The real test of a president

Joe sixpack, Joe the plumber and Creepy Joe™ the traitor

Just when you think Creepy Joe™ Lieberman has reached the zenith of his creepiness, he goes and says something even more outrageous.

Now he's calling Barack Obama a socialist:

"I mean there's ways I suppose you can make the argument that there's some similarities between with what Senator Obama is talking about, a classic what used to be known as socialist theory. I just think you have to state it directly: Senator Obama wants to raise taxes and Senator McCain does not."

If callback elections were allowed for senators, Lieberman wouldn't be doing any of this. Let's hope Democratic leaders can muster the backbone to invite him to leave the party permanenty.

The last coins of his reputation

In endorsing Barack Obama for President, the New York Times has issued a beautifully-written, strongly worded recommendation of Obama's strengths, and a lacerating repudiation of George Bush's failed presidency, and of John McCain's divisive, desperate campaign.

The Times goes so far as to remind us that they endorsed Clinton over Obama in the primary, but that:

Watching him being tested in the campaign has long since erased the reservations that led us to endorse Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries. He has drawn in legions of new voters with powerful messages of hope and possibility and calls for shared sacrifice and social responsibility.

As for McCain they also admit their error in endorsing him as the Republican candidate saying he "has spent the last coins of his reputation for principle and sound judgment to placate the limitless demands and narrow vision of the far-right wing."

As for his running mate, Bush-in-skirts Palin, her tone has only grown shriller as the campaign lurches from the gutter into the ditch.

In yesterday's kiss-ass interview with the ridiculously-biased hate-monger Sean Hannity, in which Hannity resurrects every already-disproven, already-discarded by any credible source, already-demonstrated-as-canard accusation, and forms them into softball questions, Palin shows herself as a hateful, ruthless, racist, vicious, unrepentant right-wing demagogue, and a simpleton who would stand side-by-side with Bush and push America over the precipice.

She spews code words in her infantile, small-town, adopted mid-country, mall-polished, sing-song, Betty Boop vocal style - socialism, welfare, elite, pro-American, terrorist, ACORN, judgment - only interrupting her sophomoric analysis of world matters to lie, again and again.

She's dangerous.

Message from the padded cell

At the Alfred E. Smith dinner, John McCain suggested that Keith Olbermann belonged in the rubber room of an insane asylum. Keith Olbermann, who has vowed to issue a special commentary every night until the election, has his own suggestion for John McCain.

The flames of ignorance themselves

Oh my. It's true, as PT Barnum said, "No one ever got rich overestimating the intelligence of the American public."

Bill Ayers takes a back seat to Joe the Plumber

As promised McAngry raised the specter of 60's radicalism at the debate on Wednesday night, but McAngry didn't spend as much time on Bill Ayers as he did on Joe (Wurzelbacher) the Plumber.

The two assumptions we can make is that Joe the Plumber is a very wealthy plumber indeed if he makes enough money, annually in personal income, to have to pay taxes under Barack Obama's plan.

Much the worse for Bill Ayers, whose name appears on this page as a favorite link, and has since the right-wing press tried to brand Obama as a terrorist for associating with Ayers. The blog is worth reading. In fact, in his most recent post invites his critics to take the time to read the books Ayers has written on education.

But a previous post is even more enlightening. Framed in the format of one of those famous Nigerian emails you've received which promises to open the door to great riches for you, it lampoons the great financial bailout, which alas, has not worked. I don't know if Ayers wrote it, or he just recognized its genius, but it's certainly on tarket.



Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude. I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America.

My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s.

This transactin is 100% safe. This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance.

My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction.

After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

From Alaska on a mission for god

As John McCain's candidacy is mired in the sludge it has been slinging, John McCain seems to want to stop fanning the flames of hatred and bigotry, and in fact, is reported to be feuding with his vice-presidential candidate, Bush-in-skirts Sarah Palin. Palin, for her part, feels the tilt of the sinking ship, and is clawing her way to a lifeboat.

Given the way her Alaskan church took control of many of the power positions in and around Wasila after she was elected mayor, one has to assume the Joan-of-Arc complex is at least a possibility. She wants the power of the state so she can dedicate it to the power of god.

Rats deserting a sinking ship

Remember, of course, that an Obama presidency will be good business for conservative pundits.

With apologies to that fascist Disney

H/T Colin McEnroe

Is Obama man enough to bomb Iran?

Creepy Joe™ Lieberman has his doubts as to whether Barack Obama has the nerve to bomb Iran, if it came to that.

We wonder if Lieberman has the strength to put aside his most base and bloodthirsty instincts.

Barbara Ann after all, was a harmony song, so when McCain sings "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," Creepy Joe™ can sing along.

Sarah who?

Strange, strange, strange that Cranky Old John McCain made it through an entire debate without referencing his young counterpart who has been poison the well of American politics.

For my money, McCain stumbled, bumbled and rambled his way out of the presidency tonight.

To be honest, Obama didn't mention Biden, but he hasn't sent Biden on the road to stir up mob hatred of McCain.

BTW, McCain did mention Creepy Joe™ Lieberman three times. Who is he really pining for?

From the NYTimes letters to the editor yesterday

H/T to Jim Condren.

To the Editor:

You quote John McCain, “How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?” He was referring to Barack Obama’s acquaintance with the former Weatherman Bill Ayers, but the same question might be put to his own supporters.

A Vietnamese friend once described to me the scene of carnage he witnessed as a child after a United States bombing in Hanoi. He and his family fled through a landscape strewn with the body parts of innocents.

An argument could be made that the pilot who flew 23 bombing sorties over Vietnam and the former radical were both doing what they believed right — one in support of a war and the other in protest of it — and that both were wrong.

Kevin Lathrop
Brooklyn, Oct. 4, 2008

The most beautiful mountains in the world

Some late afternoon video viewing.

Beauty pageant again. Palin says: God has made us a promise, if we will commit our works to him we will succeed. Our lives can be enhanced by applying this and by thinking optimistically. In Alaska we have mosquitoes. We also have the most beautiful mountains in the world. The choice is ours as to which we’ll focus on. You betcha.

She's strong, she's capable, she has an Israeli flag on her wall

In nearly the same breath as he's dismissed Barack Obama for not being experienced to take the office of president, Creepy Joe™ Lieberman extols the virtues of a woman he barely knows, Sarah "Bush-in-skirts" Palin, and who doesn't have the experience to know that she's swum too far beyond the ropes. But she keeps a flag of Israel in her office.

If you can stand to be amongst a crowd of rabid Floridian Palin devotees, you can hear the entire introduction here.

Lieberman has joined the McCain dance-of-death, discarding his principles as if they were spoiled fruit, abandoning those he represents as if they were lepers and acting the impresario for a cheap, tawdry spectacle that mocks the Constitution he vowed to protect.

Give me another slice of that Country First Balogna.

Prairie foreclosed home companion

Though I wish he would sing a little less on his show, I've always admired Garrison Keillor for his nerdish stardom (an inspiration to all radio nerds, famous and not, from Ira Glass to me). He's parlayed a brilliant mind, a gift for storytelling, a sense of the under-appreciated and a face for radio into a unexpectedly long, successful and lucrative career.

He has given a voice to the Lutheran farmer, and the precocious teen in a flyover state who cherishes The New Yorker.

He is also a brilliant essayist, and more so when he's angry. And he's angry now.

Pallin around with convicted felons

The danger in going negative is that negative comes back to bite you.

McCain's camp may be bringing up Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko, but they must remember that McCain has a skeleton in his own closet, the Keating Five.

The grace and intelligence of a rabid wildebeest

John McCain is fond of spouting the bi-partisan cliche, but he can't seem to walk the talk.

Gestures of collegial greeting are common, even among opponents in the Senate, so why does McCain have so much trouble looking Barack Obama in the eye.

As Josh Marshall at TPM, and later Colin McEnroe, have suggested, perhaps it's primate dominance theory.

Or maybe he's just a crabby old man. "Hey, you kids keep your ball out of my yard!"

Just because she sounds like a dimwit

Is no excuse for Joe Biden to overlook the challenge he will face Thursday.

Bush-in-skirts has read all the vast, variety of media source available to her (Good Housekeeping, Readers' Digest, People, Maxim), so she'll be ready to rumble.



But she's won a few debates in her times with a motormouth act that is usually bereft of specifics, but long on values.



And she's got to win because she's got one pissed-off motherfucker for a boss.



BTW, Mr. One-hundred-Percent-Absolute-Truth is lying.

Time to seriously consider what a Palin presidency might look like

The spot MSNBC took off the air.

McCain arrives in Washington with a monkey wrench to throw in the works

Just when it seemed like a truly bipartisan financial bailout plan had been achieved after a solid week of negotiations, John McCain rode in to Washington on a dirty steed with diarrhea.

Certainly, McCain could not abide a deal done Thursday. That would mean he'd have no excuse for backing out of the debate with Barack Obama Friday.

Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd has called the last minute Republican balk an attempt to save McCain's candidacy.



Barney Frank, aghast that the Republicans had walked out of emergency negotiations Thursday night, complained loudly that the Republicans were more interested in politics than with coming up with a solution to America's financial problems.