Tag Archives: 2008 Presidential Election

One Week Until Election Day – An Open Appeal

With one week left before Election Day, the Presidential campaign continues to be contentious. Senator Obama is ahead in the polls—fingers crossed!—but John McCain and his supporters are ramping up their attacks, tossing out accusations of un-Americanism, Marxism, and similar outdated nonsense.

While these attacks target Senator Obama, they also demean everyone who supports him, implying that a Democratic vote is equivalent to treason or terrorism.

That obviously isn’t the case. And the best response to these tired attacks is an overwhelming Obama victory on November 4.

How can you bring this about?

1. Vote. Encourage your friends and family to do likewise.

2. If you can, make a contribution to the Obama campaign. Each donation, now matter how small, helps to promote a message of competence and change.

The next Presidency will be a momentous one. It’s essential that the right person—Barack Obama—is in place to lead our country on a better, more hopeful, path to prosperity. You can help to make this happen.

I Heard Obama Was Born in Kenya…

Want to know the craziest stories that far-right true believers are spreading about Obama? Jon Swift breaks it down in his recap of “Great Moments in Election-Year Blogging,” covering the gamut from “There is a tape of Michelle Obama with Louis Farrakhan talking about ‘whitey’” to “Obama had cocaine-fueled gay sex in the back of a limousine with a not-very-attractive disabled man with a criminal background.”

It’s pretty funny.

Palin Whiffs in First Interview

Reading the transcript of the Charlie Gibson interview of Sarah Palin is like watching a Big Leaguer strike out at teeball. Sure, the player should’ve never been called up from the minors, but, what can you do? (Except vote for Obama, of course.)

Some lowlights:

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush — well, what do you — what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.

PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that’s the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?

PALIN: I agree that a president’s job, when they swear in their oath to uphold our Constitution, their top priority is to defend the United States of America.

I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people.

***

GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?

PALIN: They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.

GIBSON: What insight does that give you into what they’re doing in Georgia?

PALIN: Well, I’m giving you that perspective of how small our world is and how important it is that we work with our allies to keep good relation with all of these countries, especially Russia. We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it’s in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

***

PALIN: We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. [Ed. note: Uh, how many things are wrong in that sentence?] We’ve learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.

We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it’s in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

You have to read the whole thing to fully internalize that she has NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT SHE’S TALKING ABOUT!!!! And people are pretending she could be President! Jesus!

McCain Is Not a Centrist

Among the nonsense that’s sure to be bandied about in the election ahead is the absurd notion that John McCain is some sort of centrist. I’ve blogged about the emptiness of this claim before, but I wanted to highlight Paul Krugman’s take on the subject.

There are ways to assess politicians’ position on the left-right scale. Ignore the National Journal, which has a somewhat subjective method, and always manages to find that the current Democratic candidate is an ultra-liberal. Instead, we can turn to the Poole-Rosenthal-McCarty analysis, which is based on a systematic, no fiddling technique using rollcall votes.

And they tell us that, based on his voting record, McCain is the eighth most conservative member of the current Senate. That’s right: he’s been voting on the right wing of the Republican party.

But has he just moved right to curry favor with the GOP base? No: he was the second most conservative member of the previous Senate.

Add: Barack Obama, by contrast, while more liberal than the average Democrat, is considerably closer to the center than McCain.