Today was visit to the vet day and let's just say it did not go well. After taking the Metro across town, during the walk the cat case handle finally gave way and Nasdaq hit the ground with a hard thud. First hiss of the day. (She rarely hisses and usually only when children run after her or Sushi is attacking her.) It was an especially humid day so I was drenched by the time I reached the vet.
Cat girl needed to have a large lump on her back removed so today was the day. Thankfully it turned out to be OK and not serious but it had grown quickly in recent months. The vet asked me to pull her out of the crate after surgery because she was hissing at everyone and taking swipes at the doctor. (Yikes, never happens.) The next round of hissing started. She eventually went into her new soft carrying case and was OK until we arrived home. I unzipped the case and the hissing started all over again.
I know a way to my cat girl's heart and it's with a tasty bowl of all natural fish something-or-other, nice and smelly, just the way she likes it. She hissed at me as I opened the tin but reluctantly approached the dish. Once I left the room, she dove in. Now that Joelle is home (the good guy is here!) all is well. No hissing.
Happier times, as in before taking Nasdaq to the vet for surgery...sniffle, sniffle. (Mental note: let Joelle take cats to vet next time.) Read the rest of this post...
A pollster whose mathematical model has correctly predicted every winner of the White House popular vote since 1988 is banking on a decisive victory for Democrat Barack Obama in November.
Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz said Wednesday that according to his "time for change" model, Obama would secure 54.3 percent of the popular vote against 45.7 percent for Republican John McCain.
That margin would virtually guarantee a crushing victory for the Democrat in the state-by-state electoral college that actually selects the next president, Abramowitz said.
Schenectady County gave Paul Tonko the win in the Democratic primary Tuesday night for the 21st Congressional District seat, even though he entered the race later and raised less money than two of his strongest competitors.
Scathing report from ABC this morning on Sarah Palin's book-banning inclinations while she was mayor of Wasilla. Watch this video, then send it around:
As I reported last night, the McCain campaign is hopping mad that they think Barack Obama called McCain "a fish." Obama didn't, of course, since, well, people don't call each other fishes in America. It doesn't make any sense. Perhaps they did use "fish" as a slur in, say, 1920s America - I have no idea - but today, it just doesn't make any sense. But, there you had them today, all over the news, John McCain's new "truth squad" fishing out - oh sorry - fleshing out the details of this rather fishy story.
I really wish the Obama campaign had jumped on this and had fun with it. Can you imagine Obama going off in front of a crowd about how - get this - John McCain is angry that I called him a fish! People would howl. The DNC could add a page to their Web site - guess what kind of fish John McCain is. We could make signs "Fish for Obama." It would make people question John McCain's honesty, his sanity, and it would be one big joke, all at John McCain's expense. It would also shut down the sexism argument once and for all, because the entire thing would be laughable. Jed put together a great video, above, but I'd still like to see the professional Democrats take advantage of some of these opportunities McCain hands us, and throw them back in his face, like a cold wet fish.
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Keith Olbermann raised a brilliant point tonight. John McCain bragged in June that he, and only he, knows how to capture Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for killing 3,000 people on September 11. Pray tell, how Senator?
As Keith notes, it's been several months now and John McCain is still keeping his little secret. Is McCain planning on blackmailing the country, Olbermann asks - he won't tell us unless he wins? I can imagine some in the media will say "pshaw, we know what McCain meant." No we don't. McCain was happy to invoke September 11 for his own political purposes in June, and just last week at his own convention John McCain was happy to force the nation to witness again the horrific spectacle of planes flying into the World Trade Center and the towers falling. For some reason, John McCain thought showing that video, up until then taboo at a political event, was now fair game. John McCain told the country three months ago that he and only he - not Barack Obama, but John McCain - had the secret to how to capture Osama bin Laden. But apparently he's keeping the secret a secret.
When John Kerry said that several world leaders had confided to him that they preferred him as president to Bush, the Republicans had a simple reply: "Name one." So tell us, Senator McCain, what's the secret to capturing Osama bin Laden? And more importantly, why haven't you shared this deadly secret with anyone else?
Okay, Ben didn't call her a "liar" because nice journalists don't go there. He simply pointed out that everything Sarah Palin is saying is untrue and she knows it.
Senator John McCain recently told reporters that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has “learned that earmarks are bad.”
But not that bad, apparently. According to a “summary of requests for federal appropriations” posted to her budget office’s website earlier this year, Palin requested millions of federal dollars for everything from improving recreational halibut fishing to studying the mating habits of crabs and the DNA of harbor seals.
It’s a position at odds with her recasting as an anti-earmarking champion, and with the tone of the biting scorn she’s employed toward the budgetary practice this week....
Palin wrote an op-ed in a local newspaper outlining her not-so-reticent posture on earmarks.
“My role at the federal level is simply to submit the most well-conceived earmark requests we can,” she wrote....
Palin, meanwhile, has requested $3.2 million to be spent in part researching the “genetics of harbor seals,” in one of the state’s many requests for federal funding of research into Alaska’s fauna....
The McCain-Palin campaign didn’t respond to the questions of whether Palin still backs those specific requests, or how she would defend them in light of her opposition to earmarks.
GOP sources are sending around a six year old article from the paper reporting that Biden's then- 21-year-old daughter was arrested for mouthing off to a cop outside some bars. Yeah, okay. And she apologized to the police afterwards and they let her go. Good. It was a stupid thing of her to do, and she made amends.
But I'm not quite sure what the point is here in Republicans spreading around this article. Biden and Obama both said to leave kids out of it, they didn't take the bait when asked about news reports that Palin's underage unwed daughter was pregnant. In fact, the reason we all know about that story is because John McCain leaked news of the pregnancy to Reuters.
And in any case, Sarah Palin has made pregnancy and abortion and sex education, and more generally religious right "family values" one of her big issues - some argue that Sarah Palin fails the hypocrisy test, living to a different standard than she'd like the government to impose on others. For example, the Reuters story seemed to imply that Palin gave her daughter the choice as to whether to keep the child. Whereas Palin would like to take that choice away from every American man and woman. She wants abortion outlawed in every case other than when the life of the mother is threatened. That doesn't appear to be the standard she used in her own family. The issue isn't her daughter - the issue is Sarah Palin and her own hypocrisy on a variety of "family values" issues.
I don't see where Biden fails the hypocrisy test because his daughter was dumb enough to mouth off to a cop. And in any case, if the Republicans really want to say that families are now on-limits, then should we post the numerous stories in the National Enquierer about Sarah Palin, including a new one today? Should we post the story about McCain's son on Gawker? We don't, we haven't, and we won't because, at our core, Democrats simply aren't as sleazy as Republicans. And it may be our eventual undoing.
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This is about as close to "criticism" of McCain as you get from the GOP propaganda organ known as Tass News, I mean, FOX News. In the article, FOX marks the "anniversary" of McCain's last press conference - that's downright nasty for them.
For a candidate who once railed against “stale soundbites, staged rallies and over-managed messages,” John McCain seems to have turned over a new leaf.
Today marks the four-week anniversary since McCain held his last press conference (8/13 in Birmingham, MI) and three weeks since his last public town hall meeting (8/20 in Las Cruces, NM).
McCain’s new campaign strategy: staged rallies with thousands of supporters. Since announcing Sarah Palin as his VP choice on August 29, McCain’s has appeared at 11 rallies with his new running mate where both members of the ticket delivered a 10-15 minute stump speech.
While shifting to rallies is inevitable for any party nominee during a general election, McCain has always touted town hall meetings and interactions with the press as reasons for his success.
[W]hat is already apparent is that John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes. So let's stopped being shocked and awed by every new example of it. It is undignified. What can we do? We've got a dangerously reckless contender for the presidency and a vice presidential candidate who distinguished her self by abuse of office even on the comparatively small political stage of Alaska. They've both embraced a level of dishonesty that disqualifies them for high office. Democrats owe it to the country to make clear who these people are. No apologies or excuses. If Democrats can say at the end of this campaign that they made clear exactly how and why these two are unfit for high office they can be satisfied they served their country.
McCain made a decision that revealed many appalling things about him. In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement. No one who cares about this country's safety would gamble the security of the world on a total unknown because she polled well with the Christianist base. No person who truly believed that the surge was integral to this country's national security would pick as his veep candidate a woman who, so far as we can tell anything, opposed it at the time.
McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain - no one else - has proved it.
So now John McCain is lying about what independent watchdogs have said, or haven't said, about Barack Obama. McCain just put out an ad claiming that FactCheck.org called Obama's attacks on Palin "completely false"..."misleading." Only problem? FactCheck.org said that quote about someone else, not Obama, and in fact, FactCheck.org says Obama's criticisms of Palin have been accurate. So, John McCain lied, again, to the American people. (CBS caught McCain lying in the same ad about Katie Couric, claiming that she as well criticized Obama - she didn't.) And he's going to keep lying until the media stars asking him the larger questions, like what all these lies say about John McCain, the man he's become, the loss of his maverick image, has McCain reached a point of utter desperation, has Karl Rove totally taken over McCain's campaign, and is McCain any longer in charge of his campaign? We've all known John McCain for decades. So who is this guy running for president in his name? That's the question the media should be asking. What happened to John McCain?
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Good. McCain's a liar. And Palin is a liar. And they're burning all their bridges with the media. For all of its flaws, the media is still our last best defense at defending the truth. That's why we get so upset with them all the time. As I think Atrios wrote once, the right wants the media to lie, we want the media to do its job. McCain thinks the media is going to help him win this election based on a series of lies. Time will tell if the media plays along. So far, I'd say they're showing a fair amount of backbone, including CBS today with regards to standing up to McCain for lying about what Katie Couric had said (gee, McCain hiding behind someone else, no one could have predicted that).
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AMERICAblog reader SMT from Raleigh, NC writes about pig-gate, and includes an image they made:
It seems to me that the best way for Obama to respond to this latest manufactured outrage from the Mighty Wurlitzer is to do something that no Democrat has done before, but that Republicans do all. the. time.
Repeat what he said. Repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. "Like I said yesterday, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. You can wrap a fish in paper, but it's still gonna stink." Laugh while you repeat it. Over and over again, at every campaign event.
It demonstrates that he can't be badgered into submission, that there was no subtext to the statement to begin with, that he's not afraid of Mccain or Palin, that he's not afraid of the noise machine, and that he trusts the American public to discern the difference between an issue and utter bullshit.
Don't back down, don't waver or hesitate, don't alter your stump speech, and for god's sake don't explain or ever ever apologize.
Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties engaged in illicit sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said Wednesday.
The alleged transgressions involve 13 Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with — and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from — oil company employees, according to three reports released Wednesday by the Interior Department's inspector general.
The investigations reveal a "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" by a small group of individuals "wholly lacking in acceptance of or adherence to government ethical standards," wrote Inspector General Earl E. Devaney.
The reports describe a fraternity house atmosphere inside the Denver Minerals Management Service office responsible for marketing the oil and gas that energy companies barter to the government instead of making cash royalty payments for drilling on federal lands. The government received $4.3 billion in such Royalty-in-Kind payments last year. The oil is then resold to energy companies or put in the nation's emergency stockpile.
Yeah, drill, baby, drill. Under George Bush's reign, the oil companies were literally screwing the country.
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McCain has a new ad. It paints Obama as a dark nasty wolf out to eat poor Sarah Palin. Which got me thinking:
1. Obama doesn't want to cut McCain's or Palin's heads off because it would be mean, and he doesn't do mean - but also because if Obama does fight back hard, then he might be accused of flip-flopping on his message of "change."
2. In his latest personal attack ad, John McCain is now accusing Obama of doing just that, knocking Palin's head off, AND flip-flopping on his message of change - even though Obama hasn't and isn't.
3. So, Obama's strategy of playing nice, and not giving the Republicans cause to accuse him of flip-flopping on the "nice" thing, has led Obama to give McCain a free pass AND McCain is still accusing Obama of flip-flopping on the "nice" thing.
4. Finally, I've heard chatter that Obama may think he has to be careful not to come off as the "stereotypical angry black man." That this is one reason he's playing nice. Well, they just painted you as a black wolf preying on a white woman. How's that going for you?
So, in a nutshell, we played nice and the Republicans played mean. We held back because we didn't want to give the Republicans ammo, and they fired anyway. Gee, no one could have predicted that. Oh wait, we all did. Anybody else starting to wonder if our next president is going to be named Palin?
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Thomas Frank noticed in the Journal today that Sarah Palin used an odd source for a quote in her announcement speech attributed only to a "writer."
"We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity," she said, drawing from a once-powerful, now forgotten mid-century conservative columnist named Westbrook Pegler.
It's an odd source because Pegler, who moved further right as his career went on, ended up very, very far out. Frank notes that he talked hopefully of the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt.
He was also known for what Philip Roth described as his "casual distaste for Jews," which had become so evident by the end that he was bounced from the journal of the John Birch Society in 1964 for alleged anti-semitism. According to his obituary, he'd advanced the theory that American Jews of Eastern European descent were "instinctively sympathetic to Communism, however outwardly respectable they appeared.
It'd make a great ad, or simply a great comeback during the debates, or even now, when John McCain tries to deflect criticism of his troubled present by once again reminding us of his fabled past:
"Senator, I served with John McCain. I knew John McCain. John McCain was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no John McCain."
Gets to the larger issue of McCain no longer being a maverick, no longer being much of anything he once was. He's just not the same John McCain who ran for president as a younger man. He's someone else now, someone unrecognizable.
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Watching CNN a few minutes, saw Sarah Palin, standing next to John McCain, say her now classic line about the private jet, "I put it on eBay." She certainly leaves the impression that it was her idea and the sale was successful. Neither are true. In fact, the eBay gimmick cost the state of Alaska money. Nico Pitney explains:
"It was the practice of the state to dispose of items such as this via eBay prior to listing the jet," Vern Jones, Alaska's Chief Procurement Officer, acknowledged on Tuesday.
Despite being a normal state procedure and, in the end, a costly one, Palin has highlighted her decision to put Alaska's luxury jet on eBay in every speech she has given since being chosen as McCain's vice president. It is a significantly abridged version of what happened.
By the time she was elected, there were many state items being offered on eBay. As the Anchorage Daily News reported on December 13, 2006, nine days after Palin took office and the day she announced the jet posting, the state was "auctioning 38 items on the site, including three aircraft -- two Super Cubs and a Cessna... Other items for sale included two sets of used helicopter floats ($300) and King Air exhaust stacks ($500)."
Back in 2003, the state sold an old ferry, The Bartlett, for $389,500. As Jones noted in a Daily News article at that time, "it [was] not usual for Alaska to sell big-ticket items on eBay because the site is cheap and has a big audience."
The state jet, in contrast, was not a good fit for eBay. Palin never actually sold the aircraft online (though, unlike John McCain, she never claimed that to be the case). But more important, while the jet sat unsold, Alaska was on the hook to pay $62,492.79 every three months as part of the initial purchasing deal.
But, it's such a good story and the GOPers love it. Why should facts matter. And, anyone who challenges the veracity of John McCain or his v.p. pick will be branded a sexist and un-American.
Also, maybe that for eBay CEO, Meg Whitman, who is a big McCain supporter can school Palin and McCain on how eBay works.
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It's hard to imagine a better definition of sexism, and dishonor, than a man under attack grabbing a woman to hold in front of him. (Doesn't have to be a man, doesn't have to be a woman, roles could be switched, they could even be grabbing a child, like in the movie The Dead Zone (pictured to the left) but you get the idea.) But that's exactly what John McCain has done with Sarah Palin over the past two weeks - John McCain has found his human shield, and her name is Sarah.
Take a look at the video of Obama yesterday making the "lipstick on a pig" reference. Obama wasn't talking about Palin - Palin wasn't even mentioned. Obama was clearly talking about John McCain. And John McCain got so angry that he grabbed the first woman he could find and held her in front of him so she could take the blows. And that woman's name is Sarah Palin. Here's the video of Obama, watch it, it's only 45 seconds long - the target was clearly McCain, and McCain knows it, and it really set off his temper:
McCain may be old and in somewhat precarious health, but he's not senile. He knows what he's doing. Following the Democratic convention, McCain was worried that Obama's rock-star status, and McCain's own now-frail appearance, would show him up at his own convention and beyond. So McCain decided that the best way to defend himself was to use Sarah Palin - and I mean "use" - to change the subject.
Remember, it was McCain who leaked news of Palin's daughter's pregnancy to Reuters. It was McCain who approved of Palin lying about earmarks and the Bridge to Nowhere the first day he introduced her to the public. It is McCain who then had Palin lie about those issues each and every day since. It is McCain who has suddenly become such a sensitive Alan-Alda type of guy that he now sees sexism around every corner (except when he himself berates small girls, grown women, and even his own wife).
"John McCain has now put his entire campaign on Sarah Palin's shoulders... He doesn't get crowds without her. She was already supposed to be in Alaska getting ready to send her son off to war, getting sort of her house in order to start campaigning solo. Now there's a lot of question: Does McCain even bother campaigning solo, or are they campaigning in a tandem because they can get the real crowds... McCain-Palin events look like Obama events a month ago."
Sarah Palin is simply one more excuse for John McCain not to have to face the press, not to have to explain why he voted with Bush 90% of the time, not to explain why, whenever faced with a difficult question about current events or his own actions, he resorts to shutting down all questioning by reminding us, again and again, that he was a POW 40 years ago. John McCain can no longer take the heat, so he's gotten a woman - grabbed a woman - to do it for him.
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The LA Gay & Lesbian Center asked me to post this - they need your guys' help:
This is one of the most important e-mails I have ever sent to you—perhaps the most important. Please read on because I have alarming news.
In 56 days, 12 million Californians will go to the polls to elect a new President and weigh in on Proposition 8—the ballot measure that would eliminate our right to marry.
A number of public polls have shown that our side—the NO side—is ahead. This is much better than being behind, but the devil is in the details. An in-depth analysis of the polling reveals that fully 20% of the voters are still undecided.
We've learned from losses on other anti-gay ballot initiatives, here and in other states (Wisconsin, Colorado, etc.), that people lie to pollsters about their prejudices. There is typically a 7-10 point difference between what people tell the pollster about their views on LGBT rights and how they really vote. In other words 7-10% say they believe in equality but actually vote against us.
When you consider all of these factors, we’re in a dead heat on Prop 8.
So, we cannot rest easy—we must do everything we can to match the efforts of our opponents. Every single vote and donation counts!
That’s why I’m writing. We need you. It costs money to reach voters, and lots of it. That means we need you to give. And if you already have, we need you to dig deeper and give again. We need you to help in every way you can.
Our plan for defeating Prop 8 requires us to match anti-gay efforts dollar for dollar. We’ve been doing that. Until a few days ago, that is, when the right wingers behind Prop 8 did something really scary—they bought time to begin running their misleading and discriminatory TV ads a full week before we bought time to begin running ours.
Let me share with you why this is a concern:
Most ballot measure ads, that are not about corporate interests, begin running when voters receive their vote-by-mail ballots—this year that’s October 6. We bought air time to begin our ad run that week. Just days ago we learned our opponents bought time to begin running their ads on September 29—a full week prior to when the vote-by-mail ballots are received.
We're concerned because our analysis of undecided voters tells us that they may well make up their minds based on the first TV ads they see.
We cannot afford to let them get on the air first, especially when the race is so close!
That means we need to raise millions more to purchase an additional week of time. And, the longer we wait, the more expensive it gets to buy that time. So, we need money and we need it fast so we can get the biggest bang for our bucks.
It also would be enormously helpful if you would throw a house party to raise money from your friends and engage them. You can download a campaign house party kit that will walk you through all the steps. Also, if you’ll e-mail me, I’ll give you a referral code that will enable us to track the money you raise. (I’m going to have a thank you party for successful fund raisers).
You can also volunteer to help our field effort reach voters. In addition to television advertising, a phone call from a committed volunteer is one of the best ways to persuade undecided voters.
THANK YOU for taking some action today. We can win on November 4, but only if you and I and everyone gets involved.
I'm trying to decide which is worse: John McCain not knowing how many houses he owns or Sarah Palin having taxpayers pay for her to sleep in her own house.
Both are pretty bad and show that McCain and Palin are out of touch.
On which is worse, I'm leaning towards McCain not knowing how many houses he owns.
But, it is almost comical to see the contortions the McCain campaign is going through to justify Palin getting paid to sleep in her house:
Ms. Palin’s staff and the McCain campaign said the charges to the state were entirely appropriate under Alaska rules.
“Every action taken by Governor Palin was open and transparent,” said Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign. “It is only logical that if she is traveling for the government, that her expenses be paid for.”
Ms. Comella said that Ms. Palin’s travel expenses were “80 percent below” those of her predecessor, Frank H. Murkowski, and that she had achieved this savings by selling the state’s plane, flying coach when traveling on the state’s business and driving herself to work.
“Her actions mirrored her promise when she went into office of assuring accountability and transparency in government,” Ms. Comella said.
Ms. Comella declined, however, to release the details of Ms. Palin’s travels as governor and the per diems that she had received.
Um, just because she could do it, didn't mean she should do it. Isn't that their whole argument on earmarks? Elected officials can do them, but shouldn't?
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This is John McCain's campaign. When his v.p. pick lies, she is lying on behalf of John McCain. For the past few days on the campaign trail, McCain stood on the stage with her every time she repeated the lie about the "Bridge to Nowhere." McCain needs lies to win.
CBS has now dissected the Palin stump speech lines about the "Bridge to Nowhere." Like just about every other traditional media outlet, CBS says Palin's claims are not true. That means Palin is standing next to McCain and just lying:
Its one of those claims that gets so much applause.
"I told Congress 'thanks but no thanks,' to that bridge to nowhere," Palin has said over and over on the campaign trail, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports.
Gov. Sarah Palin just won't let it go. But the truth is the governor never rebuffed Congress. Here are the facts.
After a year of supporting the proposed bridge, near Ketchikan, Gov. Palin pulled state funds from the project, which killed the bridge for good, but she never said "no thanks" to the Federal funds promised by Congress -- $233 million.
In fact, here's the list of how Palin is spending those federal tax dollars - on other highway projects around Alaska. As a candidate for governor, she defended every dollar for roads and bridges the state could wrangle from Washington, according to the Congressional Record and the Alaska Department of Transportation.
So, why does John McCain just stand by while his v.p. lies to the American people?
McCain isn't in charge of his campaign. Karl Rove and his cronies are running the show. They're the people who lied about a war, which led to the deaths of over 4,000 Americans. Lying about the "Bridge to Nowhere" is kid's stuff for them. And, the Rove gang think (with good reason based on the Bush experience) that they can roll the traditional media and the pundits.
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This campaign gets more bizarre by the day. McCain and his crew, led by Karl Rove acolytes, are doing everything to keep the discussion off issues. They're trying to make sure voters never want to hear the name "George Bush" uttered between now and November 4th. Somehow, Sarah Palin has become the ONLY thing anyone is discussing.
The Obama campaign needs to pivot back. Get on the offensive. It's about McCain. It's about Bush. Palin is a sideshow, not the main event.
Obama kept saying that he wouldn't be distracted. "Not this time" was the mantra. Well, it's happening this time. The GOP's only hope is distraction, vicious attacks and lies, blatant lies. I think we've seen this movie before. This time, it needs a different ending.
Now this is a program that is interesting. Remember back in 2000 when Bush told us we couldn't afford Kyoto because it was too expensive? He then went on to blow out that amount on his war of convenience in Iraq. Investing in green jobs is a win-win because it helps create American jobs and it helps the country move beyond oil. There is no doubt that oil will go away at some time so why not be on the leading edge of the new market instead of playing catch up, when it's more expensive and fewer opportunities exist? The time for creating new markets for green energy is today, not in a decade or more when the game is over.
On a related subject, there is more chatter in the US about nuclear energy and recently I heard Bill Maher talk about France's success with it. Yes, France relies heavily on nuclear energy and in general, it has worked well. There are still plenty of problems related to disposal of the waste but in addition, we have had a few serious safety failures at two facilities in southern France. Before jumping on the more-nukes bandwagon, read on.
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The Milwaukee firm's quarterly survey of hiring plans found that a net 9% of firms expect to hire in the fourth quarter, down from 12% in the previous quarter, and 18% for the fourth quarter a year ago. This fourth quarter outlook is the tenth consecutive quarter of declining employer sentiment in the survey -- the longest such retreat in more than 20 years. Manpower's seasonally adjusted net-employment numbers, based on a survey of 14,000 U.S. companies, measure the percentage of firms planning to hire minus those intending layoffs. Manpower doesn't measure the number of jobs. The survey's margin of error is +/- 0.8%. Among retailers, even the upcoming holiday season doesn't seem to offer much hope: Just 8% of employers in wholesale and retail trade expect to hire in the upcoming fourth quarter, the lowest figure for that sector in 17 years, said Jonas Prising, president of Manpower North America. That category includes department stores, gas stations, restaurants, discount retailers, computer stores and wholesalers, among others. The industry's "hiring intentions are the lowest we've seen in the last 17 years. That tells you something about what they feel about end-of-year shopping sprees," Prising said. The sector "hasn't been this pessimistic for a long time."
Surprise! (Not really, but what the heck.) The Saudis were leaking stories the last few days that they would never go along with a cut, but in they joined the others. It looks as though the Saudis have either lost clout or are liars.
After hours of wrangling, OPEC on Wednesday agreed to revise its complex output targets and said the move would effectively cut supplies by half a million barrels per day (bpd).
Ministers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) had been widely expected to stick to existing production allocations, which have been in place all year.
But they had voiced concern about a growing surplus of oil on the market and prices on Tuesday sank to a five-month low below $102 a barrel, around 30 percent below a record hit in July above $147.
The market rallied by a dollar after OPEC's announcement.
So much for the decades of Republican talk about being fiscal conservatives. The Bush/McCain economic policies are crushing the country while their friends in Big Oil and Wall Street walk away laughing with profits and lower taxes. The federal deficit will jump from $161 billion up to $407 billion in only one year, reaching a record high only outdone by Bush in 2004. Clearly this is heading in the wrong direction.
The presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said the $407 billion deficit for this fiscal year is "more than $1 trillion worse than the budget surplus President Bush promised for 2008 in his first budget."
The Obama campaign charged on its Web site that Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the Republican presidential candidate, "wants us to think he represents change, but he wants to spend $3.4 trillion more than President Bush on tax cuts, most of which will go to the wealthiest corporations and big oil companies and leave more than 100 million middle-class families without a dime of tax relief." It said Obama "will bring real change by cutting taxes for middle-class families and small businesses, paying for all his proposals to reduce the deficit, and will put America on a path towards fiscal responsibility and a stronger economy."
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What issues do you cover?
US politics overall with a particular focus on the Obama Administration, the radical right, and civil rights.
Today was visit to the vet day and let's just say it did not go well. After taking the Metro across town, during the walk the cat case handle finally gave way and Nasdaq hit the ground with a hard thud. First hiss of the day. (She rarely hisses and usually only when children run after her or Sushi is attacking her.) It was an especially humid day so I was drenched by the time I reached the vet. 
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