I can hardly believe it’s here. After many, many months, it’s Election Day 2008.
VOTE TODAY!
Don’t listen to anyone who tells you the election is November 5. Don’t listen to anyone who tries to intimidate you at the polls. In fact, report anyone who tries to intimidate you at the polls.
Today is the day! Tonight will be, well, awesome.
We stand on the threshold of a dream.
VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!!!!!
Tom Brokaw obviously favors the right wing, but the show is still one of the finest Sunday news programs on television. I’m happy to spread the word.
A great interview with Barack Obama by Jon Stewart.
Believe it or not they’re still questions being raised about Barack Obama’s birth certificate. The Obama campaign debunked rumors in June, but persistent rumors are still circulating around the Internet that the Democratic candidate for president was not born in this country.
According to the Chicago Tribune, conservative critics have suggested that Obama may have been born outside the United States and is not a “natural born citizen” eligible for the presidency. These critics produced no evidence to support their assertions.
It’s amazing to me that this close to the election this type of rumor and innuendo is still circulating. The persistence of these rumors only gives further credence to the fact that the McCain campaign simply has no real issues. They rely again and again on tilt by association, as well as ridiculous assertions about Citizen Obama’s lineage.
Read more about this ridiculous controversy at the Chicago Tribune.
Is Barack Obama a Socialst? Why not ask THE Socialist candidate for President?
Incredible Stephen Colbert.
It’s official. The Steeler Nation has endorsed Barack Obama for President.
Very cool.
It must have been an awesome event in Pittsburgh’s Mellon Arena Monday. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, thousands showed up to hear the Senator from Illinois deliver his “closing argument” to the campaign:
Mr. Obama was introduced by Steelers President Dan Rooney whose presence sparked incongruous calls of “Here we go Steelers, Here we go,” in the home of the Penguins.
“Eight more days, eight more days,” the crowd chanted taking the lead of Sen. Bob Casey, who, along with Gov. Ed Rendell joined Mr. Obama on the arena floor. As they voiced their support for the Democratic nominee, thousands of other supporters still waited in the long line that wrapped around the Lower Hill site.
Obama brought his message of hope home to the voters of Pennsylvania:
“After decades of broken politics in Washington, eight years of failed policies from George Bush, and 21 months of a campaign that has taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are one week away from change in America,” he said as a wave of applause broke over the arena.
“I knew that the size of our challenges had outgrown the smallness of our politics. I believed that Democrats and Republicans and Americans of every political stripe were hungry for new ideas, new leadership, and a new kind of politics — one that favors common sense over ideology; one that focuses on those values and ideals we hold in common as Americans.”
And more:
“Now, Sen. McCain has served this country with distinction. And he can point to a few moments over the past eight years, on torture for example, where he has broken from George Bush,” Mr. Obama said. “But when it comes to the economy — when it comes to the central issue of this election all across then region, he don’t get it. The plain truth is that John McCain has stood with this president every step of the way. Voting for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that he once opposed.
“Voting for the Bush budgets that spent us into debt. He called for less regulation twenty-one times just this year. Those are the facts.”
As a Steeler fan, I have to admit seeing Dan Rooney with Barack was incredibly awesome. Look, I know Barack has been cheering many different sports teams all over this great country of ours. Pols do that all the time.
Today, one team cheered back with a thunderous roar.
The message is clear, Pennsylvania: Barack Obama is on our team now. Give him your vote.
Addendum: Franco Harris, who is also backing Barack Obama, attended the 55th Annual Autumn Leaf Festival parade on October 4 to campaign for Obama.
Editor’s Note: On Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton, one of the most beloved pols to ever visit the Keystone State will seek Democratic votes in Washington County. Our report on Turning Left will follow.
A strange thing happened on the road to the White House last week…
Conservative legal scholar, Reagan Solicitor, prominent Republican and John McCain campaign adviser General Charles Fried, endorsed and voted for Barack Obama.
This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision “is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis.”
Fried further clarified his reasons for his move to Obama-Biden:
I admire Senator McCain and was glad to help in his campaign, and to be listed as doing so; but when I concluded that I must vote for Obama for the reason stated in my letter, I felt it wrong to appear to be recommending to others a vote that I was not prepared to cast myself. So it was more of an erasure than a public affirmation–although obviously my vote meant that I thought that Obama was preferable to McCain-Palin. I do not consider abstention a proper option.
Fried is listed in a May 6, 2008 press release on John McCain’s web site as a member of the McCain campaign’s steering committee. As late as September 15, 2008, McCain’s campaign had Fried listed as a member of McCain’s Honest and Open Election Committee.
Thanks to our friends at Drinking Liberally in New Milford for the nod on this one.
In other campaign news, salmon fisherman Seth Kantner apologized on behalf of the people of Alaska for inflicting the diva on the lower 48:
I’m an Alaskan — born in an igloo, enjoy whale muktuk, all that — and in case you aren’t sick of our state by now, I’ll start off with an apology for one of our residents: Sarah Palin.
We Alaskans are not generally so magazine-pretty like her, nor are we so confrontational and vapid. Most of us don’t have those peachy cheeks — we have sunburn, windburn and frostbite. Our fingernails are dirty from actually gutting moose, not yakking about it. Our hands are chapped from picking thousands of salmon out of nets, not holding one up for the camera.
Mr. Kantner brushes off Palin’s claim that being mayor gave her the administrative experience to serve as President of the United States:
Tougher in Alaska? Not necessarily. Here most anyone can be dogcatcher, city planner, governor, with little or no experience. That’s one beauty of our state — although, often the only thing keeping it all working is the lubrication provided by obscene amounts of money.
Sitting on this worn-to-the-hide bearskin chair of mine, scribbling, I pause to glance at a month-old newspaper before I stuff it in the stove. Lo! — there’s yet another photo of Gov. Palin; she’s sitting in a glass office in Anchorage, with a bearskin, too, draped across the back of her expensive couch. Sarah’s wearing heels. The bear’s wearing a fake head with a plastic snarl. In the foreground on a glass table crouches something with pincers — a taxidermied king crab!
I’ll have to show this photo to my Eskimo friends I grew up with. We simply never contemplated such wanton unAlaskanness. Why not eat the damn thing? We ate this bear I’m sitting on, including the paws and jaw and fat — some of which we ate raw; some got rendered for piecrusts.
It’s worth reading the whole piece.
Eight days and counting, er, my friends.
Absolutely inspirational.
There is one America, and together we stand on the cusp of the incredible.
Want to know how to get John McCain and Sarah Palin on the phone?
On Wednesday, Ashley Todd, a 20-year-old college student of College Station, Texas, said she was using an ATM at in Pittsburgh just before 9 p.m. Wednesday when a man approached her and put a knife to her throat. Todd was in Pittsburgh campaigning for John McCain.
Police spokeswoman Diane Richard said Todd told them the robber took $60, then became angry when he saw a McCain bumper sticker on the victim’s car. The attacker then punched and kicked the victim, before using a dull knife to scratch the letter “B” into her face, Richard said.
“She further stated that the male actor approached her from the back again and hit her in the back of her head with an object, she doesn’t know what the object was, causing her to fall to the ground where he continued to punch her and kick her and threaten to ‘teach her a lesson’ for being a McCain supporter,” Richard said.
The story made the national morning shows Thursday. By midmorning, Pittsburgh Police said they were suspicious, and by Friday mid-afternoon, police said Todd had made the whole thing up.
From KDKA (America’s first radio station) in Pittsburgh:
Police say a campaign volunteer confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter B in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker.
At a news conference this afternoon, officials said they believe that Ashley Todd’s injuries were self-inflicted.
Todd, 20, of Texas, is now facing charges for filing a false report to police.
Todd initially told police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield and that the suspect became enraged and started beating her after seeing her GOP sticker on her car.
Police investigating the alleged attack, however, began to notice some inconsistencies in her story and administered a polygraph test.
There was more to the story. According to police, Todd also alleged that she was sexually assaulted by this man. While holding her on the ground, he fondled her:
Police spokeswoman, Diane Richard explained,
“She further stated that the male approached her from the back again and hit her in the back of her head with an object, she doesn’t know what the object was, causing her to fall to the ground where he continued to punch her and kick her and threaten to ‘teach her a lesson’ for being a McCain supporter,” Richard said.
“She also indicated she was sexually assaulted as well. She indicated that when he had her on the ground he put his hand up her blouse and started fondling her. But other than that, she says she doesn’t remember anything else. So we’re adding a sexual assault to this as well.”
A Pittsburgh police commander told KDKA Investigator Marty Griffin that Todd confessed to making up the story.
Talk about your blame-it-on-the-black-man 15 minutes of fame.
Here’s what I don’t get. Set aside that we now know that Ms. Todd made the whole thing up, possibly mutilitating herself for effect. Forget for a moment that this is a disturbed young woman who will someday, hopefully, look back on this with rue and wonder, “What the hell was I thinking?”
I simply don’t understand the personal response of two alleged adults from the McCain campaign:
On Thursday, The Obama-Biden campaign released a statement, commenting on the attack. The statement said, “Our thoughts and prayers are with the young woman for her to make a speedy recovery, and we hope that the person who perpetrated this crime is swiftly apprehended and brought to justice.”
The McCain-Palin campaign also released a statement saying, “The McCain campaign is aware of the incident involving one of its volunteers. Out of respect, the campaign won’t be commenting. The campaign also confirms that Senator McCain and Governor Palin have both spoken to the woman.”
McCain and Palin both spoke to her? What did they say to Ashley the Liar?
Is that all it takes to get Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin on the phone? Didn’t the candidates think for a minute that this might be a complete fabrication? Did the candidates investigate this situation at all?
They should have called conservative blogger Michelle Malkin first. While I disagree with Malkin’s blanket reprimand to those of us on the left …
And those of you on the left who are now so interested in debunking despicable hate crimes might show a little more skepticism yourselves next time when similar narratives hit the news pages involving politically correct hoaxers who share your politics.
… I agree with her call for a critical eye and restraint when reports like these surface:
Final lesson: Trust your instincts. Use your brains. Stop jumping every time Drudge hypes something in Armageddon-sized font.
Amen to that!
My final thoughts are for Ms. Todd.
Go home to Texas after you’ve answered the charges you now face in Pittsburgh. Get out of the spotlight. Stay away from the media. Get help if you need it. Someday, hopefully, you’ll find that those of us on the left can be pretty forgiving. You’re actually going to need a real job some day soon, and your future employer, who might even be an African American man, will need to look past this.
But, really, what were you thinking?
I almost missed this one. Picked up on it while perusing the Huffington Post:
Scott McClellan, President Bush’s former press secretary, says he is backing Barack Obama for president.
McClellan made the endorsement during a taping of Comedian D.L. Hughley’s new show that is premiering on CNN this weekend. The former Bush administration official said he wanted to support the candidate that has the best chance for changing the way Washington works and getting things done.
McClellan follows Gen. Colin Powell as the second former member of the Bush Administration to endorse the Senator from Illinois.
Maybe I’ll buy his book now.