From a great columnist and presidential historian, Richard Reeves, whose books and writings on Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan and Clinton I have always enjoyed. I always appreciate his perspective on current issues through his lens into history.

-Maltok 5

IS OBAMA ALREADY PRESIDENT?

by Richard Reeves
Mon Sep 8, 10:01 AM ET

NEW YORK -- As a member of the Elite Eastern Media in good standing (I hope), I would like to say that St. Paul was the most educational and enjoyable Republican National Convention I have ever watched. Thrilling, really. I did not know that we, the people like me, were running the country until hearing it from John McCain, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and the rest of that wonderful bunch from real America.

This is just great, I thought again and again. My favorite revelation was Romney's declaration that the Supreme Court was "liberal." And I was delighted to hear Sen. McCain described as: "A restless reformer who will clean up Washington ... (and will) drain that swamp." Wow! You really have to pay attention these days, what with things changing so fast.

Romney was a hoot. My favorite. He must hate the media more than most of those who were in St. Paul, because he spoke as if he has not read or noticed anything for years. It is hard to believe he said:

"Is Washington now liberal or conservative? Let me ask you some questions. ... Is a Congress liberal or conservative that stops nuclear power plants and off-shore drilling, making us more and more dependent on Middle Eastern tyrants? It's liberal. Is government spending, putting aside inflation, liberal or conservative if it doubles since 1980? It's liberal. ... Throw out the big-government liberals and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin. ... You know, it's time for the party of big ideas, not the party of Big Brother."

The big-government liberals he's apparently worried about are the reigning Big Brother, Vice President Cheney, and the reigning borrow-and-spend budget-busting president, whom I had been thinking was named Bush.

Maybe it was me who got it wrong. I must admit that I was sorry to hear that this president -- Barack Obama, is it? -- is screwing up so bad, fighting wars and building bridges to nowhere and presiding over a tailspinning economy. You know, until McCain and the rest told me, I didn't even realize Obama was in charge the whole time. Pay attention!

Oops! This just in: George W. Bush is still president and has been for more than seven distressing years. I guess I was fooled by the fact that his name was almost never mentioned in St. Paul. A computer count indicated that Bush's name was used 12 times as often at the Democratic convention in Denver than in St. Paul -- but you know the Eastern Elite Media, they probably made that up.

And, darn, the papers said McCain has been in Congress for more than 25 years. His party, the Republicans, have controlled the White House or Congress or both since 1980. That did make me wonder a bit why McCain said, "We're worse off than we were four years ago." And then he added: "I promise you, if you're sick and tired of the way Washington operates, you only need to be patient for a couple of more months. Change is coming! Change is coming! Change is coming!"

Maybe he really does think Obama is now and has been for four years our president.

No, he must know Bush is still in office. Why else would he and Gov. Palin, the sparky leader of that expensive federal preserve called Alaska, declare victory in Iraq? Some victory. McCain said triumph was a result of his personal resolve and the surge led by "the leadership of a brilliant general, David Petraeus." Petraeus is one smart and admirable guy, but his timing is not always perfect. Just before McCain spoke, it was revealed that the general has recommended to the president (Bush) that sharp troop cuts trumpeted by the Republicans should be postponed until next year.

But, of course, McCain has already said we may be there for a hundred years. He may be right.

The conventions were fun and games and a bit of fantasy this time around. But except for introducing the country to Gov. Palin of the Yukon, "Caribou Barbie" to the bloggers, I doubt these rock concerts did much beyond holding the contenders in place. This race will still be about Bush's record, Obama's race and McCain's age.

Previous: WHO IS PREPARED TO BE PRESIDENT? NOBODY

The Race Card: Confronting The New "Big Lies"

Excerpted From:
GOEBBELS' PRINCIPLES OF PROPAGANDA

Based upon Goebbels' Principles of Propaganda by Leonard W. Doob, published in Public Opinion and Propaganda; A Book of Readings edited for The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

13. Propaganda must be carefully timed.

a. The communication must reach the audience ahead of competing propaganda.

b. A propaganda campaign must begin at the optimum moment

c. A propaganda theme must be repeated, but not beyond some point of diminishing effectiveness

14. Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.

a. They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses

b. They must be capable of being easily learned

c. They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations

d. They must be boomerang-proof

Obama's Second Chance to Make a First Impression...

Now that the FISA vote is postponed a bit, Obama has some time to recalibrate his communications regarding the current pending legislation. As usual, Keith Olberman has a great take on this.
-Maltok 5

Obama Goes After McCain's "Energy Strategy"

It takes a pretty brave politician to tell folks the truth, that solutions to our energy problems won't be super easy and fixed by "drilling more at home."

Obama ridicules McCain's plan to tap offshore oil

3 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Democrat Barack Obama Tuesday accused White House rival John McCain of "posturing" as the Republican, tapping voters' anxiety about sky-high fuel prices, called for offshore oil drilling.

In a speech later in the Texas oil capital of Houston, the Arizona senator was to call for a 27-year-old moratorium on offshore exploration to be lifted -- reversing his own support for the ban when he ran for president in 2000.

McCain was again to push for a summer suspension of federal taxes on gasoline, to ease a little of the pain at the pump for voters already reeling from an epidemic of home foreclosures and job losses.

Obama, who has been hammering McCain and the Republicans on the economy, said his White House opponent's support of the moratorium in 2000 was "certainly laudable."

"But his decision to completely change his position and tell a group of Houston oil executives exactly what they wanted to hear today was the same Washington politics that has prevented us from achieving energy independence for decades," the Illinois senator said in a statement.

"Much like his gas tax gimmick that would leave consumers with pennies in savings, opening our coastlines to offshore drilling would take at least a decade to produce any oil at all, and the effect on gasoline prices would be negligible at best since America only has three percent of the world's oil.

"It's another example of short-term political posturing from Washington, not the long-term leadership we need to solve our dependence on oil."

Hillary as VP? Maybe Not...

Head of State: The Reasons That Hillary Should Not Be Vice President

Regarding Hillary Clinton as Barack Obama's running mate.

Originally, this seemed to be a potentially plausible choice--and if presented in the following way, could turn her divisive campaign into a potential coup as a VP candidate. The thinking was the following:

Hillary has run a divisive campaign. Now, just as the nation should mend its divisions in favor a greater unity that would serve the greater needs of our country, so now they would explicitly put these divisions behind them, in the interests of the unity that this nation, after a bitter and divisive Administration, is so in need of. This would serve as a powerful and vibrant example of the very ability to unify that Obama both offers and represents.

However, this would require a candidate that was willing to take such a position of relative shared selflessness in the interests of a greater good--while the Vice Presidency certainly offers its honors (now far beyond the "warm pitcher" of John Vance Garner's famous phrase) and positioning for later Presidential aspirations, such a plan would require the ability to think in terms of a shared effort based on the betterment of the nation, rather than in more grasping, combative and singular terms.

The Clinton camp's behavior over this past week has made such a positive scenario clearly untenable, showcasing the same characteristics that have signified her campaign throughout its long, chaotic, march--its contradictions of previous statements when such changes have a slight possibility of adding a week or two of vitality, its sudden and implausible use of populists guises and specious historical parallels for transparently opportunistic purposes, its near-hallucinogenic transmogrifications of personality and central bases for further continuation, and the central campaign tendency to place personal attainment over virtually all values that lay in its path.

These characteristics--self over nation, positioning over a consistent presentation of position, values and even self, the willingness to put personal viability over the need to transcend and transform the vast wreckage of state and international relations that remain at this critical time--are as present now, at a moment when wisdom rather than a remorseless, obdurate desperation could fill this gap, as they have been throughout much of the campaign. They would continue to make themselves present during a campaign for vice president, complicating, diminishing and often distracting, in trivial internecine battles, the message of unity and change.

Perhaps Clinton could adopt a more unifying and integrated and less grasping position on the VP subject. However, thus far, the actions of the Clinton camp have made it clear: It's time to clean the slate. Hillary Clinton should not be the Vice Presidential candidate.

Hope Ad

Hillary Sacrifices For You

Monday, April 14, 2008

Things Hillary Clinton Would Do To Become President

In order to become President, Hillary Clinton would...

- undergo torture
- slip Dick Cheney the tongue
- eat hair out of the shower drain
- sit on a porcupine
- invent a fictitious black grandparent
- swim across the Arctic ocean
- become a Republican
- become a Libertarian
- become a Socialist
- become a Communist
- become a Whig
- try out for American Idol
- shoot herself in the forearm
- bear the child of a Superdelegate
- sell Chelsea to gypsies
- eat a banana peel
- iron your shirt
- step on a rusty nail
- sleep with Fidel Castro
- watch "Gigli" on loop for four days
- pour acid on her skin
- attempt to escape actual sniper fire by Bosnian militants with no running start
- shave her eyebrows
- disavow pantsuits
- stare down an angry rhinoceros
- admit that perhaps she might have sort of conditionally been a hair of a smidge wrong for voting for the Iraq war but really only kinda sort of wrong if you look at it from the right perspective and take into account the facts of the time which were not at all straightforward and really hypothetically if she had been president at the time she not only would have not made the same decision she might not have even been partly wrong about the fact that she voted incorrectly that is to say if her vote was incorrect in the first place given the facts on the ground at the time and actually if you want to get technical about it she was not president and was only a senator making a potentially and possibly ill-advised vote if you want to look at it in that fashion but really it was not that kind of a vote
- clip Rush Limbaugh's toenails
- become a Wiccan
- stand in line at Target to get you a Wii
- donate both kidneys
- eat nothing but Big Macs for two months
- fire a shotgun at reporters to demonstrate love of 2nd Amendment
- release her tax records
- lie down in a busy intersection
- walk 500 miles
- work as a rodeo clown
- be an actress in a Herpes medication ad
- agree to be bitten by a rattlesnake
- walk naked through Baghdad
- cry
- join The View
- kick Howard Dean in the nuts
- change her last name to Bush
- start her own country
- hike across the Gobi desert with no water
- smash a beer bottle over her head
- become Obama's Vice-President, then murder him
- sell her soul to anyone buying
- marry Bill Clinton

Funny How Context Changes Everything

Some of the "hateful" Pastor Wright's video in fuller context.

FOX News: Fairly Unbalanced - More Fear Please!!

God Won't Damn America: We're Doing A Fine Job Of It On Our Own, Thank You

Check out some of the comments attached to this story. And to think I was actually getting hopeful that this country was turning around, and living up to its ideals, not just its hypocrisies. But from some of the hate filled spew coming from Amurka in these comments, it's pretty obvious to this lil' alien that the haters ain't lettin' go too soon.

Well, at least this proves he's not a radical Muslim...

By the bye, remember all the hate filled nuttiness that Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and the like disseminated amongst us about how the queers caused Katrina, 9/11, etc.???

I'm going back to the bunker now.

-Maltok 5


Obama Disagrees With Pastor's 'God Damn America' Sermon
Obama on His Pastor: 'I Profoundly Disagree With Some of These Statements'
Sen. Barack Obama says he "obviously disagrees" with his pastor of 20 years who said black Americans should sing "God Damn America" instead of "God Bless America." Reacting to an ABC News story about the sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Obama told the Pittsburg Tribune-Review, "I haven't seen the line. This is a pastor who is on the brink of retirement who in the past has made some controversial statements. I profoundly disagree with some of... [more]