Next meeting:
TBA
At Local 47, AFSCME,
1606 Walnut St,
6:30PM-9:00PM
People have asked about parking near where we meet,
there
is no parking in the immediate vicinity. Folks can park at
nearby
Septa stations and take the train or subway in or Larry Petkov
at
215-563-6357 can obtain a parking space for you in a nearby parking
garage.
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us:
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November
16,
Tolerance Peace Event
The United
Nations in 1995 declared November 16 to be the International Day for
Tolerance.
Northwest Greens and 23 other peace
groups will demonstrate from 2:00 until 4:00 p.m. near Senator Arlen
Specter's home on West Schoolhouse Lane (between Henry
Avenue and Gypsy
Lane) in East Falls. They want Specter to cut off funding for the U.S.
occupation of Iraq
and to bring the troops home now.
Twenty-four peace
groups will demonstrate from 2:00 until 4:00 p.m. near Senator Arlen
Specter's home on West Schoolhouse Lane (between Henry Avenue and Gypsy
Lane) in East Falls. We want Specter to cut off funding for the U.S.
occupation of Iraq and to bring the troops home, now. For more
information,
please contact 215-307-7980 and info2506@prawnworks.net.
It's
going
to take place
upon the third Sunday of the month 2pm
to 4pm at the intersection of Timber Lane and Schoolhouse Lane near the
West Chestnut Hill stop on
the R8 train line or by the 32 bus line. For people using
MapQuest
or some other online map search program, the search terms are:
Timber Ln At W School House Ln
Philadelphia, PA 19129
Our view of the current war in
Iraq:
- The
Iraqi Government has requested that
US troops leave their country. The Iraqi Government
refuses
to define shooting at American troops as a "terrorist" action.
Meaning: it's open season on Americans!
- Even hard-core
Neocons like David Frum (Came up with the term "Axis of Evil"
to
describe Iraq, Iran & North Korea) realizes that the war is
lost
and that the US can, at best, return to square one and restore what was
lost..
- Far from having a national "all-for-one, one-for-all"
feeling, the American political leadership is on
the
attack against domestic political opponents
- As the truth about the war trickles out from the
front
lines, the US all-volunteer military is getting fewer
and
fewer recruits with even strong
supporters of the war refusing to serve. The general
public is also rapidly losing enthusiasm.
- US allies
aren't providing much
help either.
- Iraqi have suffered an estimated 655,000
deaths as a direct result of the US invasion. Living standards for
Iraqis have dropped
sharply from what they were in February 2003
- Meanwhile, Big
Oil is attempting to lock in highly favorable contracts on
the
development of new Iraqi fields that would have the effect of robbing
the Iraqi public of billions.
- The military resistance in Iraq is 95%
Iraqi and is a force that's costing America more
casualties every month.
- The war in Iraq has
made
the US less
secure as
jihadists
from all over the Mideast have used Iraq as a training ground.
- The idea of spreading
democracy to a foreign country through an
invasion
and a military
occupation has proven to be sheer wishful thinking.
.
It's time to withdraw. The
war was a crime against humanity to begin with and the alternative is
to go through what happened in Vietnam in 1975, a panicked helicopter
exodus from the
rooftops.
PRAWN's
mission is to:
- Network groups, organizations, and individuals to
stop the
repression caused by "never ending wars" at home and abroad, by the US
corporate military state
- Support organizations having common ground
- Educate and activate the general public
Local Resource Organizations
National Organizations
"Political Allies Newsletter" email listserve which is
sent
out a
few times a month. There are actions you may want to support &
local, national & international articles, most of which are not
printed in
the Phila Inquirer or NY Times. Topic titles are listed. You may read
any
portion, file away for another time or delete any or all.
To subscribe, if in the Philadelphia area: send a blank
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To subscribe If OUTSIDE the Philadelphia area then send
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|
Upcoming Events
UFPJ-DVN
meeting
2:00pm - 5:00pm,
Sunday 23 Nov 08
Friends Center 15th & Cherry Sts
Purpose of the meeting is to get as many
groups as possible to
participate in building a sturdy regional organization to work for
peace and to discuss future actions, possibly coordinating with UFPJ
National to protest upon sixth
anniversary of beginning of Iraq War.
Any and all progressive groups invited to
meeting!
Contact Nina
Huizinga @ (215) 528-6130
UFPJ-DVN
schedule of Philadelphia-Trenton region anti-war events
The Reagan Question: Are
You Better Off Now Than You Were Eight Years Ago?
Economics comparison of 2000 and 2007
The
"burn rate" for the money the US is spending per month in Iraq was
nearly $5 billion a month in 2003 and has steadily grown to where, in
2007, it had reached about $11 billion
per month. According to Barack Obama during a presidential debate, the price has dropped to $10 billion a month.
The Strange Bedfellows
coalition has put an ad into the WaPo about the FISA cave-in. (PDF 1 & 2)
They're collecting
money to shame the enabling Washington DC press corps and
their corporate sponsors.
Institute
for National
Strategic Studies (INSS) did a study
of the
Iraq War (60 page PDF),
concluding that it is a “major
debacle,” a
“classic case of failure,” and a conflict that may not be winnable."
Update: Contains lots of points of agreement with
Bush
Administration (i.e., that Saddam Hussein attempted
to assassinate
the elder George Bush, among many others) but these can be seen as
tactical agreements, made so that other points have more credibility
(i.e., "This is not a DFH
screed!").
Quickly, Carefully &
Generously - A
Responsible Plan for Withdrawing from Iraq - a Committee headed by Rep. Jim
McGovern (D-MA)
Executive
Summary (6 pages) PDF
Full
version (34 pages) PDF
Question: How to withdraw American troops from Iraq without sustaining
needless casualties?
Remind me again, just why
did the Depression occur?
Database
of 935 Bush
Administration lies
that preceded the Iraq War
Not many people are even
aware of death toll.
The
Senate Intelligence Committee Phase II report (PDF)
Part
I
Part
II
on the lies that the Bush Administration told the
American People in order to drag us into the Iraq War.
Post-"Surge,"
casualties in Iraq
start climbing back up
Icasualties " Casualty
Trends"
shows that US military fatalities reached an average of 30 per week in
Jun 07, declined to around 5 a week by Jan 08, but have remained
consistent at around 8 per week since then.
Update: Apr 08 is the
deadliest month on record since Sep 07.
To mention
another issue, consider conservatives (red) vs liberals (blue) and how
Republicans would like to shift
that balance
even further.
YouTube video produced
by local Gold Star family
Boston
IndyMedia story
Seems the
plans made for the Iraq War fall into the category of what we
call
"wishful thinking." The idea here was that the occupation
force
in Iraq was going to fall to 5000 by December 2006.
Oops!
Cool
Protest Idea!!
Obtain toy plastic
soldier, add
a label "Bring me home!",
leave in bookstores, libraries,
coffee shops, etc.
and
The Freeway Blogger
strikes again!
Media
Tank says
FCC is considering
reviewing rules
for media
ownership
This
may pave the way for further concentration of the
already-overconcentrated media
Media Tank
and other Philadelphia groups
ran a public hearing
with
FCC Commissioner
Michael Copps here in Philadelphia
on
January 18th, 2007. Archive of
presentation.
PhillyIMC story
Status
of Public
Access TV
Philadelphia
is about America's
only major city without public access TV. This
means that
noncommercial groups can't get airtime to explain their point of view
on any issue. They must depend on commercial media to do that
and
we have seen with the United
Church of Christ ads how willing they are to do that.
Thanks to the
Adelphia company
no longer being a player (PDF
on Adelphia's
sale of its assets.) in the cable TV business, Time-Warner and Comcast
are
now divvying up its assets. Adelphia used to own a
substantial
chunk
of Philly's cable TV market and those assets are now slated for
Comcast, which
currently owns the other
three-quarters of the city. Comcast has been
legally
obligated to provide free access to community groups since 1983 and the
reason it has not done so
is the subject of a long-running feud between the cable giant and the
city. PCAC
opposes
allowing Comcast to swallow up that last portion "until Comcast make a
public commitment to
fully fund public access." The Philadelphia
Grassroots Cable Coalition also points out that "Cable rates
have
risen more than three times the rate of inflation, with rate hikes in
Philadelphia of 5% or more annually."
Especially
noteworthy
Who
Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think: Book
Review Essay. A
relatively thin book (135 pages) that covers many issues with
Muslims and how the West deals with them. No, there is no "clash of
civilizations." What most Muslims hate about the US is the failure of
the neoconservative movement to live up to the best ideals of our
forefathers. They hate the fact that the neocons appear to have dragged
the rest of America down into the sewer with them.
The fellows
behind Media
Matters
write Free
Ride: John
McCain and the Media, which examines how the media just loves
John
McCain and how they cover for him at every opportunity. Firedoglake
discussed this book
on March
29th. McCain had 135
appearances on high-profile talk shows between 1997 and 2006.
One
of his more infamous appearances (But that indicts the media more than
it does McCain) was his November
12th appearance on Meet the Press. That's right, he appeared
shortly after the Democratic
sweep of the House & Senate to deliver an anti-Democratic
message!
Naomi
Klein writes ,
that presents a very
frightening picture of how modern capitalism makes profits off of
disasters. It's a story of privatization
via shock therapy run amuck. Klein's theory is
discussed in
the context of the California
wildfires of late October 2007 and Grover Norquist's
expressed
desire to annihilate government's role in society.
Susan
Faludi writes ,
about how gender
roles were shaped and
twisted and bent to serve political ends. Faludi probably
pays
more attention to what the right wing was saying at the time than most
folks were aware of, which may explain why some consider the book
overheated. Faludi
talks about how the
"cult of the codpiece" was going to
save us all from the "Islamofacist Menace" in the "War On Terror."
Copied
the PDF of the
Congressional Research
Service's examination of whether it was legal for Bush to have the NSA
spying
for him without FISA warrants.
Short
answer: NO! DailyKos
describes it as a
subtle, polite, well-worded "smackdown".
Also,
letter
sent by "
Other meetings/protests
In
front of
the Recruiting Office at Broad & Cherry Streets last
Friday of
each
month from 5:00pm to 6:00pm. September
07
The
Northwest Peace Coalition has been holding weekly candlelight
vigils at 7:30 pm each Wednesday at the intersection of Germantown
Avenue and Bethlehem Pike (near Borders Books) in Chestnut Hill.
Northwest Peace and
Justice
Movement and the Unitarian Society of Germantown will begin
on
December 8 to hold a peace vigil every Wednesday at 5:00 pm, outside
the Unitarian Society, 6511
Lincoln Drive (just north of Wayne
DelCo Drinkng
Liberally
meets at John Harvard's Brew House, 1001 Baltimore Pike #1B
(Springfield Square South) (map) monthly starting February 5th
6:30pm-8:30pm
Archive
of Action Items
Oh,
and just how DO Iraqis
feel about the "liberation" of their country?
From The
Angry
Arab News Service
Philly Against War stages
a rally at City Hall
Did we gain a victory? Did the Armed
Forces Recruiting Station move away because we were protesting in front
of it once a month? Hey, ya never know!
IVAW Winter
Soldier event, A 25-mile march from the Constitution Center to Valley
Forge.
March on
Congressman Joe Sestak's office
Human
Chain Event - took place in coordination with 10 other
American cities all on the
same day. Other
demonstrations.
29 Sep
protest blog
Yet another Tombstones
display!
Celeste Zappala with Iraq War vets behind her
We
decided to
start up yet
another
regular monthly protest! Sept07
We
were
concerned that we
might have a sparse demonstration in August. Code Pink
saved us by
showing up
at our monthly rally near Senator Specter's home!!
Declaration of Peace rally in Philly
One of the Grannies
for Peace outside the recruiting station on June 28th.
Combination of pictures from Rich
and Monique
during march in NYC on 29 April 06
Easter Peace Event
Protest - Break the Silence
Observing third anniversary of beginning of Iraq War by picketing near
Senator Specter's home.
Cindy Sheehan, Monique Frugier, Bill Perry
Winter Solstice Event near Senator Specter's house
Photos by Monique
The
main, serious, essential
question
Bush comes to speak in Philadelphia
These five pictures by Monique
Gold Star Mother Celeste Zappala
|
Info,
articles, etc.
"Burrowing"
appears to be the latest method to frustrate the new administration and
to make it more difficult to achieve liberal goals. It's transferring a
political appointee to a protected career position that the
appointee may not be qualified for.
But there's evidence
that the burrowing under Bush has been extensive,
and hasn't just been confined to the administration's waning days.
More extensive examination of the issue.
Interview transcript. Funny stuff! Guy being interviewed starts losing it at the fifth question and is swearing by the end. Summary of poll questions. Lots of just plain false suggestions.
Liberal
bloggers "speculating"
about Hillary Clinton and the Secretary of State job? But mindless,
evidence-free speculation is a traditional media speciality. Bloggers
don't really do that.
Weekly
Standard writes
a plea to keep Missile Defense going. Is it really worth it
to do so? Major problem is that it's impossible to tell how truly
effective the program is until a new and critical team takes over the
testing. Otherwise, there's simply no way to tell.
So, now that
the US has agreed to
be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, just how firm is that agreement?
With Press Secretary Dana Perino talking
about mere "aspirational
dates" and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral
Mullen talking about the withdrawal being "conditions
-based," the agreement doesn't seem very firm at all.
WaPo Ombudsman
again frets
over all of the "Liberal Bias" the WaPo contains. She's very sorry and
promises to do better.
The US is
discussing the worthless
boondoggle known as Star Wars/SDI/Missile Defense. We need to
contact
the President-Elect and encourage him to shut it down.
Also, the sub-group within the My Barack Obama
site that encouraged (unsuccessfully) Obama to preserve FISA is regrouping
and plotting strategy.
Facebook for Philadelphia
to oppose California's Proposition 8. They conducted a rally on November
15th and claimed that 5000 were there.
Kewl! The
first YouTube-style
presidential address. Well, okay, Obama is just the
President-Elect so far, but hey, it's all good.
A suggestion
for what to do with
prisoners at Guantanamo Bay that are innocent,
in a way that will keep them from returning to the battlefield. I would
recommend that America truly and decisively reject the prison there as
an unequivocally immoral thing that no Americans approve of. That would
then convince the prisoners tht Gitmo is rejected by the American
people.
It's pieces
like this
piece 'o crud that really make me appreciate how good
writers will use quotes and links to back
up what they say!!! This writer has absolutely no
clue that people might want to know "What exactly is the evidence
that you're basing all of these wild, unhinged assertions
on?!?!"
Yes, I'm very
disappointed that our new President-Elect is backing
the idea of allowing Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to retain
his current chairmanship of Homeland Security. I absolutely
guarantee that the decision will come back and bite the
Democratic Party in the $#@!
Hoo-boy!
Wingnuttery ahoy! We've got Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) comparing Obama's
“civilian national security force,” to
Hitler!!!1!@@!! He later "dialed to back" after both
Georgia Senators expressed dismay.
Hempstead police, after using horses against peaceful
protesters from the IVAW, charge
IVAW with "Disorderly Conduct."
Bwah-hah-hah-hah!!! Newt
Gingrich wants to run the Republican National Committee! Love
it! That's almost as good as Governor
Palin for President!
Kofinis:
Sarah Palin is like that crazy relative who comes over and doesn't want
to leave.
Oh, and here's a good one:
Christie: Voters did
not decide that on Tuesday. It was a very close
election. I mean -- 52 percent, you can't say that he had a mandate.
Uh, scooz me, but
Obama won 66.3 million votes to McCain's 57.9, which actually
rounds off closer to 53%. When Bush declared
a mandate with only 50.7%
of the vote, yes, I would say Obama very definitely
won a mandate!
And this
is just, like, whoooo!
Obama thinks he is a
good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he
speaks. ... President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a
lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking
publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision...
Wow! That's not even mockable, that's so lacking in reality. Has this
guy even heard
of a "Bushism"?
Atrios makes
an extremely
good point about how there's criticism and there's criticism.
Sometimes one is a friendly critic who wants the
person or project to succeed and sometimes one is a hostile
critic who doesn't. Tom Friedman is clearly a friendly
critic of the Iraq War and so yes, he does bear
some responsibilty for the consequences.
The WaPo
Ombudsman takes a look at her paper's campaign coverage and concludes
it was tilted to favor Obama. I point out
that McCain ran a campaign of demagoguery and name-calling,
meaning that a straight "bean-counting" tells us next to nothing.
Ombudsman Howell arrives
at no conclusions concerning the content
of the various Op-Eds she bean-counts so assiduously.
Is there some
way to prevent criminals
such as Karl Rove & Tom DeLay from making TV appearances? Or at
least some way to precede their appearances with an honest description
of their crimes?
Yee-haw!!!
Sarah Palin looks to be the permanent
Republican figurehead for hard-line rightwingers! Yes, we'll
have Palin "to kick around" for many moons to come. You can help! Here's
a petition by Michelle Malkin to support Palin's hard-line
positions with. Here's
a liberal endorsement for that petition.
Just why did
McCain fail to seize the presidency? For all of the claims that McCain
and the Republican Party were substantively different from Bush,
it's really not clear where, exactly, they actually differed.
One extremely good point is that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's acceptace
of Barack Obama's timetable for the withdrawal of American
troops from Iraq back in July basically neutered McCain's perceived
advantage.
Ah! Sweetness,
light & sunshine! Barack
Obama wins decisively! Right wing smears getting
a lot less traction than they used to. As to Matt Drudge?
Bwah-hah-hah!!! Poor
Drudge is in very bad shape compared to the guy who "rules
our world" back in 2004.
From 16
October to 31 October, six
cases are examined where prominent media figures have
compared Obama to Hitler or his campaign to the Nazi
Party. And yes, victimization
is a major theme of conservative media
criticism.
The major
telcos are, once
again,
trying to kill off "net neutrality." This is the concept that all net
users must be treated equally. Companies can't pick and choose whose
content gets favored access. Fach
sheet (23 page PDF) shows why net neutrality is essential to
protecting regular citizens. The
case between Comcast & BitTorrent is probably the
highest-profile case we've seen recently.
October
Uh! Mah! Gawd!
The stupid!!! It HURTS!!! Governor Palin thinks
her 1st Amendments rights are being violated because people
are disagreeing with her and saying things that she doesn't like.
McCain
campaign launches
ugly and frankly, racist, attack on Palestinian
Professor. Karl Rove of course approves the attack and Drudge
features it on his website.
McCain
campaign speaks of the need to get America off of using Mideast oil so
much, but doesn't have any realistic, concrete plans for doing anything
about that.
Two things
about the helicopter assault on an alleged al Qaeda target in Syria on
26 October - 1. In
a piece published on 28 October,
the targets killed are still referred to as "unverified," meaning that
the US has yet to produce physical evidence that they really did attack
a genuine threat. 2. Syria has requested assistance in guarding their
"450-mile long desert border with Iraq, but the Americans
refused." [emphasis added]
*Sigh*! And
just why
are US troops in Iraq
again? If only two steps of the five-step "surge" plan are complete and
if the US will not intervene in case of Iraqi civil war, what in the
heck are US troops "in harm's way" for?!?!?
Yeesh, what a
bunch of whiners! A Republican journalist whines
about the "lack of balance" in today's journalism (That ol' "liberal
media" bugaboo) and Republicans in general "worrying"
(The term is "concern troll") about the presidency, the House and the
Senate all being in the hands of just one
party!*!!1! That is, of course, just
the situation that Republicans enjoyed from 2001 to 2006.
A member of
our peace group warns darkly:
There aren't too
many of these
articles YET, but, some are beginning to pop up.
It's entitled: "McCain guarantees victory" and cites the pollster
Zogby, to which Daily
Kos responds:
...despite Zogby's
breathless "it's getting CLOSER!", it's not clear that that's true in
any meaningful way.
In the meantime, Kos has a very
cheerful piece on Alan Greenspan, the novelist Ayn Rand and
the "Epic Failure" of Republican conservatism. They also have
a kewl
landslide diagram and pix of Obama's 100,000
person rally in Denver.
No, Fannie Mae
& Freddie Mac are
not to blame for the housing crisis.
Iraq reneges
on security agreement with US. Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki seems to
think he
can run his own country without
assistance from the US [/snark]! Seeing as continued occupation is
supported by neither country, it's hard to see how anyone
would fight to keep US troops there.
McCain
campaign worker Ashley Todd allegedly mutilated by black male Obama
supporter who drew a "B" into her cheek with a knife
(Amazingly,
without breaking her skin). Turns
out this was a hoax. "Journalist" Matt
Drudge
"breathlessly reported" it and the McCain campaign picked up the story
as well. What's that you say? Did the McCain campaign do any
fact-checking? Ha, ha, ha! No,
of course not.
Return of the "Mayberry
Machiavellis"
in the McCain campaign. It's difficult to come up with any real policy
differences between McCain and Bush for the very good reason that his
staff doesn't pay much attention to policy details.
Good heavens!
WHAT
does this even MEAN!?!?!
...a Vice President has a
really great job, because not only are
they there to support the President agenda, ... But also, they're in
charge of the
United States Senate, so if they want to they can really get
in there
with the Senators and make a lot of good policy changes that
will make
life better... [emphasis added]
Huh!?!?! WHAT is Governor Palin talking
about!?!?! Does this person
have a clue as to what it is
that a VP does?!?!?
Chris Matthews tries asking McCain aide Nancy Pfotenhauer and can't
get a coherent reply.
Hey, John
McCain gets an endorsemet! Not,
er, exactly one he wanted, but hey, y'know? Al Qaeda
evaluates McCain as "impetuous" and decides that that's just
the quality they want in a US President!
Now, to be
fair, Governor
Palin's wardrobe money doesn't come from taxpayers, it comes
from the Republican Party, so Democrats & independents don't
pay anything, but dude!!!!! $150,000!?!?!?!
As Jane Hamsher points out:
I've made entire
movies where the budget to clothe the whole cast was less
than that. [emphasis in original]
Also:
ABC’s wardrobe
guidelines allow $4200 per prime time show for female
characters, so “do the math”, it’s the equivalent of 29 prime time
shows.
Yeah well,
Governor Palin is scheduled to do a 15 minute interview with CNN, but
their choice of interviewers leaves much to be desired. This
is a fellow who decided even before he investigated Troopergate
that there was no story there. Turns out actually, there
was.
Update:
"...Griffin allowed her to openly lie about a number of issues without
any interruption or challenge..."
I did a paper
on Star Wars/SDI/Missile Defense back during the late 1980s. What
a frackin' waste of the taxpayers' money!!! It's a 50-year
old program (The period from the ABM treaty to Reagan's revival was an
"on spec" period) that has yet
to produce a usable weapon. Fortunately, the
latest study says the whole program needs to be taken "back
to the garage for some serious repairs."
Colin Powell
endorses Barack
Obama. We lefties don't particularly like Powell as he helped
get
the Iraq War started, but he may appeal to more moderate, centrist
voters and actually
did say some very good, pro-American things about Muslims.
What's really
amazing about the traditional media here is how unmoored
they are
from any real standards. Especially amazing is how someone wants the
presidential candidates to tell everybody how they feel about God, but
as Governor Palin subscribes to an unusual "flavor" of Christianity,
the McCain campaign is anxious to NOT have her be questioned about God.
Conservatives don't appear to recognize the problem.
Wow! Ranting
and raving! Governor Palin looks
here like Mussolini himself! And yeah, it's hard to
categorize this as anything
but the statement of a complete snob.
Good for the
Obama campaign! They've requested
an investigation into smears on ACORN, smears which have, quite
predictably, resulted in violence.
Local
columnist bemoans what "the fates" have done to the campaign of "poor"
John McCain. Defends
McCain against the charge of wanting "Bush's third
term." Problem: Barack Obama has proposed ending the Iraq War,
something that's costing the US Treasury $10 billion a month. What
savings has McCain offered that's even a fraction of that?
About a year
ago, Michelle
Malkin and many other right-wingers were verbally assaulting
and hectoring and hassling a family and their 12-year old son
over the boy's televised statement on the SCHIP program. Their given
reason?
[T]he office of
Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, ... asked: "Could the Dems
really have done that bad of a job vetting this family?"
Turned out the family was precisely
what they said they were and that they were fully
entitled to support the SCHIP program.
Now that McCain has made a complete
cluster---- of the life of his chosen hero, Joseph
Wurzelbacher, we
get Malkin fuming that:
The left's political
plumbers are attacking the messenger, rummaging through his
personal life...
[emphasis added]
Yeah, it sure is awful when bloggers go rummaging through someone's
personal life. Kind of amazing that what was perfectly
acceptable a year ago is completely unfair today.
Update: Yup! It's
Michelle Malkin again!
Now she's taken the lead in forcing the University of Nebraska
to
cancel an invitation to William Ayers to speak on 15 November. Can't ya
just smell that love of freedom? That love of free discourse and
debate?
Hard to get a
more
definitive verdict on the third and last debate between
Obama and McCain than this:
CBS poll of undecided
voters:
Who won the
debate?
McCain
(R) 22
Obama (D) 53
McCain doesn't
appear to think that the health of women is an importan component
of the abortion debate. In fact, he doesn't seem to think women are
important at all. Obama's answer was pitch-perfect.
Keith
Olbermann on the screaming,
frenzied crowds at McCain-Palin rallies:
Obviously, Senator,
you haven’t heard your own speeches, and Gov.
Palin’s, and what people shout during them. And you haven’t heard your
state GOP Chair in Virginia, Jeffrey Frederick, giving talking points
to 30 of your field-operatives heading out to canvass voters in
Gainesville, Virginia, with a reporter present, telling them to try to
forge a connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden to
emphasize bombings and terrorism.
Juan Cole
gives us a capsule
history of the last 30 years, concentrating on how the
Republican Party and Reagan's coalition of the Religious Right and the
big-money people has shaped America.
Al Jazeera
does a report on McCain supporters spewing
all sorts of nonsense about Obama. Very sad that America
looks so bad to foreign countries.
The level of sheer racism
and hatred in the McCain rallies is really reaching
dangerous
levels. Michelle Malkin notes
the video at first link and says:
Let’s
talk about “insane rage” and “violent escalation.” This is insane rage
— Madonna bashing Sarah Palin and shrieking “I will kick her ass...”
Er, well, okay, but Madonna is not part of the Obama campaign.
When Palin accuses Obama of "palling around with terrorists,"
she is saying that as a part of the McCain campaign.
Just a bit of a difference there.
Governor Sarah
Palin charged with "abusing
power" to such an extent that even
the traditional media reports it!
Heh! McCain tries to pretend that his administration will
be above such things.
Update: Report
is ignored in numerous quarters.
NBC's "Meet the
Press," ABC's
"This Week," and CNN's "Late Edition" ignored the story altogether
Worrisome
signs that Sarah Palin's & John McCain's speeches are inciting
people to violence, or at the very least, to violent
language. Of course, right-wingers see the traditional media as hopelessly
biased in favor of Obama and the Democrats. Interesting
YouTube, where people
try to avoid using inflammatory language, but where they
clearly feel it.
Update: McCain finds it difficult to "dial it back" and to calm
his followers down. Funny how that happens!
'Fraid to say,
this
is not surprising news. Two NSA whistleblowers go onto ABC
News and reveal that, surprise, surprise, the "Terrorist Surveillance
Program" was not a
well-crafted, highly-targeted program and that many, many people who
had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism were
surveilled.
I guess women
haven't come that far after all, at
least not on Fox News. A news reader complains that a
Newsweek cover of Governor Palin was, get this, NOT
retouched! Yes that's right, she was expecting Newsweek to
retouch all of Palin's facial imperfections.
Amusing to see
how small websites can get the current state of the presidential race
right, but big
media websites can't seem to do that. As a group, the big
sites refuse to admit that Obama is poised to win well over the 270
votes needed to win.
Bush cuts off
aid to African countries because they
might practice contraception.
Of course, due to this "pro-life" policy, African women now have a much
greater chance of dying while giving birth.
Heh! Mark
Halperin of "The Page" in Time Magazine considers
Matt Drudge to be an important and influential person. Rather
difficult to see why he thinks that as Obama has opened up a significant
lead in the past few weeks and, as Drudge is a Republican,
quite obviously, he had nothing to do with that.
Obama wins
second debate with McCain without
breaking a sweat. McCain sounded like a grumpy, tired old man
fussing about whether Obama announced his intention to invade
Pakistan, if that proved necessary,
to get bin Laden. Obama appeared more comfortable and relaxed than he
did at the last debate. Funny, but McCain had a full 90 minutes to
repeat Palin's attacks on Obama and didn't say a
word.
According to
the David Horowitz website "Discover
the Network,"
Barack Obama's connections to William Ayers (Whose last acts of
violence were in 1972, when Obama was eight years old) are, well,
pretty darned unimpressive. The two of them were on the same board of
directors 1999-2002. Yes, Ayers has made some really hating comments
about the Bush Administration, but if that
were a crime, many, many millions of us would be
in jail!
The McCain campaign has decided to make
an issue of the Ayers connection anyway.
The connections of McCain & Palin, on the other hand, are wide and deep.
Daily Kos counts three
highly questionable associates for McCain and two for Palin.
Update: McCain campaign sending out very
muddled, confused message on Ayers.
Wow! It's hard to know how to even parody such a
blatant falsehood.
Obama speaks
at Abington High School football field.
On the
Vice-Presidential debate, I
had to chuckle at this one: [Palin] "went toe-to-toe with a
guy who's run for president twice, and she held her own"
Wel-l-l-l, "CNN vote of debate watchers: Biden 51, Palin 36
CBS poll of undecideds: Biden 46, Palin 21"
So, uh, no.
CNN
transcript.
Bail-out bill passes
Senate 74-25, both Obama & McCain vote "Aye."
What's been
about the silliest claim of the campaign (And believe me, it has lots
of competition!) has been the one about Alaska being in some sort of
danger from Russian aircraft:
“Putin rears his
head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America."
Thankfully and unsurprisingly,
the Air Force confirms that, no, no Russian plane has violated US
airspace over Alaska during Palin's term as Alaska's Governor.
September
The
bail-out bill failed by a vote of 228 against to only 205
for. 60% of Democrats voted yes on the bill, but only
33% of Republicans did so. Breakdown:
65R 140D - yes, 133R 95D - no. Stock market promptly tanks, losing 777
points, 7% or $1.1 trillion in value.
An examination as to who
is to blame for the economic crisis.
188 kilobyte
PDF of the House Discussion Draft
Bill for the bailout.
Based on Speaker
Pelosi's summary, it looks to be a reasonably good plan. It's
"the largest
single non-defense expenditure ever is about to pass into
law."
John McCain's very
bad week. Saturday Night Live's hilarious
takedown of Governor Sarah Palin.
This seriously
calls for letters! MSNBC correspondent Kelly
Norah O'Donell makes a series
of highly edited, selective quotations
in order to make a very dishonest and partisan point. She claims that
Obama appears to be in such hearty, full-throated agreement with McCain
that it puzzles her what Obama's disagreement is. No mystery at all IF
one looks at the full quotations. Addresses for MSNBC, MSNBC's Senior Vice
President, News, and President, NBC News.
Obama wins
the debate!!! My
own reaction. No game
changers, but people notice McCain's refusal
to make eye contact. Speaking on the "surge," Obama points out that the
war didn't start in 2007.
So John McCain
allegedly "suspended" his campaign. But does
he actually do so? It was especially silly for MSNBC to both
have a McCain adviser attacking Obama on one of their shows and
to run the announcement that he was suspending his campaign.
Huh?!?! Foreign
countries aren't willing to help the US out of its fiscal
jam? German Chancellor Angela Merkel reminds
the US that:
she had pushed for
steps to boost the transparency of hedge funds
during Germany’s presidency of the Group of Eight last
year. ”We got
things moving [last year], but we didn’t get enough support, especially
in the
United States and Britain.”
After the Iraq War had been launched, a UN
debate
made it quite clear that the US had done a very poor job of reconciling
countries to US actions. We're now seeing the results of such
"steamroller" action.
Heh! Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson
tries to "walk back" the demand that he be able to dispose of
$700 billion in whatever way he gol durn jolly well pleases. Original
wording:
Sec. 8.
Review.
Decisions by the
Secretary
pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable
and committed
to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by
any court of law or
any administrative agency. [emphases added]
And now:
Paulson insisted over
and over during today’s hearing that he “wanted” and “welcomed”
oversight.
William Greider thinks the bail-out plan is an "historic
swindle." Robert Reich weighs
in.
It's actually (grimly) hilarious to see conservatives now doing a
complete 180o on philosophies they've
held very firmly and unwaveringly for the past eight years.
Opposition rapidly
growing to "Treasury Secretary Paulson’s unconditional,
blank-check
bailout plan." We're seeing encouraging
signs of spinal columns among Democrats, helped along by the
fact
that Republicans don't seem to like the plan much either. Natcherly, McCain
has all sorts of ties to the corporate lobbyists who got us
into
this mess.
Wow! Did our
president
really have that
shaky a grasp of how the national economy works before
entering the
Oval Office?!?!?
Can the Bush
Administration
be trusted to spend the $700 billion they're asking for to bail the US
out of yet another financial crisis?
Um,
no. The piece looks at several dramatic failures of
control,
discipline and oversight, but what's really staggering is $10 billion wasted
on Iraqi
reconstruction. The July
08 report of the Special Inspector General for Iraq says that
$50
billion had been spent on reconstruction. Three inspectors told Congress
in Feb 07
that one-fifth of that amount had either been lost or was very poorly
tracked.
Al Jazeera
shows videotape
of truck
ramming into security gate at Islamabad's Marriott Hotel and
shows
truck burning.
The following explosion left a 30
foot crater.
Hilarious pair
of pieces: Dodgy Journalism: Time's
Michael Scherer debates strawman, loses
followed by: Michael
Scherer debates Michael Scherer, loses
Oh, and Scherer
Wanks About
Renewable Energy
The question was whether John McCain supports privatizing Social
Security. Scherer argued that no, McCain was not suggesting that.
So what does McCain then tell all of us? Why,
of course he's for that!
Amazingly,
upon the very
day that Admiral Mullen was assuring Pakistan that the US respected its
sovereignty, a
US
drone attack killed at least six Pakistanis. Yes, this
incident is
related to the loss of confidence in US financial markets. It
demonstrates to the world that the solemn word of the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff (by law the highest ranking military officer
overall in the United States Armed Forces) is worthless. Not good. Not
good at all.
Bush tries to
make it
appear as though the current economic crisis was a unanticipated
"bolt out of the blue." (And yeah,
we've heard that
one before.) Unfortunately, there was nothing mysterious or
unanticipated about it. The housing
bubble has been a problem for quite some time and very little
was
done to correct it.
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