global electoral college

if the world could vote in this election it would look something like this:



note that the blue countries are all for obama. you can barely see the red countries.

go here to see the interactive map for yourself.

via economist.com

My Holiday with McCain

Note: This is an email I received last week from my mom. Demi works with my mother at a psychotherapy institute.  I realize this story cannot be fact-checked (except perhaps mccain's visit to this vacation spot, or the testimony of the other vacationers there), but I thought it a likely enough story to share with you all.  Please note the emphases are mine.  

This story comes from Anasuya Dubey, an American citizen, daugher of a previous Indian Consul General of San Francisco, and a clinical psychologist in California.

It was just before John McCain's last run at the presidential nomination in 2000 that my husband and I vacationed in Turtle Island in Fiji with John McCain, Cindy, and their children, including Bridget (their adopted Bangladeshi child).

It was not our intention, but it was our misfortune to be in close quarters with John McCain for almost a week since Turtle Island has a small number of bungalows and their focus on communal meals force all vacationers who are there at the same time to get to know each other intimately.

He arrived at our first group meal and started reading quotes from a pile of William Faulkner books with a forest of Post-Its sticking out of them. As an English Literature major myself, my first thought was "if he likes this so much, why hasn't he memorized any of this yet?"  I soon realized that McCain actually thought we had come on vacation to be a volunteer audience for his "readings" which then became a regular part of each meal. Out of politeness, none of the vacationers initially protested at this intrusion into their blissful holiday, but people's buttons definitely got pushed as the readings continued day after day.

Unfortunately this was not his only contribution to our mealtime entertainment. He waxed on during one meal about how Indo-Chine women had the best figures and that our American corn-fed women just couldn't meet up to this standard. He also made it a point that all of us should stop Cindy from having dessert as her weight was too high and made a few comments to Amy, the 25 year old wife of the honeymooning couple from Nebraska that she should eat less as she needed to lose weight.

McCain's appreciation of the beauty of Asian women was so great that David, the American economist had to move his Thai wife to the other side of the table from McCain as McCain kept aggressively flirting with and touching her.

Needless to say I was irritated at his large ego, and his rude behavior towards his wife and other women, but decided he must have some redeeming qualities as he had adopted a handicapped child from Bangladesh. I asked him about this one day and his response was shocking:

"Oh, that was Cindy's idea – I didn't have anything to do with it. She just went and adopted this thing without even asking me. You can't imagine how people stare when I wheel this ugly, black thing around in a shopping cart in Arizona. No, it wasn't my idea at all."

I actively avoided McCain after that, but unfortunately one day he engaged me in a political discussion which soon got us on the topic of the US bombing of Iraq... I was shocked when he said "if I was in charge, I would nuke Iraq to teach them a lesson." Given McCain's personal experience with the horrors of war I had expected a more balanced point of view.

I commented on the tragic consequences of the nuclear attacks on Japan during WWII – but no, he was not to be dissuaded. He went on to say that if it was up to him he would have dropped many more nuclear bombs on Japan. I rapidly extricated myself from this conversation as I could tell that his experience being tortured as a POW didn't seem to have mellowed out his perspective but rather had made him more aggressive and vengeful towards the world.

My final encounter with McCain was on the morning that he was leaving Turtle Island. Amy and I were happily eating pancakes when McCain arrived and told Amy that she shouldn't be having pancakes because she needed to lose weight. Amy burst into tears at this abusive comment. I felt fiercely protective of Amy and immediately turned to McCain and told him to leave her alone. He became very angry and abusive towards me, and said "Don't you know who I am?" and I looked him in the face and said "Yes, you are the biggest asshole I have ever met," and headed back to my cabin.

I am happy to say that later that day when I arrived at lunch I was given a standing ovation by all the guests for having stood up to McCain's bullying.

Although I have shared my McCain story informally with friends, this is the first time I am making this public. I almost did so in 2000, when McCain first announced his bid for the Republican nomination but it soon became apparent that George Bush was the shoo-in candidate and so I did not act then. 

However, now that there is a very real possibility that McCain could be elected as our next president, I feel it is my duty as an American citizen to share this story. I can't imagine a more scary outcome for America than that this abusive, aggressive man should lead our nation. I have observed him in intimate surroundings as he really is, not how the media portrays him to be. If his attitudes toward women, and his treatment of his own family, are even a small indicator of his real personality, then I shudder to think what will happen to America were he to be elected as our President.

*the preface to this email read:

Hi all,

My friend Ana accidently found herself on vacation with John McCain and his wife a few years ago, and she has this to say about her experience with him during his 'off time.'  She is a VERY trustworthy source, someone I know from my training at the Wright Institute, her father was a diplomat, she has lived all over the world, and she is one of my favorite people I've met during my psychology training.  I think this description corroborates many other descriptions of McCain's character and is important for people to know about... feel free to send it on if anyone you know would be swayed by this...

Love to all,

Demi

trojan moose

Her critics like to say that Palin hasn't accomplished anything. I disagree: in the space of ten days she's succeeded in distracting the entire country from the horrific Bush record -- and McCain's complicity in it. My friends, that's accomplishment we can believe in.

Just look at the problem John McCain faced. George Bush has a disastrous record, and the country knows it. John McCain -- the current one, not the one who vanished eight years ago -- has no major disagreements with George Bush (and I'm sorry, wanting to fire Donald Rumsfeld a bit sooner doesn't qualify) and wants to continue his incredibly unpopular policies for another four years. The solution? Enter Sarah Palin, a Trojan Moose carrying four more years of disaster...

link via huffington post

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

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