There's a new and truly frightening ending to McCain's "lost at sea" ad

McCain's got a new ad that's apparently supposed to scare Americans into voting for him. Jed re-cut this latest ad with an alternate and truly horrific ending.

Read the rest of this post...

McCain campaign denying they pushed hoax mutilation story to media, even though they did

Read the rest of this post...

CNN's Rick Sanchez calls out media who fell for McCain staffer hoax

That would be FOX, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Newsday.

Read the rest of this post...

It's close in Arizona

Via DailyKos, the latest poll in Arizona shows John McCain has a four point lead in his home state: 44% - 40%. According to Markos, we may see a similar poll early next week from Arizona State University. Read the rest of this post...

Beautiful NYT story about Obama's grandmother

It's nice. Read it.

Read the rest of this post...

The Vet who did not vet

Read the rest of this post...

Why didn't McCain do the cover too?

Reader GP writes:

Was in line at Whole Foods in Silver Spring and people were pointing out the latest issue of Men's Health with Obama on the cover. Every checkout aisle had two rows of the mag.

Overheard the couple in front of me say "Obama on that cover just makes you think of McCain's dodgy health."

I'm sure they weren't the only one's to think it. A great get for Obama in the final days of the campaign.

Read the rest of this post...

Palin blames Steve "I worked for Karl Rove" Schmidt and Nicole "I worked at CBS" Wallace for her plunge in the polls

Yeah, it has nothing to do with Palin being a blithering idiot. This is great to see. The circular firing squad has now advanced to the very top of the McCain campaign, with Palin now blaming McCain's top strategists for her abysmal public image. Chuck Todd was apparently right, the other day, when he noticed some ill-will between McCain and Palin during their appearance with Brian Williams. It seems McCain managed to pick a running mate who's even more arrogant and self-righteous than he is. 10 more days, bitches. Read the rest of this post...

Obama is beautiful world

There's a town in Japan called "Obama." Guess who they're a fan of. This is priceless:

Read the rest of this post...

McCain aide: Palin a "diva" who's looking more out for herself than McCain

Let the fireworks begin, baby. You betcha.

With 10 days to go until election day, long brewing tension between Sarah Palin and key aides to John McCain has become so intense, it is spilling out into the public.

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin “going rogue” recently, while a Palin associate says she is simply trying to “bust free” of what she believes was a mishandled roll-out that damaged her.

McCain sources point several incidents where Palin has gone off message, and privately wonder if they were deliberate. For example: labeling robo calls “irritating,” even as the campaign was defending the use of them and telling reporters she disagreed with the campaigns controversial decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source tells CNN she appears to now be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

“She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,” said this McCain adviser, “she does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else. Also she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party.

Remember: divas trust only unto themselves as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”

The next leader of the party?! LOL We wish! Please, please, please anoint that blithering idiot, who believes women should carry their rapists's babies to term, as the next party leader. And the GOP can get 23% of the vote for the next 50 years. My pleasure. Read the rest of this post...

Big-name McCain adviser endorses Obama

HUff Post reports:

Now one of John McCain's actual advisers has switched sides:

Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.

This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."

More from TPM. Read the rest of this post...

Norm Coleman mails "rape" comic book to Minnesota's children

AMERICAblog reader JW writes:

hey john,

I got a self-mailer from the NRSC [National Republican Senatorial Committee] today.

My wife and I have 3 small boys under 6 years old. So when I saw the cartoon cover that says "Come on in kids..." then talks about rape with a little girl on the opposite page you can guess my utter disgust.

I'm just glad I got to it before my 6 year old. He doesn't need to be exposed to this.

What the hell is going on with the NRSC?

I am absolutely livid.

How sick are the Republicans? Creating a children's book talking about rape, and then sending it to Minnesota's children, all on behalf of Norm Coleman. So much for Coleman claiming the negative advertising was going to stop. (Then again, Coleman was at a rally last week where Obama was compared to mass murderer Charles Manson.) But making sleazy campaign literature look like a children's book, then sending it unwrapped into Minnesotans' homes so their kids can find it. Not very Senatorial. Here's a mailing that AMERICAblog reader JW just got yesterday from the Republican party supporting Norm Coleman against Al Franken.

PS Anyone else think the Republicans drew Franken a bit "ethnic," shall we say? Read the rest of this post...

Blithering Idiot Watch - Palin to stop federal funding for fruit fly research, the underpinning of all genetics, because she thinks it's pork

"This is the most mindless, ignorant, uninformed comment that we have seen from Governor Palin so far, and there's been a lot of competition for that prize." - Richard Wolfe, Newsweek

Sarah Palin yesterday mocked - yes, mocked - fruit fly research. In a speech about autism and disabilities, Palin had the audacity to mock "fruit fly research" as wasteful pork. Yes she did. She thinks it's pork because, to her, it has a funny name. Funny, because she's a blithering idiot who apparently never attended high school.

Now, anyone who has ever studied any science IN HIGH SCHOOL knows full well that fruit fly research is one of the underpinnings of all modern biology. She is a freaking idiot. Here is what Palin had to say, then I'll quote a science blog that brought this to my attention:

This is a matter of how we prioritize the money that we spend. We've got a three trillion dollar budget, and Congress spends some 18 billion dollars a year on earmarks for political pet projects. That's more than the shortfall to fully fund the IDEA. And where does a lot of that earmark money end up? It goes to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good -- things like fruit fly research in Paris, France...

And here is what science blog BiochemicalSoul.com had to say:

The fruit fly (Drosophila) has probably been the single most important organism for the study of genetics for over a century now. Almost everything we know about genetics, development, cell biology, neuroscience, and every other field of biology has strong roots in previous and current work on Drosophila. The fruit fly is one of a small handful of “standard model organisms” used by thousands of scientists across the world to learn how our bodies, organs, genes, and proteins work. Most of what we know about how a single fertilized cell becomes the amazingly complex beings we are comes from studies initially done in Drosophila. Vast amounts of our understanding of the brain (and brain disorders, diseases, and defects) also come from initial studies in fruit flies.
In fact, recent research from my own graduate alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, on fruit fly brains has had an impact on the understanding of autism and has boosted autism research:

“[S]cientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown that a protein called neurexin is required for..nerve cell connections to form and function correctly. The discovery, made in Drosophila fruit flies may lead to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders, as recently, human neurexins have been identified as a genetic risk factor for autism.”

To decry research in [condescending and amazed tone] “the fruit fly” is a testament to the true idiocy of this woman and to the failure of our public education system. In fact, her own father, Chuck Heath, was a biology teacher – obviously a complete failure of a biology teacher.

Keith Olbermann is all over this. Republicans don't respect science. It's one more example of the intellect, of the brain. Modern Republicans respect stupidity and ignorance. That is when, they're not respecting hatred and intolerance. Read the rest of this post...

This is a defining moment

Obama asks if our country will be better off four years from now in his latest 2 minute ad:



I like these longer ads. It gives Obama the chance to appear presidential while talking to us like we're adults. Read the rest of this post...

WASSUP 2008

Hysterical. First, watch the original commercial from 1999:



Then watch the new one, 2008:

Read the rest of this post...

After destroying the country, Republicans are planning to rebuild and re-energize their party. They really must be crushed.

The GOP knows it's over. The Republicans are going to suffer huge losses on November 4th. And, they deserve it. That party has destroyed the country.

But, the Republicans have their priorities. They're already talking about rebuilding their party. It's going to take years to rebuild the country after what Bush and his GOP wrecking crew did:

While congressional Republicans will not publicly concede that the presidential race is lost for the GOP, they speak frankly about the real possibility of an Obama presidency. They are discussing ways to reenergize the Republican party at a time when Democrats will probably be in charge of the White House and hold larger majorities in the House and Senate.

"It's time for a fresh start. We need new faces and new people to communicate what our party stands for," said Representative Zach Wamp, Republican of Tennessee. After the elections, Republicans need to develop a simple, five-point plan that gets back to the principles espoused by GOP icon Ronald Reagan, he said - smaller government, no deficit spending, and a strong national defense that does not entail making the United States the "world's policeman."

Capitol Hill Republicans say they lost their way and are now being punished for it.

They need to be punished badly. There are no simple, five point solutions. It's going to take a lot of work, not just gimmicks.

Seriously, that party must be crushed on November 4th. Badly. Crush them. Show no mercy, they never did. Read the rest of this post...

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

10 days.

For some good laughs and a little stress relief, Bob Geiger has the weekly compilation of editorial cartoons. Sarah Palin gets prime coverage. There's so much material there for the cartoonists.

John McCain is in New Mexico today. Sarah Palin is in Iowa today. Those are the only two states that Gore won, but Kerry lost. Obama has them locked up. But, if McCain and Palin want to campaign there, who are we to question it? They're running out of options...

Okay...let's get it started.

10 days. Read the rest of this post...

More on McCain's brother calling 911 and police to complain about traffic

Considering all of the nationwide cutbacks in services due to the bad economy - including with police, fire and safety - it's hard to imagine what Joe McCain was thinking as he abused these services for a simple traffic jam. He has since sent letters apologizing, but this was a waste of expensive time and resources for people who are trying to help with emergencies. Maybe Joe thought he was something special because his brother is running for President or maybe growing up with generations of Admirals and Navy elite, he thought he was above the rest and could abuse the emergency services system.

Let them eat cake.

Joe McCain, who lives in Alexandria, Va., told Washington radio station WTOP he was returning from a campaign event in Philadelphia around 2 a.m. on Oct. 18 when he got stuck in traffic on Interstate 495 at the Wilson Bridge. His account of the timing differed from the police, who said the call was made at 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 21.

Frustrated because of the traffic, he called 911 to find out what was going on. The operator asked him to "state your emergency."

"Well, it's not an emergency, but do you know why on one side at the damn drawbridge of 95 traffic is stopped for 15 minutes and yet traffic's coming the other way?" Joe McCain said.

The operator asked him if he was calling 911 to complain about traffic. McCain then uttered an expletive and hung up the phone.

McCain told WTOP that he thought his cell phone was on mute.

Read the rest of this post...

Bush tries stripping gray wolf of endangered protections, again

Bastards until the very end.

The Bush administration is trying again to take the gray wolf of the northern Rockies off the federal endangered species list.

Having lost in court this summer in a legal battle with conservationists, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided to reopen for public comment its 2007 proposal to delist the wolves.

"The position of the service is, we think the wolves no longer need the protection of the Endangered Species Act. We're asking the public to weigh in to that," Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for Fish and Wildlife, said in an interview yesterday.

Wolf advocates immediately protested.

"This is the Bush administration's last-gasp attempt to remove protections for wolves," said Louisa Wilcox, a senior wildlife advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Livingston, Mont.

"It looks like they're launching an all-out run to ram the same flawed package back through," said Jamie Rappaport Clark, executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife and a director of Fish and Wildlife during the second Clinton administration.

Read the rest of this post...

It's gray and gloomy, so a summer flashback

The melon season is so short, or at least the good melon season. In July and August I can't get enough of them for breakfast or as a starter at dinner, covered with prosciutto or sliced in half and filled with sweat wine. They are out of season now so I'll have to settle for a cup of coffee and a fruit juice smoothie. Then it's time to prep for my Normandy dinner and that means butter and cream. I have a good looking guinea fowl, chestnuts and apples but I only have 500 ml of cream and that's not going to be enough. Read the rest of this post...

Dumbest political ad ever

Just saw this McCain ad over at Nate Silver's site:



Putting aside the obvious come-back this ad invites (tell Senator McCain it's not 1938), what are people supposed to take away from this bizarre ad? I thought it was an Obama ad. Then I looked more closely and realized McCain is trying to play off of his line at the debate about not being George Bush (if he's not George Bush, then why does he talk about him so much?). That's the "joke" - it's not 2004, Bush isn't running for president this time.

But the problem is, all most people see is a big blue square and the words "Senator Obama" - and then they coo warmly, thinking of our next president. And if they bother to actually read the ad, they learn that it's not 2004, which they already knew, and that they're supposed to tell Senator Obama that it's not 2004, which is kind of an embarrassingly stupid thing to ask us to do, since we all pretty much assume that Obama isn't senile. Then, naturally, you start wondering if John McCain knows what year it is and whether that's why he think it's newsworthy to run an ad telling you what year it is (or what year it's not). Considering most people don't click through ads (probably 99% don't), the take-away from the McCain ad is:

1. Go Obama.
2. It's not 2004. (Is thing going to be part of a series? "Tell Senator Obama it's not 1492!")
3. Please tell Senator Obama what year it isn't.

And John McCain wonders why he's losing. Read the rest of this post...

Temper, Temper

McCain campaign says "bullshit," on the record. Erratic is so ugly.

Read the rest of this post...

Meet a journalist who fell for the McCain staffer's hoax, and then accepted it as truth

Hook, line and sinker.

Read the rest of this post...

GOP blogger post-mortem

Jon Swift takes us on a tour of the best-of-the-worst of the Republican blogosphere, and their reporting on the campaign. I laughed out loud repeatedly. Please read it.

No matter what happens in this year’s election, the conservative blogosphere deserves to win a collective Pulitzer Prize for its election-year coverage. While the mainstream media has given Americans a very distorted picture of Barack Obama, portraying him as a thoughtful, intelligent, unflappable, decent family man who has the temperament and judgment to be President, the conservative blogosphere has been the only place where you can get the real story. Hampered by quaint, old-fashioned rules of journalism that require citing evidence and reputable sources, the mainstream media has failed to report a number of important stories about Obama and the conservative blogosphere has had to step up and do the media’s job for them. As a public service I have collected some of the most important of these stories in one place. Pulitzer Prize judges, take note!
....

Obama didn’t actually write Dreams of My Father. In fact, it was ghost-written by none other than Bill Ayers!

Jack Cashill at the aptly named American Thinker found it difficult to believe that Barack Obama, who is not one of the most articulate politicians around, could possibly have written a whole book all by himself. He must have had help. Probably from someone evil. So on a hunch Cashill decided to compare Obama’s book with a book written by Bill Ayers and lo and behold, he discovered some shocking similarities, including the use of nautical imagery and the fact that a very scientific test to determine the grade level of the prose was a match. This wasn’t the first story Cashill broke. Cashill also proved that Arab terrorists and not Eric Rudolph were responsible for the 1996 Olympics bombing in Atlanta and that the Clintons covered up the real cause of the death of Ron Brown and the downing of TWA Flight 800. Unfortunately, Cashill’s overwhelming evidence wasn’t enough to convince the mainstream media to report on his theories...

There is a tape of Michelle Obama with Louis Farrakhan talking about “whitey”

Larry Johnson of No Quarter used to be a liberal until the Democrats decided to nominate an unqualified African-American for President. In a last-ditch attempt to get Democrats to come to their senses, he revealed the existence of a secret videotape featuring Michelle Obama speaking to a group that included the wife of Louis Farrakhan and maybe even Farrakhan himself in which she confirms the most feverish nightmares of some white Americans by ranting about “whitey.” Johnson claimed that Republicans had a copy of this tape, which they were holding onto until October, when it would do the most damage. Although he didn’t actually see the tape himself, he had many friends and friends of friends who did see it. Stop the ACLU wrote, "This is all a rumor, but if you read Michelle’s college thesis on race you will find it is most likely true." Macranger reported, "Too many insiders are talking about it to outright dismiss it." Jim Geraghty of National Review's The Corner initially believed the tape existed but later grew skeptical, writing, "I note that despite my readers' hopes, this fits the pattern for rumors like this — they're always simultaneously vague but hyped to be huge, and they're always coming just around the corner." Killjoy. If Johnson is right, and there is no reason to doubt him, we should be seeing that tape any day now. But you might want to send him a note and remind him that there are only two more weeks left in October so they better release that tape quick.

Read the rest of this post...