Month: September 2008

Saturday Night At The Movies

Darkness, darkness: My obsession with Ida Lupino

By Dennis Hartley

Hello, Dali.

This week, I wanted to spotlight a pair of lesser-known, under appreciated and previously hard-to-find films noirs from the 1940s that have finally seen the light of day on DVD. Moontide and Road House are two of the latest reissues in the ongoing Fox Film Noir Series, and both happen to feature the woman of my darkest dreams, Ida Lupino.

The British-born Lupino (who left us in 1995 at age 81) was a staple of the classic American noir cycle from the early 40s through the late 50s. Although it wasn’t the only movie genre she worked in during her long career, it’s the one she was born to inhabit. She had a sexy, slinky, waif-like appearance that was intriguingly contrapuntal to her husky voice and tough-as-nails countenance. Whether portraying a victim of fate or a femme fatale, Lupino imbued all of her characters with an authentic, “lived-in” quality that gave her a compelling screen presence. It’s also worth noting her fine work as a writer, director and producer, in an era of filmmaking when few women wore those hats.

Back in 1941, director Archie Mayo (The Petrified Forest, Charley’s Aunt, A Night in Casablanca) faced the unenviable task of stepping in to rescue a 20th Century Fox film project called Moontide, which had been abandoned by the great Fritz Lang not too long after shooting had begun. As one of the pioneering German expressionists, Lang was a key developer of the visual style that eventually morphed into a defining noir “look” (some of his pre-1940s classics like M , The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse and Fury are generally considered seminal proto-noirs). Moontide was also to be the American debut for Frenchman Jean Gabin, already a major star in Europe (Pepe Le Moko , Grand Illusion, La Bete Humaine ). Needless to say, the pressure was on for Mayo to deliver. And “deliver” he did, with this moody and highly stylistic sleeper, ripe for rediscovery.

Gabin stars as Bobo, an itinerate odd-jobber (the type of character Steve Martin might call a “ramblin’ guy”) who blows into a coastal California fishing community with a parasitic sidekick named Tiny (Thomas Mitchell) in tow. Adhering to time-honored longshoreman tradition, Bobo and Tiny make a wharfside pub crawl the first order of business when they hit port. It is quickly established that the handsome, likable and free-spirited Bobo loves to party, as we watch him go merrily careening into an all-night boning and grogging fest. The next morning, Bobo appears to be suffering from a classic blackout, not quite sure why or how he ended up sacked out on an unfamiliar barge, wearing a hat that belongs to a man who has met a mysterious demise sometime during the previous evening. Taking a stroll along the beach in an attempt to clear his head, he happens upon a distraught young woman named Anna (Lupino) who is attempting to drown herself in the surf. Anyone who has screened a noir or two knows what’s coming next. Before we know it, Bobo and Anna are playing house in a cozy love shack (well, bait shop, technically). Of course, there is still that certain unresolved matter of Did He Or Didn’t He, which provides the requisite dramatic tension for the rest of the narrative.

John O’Hara’s screenplay (adapted from Willard Robertson’s novel) borders on trite at times and could have done more damage to the film’s rep, if it had not been for Gabin and Lupino’s formidable charisma, as well as the beautifully atmospheric chiaroscuro photography (by Charles G. Clarke and Lucien Ballard) and assured direction from Mayo. There are several brilliant directorial flourishes; the montage depicting Bobo’s fateful night of revelry is a particular standout. The surreal touches in that sequence were “inspired” by some original sketches submitted on spec by Salvatore Dali, who was slated to contribute art direction, but ended up dropping out for one reason or another. Great supporting performances abound, particularly from a nearly unrecognizable Claude Rains as a paternal waterfront philosopher who could have easily strolled off the pages of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Moontide would make an interesting double bill with Clash by Night, another character-driven “cannery noir” set in a California fishing town milieu.

And now we come to a particularly delicious sleaze-noir from 1948 called Road House (not to be confused with the trashy 1989 Patrick Swayze mullet fest that shares the same title). This was the fourth and final genre pic from director Jean Nugulesco, who had previously helmed The Mask of Dimitrios, Nobody Lives Forever and Johnny Belinda.

Noir icon Richard Widmark stars as the mercurial Jefty Robbins, who owns a road house called (wait for it…) “Jefty’s”. He has hired his longtime pal Pete Morgan (noir beefcake Cornel Wilde) to help with day-to-day management. The fussy, protective Pete feels that his main function is to be the voice of reason and steer the frequently impulsive Jefty away from making potentially reckless business decisions. When Pete is dispatched to the train station to pick up Jefty’s “new equipment” Lily Stevens (Lupino), a hardened chanteuse who starts cracking wise from the moment they meet, he becomes convinced that this is one of Jefty’s potentially reckless business decisions. The tough, self-assured Lily laughs off his attempt to offer up the advance money “for her trouble” and then steer her onto the next train heading back to Chicago. Now, you and I know that these two are obviously destined to rip each other’s clothes off at some point; the fun is in getting there.

Although the setup may give the impression that this is going to be a standard romantic triangle melodrama, the film segues into noir territory from the moment that the Widmark Stare first appears. For those not familiar with the Widmark Stare, it goes thusly:

Suffice it to say-when you see the Widmark Stare, it is very likely that trouble lies ahead. As his character becomes more and more unhinged, Widmark eventually employs all his “greatest hits” (including, of course, The Demented Cackle). His performance builds to an operatic crescendo of sociopathic batshit craziness in the film’s final act that plays like a precursor to Ben Kingsley’s raging, sexual jealously-fueled meltdown in Sexy Beast.

Widmark and Lupino are both in top form here. Wilde is overshadowed a bit, but then again his “boy toy” role isn’t as showy as the others. Celeste Holm is wonderfully droll as one of Jefty’s long-suffering employees. Lupino insisted on doing her own singing in the film; while she was not a technically accomplished crooner, she actually wasn’t half bad in a husky-voiced “song stylist” vein (she really tears it up on “One For My Baby”).

Both films sport excellent DVD transfers and insightful commentary from noir experts.

Noir-Ida: Outrage (as director only) The Hitch-Hiker (as director/co-writer only), Beware My Lovely, They Drive by Night , The Big Knife, High Sierra, On Dangerous Ground, Private Hell 36 (also co-writer), While the City Sleeps, Woman in Hiding.

Previous posts with related themes:

Summer of Darkness

The Art of the Heist Caper

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What Else is New?

by digby

It’s who they are:

A conservative political forum on Saturday sold boxes of waffle mix depicting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a racial stereotype on its front and wearing Arab-like headdress on its top flap.

The product, Obama Waffles, was meant as political satire, said Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two writers from Franklin, Tenn., who created the mix and sold it for $10 a box from a booth at the Values Voter Summit sponsored by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council.

Republican Party stalwarts Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney were among speakers at the forum, which officials said drew 2,100 activists from 44 states.

While Obama Waffles takes aim at Obama’s politics by poking fun at his public remarks and positions on issues, it also plays off the image of the classic pancake-mix icon Aunt Jemima, which has been widely criticized as a demeaning stereotype. Obama is portrayed with popping eyes and big, thick lips as he stares at a plate of waffles and smiles broadly.

Placing Obama in Arab-like headdress recalls the false rumor that he is a follower of Islam, though he is actually a Christian.

There’s nothing new in this. For years they’ve been selling buttons that say “happiness is Hillary’s face on a milk carton” at conservative confabs. Here’s one they were selling at the Texas Republican convention:

Just a few months ago I posted pictures of these fun t-shirts they were selling at CPAC:

And this too …

This is why we get so crazed when they unctuously attack liberals with charges of racism or sexism (or libertinism.) But then, hypocrisy is no longer an operative concept in our post modern conservative world and we’d better learn to adapt to it.

Update: More on the waffles. “Aunt Jemima means quality.”

And in case anyone still thinks that “values voters” care about the private lives of conservative politicians, check out the presence of Newt Gingrich as a featured speaker.

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He Likes It

by digby

From his childhood pastime of blowing up frogs to his time as Governor of Texas signing death warrants, George W. Bush showed a penchant for bloodthirstiness. It continued throughout his presidential years:

Bob Woodward reports [in his new book] that Casey, the president’s commanding general in Iraq from 2004 to 2007, came to believe that Bush did not understand the nature of the Iraq war, that the president focused too much on body counts as a measure of progress.

“Casey had long concluded that one big problem with the war was the president himself,” Woodward writes. “He later told a colleague in private that he had the impression that Bush reflected the ‘radical wing of the Republican Party that kept saying, “Kill the bastards! Kill the bastards! And you’ll succeed.” ‘ “

Asked about his interest in body counts, Bush told Woodward: “I asked that on occasion to find out whether or not we’re fighting back. Because the perception is that our guys are dying and they’re not. Because we don’t put out numbers. We don’t have a tally. On the other hand, if I’m sitting here watching the casualties come in, I’d at least like to know whether or not our soldiers are fighting.”

He’s always been bloodthirsty. He signed nearly 160 death warrants in Texas without blinking an eye or expressing the slightest moral qualms at the possibility that any of them might have been innocent. He liked to cross off the names of dead terrorists on a list he kept in his desk. He likes violence.

So, does John McCain. So does Sarah Palin. (She even supports aerial wolf hunting, one of the most despicable hunting practices ever devised.) It’s a defining characteristic of modern conservatism. And it’s killing all of us.

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The Lists You Have

by digby

My reader JN from Wisconsin writes in with news of the latest vote suppression effort:

The state elections agency is investigating complaints about a massive campaign mailing Republican Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign has directed toward Wisconsin Democrats and other voters.

Each mailing includes at least one copy of the state application for an absentee ballot that has the address of a local clerk and a box for postage printed on the other side.

But in some cases, the incorrect clerk’s address is printed on the application, leading some Democrats to wonder if the Arizona senator’s campaign is deliberately trying to get them to apply for absentee ballots in places where they aren’t eligible to vote.

“They’re trying to knock me off the rolls,” said Democrat Beverly Jambois, of Middleton. “I can’t tell you how upsetting it is to me. This is how you win elections? By disenfranchising other voters?”

Her household received the flier this week addressed to her husband, Robert, a lawyer for the state Department of Transportation. The couple are registered to vote in Middleton, but the absentee ballot application was addressed to the city clerk’s office in Madison.

A McCain campaign spokeswoman said in a statement the mailing mistakes are “certainly not intentional” but she wouldn’t answer questions. The statement also said the mailing went to “potential supporters across the spectrum.”

Mark Jefferson, executive director of the state GOP, said the mailing is not intended to keep people from the polls and that the wrong absentee ballot applications resulted from incorrect information in databases used for the mailing.

“You do the best with the lists you have, and no list is perfect,” Jefferson said. “There is certainly no type of suppression effort going on.”

Jefferson said the mailing was directed to hundreds of thousands of voters.

This is a form of caging and is part of the Republican vote suppression program. You’ll recall that it was featured in the US Attorney scandal, not that anything came of it. Here’s Greg Palast:

Goodling testified that Gonzales’ Chief of Staff, Kyle Sampson, perjured himself, lying to the committee in earlier testimony. The lie: Sampson denied Monica had told him about Tim Griffin’s “involvement in ‘caging’ voters” in 2004.

Huh?? Tim Griffin? “Caging”???

The perplexed committee members hadn’t a clue ­ and asked no substantive questions about it thereafter. Karl Rove is still smiling…

Here’s what you need to know ­ and the Committee would have discovered, if only they’d asked:

1. ‘Caging’ voters is a crime, a go-to-jail felony.

2. Griffin wasn’t “involved” in the caging, Ms. Goodling. Griffin, Rove’s right-hand man (right-hand claw), was directing the illegal purge and challenge campaign. How do I know? It’s in the email I got. Thanks. And it’s posted below.

3. On December 7, 2006, the ragin’, cagin’ Griffin was named, on Rove’s personal demand, US Attorney for Arkansas. Perpetrator became prosecutor.

The committee was perplexed about Monica’s panicked admission and accusations about the caging list because the US press never covered it. That’s because, as Griffin wrote to Goodling in yet another email (dated February 6 of this year, and also posted below), their caging operation only made the news on BBC London: busted open, Griffin bitched, by that “British reporter,” Greg Palast.

There’s no pride in this. Our BBC team broke the story at the top of the nightly news everywhere on the planet ­ except the USA ­ only because America’s news networks simply refused to cover this evidence of the electoral coup d’etat that chose our President in 2004.

And now, not bothering to understand the astonishing revelation in Goodling’s confessional, they are missing the real story behind the firing of the US attorneys. It’s not about removing prosecutors disloyal to Bush, it’s about replacing those who refused to aid the theft of the vote in 2004 with those prepared to burgle it again in 2008.

It’s quite clear that these operations are still going on. Why wouldn’t they be?

If any of you see news items in your local papers like that one above, please send it to me and I’ll post it. It’s tough to do anything about this stuff, but at least we can document it. As Palast notes above, they were thrilled that the US Networks refused to cover these stories and I doubt they will cover them this time. After all, they’ve got pigs and lipstick scandals on their plates and they just don’t have the time to connect these dots.

Update: Here’s more on Wisconsin. And my correspondent also notes that John Fund (who is peddling a book on “voter fraud”) was on Maher last night and claimed that Republicans would be challenging a lot of provisional ballots in battleground states. So — if the election is close it might not be decided immediately — and could be decided by courts. Gosh, I wonder how that would turn out?

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Feminist Icon

by digby

Sarah Palin was a high school basketball star back in the 1980s and when asked about the gender issues in this campaign by Charlie Gibson, she said this:

PALIN: I’m lucky to have been brought up in a family where gender has never been an issue. I’m a product of Title 9, also, where we had equality in schools that was just being ushered in with sports and with equal opportunity for education, all of my life.

I’m part of that generation, where that question is kind of irrelevant, because it’s accepted

How nice for her. Many women (and men) had to fight right wing conservatives like her tooth and nail to achieve that acceptance. If it hadn’t been for them she never would have had all those opportunities and she wouldn’t now be in a position to tell other women that they shouldn’t have them. Like so many conservatives before her, she is more than willing to accept the freedoms and rights that liberals fight for and then turn around and deny them to others.

Still, she does seem to admit that women were allowed equal educational opportunities through governmental action so maybe she could have a chat with her running mate who has a zero rating with the American Association of University Women.

Ok, they’re obviously a bunch of commie symps who “promote equity for all women and girls, lifelong education, and positive societal change,” so who cares what they think, right? But since McCain is the man who chose the first female to be on a national Republican ticket, he must be someone who receives a high rating on women’s issues generally, right?

2007 Senator McCain supported the interests of the Federally Employed Women 10 percent in 2007.2007 Based on a point system, with points assigned for actions in support of or in opposition to League of Women Voters‘s position, Senator McCain received a rating of 17.2005-2006 Senator McCain supported the interests of the Business and Professional Women USA 33 percent in 2005-2006.2005-2006 Senator McCain supported the interests of the National Organization for Women 13 percent in 2005-2006.

He’s quite the champion of women’s rights.

This is one of the things that is making liberal women crazy about Palin. They recognize that her achievement to become governor of a conservative state and a GOP VP candidate represents the fruits of a couple of generations of feminists who fought for her right to be there. And yet her political principles would have ensured the opposite. I guess when you open doors you can’t guarantee that everyone who walks through them deserves to, but it’s galling nonetheless.

Rebecca Traister, who’s been following the “woman’s story” throughout this campaign, wrote a great article in Salon this week about this odd phenomenon:

I am still perfectly capable of picking out the sexism being leveled against the Alaska governor by the press, her detractors and her own party. Every time someone doubts Palin’s ability to lead and mother simultaneously, or considers her physical appeal as a professional attribute, or calls her a “maverette,” I bristle.

But that’s the easy stuff. The clear-cut stuff. I’m far more torn about the more subtle, complicated ways in which Palin’s gender has me tied in knots.

Perhaps it’s because the ground has shifted so quickly under my feet, leaving me with only a slippery grasp of what the basic vocabulary of my beat — feminism, women’s rights — even means anymore. Some days, it feels like I’m watching the civics filmstrip about how much progress women made on the presidential stage in 2008 burst into flames, acutely aware that in the back of the room, a substitute teacher is threading a new reel into the projector. It has the same message and some of the same signifiers — Glass ceilings broken! Girl Power! — but its meaning has been distorted. Suddenly it’s Rudy Giuliani and Rick Santorum schooling us about pervasive sexism; Hillary Clinton’s 18 million cracks have weakened not only the White House’s glass ceiling, but the wall protecting Roe v. Wade; the potential first female vice president in America’s 200-year history describes her early career as “your average hockey mom” who “never really set out to be involved in public affairs”; and teen pregnancy is no longer an illustrative example for sex educators and contraception distributors but for those who seek to eliminate sex education and contraception.

In this strange new pro-woman tableau, feminism — a word that is being used all over the country with regard to Palin’s potential power — means voting for someone who would limit reproductive control, access to healthcare and funding for places like Covenant House Alaska, an organization that helps unwed teen mothers. It means cheering someone who allowed women to be charged for their rape kits while she was mayor of Wasilla, who supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution, who has inquired locally about the possibility of using her position to ban children’s books from the public library, who does not support the teaching of sex education.

In this “Handmaid’s Tale”-inflected universe, in which femininity is worshipped but females will be denied rights, CNBC pundit Donny Deutsch tells us that we’re witnessing “a new creation … of the feminist ideal,” the feminism being so ideal because instead of being voiced by hairy old bats with unattractive ideas about intellect and economy and politics and power, it’s now embodied by a woman who, according to Deutsch, does what Hillary Clinton did not: “put a skirt on.” “I want her watching my kids,” says Deutsch. “I want her laying next to me in bed.”

Bushian epistomological relativism has finally hit the culture wars.

Politically, this is incredibly easy of course. Palin is just another anti-intellectual, hypocritical, right wing freakshow, to whom I react with the same level of shock and disgust as I did when I first saw George W. Bush. Here’s someone who has no more business running for high office than my cat. It’s mind boggling that our system seems to regularly produce such candidates — and that they have such appeal. It makes you question democracy itself. But Palin is riding in on the hopes and aspirations of generations of women and to have the “first” be someone who has been chosen in order that feminism itself could be used as a shield for social conservatism and retrograde policies is almost too much to take.

I always thought the first female president would be a Republican. It’s a Nixon goes to China thing. Only a Republican female could be assured of not being gender-baited by Republicans. But I assumed she would be someone of stature and accomplishment — that they’d demand that much, if only for their own sense of pride. But they have so lowered their standards and bastardized the presidential campaign into a sort of professional wrestling match, that they don’t feel the need to present any candidate of substance.

I suppose that’s a sort of progress. If they could pick George W. Bush, it would have been unfair to expect any more of the first female candidate. Sadly, however, George W. Bush’s failure won’t be held up as an example of why you shouldn’t vote for a man for high office. I’m afraid Sarah Palin will be. Firsts are important.

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Good Old Days

by digby

Yesterday, McCain said this at the “Service” forum in NYC and right afterwards Tweety went nuts on it saying that it was evocative of the “good” 60’s and thin ties before everybody went crazy and grew their hair:

“I think the tone of this whole campaign would have been very different if Sen. Obama had accepted my request for us to appear in town hall meetings all over America, the same way Jack Kennedy and Barry Goldwater had agreed to do so,” McCain said.

Imagine that. Here’s the fact check on it:

The quote actually comes from a 1988 Washington Post interview with Goldwater — and it might be interesting to see the full quote in context.

In it, Goldwater says, “It probably wouldn’t have happened.” Here’s the full quote:

“Goldwater’s eyes remain fixed on the window. ‘I would have enjoyed it very much. I even talked to him one day about using the same airplane, going to the same places. He’d get out in one place and start to debate and I’d rebut him. Then we’d turn it around in the next place. It was the Uncle Morris fantasy, and it probably wouldn’t have happened. But he liked the idea. It would have saved a lot of money, we’d have had a good time, and it would have done the country a lot of good.'” (Washington Post, 8/14/1988)

Tweety said this harkened back to the good old days when the country wasn’t divided and everybody was on the same team. Too bad one of the participants in this good hearted exchange of views was assassinated in cold blood on the streets of Dallas before they could make their “morning in America” tour.

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Meanwhile, Back In Reality

by tristero

As mentioned time and again, the surge reduced violence in Iraq from apocalyptic levels to completely unacceptable:

A car bomb ripped through a crowded commercial district in a mainly Shiite town on Friday, killing at least 32 people, Iraqi officials said _ the latest attack north of Baghdad where violence has been slower to decline than elsewhere in the country.

The explosion, which wounded 43 others, was apparently targeting a police station in the town of Dujail but instead badly damaged a nearby medical clinic, according to police. Concrete barriers largely protected the police station, the officials said.

The blast took place about 50 yards from the police station in an area packed with shoppers preparing for Iftar, the daily meal at which Muslims break their sunrise-to-sunset fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

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Oil Covered Ostriches

by digby

So in her interview with Gibson, Sarah Palin said she believes in global warming. That’s very reassuring. But it’s been a damned recent conversion. The AP writes:

[I]n the past Palin has said she does not believe global warming is caused by human activity. She has told the Internet news site Newsmax, “A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location…. I’m not one, though, who would attribute it to being man-made.”In an interview with a Fairbanks newspaper within the last year, Palin said: “I’m not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity.” ABC cited the interview as being at odds with her statement.

It’s not just her statements. It’s her actions as governor. This was just four months ago:

The State of Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species, Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday.

She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state’s northern and northwestern coasts.

Palin argued there is not enough evidence to support a listing. Polar bears are well-managed and their population has dramatically increased over 30 years as a result of conservation, she said.

Climate models that predict continued loss of sea ice, the main habitat of polar bears, during summers are unreliable, Palin said.

The announcement drew a strong response from the primary author of the listing petition.

“She’s either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading, and both are unbecoming,” said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Alaska deserves better.”

Siegel said it was unconscionable for Palin to ignore overwhelming evidence of global warming’s threat to sea ice, the polar bear’s habitat.

“Even the Bush administration can’t deny the reality of global warming,” she said. “The governor is aligning herself and the state of Alaska with the most discredited, fringe, extreme viewpoints by denying this.”

As marine mammals, polar bears are regulated by the federal government, not the state. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne last week made the listing decision and said it was based on three findings.

“First, sea ice is vital to polar bear survival. Second, the polar bear’s sea-ice habitat has dramatically melted in recent decades. Third, computer models suggest sea ice is likely to further recede in the future,” he said.

Summer sea ice last year shrank to a record low, about 1.65 million square miles, nearly 40 percent less than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000.

What is significant here isn’t that Palin is a moron on the issues, although she may very well be one. So is Bush. So was Quayle. So was Reagan, (although in comparison to what’s come since, he was a genius.) I think the Republicans have proved that you don’t have to be informed or even have a slight grasp of the world and its complexities to be elected in America. The significance of her statements and behavior is that she denies science because she wants to preserve the oil companies prerogatives. They didn’t even try to hide their agenda in Alaska.

Designating the polar bears as a threatened species due to global warming results in certain regulations kicking in. Palin wasn’t willing to let that happen. What that translates into is the fact that if global warming, which she now insists she believes is happening, requires that the US government curtail certain activities that might harm the profit potential of the oil companies, she will side with the oil companies. I know this is hardly news to anyone who has ever observed Republicans in action. But we are now fighting wars over oil, the health of the planet is in crisis and the country cannot afford any more of this blatant shilling for the petroleum industry.

Alaska is a perfect petrie dish for this discussion. It’s is owned by oil companies. And it is also seeing the most extreme early consequences of global warming. Sarah Palin is its leader and when faced with a decision that affects the well being of not just her state or her country, but the entire world, she chose to back the short term profits interest of the oil business. There is no reason to believe she and John McCain won’t make the same calculations if they win the election.

These guys are all having a lot of fun driving liberals crazy by screaming “drill, logans. But that won’t change the fact that the ice is melting and the arctic permafrost is turning into mush. I’m sure they’ll find a way to blame liberals for that too, once it becomes irreversible, but I don’t think anybody’s going to be laughing.

Update: Sarah Palin is also a big fan of aerial wolf hunting. If you want to see just how sickeningly awful it is, see this Youtube. I didn’t put it up here because I didn’t want anyone to see something this disturbing by accident. But all of your Republican relatives who think Palin is a nice small town gal should see it for sure.

I’m sure that many hunters thinks this is ok and I’m just preaching to the choir from my liberal weenie perch in California, but I don’t care. It’s disgusting.

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Lies, Lies, Lies

by dday

The first line of this AP story says it all.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Friday running mate Sarah Palin has never asked for money for lawmakers’ pet projects as Alaska governor when in fact she has sought nearly $200 million in earmarks this year.

John McCain is running a campaign based on lies. Lies about their opponent’s record. Lies about their own record. Lies on all things great and small.

Bravo to Joy Behar, by the way, for saying this to his face:

JOY BEHAR: “There are ads running from your campaign, one of them is saying that Obama, when he said you can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig, was talking about Sarah. There’s another ad that says that Obama was interested in teaching sex education to kindergarteners. Now, we know that those two ads are untrue, they’re lies. And yet you at the end of it say I approve these messages. Do you really approve them?”

JOHN MCCAIN: “Actually, they are not lies.” [ABC, “The View,” 9/12/08]

He then went into his whole whiny lament about how Barack Obama wouldn’t go on joint town halls with him, so he just had to base the campaign on lies, you see. Which would make more sense if John McCain hadn’t abruptly stopped giving town halls himself three weeks ago. And if it made sense at all. “Because my opponent didn’t campaign with me, I had to falsely claim that he wants to teach kindergarteners how to have sex.”

(what may really kill him with female voters, however, is that he out and out said he opposed Roe v. Wade on a daytime chat show.)

You can say this 100 different ways. Brave New Films is out with a new one that has received over a quarter of a million views so far.

McCain is such a pathological liar that he doesn’t recognize he’s a liar.

I’ve been through this litany before, where I say, “ok, what specific area have I quote changed?” Nobody can name it. … I am the same person and I have the same principles.

Does he mean the position shifts from just today? Or the 76 position changes that have been chronicled up until now?

How about the flip-flop on the question of the experience needed for the Presidency?

“I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I’ve been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism,” the Senator declared. “I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn’t a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn’t a governor for a short period of time.”

The man has no honor left. He’s given it away to Republican maniacs so he can get elected.

…Ari Berman Melber shows how it’s done, you call these hacks liars, you call them dishonorable, you do it again and again.

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Oh Dear God

by digby

From Instaputz, evunthelibrul Michael O’Hanlon does it again:

In its infinite wisdom, Politico asked a bunch of folks what they thought of Palin’s performance. Among them, Michael O’Hanlon, who said he “thought she handled the discussion of the “Bush doctrine” fine.”

We’ll agree to disagree there, Mike, but this is just plain ridonkulous:

Also her speech yesterday about going over to defend us against those who committed the attacks of 9/11, to troops headed for Iraq, is also correct because in fact al Qaeda is in Iraq now, even if it wasn’t then.

Shoot me now.

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