At what point to political speculations go beyond mere amusement and bet-fodder to outright spooky? It’s one thing to have predicted Obama to take the nomination nearly a year before he throws his hat in the ring but that’s nothing next to predicting McCain in early December of ’07 (in the now epic The Republican Candidates are the Most Unelectable Gang of Freaks in American History). But then to go on and nail down Senator Joe Biden as Bama’s Veep in late May of this year? I know what you’re saying: who is this iSenseChange and how is he so dead-on-balls accurate for this election? How can we reward this latter-day NeoNostradamus for the sheer prescience involved in these utterly uncanny picks of his? What glorious accolades can we lay at his freshly oiled feet, what leafy laurels around his surely massive skull? Judging from the lackluster response to my admittedly weird entries thus far, I’m guessing a handful of reads and less than ten comments. Half of which are my own. Fuck it, says I. Ignore me at your peril. I am the Kossack Kreskin. And I have massive nuts.
John McNicotine is now for the tobacco lobby after years of working against it. He not only opposes the cigarette taxes he used to support but also opposes FDA regulation of the tobacco industry after years of supporting it. McNicotine is an ex-smoker and should understand just how addictive nicotine is, and he even acknowledged the exceptionally high death rate for tobacco users when he joked that cigarette exports to Iran were part of his plot to kill Iranian citizens. For McNicotine to cave in to the tobacco cartel is the ultimate flip-flop:
http://www.boston.com/...
Why has McNicotine caved in to the interests of the tobacco drug cartel? It couldn't possibly have anything to do with hiring tobacco lobbyist Charlie Black as his senior adviser. Move along folks. There's nothing to see here:
http://firedoglake.com/...
Now let's use the traditional Rethug "moral values" and "sanctity of life" frames against McNicotine! There's more in the flip.
Hi. John Sidney McCain III, here. I know a lot of you Daily Kossacks aren't of a mind to listen to my straight talk, but being the original maverick that I am, I am going to very publicly and proudly cross the aisle and tell you just how, in my own words (more or less, with the help of one of your regular contributors) share with you over the next several days how my experiences as a prisoner of war for seven years in Vietnam shaped my life, my character, my resolve, my views and my candidacy to become the next President of the United States who, despite sharing the same party, the same views, the same talking point and the same most wonderful special mancrush of a hug, will in no way be like the previous administration.
So, I'd like to start off this first part of what I think will be a five part series with the easiest, least controversial topic in American politics: Abortion.
As you hip netroots types like to say: More below the break. Heh!
As a Dem and a Liberal one of the things the Dog feel he as to do (and the rest of us too) is spend time breaking the conceptual frames of the Repugs. Think of it as maintenance, sure it is no fun, it does not really advance our goals, but if we don’t do it, it limits the goals we can set and achieve. Part of this is trying not to use the words that represent the larger idea of the frame, things like not saying "gay marriage" but saying "full civil rights for all citizens". That is the most basic of the tactics to combat the frames, but there is another area where we need to work. It does us no good to let the Repugs chase us off of words and ideas that support that core of liberal values, we have to go after their core concepts as well and show them to be the misdirection that they are.
I am attending the Democratic Convention as a PA Delegate and also representing a newspaper locally where I live. In order to do my editorial duties while I am attending the activities, I am looking for your input on a set of questions to ask politicians and/or press.
David Roberts at Grist and Matt Stoller at Open Left have given Al Gore and We Can Solve It grief of late for not taking a hard enough stance against the wingnuts in their campaign to stop Climaticide. One of their complaints had to do with an early We Can Solve It ad that they thought gave green cred to right wing scumbag Newt Gingrich. Maybe Gore was listening. This new ad definitely hits a better tone.
"We DEMAND that we use them."
Yes! This is how WE we all need to be talking. We're not asking any more. Kudos to Al Gore and the We Campaign for getting it right this time.
A very dear friend of mine is directing a feature length documentary that is soon coming to completion and fruition about a very important but grossly ignored subject.
She was imprisoned, interrogated, and ultimately deported for her work documenting the horror occurring in Zimbabwe. I have been trying in my own small way to assist her with the completion of this important project.
I have asked for and received permission to cross-post her latest blog from Huffington Post here. Following is something that I hope gives everyone a moment of pause to understand the true horror that is happening this very minute.
I recently posted a YouTube video that I made which brutally attacks McCain on everything from his military biography, to his adultry, to the Keating 5 to his latest rhetorical gymnastics. It is presented in the same snarky and mean way that Republican attack adds are. In fact, it was originally intended to be a spoof titled "Republican attack add."
While this video has been successful, I want to address some of the criticisms, because I think it is fair to be shocked by the brutality of this approach. The most common criticisms are:
It is mean, taking the low road, making us no better than them.
It goes below the belt by attacking McCain's Navy and POW biography.
An amazing amount of simple factual truth has not dawned upon many of us or is generally actively denied since we all have a strong tendency to believe only what we want to believe, what we feel we must believe, what we have been manipulated and indoctrinated into believing, what we think will win favor with important others if we believe it, what we believe is good and proper to believe, and/or what we have a compelling emotional need to believe, and to resent and defend against acknowledgment of anything that threatens or runs counter to such belief - all in the service of believing that we know we are "right" - so "right" that everyone else in the world should think, feel, and behave just like us, and be made to by force if necessary.
• Trouble is, no matter how fervently one believes that one knows what one merely believes, one merely believes it and one might be wrong - very wrong.
My niece sent me this email and asked me the following...
Subject: Fw: Taxes...VERY IMPORTANT!!]
Date: Sunday, August 17, 2008, 6:13 PM
Hey Aunt C, Somebody sent this to me and I know you are fantastic at finding the truth, so is this true or some republican trying to change peoples votes. Thanks, (Niece)
INTERESTING DATA JUST RECEIVED ON TAXES
Click here to see "FORWARD" on Snopes
In the time of the Roman Empire, civic life was divided between the Blue and Green factions. The Blues and the Greens murdered each other in single combats, in ambushes, in group battles, in riots. Procopius said of the warring factions: "So there grows up in them against their fellow men a hostility which has no cause, and at no time does it cease or disappear, for it gives place neither to the ties of marriage nor of relationship nor of friendship, and the case is the same even though those who differ with respect to these colors be brothers or any other kin." Edward Gibbon wrote: "The support of a faction became necessary to every candidate for civil or ecclesiastical honors."
Who were the Blues and the Greens? They were sports fans - the partisans of the blue and green chariot-racing teams.
I did not get a chance yet to watch the debate at Saddleback church besides some clips on CNN afterwards. However even without seeing the show I can imagine that a few questions of religious faith came up.
As a person who is moderately politically aware and neither a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, or part of any other organized religion it has always struck me...where is my place in politics?
This is my first diary entry and more of a question than a statement. I know that in America we pay lip service to the idea of seperation of Church and State but when the vast majority of Americans believe in God and congregations hold such a high degree of influence...where is my place in politics?
If I was running for President or any other political office I would not have a chance no matter what my policy positions were. Forget being black, forget being to young or to old, part of the wrong gender, or all those other minor barrriers to political success...what do you do when you can't get on television like McCain and Obama and tell people you believe in God?
Yup, "Buke" (It rhymes with puke) would have been 88 yesterday. You don't know who I am talking about? That's not so strange. Wikipedia tells us this about him:
Henry Charles Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994), German-American poet and novelist. Gained fame, phenomenal sales and critical recognition in Europe but continues to be generally ignored by the American literary establishment. Bukowski's writing was heavily influenced by the geography and atmosphere of his home city of Los Angeles, and is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of marginalized poor American Whites, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, the drudgery of work and horseracing. A prolific author, Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels, eventually having 110 books in print. He is often remembered as "The Poet Laureate of Skid Row" and, in a nod to his somewhat irregular lifestyle and habits, the "Swamp King of L.A.".
He was ignored by most, but those of us who read him were irreversibly changed. Look below the break to find out why.
from the theocrat gathering last night. He had no business appearing before a crowd that doesn't believe in separation of church and state, is anti-choice and anti-gay rights. Did he think he would win them over? Did he think he would get a better reception than McCain? Did he think he would get brownie points for showing up? Whatever he thought is overriden by the terrible precedent set by having the presidential candidates of each party a joint appearance by presidential candidates before a religious crowd, not to mention a fundamentalist crowd.
So why isn’t Obama romping? The obvious answer — and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it — is that the public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is.
What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the "agents of intolerance" of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.
With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.
