Month: September 2008

Democrats Hate America

by digby

Always have, always will. We hate America so hard that we like to throw flags into the trash can (and then throw used kitty litter on top of them!)That’s how much we hate America. Or at least that’s what the Mccain campaign says. (The kitty litter part is implied.)

Drudge rules their world so the cable nets are all over this story:

Democrats are not caring for their Stars and Stripes. At least that’s the message out of John McCain’s campaign.

McCain supporters, claiming they rescued 12,000 miniature American flags from the site of Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech last Thursday, redistributed the orphan flags to audience members ahead of a McCain rally in Colorado Springs on Saturday.

[…]

McCain supporters said the flags were discovered by a vendor at Denver’s Invesco Field after the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention. The vendor supposedly found trash bags full of flags in and near garbage bins, and turned them over to the McCain campaign.

Boy Scouts were sorting through 84 bags of flags in Colorado on Saturday, before a McCain supporter had veterans distribute them to the audience.

“We want to find good homes for these flags,” radio host Dan Caplis said at the rally, adding that whatever flags remained would be placed at memorials throughout Colorado.

Audience members, who booed when Caplis announced that the flags were left in Denver, waved the flags and chanted “U.S.A” before McCain arrived at the rally with his running mate, Sarah Palin.

Damon Jones, spokesman for the Democratic National Convention Committee, released a statement saying McCain should applaud the fact that thousands of American flags were “proudly waved” at their convention.

“But instead his supporters wrongfully took leftover bundles of our flags from the stadium to play out a cheap political stunt calling into question our patriotism,” he said.

Sadly, it isn’t actually true, not that it will matter:

According to a senior official involved in organizing the Democratic convention, the McCain camp is simply lying about the flags.

“All of the flags at Invesco were picked up and put in bags and into storage, along with the unused flags and campaign signs. The flags were going to be donated, and the signs were going to be sent out to be used elsewhere,” the official said, speaking anonymously since he was not authorized to talk to the press.

Fox News’ Carl Cameron and Bonney Kapp reported that they had “been told” that “a vendor at Invesco Field found the flags, which were going to be thrown out, and turned them over to the McCain campaign.”

The Democratic convention official says that’s not true.

“It’s pretty reprehensible on their part,” he said. “Someone made an assumption, took the flags, and essentially lied about what was going to happen to them. I mean, c’mon, we were never ever going to throw out flags.”

Why wouldn’t people believe it? We’ve nominated a Muslim terrorist as our candidate after all — and we’ve always hated America. Of course it’s true. Most of us agreed before hand that we were going to take them home and sexually defile them like we usually do. I don’t know who the 12,000 losers who left theirs behind were, but they certainly aren’t good Democrats.

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Keeping It Real

by digby

While we’ve all been enmeshed in the soap opera of the former mayor of Wasilla and Mean Mr Mustard all week, Howie Klein has been doing something useful — raising money for Blue America’s progressive candidates.

He will introduce the winner of the contest today at 1PM over at FDL, so if you’ve contributed, check in over there to see which Blue America candidate gets the $5,000.

But check this out (I can hardly believe it):

Meanwhile at 9AM this morning, we got this awesomely generous letter from Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Chairman of the DCCC. Before I share it with you, just let me remind everyone that when Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer beat up on a buncch of Democrats and led enough across the aisle to help the Republicans pass Bush’s continuing occupation of Iraq and, a week later, his hideous FISA legislation, Van Hollen, was one of the few in the Democratic leadership who refused to join them on either. Like a majority of Democrats, Chris voted to end the war and voted against the FISA bill. His letter:

Please offer my thanks to the Blue American community for their continued help to our Democratic candidates. Mobilizing grassroots supporters is crucial in our campaign to strengthen and secure the Democratic Majority. The outpouring of support that the Blue America community has shown this week for our Democratic candidates for change has been particularly exciting. I am pleased to match Blue America’s $5,000 contribution to the winner of your “Vote For A Blue America Candidate” contest. I thank you for your continuing support in securing a New Direction for America.

Warm Regards,

Chris Van Hollen
Chairman

Translation: today’s winner gets $10,000, not $5,000.

And… futhermore there’s a bonus for our donors today too! Anybody who contributes at least $25.00 before noon will be entered in a drawing to win two (2) fourth row center tickets to the Jackson Browne concert at the historic Orpheum theatre in Los Angeles on October 5th.

I’m as hooked on the presidential soap opera as anyone, but this is the real work of getting progressive policies passed in the congress. We don’t know how many of our candidates will make it this time. probably quite a few. But this contest was run specifically for those candidates who are not getting institutional support from the party (the Red to Blue operation) so it means something that Van Hollen kicked in the matching money. It’s possible that some of the leadership are finally seeing the value of having a progressive wing of the party after all.

If you still want to contribute, you can find all the necessary links at Down With Tyranny.:

You can see what each of our candidates has managed to bring in since last Saturday on our special contest page. Many overly enthusiastic donors gave more than once– some more than a dozen times– to the candidates of their choice. To determine the winner of our prize, only one donation per candidate is counted for any one screen name. The contest remains open until 12 noon (PT), so, by all means, please donate to the candidate, or candidates, of your choice. We have also gotten a generous donation of $1,250 to the Blue America PAC from an anonymous donor who has asked that we match it and donate $2,500 to the runner-up. So… if you’d like to support that proposition, by all means drop some cash into the Blue America PAC slot as well.

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Let Freedom Reign

by digby

Heckuva job, Bushie:

The Iraqi government reacted with concern and dismay on Friday to allegations that American officials spied on Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and warned that it could affect negotiations over the continuing American troop presence in the country.

The claims about espionage against senior Iraqi government figures appear in Bob Woodward’s book “The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008,” The Washington Post reported Friday.

Ali al-Dabbagh, a government spokesman, said Mr. Maliki’s government would seek explanations and assurances about the conduct of the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies.

“If it is a fact, it reflects that there is no trust and it reflects also that the institutions in the United States are used to spying on their friends and their enemies in the same way,” he said. “If it is true, it casts a shadow on the future relations with such institutions.”

And people wonder why we think they would likely spy on their friends and enemies at home too. It’s what they do.

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Gentlemen Scholars

by digby

Oooh… the next 60 days are going to be really, really fun:

From the September 4 broadcast of ABC Radio Networks’ The Sean Hannity Show:

HANNITY: By the way, I have what has to be — and I have warned you that these attacks are only, only going to get worse, although they’re not going to work and it’s all going to backfire. And this has got to be the most hysterical reaction to Sarah Palin’s home-run speech. Get this. The National Organization of Liberal Women is charging that Sarah Palin — now, you better sit down for this — Sarah Palin is really a man.

I’m — this report in the Politico, spokesman for the National Organization for Women, “noting Palin’s opposition to abortion rights and” her “support of other parts of the social conservative agenda,” told the Politico, quote, “She’s more a conservative man than she is a woman on women’s issues. Very disappointing.”

So that’s the official liberal feminist position. Sarah Palin is not a woman. She’s a man. Now, folks, these people are just — they’re not connecting. You know, Gloria Steinem — well, the only thing she shares with Hillary is a chromosome. You know, folks, fear has now literally taken over the Democratic Party. Someone needs to start — you know what? There’s Happy Housewives, they were quoted in The New York Times, we’re going to have — maybe we’ll have them on tomorrow to counter this nonsense.

But anyway, let’s get to our phones. I see Mark is in Washington, D.C. Uh-oh. Is this him? Is that —

LEVIN: Dr. Hannity?

HANNITY: Dr. Levin. Thank me. How am I?

LEVIN: It’s not the National Organization of Liberal Women. It’s the National Organization of Ugly Women.

So Much For SooperDooperTrooper-Gate

by tristero

Newsweek says that Republicans are applying a full court press and that the investigation may be shut down. And if you believe that “may,” then you didn’t see the white-collar riots in Florida in 2000.

Naganahappen

Simple Answers To Simple Questions

by tristero

Jamison Foser

The next two months will constitute a test for reporters: If they fall for the idea that they’re treating unfairly a candidate who has long referred to them as his “base,” what won’t they fall for? If they won’t stand up to these attacks, what will they stand up to?

Nothing. Nothing.

This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

With apologies to Duncan.

Read It And Weep

by tristero

Shorter Joe Biden:

They’re gonna win. And I better help ’em.

After reading Biden’s appalling paean to a man who last behaved well a loooooooooooong time ago, I came across this blueprint from Michael Moore on how the Democrats can manage, despite incredible odds, to wrest defeat from the jaws of certain victory. It was written before Biden was chosen as Obama’s running mate:

For years now, nearly every poll has shown that the American people are right in sync with the platform of the Democratic Party. They are pro-environment, pro-women’s rights and pro-choice. They don’t like war. They want the minimum wage raised, and they want a single-payer universal health-care system. The American public agrees with the Republican Party on only one major issue: They support the death penalty.

So you would think the Democrats would be cleaning up, election after election. Obviously not. The Democrats appear to be professional losers. They are so pathetic in their ability to win elections, they even lose when they win! So when you hear Democrats and liberals and supporters of Barack Obama say they are worried that John McCain has a good chance of winning, they ain’t a-kidding. Who would know better than the very people who have handed the Republicans one election after another on a silver platter? Yes, be afraid, be very afraid.

In an effort to help the party doofuses and pundits — and the candidate himself — spare all of us another suicide-inducing election night, as the results giving the election to the Republican pour in, here is the blueprint from the Democrats’ past losing campaigns. Just follow each of these steps and you, the Democratic Party establishment, can help elect John Sidney McCain III to a four-year extension of the Bush Era.

1. Keep saying nice things about McCain.

2. Pick a running mate who is a conservative white guy or a general or a Republican.

3. Keep writing speeches for Obama that make him sound like a hawk.

4. Forget that this was a historic year for women.

5. Show up to a gunfight with a peashooter.

6. Denounce me!

5 out of 6, by my count. And it’s only early September. There’s still time to do ’em all.

UPDATE: And while the following doesn’t hurt, it really doesn’t help things at all. As Moore astutely observes:

You’ve sold them on the idea that McCain isn’t a bad egg, and they do not hear the rest of what you have to say: “But John McCain is four more years of George W. Bush.”

Attack Kitten

by digby

Biden:

“John McCain is my friend,” said the loquacious Blue Hen. “I admire John McCain. I know of no man or woman I have ever met that has more personal courage than John McCain. We have been friends for over 33 years. We have traveled together. When John was Navy liaison he staffed me for three or four years everywhere I traveled in the world.

“Jill and John are good friends,” Biden said, referring to his wife Dr. Jill Biden, who had just introduced him. “Matter of fact there’s a best-selling book written about us called The Nightingale’s Song about John and some of his graduating class from Annapolis that references Jill and John in the book as good buddies.

“She doesn’t like the reference,'” Biden added, “but John, John’s a great guy. John was staffing me in Greece. I was meeting with the Prime Minister Papandreou and we were supposed to go to this fancy dinner and Jill said ‘Do we have to go to this dinner?’ And John said, ‘No, no, no I know this great place for dinner.’

“And there was a place literally down on the docks, where Zorba lived I think, and so I had to go to the fancy thing and I come back down and I find it, and we’re wandering through these alleys on the dock — you’re gonna get very angry at this Jill — but I walk around the corner and there’s these cement tables like down at the shore you know, the cement base ,the cement table, and I walk in and Jill and John are standing up on the table drinking ouzo dancing with one another, and I’m thinking, ‘I’ve never trusted John since then, Jillie.’

“But he’s a great guy,” Biden said, “and if John called me today and said ‘Joe -,’ like when they went after John McCain, when Bush went after him in South Carolina with the scurrilous comments they made about his character, I called him and said, ‘John, where do you want me? I’m an Al Gore man but where do you want me? I will show up anywhere in America to testify to the kind of man you are.’ And he is a good man, he is a good man.”

Ok.

To be fair, he did go on to give Mccain’s policies a very effective going over, so it wasn’t a total love fest. But these testimonials are unnecessary, particularly the thing about South Carolina which does McCain’s work for him by putting distance between him and Bush. I’d be very surprised if we hear that again.

But I kind of liked the ouzo story. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but it sounded like fun.

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Jane Smiley Absolutely Gets It

by tristero

This is the kind of tone leading Democrats, except Obama of course, need to take:

[T]he Republicans have gone beyond lying. Bush and Cheney have been great liars, really, the best. Rove has made a career, and even a philosophy of lying about everything. But there is a special cold villainy to the way they have taken it to the next level now. “Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.” Rather than repent, they plan ever more of the same. Knowing that we know what they know, they now tell us we’re crazy, that black is white and cats are dogs and John McCain is a maverick and Sarah Palin is a tax cutter (hear the one about Sarah P. leaving the town of Wasilla with 19 million dollars in long term debt? You did? No, you didn’t, darling. You must be imagining things)

Well, we are crazy if we let them get away with it. The whole world thinks so.

Do I think Biden and Clinton should talk this tough? No. They should be tougher.

Sacred Tribal Chants

by digby

So I hear the the Wilson Sisters have told the McCain campaign they can’t use Barracuda and Brooks and Dunn told the Obama campaign that they couldn’t use “Only In America.”

I think this is a pretty good illustration of the tribal divide in this country. I could tell that the people at that convention last night didn’t have a clue about Barracuda and didn’t relate to it at all. Same thing with the Brooks and Dunn tune at Invesco. We all waved our flags in time to the music but it was a little bit incongruous after listening to our own sacred tribal chorus of Stevie Wonder and Cheryl Crow earlier in the evening. It seemed a little bit literal.

The fact that these artists don’t want their songs associated with the “other side” is really telling. They identify with us as much as we identify with them.

I actually like that Brooks and Dunn tune and if using it is Obama’s way of reaching out, then count me in. I’d be willing to share Barracuda with the other side in exchange, although I don’t think they’d like the lyrics if they could understand them:

If the real thing don’t do the trick
No, you better make up something quick
You gonna burn burn burn burn it to the wick
Ooooooohhhh, barra barracuda.

I guess this sweet merging of our ritual hymns is not to be. They’re a little bit country and we’re a little bit rock and roll and never the (Shania) Twain shall meet. So much for post-partisanship.

Let us pray:

Update: Oooops. The report I heard on the radio was incorrect. So sorry. It seems Brooks and Dunn didn’t object after all. I take that to mean they are nothing but bleeding heart liberals who are voting for Obama. (Actually, I guess one is and one isn’t, which mean they are a mixed marriage. Only in America!)

It was still an oddly literal choice for the “Promise of America” speech, especially since it was Bush’s theme song in 2004. But maybe that’s what makes it a true post-partisan anthem.

I would have preferred Melissa Etheridge’s “I Need To Wake Up” which, to me, is the true liberal anthem. She was in Denver and I heard her on the radio the day of Obama’s speech sing it on acoustic guitar in the studio and it made me choke up — again:

And if they wanted country, this one certainly expresses my feelings, although it certainly isn’t post-partisan: