Operation Zero Cred: Calling the Leadership

Tell these guys to get some balls.

Majority Leader Harry Reid
(202) 224-3542

Majority Whip Dick Durbin
(202) 224-2152

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
(202) 225-0100

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer
(202) 225-4131

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn
(202) 226-3210

The message:

“The Republicans have zero credibility on the economy.”

Paraphrase President Obama:

“Please reject the Republican theories that got us into this mess in the first place.”

And for Senator Reid:

“Make the Republicans stand and filibuster if they want to filibuster. No cloture votes!”

I Didn’t Vote For Obama Today (great piece from Talking Points Memo)

You can see the original post here

I Didn’t Vote For Obama Today

November 4, 2008, 9:37AM

I have a confession to make.

I did not vote for Barack Obama today.

I’ve openly supported Obama since March.  But I didn’t vote for him today.

I wanted to vote for Ronald Woods. He was my algebra teacher at Clark Junior High in East St. Louis, IL.  He died 15 years ago when his truck skidded head-first into a utility pole.  He spent many a day teaching us many things besides the Pythagorean Theorem.  He taught us about Medgar Evers, Ralph Abernathy, John Lewis and many other civil rights figures who get lost in the shadow cast by Martin Luther King, Jr.

But I didn’t vote for Mr. Woods.

I wanted to vote for Willie Mae Cross. She owned and operated Crossroads Preparatory Academy for almost 30 years, educating and empowering thousands of kids before her death in 2003.  I was her first student.  She gave me my first job, teaching chess and math concepts to kids in grades K-4 in her summer program.  She was always there for advice, cheer and consolation.  Ms. Cross, in her own way, taught me more about walking in faith than anyone else I ever knew.

But I didn’t vote for Ms. Cross.

I wanted to vote for Arthur Mells Jackson, Sr. and Jr. Jackson Senior was a Latin professor.  He has a gifted school named for him in my hometown.  Jackson Junior was the pre-eminent physician in my hometown for over 30 years.  He has a heliport named for him at a hospital in my hometown.  They were my great-grandfather and great-uncle, respectively.

But I didn’t vote for Prof. Jackson or Dr. Jackson.

I wanted to vote for A.B. Palmer. She was a leading civil rights figure in Shreveport, Louisiana, where my mother grew up and where I still have dozens of family members.  She was a strong-willed woman who earned the grudging respect of the town’s leaders because she never, ever backed down from anyone and always gave better than she got.  She lived to the ripe old age of 99, and has a community center named for her in Shreveport.

But I didn’t vote for Mrs. Palmer.

I wanted to vote for these people, who did not live to see a day where a Black man would appear on their ballots on a crisp November morning.

In the end, though, I realized that I could not vote for them any more than I could vote for Obama himself.

So who did I vote for?

No one.

I didn’t vote.  Not for President, anyway.

Oh, I went to the voting booth.  I signed, was given my stub, and was walked over to a voting machine.  I cast votes for statewide races and a state referendum on water and sewer improvements.

I stood there, and I thought about all of these people, who influenced my life so greatly.  But I didn’t vote for who would be the 44th President of the United States.

When my ballot was complete, except for the top line, I finally decided who I was going to vote for – and then decided to let him vote for me.  I reached down, picked him up, and told him to find Obama’s name on the screen and touch it.

And so it came to pass that Alexander Reed, age 5, read the voting screen, found the right candidate, touched his name, and actually cast a vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Oh, the vote will be recorded as mine.  But I didn’t cast it.

Then again, the person who actually pressed the Obama box and the red “vote” button was the person I was really voting for all along.

It made the months of donating, phonebanking, canvassing, door hanger distributing, sign posting, blogging, arguing and persuading so much sweeter.

So, no, I didn’t vote for Barack Obama.  I voted for a boy who now has every reason to believe he, too, can grow up to be anything he wants…even President.

This is how disgusting , and desperate, the Republicans have become

Have we hit an all-time low yet?

More on Joe, er, I mean, “Sam” the Not so plumber plumber

More on “Joe” , er, Sam the non-plumber

Joe the Plumber? More like Joe the Keating Family Operative

I guess it’s no wonder John McCain was so happy to use “Joe the Plumber” as a debate prop last night — he’s a partisan Republican who also happens to be a member of McCain’s old friends, the Keating family.

From Martin Eisenstadt:

Turns out that Joe Wurzelbacher from the Toledo event is a close relative of Robert Wurzelbacher of Milford, Ohio. Who’s Robert Wurzelbacher? Only Charles Keating’s son-in-law and the former senior vice president of American Continental, the parent company of the infamous Lincoln Savings and Loan. The now retired elder Wurzelbacher is also a major contributor to Republican causes giving well over $10,000 in the last few years.

Now I guess we know why Joe is telling the press that Obama is a “socialist” and that the Obama tax plan “infuriated” him. After all, it would hit families like the Keatings and their minions the hardest.

Not to mention that Obama’s economic-recovery plan would put the crimps on influence peddlers like McCain’s old friends, the Keating Five.

But he sure made for a good one-day story.

http://www.newscloud.com/read/Joe_the_Plumber_More_like_Joe_the_Keating_Family_Operative

A Reverse “Bradley Effect”?

You guys know what the supposed “Bradley Effect” is, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect

Well, it turns out there a reverse version of it going on. in this version, white voters don’t want to reveal to their other white friends or family that they want to vote for Obama.

“The Bradley effect has mutated. We are seeing it in several states, but the reverse effect is much stronger,”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/A_reverse_Bradley_Effect.html

The Dirt Trail (The Obama Smears)

Thanks to Malcolm Mills for sending me this article

A herd of elephants on a mud trail makes for a pretty noisome combination

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Election2008.mud.htm

10/13/08

Usually, at this point, just 22 days before the election, I’m at the
point where I’m running out of things to say about the campaigns and am
looking around a bit desperately for something non-political to write
about, just to take a break and maybe restart my brain. This time
around, I had an essay about a kitten – yes, a kitten, that’s what I’ve
descended to – on the back burner ready to go against the point where I
couldn’t post one more Palin quote without puking.

But of course, this year has been a little different. The worldwide
economic crash is huge, news that is once-in-a-lifetime, vast in its
implications. It has been so big that even the campaign for what is
arguably the most important election America has seen since 1932 has
been pushed to the side.

So: three weeks to go, and I’m looking for opportunities to write about
politics. Right now, the kitten’s not even on the horizon, even though
he is indisputably a very nice kitten.

Europe is effectively nationalizing their banks while US “leadership” is
dithering. Tick, tick, tick. That’s where the economy stands. We’re at
that point in a Roadrunner cartoon narrative where we’re Wile E. Coyote,
and we’ve just noticed a shadow forming around us, bugged our eyes
skyward, and opened a little paper parasol in an effort to shield ourselves.

Paul Krugman just won the Nobel Prize for Economics. I posted
congratulations to his blog, noting that if elected, Obama was going to
need a really, really good economic advisor.

So let’s talk about the campaign. First, there’s the right wing smear
machine. Smearing isn’t limited to the right, and you can find Democrats
willing to swear that McCain caused the Forrestal accident, or is
actually not a citizen and not eligible to run for president, or turned
coward and traitor whilst being held captive in North Vietnam. All three
can be regarded, at best, as unprovable and more likely to be
politically motivated nonsense.

But the smears against Obama are organized, coordinated, carefully
planned, and crafted, and repeated, over and over. However, between the
huge distraction of the economy and Obama’s willingness to fight the
smears, they just aren’t gaining ground.

The far right, predictably, has become pretty hysterical. One user on
Usenet breathlessly posted recycled stories of a silly case demanding
that Obama prove his citizenship with the breathless header, “This could
be a game-changer!” The source in this case was something called “The
Illuminati Press.” That just added to the gravitas. Apparently he didn’t
know that the Dark Illuminati, by all accounts, aren’t very nice people.
Or if David Icke is to be believed, aren’t people at all. Another user
has posted at least 300 messages claiming that Obama had gay sex in the
back of a limousine with a man named Larry Sinclair. Another claimed
that Obama boasted of having sex with 10,000 white women, which would be
nearly a different one every day for his entire adult life. Forget
electing him president: vote him in for God!

Along with the usual suspects – Sun Myung Moon, Richard Scaife, Karl
Rove, Dick Morris, and Matt Drudge – the smear machine has some other
faces.

The NY Times just did a piece on Andy Martin, the clown who started the
“Obama is secretly a Muslim” crap back in 2004. They noted, among other
things, that Martin was diagnosed “moderately severe character defect
manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a
grandiose character.” In other words, he invents and may well believe
lurid and crazed conspiracy stories in which he is a hero. The problem
was evident enough that it was used to stop him from being accredited as
a lawyer. The NY Times notes that over the years, he’s filed hundreds of
crackpot lawsuits, despite being too mentally unfit to even be a lawyer.

Larry Sinclair has been discredited as a felon with a 27 year track
record of lies, fraud and deceit. He’s the one who claims that Obama had
sex with him in the back of a limo. Larry himself gave a press
conference at the National Press Club in Washington DC, which tells you
volumes about the state of American journalism, and at the end of the
conference, was arrested for the umpteenth time, this time on charges of
larceny in Delaware. He spent 12 years in prison for one fraud
conviction in 1987. According to Tim Shipman of the Daily Telegraph,
Sinclair came to the conference with a lawyer in tow, one Montgomery
Blair Sibley. Sibley, who wasn’t licenced to practice law in DC, was
wearing a kilt, and took advantage of his time at the mike to explain to
all assembled that he had to wear a kilt instead of trousers because of
his enormous genitalia. For some reason, News of the World didn’t cover
that story, but if Monty is Scottish, then perhaps there was mention of
it in Ewes of the World. Even Sibley’s, um, imposing presence didn’t
stop his client from being arrested. Again.

Finally, there was Larry Corsi. He of the “swiftboat” fame in the 2004
election. He released a book, “Obama Nation” which promptly sank in a
sea of derision except among the double-digit IQ members of the extreme
right, who quote it to one another endlessly. When last heard from Corsi
was in Kenya trying to find more dirt on Obama, and annoyed the
authorities and got kicked out of the country. That may not have the
cachet of being a mentally-ill lawyer, but it’s still pretty good.

It would be nice to say these are just fringe crackpots, but
unfortunately, these fringe crackpots have pretty much become the voice
of the GOP. They have a new leader in Sarah Palin, who has been inciting
crowds to shout things like “Traitor!” and “Kill him!” of Obama. One
half expects her to start hoisting a noose every time she mentions his
name, to cheers from the hooded crowd.

I noted at the second debate that then was the time for McCain to
apologize to Obama and disassociate himself from such tactics. The press
was beginning to notice the really ugly tones Palin was deliberately
whipping up among the mentals who believe that people like Sinclair,
Corsi, and Martin are telling the truth, and Obama really is a gay
moslem communist, his wife a black panther, and his daughters suicide
bombers. What’s left of the GOP these days has no shortage of ignorant,
hate-filled nuts.

But that moment has passed. McCain clearly realizes that his campaign
misstepped, and it’s possible that deep in his heart, the man genuinely
regrets it. But with it now getting widespread attention in the press,
he can’t make a show of changing the tone without it looking like yet
another erratic political gambit to try to save a campaign that is
foundering.

There’s also the fact that people like the woman who told McCain she
supported him because “Obama is an Arab” (McCain called her to task on
it) make up most of McCain’s support these days. If McCain loses them
(and they support Palin in the American European Heritage Party in 2012
or some damn thing) then he’ll be lucky to get Arizona and Utah in the
electoral college. Most responsible conservatives have already bugged
out from the GOP, leaving only the loons.

But McCain should do it anyway, if only because it’s the right thing to
do, and if he is to lose, at least he can do so with some class and dignity.

And it can start the GOP on the path to breaking away from the clutches
of the lunatic-fringe right. The lies and smears aren’t working, that’s
for sure, and people are getting pissed off that in the middle of a
major crisis, that’s about all they have to offer.

——————————————————————————————-

also: the racist at this blog still has her disinformation as the featured post on wordpress.com’s main page. Tell the people who run this site that you want it off the main page. this post originates on Stormfront’s website. they are a white-supremist, violent, hate-mongering group. WordPress needs to put up a different post as a featured post. the woman has the right to say what ever she wants…even lies…but, wordpress has STILL not removed it from the main page.

This post is on the wordpress.com main page:

This post is on the wordpress.com main page:

Obama Born in Kenya? (New Information) [Update x2]

Coast Provincial General Hospital, Mombasa, Kenya Update 2, 10/12/08 10:40 AM ET: Since originally posting this story Saturday, Atty. Philip Berg’s office informed us that they cannot discuss this matter due to pending [...]
td bl

Doesn’t seem all that bad, right?

Until you discover who is behind it

from the Racist White Supremist group Stormfront’s site

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php/which-hospital-obama-born-522021.html

And the usual pro-gun nuts

http://www.guncontrolkills.com/199/elections/barack-obama-is-not-a-us-citizen-not-eligible-to-be-us-president/

Two racist/violent groups came up with this stuff. I don’t know who texasdarlin is. But, my guess is she’s not so darlin.

What they’re trying to do is make a few voters think “He’s not one of us. he’s not American. He’s not white.” This is how ridiculous it’s getting out here. We’re in the midst of some very strange times. No single person, obama or anyone else, can change things by themselves. What Obama HAS done for many of us (especially campaign volunteers)….is made us come back to the idea that we can do an awful lot together.He’s taught us about teamwork and community.
There IS a lot of division in this country. It may be impossible to stomp out ignorance altogether. But, perhaps we need it there to keep us on our toes. Let’s just do our best.

The REAL Maverick’s Not So “Mavericky”

I just wanted to spread the word on a fantastic article in Rolling Stone this month. Check out Make-Believe Maverick by Tim Dickinson.

“In its broad strokes, McCain’s life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers’ powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives’ evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.”

Here are a few of my favorite parts:

1.”the truth of the matter is that ambition is John McCain’s basic character. Seen in the sweep of his seven-decade personal history, his pandering to the right is consistent with the only constant in his life: doing what’s best for himself. To put the matter squarely: John McCain is his own special interest.

“John has made a pact with the devil,” says Lincoln Chafee, the former GOP senator, who has been appalled at his one-time colleague’s readiness to sacrifice principle for power. Chafee and McCain were the only Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts. They locked arms in opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And they worked together in the “Gang of 14,” which blocked some of Bush’s worst judges from the federal bench.

“On all three — sadly, sadly, sadly — McCain has flip-flopped,” Chafee says. And forget all the “Country First” sloganeering, he adds. “McCain is putting himself first. He’s putting himself first in blinking neon lights.”

2.(On his time at Annapolis) McCain’s self-described “four-year course of insubordination” ended with him graduating fifth from the bottom — 894th out of a class of 899. It was a record of mediocrity he would continue as a pilot.

3.

TRIAL BY FIRE

Sometimes 3 a.m. moments occur at 10:52 in the morning.

It was July 29th, 1967, a hot, gusty morning in the Gulf of Tonkin atop the four-acre flight deck of the supercarrier USS Forrestal. Perched in the cockpit of his A-4 Skyhawk, Lt. Cmdr. John McCain ticked nervously through his preflight checklist.

Now 30 years old, McCain was trying to live up to his father’s expectations, to finally be known as something other than the fuck-up grandson of one of the Navy’s greatest admirals. That morning, preparing for his sixth bombing run over North Vietnam, the graying pilot’s dreams of combat glory were beginning to seem within his reach.

Then, in an instant, the world around McCain erupted in flames. A six-foot-long Zuni rocket, inexplicably launched by an F-4 Phantom across the flight deck, ripped through the fuel tank of McCain’s aircraft. Hundreds of gallons of fuel splashed onto the deck and came ablaze. Then: Clank. Clank. Two 1,000-pound bombs dropped from under the belly of McCain’s stubby A-4, the Navy’s “Tinkertoy Bomber,” into the fire.

McCain, who knew more than most pilots about bailing out of a crippled aircraft, leapt forward out of the cockpit, swung himself down from the refueling probe protruding from the nose cone, rolled through the flames and ran to safety across the flight deck. Just then, one of his bombs “cooked off,” blowing a crater in the deck and incinerating the sailors who had rushed past McCain with hoses and fire extinguishers. McCain was stung by tiny bits of shrapnel in his legs and chest, but the wounds weren’t serious; his father would later report to friends that Johnny “came through without a scratch.”

The damage to the Forrestal was far more grievous: The explosion set off a chain reaction of bombs, creating a devastating inferno that would kill 134 of the carrier’s 5,000-man crew, injure 161 and threaten to sink the ship.

These are the moments that test men’s mettle. Where leaders are born. Leaders like . . . Lt. Cmdr. Herb Hope, pilot of the A-4 three planes down from McCain’s. Cornered by flames at the stern of the carrier, Hope hurled himself off the flight deck into a safety net and clambered into the hangar deck below, where the fire was spreading. According to an official Navy history of the fire, Hope then “gallantly took command of a firefighting team” that would help contain the conflagration and ultimately save the ship.

McCain displayed little of Hope’s valor. Although he would soon regale The New York Times with tales of the heroism of the brave enlisted men who “stayed to help the pilots fight the fire,” McCain took no part in dousing the flames himself. After going belowdecks and briefly helping sailors who were frantically trying to unload bombs from an elevator to the flight deck, McCain retreated to the safety of the “ready room,” where off-duty pilots spent their noncombat hours talking trash and playing poker. There, McCain watched the conflagration unfold on the room’s closed-circuit television — bearing distant witness to the valiant self-sacrifice of others who died trying to save the ship, pushing jets into the sea to keep their bombs from exploding on deck.

As the ship burned, McCain took a moment to mourn his misfortune; his combat career appeared to be going up in smoke. “This distressed me considerably,” he recalls in Faith of My Fathers. “I feared my ambitions were among the casualties in the calamity that had claimed the Forrestal.”

The fire blazed late into the night. The following morning, while oxygen-masked rescue workers toiled to recover bodies from the lower decks, McCain was making fast friends with R.W. “Johnny” Apple of The New York Times, who had arrived by helicopter to cover the deadliest Naval calamity since the Second World War. The son of admiralty surviving a near-death experience certainly made for good copy, and McCain colorfully recounted how he had saved his skin. But when Apple and other reporters left the ship, the story took an even stranger turn: McCain left with them. As the heroic crew of the Forrestal mourned its fallen brothers and the broken ship limped toward the Philippines for repairs, McCain zipped off to Saigon for what he recalls as “some welcome R&R.”

4. To watch the Republican National Convention and listen to Fred Thompson’s account of John McCain’s internment in Vietnam, you would think that McCain never gave his captors anything beyond his name, rank, service number and, under duress, the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line. His time in Hanoi, we’re to understand, steeled the man — transforming him from a fighter jock who put himself first into a patriot who would henceforth selflessly serve the public good.

There is no question that McCain suffered hideously in North Vietnam. His ejection over a lake in downtown Hanoi broke his knee and both his arms. During his capture, he was bayoneted in the ankle and the groin, and had his shoulder smashed by a rifle butt. His tormentors dragged McCain’s broken body to a cell and seemed content to let him expire from his injuries. For the next two years, there were few days that he was not in agony.

But the subsequent tale of McCain’s mistreatment — and the transformation it is alleged to have produced — are both deeply flawed. The Code of Conduct that governed POWs was incredibly rigid; few soldiers lived up to its dictate that they “give no information . . . which might be harmful to my comrades.” Under the code, POWs are bound to give only their name, rank, date of birth and service number — and to make no “statements disloyal to my country.”

Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. “I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital,” he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. “I had to tell them,” he insisted to Dramesi, “or I would have died in bed.”

Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain’s service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot’s behavior as heroic — “he wasn’t exceptional one way or the other” — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. “This business of my country before my life?” Dramesi says. “Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he’d be dead.”

Once the Vietnamese realized they had captured the man they called the “crown prince,” they had every motivation to keep McCain alive. His value as a propaganda tool and bargaining chip was far greater than any military intelligence he could provide, and McCain knew it. “It was hard not to see how pleased the Vietnamese were to have captured an admiral’s son,” he writes, “and I knew that my father’s identity was directly related to my survival.” But during the course of his medical treatment, McCain followed through on his offer of military information. Only two weeks after his capture, the North Vietnamese press issued a report — picked up by The New York Times — in which McCain was quoted as saying that the war was “moving to the advantage of North Vietnam and the United States appears to be isolated.” He also provided the name of his ship, the number of raids he had flown, his squadron number and the target of his final raid.

AND THAT’S JUST IN THE FIRST 5 PAGES. Take the time to read this article. I think you’ll find, as the title of the article suggests, McCain is no maverick. In fact, you may just find that this man is worse than you could have imagined. He does NOT have the class, temperament, or anything that should qualify him to be president. In fact, all those things have convinced me we would ALL be safer if he never gets that chance.

The Extremely Dangerous Religion of Sarah Palin