Stealing back your vote

It should be simple. You're a citizen, you should get to vote, right?

Wrong.

In Canada, its fairly simple to get on the voters' list if you are eligible. You can even get on the list of electors at the polling station on election day. You accept your ballot, mark it with an X and put it in the ballot box, and then go home and wait for the returns to roll in.

In the U.S. it isn't quite as easy as that. Rules, proceedures and the physical mechanics of voting and counting vary from state to state, even from polling station to polling station. And some people are doing their best to make it as difficult as possible for the "wrong sort" of voter.

The New York Time reports voters being illegally purged from electoral rolls in six battleground states -- not much of a surprise if you've been reading Greg Palast ( and if you haven't, what's wrong with you, you louche slacker bastards? His "Armed Madhouse" and "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" should be required reading for anyone who votes.)

Let me make this very simple -- I'll type this very slowly for some of you who have trouble following things more complex than an episode of Dancing With The Stars-- The Republicans took office in 2000 because they were successful in keeping people, mostly blacks, from voting in Florida. The Republicans took office in 2004 because they used similar tricks to surpress the vote in Ohio. If you don't think they will do their best to surpress the vote in 2008 you are either too stupid to be allowed to vote or a Republican. Fortunately, Palast and Kennedy have whipped up this little number to show how to steal back your vote.

Radical ties
We've mentioned a few of John McCain's unsavory associations already -- not the least of which is his "close friend" Watergate thug G. Gordon Liddy -- but what of some of his inner circles' connections? Fancy seeing this in the Wall Street Journal:

The McCain campaign, in a continuing effort to link Barack Obama to domestic terrorism, released a statement Wednesday from a New York supporter, recounting how his family home was firebombed by the radical 1960s group founded by Obama supporter William Ayers.
But the McCain supporter, John M. Murtagh, has his own ties to radical protesters: He served as a lawyer for a Catholic priest who led protests at an abortion clinic that turned violent.

Then, of course, there is Sarah Palin's consorting with wingnuts from the John Birch Society and the Alaska Independence Party :

During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin’s campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.
Palin backed Chryson as he successfully advanced a host of anti-tax, pro-gun initiatives, including one that altered the state Constitution’s language to better facilitate the formation of anti-government militias. She joined in their vendetta against several local officials they disliked, and listened to their advice about hiring. She attempted to name Stoll, a John Birch Society activist known in the Mat-Su Valley as “Black Helicopter Steve,” to an empty Wasilla City Council seat. “Every time I showed up her door was open,” said Chryson. “And that policy continued when she became governor.”

Meanwhile, Barrack Obama has your October Surprise right here. My guess is he either gives another hard-hitting speech on race or runs an old episode of the Beverly Hillbillies with the Palin's and the McCain's faces superimposed via CGI, depending on where things stand in the polls.

McCain needs more cowbell

From "You Are My Sunshine" to "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" campaign theme songs are a venerable part of presidential political campaigns. McCain/Palin '08 seem to be having some trouble finding someone who wants to be associated with the campaign.

Foo Fighters tell McCain to stop using song
NEW YORK (AP) — Yet another band is complaining about John McCain's use of their song to promote his campaign. This time, it's the Foo Fighters.
The rockers sent out a missive telling the Republican presidential candidate to stop using "My Hero." They said they learned it was being use through news reports.
"The saddest thing about this is that `My Hero' was written as a celebration of the common man and his extraordinary potential," the band said in a statement. "To have it appropriated without our knowledge and used in a manner that perverts the original sentiment of the lyric just tarnishes the song."
The band noted it's not the first time McCain has been told to stop using a song. John Mellencamp, Heart and Jackson Browne have also complained — Browne even filed a lawsuit.

Maybe they should ask Jackson Browne if they can use "Running on Empty"

"The sheriff is a ..."

With the world economy in freefall, I can't believe this even needs to be talked about, but after McCain's reference to "that one" in the debate, and the tenor of recent speeches by McCain and Palin and responses they have drawn -- it is pretty clear that the Republicans, desperate to distract, have once again hit the bottom of the barrel and started digging.

Don't for a second kid yourself that race no longer matters in America. Conservatives like the gang at the Corner like to claim that Barack Obama's nomination by the Democrats proves that discrimination against blacks no longer exists (reverse racism against white men, well according to them, that's another story ) Bullshit. Just have a look at what is going on in Virginia, in cyberspace, in Oregon, all over the place, everywhere.

The McCain campaign has given up on the dog whistle and dusted off the megaphone. (Thanks to Cynicor for the comprehensive list of recent sins)

From the LA Times Via Glenn Greenwald and Rising Hegemon :

Here (.pdf) is a newspaper column from Bobby May, the McCain campaign chair in Buchanan County, Virginia and correspondence secretary for the Buchanan County Republican Party, warning that "the platform of Barack Hussein Obama" includes:
Illegal Immigration: "Learn to Speak Spanish";
Terrorist Threat to America: "Learn to Speak Arabic";
Reparations to Black Community: Opposes before Election Day and supports after Election Day;
Freedom of Religion: Mandatory Black Liberation Theology courses taught in all churches;
Homosexual Marriage: Coddle sexual perverts. Give tax breaks for NAMBLA membership;
Drug Crisis: Raise taxes for free drugs for Obama's inner-city political base;
The White House: Hire rapper Ludacris to "paint it black."

It's a short step from "that one" to "you people" to "Sambo beat the bitch *" to the picking a new Grand Wizard. If only Barack had done those townhall meetings like McCain had asked him to, this wouldn't have had to happen.

And furthermore: A Maverick? I don't think so.

*sourcing discussed here

There but for the grace of God go I...

The scene: The moat of the Imperial Palace, Tokyo at 11 A.M. today.

interestingly, the original videos seem to have disappeared but you can still see it on the BBC 

site 

It's not me, but I work a block away and a few more of those 45 degree-85 percent humidity August days and I wouldn't necessarily rule it out for next year.

Update: Now you know (none of) the rest of the story

"Like watching Gidget address the Reichstag"
Matt Taibbi channels the spirit of Hunter S. Thompson. Go read it now!

Palling around with terrorists

Sarah Palin says Barack Obama palls around with terrorists because an acquaintance of his, William Ayers,was once a member of the Weather Underground, back when Obama was eight years old. As future Alaska Gov. Dave Noon (aw cmon Dave, run! please! Wouldn't you just love to debate her yourself?) points out, the Republicans really don't want to go there.

There is also talk that the Republican smear machine is gearing up to talk about Rev. Jeremiah Wright some more. Oh yeah, lets talk about whose preacher is crazier, the ex-Marine civil rights firebrand that Obama has split with, or the gay-hating, witch-hunting brace of looney toons who speak in tongues and think the Iraq war is part of the God's plan that Palin embraces.

If Team Maverick want to talk about who has connection to shady characters, radicals or ideologues that might affect the way they govern, well, bring it on. McCain has some very, very troubling friends - the aforementioned Watergate spook G. Gordon Liddy, financial deregulator Phil Gram, American Taliban Pastor John Hagee, to say nothing of the various mobbed-up gambling industry types and assorted lobbyists.

And of course, there's this guy:





Update: Dave Neiwert rightfully points out that Palin complaining about Obama hanging out with traitors is very much a case of the pot calling the kettle....uh.... well, you know what I mean . Hasn't she already shown her sympathy for a plan to break up the union? Doesn't she snuggle up every night with someone who favours treason in defense of oil profits?
Over at the Huffington Post, Sam Stein reminds us of John McCain's association with a group that backed Central American death squads.
Finally, in the interest of being fair and balanced, Jesus' General has a video that shines a light on the kind of radical organization Obama has joined and the sort of sleazy company this has put him in.

Tancredo knows what the real problem is

"We need to ensure that the ‘American Dream’ remains within reach of American families – and that means enacting some long overdue safeguards that prevent illegal aliens and their unscrupulous allies in the financial industry from undermining its integrity."

Seriously, someone should take Tom Tancredo and Lou Dobbs, load them in the back of a pick-up truck, give them a liter of Evian and some beef jerky, drive them out to the middle of the Sonoran desert and leave them there.

Gunfight

The U.S. presidential election is a gunfight, and John McCain is bringing a knife. Sarah Palin is bringing green jello salad.
h/t to Ken A.

Freeping the Mothercorp

a new Spiritual Leader of the Moment

Heather Mallick uses her CBC column to makes fun of conservative men's teeny weenies and go up one side and down the other of Caribou Barbie with the iron rod of snark. Predictably, the National Post and Fox News, paragons of rectitude where n'er is heard a discouraging word of hyperbolic invective, cannot let such a grievious, base slander stand unchalleged and unleash their knuckledragging hordes. The CBC, creaking under the load of cheetos-stained missives, caves in , takes the column off its site and begs the indignant troglodytes to holster their crayolas. Alison is among the many majorly ticked off and RossK and I have suggestions. Get those cards and letter sent people.

Heather has often gotten under conservatives skins and is likely to continue to do so. That is why she is our new Spiritual Leader of the Moment.

Required Reading

Sincerest form of flattery and bullshitting
We shouldn't be that surprised by this as Steverino has never, ever had an original idea, but really the bit about the 'roos should have tipped us off. Over at McMagazine, Kady O'Mally, Chris Selley and Aaron Wherry discuss why it matters and what it all means while Andrew Coyne visits a large river in Egypt.


The trifecta
Driftglass on the Choler of Money and the Newtering of the bailout, and yet another reason Tom Friedman is a douchebag.


"Everytime I think I'm out, they pull me back in"
Everyone's favorite Professor of Dangeral Studies has suspended his retirement from blogging to help us through the current crisis.

Harper fails to eat own baby
900 ft. Jesus shows us it isn't just Churchy Spice who uses her children as campaign props. As with all great Republican ideas, Steverino has adopted this one too.

Sarah Palin is not illiterate!

She can prove her parents were married!



from about 3:05

COURIC: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?
PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —
COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.
PALIN: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.
COURIC: Can you name any of them?
PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.

via Think Progress

Now, I'm not suggesting that Sarah Palin has never read a newspaper, after all she majored in journalism at six different colleges before she graduated, so I think it is safe to assume she must have seen one in class at least, and she must have studied hard since she didn't have time to work on the student newspapers at any of those schools.

I think she was just being polite, after all it would have been rude to tell the scary lady from CBS that gets all her news from FOX, Rush Limbaugh and her church newsletter. And she knew damn well that if she bluffed and said she read the New York Times and Washington Post daily and Time, Newsweek and Foreign Affairs regularly she'd have been in for double whammy. Someone in the rotten, liberal, gotcha media would notice that those publications were nowhere to be found in her home or office and she wasn't on the subscription lists AND she'd have the base mad at her for reading the damned liberal Emm-Ess-Emm.

Fisted by the invisible hand of the marketplace
All those middle and upperclass white retirees that were planning to vote for John McCain might want to think again now that their retirement plans are going to include a lot more Alpo than arugula.

The next person who tells me that government should be run like a business gets a punch in the throat. While bringing back the public stocks (as opposed to the stock market) has a certain visceral appeal, something else is also called for. Maybe John McCain can take another day off from campaigning. After all, he was all in favour of investing America's Social Security funds in the stock market as recently as six months ago and two weeks ago told us the fundementals of the economy were strong, so clearly he knows what he's talking about.
Meanwhile, the peasantry seem to be getting restless. I think the smart money is now in pitchfork and torches futures and the tar and feather commodities.

A message from Stephen Harper's biggest fan

While it is hard to believe something this long could be written in crayon, it is even harder to believe that brain-dead, half-assed, prarie National Review wannabe paragon of conservative intellectual thought - the Western Standard -- would publish this magnum dopus by Adam Yoshida (seen at the left, just one step away from becoming one of these guys) in the midst of an election in which they want to make their guy look less scary to centerist voters.

"Do too much, rather than too little. Don’t shift these things around. Burn them down and salt the Earth. A future Liberal government won’t have the guts, the time, the wherewithal, or the money to recreate them all at once. Sell the land and the buildings. Shred the records. Disperse the staff. It’s easier to destroy than it is to create. A Tory government on a rampage could destroy in a couple of months what it took four decades to create – and what it would take another forty to recreate."

Reassuring isn't it? He burbles on about the need to triple the size of the Canadian Forces, get rid of the CBC, build a couple of aircraft carriers and crank up the Canadian military-industrial complex (no really, he calls it that)

PSA does a proper eviceration. One might think that this would be the craziest thing Adam has ever written and it just somehow slipped through the editing process at the Western Standard. Sadly, no.

Tonight, on a very special episode of ...

Well, you can leave your sitcom name suggestions in the comments (The Frostbacks? Flyboy and Sureshot? The Pitbull and the POW?) but this latest rumour is proof that the GOP brain trust is being run by people who have watched way too much television --and I don't mean 60 Minutes and Nova.

In an election campaign notable for its surprises, Sarah Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate, may be about to spring a new one — the wedding of her pregnant teenage daughter to her ice-hockey-playing fiancé before the November 4 election.

Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

It worked on Rhoda, it worked a couple of times on Friends, it worked on Cheers, it worked on Coronation Street, on the Office, on Beverly Hill 90120 ---almost every television series that lasted more than a single season has a wedding episode. Whenever TV writers are running out of ideas, need a big season-closing climax or just need to get their audience back you can bet that somebody is going to be getting hitched and wacky hijinks will ensue.

And if the wedding plan doesn't work out, maybe McCain can offer Ted McGinley a cabinet post or go waterskiing or take the whole family to Hawaii or London or adopt an adorable orphan-- I know, why not a speech where McCain and Palin sing a duet of "Summer Loving" from Grease!

spot the difference

You know this isn't the real Sarah Palin because Tina Fey is too coherent.

Plus ca change etc etc

At least I can still count on Japanese politics to be predictable.

For I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep

But then, I'm not John McCain, who less than 12 hours before the first presidential debate, a event he committed to weeks ago, can't decide whether to show up or keep obstructing the business of congress in trying to put a $700 billion band-aid on Wall Street's sucking chest wound. How very Mavricky of him to start breaking campaign promises before he even gets elected. What a lovely "screw you" to voters.  I guess the woods in Washington are lovelier, darker, and deeper than we realize. My guess is that he will either cave in and show up or six months from now we will learn he hasd a "medical crisis" that prevented him from attending or even sending Caribou Barbie to stand in for him.

It is what it is, and what it is, is unqualified

I know, I know, I said we should stop talking about her, but the more I see of her, the more I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I'm delighted that the Republicans have picked such an obviously, comically unqualified candidate to shore up the glaring gaps in McCain's areas of expertise. On the other hand, I'm horrified that there is any chance at all that this woman could get anywhere near the Oval office.

Caribou Barbie, Sarah America, Bible Spice -- call her what you want, but by any name. Sarah Palin should not be allowed to work in the White House, not even as a tour guide.

The title of this post, at least the first part of it, is one of my father's favorite little verbal tics of late. I was warned that he has taken to watching FOX news -- this is a guy who has always been a centerist politically, more or less, but like many of us seems to have gotten more conservative as he's gotten older. He was Trudeau fan, but I suspect he voted for both Harris and Harper. We are both political junkies, but tend to treat it more as a spectator sport than something we would want to actually get our hands dirty with as candidates--It isn't that we don't care who wins, we do, its just that I suspect we'd both rather be handicappers or bookies than racehorses. I don't really want to drag him into this, but the fact that he didn't express outright support for either candidate had me wondering. He made some predictions, but he never really said which side he hoped would win and since he's the closest thing to a conservative I'm on face-to-face speaking terms with these days, I was curious to see his reactions to the presidential race. 

Both the Democratic and Republican conventions were on while I was back in Canada. We watched Obama's speech together and he said he thought Obama would win, but that as usual his speech was short on specifics. I couldn't watch the Republican convention with him, mostly because I couldn't suppress my gag reflex long enough or keep from making snide comments whenever Mitt Romney  or Rudy 9u11ani said something stupid, (ie: every time they opened their mouths). 

"You have to listen to both sides" he'd keep telling me as he flipped from CNN to FOX and I started to sneer at Bill Kristol. Hey, I'm a journalist, I know all about listening to both sides, but if I'm doing a story on the Holocaust and one side is concentration camp survivors, soldiers who liberated camps and every serious historian on the planet and the other side is David Irving and a couple of knuckledraggers from the American Nazi Party, it isn't a "he said/she said/who knows what the truth is" kind of a situation and I can tell one side to shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of my office with a clean conscience. Eventually, I went and watched in another room.

When it came to Sarah Palin, I was suspicious from day one. I looked around for bio info on the internet when McCain first announced he had picked a running mate, realized she had zero policy  experience, was a fundamentalist Christian, was a family values conservative, anti-choice, pro-war, pro-drilling here, there and everywhere, had ties to corrupt bum Sen. Ted Stevens and pretty much wrote her off as a losing prospect. I knew she'd never get the disappointed Hillary voters. When it came out that her teenage daughter was knocked up, I admit I cackled with schadenfreude, wondering how the hell McCain's people missed it and how they would try to spin it. I watched her speech and figured "okay, she can tell a really old joke and make mean misinformed cracks about he opponent. The republican base is gonna love her, but that's it. No problem."

But then the press loved her. And my dad seemed to think she was okay -- he seemed to like the pit bull gag--god knows he sat next to enough hockey moms during my and my brother's minor hockey days. He seemed to think she was as qualified as anyone for the job. "It is what it is" he said. This worried me. My dad is a pretty smart guy and he wasn't dismissing this travesty. Could the American people fall for this bullshit? God knows, they've fallen for some stupid shit before, but would they buy into the neocon Cinderella narrative about her being a tough and sassy hockey mom who could hunt moose in the morning and run the state in the afternoon? I hoped not, but they bought the absurd idea that John Kerry was a coward whose war record was a lie and George W. Bush was a fighter pilot/war leader, so anything was possible.

Then some cracks started showing. The GOP machine was keeping her away from the press and unfriendly crowds. Then they let her be interviewed.

"In what respect Charlie?"

"I'll try to find some and I'll bring'em to ya"

Watch CBS Videos Online

These all reminded me of something. 

The best description comes from the comments at Balloon Juice:

"I'm still in shock over how terrible the Palin/Couric interview was. "Train wreck" is being charitable -- it was more like a train derailing on a bridge, tumbling a thousand feet into a canyon and landing on a pile of old dynamite and gas drums. And then a jumbo jet crashed into the flaming wreckage. Followed by an earthquake that caused the whole mess to slide off a cliff into the sea, where the few miraculous survivors were eaten by sharks."

In a way, I'm not worried anymore.

Sorry Dad, but this is a case where one side is grounded in reality and the other is not even sure where reality is anymore--in fact, I don't think they could find reality at this point with both hands and a search party if it was safety-pinned through both ass cheeks. Seriously, if you want to be vice president and you can't even manage to bullshit your way through an interview Katie Freaking Couric, how does she think she's going to do if she has to sit down across the table from Vladimir Putin or even Joe Biden?

 I don't think anyone could watch these and get the idea that this person is well suited to be Vice President. I don't think most people watching these clips would even think she should be running the least populous, most remote state in the USA. I don't think anyone but a dyed-in-the-wool, born-again, Republican partisan would think she was even qualified to be the mayor of a town of 5,000.  Frankly I'm amazed Wallisa doesn't have a monorail, but maybe that's more of a Shelbyville idea. 

She can't seem to form and express a coherent opinion or even put together a full sentence. 

That McCain picked her should disqualify him from ever holding public office again. This choice is not a demonstration of poor judgement, its is evidence that he has lost his freakin' mind.