The Watering Hole: Wednesday, May 29, 2013: Not Again!

Are we there yet?

“It was like re-living the Vietnam war all over again, only this time without the trees and swamps and jungles.” remarked John McCain after returning safely from Syria. “I was held, basically, as a Prisoner of War for what seemed an eternity.”

McCain spent a total of two hours in the complete mercy of terrorist rebels hell-bent on overthrowing the righteous government of Syria. “Make no mistake about it,” McCain continued, “some of those rebels are more extreme than the Taliban.”

McCain’s mission, undertaken with the full knowledge of the Obama Administration, was to deliver a message of support to the rebels. “Well, actually, I got the messages mixed up. In all the haste and security and confusion, I grabbed a note I got from Paul Ryan instead of the note from the President. So, when I got there…well, you can imagine their reaction when I read Ryan’s note. So. There I was, face to face with armed radical Islamists when I read “If you will accept the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart … That’s as far as I got before my security guards picked me up by the armpits and hightailed it out of Syria.”

OPEN THREAD.
FEEL FREE TO PASS NOTES AROUND

Don’t Hand Those Clothes To Me

So, will Sarah Palin really try to run for president in 2012? Did she learn anything from the last time she ran for national office? Let’s find out with some help from The Police’s “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”.

Don’t Hand Those Clothes To Me
Original music and lyrics, Sting, 1981
Additional lyrics by Wayne A. Schneider 2009

Young gov’nor, the subject
Of blogger fantasy
She wants this so badly
Knows what she wants to be
Inside her there’s nothing
This girl’s a prop on stage
Veep-picking, she’s so close now
This girl is half his age

Don’t hand,

11/1/08 CBS Poll: Obama up by 13

Read the whole thing here:

The Democratic ticket now leads by 13 points – 54% to 41%.

CHOICE FOR PRESIDENT
(Among all likely voters including leaners)

…………………………………Now …….10/30/08 ……………………………
Obama-Biden…………….. 54%………. 52%
McCain-Palin……………… 41%………..41%
Undecided …………………..4% ……….. 5%

SWEET!

Obama’s latest campaign ad on the economy

One of the best yet. What do you think?

Oh the times, they are a changin’

Joe Lieberman has, in the last couple of days, tried to back peddle his repeated rantings, i.e.,  Obama is not ready or responding that it was a good question to ask whether Obama was a Marxist.   Let’s take a look at Joe Lieberman over the years.

Lieberman saying Barack Obama is a blessing.

My,  how you have changed since 2006, Joe.

The McCain Campaign of Central Florida

More frightening aspects from the McCain campaign.  This is America, right?  Have I fallen alseep and woken up in some Third World country?  Should I expect to have my hand chopped off should I vote for the wrong candidate?

Proud to be an American?

Not so much when I see stuff like this.

Al The Shoesalesman Gets A Tax Cut

Check it out… even Al Bundy gets a tax cut.

http://taxcut.barackobama.com/

Obama Hung in Effigy on College Campus

OregonLive.com reports:

A custodial crew at the 3,355-student Christian university found the Obama likeness hanging by fishing wire from a tree at 7 a.m. Tuesday and tore it down before students arrived for classes.

A sign taped to the cutout said, “Act Six reject,” referring to a scholarship program for Portland students, many of whom are minorities.

(snip)

The Act Six program, which started last year, provides full scholarships each year to as many as 10 students chosen for their leadership potential from Portland high schools.

Four students have been suspended as a result.

The students, whose names are not being released, have been suspended on a long-term basis and must complete community service.

Other sanctions include community service and multicultural education, which must be completed before the students can return to campus, said Brad Lau, vice president of student life.

(snip)

The FBI is continuing its investigation into possible civil rights violations, including whether the display intimidated minority students in exercising their federal rights, spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele said.

University leaders have used the racist display as an educational tool to talk about race issues on the mostly white campus. About 100 students attended a forum Thursday, and more discussions are planned in dorms and in Portland in the next week, said Joel Perez, dean of transitions and inclusion.

Recently, there had been a rally for McCain at the university with an attendence of about 40 students.  After all the fear mongering delivered by McCain, Palin and their surrogates and supporters, there is little wonder that the Republican party is less about patriotism and more about hatriotism.

Jon Stewart did a brilliant piece the other day about the monster that the McCain camp is creating – and whether they will be able to put that monster back into the bottle.

It seems not.

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Pfotenhauer: The “real Virginia” is more responsive to McCain

Nancy Pfotenhauer, an advisor to the McCain campaign, just now spoke on MSNBC about how northern Virginia is polling strongly for Obama due to democrats having moved there from DC,  but the rest of the state of Virginia, the “real Virginia” will be more responsive to McCain’s message.

This follows Sarah Palin just yesterday, in North Carolina, saying:

“We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe…we believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.”

And Michelle Bachmann R-MN, stating that her fellow Congresspeople should be investigated as being anti-American.

When given the chance to correct their words, both Pfotenhauer and Bachmann stood by what they said.

Apparently, according to the Republican point of view, you are only a patriotic American if you are an unquestioning Republican sharing only their views.  Anyone who is not Republican, is anti-American.  Anyone who does not support McCain/Palin are traitors, terrorists or baby-killers. If you question any of their views or policies, it is a personal affront and not an attack against bad policy.

I don’t know about you, but I am very tired of  being labeled anti-American or unpatriotic because of my views and beliefs.  The First Amendment was specifically created to ensure that people could speak out against their government.

I think the Republican’s need to take a refresher course in The Constitution, that god-damned piece of paper which is the fundamental basis for this great country of ours: The United States of America.

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Racism Rears Its Ugly Head, Again

This is the same man that was captured by ABC news in the bleachers at a Palin rally in Johnstown, PA.

The MorrillMajority was courageous enough to interview this man as he was walking into the rally.

The People on the Street Speak Up

Sarah Palin’s Pal

Interview with Mark Chryson by Max Blumenthal.

McCain’s Hate Talk Express UPDATED

Here are two videos by BloggerInterrupted as he speaks with crowds of McCain supporters after a rally in Ohio, asking if they think Obama is terrorist.

Palin and McCain have spent several days whipping their crowds into a frothy frenzy culminating chants of Obama is a “terrorist” and people yelling comments like “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” (The Secret Service is looking into the “Kill Him” comment.) I wonder what the reaction would be if an Obama supporter suggested killing McCain.

Is this not akin to shouting “Fire” in a theatre?

UPDATE: Watch a video from the streets of Pennsylvania from the Pennsylvania Progressive below the fold. It’s even more terrifying.

From a distance: Calling the race for Obama finally

I cannot interpret it any other way. Throughout the British press Obama is declared the winner of last night’s debate. Given the fact, that McCain would have needed a decisive, overwhelming victory, this equals with James Carville’s assessment:

Obama won the debate. Period. It wasn’t a tie. He clearly won the debate. Call the dogs in, wet the fire, the hunt’s over.

This is not saying the Obama campaign can relax their efforts, from what I’ve seen of them they surely won’t, but it should give them the leeway to stay on the issues and not stoop too much to the smear tactics employed by the McCain/Palin people.

Look at what the newspapers in Britain have to say below the fold:

Obama: McCain Out of Ideas

Obama’s latest campaign ad.

Obama fights back! Keating Economics

Barack Obama is fully prepared to fight back on the “nuclear option” John McCain has promised to use in the final 30 days of this election campaign. And when the campaign opened that “Use in case of smear campaign” drawer of their filing cabinets, there was plenty to find.

The full video will be available at KeatingEconomics starting 12:00 p.m. Eastern. Make sure to watch it.

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McBush’s Dictatorial Desires

It’s funny, in an ironic sort of way, you can tell that Bush is joking (outwardly).

McCain speaks out of both sides of his mouth

More video below the fold.

From a distance – Calling the race for Obama, or maybe not just yet ?

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The underlying conviction of the British newspapers about the Presidential Election seems to be, Obama will win the race. They just don’t dare to say it out loud. In a way it is understandable, there have been so many surprises in this overlong campaign, so why not another momentum change in the last four weeks? Personally, I do not think there will be another upset, if only because the McCain surprises have lost almost all of their charm. His first one, the nomination of a woman as running mate could have been a real game-changer, had he made a wiser choice. By all means the perfomance of Sarah Palin is painfully inadequate. Whatever the pundits say, she was an abject failure in the debate. She so obviously skirted the questions to spew forth her talking points it was an embarrassment to watch. I am not an American, but I am a woman and really, to me this is insulting. John McCain’s second attempt at mavericking the race by theatrically suspending his campaign, racing to Washington to “fix it”, was another failure. So what on earth can he think up now that will change a race that has Obama leading 264 to 163 in electoral votes (111 votes toss up with Obama leading in six of the eight remaining toss-up states). Going dirty is the only remaining option, William Kristol has already done the “journalistic” groundwork for that and the McCain campaign has already gone there, but my guess is that people have moved on and mostly made up their minds. Barack Obama will win this race.

But then, who am I? Let’s have a look what the big boys and the big girls in journalism have to say:

Starting with The Times there is Daniel Finkelstein, who essentially says the race is over. Holly Watt is traveling the South and is detecting early warning signs in Georgia:

The Peach State has already begun early voting, and it will not have lowered Republican blood pressure one little bit. 30% of Georgia’s voters are African-American, but that group has cast 40% of the votes so far.

And Then There Is Troopergate

Seems like Sarah Palin and her cohorts just can’t shake this Troopergate investigation.  No matter how hard John McCain’s paid lawyers tried to shut down this investigation, it just keeps rearing its head.

Today, an Anchorage judge refused to halt the investigation.  Excellent!  This judge would not be bullied by DC lawyers.  Now that’s change that I can believe in.

From Mudflats…

An Anchorage judge today refused to halt the Legislature’s investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin and denied the state attorney general’s attempt to throw out legislative subpoenas.

Superior Court Judge Peter Michalski heard arguments from both sides this morning and ruled just before 5 p.m. this afternoon.

“I think it’s great. It’s a big day for the state of Alaska,” said Peter Maassen, the lawyer representing the Legislative Council, which ordered the investigation.

Maassen said he expected the other side to attempt a last-minute appeal to the state Supreme Court.

It’s last-minute because the investigator hired by the Legislative Council, Steve Branchflower, is to present his report in a week. Branchflower is looking into Palin’s dismissal of her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, and whether she improperly pressured him to fire a state trooper divorced from her sister. There is intense national interest in the outcome now that Palin is the Republican nominee for vice president.

Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg said he didn’t know whether he’d appeal or if he’ll now advise the subpoenaed state officals to cooperate with the investigation. He said he needed to consult with them.

Looks like “The Show must go on.”

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McCain’s Friend Problem

McCain’s Healthcare Plan: Get ye to a Doc-in-the-Box

Who needs healthcare when you can have Walmart.

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Republicans Own this Financial Disaster

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We are in the midst of a financial meltdown.  We’re talking about using almost a trillion dollars of taxpayer money to bailout the markets – on top of the quarter trillion dollars which have already been infused into our economy in the way of bailouts.

We are watching and waiting to see if some plan can be developed to loosen credit markets – needed to help the continuance of many small businesses and farmers, provide any confidence in our markets – those markets where many retirement plans are heavily invested, provide assistance to people who are trying to hold on to their homes, all while not screwing the American taxpayers for future generations.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane and look at some of the financial disasters, policies and incompetence by the Republicans in the last eight years.

A CBS report, from 2002:

Just last week President Bush announced, “my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending.”

More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.

“According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions,” Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion — that’s $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

“We know it’s gone. But we don’t know what they spent it on,” said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

And then we have this.  CNN reports, from 2005:

Nearly $9 billion of money spent on Iraqi reconstruction is unaccounted for because of inefficiencies and bad management, according to a watchdog report published Sunday.

An inspector general’s report said the U.S.-led administration that ran Iraq until June 2004 is unable to account for the funds.

“Severe inefficiencies and poor management” by the Coalition Provisional Authority has left auditors with no guarantee the money was properly used,” the report said.

But there’s more.

BREAKING: Palin to suspend HER campaign

Politico reports:

John McCain’s campaign has floated the possibility that Sarah Palin may also suspend her campaign, matching McCain’s announcement that he would cease campaigning for president to return to Washington to try to hammer out a fix for the nation’s financial meltdown.

As the governor of Alaska, Palin cannot participate in the high-level federal government deliberations on the economy that McCain gave as his reason for suspending his campaign.

Yet, after McCain’s dramatic announcement, his campaign chief Steve Schmidt suggested Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, would also suspend her campaign.

Democrats have blasted McCain’s move, which includes a call to reschedule his planned Friday debate with Democratic rival Barack Obama, as political posturing, rather than a genuine effort to address the economic crisis.

Asked about Schmidt’s comment, given Palin’s inability to participate in congressional deliberations, spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt told reporters on a Wednesday evening conference call “We are part of the McCain-Palin campaign. It is one ticket.”

But she demurred when asked specifically whether Palin, too, would be suspending her campaign.

Since Palin was selected as McCain’s running mate in late August, she’s appeared at 21 rallies, most of which were at McCain’s side, has yet to hold a press conference, has conducted less than a handful of national media interviews and has pulled out of several fundraising appearances.

Read the rest at Politico.

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