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I don’t see how anybody could possibly be complaining about a rigorous vetting procedure, when politicians’ private lives are increasingly made public and scrutinized by the media. If he doesn’t get this stuff out into the open now, it will be uncovered by bloggers, and it will be made public at the most inopportune time – probably when these people are trying to actually accomplish something significant. There’s nothing quite like a major media scandal to derail the political process…
In any event, I think we’ve all seen what happens when people fail to adequately vet their nominees…
Very curious as to how social conservatives will view this decision. I can just see the debate now: Side A: “Public businesses have to provide accessible seats to their customers, including larger people, and shouldn’t penalize them by charging double fees if the provided seats are too small.” Side B: “Fat people just want special rights. Let them lose their fat asses if they want equal prices.”
One wonders if the US government would have made a bigger deal out of this enslavement and murder if the 350 soldiers had not been separated and sent there specifically for being or looking Jewish. Don’t forget that this is the same US that segregated its troops based on race (black people were good enough to fight, but not good enough to be integrated??), and deliberately kept out of the country hundreds of thousands of Jews who were trying to flee from the Nazis and who wound up being slaughtered by them because they could not find refuge here. The US literally turned away ships full of people who had made it out, only to be sent back.
The US could have done more – it just didn’t care enough. And apparently that apathy extended to its Jewish and “Jewish-looking” soldiers as well. I have always been very proud that my grandpa, a Jewish man, fought for America in World War II. It makes me sick to think that he, too, could have been conveniently “forgotten” by the US Army if he had been captured.
Not the Crackberry! NOOOOO, DARKNEEEESSS! CHAARRLIIIEEEEE!
My guess is he’ll keep the thing, and just switch it out somewhat frequently. You can’t just give that up. You’ve gotta ease out of it over a period of like… you know… a decade or so. Or until the Next Great Thing comes along to replace it.
Eeesh. They make it sound like all of California – or even all of southern California – was involved. So not the case. But whatever, at least it’s for a good purpose.
The move will give AmEx the ability to grow its deposits — a more stable form of funding — and provide it greater access to Fed funding and government rescue programs.
Hey, I’m not doing so well economically these days. Maybe I should become a bank too. Obscanity Savings & … Savings. Get me some corporate welfare, and all that…
Uh, yeah. Welcome to what the Jewish community has had to deal with for years. I remember during the first Gulf War we were afraid to go to Hebrew school because there were reports of bomb threats against Jewish institutions around the city. My synagogue has had an armed security guard for as long as I can remember.
It’s not so much fun realizing that people hate you, is it?
The No on 8 campaign received a letter from the Yes on 8 campaign requesting that they engage in a debate over whether Prop 8’s failure would lead to kids being “indoctrinated in schools.” In other words, the Yes on 8 campaign asked for No on 8 to show up for a debate in order to legitimize their lies by making them sound like something actually up for debate. They might as well have asked No on 8 to come to a debate about whether gay people are child-molesters – we all know that’s what they are really thinking.
SENT VIA EMAIL AND COURIER
October 28, 2008
Frank Schubert
Campaign Manager, protectmarriage.com â Yes on 8
1415 L Street, Suite C-259
Sacramento, CA 95814
Dear Frank:
Thank you for your letter. It would be a disservice to the people of California to debate an issue
that is completely unrelated to Proposition 8.
As you know:
Jack OâConnell, the stateâs top educator and the nonpartisan-elected Superintendent of Public
Instruction says Prop. 8 has nothing to do with schools and that your campaignâs use of children
to make this false claim is âshameful.â
Delaine Eastin, his predecessor, says Prop. 8 has nothing to do with schools.
Dr. Ted Mitchell, the President of the State Board of Education, says Prop. 8 has nothing to do
with schools.
His predecessor, Reed Hastings, says Prop. 8 has nothing to do with schools.
The California Teachers Association says Prop. 8 has nothing to do with schools.
And leading newspapers have concluded Prop. 8 has nothing to do with schools.
The only debate worth having in California is why you have pursued such a deceptive campaign
strategy.
That debate is one you can conduct alone â with your conscience.
Cordially,
Steve Smith
Campaign Manager
NO on Prop 8
A campaign worker who claimed she was the victim of a politically-motivated attack in which she was beaten, kicked and cut, now admits that she made the whole story up.
Read the last sentence. No, seriously. Did anybody expect that? I sure as hell didn’t. On what planet is it reasonable for a 9-year-old child to have a baby?
Do you ever wonder if this isn’t just the greatest heist of all time? Do you wake up in the middle of the night sometimes wondering how much of that $700 billion of our money is going to wind up in the offshore bank accounts of the top .05% of America’s wealthiest Republican puppeteers? Do you ever wonder if King Georgie is going to help himself to a share of it before he heads out of office? How many of Wall Street’s CEOs are REALLY not going to see massive financial perks from this bailout?
How much of this money is going to bail out the economy, and how much of it is going to leak out of the economy into the wealthiest Americans’ personal vaults?
I have no answers – only lots and LOTS of questions.
With friends like Sarah Palin, who needs enemies?! I would rather see somebody supporting Israel by trying to further peace in the Middle East, rather than supporting Israel blindly in the hopes that the resulting wars will bring about the End of Days just a little bit sooner, or because as long as Israel holds out, there’s still a chance all the Jews will move there and either accept Jesus or die.
I don’t want this woman anywhere near the international peace process – or the proverbial “red button.” Religion is a personal matter, but not when her religious motivations will guide her every move in office. A religious politician – EVERY politician, really – has to have some level of humility; as we’ve seen from the past 8 years, when an official believes he has God’s mandate to rule and has been placed there to do God’s work and have God speak through him… well… I think we know how well that goes.
And finally, a videotape surfaced of a 2005 service at the Wasilla Assembly of God Church, the Pentecostal church that Palin attended for most of her life. In the scene captured on video, Palin stands at the front of the sanctuary while a visiting African pastor prays that God will help her gubernatorial campaign and protect her “from every form of witchcraft.” Later in the same service, the pastor complains that “Israelites” held too many prominent positions in business, a comment that has further alienated Jewish voters.
Yesterday, Ben Smith posted a remarkable story about Sarah Palin’s attendance at an anti-Semitic sermon delivered at her church just two weeks ago.
The sermon, given by the executive director of Jews for Jesus, blamed Jewish victims of terrorism for the attacks which claimed their lives. If Jews had just converted to Christianity, he said, they would have lived.
This is crazy, paranoid stuff, and it is far beyond anything Jeremiah Wright ever said, yet we went through six weeks of nonstop scrutiny over his politically extreme statements.
FINALLY, THERE is the matter of two anti-Israel politicians – Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan. In February Palin in an interview lavished praise on Ron Paul. There is also a controversy over whether Palin has supported former presidential aspirant Pat Buchanan. To be fair there is no evidence that Palin shares either of these Republicans’ anti-Israel creed. However, since the beginning of the GOP narrative within the Jewish community is that Obama can not be trusted because of a handful of people who have endorsed him. If this guilt by association standard is one the McCain stands by, then they also need to deal with Palin’s past support for anti-Israel politicians.
In his talk at Wasilla on August 17, 2008, with Palin in the audience, Brickner described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's "judgment of unbelief" on Jews who have not converted to Christianity.
…
At the conclusion of Brickner's sermon, the congregation contributed money for Jews for Jesus' mission of converting
the Jews and and prayed that Jews would come to accept Jesus.
…
John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate has already cost him the vote of at least one prominent Jewish politician — former New York City Mayor Ed Koch.
Koch, who endorsed George W. Bush in 2004, said that McCain’s choice of Palin has led him to endorse Barack Obama.
The Supreme Court of Connecticut has become… yet another high court to rule that marriage discrimination against same-gender couples is unconstitutional. This makes Connecticut the third state to allow same-gender marriage. I would say it was the third court to make this ruling, but I think people underestimate the number of state supreme courts that have ruled against marriage discrimination. For the record, they are: Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York (for out-of-state marriages), California, Connecticut. Other states, like Alaska and Hawaii, have seen court decisions become void because the states were allowed to pass DOMA amendments, which are entirely unconstitutional but have yet to be successfully challenged.
The reason DOMA is unconstitutional is that it violates the original constitution itself – not even an amendment – by flying in the face of the Full Faith and Credit clause, which directs that states give full faith and credit to other states’ public acts, records, and judicial proceedings. Marriage, and later divorce, has been established as a public act/record and if you get married in any state, you are married in all states – and if you get divorced in any state, you are divorced in all states. For states to recognize some out of state marriages and not others violates the 14th Amendment. If states want to recognize out of state marriages, they cannot pick and choose which marriages they will recognize. Let them stop recognizing ALL out of state marriages, divorces, and adoptions – let’s see how well that works! Let’s see how well that protects families!
Interesting quote:
State Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, a Republican of Fairfield, issued a statement today saying: âWhile I believe these decisions are better left to elected representatives, it is ultimately the province of the State Supreme Court to interpret our constitution. The Court carried out that responsibility today and ruled that the institution of marriage in Connecticut must include same-sex couples. Whether people agree or disagree, we all need to respect the Courtâs decision and abide by the ruling.â (Read more)
Now, why is it that they recognize this in Connecticut, but not in California?
Oh. My. Gosh. Everybody in America needs to take eleven minutes out of their crazy schedules and watch this commentary about Sarah Palin. Every last bit of it is pure truth, and scary as all hell. I’m only sorry it’s on MSNBC and not on network television, where more people could see it.
If you’re even THINKING about voting for a ticket with Sarah Palin on it, you need to see this video. He has her so spot on – he’s raised so many questions that have been floating out there about her – for example, if Obama has been “pallin’ around” with terrorists (i.e. former anti-Vietnam war radicals who have reformed themselves and now work toward improving Chicago’s school system), then what does Palin have to say about her affiliation with the Alaskan Independence Party, founded by a man who by his own admission hates America? Who literally said he hates America and refuses to be buried under her flag? And what of her relationship with the pastor who “laid hands” on her and cast away any forms of witchcraft which might be getting in her way of becoming governor? (and who, I might add, threw in some lines in there about letting Palin bring the nation to god…) You’ll have to watch this video to find out his sordid past – which the people in the Wasilla church thought was just fab, by george!
Wow, I’m sure all those people out there who were worried about losing the right to heterosexual marriage will be so relieved that they don’t have to vote yes on Prop 8 anymore!
Seriously, though. There were a lot of people who were put off by the Party A and Party B forms, so hopefully this will assuage their concerns.
WASHINGTON â More than one-third of all Americans will soon receive better insurance coverage for mental health treatments because of a new law that, for the first time, requires equal coverage of mental and physical illnesses. (Read more)
The gist of this interview with McCain: “Hey LGBT Americans! Vote against your interests: McCain Palin ’08! p.s. we still hate you, but we’ll never admit it – at least not before the election! State’s rights, state’s rights, state’s rights.”
My favorite:
McCain: As a Republican, I am a strong advocate for federalism. States should be able to decide as many issues as possible. Thatâs certainly the case on the definition of marriage. My home state of Arizona shouldnât be compelled to recognize a marriage from California or Massachusetts. Those states can decide that issue by themselves.
Hey McTwoface: Are you also in favor of the CONSTITUTION? For example, the part where states have to give FULL FAITH AND CREDIT to the “public acts, records, and judicial rulings” of another state? THAT INCLUDES MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.
Safety food inspectors in Connecticut recently found melamine in White Rabbit candy – you know, those yummy vanilla chewy candies with the edible rice-paper wrapping? If you purchased some recently… yeah. Throw it away.
Abstinence-only education is great in theory, but it is not practical. For every emergency drill I went through to protect myself from an intruder or bomb threat, I think of the condom wrapped in foil and how unprotected I could have been. (Read more)
Wow. John McCain’s campaign has been putting out some pretty desperate ads, but this one just takes the cake.
This ad pretty much crystallizes one of the key differences between Republican and Democratic thinking, at least in the present climate of divisive politics. Democrats – or at least, the kind of Democrats who support Obama – recognize that for any given issue, there is a black, and there is a white, but there are also countless shades of gray, and typically the truth falls somewhere in that ambiguous area. Not always, of course, but when it comes to certain issues, you cannot simply boil it down to a Right and a Wrong. After all, as they say in “Wicked,” “There are precious few at ease with moral ambiguities, and so we act as though they don’t exist!”
On the other hand, for many Republicans, especially the knee-jerk Republicans we seem to see as mainstream candidates these days, there is only a Right and a Wrong, and a Yes and a No, and if you even pause to THINK about the complexity of the issue, or about the space between Yes and No, then you are part of the No. They don’t understand that you can be right AND wrong. They don’t understand that two people can agree about a problem and disagree about a solution.
For a Democrat like Obama, it would seem natural, in a debate, to acknowledge when the opponent is right about certain things, and follow up with an explanation of why their interpretation of those things is still not the best, why some of the details are wrong, why something has been mischaracterized, or why they disagree with the solution to fixing those things, if they’re broken. For Obama to say, “John is right, but…” or “John is right, and we agree on that issue…” seems perfectly natural to us.
For the kind of Republicans who patched this ad together, this is a sign of weakness. The willingness to recognize the skill or knowledge of your opponent makes you a bad leader, in their eyes. Cooperation is weakness. Diplomacy is weakness. Mediation is weakness. Politeness is weakness. To them, you have to be a pit bull in lipstick. You can’t work things out; you have to WIN, at any cost. To them, there is a right, and there is a wrong, and for every Good Guy, there is a Bad Guy. There can’t be two Good Guys who are just different. One of them has to be Bad. And it’s true that sometimes this is the case – but sometimes you’re just talking about two people who want to do good but disagree on the meaning of “good,” or two people who want to fix the same problem but have very different solutions.
This is setting aside the reality that every single one of Obama’s acknowledgments of McCain’s accuracy on a point was followed by a “but,” which was meticulously edited out by the commercial’s creators. Never mind that it mischaracterizes Obama’s opinion of McCain’s beliefs and strategies (and tactics) and completely ignores that he had a strong rebuttal for each point. As far as I’m concerned, that is the obvious problem with the ad, and I don’t think people will fall for it. Not most people, anyway. For me, more problematic is the implication of the ad itself – that to them, the very fact that he was willing to concede a single inch, or say something positive about McCain, even just acknowledge that McCain is at all informed or intelligent or, you know, a human being, makes him a failure and serves as proof of his inability to lead. For them, if Obama acknowledges that McCain is right about one thing, it necessarily follows that 1) McCain is right about all things, and 2) Obama is wrong about all things.
I think that says a lot about what kind of administration McCain would run. It’s pretty much the same administration Bush ran – you’re either with us, or you’re against us. You’re either Christian, or you’re going to hell. You want every zygote to turn into a human, or else you’re a raving baby-murderer. You either support the nuclear family, or you’re a child molester who wants to undermine society and demolish the institution of marriage or marry your pet goat. If you aren’t a conservative, then you’re a radical left winger. You can either put complete and utter faith in the free market, or you can fess up to being a rabid socialist. You’re a blind supporter of US policy, or you’re a terrorist. You’re either a Republican, or you hate your country. If you try to reach over to the other side… you are weak. Oh, and you hate your country.
This most recent ad proves that John McCain will bring more of the same. After all, he’s John McCain, and he approves of this message.
As you probably already know, yesterday John McCain cancelled his appearance on David Letterman’s CBS late night talk show, claiming that he had to rush back to Washington because the economy was about to crater. Letterman was informed that McCain was rushing off to the airport and was about to board a plane immediately.
Well, about six and a half minutes into this video, you’ll see where McCain really had to go. Well, it turns out that while he was supposed to be on a plane, McCain was having his nose powdered on the set of Katie Couric’s CBS Evening News. Does he think nobody is going to catch him? Seriously? I mean, this is all on camera. In the public eye. What, Letterman just wasn’t going to notice the national broadcast? From the same building???
Of course, the benefit to McCain is that while some of us may see right through this blatant transparency, I guarantee you that the rightwing defense will be, “So what? Letterman isn’t important; the economy is!” To which the correct response is, of course, and now, which is more important, Katie Couric, or the economy? Because McCain put one of these first yesterday, and it wasn’t the economy.
The first couple minutes are not the main point, so if you are pressed for time, skip the intro and the praise for McCain’s war service, and start at 2:22. Or if you’re REALLY pressed for time, skip to 6:35, when things get really interesting. (But if you can, just watch the whole clip.)
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