The US election came and went, and now it’s time to laugh ourselves stupid at those who predicted an overwhelming win for McCain.

Political Lizard:

So sa (sic) we start this election We (sic) see that Obama starts off with approximately 36.8 million votes and McCain starts with 36.6 million votes. This is a 200,000 vote lead prior to independents being included. If these voters are evenly split We (sic) could have a situation where one candidate wins the popular vote and another wins the electoral college. A split in independents favors McCain. If McCain maintains his slight lead among independent (sic) he wins similar to 2004.

ChronWatch:

Obama’s biggest problem is that the majority of Americans racially are white. Even Hispanics, racially, are white. Once you get by all the usual politically correct blather about race, the likelihood that whites will vote for Obama is slim to none when they get in the privacy of the voting booth.

That is why John McCain, unless he selects a serial killer as his vice president running mate, is likely to be the next President of the United States of America.

When queeried (sic) on what he meant by this, the intrepid poster expanded upon this thesis:

The vast majority of homosexuals are atheist and liberal. That is a
fact. Also journalism is a favorite career path of homosexuals and
socialists.
Journalists are like lawyers. They create their own job via paper and
bullshit. Both are human barnacles on society that produce nothing of value.

Edward David Gil (cached, original deleted):

Here is how “the penny dropped” and I suddenly realized that McCain will beat Obama decisively in this November’s presidential election (as unlikely as it may seem now in July): it was when I read that the city of Denver has been giving the Democratic National Committee’s “Host Committee” members a pass on the city’s tax on gasoline for about four months, before it was disclosed.

Daily AntiKos

Reasons why:
1. Conservatives don’t participate in polls.
2. People have felt intimidated into saying they’re supporting Obama.
3. Sarah Palin will produce a turnout of the base as never seen before.
4. Coal states have shifted toward McCain.
5. God is conservative.

Owned. Every last one.

In a major boost to Barack Obama’s quest for the White House, a global survey has revealed that Australians will overwhelmingly vote Democrat at the November 4 presidential election. 76% of Aussie respondents indicated support for Senator Obama, with only 10% in the camp of Republican candidate, John McCain. (It is a mystery for whom the other 14% will vote. David Koch perhaps?) The problem is, of course, that Australians won’t be voting for the United States Prez in a couple of weeks because we’re, you know, Australian. So why is it that the same survey reckons 85% of Australians are paying attention to another country’s election campaign five months out (at the time of the survey), when 85% of Australians barely think about their own country’s elections until polling day?

Read the rest of this entry »

When Barack Obama correctly referred to John McCain’s “running mate’s” apparent refusal to stop racist taunts at Republican rallies, during the third Presidential debate on Thursday (Australian time), McCain, as is his wont, immediately got huffy and defensive. He said that he was “proud of the people who come to our rallies.”

Is that so, McCain? Then how come the McCain campaign, with three weeks left to go until Election Day, “launched a nationwide talent search to find angry audience members for their increasingly hate-filled rallies”, as admitted by McCain aides?

“People assume that when we hold a rally, angry white people just magically appear, but that’s not the case,” said McCain aide Hardin Carley. “The fact is, a lot of planning goes into this.” In order to stock their rallies with the requisite number of irate white voters, the McCain camp has reached out to Hollywood, retaining the services of casting agent Tracy Klugian, who found the angry crowds for the 2000 film “Gladiator.” “They were really clear about my assignment,” said Mr. Klugian. “They were like, we want the same kind of crowds you had for ‘Gladiator,’ only more bloodthirsty.”

(source)

We all know McCain’s been getting desperate in recent weeks. It’s one reason why his running mate Sarah Palin was “unleashed” and allowed to fire off ugly and highly provocative rants during Republican rallies, such as this gem at a Florida rally on October 6, that Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist! This is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.  I’m afraid this is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country.”

The day before was the risible and now infamous claim that Obama is someone who used to “pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country”. These repugnant statements backfired for McCain and tarnished his reputation as an honourable type of guy.

A poll following these attacks showed that “more voters [saw] Mr. McCain as waging a negative campaign than Mr. Obama. Six in 10 voters surveyed said that Mr. McCain had spent more time attacking Mr. Obama than explaining what he would do as president; by about the same number, voters said Mr. Obama was spending more of his time explaining than attacking.”

Elsewhere, specifically Gainesville, Virginia, state GOP Chairman Jeffrey M. Frederick knows that the McCain bid for the White House is failing miserably. Things are quite desperate, that they’re resorting further still to lies and baseless allegations:

With so much at stake, and time running short, Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: “Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon,” he said. “That is scary.” It is also not exactly true — though that distorted reference to Obama’s controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. “And he won’t salute the flag,” one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, “We don’t even know where Senator Obama was really born.” Actually, we do; it’s Hawaii.

In light of the realisation that attacking Obama is not helping the McCain-Palin ticket at all, the pitbull with lipstick in recent days has softened her tone, saying things like “I don’t question at all Barack Obama’s love for this great country.” What a turnaround!  Desperate, devious, tricky and so utterly insincere. Win at all costs, no matter what.

I hope American voters, especially the undecideds, see just how full of shit the whole McCain campaign has been and make the right decision with their vote.

(Hint: Vote Obama!)

UPDATE:

Turns out that the “report” about the McCain campaign auditioning for “angry crowds” was written by a political satirist and comedian. My apologies for not seeing the fine print in the Huffington Post at the end of the article: “Andy Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and at his award-winning humor site, BorowitzReport.com.”

Having now read some of his archived work after a heads-up in the comments, yes, yes, the penny drops. He’s quite good though. I encourage you to read his stuff, even if the fucker tripped me up! Grrr.

Nevertheless, for McCain to declare he is proud of the people who attend his and Palin’s rallies shows just how silly and desperate the man is. He is not a racist and yet he’s practically endorsing the “people” who have been yelling out bigoted and racist epithets at Republican rallies, such as “Kill him!” (in relation to Obama) and “sit down, boy” at an African American sound man for a network.

Charming.

Broken Left Leg, in comments, has reminded me of something I intended blogging about last week before I was cruelly sidetracked by work. On Q&A last week, the odious Tom Switzer attempted to launch a defence of Sarah Palin with this curious analogy:

Switzer: “It’s easy to knock Sarah Palin, and I can understand why a lot of people do (laughter) … but it’s also worth bearing in mind a bit of history. Franklin Roosevelt, when he was president, in 1944, fighting the good fight against Nazism and Japanese militarism, he appointed as his running mate a simpleton, an unknown guy from a backwater state in Missouri (?) who had no foreign policy experience. And his name? (Pause for effect) Harry Truman. And history, I think it’s fair to say, has vindicated Harry Truman as one of the great foreign policy presidents of the modern era, having presided over the end of World War Two and the onset of the Cold War. I’m not suggesting that Sarah Palin’s gonna be the next Harry Truman (laughter) but the point is that so long as she’s surrounded by the smart people and makes sound judgements, she shouldn’t be written off.”

…which the agitated David Marr rebutted with seven words:

Marr: “Tom… she’s as thick as a brick”.

(You can watch Switzer’s performance here - flick forward to 39:00 to see it. Take note of his intentional well-aren’t-I-just-the-friggin’-guru pause after mentioning Truman’s name. Git. It’s also worth looking at the comic exchange between Marr and Peter Costello at 41:30-42:20 … another example of why politics would be more interesting if Costello was fronting the Coalition.)

I’m not closely familiar with Tommy Switzer’s work. He ran the op-ed pages for The Oz for several years before taking on the role of senior advisor to Brendan Nelson, and being highly successful at it. The Q&A episode page says that Switzer has an Honours degree in History from Sydney University, so he should really have known that Harry Truman, who at the time of his nomination, had ten years’ experience in the Senate and another ten before that as a county commissioner and bureaucrat. As for having “no foreign policy experience”, Truman sat in the Senate for the duration of World War Two and headed a committee that investigated military wastefulness - not much, but a lot when compared to Palin’s vacant verandah-gazing across to Siberia.

From the offical transcript of the vice-presidential debate, comes this nugget of comedy gold from Sarah Palin.

IFILL: Let’s talk conventional wisdom for a moment. The conventional wisdom, Gov. Palin with you, is that your Achilles heel is that you lack experience. Your conventional wisdom against you is that your Achilles heel is that you lack discipline, Sen. Biden. What id it really for you, Gov. Palin? What is it really for you, Sen. Biden? Start with you, governor.

PALIN: My experience as an executive will be put to good use as a mayor and business owner and oil and gas regulator and then as governor of a huge state, a huge energy producing state that is accounting for much progress towards getting our nation energy independence and that’s extremely important.

But it wasn’t just that experience tapped into, it was my connection to the heartland of America. Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how are we going to pay those tuition bills? About times and Todd and our marriage in our past where we didn’t have health insurance and we know what other Americans are going through as they sit around the kitchen table and try to figure out how are they going to pay out-of-pocket for health care? We’ve been there also so that connection was important.

But even more important is that world view that I share with John McCain. That world view that says that America is a nation of exceptionalism. And we are to be that shining city on a hill, as President Reagan so beautifully said, that we are a beacon of hope and that we are unapologetic here. We are not perfect as a nation. But together, we represent a perfect ideal. And that is democracy and tolerance and freedom and equal rights. Those things that we stand for that can be put to good use as a force for good in this world.

John McCain and I share that. You combine all that with being a team with the only track record of making a really, a difference in where we’ve been and reforming, that’s a good team, it’s a good ticket.

If Joe Sixpacks like myself were asked our weaknesses in a job interview, and we answered the question the way she did, we wouldn’t get the job - you betcha.

Unlike most people here, I didn’t watch/listen to the debate. I started to, but, fatally, decided to play a drinking game. I would take a shot of Vodka everytime Palin used the word “maverick”.

Twenty minutes later I was rushed to hospital with suspected alcohol poisoning. Serious shit. I nearly died.

Another golden nugget from our Alaskan friend:

“Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?”

I have no idea what she is talking about, and I can’t remember what the question was, but hey, she can wink, right? If only, like Biden, she was smart enough to plagarise.

UPDATE: This morning McCain and Palin are accusing Obama of hanging out with terrorists. Duh. I revealed that Obama is a terrorist ages ago. A win for Citizen Journalism.

I have been copping it from all angles of late from neo-con bloggers, probably because a few days back I dared point out how inept and unqualified GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin looks. And haven’t the piercing rebuttals been coming thick and fast. A ’stoopid conservative’ rushed to reveal the grammar error that never was. JF Beck, unhappy that I’d taken shots at his VPILF, was merciless in his deconstruction of my joke about John F. Kennedy reading Sweet Valley High (a chronological impossibility, says JF, so I must be dumber than Palin herself). He also pointed out the fallacy of my claim that one can have “empathy for the environment” - a fair criticism, one I hope JF extends to the “war on terror”, a phrase that appears in his blog numerous times.

The ever-boring Currency Lad picked up on JF’s final retort: my mention, in the context of Palin’s naivete, of John F. Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. A paraphrasing of CL’s febrile historical revisionism runs something like this:

Kennedy didn’t solve the crisis you know and anyway he actually caused it and also did you know that he endangered the United States by putting Jupiter missiles into Turkey and hey, hey, hey he also tried to kill Castro with a poison milkshake and that’s, like, really bad, and did you also know that he took drugs, slept with lots of girls and his daddy got him into power and that his book Profiles of Courage was plagiarised and was only a best-seller because Joe Snr. bought all the copies and and and… <snip>

CL, who claims a PhD in ecclesiastical history, seems to have more problems with the secular stuff. In any case, my initial comment was about how Kennedy - himself a graduate of real History - handled having pointy Soviet nuclear thingies in his backyard, as compared to how a future President Palin might deal with such a problem. All eyes were on the VP debate earlier today for some insight into such a proposition.

Palin’s performance was jittery and sporadic but, on the whole, better than her woeful output from the Katie Couric fireside chat. She sounded stronger, if a little hackneyed and a lot rehearsed, when she described herself as a “Washington outsider”, a down-home type who knows the pains and perils of ordinary voters. On matters of foreign policy - Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel - she was helplessly outpointed against Biden, who has 35 years of experience in the Senate. The whole thing was at best a draw, at worst a win on points to Biden - but given Palin’s recent efforts, that’s probably better than many conservatives were expecting.

Still, the debate telecast will give JF Beck some good entertainment tonight. If only he had a cat to watch it with…

UPDATE

A kind reader has kindly directed me to Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, kinda.

This video is great for two reasons:

1) Sarah Palin’s rabbit-in-the-headlights inability to name a single newspaper that she reads; and
2) The terminology employed by Katie Couric at the 9 second mark.

(Thanks to GrodsReader Jason for the link)

Poor widdle Timmeh Blair has had a raging erection for Sarah Palin ever since she was announced as John McCain’s running mate. And such is his lust/love for sweet, sweet Sarah that he gets very defensive when anyone dares take the piss out of her.

The political heavyweights at 9am With David & Kim turned their attention this morning to Sarah Palin’s candidacy (quotes are approximate):

Airhead #1: “I’ve got a feeling that it’s all about to implode.”

Airhead #2: “HEE HEE HEE!”

Airhead #1: “She’s got no international business experience.”

Airhead #3: “They did elect Ronald Reagan, for God’s sake.”

Airhead #2: “HEE HEE HEE!”

Airhead #1: (attempting an American accent) “A soccer mom – boss of the world.”

Airhead #2: “HEEEEEEEEEE! HEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Airhead #3: “A gun-totin’, moose-shootin’ soccer mom.”

She’s a hockey mom, geniuses.

Maybe after Timmeh finishes worshipping at his Palin Altar (a Palin Altar is like a Scientology Room but different) he can cast his mind back to the times that he’s mercilessly ripped into political figures who don’t align with his personal views.

Like Peter Garrett.

According to long-suppressed video evidence, Peter Garrett is some kind of ginger mutant. Check that buzz-cut bloodnut! Peter commenced total hair removal soon afterwards, for obvious reasons (although possibly the redness is due to lighting; we need hair-colour confirmation from Garrett’s office).

Note also, around the 2:49 mark, that Labor’s future environment minister appears to briefly consider an air-guitar solo - before reverting to an early form of his trademark “dancing”, which at this stage (1977) resembled a cross between an awkwardly tall girl’s skip-rope attempts and someone playing table tennis with both hands.

That’s some rooly heavyweight political opinion right there. Feel free to highlight in comments other examples of Timmeh’s mature and heavyweight dissection of teh Left.

That’s right, McCain chased the Kaiser for diggity-six miles.

Mercilessly stolen from the Daily Kos.

Andrew Bolt, from his liveblog of Sarah Palin’s Republican convention speech last week:

12.35pm: “As the mother of one of those troops [about to serve in Iraq], [McCain] is exactly the kind of man I want as Commander in Chief.” Ding! Fries are done Hit the bell.

Whose bell? The only Americans prepared to be consumed by patriotic zeal upon hearing a platitude like that are bound to be Republican voters anyway.

More importantly, I’m not convinced that reminding the rest of the voting public about their nation’s involvement in a vastly unpopular war, and tying John McCain into the narrative, is such a great idea — no matter how many times Andrew has shot his Bolt declared victory for the US and its allies.

The Editor, John Surname, Ant Rogenous, Chuck A. Spear and Craig discuss:

* Sarah Palin: Teh Right’s spank bank
* Fred Nile is a grumpy old codger
* Man pegged, raped (allegedly)
* TardWatch

[display_podcast]

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The denizens of the Rightardsphere have been busy rubbing several layers of skin off themselves since Sarah Palin was announced as John McCain’s vice-presidential running mate in the forthcoming US election — but perhaps none so vigorously as GrodsCorp’s favourite rhyming doctor, John “TingTong” Ray.

After reproducing a fawning post by US blogger Dick McDonald — in which he declares, among things, “My first impression is that we may have found our Margaret Thatcher”! — das gut Herr Doktor yesterday took the adulation one teensy-weensy step further:

I predict that she will one day be President of the United States.

Level-headed, insightful and well researched — as usual. Who could possibly argue?

Meet Sarah Palin, possibly the next vice-president of the United States, the fish that John McCain didn’t reject.

Just 44 and governor of that behemoth state Alaska for only 20 months, Palin is so grossly inexperienced she makes previous VP candidates Geraldine Ferraro and Dan Quayle seem like elder statesmen. But she’s the ideal policy foil for McCain’s timid conservatism. Palin is fiercely pro-life and has churned out five kids of her own; she’s against same-sex marriage and rights for gay partners; and she supports the teaching of creationism in schools. She’s a lifelong member of the NRA and in her spare time loves to go out killing things. Her views on climate-change are flakey (apparently in Sarah’s world it might not be a man-made event) and she vehemently opposed the federal government’s listing of polar bears as an endangered species. Probably because she wants to go a-drilling in Alaska’s protected wilderness reserves (it may come as no surprise that hubby works for ’big oil’).

McCain’s choice of Palin might prove to be a masterstroke, snapping up hardline conservatives and disillusioned female Hillary voters in one fell swoop. Or it might eventually be shown up for what it really is: optimistic, opportunistic tokenism, making use of an inexperienced and probably incompetent second-tier politician.

UPDATE

MK, the Internet Right’s own Beaver Cleaver, has pants-swelling conniptions over Palin’s nomination. “She definitely has my vote, too bad I can’t vote” says Matty, somewhat paradoxically.