“Obamacans” or “Obamacons”

You are starting to see more and more Republicans and Conservatives coming out in favor of Obama. The trend continues with another top Republican:

Former U.S. Rep. Jim Leach, a leading Republican moderate with a foreign policy background, is endorsing Democrat Barack Obama for president. The former Iowa congressman’s backing was announced Tuesday as part of a group of GOP activists crossing party lines this year.

Leach told reporters: “I’m convinced that the national interest demands a new approach to our interaction with the world.” Leach added that Obama offers the leadership to do that. […]

Leach predicted that a lot of Republicans and independents are going to be attracted by Obama’s campaign.

While McLame had a video out last week using pre-2006 soundbytes of Democrats giving him random praise, this highlights how Obama is in the present, with the Conservatives actively praising and supporting his Presidential campaign.

Vacations

Here's a question: Are the same Right Wing echo chamber people who try to get on Obama for taking a vacation in Hawaii, where he grew up and has family, because it sends the wrong message, are these same people getting on Condi Rice for sending the wrong message by staying on her vacation as the Russia/Georgia conflict explodes?

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has also been noticeably absent on the diplomatic scene, having failed to interrupt her holidays to fly to Tbilisi in support of the Georgian government.

So for all that BS about 3am phone calls, the answer is your President will go to the Olympics and play the pawn in China's propaganda-fest and your Secretary of State will stay on her vacation. Don't fool yourself.

Bob Barr Takes On McCain

The Libertarian candidate Bob Barr is John McLame's new bugbear. In the video he takes on McSame's "Maverick" moniker. Seems he's not a fan. Barr's supporters are pushing to have him included in the upcoming Presidential debates. Not the greatest video, but, it does has Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Kind Of Man" as its music bed.



Some Bob Barr factoids:
Married 3 times. He failed to pay child support to his first two wives, (To his credit, Barr did pay for his second wife's abortion, though she still suspects he was cheating on her.)

In 1998, Barr gave the keynote speech at the national convention of the Council of Conservative Citizens; a hate group that routinely denigrated blacks as "genetically inferior," complained about "Jewish power brokers," called homosexuals "perverted sodomites," and accused immigrants of turning America into a "slimy brown mass of glop." He claims he was not aware of the group's history.

While trying to impeach Bill Clinton on moral grounds when there were photos floating around of him licking whipped cream off of strippers chests at his inaugural ball. I'm sure McCain has those ready to roll out.

McCain Called Out For Lies

We finally see the "L" word. Here's the response to McCain's latest "celeb" ad from Obama spokesperson Hari Sevugan:

"This ad is a lie, and it's part of the old, tired politics of a party in Washington that has run out of ideas and run out of steam. Even though a host of independent, nonpartisan organizations have said this attack isn't true, Senator McCain continues to lie about Senator Obama's plan to give 95% of all families a tax cut of $1,000, and not raise taxes for those making under $250,000 a single dime. The reason so many families are hurting today is because we've had eight years of failed Bush policies that Senator McCain wants to continue for another four, and that's what Barack Obama will change as President."

As McCain flies around in his millionaire wife's private jet, these celeb ads highlight how weak the conservatives are. As long as the Right Wing base fail to see the hypocrisy and demand some class out of Grandpa McLame, this is how he will run his campaign into the ground.

From The Pen Of: Steve Greenberg

For all the talk the Conservatives give about government being broken and how much they despise the workings of Washington, they sure know how to spend. I guess that is the "broke", as in having no more money, in broken. After the Republicans use their control it sure is Broke Government. But that all ends on November 4.

Obama Attracts Crowds, McCain Searches For Them

Now matter how you look at it, the Obama brand is much bigger and stronger for leading the US into the next stage, Post-Bush hellstorm. He raises money in a new way, he excites people, he unites them, he gets people to register to vote, he gives hope, he gets the world energized about our country. He is the new paridigm.

In order to keep up with the genuine charisma of Obama, who can get 200,000 people to see him give a speech, McLame must find crowds "to bask in the unwarranted limelight". So McLame heads to Sturgis to bogart a crowd of lawless, extremist bikers. I'm sure his $500 loafers were all the rage. These signs might as well have said "Bikers For The Old White Guy".

This exchange from Keith Olbermann highlights the difference between McLame and Obama:

OLBERMANN: Also, maybe a somewhat serious point contained in all this malarkey; on stage at Sturgis, he referred to the—preferring the roar of the 50,000 Harleys to 200,000 Germans cheering in Berlin. But in doing that, did he not underscore the fact that those 200,000 Germans in Berlin actually showed up to hear Barack Obama speak, but the 50,000 bikers on the roar of their Harleys, they had shown up at Sturgis not to see John McCain, but to see Kid Rock, Kelly Pickler and a bunch of female wrestlers and other women not wearing tops?

MADDOW: This is a critical and basic difference between the John McCain campaign for president and the Barack Obama campaign. Barack Obama creates large crowds when he gives speeches. John McCain‘s campaign has just figured out to find out where there‘s going to be a large crowd for another reason and to hope to slip their candidate in between other acts.

How out of touch is McCain? How desperate? He really counts on the room-temperature IQs of his crowds. I wonder if reformed-junkie Cindy McCain was looking to score some meds off the bikers?

Exxon McCain '08

Exxon McCain website

John McCain thinks if you have a problem with oil, why not ask the oil industry to solve it. They're objective. Asking Exxon to team up for his presidential run was a logical next step.

Right Wing Never Quite Has The Facts

All hot air, all the time. Too bad the truth has to get in the way of all their jabbering. Mitt Romney was asked by Wolf Blitzer to name a single bill John McCain has produced in 26 years [as AZ Senator] on energy independence. Cite one legislative accomplishment?

Romney responded, “I’m not a historian.”

One, Two, Dale, Four

Get Your War On

The highly anticipated premiere of Get Your War On, the new animated series from 23/6, based on the popular comic by David Rees.



Video series on www.236.com.

Bush Administration Borrow Billions

We all know it's better to pay things off up front rather than borrow and pay back with interest. It costs more. It's also the right thing to do. By not raising the appropriate tax receipts now, by cutting taxes for the top 1%, you're just delaying the responsibility of running the government and asking to pay more down the road. You're letting the top 1% keep more of their money and passing on the negative consequences of these reckless tax cuts to the other 99%. When the Bush Administration has to borrow money to pay for its current budget, it's like writing a massive I.O.U. to the country.

"The Bush administration gave details Wednesday on how it plans to borrow the billions of dollars it will need to finance soaring budget deficits. Those plans include raising $27 billion by selling a new 10-year note and a new 30-year bond at the regularly scheduled quarterly auctions to be held next week. The government needs to borrow $171 billion during the July-September quarter, second-highest quarterly borrowing on record. ... Democratic critics say the soaring deficits show the total failure of the Bush administration to put the government's fiscal house in order,. They contended that whoever wins the presidency in November will inherit a huge financial mess that will severely restrain the next president's ability to fulfill his own campaign promises. The administration projects that the deficit this budget year, which ends Sept. 30, will total $389 billion, more than double the $161.5 billion deficit for 2007."

I love this part, too. How can they not include these numbers to show how screwed thing are?

"That deficit estimate could go even higher. It does not include the expected full cost of funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or costs associated with the housing rescue measure Congress passed last week and President Bush signed into law Wednesday."

It's just asking the next generation to assume all this debt. So not only is he ruining the economy now, he also leaves a legacy of debt for the next guy. Look how Clinton left things, there was a surplus. Bush took us from a surplus into a massive deficit. The MBA President from Harvard? What a joke.

Read on at USA Today

Army Covers Up Death Of PFC LaVena Johnson

Support the troops? Respect the troops? Put a magnet on your car?

When a female US officer in Iraq is beaten, raped, teeth knocked in, set on fire, has lye poured on their vagina, and dragged to another location [ a military contractor's tent], what does the Army rule as cause of death: suicide. Unbelievable. PFC LaVena Johnson deserves better than that. Her father, who previously served in the U.S. Army and worked and retired as a civilian personnel specialist for the Army, got involved and found documents and photos that suggest foul play in her death.

It's a cover up and the story needs to come to light. Contact your representatives in the House and Senate to demand a full scale Congressional investigation begin immediately. Watch the video from Cenk of The Young Turks.



The Army has been complicit in the cover up of many things, the fratricide of Pat Tillman and bogus rescue of Jessica Lynch, to name a few. It is all a front to present this image of the military to America as honorable and doing the hard jobs to protect us. I'm OK with that, most people in the military do a great job, but let's not forget why they are there: to make a paycheck. All this good vibes about freedom is BS, take away their signing bonuses and incentives and you'd see a mass exodus.

Read on

Right Wing Muppets

Both are children of privilege. Both rebelled against their famous Daddies. One lost his first family to marry another woman, one lost the first 40 years of his life to booze. One a fake church man. One a faux military man. Both dangerous to the world.

Bush and McCain. The perfect front men for a complex conservative movement. Don't ask questions because you don't understand things. Just repeat what they tell you and never realize the fool you are.

From the Pen of: John Sherffius

Bob Herbert's NYT Column

Bob Herbert's NYT column

"Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. Barack Obama is a United States senator, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his party’s candidate for president of the United States — and yet it was somehow presumptuous of him to meet with foreign leaders last week during his trip to the Middle East and Europe.

I’ll say this about Senator Obama. He sure raises people’s hackles. I’ve never seen anyone so roundly criticized for such grievous offenses as giving excellent speeches and urging people of different backgrounds to take a chance on working together. How dare he? And 200,000 people turned out to hear him in Berlin. Unforgivable.

The man has been taken to task for promoting hope, threatened with mutilation by Jesse Jackson for suggesting that a lot of black fathers could do better by their kids and had his patriotism called into question because he wants to wind down a war that most Americans would dearly love to be rid of.

John McCain can barely stop himself from sputtering at the mere mention of Senator Obama’s name. He actually ran an ad blaming Mr. Obama for high gasoline prices. Even Republicans had a good laugh at that one.

And yet Mr. Obama continues to treat Senator McCain respectfully. As far as personal character is concerned, Mr. Obama has scored very well, indeed...

So this is not your ordinary election. Senator Obama will have to turn people on big-time just to win by a little. And for all the tedious talk about timelines and what the surge in Iraq has or has not accomplished, the top three issues in this campaign are still the economy, the economy and the economy...."

Barack will have to work twice as hard, as he did against Hillary in the primaries, but, in the end, it will all be worth it. Winning the right way, bringing the American brand back to something you can respect, inspiring people and industry, leaving the sour politics of yore to Grampy McLame.

Our economy was driven into the ground by the people at the top, the Bush Administration, not by Americans working any more or less competitively. Running up massive debts has a consequence. Catering to a small demographic of wealthy people hurts the country as a whole.

If you want to continue this slide into the depths of cheap labor, high prices, and outsourced opportunity, let the "I'm free market yet I subsidize the banking industry" Republican hypocrites continue to sell you there tired broken story by the likes of John McSame.

Barack's New Ad

John McSame, maybe 30 years ago, was a fresh idealist. Now he is a neo-con flunkie.



Barack Obama is bobbing and weaving Grandpa McCain's juvenile mudslinging. I think the country senses the same tired tricks used by McLame and just wants to move on.

Bush Scandals

Cool Venn diagram on all the scandals of the Bush administration. All roads lead to Alberto Gonzales.

The actual diagram has roll-over features and much more information. See it at Slate.com