Third Graders Debate Iraq War

An excerpt from a presidential debate in Mr. Faustmann's third grade class, Alma Michigan.

Mangled Debate

Funny

I Don't Want to Hear Anything More About Joe the Plumber

The guy isn't even registered to vote, for crying out loud. And he's not a registered plumber, as far as anyone can tell. And he compared Obama to Sammy Davis Jr. (why not Fred Astaire? Oh yeah, Fred Astaire's white.)

Joe the apathetic cheating racist, more like it.

Real, Not Photoshopped

These actual photos from the debate are the top emailed photos on yahoo right now. Vote for McTongue.






McCain couldn't figure out which was to go to get around the table after the debate, so he mugged for the camera. Bad idea, John.

What Just Happened to Me?

Maybe he's practicing for his part in the campaign's rendition of "The Monster Mash" for Halloween.

Mucho Poll Candy

dailykos: ------ AVALANCHE !!! ----- --- By 3 to 1 Margin --- (Now /w Mega Eye Candy)

Photos of the debate and from the campaign trail, and many screengrabs of the cable polls, all of which showed Obama wiped the floor with Senator Angry.

Why John McCain Lost the Debate

48 second version:



ANGRY! ANGRY! ANGRY!

Don't Roll Your Eyes At Me, Buster

Why McCain lost the debate, in 90 seconds, from the fabulous JedReport (now the official videoblogger/contributing editor of dailykos):



McCain spent the entire debate on the verge of losing it. Scary.

John McCain = 4 More Years of Bush

McCain recites Bush's 2004 debate position on taxes in the 2008 debate. Feel the change!



McCain = Bush

Debate Predictions

Emptywheel says Bob Schieffer will bring up William Ayers in the debate, because he's in the tank for McCain (and in the tank for Republicans generally; after all, his brother is ambassador to Japan) and because McCain wants him to.

I say Obama will be cool as a cucumber and keep bringing every discussion back to the economy. Also, McCain will mangle some difficult-to-pronounce name. Attacks will fail. Post-debate polls will give it to Obama. Fox Newsies will wail and gnash their teeth.

Should be fun!

Set the Record Straight

From the Obama campaign:

JOHN MCCAIN’S 17 LIES TONIGHT

1. MCCAIN PROPOSING NEW HOUSING PLAN. McCain today said he had a new plan to allow the Treasury to purchase and restructure mortgages. The truth is that this is not a new proposal and is already part of the rescue plan that was signed into law. It was Obama, not McCain who called for this move two weeks ago.

2. MCCAIN TAX PLAN IS BETTER. McCain said, “It is my proposal not Senator Obama’s” that will “take care of working families.” The reality is that even the Heritage Foundation agrees Obama will provide a middle class tax cut that studies have found is three times larger than under McCain’s plan. In contrast, the McCain plan’s benefits would overwhelmingly go to the wealthiest Americans and would leave out 101 million middle class households.

3. MCCAIN’S PLAN FOR HOUSING CRISIS. McCain said, “We have got to give some trust and confidence back to America” to solve the housing crisis. But Politifact agrees that McCain was taken by surprise by the mortgage crisis and was “a latecomer” to the debate. He even said “I don’t claim to be smart enough” to solve the housing crisis and newspapers have found that McCain “overstates” his past actions on housing regulation.

4. TIES TO FANNIE/FREDDIE. McCain talked about “Senator Obama and his cronies and friends in Washington” and blamed them for Fannie and Freddie, while news accounts have pointed out his “deeper” ties to the companies. His campaign manager Rick Davis fought against greater regulation for years, and then his firm was revealed to be taking $15,000 a month until this summer from Freddie Mac, after denying any recent ties.


5. MCCAIN WILL MAKE HEALTH CARE AFFORDABLE AND AVAILABLE. McCain said “We can do them all at once,” talking about affordability and availability of health care, but he failed to mention that experts say his plan may require some to pay more or get less coverage, that millions would lose their employer-based coverage, and that even he has admitted that his plan will raise taxes on some.

6. SMALL BUSINESS TAXES. McCain said Obama’s plan “will increase taxes on 50% of small business revenue,” when the Washington Post found similar attacks “untrue,” and studies show 97% of small business owners wouldn’t see higher taxes under Obama’s plan. Factcheck.org said the attack used “a false and preposterously inflated figure.”

7. TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY. McCain said “I am not in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy.” While he once said that the Bush tax cuts were “too tilted to the wealthy,” now he wants to make them permanent.

8. 2005 ENERGY BILL. McCain attacked Obama for his vote for the 2005 energy bill, saying it had “billions for oil companies.” The truth is that FactCheck.org called this “an old canard” and a “false attack.” The non-partisan Congressional Research Service said the bill actually raised taxes on the oil and gas industry.

9. 94 VOTES FOR HIGHER TAXES…AGAIN. McCain once again repeated the attack that Obama voted 94 times for higher taxes, calling it “his record.” This attack has been debunked by the Associated Press, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, CNN, the New York Times and FactCheck.org, among others.

10. OBAMA RECORD ON NUCLEAR POWER. McCain said, “Obama is opposed to that,” when the reality is that this attack is “false” according to FactCheck.org. Obama supports nuclear as long as it’s “clean and safe.”

11. HEALTH COVERAGE FOR PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS. McCain said his health care plan would let people cross state lines to get plans, suggesting it would improve care and not telling Americans that it would weaken patient protections and does nothing to require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. McCain’s plan would create a situation the GOP chair of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners said would cause a “race to the bottom.”

12. HIGHER HEALTH CARE COSTS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES. McCain attacked Obama’s health care plan, suggesting that Obama will fine small businesses and make health care more expensive for them. ABC pointed out that he was “omitting key details about Obama’s plan to mitigate costs” for health care for small businesses. McCain also omitted his record of voting repeatedly against tax credits for small businesses to help with health care costs and that the majority of members of the National Federation of Independent Businesses oppose his plan.

13. JUDGMENT ON IRAQ. McCain said that he had “the judgment” to make national security decisions, ignoring his record of misguided statements during the course of the Iraq war. In 2005 he said the war would be over within 18 months. In 2003 he said “we will be welcomed as liberators,” and that “we will win it easily.”

14. RUSSIA AND GEORGIA. McCain said Obama “was wrong about Russia when they committed aggression against Georgia” when Obama had condemned Russia’s actions and called for an immediate ceasefire.

15. SURGE IN IRAQ. McCain again attacked Obama on the surge, when news accounts show that Obama “said at the time” that the increase “could improve security in certain neighborhoods but that it would not solve the long-term political strife.” Meanwhile McCain said only 10,000 troops would do the job.

16. NEGOTIATIONS. McCain attacked Obama on diplomatic engagement, but the Washington Post has said McCain is “distorting history when he suggests that Barack Obama is bucking American presidential tradition in expressing a willingness to meet with the leaders of countries hostile to the United States” and that McCain is “incorrect.”

17. SOMALIA. McCain held up Somalia as an example of failed American foreign policy, saying “we ended up having to withdraw in humiliation.” McCain ignored the amendment he introduced in 1993 to cut off funding for troops in Somalia.

Already Commercialized

I'm voting for that one!

McCain loses the debate in 3 seconds:

Obama Defeats McCain

Poll porn

Down goes McCain! Down goes McCain! Down goes McCain!

Awesome photo diary on the debate:

dailykos: ------ LANDSLIDE !!! ----- Barack CRUSHES McSame --- By 2 to 1 Margin --- (UPDATED w Mega Eye Candy)

New Slogan

I'm with that one.

hat tip to Andrew Sullivan, who I still haven't forgiven for saying of me and other liberals "The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts...may well mount...a fifth column." after 9/11. Dumb fuck.

Contempt

McCain calls Obama "That one"



McCain refuses to shake Obama's hand:



McCain's treating Obama with contempt makes me feel contempt for McCain.

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy: October 7, 2008

McCain doubletakes -- then smiles -- as supporter calls Obama a terrorist.

Angry/Hater '08 are whipping their crowds and their supporters into a hate-filled, racist frenzy. John McCain asked the crowd in Albuquerque, New Mexico yesterday "Who is the real Barack Obama?" and a man shouted "terrorist". Watch the video above; McCain clearly heard the man yell terrorist, his facial expression changes to one of "whoops", but he does not denounce the statement. Just like when a supporter asked him "How do we beat the bitch" about Hillary Clinton in the primaries, and he didn't denounce that, either. He laughed it off, just like he did yesterday.

At Sarah Palin's rally in Florida, she claimed that Obama "palled around" with terrorists, and said nothing as one of her supporters yelled "Kill him!". At the same rally, Palin complained about the mainstream media at a campaign event, and her supporters:

...hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

The head of the Pennsylvania Republican Party called Barack Obama "a terrorist's best friend".

Associations, associations, does the McCain camp really want to play that game? Palin held a fundraiser yesterday at the home of a corrupt Wall Street investment company exec, whose company paid a $72 million dollar fine in 2005. She and her husband belonged to a secessionist political party. She was blessed in church by a witch-fighting pastor who prayed to protect her from the "spirit of witchcraft" in 2005 (not 1605). She sat and listened in church while the founder of Jews for Jesus lambasted "Israelites".

McCain has his own set of unsavory affiliations. For one, G. Gordon Liddy, the convicted Watergate burglar, is an old friend of McCain's, and McCain appeared on his radio show in November of 2007. Liddy is a convicted felon who spent 4 1/2 years in jail for Watergate, and who has admitted plotting to kill, firebomb, and kidnap American citizens who disagreed with his radical conservative views. In addition, during the 1980s, McCain "served on the board of a far-right conservative organization that had supplied arms and funds to paramilitary organizations in Latin America", the U.S. Council for World Freedom, an organization with ties to Nazi sympathizers.

The debate tonight will be interesting to say the least. If I were Obama, I would be tempted to put McCain on the spot and ask him, "Do you think I am a terrorist?" Because McCain is a coward. He says these things behind Obama's back, but never has said them to his face. Even if he says yes, McCain won't dare look at Obama, and we will see who the real Alpha Dog in the race is. The fear of looking his opponent in the face betrays McCain's weakness.

Will McCain continue his angry rants in front of a group of undecided voters? I doubt it, but my record as a prognosticator isn't very good. We'll see tonight.

Sarah Palin in 30 Seconds

Vice Presidential Debate on Saturday Night Live

Tina Fey once again skewers Sarah Palin on last night's Saturday Night Live. Bonus appearance by Queen Latifah as Gwen Ifill.

Q: How would you solve the financial crisis, being a maverick?

A: You know we're gonna take every aspect of the crisis and look at it, and then we're gonna ask ourselves, what would a maverick do in this situation? And then you know, we'll do that.

Sarah Palin is George W. Bush in Lipstick

Keith Olbermann shows that Sarah Palin's handlers have put George W. Bush's deceptive words in her lipsticked mouth:



Winker/Wanker '08

No Comment

yahoo: Republican vice presidential candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin winks as she speaks during her vice presidential debate against Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)