How Will They Lower The Bar Tomorrow?

It's nice of McCain to reinforce the view I expressed here.



Maybe tomorrow McCain can accuse Obama of hanging out with communists or better yet how about child rapists?

Among all the other things fucked up with the above clip, to the best of my knowledge Rashid Khalidi, while being anti-Israel, has never said anything that would make him specifically anti-semitic.

Battle of the Lessers

Jacob Sullum of Reason writes a great article summing up which of the two major party candidates is actually the lesser of two evils. Link

The extent of the president's powers, although hardly mentioned during the general election campaign, is probably the most important consideration in choosing between McCain and Obama. It is tied to all the other major issues, including the Iraq war, the fight against terrorism, and the government's response to the current economic situation.

The crucial question is which matters more: a president's theory of executive power or the political environment he faces. If the former, Obama is the less risky choice. If the latter, McCain is, since he would face a less compliant Congress.

I agree with Mr. Sullum's assesment of the choice that is presented to the American people this election. One thing I would add is that a vote for McCain is also a vote for the continuation of President Bush's "politics of fear". Where the main tool that is used to accomplish political goals is manipulating the inherent fear that people have of things that are unknown or different. I think this factor is ampliphied even more if you assume that Senator McCain will not complete his full term in office due to his age and that Sarah Palin will take over at some point.

If I happened to live in a swing state the combination of executive power and politics of fear would be enough to swing my vote for Senator Obama and against Senator McCain. Luckily, I live in Illinois, where Senator Obama is sure to win, so I'll be voting for Bob Barr this presidential election.

I'm a fan of Helen's new rules: Link

New rules:

I will stop calling George Bush a jackass when he stops calling me a terrorist: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.

I will stop calling John McCain an ass when he stops calling Barack Obama a socialist at every dog and pony show on the Straight Talk Express tour.

I will stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops calling Obama a terrorist sympathizer.  And I will stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops calling the parts of the country where I don’t live more Pro-American than the part of the country where I do live.    And I will definitely stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops acting like a bitch.

I’m old enough to remember the Republican party of Barry Goldwater - when the party stood for fiscal responsibility, small government and personal freedoms.  I remember when I could talk with friends about politics and just agree to disagree.  And then religious nut cases decided that if you didn’t agree with them you were immoral.  So they went and elected George Bush President so he could take the Republican Party from being a party full of respectable people to a party filled with asses, jackasses and yes - bitches like Sarah Palin.

I am tired of Rush Limbaugh suggesting that feminism is a dirty word.  How hard did he fight to gain the right to vote?  Or own property in his own name?  Or get equal pay for equal work? 

And I am tired of Sean Hannity suggesting I am un-American because I don’t think that war is the answer to everything.  How many bullets has he taken defending his country in battle? 

And I am tired that Sarah Palin can decide what she wants to do with her body but other women can’t make that decision for themselves.

NEW, New Rules:

If you are not for me, you are against me.  I’ll get over it.  Now kindly return the favor.

Oh…and one last thing. Elisabeth Hasselbeck is still a moron.  There is just no way around that, Folks.

The New Meaning of Fair and Balanced

This is the current electoral map according to Bill O'Reilly.

Apparently Bill knows something that no one else running an electoral map has caught on to yet. Here's the current one from Pollster. According to RCP the current count is 311 - Obama, 157 - McCain. I wonder, if O'Reilly tried could he be an even bigger tool? Probably not.

Trassin

- I'm afraid of Americans

Welcome to Crazy Town.

Maybe it was a feature in past elections and I just wasn't paying close enough attention to notice it but there seems to be a large segment of the American populace that expects the country to collapse into ruin if their chosen presidential candidate doesn't win and, in response, have developed deeply emotional feelings towards the "other guy".  People saying things such as "Obama will turn us into a Muslim country" or "McCain will destroy our country" seem far more common place than what I've seen in the past.  

While I expect statements such as these to come from political operatives of all the parties, it amazes me when I hear it from a 20 something college grad or a 65 year old grandmother.  People who seem perfectly reasonable and to have at least average intelligence suddenly drop any semblance of logic and spew off hateful statements with no basis in reality.  To be sure, sentiments such as these have always existed along the extremes of American society but in the past year they seem to have found their way much closer to "main street".

Of course it could just be that this emotionally based, logic deprived hatred has always been a component of the average Americana's political views and is simply more visible now due to the internet giving anyone with a computer and a camera their own little world stage.  I'm not sure if that possibility makes me feel better or worse about the current situation.

Trassin

- I'm holding out, not giving an answer.

The birds sure are angry this morning.

For those of you who don't know, the apartment that my girlfriend and I share is located on a lake with our balcony hanging over the edge of the water.  It is the only body of water in the immediate area that is large enough to support water foul and as a result, it has a ton of water foul in it pretty much all year round.

It appears that mating season is now in full swing for the ducks, as they have spent most of the morning beating the crap out of each other.  We also have a growing population of Coots showing up since the beginning of the month.  They are strange little birds with black heads,yellow beaks, and spend most their time floating in the water.  They look a bit like ducks except they don't have webbed feet, their bills are shaped like a chicken's, and they dive much deeper under that water than most ducks.

Originally this post was going to be about the movie Quarantine, which I saw last night, but these ducks are just to entertaining.  I do want to say though, Quarantine was an awesome movie and probably one of the best sudo-zombie movies I've seen in at least the last 10 years.  It was good enough I'll probably try to go see it a second time in the next week or two.  There was a ton of stuff going on and I want to see if I can pick up a little more detail than I did the first time.

Well I'm going to go get myself another cup of coffee and watch the ducks some more, later.

Change of Mind

I happened to notice today that all of a month ago I had posted that I hoped John McCain would win in the upcoming election.  I had actually completely forgotten about that post and was even surprised a bit when I read it.  While the reasons for my supporting McCain over Obama at the time haven't changed, I no longer want Senator McCain to win.  

One of the things that I was happy to see with this year's campaigns, at least now that we are out of the primaries, is that the use of blatant hate as a tool for winning the presidency was greatly reduced compared to the Rove/Bush elections in the two previous presidential campaigns.  Neither of the major party candidates were standing on stage bashing away at a minority group, such as was done towards gays during the Bush campaigns.  Not only did they personally stay away from this type of rhetoric, but they kept their campaign's away from it too.

Over the last month however, that has changed in the McCain campaign.  Now they have Sarah Palin out there, acting like a junior Bush, trying to stir up hate and fear towards their chosen minority, anyone perceived as different than "Joe the Plummer".  As Colin Powell pointed out this weekend, they have also unleashed the surrogates, Republicans in congress, to reinforce the idea of Obama as a "secret Muslim".  Indirectly implying that some how being a Muslim automatically disqualifies a person from being a "good American".

I'm beyond sick of hearing hateful speech spew forth from the White House towards various minority groups in order to gain political points.  I also have zero tolerance for the idea that some how having either a Muslim or Arab background inherently makes someone unpatriotic.  

So I've changed my mind, despite thinking that both Obama's health care plan and judicial choices will be wrong for this country, I would rather have that then the risk of Sarah Palin ending up as President and forcing me to endure eight years of Bush 3.0.