Month: August 2008

Oiled Up And Ready To Go

by digby

One of the points I probably failed to adequately make on my Netroots Nation panel with Perlstein, Atrios and Krugman about the media’s relationship with the right is the fact that the professional right wing noise machine exists on a number of different levels and is at its most effective when it operates in opposition to power. It’s an industry that exists across all communications fields and operates on its own logic. They don’t even have to talk to each other. They have a synergy built in, a common worldview and vocabulary that enables them to work in tandem without actual coordination.

So, we see McCain putting out a bunch of ads that basically say Obama is a phony, messianic, presumptuous, vapid, anorexic starlet who ruthlessly plays the race card. Right on the heels of this blitz comes two wingnut books, one by Swiftboat liar Jerome Corsi called Obama Nation and the other called The Case Against Barack Obama both of which purport to reveal the “real Obama” — who happens to be a phony, messianic, presumptuous, vapid, anorexic starlet who ruthlessly plays the race card.

And then there’s this, from my favorite wingnut bottom-feeder David Bossie:

HYPE: The Obama Effect

A movement is sweeping the nation. Frenzied crowds gather in every state. Young people chant and sing. Women swoon. The result is record voter turn out and a rare political enthusiasm. At the head of this unprecedented phenomenon stands a charismatic figure intent on becoming the President of the United States. “I’m asking you to believe.”
“We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
“Yes, we can!”
“Change.”
“Hope.” These words, from Barack Obama, have inspired everything from outrageous videos to the largest campaign fundraising success in history. He has taken what was considered a sure bet Clinton machine and turned it on its head. His supporters claim he is the new Martin Luther King, Jr. He is hailed as this generation’s John F. Kennedy. This documentary explores the HYPE behind Barack Obama.

All these themes reinforce each other, culminating in a vague sense that the Democrat — in this case Obama — is somehow an illegitimate leader, unworthy of the presidency, a fluke, a phony (and a fascist.) It might help McCain on the margins, but I don’t think that’s what this is really about; it’s about setting the conditions and frame for Obama’s ability to govern if he should win. It’s what he will be fighting from the minute he takes the oath of office.

Oppositional politics is what the modern Republicans really do well. (It’s the only thing they do well besides starting wars and pillaging the treasury.) They have a gift for making the Democrats dance on the head of a pin with the most simple-minded kabuki.

Obama will be seen as the interloper who stole the election from its rightful owner by fooling the nation into thinking he was something he wasn’t. “He’s a chameleon, a changeling, he’s not quite right.” Whether he wins big or by a hair, he’ll still be an illegitimate president who must be stopped from doing anything until they can restore the White House to its proper occupants — the Republicans. It will be the basis of their rationale for total obstructionism and ongoing character assassination.

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Keeping It Unreal

by digby

I was listening to McCain’s Urban institute event yesterday (during one of the many marathon discussions of “Obama played the race card”) and thought I had misheard something that he said. It turns out I didn’t mishear it — he just lied his ass off (or has Alzheimer’s like Reagan.) This is unbelievable.

Someone in the audience asked:

“And can you elaborate when you said you fought for equal rights for your entire life, what specifically you’ve done focusing on improving the lives of African Americans?”

His answer:

“I am proud of that record, from fighting for the recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday in my state . . . “

Well, sort of. This came up just a few months ago and McCain is being very, very misleading. Here’s John Amato back in April:

Check out John McCain trying to wiggle his way out of the fact that he voted against MLK day back in 1983. John McCain was born in 1936. He was how old, how old—hmmmm—let’s see…maybe 47 years old I think.He was almost 50 years old and he voted against MLK day! You see he needed just a few more years to figure out the impact MLK had on our society. He certainly can’t say in this statement that he was young and inexperienced. Nope, he has to give the impression that he was young and inexperienced since it was his first year in Congress—so he studied and learned and studied and learned until it dawned on him. And then he suddenly realized he made a big mistake.

McCain: I voted in my first, I think it was my first year in congress against then… I began to learn and I studied and people talked to me and I not supported it but I fought very hard in my home state of Arizona for recognition against a Governor who was against my own party.

And what else did he say?

“I had not been involved in the issue. I had come from being in the military to running for Congress in a state that did not have a very large African American population and it had not been in issue. It just simply had not been.”

In a February 2000 interview with ABC News, McCain said his initial opposition to a holiday was based on his belief that “it was not necessary to have another federal holiday, that it cost too much money, that other presidents were not recognized.”

Here’s a report from Jake Tapper on the same topic:

Tomorrow Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by speaking in Memphis on the 40th anniversary of King’s assassination.

He will no doubt sound a bit different than he did in April 1987, when McCain was interviewed by USA Today about his five and a half years as a P.O.W.

Could you keep up with what was going on in the world? He was asked.

“They never gave us any meaningful news,” McCain said. “They told us the day that Martin Luther King was shot, they told us the day that Bobby Kennedy was shot, but they never bothered to tell us about the moon shot. So it was certainly selected news.”

Surely the John McCain of 2008 would not hold that the assassinations of King and Kennedy were not “meaningful.”

Here are the facts on McCain and Martin Luther King Day. It’s a very *spotty* record, to say the least:

* FACT: McCain Supported Gov. Evan Mecham’s Decision In 1987 To Rescind Martin Luther King Jr. Day. As reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, “In a vote likely to haunt him for the rest of his public career, McCain voted against 1983 legislation establishing the third Monday in January as the federal holiday marking King’s birthday. Back home in Arizona, he supported Gov. Evan Mecham’s decision in 1987 to rescind an executive order creating a state holiday for King, but later reversed his position.” [Philadelphia Inquirer, 6/16/08]

He eventually came around in 1990 and backed it. 1990! He was only 54 years old when he began his crusade for civil rights — 23 years after Martin Luther King was shot. What a record.

The crusade continues to this day:

McCain, in response to a question, said affirmative action was “in the eye of the beholder.” He did not mention that he supports an anti-affirmative action referendum on the ballot in Arizona.

*Note: No one should construe this as a criticism of McCain’s heroic service in Vietnam or infer that he isn’t entirely color blind and above any kind of racial bias. Neither should this be seen as any kind of attack on him for his age or an accusation that he isn’t always a straight talker of unwavering principles. He has a heroic and unimpeachable character and I would never imply otherwise.

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Shut Up Whiners

by dday

Dana Milbank printed lies in his article parroting the “presumptuous” narrative, got caught, and now can’t face the facts.

In a July 31 washingtonpost.com online discussion, Dana Milbank dismissed participants’ criticisms of his July 30 column — a “sketch” of Sen. Barack Obama’s “premature presidency” — as “whines.” Indeed, Milbank began the discussion by acknowledging that “some of you have some thoughts you’d like to share about yesterday’s Sketch on the premature presidency of Barack Obama,” and before taking questions, wrote: “I’ve decided to approach today’s chat as a wine writer would. … Today, I am inaugurating the Whine Enthusiast, in which I will rate your whines.”

The Washington Post itself was not quite as dismissive, publishing a correction to one falsehood (in a column rife with misleadingly cropped quotes, false insinuations, and negligent reporting, as Media Matters for America noted). Milbank falsely asserted that Obama “g[a]ve British Prime Minister Gordon Brown some management advice over the weekend.” The Post ran the following correction: “This column incorrectly said that Sen. Barack Obama shared his views on how to avoid micromanagement with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last Saturday. Obama shared those views with British opposition leader David Cameron.”

Referring to a July 29 meeting Obama had with members of the House of Representatives, Milbank wrote in his column: “Inside, according to a witness, he told the House members, ‘This is the moment … that the world is waiting for,’ adding: ‘I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.’ ” Milbank cited the quote in support of his thesis that Obama was becoming a “presumptuous nominee” and as evidence that Obama’s “own hubris” may be his “biggest challenger.” Several participants in the online discussion, apparently in reference to this quote, accused Milbank of “misquot[ing]” Obama, “omit[ting] the full context of his quote,” and “intentionally butcher[ing] Barack Obama’s words to sell papers.”

During the discussion, a reader from Pasadena, California, asked Milbank: “I do wonder whether or not echoing a Rovian talking point, complete with misquote, is really your best starting point.” Milbank responded:

Under challenge is a quote in the story, and in an earlier post on the washingtonpost.com blog, The Trail, by my colleague Jonathan Weisman. We cite a witness to Obama’s private meeting with House Democrats telling us that Obama said “this is the moment … that the world is waiting for” and “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.”

House Democratic aides got up Thursday morning and decided that the quotes looked bad. While not challenging the quotations themselves, they said that the quotes were out of context. This is interesting, because our source who was among the people complaining about the quotes yesterday sent us the quotes in writing in an email Wednesday night.

Evidently no recording was made, so we’ll probably never know the exact wording.

We’ll just never know. I mean there’s the one witness on one side, and the dozens on the other. It’s very balanced.

Milbank’s trying to become the next Maureen Dowd and I’m sure he got quite a few backslaps from his Beltway friends on this one. He’s not going to bother with such trifles as fact-checking or accuracy. The narrative is set, and anyone who wants to change it is just a whiner who’s pissed off that their guy just got zinged.

He’s winning “America’s Next Top Clueless Pundit,” and he’s not going to turn in his crown now.

Interesting how Washington Post staffers continue to have such contempt for their readers. It’s almost as if they know Washington, be it the political class or the media class, is an accountability-free zone.

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The One

by dday

At this point you may have seen this Web ad that the McCain campaign put out, using fabricated quotes and contextless remarks to make some kind of muddled “argument” that Obama fancies himself the Messiah.

Seems to be a little projection in there. As far as I know, Obama doesn’t open his town hall meetings with a video like this:

At many of his events, his campaign sets up a screen and plays for the crowd a three-minute film called “Service with Honor,” telling the story of McCain’s more than five years of captivity in a North Vietnamese prison after his Navy plan was shot down in 1967. As sonorous music plays in the background, McCain’s mother Roberta recounts her reaction on hearing of his capture, images of McCain in captivity are flashed on screen, and two fellow POW’s describe his comportment. “He was offered early release and he told ’em to shove it,” says one, Paul Galanti. “He has been there, he’s done that, he’s been miserable he’s been tortured, beaten to a pulp and yet he still comes up with that patented McCain smile.”

McCain himself concludes the film with these words: “The only reason I am here today is because I believe a higher being has a mission for me and my life.”

Here’s that film:

Talk about presumptuous. Is that a young McCain standing with his arms outstretched, like the Messiah, at 0:13?

Remember, though, that McCain is extremely reluctant to talk about his POW experience.

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“Our Man Ailes”

by digby

Puke:

RUSH: What are…? (interruption) Interrupting for what?

THE PRESIDENT: Hello!

RUSH: Oh, jeez. The president?

THE PRESIDENT: Rush Limbaugh?

RUSH: Yes, sir, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: President George W. Bush calling to congratulate you on 20 years of important and excellent broadcasting.

RUSH: Well, thank you, sir. You’ve stunned me! (laughing) I’m shocked. But thank you so much.

THE PRESIDENT: That’s hard to do.

RUSH: (laughing) I know, it is.

THE PRESIDENT: I’m here with a room full of admirers. There are two others that would like to speak to you and congratulate you, people who consider you friends and really appreciate the contribution you’ve made.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. Put ’em on.

THE PRESIDENT: How you doing? This is my swan song? If this is all you got for me, I’m moving on.

RUSH: (laughing) No! The show’s yours; take as much time as you want.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I’m just calling along with President 41 and the former governor of Florida. We’re fixing to have lunch here, and I said, “Listen, we ought to call our pal and let him know that we care,” for you. So this is as much as anything, a nice verbal letter to a guy we really care for.

RUSH: Well, thank you, sir, very much. I’m overwhelmed. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this and how much you’ve surprised me.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, that was the purpose of the phone call.

RUSH: You succeeded.

THE PRESIDENT: Good.

RUSH: They were waving at me trying to tell me you were on the line, and I didn’t know what was going on. So you succeeded here in the surprise. How are you doing, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: I am great. We’re doing very good, thank you very much, sir. Concerned about our economy, obviously, but know we need to be drilling for some oil and gas in order to take the pressure off the gas prices — and I’m pleased with the progress in Iraq.

RUSH: Have you heard what Senator Obama wants to do? He wants another stimulus check of a thousand dollars to every American paid for by the oil companies.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah. Well, what we ought to be doing is encouraging oil companies to find oil, and that’s the best way to take the pressure off the gasoline prices. We’re on a very strong push to get the Congress to allow for there to be offshore drilling, and most Americans understand now that an increase in oil, particularly here in America, will help take pressure off of price. And I tell people I’d rather, you know, be buying American oil instead of sending our money overseas.

RUSH: You know, Mr. President, it’s amazing. In 2004 during your campaign, Senator Kerry was constantly criticizing you for not “jawboning” with the Saudis enough to bring the price of oil down. Now, four years later, they’re doing everything they can to keep the price from coming down. They apparently want it to remain high.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, they may want to, but the American people want to see some relief. It would be like a massive tax cut when the gasoline prices decline. So we’re in times of economic uncertainty and the more money people have in their pockets the quicker we’ll be able to recover, in my judgment. You asked how I’m doing. My spirits are high; I’m going to finish strong. I love my family and I’m spending two days here with mother and dad before I head overseas.

RUSH: Well, that’s right. You’ve got China on your agenda.

THE PRESIDENT: I do. But listen, President 41. You might remember him.

RUSH: I do. (laughing) Yes, I do. We all do.

THE PRESIDENT: You know what? He remembers you.

RUSH: Good.

THE PRESIDENT: Fondly, I might add. Anyway, here he is. Congratulations.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much, again.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, sir.

BUSH 41: Hey, Rush?

RUSH: Mr. President, sir.

BUSH 41: How are you doing?

RUSH: I am never better. I’m so glad that you three called me. I’m stunned here. It’s great to hear from you.

BUSH 41: I’ve got some advice for you.

RUSH: Tell me.

BUSH 41: Slow down your backswing.

RUSH: (laughing)

BUSH 41: (laughing) That’s what I’m doing is giving advice. I remember playing with you and enjoying it. How are you?

RUSH: I’m great.

BUSH 41: Proud of you, always.

RUSH: Well, thank you. I’m doing great. And you? You’re looking well, too.

BUSH 41: Well, yeah. I’m kind of on the sidelines, but I can’t do golf and all that stuff anymore. But life is good. It’s wonderful, and it’s great having the family up here in Maine, and all is well. Do you see our man Ailes at all?

RUSH: Oh, yeah. I saw Roger at Tony Snow’s funeral.

BUSH 41: Oh, did you?

RUSH: And a couple of times earlier this summer.

BUSH 41: Are we on the radio, are we?

RUSH: (laughing)

BUSH 41: I didn’t know that. I’ll clean up my act here. I’m glad they told me.

RUSH: Yeah, we’re on the radio.

BUSH 41: It’s wonderful talking to you, I’ll tell you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir. Same here.

BUSH 41: Wait a minute, Jeb — Governor Jeb — wants to speak to you.

RUSH: That’s great.

BUSH 41: We’ve got the whole family lined up.

RUSH: Put him on.

BUSH 41: All Limbaugh fans. Just a sec. Here.

JEB: Hey, Rush, congratulations on your longevity.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. This is a thrill.

JEB: One of the highlights, one of the great things about your show is it’s broadcast in the Sunshine State for which a whole lot of Floridians are very grateful, including me.

RUSH: It’s a great place to live, governor. It really is, as you well know.

JEB: We’ve got a few challenges, but it’s not a bad place at all.

RUSH: What’s your future? What are you going to do?

JEB: I’m staying below the radar. That’s what I’m doing. I love policy, and I have an education policy to try to help folks that are running for office be bold on education reform, which I think is a huge challenge and a great opportunity for our country. So my political stuff is really focused on that, which I love.

RUSH: Well, good. Keep at it, because if there’s something that needs reform in this country, it’s certainly that.

JEB: Absolutely.

RUSH: Particularly public education. Well, thank you guys so much. This is unexpected and a real honor for me to hear from all of you guys at the same time.

JEB: All right. Take care.

RUSH: Thanks, sir, very much.

JEB: Bye-bye.

I will never get over the fact that this raging, racist, sexist, hypocritical, asshole is considered so mainstream that he is even broadcast to the troops overseas and hosts the Bush family, but the congress of the United State voted to condemn MoveOn for taking out an ad in the NY Times. It still makes me mad.

And you’ve got to love Poppy referring to Fox News president Roger Ailes as “our man.” Out of the mouths of codgers.

H/T Dover Bitch

That Was Quick

by digby

The Republicans stage a little hissy fit and to anyone not paying close attention it appears that they got instant results:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Friday he would be willing to support limited additional offshore oil drilling if that’s what it takes to enact a comprehensive policy to foster fuel-efficient autos and develop alternate energy sources.

Shifting from his previous opposition to expanded offshore drilling, the Illinois senator told a Florida newspaper he could get behind a compromise with Republicans and oil companies to prevent gridlock over energy.

Republican rival John McCain, who earlier dropped his opposition to offshore drilling, has been criticizing Obama on the stump and in broadcast ads for clinging to his opposition as gasoline prices topped $4 a gallon. Polls indicate these attacks have helped McCain gain ground on Obama.

“My interest is in making sure we’ve got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices,” Obama said in an interview with The Palm Beach Post.

“If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage — I don’t want to be so rigid that we can’t get something done.”

Obviously, obama changed his position because of public opposition to the ban and because he thinks he could use it get Republicans to sign on to other legislation as he says. It’s an election year. But I would suspect they will extract another 100 pounds of environmental flesh before they do. That’s how they operate. Maybe we could agree to store nuclear waste at Fisherman’s Wharf in exchange for some investment in wind power. Or perhaps we could agree to drill in Yellowstone in exchange for subsidies to the automakers to put solar panels on their office buildings. If there’s one thing you can count on it’s that Republicans negotiate in good faith.

I would imagine the House Dems faces are a little bit red now that they didn’t just give the Republicans what they wanted so they could go home and reap the votes of all those people who demand offshore drilling immediately so we can get our gas prices down before their vacations start. What a missed opportunity.

And who’s the big winner?

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In Like Flynn

by digby

In case anyone still has doubts that some of the progressive members of the Religion Industrial Complex are really social conservatives in liberal clothing, read this. I have nothing but respect for the millions of truly progressive churchgoers and church leaders out there. These social conservatives who nonetheless care about poverty and global warming, not so much. It’s quite clear that the deal they are proposing is to give up women’s reproductive freedom in exchange for votes.

Judging from my emails, a lot of liberals agree that that is smart politics and the best hope for a progressive majority. After all, it’s only half the population’s personal autonomy we’re talking about. Nothing really important. Sometimes you have to compromise for the greater good.

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Sam’s Club Conservatism

by dday

Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota, is pushing this idea that government should just run like Sam’s Club – using sweatshop labor and locking employees inside the store offering services at low cost and value. Because that’s exactly how government works. (“Use the discount highway and bridge!”)

But there is something to this “Sam’s Club conservatism” – in fact, to the corporate parent it means getting everyone who works at Sam’s Club to vote for conservatives out of fear of losing their job:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they’ll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies — including Wal-Mart.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.

According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise […]

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don’t specifically tell attendees how to vote in November’s election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

“The meeting leader said, ‘I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won’t have a vote on whether you want a union,'” said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. “I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote,” she said.

I’m sure this won’t trickle down to the rank and file employees, nor will it be framed as “vote Republican or your job is gone.”

Big business is TERRIFIED by the prospect of a President Obama signing the Employee Free Choice Act. The combination of making it harder for management to harass and intimidate workers who want to bargain, and aggressive unions like SEIU ready to organize means that union membership will finally start increasing again after decades of decline (it actually went up slightly this year). The labor movement is the greatest anti-poverty program in American history, but to the corporate profiteers, it means one less yacht in the harbor. Wal-Mart is among the groups who have put up hundreds of millions of dollars to stop the EFCA and demonize unions. Some of the ads are already up and running, using euphemistic shell group names like “the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace.” To economic royalist conservatives it’s as important to stop this dead as it was to stop universal health care in the 1990s.

Wal-Mart is skating right on the edge of the legal line with this.

Federal election rules permit companies to advocate for specific political candidates to its executives, stockholders and salaried managers, but not to hourly employees. While store managers are on salary, department supervisors are hourly workers.

However, employers have fairly broad leeway to disseminate information about candidates’ voting records and positions on issues, according to Jan Baran, a Washington attorney and expert on election law.

And check out how the corporations who have paid practically no net taxes the entire Bush era are claiming themselves to be the “underdogs” against big bad Labor and its 8% of the private-sector workforce.

Business groups say they’re the underdogs since they will be outspent by unions by a wide margin. Labor has pledged to spend $300 million on the election and securing passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, compared with under $100 million by business groups, according to Steven Law, chief legal officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber’s strategy is to focus on the Senate, where labor needs eight more supporters of the legislation to reach the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

“This is a David-and-Goliath confrontation, but we believe we’ll have enough stones in the sling to knock this out,” said Mr. Law.

They really do consider themselves the oppressed elite. It’s kind of like Bill O’Reilly lamenting that (even though taxes on the richest 1% are at their lowest rate in 18 years) they’ll have to finance all the dirty hippies if the Democrats come to power.

You’re already seeing Wal-Mart give to conservative Dems to hold off EFCA. It’s one of the biggest battles we’re going to face in the next year or so, and the stakes are enormous. So much so that the corporatocracy is trying to shake down their own employees for votes.

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Pity Party

by dday

You know, I go do one little Web video show and all hell breaks loose on the House floor. This is a hissy fit especial.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats adjourned the House and turned off the lights and killed the microphones, but Republicans are still on the floor talking gas prices.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders opposed the motion to adjourn the House, arguing that Pelosi’s refusal to schedule a vote allowing offshore drilling is hurting the American economy. They have refused to leave the floor after the adjournment motion passed at 11:23 a.m. and are busy bashing Pelosi and her fellow Democrats for leaving town for the August recess.

At one point, the lights went off in the House and the microphones were turned off in the chamber, meaning Republicans were talking in the dark. But as Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz..) was speaking, the lights went back on, and the microphones were turned on shortly afterward.

But C-SPAN, which has no control over the cameras in the chamber, has stopped broadcasting the House floor, meaning no one is witnessing this except the assembled Republicans, their aides, and one Democrat, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who has now left.

This reminds me of a group of adolescents putting up a tent in the backyard for a sleepover and telling dirty words to each other while their parents are inside. 199 districts in this country continue to elect 9 year-olds. Crazy.

Since nobody asked, here’s what I think about this drilling issue. I think it’s the immigration issue of 2008. Republicans think they have a winning hand and they keep playing it, to the exclusion of everything else, and the country is in a wildly different place that what is believed. There’s actually some documentary evidence of this. And with all the big oil companies rolling out record profits, and GOP whiners (who are heavily tied in with Big Oil) demanding we give the same companies making those record profits off high gas prices the opportunity to LOWER them, a smart political party would know exactly how to parry this.

Where can we get one of those?

…they’re Twittering this whole thing, too, which is, er, appropriate.

…Brad Johnson at The Wonk Room connects the dots on all of this. Think 14 billionaire Bush Pioneers in a room with Newt Gingrich, and you can figure out where this is coming from.

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Anorexic Starlet Watch

by digby

This is rich. Apparently, Barack isn’t a Real American because he’s healthy:

Speaking to donors at a San Diego fund-raiser last month, Barack Obama reassured the crowd that he wouldn’t give in to Republican tactics to throw his candidacy off track.

“Listen, I’m skinny but I’m tough,” Sen. Obama said.

But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama’s skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.

See, he works out and Joe Sixpack won’t vote for somebody like that:

But too much time in the gym can cause problems, as Sen. Obama learned last month after he made three stops to local Chicago gyms in one day, for a total of 188 minutes. The marathon workout session sparked a widely circulated Associated Press article titled “Obama Becomes a Gym Rat.” In it, the reporter wrote, “Sometimes it’s hard to tell if Barack Obama is running for president of the United States or Mr. Universe.”

Republicans have recently picked up on the senator’s fitness regimen. On Wednesday, the McCain campaign launched a new ad titled “Celeb” that compares Sen. Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. In a memo to reporters explaining the ad, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis wrote, “Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day.”

I agree. Unless the president looks like Grover Cleveland, I just don’t trust him.. That is the main reason why I couldn’t vote for this guy, by the way:

President George W. Bush rode with cycling superstar Lance Armstrong on Saturday, August 20, 2005.

The seven-time Tour de France champion joined the president for a two-hour, 17-mile trek through the canyons and river-crossings of Bush’s 1,600-acre Crawford, Texas ranch. The two only rested for ten minutes during the ride.

George W. Bush, 59, took up mountain biking after a knee injury forced him to give up jogging a couple of years ago.

He’s described by his doctors in his annual physical as being in “superior” condition for a man his age.

He participates in a six-day-a-week workout regimen and showed his heart rate monitor to reporters who rode with him. The monitor showed he burned 1,493 calories in the prior 17-mile ride that also lasted two hours.

It’s why I can’t stand Condoleeza Rice either:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gets up at 4:30 in the morning to exercise. She set up a mini gym in her apartment with a stationary bicycle and an elliptical machine.

President Bush gets up early, too, is in the Oval Office by 7 a.m. and works out at midday. The president used to run a 7-minute mile but started mountain biking a couple of years ago to give his knees a break.

He’s such an inveterate exerciser that he has little patience for anyone who doesn’t find time. Bush says if he can find time to work out, anyone can.

Hear that fatso?

All those Real Americans out there who voted for Bush must not have realized that he was not just offensively fit, he is a work-out obsessive:

Given the importance of his job, it is astonishing how much time Bush has to exercise. His full schedule is not publicly available. The few peeks we get at Bush’s daily routine usually come when some sort of disaster prods the White House Press Office to reveal what the president was doing “at the time.”

Earlier this year, an airplane wandered into restricted Washington, D.C., air space. Bush, we learned, was bicycling in Maryland. In 2001, a gunman fired shots at the White House. Bush was inside exercising. When planes struck the World Trade Center in 2001, Bush was reading to schoolchildren, but that morning he had gone for a long run with a reporter. Either this is a series of coincidences or Bush spends an enormous amount of time working out.

[..]

In 2002, Bush fired Lawrence Lindsey, his overweight economic adviser. Lindsey’s main crime was admitting to Congress that the Iraq war might cost $200 billion, at a time when the administration was trying to cut taxes and was insisting that the war would cost nothing. But compounding things was the fact that, as The Washington Post reported, Bush “complained privately about (Lindsey’s) failure to exercise.”

But, you’d want to have a beer with him and that’s the most important thing. Even if he does spend virtually all his time working out and harshly judging others for being out shape, we don’t feel like he’s being presumptuous. Unlike the odd foreign freak Barack Obama, he’s just a regular Joe who comes from a fabulously wealthy well-connected Connecticut family of blueblooded WASPs. He’s one of us.

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