October 17, 2008
September 27, 2008
September 17, 2008
The Tattlesnake – Pondering Political Ponderables Edition
– If McCain and Palin are such maverick reformers, why haven’t they quit the corrupt Republican Party?
– Why doesn’t Obama, Biden or the Big Media ever mention that McCain’s tax cuts are going to directly benefit John and Cindy McCain, worth over $100 million? Meanwhile, under Obama’s tax increase for those making over $250,000 per year, the Obama’s would be paying more in taxes, since they’re worth about $4 mil. Who is really putting country first here ahead of their personal interest?
– Is McPalin actually trying to say that we are going to cure our current economic crisis by continuing to do the same things that caused it? Listen to them closely; yes, they are, only they are going to appoint a panel to study it.
– If the McCain-Palin ticket has so energized the Republican base, how come there are so many glum faces among the party hacks assembled behind them at campaign stops?
– Who do the McCain handlers think this ‘deference and respect’ for Palin nonsense is playing to – ‘dissed’ working-class women who shop at Walmart? Think again – it reminds them of their hated country-club bosses. Uh, not to be disrespectful of the Ice Princess Moose-Killer or anything, but they are making her sound like a tinhorn Queen Victoria. Was this the best Frank Luntz could come up with to cover her alarming ignorance?
– Speaking of the Thrilla From Wasilla, she’s fading in popularity now that the public has gotten a good look at her — why doesn’t McCain replace her with Tina Fey? She’s funnier and more talented than the original, and most Republicans would never know the difference, as long as Tina didn’t slip up and tell the truth.
– Who’s dumber: ‘First Dude’ Todd “How’d You Get Pregnant Again So Quick?” Palin or McCain ‘advisor’ Carly “I Nearly Destroyed HP and They Paid Me $20 Million to Go Away!” Fiorina?
– Laughable: Following yesterday’s Wall Street meltdown, some Republican half-wit on one of the cable news channels that isn’t Fox said, without irony, “There’s a danger here we might slip into a recession.”
– Laughable Deux: Did I hear Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson just praise Bush’s economic programs today? Yes, I did. And did he really tell us all to “remain calm”? Yes, calm in the Kevin Bacon at the end of ‘Animal House’ sense, right before he was flattened into the sidewalk.
– Laughable III: If Sarah Palin’s husband Todd is Alaska’s ‘First Dude’ does that mean we can call her the ‘First Chick’? (Or would that be the ‘First Dudette’?)
– Laughable the Fourth: Is it true Sarah Palin’s kids actually hate hockey?
– Laughable de Cinco: The Obama camp should start referring to McCain as ‘Republican John Sidney McCain the Third’ and Palin as ‘Republican Gov. Vinnie Barbarino.’ Of course, Sen. John Blutarsky and Gov. Hockey Rink to Nowhere are possibilities as well.
– Finally, Obama in Elko, Nevada, Sept. 17th, and I wrote this down fast so every word may not be verbatim: “McCain says he’s going after the old boys network in Washington … the thing is, the old boys network in Washington is called a McCain campaign staff meeting.” Ha, ha, keep punching, Barack, they’re on the ropes and McCain’s no Ali.
Comments Off
April 10, 2008
Newest House Member Goes After Bush’s Iraq Policy On Her First Day
Salon, Kartarine Mieszkowski, April 10, 2008
Thursday, the day Rep. Jackie Speier, 57, was sworn into Congress, she wasted no time in pissing off Republicans, by blasting President Bush and Sen. John McCain in a speech about the war in Iraq.
“The process to bring the troops home must begin immediately,” Speier, a Democrat from Hillsbourgh, Calif., told members of Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “The president wants to stay the course and a man who wants to replace him suggests we could be in Iraq for 100 years. But Madam Speaker, history will not judge us kindly if we sacrifice four generations of Americans because of the folly of one.”
While Democrats applauded, some Republicans booed, and a few walked out in protest, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Speier’s 13-year-old daughter, who was watching from the House Gallery, asked, “Why are they booing my mom?”
March 7, 2008
E. J. Dionne Jr.: Rube Goldberg, Meet Rush Limbaugh
E. J. Dionne, The Washington Post, March 7, 2008
There they go again. Democrats have contrived a nominating contest that even Rube Goldberg would have considered too convoluted, too dysfunctional and too improbable to name as his own.
The happiest people in the country right now are Hillary Clinton and Rush Limbaugh — Clinton because she has survived, and Limbaugh, because he’s eager for the contest to go on so Barack Obama can be “bloodied up.” Talk about a vast and unexpected conspiracy.
Oh, yes, and John McCain is chuckling, too. His obligatory meeting with President Bush on Wednesday produced videotape far more likely to be used by Democrats than by Republicans, given Bush’s standing as this era’s Herbert Hoover.
But the McCain news was eclipsed by stories about Democratic hand-wringing, learned explanations of the Democrats’ exquisitely intricate “nominating process” and speculation about what nasty things Obama would need to say about Clinton to counteract the nasty things she’s saying about him.
The quotation of the week came from Clinton adviser Harold Ickes. “Too much is yet unknown about Senator Obama,” he said during a campaign conference call on Wednesday. Now that raises fascinating philosophical issues we have not pondered since the philosopher Donald Rumsfeld instructed us that while there are “known knowns,” there are also “unknown unknowns,” those we “do not know we don’t know.”
March 5, 2008
March 2, 2008
Helen Thomas: Time To Get Out Of Our Blood Debt In Iraq
Helen Thomas, The Hearst Newspapers, February 28, 2008
Will the next president be the second coming of Jimmy Carter? Given Thursday’s economic headlines, full of dire warnings about the return of 1970s-style stagflation, you might think so.
Bush wants to leave to the next president the burden of ending the debacle he started five years ago when he ordered the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, against a people who had done us no harm.
Bush cannot explain his reasons for the war without compounding his folly. To this moment, Bush has not given a logical explanation for his disastrous militarism.
How can he tell American families that their sons and daughters died for a terrible, tragic mistake committed by his administration?
History shows that other presidents have found ways to end U.S. involvement in wars. Most times there has been a public sigh of relief when that happens.
Comments Off
Frank Rich: McCain Channels His Inner Hillary
Frank Rich, The New York Times, March 2, 2008
Before they were sidetracked into a new war against The New York Times, the Rush Limbaugh posse had it right about John McCain. He is a double agent. Some Democrats do admire and like him. So does Jon Stewart, and so do many liberal editorial boards and card-carrying hacks in the mainstream American press. So, in fact, do many at The Times, including myself. As long as I don’t look too hard at the fine print.
You’ve got to love a guy who said a few years ago that he regretted likening Mr. Limbaugh to “a circus clown” because of all the complaints from circus clowns insulted by the comparison. “I would like to extend my apologies to Bozo, Chuckles and Krusty,” Senator McCain told a rather startled Neil Cavuto of Fox News.
What’s more, Ann Coulter and Tom DeLay aren’t entirely wrong when they bluster that a vote for Mr. McCain amounts to a vote for Hillary Clinton (or, for that matter, Barack Obama). The Arizona senator’s otherwise conservative record is closer to the Democrats on immigration, campaign-finance reform, stem-cell research, global warming, oil drilling in Alaska, waterboarding, Gitmo and, until a recent flip-flop, the Bush tax cuts. In The New Republic, Jonathan Chait concluded that Mr. McCain’s Senate votes made him “the most effective advocate of the Democratic agenda in Washington” during the first Bush term.
All of which should make Democrats more nervous than the clowns of the hard right. Might Mr. McCain so blur distinctions that he could grab enough independents to triumph? He won even among antiwar and anti-Bush voters in New Hampshire. A Mason-Dixon poll last week found Mr. McCain beating either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton in must-win Florida.
The good news for the Democrats so far is that whatever Mr. McCain’s sporadic overlap with liberals, he is emulating almost identically the suicidal Clinton campaign against Mr. Obama. He has mimicked Mrs. Clinton’s message and rhetorical style, her tone-deaf contempt for Mr. Obama’s cultural appeal, and her complete misreading of just how politically radioactive the war in Iraq remains despite its migration from the front page.
Comments Off
March 1, 2008
Anti-Obama T-Shirt Sales Surge Online
Alex Markels, US News and World Report, February 29, 2008
If you think the recent photo of Barack Obama wearing a turban – now appearing on the Internet near you – is a cheap shot, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Or, at least, you haven’t seen the arsenal of cheap shots now on display at CafePress.com, an online store that at last count featured more than 900 anti-Obama designs for sale on some 33,000 T-shirts and other tchotchkes.
Indeed, just as Matt Drudge posted the photo of Obama dressed in local garb during a visit to Somalia, which some have alleged was forwarded by the Clinton campaign, the same image – on more than a dozen T-shirts and sweatshirts – was selling on CafePress.com, along with a cornucopia of “Barack Obummer” campaign buttons and “Osama Obama” onesies.
Ranging from silly to downright offensive, the designs are created and uploaded by millions of would-be entrepreneurs, who then pick which products to emblazon them on and even set the price. “We have a review process that keeps out too much love or too much hate,” CafePress CEO Fred Durham says of the more than 250,000 designs displayed on the website at any given time.
Much like what sometimes happens on eBay, offensive stuff occasionally slips through the cracks, such as a recent T-shirt depicting Obama in a Nazi uniform alongside Adolf Hitler under a caption reading, “Don’t Be Fooled by Propaganda.”
The Tattlesnake – The Rate the Debate Edition
And, Don’t Worry, I’ll Keep It Brief…
The best and the worst of the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain in Oxford, Mississippi, Sept. 26, 2008, plus a little free advice to Barack:
– Obama’s Best Moments: Nailing McCain on how often he’s been wrong about Iraq; hanging Junior around McCain’s neck like a millstone.
– McCain’s Best Moments: Remembering part of his record accurately, if not all of it, and the names of some obscure foreign leaders, which he probably practiced all afternoon to pronounce correctly.
– Obama’s Worst Moments: Letting McCain interrupt him and get away with it, and the unanswered charges by McCain, such as the $900-some million in earmarks supposedly racked up by Obama. Also, agreeing with McCain too often.
– McCain’s Worst Moments: Aside from accidentally admitting, as Keith Olbermann pointed out last night, that the US had tortured people in their custody in defiance of international and national law, after all these years of BushCo denials, McCain brought up Sarah Palin briefly and expressed his pride in her. Hasn’t this doofus been paying attention? She’s a disaster on wheels, and she just dropped 14 points in the polls.
– Worst Attempt at a Joke: McCain, slamming federal research money for studying bear DNA: “I don’t know if it’s a criminal issue or a paternal issue.” Head smack! He meant ‘paternity.’
– Best Physical Appearance: Obama — he looked calm and presidential throughout the debate.
– Worst Physical Appearance: McCain’s hunched and hunkered-down stature, and grimacing during some of Obama’s answers – he looked like he was either trying to pinch a loaf in his Depends or do a bad impersonation of Don Rickles.
– Best Debate ‘Strategery’ (a tie): Obama for pounding McCain with the hideous specter of the loathed Dubya and staying cool, fool, in the face of McCain’s attacks; McCain for pummeling Obama on his lack of ‘understanding’ and ‘naiveté,’ even though it opened the way for Obama to prove him wrong, which he did.
(more…)