Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

 First, for all you people who think he was "taken by surprise" by McCain's announcement -- the withered fool showed his hand in their second phone conversation. You don't think from that MOMENT Camp Obama was preparing a response? Pshaw.

Obama may not share all my political views, but with each passing day he has my growing admiration as a superb politician.

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

John McCain's CAMPAIGN MANAGER, Rick Davis took a leave of absence -- that is, he "stopped taking a salary" -- from his lobbying firm in 2006... but that firm has been accepting FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS a MONTH until...

LAST MONTH. For, apparently, no reason. No work has been done by Davis's firm on behalf of Freddie Mac since Davis "stopped drawing a salary." John McCain and his campaign claimed as recently as TWO DAYS AGO that Rick Davis has NOTHING TO DO with Freddie Mac. Nothing. And that he has NEVER lobbied for Freddie Mac. Why was Freddie Mac paying Rick Davis's lobbying firm $15 THOUSAND a MONTH until 24 days ago?

THIS IS FUCKING HUGE.

No, seriously. If this is not THE NUMBER ONE STORY in the media this week, there is something VERY VERY VERY wrong with the media and with us for not MAKING them cover it as the NUMBER ONE STORY.

Because THIS IS FUCKING HUGE.

Connect the dots: McCain... Rick Davis... Freddie Mac... FINANCIAL APOCALYPSE... Government Bail Out.

John McCain = CORRUPTION

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

The Bush/Paulson Economic Bail Out Proposal is an American Kristallnacht in the making.

So posits a DKos diarist named Mr. Tek.

And before anyone starts screaming about Godwin's Law and the Jewish persecution of Kristallnacht... THIS IS ABOUT ECONOMICS. As was Kristallnacht, as Tek's essay explains.

I have taken the liberty of editing Tek's piece for spelling, grammar, syntax and punctuation, and emphasising elements of the essay I feel are important to the historical parallel. I've also reproduced only that part of the essay I believe relevant to the argument.

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

The Bush Administration has presented Congress with a hurriedly created "LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL FOR TREASURY AUTHORITY TO PURCHASE MORTGAGE-RELATED ASSETS" and now expects it to be voted on and passed with all the expedience and passivity it received when it presented its last two disastrously precipitous cartes blanche: the Iraq War Resolution and the Patriot Act.

Congress must refuse. This is another Patriot Act, another Iraq War Resolution moment. Stand FIRM, Democrats.

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

DIGG THIS, please

UPDATE: The Bush Administration has handed in an utterly heinous proposal for the bail out, as I surmised in -- my ruminations on Sanders's brilliant proposal below his text...

LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL FOR TREASURY AUTHORITY TO PURCHASE MORTGAGE-RELATED ASSETS

... making Bernie Sanders's proposal all the more attractive and even more NECESSARY a consideration. The Democrats in Congress cannot ignore Sanders's proposal given the outright power grab that Paulson's proposal clearly is. I'm frankly astonished at Paul Krugman's relatively mild response to this clearly fascistic proposal from the Bush Administration.

Sanders Op-Ed: Billions for Bailouts! Who Pays?

09/19/2008

By Senator Bernie Sanders

The current financial crisis facing our country has been caused by the extreme right-wing economic policies pursued by the Bush administration.  These policies, which include huge tax breaks for the rich, unfettered free trade and the wholesale deregulation of commerce, have resulted in a massive redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthy.  

The middle class has really been under assault.  Since President Bush has been in office, nearly 6 million Americans have slipped into poverty, median family income for working Americans has declined by more than $2,000, more than 7 million Americans have lost their health insurance, over 4 million have lost their pensions, foreclosures are at an all time high, total consumer debt has more than doubled, and we have a national debt of over $9.7 trillion dollars.

While the middle class collapses, the richest people in this country have made out like bandits and have not had it so good since the 1920s.  The top 0.1 percent now earn more money than the bottom 50 percent of Americans, and the top 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.  The wealthiest 400 people in our country saw their wealth increase by $670 billion while Bush has been president.  In the midst of all of this, Bush lowered taxes on the very rich so that they are paying lower income tax rates than teachers, police officers or nurses.

Now, having mismanaged the economy for eight years as well as having lied about our situation by continually insisting, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," the Bush administration, six weeks before an election, wants the middle class of this country to spend many hundreds of billions on a bailout.  The wealthiest people, who have benefited from Bush's policies and are in the best position to pay, are being asked for no sacrifice at all.  This is absurd.  This is the most extreme example that I can recall of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor.

In my view, we need to go forward in addressing this financial crisis by insisting on four basic principles:

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

Bill Maher is wrong about religious people when he says they are all either deluded, crazy, intellectually lazy or just plain stupid...

... and I say that as an atheist who thinks religion is responsible for more evil than anything else in human history, that all religions are plain fucking crazy and that most religious people are either deluded, crazy, intellectually lazy or just plain stupid.

Important distinction.

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

Over the past several years I've become convinced that the ways we classify political beliefs and ideologies (or perhaps the very definitions themselves) are in dire need of revamping. For instance...

What's a "conservative?" Used to be there was a standard reply to that query, one that included the paeans to "small government, low taxes, laissez-faire" portraits of the federal government. Nowadays, however, when I think of a "conservative," I think of a bizarre hybrid, a "free trader" crossed with a would-be Puritan, whose ideal federal government micromanages the individual's private affairs, but still uses a hands-off approach in dealing with corporatism...

The same could be said of "Republican" -- is there a shorthand descriptor of a Republican today? Aside from the fact that people like me use it as a one-size-fits-all epithet, I cannot think of anything that remains of the old definitions of Republicanism. Certainly there are, as there have always been, different subsets among the whole -- but if you had to distill its essence, how would you describe a "Republican?"

And how about a "Democrat?" What does a Democrat stand for? Is there a quick sound bite that aptly summarises what it means to be a Democrat? ("Not a Republican" seems to be it, nowadays.) How about a "liberal?"

Here are some of the definitions of "liberal" that I'm happy to claim:

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

It's time for someone to tell Republicans to stop lying to the American people about taxes, and maybe Joe Biden is the perfect man for the job.

Biden calls paying higher taxes a patriotic act
WASHINGTON - Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Thursday that paying more in taxes is the patriotic thing to do for wealthier Americans. The Republican campaign for president calls the tax increases their Democratic opponents propose "painful" instead of patriotic.

Under the economic plan proposed by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, people earning more than $250,000 a year would pay more in taxes while those earning less -- the vast majority of American taxpayers -- would receive a tax cut.

"We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people," Biden said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Noting that wealthier Americans would indeed pay more, Biden said: "It's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut."

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

House Adopts Plan to Ease Offshore Drilling Ban

Like Rachel Maddow, I am frequently disgusted beyond belief at congressional Democrats' seeming perennial willingness to cravenly cave on issues that cause them electoral fear.

However, though it appears yet another of those cowardly Democratic crumbles in the face of political intimidation, today's vote on offshore drilling is actually one of the most brilliant pieces of political jujitsu I've ever seen from a Democratic House of Representatives.

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

To call a spade a bloody shovel means more than speaking plainly; rather, it means saying something that is true but unpalatable -- or impolitic.

During an otherwise stellar appearance on David Letterman's show last night, Barack Obama missed an opportunity to deliver a kidney punch to John McCain. In my view, this missed opportunity vividly exemplifies a weakness in the election style Democrats have used over the past three decades.

(I'm not saying Obama's campaign exemplifies this style; to the contrary, despite a few missteps -- and who among us could do better? I submit that, given the fact that Barack Obama has steamrolled over every obstacle thus far, this man just might know better than anyone how to correct the Democratic Party's mistakes of the past and finally, FINALLY beat these bastards in this rigged game. But I'm making a point here, so... bear with me.)

Letterman asked, and I'm paraphrasing,

"If you'd been able to pick your Vice-Presidential running mate after McCain picked Palin, would you have chosen differently?"

Obama answered -- and again, I'm paraphrasing:

"I chose the person I want in the room with me, giving me wise advice and different points of view..."

Intelligent, cogent and sincere.

But I think he should have phrased it thusly:

"Maybe this is another difference between Senator McCain and me:

I didn't pick my running mate because I thought he would help me WIN; I picked him because I thought he would help me GOVERN."

Stark, simple and true. Did John McCain pick Sarah Palin because he thought she was the best of all possible candidates for the role of Vice-President in a McCain Administration?

The very suggestion is a joke. Nobody could make that suggestion with a straight face unless he worked for McCain or Fox News. McCain picked Palin to help him win the election.

Just one more in an endless series of proofs that John McCain's campaign slogan of "Country First" is an empty, shallow and insulting lie.

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

So Lieberman got a cool reception from Senate Democrats yesterday

The motherfucker is lucky I wasn't there.

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

"I have a dream that my four little children
will one day live in a nation where they
will not be judged by the color of their skin
but by the content of their character."

This election marks a potential turning point in American history. The American people will either elect the first black President, following the dictates of logic, self-interest and absolute common sense... or they will elect John McCain and prove that at least a slim majority of the voters in this nation are ignorant fools, religious extremists, blind believers of the partisan propaganda of the right wing, outright racists -- or some horrifying combination of those descriptors.

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

So... MSNBC "dropped" Olbermann and Matthews as anchors.

Well... Olbermann, for one, has NO BUSINESS being a news anchor.

He might as well be wearing an Obama t-shirt on the air every night.

He knows it, we know it and everyone else knows it.

I'm pretty sure that's why he excused himself from Minneapolis.

Matthews CANNOT anchor a news desk; he doesn't have the skill set, and I'm pretty damned sure he knows it -- god knows the rest of the world does. God knows the person who washes his drool-covered shirts does (I'm sorry, Tweety; I do sort of like you, but you DO sort of drop spittle more than an arthritic halfback drops shovel passes.)

This wasn't a fucking FIRING.

The one who should be fired... is Tom Brokaw.

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

His first comment:

How can Obama juggle being president and a Black Man?

Intersted (sic) in hearing comments on this issue!

I mean really how can a black man handle being president?

We all know that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for a mom to be VP...right?

A My Left Wing regular responds:

what do you think
the problems would be that need juggling? What is it about being a Black man that you think conflicts with being president? Is there some job or policy about which Obama will have to say, "You know, Joe, I'm a Black man, so i can't do this one.  You'll have to take it?"

Give us a guideline by outline the problem as you see it for us.  Please.

To which I respond, with my usual irrepressible aplomb:

That giant swinging cock will get in the way, of course.

Everybody knows that.

And the possibly syphilitic troll comes back, using those tactics they probably teach in Seminars for Conservatives Who Blog:

Giant swinging cock

Well it might be more pleasing to the interns!! But see that's a positive...this thread is here to explore the negatives of being a black man and trying to juggle responsibilities.

Could it that black men are inferior to the rest of the population? You know similarly to being a women and having children...women can't multitask and juggle responsibility like a white man can..as this has been pointed out so very well in the media since Sara Palin has come on the scene.

Now... here's my response to THAT...