Monday, October 27, 2008

Article by AP, Picture by Lavender


Obama Assassination Plot Disrupted By ATF


Federal agents have broken up a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. and shoot or decapitate 102 black people in a Tennessee murder spree, the ATF said Monday Oct. 27, 2008. In court records unsealed Monday, federal agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target a predominantly African-American high school by two neo-Nazi skinheads. The men, Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tenn., and Paul Schlesselman 18, of West Helena, Ark., are being held without bond.

WASHINGTON — Two white supremacists allegedly plotted to go on a national killing spree, shooting and decapitating black people and ultimately targeting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, federal authorities said Monday.

In all, the two men whom officials described as neo-Nazi skinheads planned to kill 88 people _ 14 by beheading, according to documents unsealed in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Tenn. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.

The spree, which initially targeted an unidentified predominantly African-American school, was to end with the two men driving toward Obama, "shooting at him from the windows," the court documents show.

"Both individuals stated they would dress in all-white tuxedos and wear top hats during the assassination attempt," the court complaint states. "Both individuals further stated they knew they would and were willing to die during this attempt."

click through title for full article...



Might Mccain lose his own home state?


you betcha! We should only be so lucky. Keep it up, clear thinkers! Don't let this old fool drag our country away from the light!

Please note in this handy- dandy map that Arizona is sliding further and further away from "strong Republican" to "barely Republican." Sorry I cut the key off, but you can click through and check the polls yourself on this great site.

I'm just ecstatic that Arizona, at this late date, is all of a sudden a swing state forcing defense on the part of the McCain Campaign.

Friday, October 24, 2008

When Will We Stop Scapegoating the Black Man?


I know several black men. Some are goofy, some are smooth, some are uptight, some are chill. None of them are so illiterate that they would carve a backwards B in some girl's face, and none are so criminal (or political!) that they would do so because they were robbing a girl or because she was a McCain supporter.

Oh wait, this stupid hooker did this to herself.

From the AP story: A McCain campaign volunteer who reported that a tall black man robbed her and then cut a "B" onto her cheek after seeing a McCain bumper sticker on her car has been given a polygraph test because of "inconsistencies" in her story, police said.

Good job, Mayella Ewell.
Good job, Susan Smith.
Good job, Ashley Todd.

Guess what this is! This is Ashley Todd's myspace screenshot. If her tag line doesn't say it all, then there ain't no more to say.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Pointing Fingers Part II- a pictorial


top: a shot of the garbage bags from the Democratic Convention
below: KSDK -- A NewsChannel 5 Photojournalist shot video of a crew taking down the American flag after Sen. McCain's campaign rally in New Town-St. Charles Monday.

In the video, you see the crane lower the flag to the ground and then a crewman cut rope connected to the flag.

Yet another example of right-wing hypocrisy.So the Democrats can't throw out the mini flags from the convention, but the Republicans can drag a house-sized flag on the ground for all to see? God, I can't stand John McCain's lousy campaign.

McCain Employing GOP Operative Accused Of Voter Registration Fraud


So, the Rovian attack technique has been honed so sharp it's cutting itself. Every time the McCain campaign points a finger at Senator Obama, it ends up pointing itself right into trouble. First, there were the Reverend issues; Wright ended up looking mighty sane and stable after seeing Hagee and the witch doctor's separate antics with both halves of the Republican ticket. Then, when that didn't stick, they trotted Bill Ayers out. This didn't work, since McCain has G Gordon Liddy hanging around his neck, and Sarah pals around with (read: married to) a member of an organization whose sole purpose was to secede from the union! If that ain't anti- American, then there is no such thing. Finally, the voter fraud issue: Acorn, whose paid flunkies tried to weasel out of actually working to register voters, filled out a bunch of crap. They handed the crap in and got their eight bucks an hour, whatever. The difference is that Acorn handed all the forms in, whereas this asshole's organization actually threw registrations they didn't like (read: Democratic) into the trash.

If McCain were to shut up, maybe he could stop the precipitous slide into hell that his campaign has become; every time he tries to open his mouth he just punches himself in the face. Sad.
About John McCain
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

I love her filthy mouth.



The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

The Posi and the Aggro


posi: Barack Obama really clarified and specified his position on Rove V Wade, and explained the rationale by which he shall choose Supreme Court Justices.

aggro: John McCain used "quotey fingers" to make his points.

posi: Barack Obama finally was able to reply to the scurrilous Ayers horseshit, and put it to bed for everybody but the Republican Campain flacks.


aggro: John McCain actually brought up William Ayers, only to have the issue smoothly deflected by Senator Smooth. Obama is right. America doesn't give a shit about Bill Ayers, not when every penny that doesn't go in the tank ends up on the table.

posi: Every aggravation is the opportunity to cultivate patience, and I am so grateful to the McCain campaign for the opportunities they've given me this evening I. could. just. spit. The eyerolling, blinking grimacing, and spastic twitching complemented the shark-glazed eyes and the gnashing teeth. These displays of histrionics were unwelcome, unpleasant, and in the end, un-Presidential

aggro: John McCain interrupted Barack Obama at least three times, out of sheer petulance. Weak!

posi: Barack Obama handled himself better than I would have, and exactly how one would expect a President to behave.

aggro: My mother in law is a bit ill, so I came down to make fried chicken and hand out for a couple of days. This isn't the aggro. The aggro is that my in-laws, including my brother-in-law, are all dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, and my b.i.l. is actually a 28%er. I had to watch the debate here, on their turf. They couldn't find MSNBC on the cable listing. It wasn't there. I RAN for the Internet the second the debate was done.

Maxi-posi-blue ribbon-winner of the night: I kept my cool and didn't throw my shoes at anyone, not even the b.i.l. If Obama can maintain his composure in the face of that raging jackanape McCain, I can do no less with my own family that I pretty much love to death.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

McCain Hires SPIES.

OK, here's how it works:

When a candidate for the Presidency gets this close to the election, it's a 50/50 chance that he's going to win. That means he's got a team to help him transition from campaigning mode to administrative mode. You don't want the same tactics for a campaign as an administration; GB43 never really made that transition and look at the screaming success that the last eight years have been.

SO I come back from picking up groceries (egg noodles $1.79, eggs $1.81, Saltines $2.59) and punch up Huffpoo, and the headline screams,

EXCLUSIVE... MCCAIN'S TRANSITION CHIEF AIDED SADDAM HUSSEIN

Wha?! are you kidding? John McCain would NEVER hire someone who'd worked on behalf of America's enemies, would he? So I read the article:

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.

So, John McCain has someone who lobbied for Saddam Hussein heading his post-election transition team working to ease him into the White House. John McCain hired spies. Thank God his chances of winning the election recede further from the shore of reality every single day. Tomorrow's debate should put the final nail in the coffin.

If he has the balls to mention Ayers or Wright tomorrow, then he should be struck by lightning for being a hypocritical liar liar liar.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

I couldn't ask for a better reality check

Honestly, it's lame to just cut and paste, but this is the most concise and perspective restoring way to put it.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

A HISTORIC TICKET.... Now that Sarah Palin has been found to have abused her powers, violated state ethics, and lied about it, I did a little digging and found an interesting historical footnote.

The McCain/Palin ticket is the first in American history in which both candidates were found to have violated ethics standards before a national election.

McCain, of course, was admonished by Senate Ethics Committee "for exercising 'poor judgment' for intervening" with federal regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, as part of the infamous Keating Five scandal.

And now McCain's running mate has also been found to have violated state ethics laws and abused the powers of her office, as part of the "Troopergate" scandal.

The nation has had 102 major-party tickets covering 51 presidential elections over more than two centuries. And we've never had a ticket in which both candidates on the same ticket were responsible for ethics violations before a national election. McCain/Palin is the first.

It makes the whole "reform" pitch a little more difficult, doesn't it?

From (via NYT) the Nutmeg State

October 11, 2008

Gay Marriage Is Ruled Legal in Connecticut

A sharply divided Connecticut Supreme Court struck down the state’s civil union law on Friday and ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. Connecticut thus joins Massachusetts and California as the only states to have legalized gay marriages.

The ruling, which cannot be appealed and is to take effect on Oct. 28, held that a state law limiting marriage to heterosexual couples, and a civil union law intended to provide all the rights and privileges of marriage to same-sex couples, violated the constitutional guarantees of equal protection under the law.

Striking at the heart of discriminatory traditions in America, the court — in language that often rose above the legal landscape into realms of social justice for a new century — recalled that laws in the not-so-distant past barred interracial marriages, excluded women from occupations and official duties, and relegated blacks to separate but supposedly equal public facilities.


Huzzah! Connecticut finally steps the hell up! Remember, kids- states do each other the courtesy of recognizing the validity of others' state laws. As go these three, so go the other forty-seven- and in twenty more years, we'll shake our heads in amazement that we ever fought against a natural, legal, fair, American state of affairs.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Sarah Palin Broke the Public Trust!


Ladies and gentlemen, can we really stomach the idea of a Vice President who has been found to have abused her power in the Governor's Office of one of the United States of America? For all those who aren't taking this seriously enough to see beyond her "hotness," I hope this crosses the line.

Here's a passage from the Branchflower Report.

Ye gawds. I shudder to contemplate the remaining wingnuts who would actually cleave to such a candidate as this.



Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Memo To Media: The Palin Rape-Kit Story Has Not Been "Debunked"


For the sake of mothers, daughters, sisters- this callousness is part and parcel of of the same callousness that led her during the debate to gloss over Biden's genuine moment at the mention of his family's tragedy with a load of maverick-ey.



She is not a woman's friend.
The fact that her role in the policy is ambiguous is exactly why we need unfettered access to putting her little toes to the journalistic fire. She has no right to aspire to the pinnacle of the American Experiment without the American people knowing exactly where she stands, and how she emotes when she stands there. I want to watch her reaction to a true press conference such as will be the DUTY of an executive of this land.

She staggers me. Truly. I am facinated with the political creature she is, and the environment that formed and shaped her. Once she's no longer a clear and present danger, we as Americans and those fascinated with history will have the leisure to explore her and vet her entirely.
About Wash Post
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

The Empty Campaign of John McCain


This is an excellent article to take into account pre-debate. Thanks to the author for an intelligent and insightful analysis of the McCain campaign mindset.
About John McCain
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Monday, October 6, 2008

McCain's Own 60's Radical Pal

See? You want to play the association game, go right ahead. This guy would be a traitor in McCain's book today; there's no way he'd associate with him now. If you did bring it up, it'd be the whole POW smokescreen machine gearing up in short order.



McCain eats his PWN face.
About John McCain
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

McCain's Tattered Remains (of his dignity)


When you have to send your Vice Presidential pick out to declare that your opponent "pals around with domestic terrorists," you've hit a new low. When you can eat your own words for breakfast and they taste like crow sausage, you've hit a new low.


John McCain's goal in the first debate was to discredit Senator Obama as a credible Commander in Chief and elevate the issue of foreign policy and national security. He didn't come close. Absent a domestic terror attack the economy will remain the number one issue in the race, and there is little Senator McCain can do to make up his gap with Senator Obama on it. Oh, Senator McCain will try to make issues of Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko and Rev. Wright, and that might hurt Senator Obama around the margins -- but it will not prevent him from winning. The economy is simply bigger than the rogues gallery that John McCain is conjuring up.
from the New Republic

This is why he sends out the lipstick pitbull to smear Obama's "associations." However, for every association he smears, Obama can answer back. Wanna pull out Bill Ayers? Great. We've got the Alaskan Independence Party. Wanna dredge up Reverend Wright? Okeedokee, we've got Hagee and that witch-craft preacher from Africa if you want to go that route.

But here's the thing- we DON'T want to go that route; we'll win with honor and concern for the business of America if we don't. "It's a dangerous road, but we have no choice," a top McCain strategist told the Daily News. "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose.

Yes. The Republicans are going to lose, and every day this becomes a little more inevitable. If McCain is really so desperate as to go down the Negative Nancy primrose path, then all we can say to him is, "John, don't worry: It will all be over in a month."

Friday, October 3, 2008

Palin On Fox News: Couric Annoyed Me


The questions that Katie Couric peppered her with were designed for one thing and one thing only- to present to the American people a deeper view of her intellectual capacity and education. The fact that she could not even reference the Supreme Court decision that lowered the damages that Exxon would pay for the Exxon-Valdez spill in her own state( in her own state!) only shows the paucity of substance that is, in the end, all she's got.

doggone it!

http://fortunelegalpad.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/07-219.pdf
About Sarah Palin
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Post Debate Exhalation


The most deeply scary thing was how Sarah Palin wants to expand post-Cheney Vice Presidential powers. This goes beyond the Constitutional scope and sweep of the office of the Vice Presidency.

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

This is a woman who tried to pass off her ignorance of the duties of the Vice Presidency as a "Lame Joke." The worst thing as VP that Cheney did was shoot his friend in the face. The last thing we need is a administration that follows along the primrose path to hell that Cheney has engineered America's destiny along lo this many years.

What about warrantless wiretapping? Isn't shredding the First Amendment damage enough to understand that the Vice President must be an ancillary figure working to support the President's policies until such unfortunate time that s/he must take on the duties of the President?

OK, so she didn't spin her head around and vomit pea soup. Ok so they coached her and schooled her and crammed her like a Christmas goose. But she didn't win. It only confirmed for me that the Republican ticket will continue to lead our country down the path it sinks today.

Hopes and Anticipation

There are times when the political waters of America become so muddied and toxic that I cannot choose to wade through them; my soul gets sickened and my heart weighs down.

Tonight will not be one of those nights. I look forward to Sarah being Sarah, and I truly hope that she's got more to say than a bunch of generalities and quicksand-shifting answers that say nothing, deflecting from the original question.

I hope Joe Biden treats her courteously, since he'll know that she'll hang herself if he lets her. I also hope that he makes at least one or two witticisms that give the pundits something to giggle over.

I hope it's as dramatic as I want it to be!

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Before the Thrilla in Manilla

I bet Muhammed Ali was wound up too. The press have been warning of Palin's "glittering generalities," in which she blankets her response time with filler static that connects with the audience so that they feel that they "could have a beer with ole Sarah Six-pack. The bar of expectation has been set so low that if she shows up and actually speaks in coherent sentences the Republicans are going to claim a win for her.

Even if she shows up and "holds her own" she's going to lose, since McCain is killing his own campaign with his monkeyshines this week during the economic meltdown negotiations. If she Courics it up, then that will simply kill the Republican's hopes all the sooner. Is it wrong, after eight years of screaming incompetency, to hope that they eat their hearts out?

Stay tuned for tomorrows hijinks!