere.

mccain video used "stock photo" images of black people

apparently, after they paid to get that rwandan woman to the convention for cindy's speech, they could only afford $1 or $2 for any additional black people.
The Republicans couldn't find very many African American supporters to show on the Big Screen Of Triumph... so they simply put up stock photos of black people...Both these images appeared in McCain's [video] introduction, but you can also buy them for a buck or two from  iStockphoto.com:


story via hunter at daily kos


Thursday, September 4, 2008

check the electoral vote predictor, updated daily


right here


sample map from 9/04/2008
electoral-vote pic sept 4 2008



good take on palin

While you could say a lot of things about Sarah Palin's screed of an acceptance speech, it would suffice to simply note that it's pretty damn rich for John McCain to dispatch a secessionist to criticize any American's patriotism.

To use Palin's formulation: when the delegates have retreated to their Hummer dealerships and gated communities, and when the hockey mom platitudes have faded back to Wasilla, Sarah Palin is still a petty, corrupt, pork-barelling, flip-flopping secessionist terrified of anyone inclined to peel back the veneer on her shady recent past.


via trapper john at daily kos

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

sarah palin gives her best recital ever

watching sarah palin recite her speech tonight at the RNC in st. paul was fairly excruciating, but i'm all in favor of "know thy enemy." so i watched. a bunch of really good speech-writers have clearly been awake for the last 6 days - which is when we first heard of this person, because mccain couldn't decide on a vp until 3 days prior to the convention... more comforting judgment skills there - writing this stunningly mobilizing, red meat-throwing, really mean speech for her to recite. and palin is an incredibly charismatic and well-spoken mouthpiece for the efficient, vicious soundbytes that were contained in that speech... and i'm sure will be in many to come.

of course she's well spoken. i mean, she was ms. alaska after all. her voice is kind of annoying though. some kind of michigan/wisconsin accent but minus the cuteness and plus the smarminess.

in any case, the speech that was written for this former beauty queen to recite (and she gets an A!) was essentially a stream of patent lies and vicious insults. her tone during her recital was sarcastic, smarmy, snide, condescending, nasty. the words though, spouting out of the sweetly smiling mouth of a pretty, "spunky" woman with "moxie," seemed to lose their sarcasm and meanness as they flowed out over the audience of adoring delegates, who transformed them, somehow, into hope and joy, as they responded to this woman who they have been praying will be "the one." and tonight, she seemed to answer their prayers.

they want their obama too, after all. they don't want to miss all the fun this year. and now they get to have a "historic" candidate too, just like the democrats. how proud they must feel!

the delegates weren't very excited before. bad year to be a republican. hurricane on the first day bringing back ghosts of katrina. bush, first sitting president not to attend the convention of his own party since 1972... most unpopular president in half a century. the republican delegates were lackluster. they had no focus. they were confused.

until this woman appeared, as if from heaven, and showed them the light.

oh and by the way, she wasn't being vicious, or mean, no, she was just being a strong woman, and how dare the damn democrats say she shouldn't be strong just because she's a woman? those dems, always fighting against feminism and women's rights... when will they learn?

feminism, used against us by the patriarchal enemies. oh goddess, deliver us!

i think we know why mccain picked her now. she's exactly what they needed, someone to be the nasty republican attack dog while maintaining their grace and charm, without looking like cheney, or rove, or bush. she's damn good at it, that evil bitch.

the other factor is mccain's decision has got to be that poor down's syndrome baby. after palin's recital, when the family and then mccain come out to stand with her, she grabs that baby and hold him right next to her face, so he's in all the camera shots.

it's a perfect pity party... retarded baby and pow veteran who's lost all his teeth and can't raise his arms above his shoulders. if the dems pulled this, the republicans would be calling pity party.

it's disturbing to me the way she seems to throw her children into the ring without a care, using them as political tools. the republicans can threaten the media all they like but palin released the statement about her daughter's pregnancy, and i fervently hope the media will not back down on this, now that they're actually doing their jobs.

the most oxymoronic, hypocritical moment of perhaps the entire convention (competing with her derogatory rant about how obama is the celebrity candidate - when that's exactly what she has become) was when, amongst a stream of nasty insults to obama's character, morality and experience, palin sarcastically accused obama of being "afraid someone won't read them their rights," referring to the evil arab terrorists in guantanamo i guess.

the dirty arabs shouldn't have rights, this much is clear. come on, they bombed, well, there was 911... remember? i know it's been 7 years but we can still manipulate it to our advantage - we're really good at doing it!

so let me just reiterate the obvious here: the entire republican national convention has been centered for days around john mccain's heroism in surviving torture in a vietnamese pow prison camp.

i completely agree that mccain is an amazing person for having survived that, and is to be honored and respected for his service, perhaps particularly for choosing not to be released before other prisoners who had been there longer, a display of great honor.

*as an aside, i'm not sure that's the kind of decision making process that we would want in a leader... someone who would just stay (and keep every single american with him) in a terrible situation, for honor and only honor, denying any other complexities of the situation in favor of the one track he is doggedly set on, not to be deterred. this kind of stubbornness (which the republicans like to couch as being a "maverick") is actually reminiscent of a certain president we know. change? doesn't sound like it.

in any case, this whole week has been a grand ol' "mccain is a hero, he choose to be tortured for us, just like jeebus did" party. and the message about torture has been, pretty consistently, that it is generally a bad thing.

but palin, and i couldn't believe the words were actually coming out of her mouth; it was the closest i've come to breaking the tv set - used as an attack the fact that obama wants prisoners to be mirandized, offering this to her audience as proof that he is clearly the biggest pussy who has ever walked the face of the earth.

that she says this is bad enough. that the line gets a standing ovation is far more disturbing. her statements leading up to that one got good applause, but the "read them their rights" line gets the crowd on their feet, hungry for blood.
"Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit.

"Terrorist states are seeking new-clear weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions.

"Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights?'

(cheers and standing ovation)

why does that get the biggest response? the only rational explanation i can think of is that torturing arab prisoners is somehow revenge for vietnam... how else could such an anti-torture convention cheer for the idea of people being held without being mirandized? i mean besides the fact that they only really care of white people are being tortured.

does she, do they, think that no one should have fought for john mccain and his fellow pows to be treated according to international human rights law when they were staying at the hanoi hilton? or is it like, well, mccain had to go through it, so these bastards do too?

someone, somewhere in the party must realize this glaring hypocrisy. right?

watch the video/read the transcript of palin's recital here. if you think you can stand it.

mccain lolz


mccain lolz
Originally uploaded by scorpiosunset



best lol ever

via warren ellis

republican insiders caught by hot mic talking shit about mccain and the palin pick


on the most critical night of the year so far for the mccain-palin ticket, two republican insiders, mike murphy and peggy noonan, were talking with chuck todd on msnbc. the segment wrapped up... but the mikes were still on.



transcript

Chuck Todd: Mike Murphy, lots of free advice, we'll see if Steve Schmidt and the boys were watching. We'll find out on your blackberry. Tonight voters will get their chance to hear from Sarah Palin and she will get the chance to show voters she's the right woman for the job Up next, one man who's already convinced and he'll us why Gov. Jon Huntsman.

(cut away)

Peggy Noonan: Yeah.

Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys -- this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it's not gonna work. And --

PN: It's over.

MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

PN: Saw Kay this morning.

CT: Yeah, she's never looked comfortable about this --

MM: They're all bummed out.

CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this -- excuse me-- political bullshit about narratives --

CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.

MM: I totally agree.

PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it.

MM: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

MM: Yeah.



a reminder to women about why we should vote




The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 helpless women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."

They beat
Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders,
Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because--why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie "
Iron Jawed Angels." It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder...

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized.  And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave.  That didn't make her crazy.  

The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."




              alice paul, suffragette leader                                            lucy burns, 1913



click here for more information on these amazing suffragettes and others in the national woman’s party, 1910-1920

juneau



Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Bush equates "Angry Left" with Hanoi Hotel Torturers

Tonight in his address via satellite to the Republican National Convention, President Bush blasted Sen. John McCain’s critics. Invoking McCain’s time as a POW in a North Vietnamese prison, Bush compared these torturers to members of the “Angry Left”:

"If the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain’s resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the Angry Left never will."
- dubya

curious how he wasn't at the convention, long after the major hurricane threat had passed. god i can't wait until he's gone.

this statement got a standing ovation. if you can stand it, watch it here (via Think Progress)


i mean, the Angry Left? that's gotta be a rovian invention. that's so absurd it made me LOL! liberal bloggers are now to be equated with torturers, even as the sitting republican administration continues to condone the use of torture throughout the world? it's incredible to me how these guys can condemn torture so grandly on the stage at the convention (in the case of white american john mccain and his friends of course), and at the same time their president's administration, with their support, is known to have authorized torture, violated the geneva convention, contemptously ignored too many other global human rights laws to name...

sigh.

their lies are so transparent... will people see?


more about palin... and more, and more...

The Associated Press: Campaign money hurts Palin's outsider image

GOP vice presidential pick Sarah Palin accepted at least $4,500 in campaign contributions in the same fundraising scheme at the center of a public corruption scandal that led to the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens.

The contributions, made during Palin's failed 2002 bid to become Alaska's lieutenant governor, were not illegal for her to accept. But they show how Palin, a self-proclaimed champion for clean government, has been part of an Alaska political system that is now under the cloud of an ongoing FBI investigation.

It's the latest in a string of revelations that raise questions about whether John McCain's presidential campaign had sufficiently investigated the background of Palin, 44, a little-known governor new to the national stage.

(snip)

The list of potentially embarrassing details grew Tuesday:

- Her husband once belonged to a fringe political group in Alaska with some members supporting succession from the United States.

- In her earlier career as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin hired a lobbyist to help the tiny town secure at least 14 earmarks, worth $27 million between 2000-2003. McCain has touted Palin as a force in his long battle against earmarks.

- Under her leadership this year, Alaska asked for almost $300 per person in requests for pet projects from Stevens, one of McCain's top adversaries. That's more than any other state received, per person, from Congress.

- The head of the firm hired to defend Gov. Palin in a state ethics investigation was previously her family's lawyer and is permitted to bill the state up to $95,000 for work in the current case. It involves the dismissal of public safety commissioner Walt Monegan after he refused to fire a state trooper who had divorced the governor's sister.

- Palin opposed the U.S. government's listing of a variety of animals as endangered, including the polar bear and the beluga whale, both of which inhabit areas also rich in oil and natural gas.


good move, john...


barack obama: he completes us

from the daily show

this is truly one of the funniest things i've ever seen.



"every time barack obama speaks, an angel has an orgasm"




and this isn't bad either.

Monday, September 1, 2008

police intimidation and raids on protestors at the RNC

click here for the full email from starhawk, writing about the insane police intimidation and raids on protesters at the RNC in st. paul/minneapolis... and this was only on Friday... it's been getting worse all weekend.

if you feel so moved, please call the mayors' offices to voice your opinion on this:

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman
651-266-8510

Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak
(612) 673-2100
(612) 673-3000 outside Minneapolis

some excerpts:
It's Friday night. Our Pagan Cluster is sitting on the bluff of the Mississippi having our first real meeting, when Lisa gets a call. The cops are raiding the Convergence Center, where we're organizing meetings and trainings for the protests against the Republican National Convention. It's not a role play, the caller says. It's real.

... We wait. That's what you do when the cops have guns trained on kids inside a building. You wait, and witness, and make phone calls, and try to think of useful things to do.

... Through the kitchen door, we can see young kids sitting on the floor, handcuffed. We walk across the street, back, made more phone calls. An ambulance is parked in front, and the paramedics head into the building, leaving a gurney ready. Susu, from her car around the corner, reports that the cops have been grabbing pedestrians from the street, forcing them down to the ground, handcuffing them.

... One by one, protesters trickle out. Now we get more pieces of the story.

The cops burst in, with no warning. They pulled drew their guns on everyone - including a five year old child who was there with his mother, forced everyone down on the floor. It was terrifying.

They had a warrant, apparently, from the county, not the city, to search for 'bomb making materials.' They were searching everyone in the building, then one by one releasing them as they found nothing.

They continue to find nothing, as we wait through long hours. Meanwhile, more and more media arrives. These cops are not as creative as the DC cops during our first mobilization there against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Those cops confiscated the lunchtime soup - which included onions and chili powder, claiming they were materials for home made pepper spray.

We wait until the last person gets out. He's a twenty year old who the cops have accused of stealing his own backpack, but apparently they relented...


via Kitsap River at dailykos.com