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Republican Defaces US Flags on Election Day

(b) The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.

(k) The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.

All four flags are set up to touch the ground...

Of course, they have a right to do whatever they want with the flag, but it bothered my parents so much, I thought I'd point it out... All four flags out of respect for our country, should be burned in a flag burning ceremony. [?]

This Will Make You Sick To Your Stomach... Someone Tell Me This Can't Happen in 2008!!!

We always knew Ohio was stolen and hence the presidency of the United States of America from John Kerry, but George W. Bush.

Now we know HOW!!!

Documents reveal how Ohio routed 2004 voting data through company that hosted external Bush Administration email accounts

Pretty disgusting huh?

The Bush Administration's email host (the people they pay to get email accounts from) received raw data from Ohio electronic voting machines before the votes were counted.

Can EVERYONE PLEASE vote Democratic straight down your tickets this year??? I'm just completely disgusted that they have so little respect for US as voters as to change our votes after we cast them just to win an election!!!

The GOP is UN-AMERICAN, UN-PATRIOTIC, FASCIST AND INSANE!!! [?]

Flashback? Gas Prices Fall Dramatically Just Before an Election...

As we were driving around today, something occurred to me... Gas was at $2.29/gallon just 3 days before an election.

I had this flashback to Oct/Nov 2004 when I seemed to remember noting that just before the election, gas prices fell. I remember it, because with Cheney and Bush in the White House the world's oil barrons, I was suspicious that gas prices were being pushed down to ease people's wallets just before they went to vote. Then I remembered them skyrocketing just after the election.

Now I thought maybe I was paranoid at the time. At the time, I did not have a blog to record my thoughts, so I have nothing to show that I really was irritated by what I thought was a deliberate and manipulative way to make the American public forget that the oil companies had been stealing from us for 3 years.

So I looked it up. Here are my results:
Charts here and here seem to confirm my thoughts, but I wanted to check further. So I went here.

Milwaukee Historical Gas Price Charts Provided by GasBuddy.com

Just as I suspected, gas prices fell in the weeks just prior to the 2004 election and spiked immediately after it! Coincidence? Maybe. Interestingly though, gas prices seem to be just about 30-40 cents more now than they were in late Oct/early Nov 2004. After shooting up to over $4.00/gal just earlier this year!

It makes you wonder... The oil and gas industry had one of their own in Dick Cheney. They have price gouged under this administration for 8 years now and with Palin (the Oil Queen) on the ticket again, it seems they are poised to have one of their own in the White House to make sure the record high quarterlies continue to skyrocket.

Now, if I were one of them (I have a soul, so never will be...), and thought I could get away with it, and saw it make just a slight difference in the rage against this administration in 2004 to have possibly made voting for Bush/Cheney just palatable for the independents, I just may drop gas prices at the pump as well for a few weeks to help ease American anxiety for just enough time to affect the American election, so I get my 4 more years of cash cow... especially if I thought I could just spike them up again after the election and have no one stepping in to stop my madness.

Also interesting to note, prices fell in the days before the 2006 election as well, obviously to lesser affect.

DON'T BE FOOLED! They've done this before and we should be scholars of history and make sure we don't let them manipulate us once again. Vote for the candidate they don't want. Surely that will be better for all of us after the election when they are more afraid of a government ready to step in at the first sign of price gouging!

Vote for Obama/Biden and let's altogether kick the oil barrons out of OUR White House for good!

And in the odd chance that McCain wins on Tuesday, I highly recommend you fill up all you gas tanks! [?]

Think I Was Angry Charlie? Check Out Olbermann's Special Comment Tonight

It seems my post last week was right on. You know the one Charlie Sykes attacked me about all day. I almost started to think I was overreacting just a bit, but tonight, I got my confirmation that I am not so far off with this.

Keith Olbermann tonight made a Special Comment that addressed exactly what I addressed in that blog. He called the campaign rallies "lynch mobs" as I did and called McCain to task for not stopping the rage at his events. I almost want to wonder, just wonder if maybe one of my 20-50 readers is Keith... I doubt it (wow, would I be honored if that was the case, wow, but alas, pipe dreams). I'm he sure thinks like I do. I've said before that Keith makes me feel sane. Once again, I thank him for my sanity tonight.

James T Harris justifies your anger. I get Keith Olbermann. Take a minute to watch. He's definitely angrier than I was...

[?]

Sorry Charlie, I Guess Hit a Nerve....

FIRST and foremost, I NEVER said, Harris didn't have a right to say what he said, and in fact, yes Charlie, I would fight for his right to free speech along with anyone else's in this country regardless of my job title. I am an American after all and my passion for my country is at least as great as yours. I fly an American flag on my home (the one that laid on my grandfather's coffin, a WWII veteran). I have flown my flag before, during and after 911. I LOVE my country!

That doesn't mean I have to AGREE with anything anyone says... it is the basic tenat of the concept free speech that if it truly works we all get to say things as crazy as we want... you Charlie should know that better than anyone.

So what is all this about? Well, Charlie Sykes didn't like my last post below... So he came after me big time. I do take some pleasure actually in knowing that I ticked off Sykes so badly, he actually wasted an entire day on my silly blog post. Who am I to have upset him so much? I think I must have touched on some truth that he found very dangerous and requiring a response.

That said, I get what, 20-50 readers a day? Hardly an opinion swaying blog, more just my place to vent when I see something really interesting or fun or upsetting in my world. NOW, that Charlie has pointed his entire listening audience to my blog and read the most inflammatory parts of it on the air (leaving out the stuff about the conservatives who are also upset and a few other things...) , my crazy thoughts that I share out here for fun have been read on the radio on a show he would never invite me to be on LOL!

Thanks Charlie for boosting my readership 100 fold! I appreciate you making my completely insignificant blog post a huge talking point for the entire city today. Perhaps you should think about that before you elevate a non-issue to city wide status. LOL! I've been giggling like a school girl since I heard about your fits over me today. One less day talking about issues and one more day talking about little old me and a rant at 9:30 at night on a boring Friday... Hahahahaha!

Or was it this that ticked you off this morning Charlie and I'm just your punching bag? 17 points in Wisconsin means that other people around the state felt the same shame I did being a state that made national news for such an ugly reason and are moving into an entirely new realm of this race as a result. Are you trying to stop the momentum by attacking a feckless blogger with your misplaced rage? And you should have read the entire blog if you were going to read it. You SHOULD have read where I talk about conservatives echoing my concerns about the McCain campaign.

What I didn't like and was really out of line is this:

He dragged my job into the discussion (and wrongly so, this is NOT related in any way to my job and that was just really unfair... my organization is huge and does a ton of great work, but everyone gets their rights to speak freely regardless of what they are saying and this is MY FREE SPEECH ZONE).

Please respect my personal space this blog. I will always tell you in what capacity I'm working and be very open about it. I expect you to understand that, when I'm out here (or I say outright in public, I'm off the clock, I do get off the clock time like everyone else) that you understand that it's just me. NOT my job. Keep it straight it diminishes your argument when you don't...

Just an example: If you worked for oh, let's say MGIC, and wrote a private blog in your own time, would you expect MGIC to take responsibility for your personal thoughts??? I think not. I make it very clear out here that I write my thoughts here and not my company's.

I agree the post was inflammatory and it was even a bit angry. I think I had a right to BE angry though. I wasn't kidding about being afraid of conservatives after the weekend rants and angry insanity.

What really upset me about Harris last weekend, Charlie, was that Harris justified the anger at that meeting. He could have gotten up and asked a question about the economy, about the war, about tax cuts, but no, instead, he made everyone in that meeting feel good about their hatred.

Harris's exact words, "Take it to him. Hit him where it hurts in the soft spot. Take it to him.... I am begging you sir!"

The cheers that erupted when Harris made those violent comments sent chills down my spine and are what I was so upset about when I saw the video. It's what my post was responding to, if not quite to my usual eloquent standards. LOL!

This isn't standard political rhetoric, this is an angry call to violence. The tone of his voice was most disturbing. Shaking with rage and it is frightening to watch the people in the background with their fists not raised in the air as in victory, but clenched in the delight of what they feel is justified rage.

By the way, you leave your first amendment at the doorstep of inciting violence. Now of course, violence has to happen before you can be held responsible for inciting it. My point in the post below wasn't that there was an actual "lynching" to use my term below, but that the lynch mob mentality was at play and had been generated by a week of Palin and McCain stoking the fires of fear with rhetoric that is frankly below McCain, but maybe right at Palin's level.

Which leads me to my final point on this. We live in a country plagued by assassination. It has been the general discourse in the political realm to not incite hatred and rage in a high profile political environment. The danger in the dialogue is that there are always crazy people out there and allowing rage and anger to foment against a candidate who received his first 10 death threats the day he announced his candidacy 2 years ago is dangerous. Others have said it, McCain has tried to stop it, but the bottom line is that the campaign crossed a line from discussing real issues to insinuating and planting ideas that in the most radical in our society could lead to something no one wants in this election.

McCain I know wanted a fair "campaign about the issues". My post last week called him out on the fact that he's forgotten that promise to the American people. What most people don't know about me in fact Charlie is that I was a McCain person. I liked him. I respected him. I loved the Straight Talk express and thought had the GOP nominated him in 2000 I might have taken a really close look at him as a candidate. I voted for Alberta Darling in the early 90's (although not this time), so I have been known to vote for the candidate, not the party and I liked John McCain... or at least the John McCain I used to think I knew. The JM who's friends with Feingold.

I guess the problem I have with McCain today is that he no longer is that guy I once admired. Ya know Charlie, if you read my entire blog for the last few months, you will find that although I don't endorse McCain, I've always been respectful of him (until he picked Palin, and she I have exposed regularly, but actually, I have even defended her on my blog since she was nominated). I took McCain at his word that he wouldn't "go there" and start race baiting, but when someone like Campbell Brown uses that term, I know what I'm seeing is not out of line.

So go ahead and spend an entire day trying to make false connections to what I said at home and what I do to support my family. Go ahead and call me a reverse racist and repost my comments for the world to see all twisted out of context on your radio show and blog.

I think the real reason you wasted so much time on me today was that I insulted you personally. Well, I apologize for that at least. I am capable of admitting when I'm wrong. Do you know how to do that? I think the apology is owed in both directions, but don't expect one. That's how you support your family. [?]

Wow... This is McCain Style Leadership??? No Thanks.

McCain and Palin in the last week have managed to scare me. Not of our Government like Bush was so adept at doing, no they now have me literally frightened of my neighbors, friends, anyone who participates in the lynch mobs McCain has created at his rallies in the last week both here in Wisconsin and in Minnesota...

I don't even blame James T Harris for his outrageous statements yesterday in Waukesha... Had I been the only black person in that angry psychotic lynch mob, I may have stood up and started shouting crazy stuff too, except that I know Harris, a Thomas Sowell wannabe with less style, actually does believe that crap he was screaming insanely which is why, by the way, he reminded me yesterday of a Dave Chappelle character, named Clayton Bigsby.

Mr. Bigsby was a blind, black, white supremacist in a Chappelle skit who didn't know he was black and preached horrible racism to all white lynch mobs in a white robe and hood, so they didn't know he was black either. Bigsby had a group of white white supremacists who went out of their way to keep their best orator and writer's secret from both he and his supporters. Hmmm... Kind of reminds me of someone else... Charlie Sykes, I think his name is...

Honestly, that's what Harris reminded me of yesterday in that angry mob. I'd attach a video of the Bigsby skits, but they aren't on YouTube which is probably just fine anyway. For those of you not privy to the joy of having a black racist shill for the GOP in your community or unfamiliar with James T Harris, here's his website. Harris calls for the lynch mob to go bat shit wild while the mob around him cheers insanely. It's scary shit.

The scariness of the lynch mobs (yes, that what they were and that's what they are...) and if you were there, you got a taste of what it was like to bring your children to a park on a sunny Sunday afternoon after church in the South 75 years ago and watch a black man be hanged for the afternoon entertainment while you screamed and shouted and cheered as he strangled to death in front of your children, and enjoyed your lemonade and barbecue ribs and greens and cornbread.

That's what it was like to be part of the crowd. To not speak up for decency to not speak out against the racism around you. I bet in your gut, you were a little scared yourself in that crowd weren't you? You felt the mob mentality and know what it's like to go along with it because your leaders didn't stop it, so it must be okay.

Then it got worse. More cries of terrorist and kill him and bomb Obama and finally after fanning the flames of racism, terrorism, hatred, fear and really dangerous mob mentality for a week, McCain finally got it this afternoon. It was too late. It is too late.

McCain has found the ugliest part of our culture. He's tapped into the hatred in this country that has simmered since the Civil War and he's brought it to the surface in all its horrifying glory. What's really scary is that McCain did this deliberately.

The journalist G.L. Godkin wrote in 1893:

Man is the one animal that is capable of getting enjoyment out of the torture and death of members of its own species. We venture to assert that seven-eighths of every lynching part is composed of pure, sporting mob, which goes...just as it goes to a cock-fight or prize-fight, for the gratification of the lowest and most degraded instincts of humanity.

That's what happened in Wisconsin and Minnesota this week. That's what my neighbors participated in and that scares the fuck* out of me! Especially since I'm quite sure they didn't even KNOW what was happening around them. That's how easy it is. That's how easy it is to get caught up in mob anger and rage.

Palin has added something to this campaign that is really disgusting.

So McCain has shown who he is adept at leading. The scary people in this world who hate anyone who's not exactly like them. Great. That's just what this country needs right now. More hatred, anger and rage focused on a man who just wants to bring this country out of the shadows of the Bush years and into the light of a new age in America. A rage on Obama deliberately focused on the fact that his father had more melanin in his skin because that's always what's worked in a crisis... Tearing our country to pieces with a race war...

This isn't funny any more. McCain has gone too far. America must reject him simply for this reason alone now.

Think I'm an over-reacting liberal nutbag? Well this conservative nutbag. A man who's father defined the word conservative for 50+ years. A man who wrote a speech for McCain a few short months ago has had enough as well.

Think I'm out of control?

Check out Christopher Buckley's endorsement of Barack Obama last week (yes, William F.'s son). Note he's not in this article denouncing the conservative movement so well defined by his father. He's only denouncing the insanity that has become this campaign and saying that he can no longer support McCain because of his ridiculous decision making, outrageous choice of VP and his dwindling well, let Christopher speak for him self:

But that wasâsighâthen. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, âWe came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.â This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget âby the end of my first term.â Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

I can't agree with Mr. Buckley more. (Note for 25 years I have never thought I could ever find a reason to say those words... LOL! I agree with a Buckley! Ahhh. Times they are a changing aren't they?)

Oh but Mr. Buckley goes on to talk about Barack eloquently:

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics arenât going to get us out of this pit weâve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.
Obama has in himâI think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy âWe are the people we have been waiting forâ silly rhetoricâthe potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.
So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, Iâll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

So if Buckley and Brooks, Noonan, and Sullivan are all sliding off the McCain bandwagon, what will it take for the rest of the thinking conservatives to admit that the train has crashed on the McCain campaign and Obama truly is the best choice to elect president in a few short weeks.

Or are they all just too pig-headed and racist to get there? If the well versed GOP establishment has rejected the McCain campaign than we can see why the McCain campaign had to turn to the hatred faction of the party to hang on to any chance of winning.

I just wanna ask you John. Did you really have to make me scared to leave my house in the morning to win this campaign? Was it really necessary to turn my neighbors in Wisconsin into raging hate mongers??? Did you really have to appeal to the most frightening instincts of our clannish animalistic lizard brains? Did you HAVE to go there???

IF I was let into a rally and IF someone actually gave me the mic, those would be MY questions. Of course, I no longer even have the courage to enter that mob, so that's not going to happen... way to bring the country together John. Nice work. I hope you're proud of yourself...

(*Note this is the first time I've used that word on this blog, but really, sometimes there is NO other word). [?]

And McCain.... It's NOT Working... Rednecks for Obama!

Here are the top 20 search terms on Google today:

1. rednecks for obama
2.bobby bones show
3.w magazine
4.pfg
5.mtsu
6.gallup poll obama mc...
7.tin pan alley
8.joann fabrics
9.mother s cookies
10.shauna newell
11.emmitt smith diamond...
12.eileen herlie
13.karissa and kristina...
14.amy leigh andrews
15.ford stock price
16.djia
17.charles rogers
18.chuck norris wife
19.shannon twins
20.your home page

Wait... Did you read number 1???

Welcome aboard!!! We have always had the biggest tent and rednecks are my favorite Dems! I was raised in Wisconsin afterall...

[?]

"Race Baiting"-- Brown Does It Again...

I posted a story Campbell Brown wrote last month that was hard hitting and full of the kind of sarcasm that was worthy of Molly Ivins, Twain and Benjamin Franklin. It was good stuff.

I am pretty sure though this is the first time in the history of this country that someone considered a very good mainstream reporter, but not a superstar has come out and used a phrase worthy of Olbermann, Maddow and Stewart.

Campbell Brown called the McCain campaign to the carpet last night for what she called "dangerous race baiting".

She's right and I've posted the video of it here:

I'm just stunned though! She could have used much less fiery language (and left the calls of "race baiting" to radical bloggers like me...LOL!). She didn't she went to the core of the problem with the rhetoric coming from the McCain/Palin campaign and called it what it was...

Americans needed to hear that... Hillary tried the racism and it lost her the ticket. Here once again as Campbell says "That is dangerous" and begs McCain to try to "maintain a little dignity", once again Americans are rejecting the horrible language that is inciting McCain rally attenders to scream out "kill him" unchecked in the audience...

This is not funny.
This is not cool.
This is not okay.
This HAS to stop.

I just want to say this to the McCain campaign... Should your nasty, disgusting, inhuman rhetoric over this past week, incite some maniac to attempt the unthinkable and you don't step in to stop it immediately, you personally will be blamed by all Americans. You will lose your Senate seat. You will go down in history as complicit. America and the world will never forgive you.

The race baiting MUST STOP NOW!

What little respect I once had for you and what you once stood for has been torn to pieces in the last two weeks. Even though I wasn't going to vote for you, I had respect for you. You are better than that...

Is she making you this evil monster? Is she the devil incarnate that suddenly took what was a respectable campaign and thrown it to the worst inclinations of our society?

I keep hoping that Americans will see through this and vote against it just to make sure it never happens again... but then they history of this kind of politics reminds me that some Americans want to be fooled again and again... and my hope diminishes just a bit more...

I am so disappointed.

Thank you Campbell once again for the courage it took for you to call this what it is and to do so with such grace. You have made my Women Who Rock wall! [?]

Mavericks...

This is what I think of whenever McCain or Palin uses the word "maverick". A shitty ford that is 50 years old, doesn't work anymore and was supposed to be cool at one point, but just never quite got there...

This car reminds me of Palin.

Seemed like a good idea at first, but quickly became a laughing stock of the car industry...

Tonight's debate was a farce. The most frightening thing was the reference to the VP getting more power. Check the Sunday paper for my thoughts on that.

She was plastic and one friend wondered on Facebook if she was a cartoon.

The winking was maddening. I vaguely remember telling everyone yesterday that she would try to flirt her way through the debate... It was really irritating to be right on that.

I did notice a couple of things, she's lost a few pounds in 5 weeks, had on too much make up and if I see that poor oldest pregnant daughter carrying that baby around like a sack of potatoes again, I'll just scream. She can't hire a babysitter to sit in the audience and care for that newborn? That 17 year old is the mother in that family. She's the one caring for the younger ones. Look closely at how they respond to her. Look at how the children at the end vied for her attention. I'm a big believer that a woman can do anything she wants when ever she wants in her life including her childbearing years. But there's a right and a wrong way to do it and to have those children there and to make the oldest daughter use the baby to hide her own bun in the oven on stage is just bugging the hell out of me. Why isn't the Baby Daddy holding the baby? Why always the oldest daughter? Doesn't she have enough responsibility with trying to finish high school and deal with morning sickness and the local embarrassment of her lack of education becoming a national issue? Does her mother have to parade her all over the country as the nanny for the little ones as well?

HIRE A NANNY PALIN!

As a mother of three children who had my husband stay home for 5 years to care for the girls when they were really young, I'm a firm believer in family structure. Stable parents or parental figures are crucial to children's upbringing. To choose to not have stability and then not provide for it in some other way at the same time is irresponsible.

Back to the debate (see how annoying it can be to change the subject without warning LOL?)

Palin was solid. I'm only going to have to say that once in this entire campaign, so there it is. She remembered her 15 talking points and repeated them back to the audience verbatim and repeatedly throughout the debate. She used her charm to try to woo the audience and let me say this before any of you call me sexist...

She USED her sex appeal to her fullest advantage. That makes it fair game to discuss.

Her skirt had to be the tightest skirt I've ever seen in my life. Her mascara rivaled Tammy Faye's. Most egregiously she actually tried to flirt with the American public and Joe Biden! She batted her eyes, she dipped her head and looked sideways, she winked, she was coy and cute and the word the media is loving tonight "folksy".

As a soccer mom (not a hockey mom, but similar), she's that mom on the sidelines with the perfect makeup who is fake nice to you and only talks to you because your kid is better than theirs (that is not a comment on ANY of the soccer mom's I've been pleased to sit on the sidelines with... you all know I love each and every one of you! It's just what I see happening on other teams we play LOL). She quietly drives you nuts and when she cheers and all the other husbands drool a bit.... she's conservative christian right and so thinks she's saved and therefore doesn't have to bother to be genuinely nice anymore... Jesus already loves her and she can do no wrong...

In other words, it's all an act. She wasn't ready for this and we all saw through it over the last few weeks. Tonight she didn't totally fall on her face as some secretly hoped, but it only took about a half hour for Keith to tear the substance of her words to pieces and the American people didn't buy the act one bit based on the polls.

It was a stunning loss in that it should have been a win or at least a tie and it still wasn't, it was just not an utter and total disaster. [?]

The Facts on Charlie Rangel's $2 million

Yesterday I posted on a disingenuous and false ad that John Gard and the RNC put out in Green Bay to stir the fires of race baiting in their race against Steve Kagen in the 8th CD.

The ad mentions $2 million in earmarks that Rangel attained. Well, not all earmarks are equal and here are the facts on this $2 million in taxpayer dollars.

What that $2 million for the Rangel library actually was used for â scholarships and internships for minority and underprivileged students.

Here are the facts: The ad is referring to a $1.916 million dollar earmark for City College of New Yorkâs Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service.

The earmark was in the Labor/HHS/Education appropriations bill H.R. 2764. City College of New York is a public institution that receives public funding. Mary Lou Edmondson in City Collegeâs press department (212 650-5310) says the money is being used for scholarships and internships.

There are currently 19 students in their Masters in Public Service Management program and they are receving scholarships. Ms. Edmondson says the money specifically can NOT be used for construction.

The Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service helps prepare students in City Collegeâs bachelors and masters programs in public administration - particularly underrepresented minority students - for leadership positions in public service. Statistics show that only 6.5% of senior managers in the federal government are black or African-American and 3.73% are Hispanic.

Does that sound like a waste of taxpayer dollars to you? To me it sounds like exactly the type of program that taxpayer dollars should be geared towards and for Gard to bash a program like this again, shows his disdain for minorities and the underprivileged and any programs that help to level the playing field. [?]

The Palin Train Wreck Goes On Smashing McCain's Campaign to Pieces

Between the disasterous Couric interviews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow slayings and now the Jon Stewart massacre tonight, Palin's 15 minutes are over.

She is officially the laughing stock of the political world, in fact, the entire world and as Clinton said today, "This choice isn't even close."

McCain's old, teetering and barely able to look at a camera without that look of combined fear and pure fury and his running mate who will most likely become POTUS should they get elected is about as smooth as chunky peanut butter... Why she didn't just say, "No, I don't have any real foreign policy experience first and then talk about seeing Russia" or "I'm not a law scholar but I have enormous respect for the Supreme Court and the complicated work they do" or "My hometown paper ____ and USA Today and the NYT and the Washington Post are commonly on my reading list" is beyong me.

Where she gets messed up is when she doesn't know an answer and instead of just saying I don't know, she punts and either talks about something else, or says something completely incomprehensible.

Listen, no one expects her to know everything, but stumbling around pretending to know what she's talking about when she doesn't is her true weakness... Biden would be well prepared to take note and politely and sweetly exploit the hell out of that.

Why we are even still discussing this campaign is just beyond me. But we are and tomorrow night we are going to see the train wreck in full swing. She's going to get on there, try to charm Biden just enough to get a few good lines in and hopefully salvage not only her vp campaign, but her governorship and her reputation which is fast exceeding the reputation of Dan Quayle as the most idiotic VP choice in history.

She's making it too easy. I'm so insulted by McCain choosing her, there are no words to describe my fury. She's the poster child for blonde jokes and she's an embarrassment to brilliant, articulate and exciting women worldwide.

That said, I'm willing to make a few predictions about tomorrow night.

1. She will at some point say a phrase very similar to "Don't bully me." She almost has to to win the debate. By trying to paint Biden as a bully, she just might win back a few of those women who were excited about her at first and now are saying, "She said what?"

2. She will also again fall back on a gotcha question type response.

3. She will not know the answer to something and rather than saying something short and sweet, she'll ramble on about a completely different subject like oil that she knows.

4. At another time, she'll be so flustered, she'll ramble on about absolutely nothing and say something really stupid.

5. She's going to look really hot tomorrow night in a mom sort of way to appeal to the middle age conservative men who are freaking out because they didn't want McCain in the first place...

6. She'll flirt with the camera a lot.

I find this whole charade ridiculous. How rude of McCain to put this woman out there so unprepared for the big game. I almost (except she agreed to do it) feel sorry for her. It's out of control and tomorrow she's going to go out there with expectations super low and hope to high hell everyone's admiring how perfect her makeup and hair are instead of listening carefully to the pablum coming out of her mouth.

The "Straight Talk Titanic", Colbert

She has only one option tomorrow night. Memorize as much as possible about Biden's record and use it like the pitbull she says she is... Problem with that strategy is that she doesn't seem to have a very good memory, so that's gonna take some real witchcraft.

I love politics, but this isn't even a fair fight. Biden is charming and adorable in his own right, but he's got the substance to back it up.

I predict that she will bat her eyes and he will flatter the hell out of her and tomorrow night is going to look a lot more like a shitty first date than a VP debate. [?]

Gard Appeals to Racism in Green Bay to Sway Kagen Voters... Inexcuseable...

Steve Kagen is running one of the cleanest and most respectable campaigns in the state of Wisconsin right now.

He's talking about issues and making his case in his attempt to win reelection after defeating John Gard in 2006.

John Gard and his party the RNC is not anywhere near as honorable in his onslaught of smears against Steve.

Consider this ad:

It accomplishes a whole boat of negative things doesn't it...

It smears Kagen with no cause.

Charlie Rangel has not been accused of and is not even generally considered corrupt. In fact, I've met him and he's a wonderful man who loves his country enormously and has servied it valiantly for decades. This alone is inexcusable. Imagine if Gard did get elected? Think Charlie Rangel a member of senior leadership in a democratically controlled congress will give him the light of day? Just for this alone, Green Bay electing Gard would be like cutting off their nose to spite their face.

Electing Gard would make the seat of Congress in the 8th completely and soundly irrelevant.

It's a smear on the east coast liberals for the most part and oh by the way, Charlie's black so it's also a smear on black liberals.

Which gets me to my next point. Let's face it. On the whole (not all, but I've been there...) the people in the Green Bay area only approve of people of color if they play football... and even the Packers had to lobby the city to stop pulling over the players and their families for DWB. The anti immigration stuff in that city/county has made national news because of its hatred (and illegality) and race-baiting overtones.

I know WHITE people who moved out of Green Bay because they didn't want their kids exposed to that level of pure racism and hatred--last year.

I know cool people in Green Bay as well and they are not in a complete minority, but there's a big race war going on up there and Gard know it. Everyone knows it. A lot of historical reasons for this exist that I won't go into right now, but suffice it to say that Green Bay has some hard core racists.

So the attempt to paint Kagen as friends with a black guy is deliberate. It's not minor either. It's a deliberate and specific play to the racists in Green Bay to say, "Kagen hangs out with all those east coast liberals and those black (being nice here) congressmen who don't know their place, but I'll be with you cause I know how much you hate those kind of people."

Honestly, guys, I talk about subtle racism all the time, this isn't even subtle. Kagen has had fundraisers with Democrats all over the country. He's getting support from his colleagues because he's smart, dedicated a great representative for his district and the country, and they want to keep him around.

Ask yourself why, out of the tons of congressmen and women who have helped out Steve with fundraising, John Gard (okay the RNC on behalf of John Gard) choose a black, New York liberal congressman to highlight in this ad?

The RNC is feeding the flames of racism in Green Bay for another reason as well... Can you guess what that is?

Reminding people of their racist tendencies at this point in time is no accident by the RNC. They have NO issues. They've destroyed this country with unnecessary and illegal war, with the failures of 911 and Katrina, and most recently with the outrageous failure of the US economy (and of the basic tenant of GOP philosophy) under their watch since the Great Depression.

ALL they have left, and I mean ALL is to feed the flames of racism and hatred and fear...

Hopefully the good people in Green Bay will continue to out number the haters and will take a look at their banks accounts, their stocks, their mortgages and the goodness in their faiths and vote for Steve Kagen and at the same time Obama so Steve has someone to work with to clean up this horrific mess the GOP has made for 8 years...

[?]

I'm Not the Only One "Screechy" about Palin

I have been pretty harsh on the VP pick, but Naomi is making no bones about it... Palin is dangerous.

and in case you thought I was making the witchcraft stuff up...
_________________________________

Has Sarah Palin Been Picked as the Titular Head of the Coming Police State?
By Naomi Wolf, Huffington Post. Posted September 24, 2008.

Palin will help to establish a true and irreversible 'fear society' in this oncefree once proud nation.Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah "Evita" Palin.You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order tounderstand "Palin Power." A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable,weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections -- but they will makesure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weakfigurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russiaholds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections.It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and evenpresidents, but you don't have freedom.I realized early on with horror what I was seeing in Governor Palin: thecontinuation of the Rove-Cheney cabal, but this time without restraints. I heardher echo Bush 2000 soundbites ("the heart of America is on display") andrealized Bush's speechwriters were writing her -- not McCain's -- speeches. Iheard her tell George Bush's lies -- not McCain's -- to the American people,linking 9/11 to Iraq. I heard her make fun of Barack Obama for wanting toprevent the torture of prisoners -- this is Rove-Cheney's enthusiastic S and M,not McCain's, who, though he shamefully colluded in the 2006 Military TribunalsAct, is also a former prisoner of war and wrote an eloquent Newsweek piece in2005 opposing torture. I saw that she was even styled by the same skillfulstylist (neutral lipstick, matte makeup, dark colors) who turned KatharineHarris from a mall rat into a stateswoman and who styles all the women in theBush orbit -- but who does not bother to style Cindy McCain.Then I saw and heard more. Palin is embracing lawlessness in defying AlaskanLegislature subpoenas -- this is what Rove-Cheney, and not McCain, believe indoing. She uses mafia tactics against critics, like the police commissioner whowas railroaded for opposing handguns in Alaskan battered women's shelters --Rove's style, not McCain's. I realized what I was seeing.Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of theRove-Cheney cabal. The strategy became clear. Time magazine reported that Roveis "dialed in" to the McCain campaign. Rove's protege Steve Schmidt is nowcampaign manager. And Politico reported that Rove was heavily involved inMcCain's vice presidential selection. Finally a new report shows that there aredozens of Bush and Rove operatives surrounding Sarah Palin and orchestrating herevery move.What's the plan? It is this. McCain doesn't matter. Reputable dermatologists arediscussing the fact that in simply actuarial terms, John McCain has a virulentand life-threatening form of skin cancer. It is the elephant in the room, but wemust discuss the health of the candidates: doctors put survival rates forsomeone his age at two to four years. I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is usingSarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populistface on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end ofelections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last trueAmerican election. She will be working for Halliburton, KBR, Rove and Cheneyinto the foreseeable future -- for a decade perhaps -- a puppet "president" forthe same people who have plundered our treasure, are now holding the US economyhostage and who murdered four thousand brave young men and women in a way ofchoice and lies.How, you may ask, can I assert this? How can I argue, as I now do, that there isactually a war being ramped up against US citizens and our democracy and thatSarah Palin is the figurehead and muse for that war?Look at the RNC. This is supposed to be McCain's America. But you see theunmistakable theatre of Rove's S and M imagery -- and you see stages eight, nineand ten of the steps to a dictatorship as I outlined them in The End of America.Preemptive arrest? Abusive arrest? "Newly released footage, which was buried toavoid confiscation, shows riot cops arresting and abusing a giant group ofpeople for nothing."Journalists were arrested -- for reporting. Amy Goodman and ABC producers werearrested. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake and others were forced to lie face down asarmed agents tied their hands behind their backs. The riot police wore the blackS&M gear of the Rovian fantasy life and carried the four foot batons cops carryin North Korea. All this is not John McCain's imagery or strategy: it is KarlRove's.In McCain-Palin's America, citizens who are protesting are being charged asterrorists. This means that a violent war had been declared on Americancitizens. A well known reporter leaked to me on background that St Paul policehad dressed as protesters and, dressed in Black -- shades of the Blackshirts of1920 -- infiltrated protest groups. There were also phalanxes of men in blackwearing balaclavas, linking arms and behaving menacingly -- alleged"anarchists." Let me tell you, I have been on the left for thirty years and youcan't get three lefties to wear the same t-shirt to a rally, let alone link armsand wear identical face masks: these are not our guys. Agent Provocateursframing protesters and calling protest "terrorism" constitutes step ten of apolice state:"In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors haveformally charged 8 alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee withConspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of TerrorismÃ¢â¬Â¦ [they] 7 1/2 years in prisonunder the terrorism enhancement charge which allows for a 50% increase in themaximum penalty.""Paid, confidential informantsÃ¢â¬Â¦ infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of lawenforcement. They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates tothe RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotageairports in St. Paul. Evidence released to date does not corroborate theseallegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for theseallegations than the claims of the informants. Based on past abuses of suchinformants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that suchpolice informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence andto also act as provocateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence."Under the Palin-Rove police state, you will see escalating infringements on youraccess to a free internet:"Sarah Palin was baptized at Wasilla Assembly of GodÃ¢â¬Â¦Last Sunday our researchteam released a video, a ten-minute mini-documentary, focusing on the WasillaAssemblies of God and the video seemed on the verge of a massive "viral"breakthrough when YouTube pulled it down, citing 'inappropriate content'. At thepoint the video was censored by YouTube it had been viewed by almost 160,000people. The short of it is that YouTube has censored a video documentary thatappeared to be close to having an effect on a hard fought and contentiousAmerican presidential electionÃ¢â¬Â¦"Under the coming Palin-Rove police state, you will witness the plans nowunderway to bring Iraqi troops to patrol the streets of our nation. This is notMcCain's fantasy: it is Rove's and Cheney's.Under the Palin-Rove police state, there will be no further true elections. MarkCrispin Miller has done sensational and under-reported investigating t oestablish that -- as I warned -- indeed the GOP staffers on the US SenateJudiciary Committee have been .The evidence is also buried on the Website of the Majority House PermanentSelect Committee on Intelligence.WASHINGTON -- Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commiteeinfiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategymemos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told TheGlobe. >From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOPcommittee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to accessrestricted Democratic communications witho ut a password. Trolling throughhundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of privatemeetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and withwhat tactics.-- "Senate panel's GOP staff spied on Democrats" By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff January 22, 2004Do you think that spying like this will ever end under a Palin-Rove regime?Dream on. If she and McCain are elected, then every single strategy memo andspeech and debate prep note from every opposition candidate from now and on intoforever will be read by the regime in power while it is still in the computersof the challengers.Under the Palin-Rove police state, citizens will be targeted with statecyberterrorism. Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda, a former Reaganofficial, warned me three years ago that the Bush team went after a Republicanwho had crossed them through cyberstalking: they messed with his email, messedwith his phones and I believe messed with his bank account -- he became acyber-pariah, unemployable and haunted. With modern technology, there really isless place to hide from the state than there was in East Germany in the Cold Warera. I remember feeling a chill: of course. That is the wave of the future oncewe breach the protections around citizens of FISA and the fourth amendment. Thatway lies the abyss for us all.Am I trying to scare you? I am. I am trying to scare you to death and ask you toscare your Republican and independent friends most of all. How do you know whenit is war on citizens? When there are mass arrests, journalists are jailed, theopposition is infiltrated, rights are stripped and leaders start to ignore therule of law.Almost everyone I work with on projects related to this campaign for liberty hasbeen experiencing computer harassment: emails are stripped, messages disappear.That's not all: people's bank accounts are being tampered with: wire transfersto banks vanish in midair. I personally keep opening bank accounts that arequickly corrupted by fraud. Money vanishes. Coworkers of mine have to keepopening new email accounts as old ones become infected. And most disturbingly tome personally is the mail tampering I have both heard of and experiencedfirsthand. My tax returns vanished from my mailbox. All my larger envelopesarrive ripped straight open apparently by hand. When I show the postman, he says"That's impossible." Horrifyingly to me is the impact on my family. Mychildrens' report cards are returned again and again though perfectly addressed;their invitations are turned back; and my daughters many letters from camp?Vanished. All of them. Not one arrived. Try explaining that to a smart thirteenyear old. Try explaining it in a way that still makes her feel secure andcomfortable.I am not telling you this because it's about my life. I am telling you thisbecause it is about your life -- whoever you are, Conservative or Liberal,independent or evangelical. Your politics will not protect you in a policestate. History shows that nothing protects you in a police state. This is notabout my fear and anxiety: it is about what awaits you and everyone you loveunless you see this for what it is:Scharansky divided nations into "fear societies" and "free societies." Make nomistake: Sarah "Evita" Palin is Rove and Cheney's cosmetic rebranding of theirfascist push: she will help to establish a true and irreversible "fear society"in this once free once proud nation. For God's sake, do not let her; do not letthem. [?]

The Debate and Upfront!

You can watch the segment that James Widgerson and I did with Mike Gousha here.

Honestly, I had a blast with this! Mike is just a doll. What an easy going nice man, it was really a pleasure to be on his show.

James and I had a great time as well. We watched the debate, ate pizza and gabbed and joked about the event as it was going on. Let me tell you a little secret about us conservative and liberal bloggers, most of us know each other. Most of us grew up in Wisconsin and guess what, as long as we don't talk politics, usually we get along really well and even when we do talk politics, we respect each other's work well enough that we don't get into heated discussions. We instead civilly make our points agree to disagree (and occasionally to agree) and move on.

In many ways I think we are kindred spirits who have passions and are willing to take a bold step and discuss those passions with the world and that makes us more alike than unalike most times. Some of my favorite conservative bloggers (I don't agree with any of these guys btw) are Owen Robinson, Dave Casper, James Widgerson and Dean Mundy. They are all really nice guys regardless of their "wrong-headed policies" (I loved it when Barack used that phrase in the debate...) and I respect the work they do... someday, they'll come around LOL!

The only bummer I can think of from the entire experience is that they only have one make up artist and she was stolen from me by Joe Biden! LOLOLOL! I punted and used lipstick for blush (women are resourceful) and it was all good though.

Big shout out to Joan at Three Graces, 207 E Buffalo Street! She rocked me out with that awesome scarf and made the outfit work. I LOVE Three Graces and Joan, her taste in clothing styles never ceases to amaze me and you cannot go wrong if you need something quick that's gonna look awesome on you. On top of that she's got a way with people and is really a good friend. I just really wanna thank her for being there for me with the loaner.

Now about the debate itself.

One of the things James and I did during the debate was to start listing the catch phrases of the debate. They were actually really funny... "main street" was used so many times we wanted to start a drinking game over it. Then there was McCain with "you don't understand" and if I had my notes I'd remember a few others that had us cracking up...

I think I got two things from is: First, I thought Obama really connected. He wasn't stunning, he wasn't insanely exciting, but he was "presidential" and as James said, that's all he needs to be right now with the train wreck that is the McCain campaign. Second, I thought McCain seemed out of touch, at times almost angry (he didn't smile the entire debate) and as my friend Jackie said, "Obama seemed to be talking to me and McCain seemed to be talking at me".

The polls seem to be reflecting the same. Although many people cautiously said it was a tie (including me) with Obama coming off slightly better, I think the combination of the debate and the insanity of this financial crisis, James may be onto something...

[?]

PALIN: 'ONLY FLAG IN MY OFFICE' IS ISRAELI

PALIN: 'ONLY FLAG IN MY OFFICE' IS ISRAELI

President Peres of Israel yesterday met for the first time with Governor Palin and with Senator McCain, who called the veteran Israeli statesman "my old friend." The warm handshake and exchange of broad smiles occurred during an international gathering known as the Clinton Global Initiative, hosted by President Clinton. "I wanted to meet you for many years," Ms. Palin told Mr. Peres, according to an aide to the president. "The only flag at my office is an Israeli flag," she was quoted as saying, "and I want you to know and I want Israelis to know that I am a friend."

She also has declared victory in Iraq (same link above):

PALIN: U.S. HAS WON 'VICTORY' IN IRAQ Governor
Palin, describing the need for more troops in Afghanistan, said America has achieved "victory" in Iraq. It was an apparent misstep in Ms. Palin's third interview since agreeing to become Senator McCain's running mate nearly one month ago. The Alaska governor told CBS's Katie Couric that "a surge in Afghanistan also will lead us to victory there as it has proven to have done in Iraq," adding that "we cannot afford to retreat, to withdraw in Iraq." Pressed on why her state's proximity to Russia enhanced her foreign policy experience, Ms. Palin said: "Well, it certainly does, because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of." She added that when Prime Minister Putin "rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska."

I have no comment... Rae

[?]

Milwaukee Public School Board Votes to Provide Domestic Partnership Benefits Tonight!

In a huge step forward for civil rights in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Public School Board voted 7 to 2 to provide domestic partnership benefits to it's employees.

This was a crazy battle. The first meetings were cordial and reasonable discussions by both sides.

Then in July, all hell broke loose when a large group of Christian conservatives blasted into the room and were so unruly that one had to be removed from the meeting and the meeting postponed.

Earlier this week, the Committee heard public testimony amid greatly increased security and voted 3 to 2 to move the issue out of committee and recommend it for passage to the full board.

The swing vote on the committee said, "Well, after hearing testimony on both sides of this issue, I have finally made a decision and based on the testimony of the opposition, I've been swayed to vote for this measure."

I want to congratulate all the people who worked on this from the MPS School Board members who championed the cause with their colleagues to Center Advocates to the ACLU of WI and all the other non-profits out there who work on behalf of equality in Wisconsin and especially to the students and parents of MPS students who came out and stood up for equality for those who work so hard to provide them with knowledge.

I even want to thank the zealots whose angry opposition was the deciding factor in getting this out of committee. LOL!

It's a great night for equality in Milwaukee! [?]

How Did I Suddenly Get in Line with My Nemesis The Heritage Foundation?

This list of guiding principles from the evil Heritage Foundation for the financial crisis seems reasonable to me... It sounds like my talking points on this all week!

The days of the Bush temper tantrums seem to be waning...

Especially when they go against the wishes of the Heritage Foundation...

I'm suddenly as confused as I was earlier this week when I realized I agreed with Pat Buchanan as well...

This bailout must be a REALLY bad idea if conservatives and liberals all agree it's idiotic.

I'm really glad Congress killed it tonight. Neither the Democrats or the Republicans wanted it, so the GOP walked and the Dems said "Well, it was your president's plan, we don't want it anyway..." And they sure as hell weren't voting for it without the GOP on board! LOL!

Nice work! Kill a crappy plan no one thinks is a good idea and then blame each other for it. American Democracy at it's best! [?]

Too Funny...

See more Sarah Silverman videos at Funny or Die

My sister over at Sisters Talk posted this and I have to spread it further!

It is crude, rude, offensive and let's face it, really really funny...

My apologies if anyone is offended, but if Sarah's not offending someone, she's not doing her schtick right!

Thanks Genia for the laughs tonight!

Witchcraft? Really? I'm sorry... still not over it yet...

[?]

Save Wisconsin's Vote!

As if I didn't have enough to say... or give you enough to do today LOL! Here's one more fun thing you can do:

www.SaveWisconsinsVote.org -- it allows you to sign a petition telling GAB and the Van Hollen-Chisholm Election Task Force to investigate the McCain Absentee Ballot Application mailing and whether it was intentional. Feel free to spread it around.

Also has a tool for anyone who received the faulty ballot application who wants to file a complaint with GAB, the Task Force and their local District Attorney the easy ability to do so. [?]

Become a Constitution Voter!!!

I love this new campaign!

Pledge to become a Constitution Voter this fall!

http://aclu.org/constitutionvoter/

CONSTITUTION VOTER Put the Constitution First at the Polls in November

Let the candidates running for office know that when you step into the polling booth this November, the Constitution will be the first thing on your mind.

[?]

760,000 Americans Right to Vote Restored Nationwide!

This is not some fringe movement. In Wisconsin,the Restore the Vote WI coalition now boasts more than 50 organizations who support the right to vote for ex-offenders immediately upon release from prison. This should be a top priority for Wisconsin's legislators in 2009 as it has been all over the country since 1997.

Think this is a liberal democratic issue? Think again. Republicans all over the country are recognizing the inherent unfairness and un-Americanness of ex-offender disfranchisement and forward thinking patriotic GOP Gov's in both Iowa and Florida's actions are counted in the numbers below. This is NOT a partisan issue. It's an American issue.

I have written about it extensively in the past, and so will not rehash here, but if you want to know what I'm talking about click here and read some of my past posts on it.

And of course reposting this is email from the Sentencing Project is self-serving. Once again, I get to brag about how cool my Senator Russ Feingold is! Wanna do something productive today to enhance our American democracy?

Call Herb Kohl (his number's coincidentally at the bottom of that link I just gave you) and ask him to sign on as a co-sponsor of the Democracy Restoration Act.

Call your Congressman as well and let them know you support the Civic Participation and Rehabilitation Act in the House and that you want them to sign on as co-sponsors.

Don't live in Wisconsin? Then call BOTH your Senators and your representative ask them to sign on to both those pieces of legislation being introduced this week. Make sure you call both democratic and republican representatives! We cannot decide our friends on this issue based on the letter behind their name.

______________________
The Sentencing Project today released a report, Expanding the Vote: State Felony Disenfranchisement Reform, 1997- 2008, that documents a reform movement over the past eleven years that has resulted in more than 760,000 citizens having regained their right to vote.

The report found that since 1997, 19 states have amended felony disenfranchisement policies in an effort to reduce their restrictiveness and expand voter eligibility. The report's release coincides with the introduction of new legislation in Congress to secure federal voting rights for nonincarcerated citizens.The report finds:

Nine states either repealed or amended lifetime disenfranchisement laws.
Two states expanded voting rights to persons under community supervision (probation and parole).
Five states eased the restoration process for persons seeking to have their right to vote restored after completing sentence.
Three states improved data and information sharing.

The report documents the rates of disenfranchisement and the racially disparate impact of felony disenfranchisement policy in the 19 states that have enacted reforms. It also highlights the profound personal impact that this policy has had on those who have regained their voting rights, or continue to be disenfranchised. Recent state reforms include:

Maryland repealed its post-sentence voting ban in 2007, restoring the right to vote to 52,000 residents.

Florida eased the complexity of its restoration process for persons who have completed a sentence for a non-violent offense.

Governors in Kentucky and Virginia expressed support for voting rights for persons who completed sentence by easing the restoration process and expediting restoration applications, respectively.

North Carolina and Louisiana passed notification bills mandating that the state notify individuals of the law regarding voting rights and the process of registration.

Despite these reforms, an estimated 5 million people will continue to be ineligible to vote in November's Presidential election, including nearly 4 million who reside in the 35 states that still prohibit some combination of persons on probation, parole, and/or people who have completed their sentence from voting.

In response to this fact, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) plans to introduce the Democracy Restoration Act and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) plans to introduce the Civic Participation and Rehabilitation Act this week to restore federal voting rights to all citizens released from prison and living in the community.

-The Sentencing Project [?]

Feingold's Been Busy Setting the Stage to Restore the Rule of Law in 2009!

This is why Russ is by far the Senator with the most integrity in the US Congress since Wisconsin sent Bob LaFollette decades ago. I am proud to have him as my Senator and excited about the work he's doing to not only try to prevent further erosions of our freedoms, but also to repair the damage that was done over the last 8 years.

Senator Feingold is headed to the Senate floor today to speak about what the next president, and the next Congress, must do to restore the rule of law and fix the damage done to our Constitution by this administration, from the President's warrantless wiretapping program to torture, habeas corpus, and Guantanamo. As you know, this has been an issue Senator Feingold has been pushing and will continue to push through January and the inauguration. His prepared remarks are available at: http://feingold.senate.gov/~feingold/statements/08/09/20080925.htm.

Earlier this year, he wrote an op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about what he wants to hear from the next president in his inaugural address about what he will do to restore the rule of law. That op-ed is available here: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=764403.

And last week, Senator Feingold held a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee which he chairs on restoring the rule of law. The goal of the hearing was to create a blueprint, based on the testimony of constitutional and historical experts, for the next administration to use in order to restore the rule of law. Witnesses included former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger, Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh, former Representative Mickey Edwards (R-OK), former Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton John Podesta, and others. Additionally, Senator Feingold solicited and received written testimony from other groups and individuals including Bruce Fein, former Justice Department official under President Reagan, Lou Fisher, Constitutional expert with the Library of Congress, and others. More on the hearing including copies of the testimony are available at http://feingold.senate.gov/ruleoflaw. The recommendations from these individuals and groups about what the next president, and the next Congress, must do range from general to very specific.

I'm keeping an eye on the work of our great Senator and will keep you up to date as well as more information comes out. [?]

Witchcraft

This article will be published in the next Rolling Stone magazine. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the thoroughness of it, but also don't think it could have captured my thoughts on this anymore... I've reposted it below as well.

Witchcraft seems so appropriate here. That's exactly what this woman represents to me... This is no statement on Wiccans by the way. They are a totally different thing. I'm talking about the stereotypical depiction of witches in America.

Beautiful temptresses hiding evil monsters hell formed and hell bent to deceive and wreak havoc and hide the devil's intent. Yeah... I went there... She did, so I'm all good with it...

Perhaps the witch Palin's pastor was trying to protect her from... is Sarah Palin herself...

Honestly, if I could have thought about and written a political narrative that was completely insane and unbelieveable, I do not have the imagination to come up with stuff like this. It's beyond the realm of palatibility and thankfully the polls are beginning to reflect the "wait a minute... did you just say the word witchcraft?" reaction I had in the last few days...

Barring some other insane revelation of the insanity that is Sarah Palin, though, I think this post below pretty much covers it, so I don't think I'll have much more to say on the issue of this woman.

For those of you still hell bent on electing Martha Goodwin, I mean Sarah Palin, as the front woman for the evil agenda of McCain and the crazy religious right, you should consider also buying stock in the tourism industry of Salem, MA. Oh yeah... the republicans destroyed the stock market so you're sh*t out of luck...
____________________

The Lies of Sarah Palin
By Matt Taibbi

I'm standing outside the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sarah Palin has just finished her speech to the Republican National Convention, accepting the party's nomination for Vice President. If I hadn't quit my two pack a day habit earlier this year, I'd be chain smoking right now. So the only thing left is to stand mute against the fit-for-a-cheap-dog-kennel crowd-control fencing you see everywhere at these idiotic conventions and gnaw on weird new feelings of shock and anarchist rage as one would a rawhide chew toy.

All around me, a million cops in there absurd post-9/11 space combat get-ups stand guard as assholes in paper-mache puppet heads scramble around for one last moment of network face time before the coverage goes dark. Four-chinned delegates from places like Arkansas and Georgia are pouring joylessly out the gates in search of bars where they can load up on Zombies and Scorpion bowls and other "wild" drinks and extramaritally grope their turkey-necked female companions in bathroom stalls as part of the "Unbelievable Time" they will inevitably report to their pals back home. Only 21st-century Americans can pass through a metal detector six times in an hour and still think they're at a party.
The defining moment for me came shortly after Palin and her family stepped down from the stage to uproarious applause, looking happy enough to throw a whole library full of books into the sewer. In the crush to exit the stadium, a middle-aged woman wearing a cowboy hat, a red-white-and-blue shirt and an obvious eye job gushed to a male colleague â They were both wearing badges identifying them as members of the Colorado delegation â At the Xcel gates.
"She totally reminds me of my cousin!" the delegate screeched. "She's a real woman! The real thing!"
I stared at her open-mouthed. In that moment, the rank cynicism of the whole sorry deal was laid bare. Here's the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.
And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she's good enough likeness of a loudmouthed Middle American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant sized bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the sizzlin' picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else's, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because that image on TV reminds him of the mean brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.
Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV â And this country is going to eat her up, cheering every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.
The Palin speech was a political masterpiece, one of the most ingenious pieces of electoral theater this country has ever seen. Never before has a single televised image turned a party's fortunes around faster
Until the Alaska governor actually ascended to the podium that night, I was convinced that John McCain had made one of the all-time campaign-season blunders, that he had acted impulsively and out of utter desperation in choosing a cross-eyed political neophyte just two years removed from running a town smaller than the bleacher section at Fenway park. It even crossed my mind that there was an element of weirdly self-destructive pique in McCain's decision to cave in to his party's right-wing base in this fashion, that perhaps he was responding to being ordered by party elders away from tepid, ideologically promiscuous hack like Joe Lieberman â Reportedly his real preference â By picking the most obviously unqualified, doomed-to-fail joke of a Bible-Thumping buffoon. As in: You want me to rally the base? Fine, I'll rally the base. Here I'll choose this rifle-toting, serially pregnant moose killer who thinks God lobbies for oil pipelines. Happy now?
But watching Palin's speech I had no doubt that I was witnessing a historic, iconic performance. The candidate sauntered to the lectern with the assurance of a sleepwalker â And immediately launched into a symphony of snorting and sneering remarks, taking time out in between the superior invective to present herself as just a humble gal with a beefcake husband and a brood of healthy, combat-ready spawn who just happened to be innocent targets of a communist and probably also homosexual media conspiracy. She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who "Five children later" is "Still my guy." It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.
Within minutes, Palin had given TV audiences a character infinitely recognizable to virtually every American; the small-town girl with just enough looks and a defiantly incurious mind who thinks the PTA minutes are Holy Writ, and to whom injustice means the woman next door owning a slightly nicer set or drapes or flatware. Or the governorship, as it were.
Right-wingers of the Bush-Rove ilk have had a tough time finding a human face to put on their failed, inhuman, mean-as-hell policies. But it was hard not to recognize the genius of wedding that faltering brand of institutionalized greed to the image of the suburban American supermom. It's the perfect cover, for there is almost nothing in the world meaner than this species of provincial tyrant.
Palin herself burned this political symbiosis into the pages of history with her seminal crack about the "Difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull: lipstick," blurring once and for all the lines between meanness on the grand political scale as understood by the Roves and Bushes of the world, and meanness of the small-town variety as understood by pretty much anyone who has ever sat around in his ranch-house den dreaming of a fourth plasma-screen TV or an extra set of KC HiLites for his truck, while some ghetto family a few miles away shares a husk of government cheese.
In her speech, Palin presented herself as a raging baby-making furnace of middle-class ambition next to whom the yuppies of the Obama set â Who never want anything all that badly except maybe a few afternoons with someone else's wife, or a few kind words in The New York Times Book Review â Seem like weak, self-doubting celibates, the kind of people who certainly cannot be trusted to believe in the right God or to defend a nation. We're used to seeing such blatant cultural caricaturing in our politicians. But Sarah Palin is something new. She's all caricature. As the candidate of a party whose positions on individual issues are poll losers almost across the board, her shtick is not even designed to sell a line of policies. It's just designed to sell her. The thing was as much as admitted in the on-air gaffe by former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who was inadvertently caught saying on MSNBC that Palin wasn't the most qualified candidate, that the party "went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives."
The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflective prejudices of their demographic, as they would for a reality-show contestants or sitcom characters. Hicks root for hicks, moms for moms, born-agains for born-agains. Sure, there was politics in the Palin speech but it was all either silly lies or merely incidental fluffery buttressing the theatrical performance. A classic example of what was at work here came when Palin proudly introduced her Down-Syndrome baby, Trig, then stared into the camera and somberly promised parents of special-needs kids that they would "Have a friend and advocate in the White House." This was about a half-hour before she raised her hands in triumph with McCain, a man who voted against increasing funding for special-needs education.
Palin's charge that "government is too big" and that Obama "Wants to grow it" was similarly preposterous. Not only did her party just preside over the largest government expansion since LBJ, but Palin herself has been a typical bush-era republican, borrowing and spending beyond her means. Her great legacy as mayor of Wasilla was the construction of a $15 million hockey arena in a city with an annual budget of $20 million; Palin OK'd a bond issue for the project before the land had been secured, leading to a protracted legal mess that ultimately forced taxpayers to pay more than six times the original market price for property the city ended up having to seize from a private citizen using eminent domain. Better yet, Palin ended up paying for the fucking thing with a 25 percent increase in the city sales tax. But in her speech, of course, Palin presented herself as the enemy of tax increases, righteously bemoaning that "Taxes are too high" and Obama "Wants to raise them."
Palin hasn't been too worried about federal taxes as governor of a state that ranks number one in the nation in federal spending per resident ($13,950), even as it sits just 18th in federal taxes paid per resident ($5,434). That means all us taxpaying non-Alaskans spend $8,500 a year on each and every resident of Palin's paradise of rugged self-sufficiency. Not that this sworn enemy of taxes doesn't collect from her own; Alaska currently collects the most taxes per resident of any state in the nation. The rest of Palin's speech was the same dog-whistle crap Republicans have been railing about for decades. Palin's crack about a mayor being "like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities" testified to the Republican's apparent belief that they can win elections till the end of time running against the Sixties. (They're probably right.) The incessant pausing about the media was likewise par for the course, red meat for those tens of millions of patriotic flag-waving Americans whose first instinct when things get rough is to whine like bitches and blame other people â Reporters, the French, those ungrateful blacks soaking up tax money eating big prison meals, whomever â For their failures.
Add to this the usual lies about Democrats wanting to "forfeit" to our enemies abroad and coddle terrorists, and you had a run-of-the-mill, almost boring Republican speech from a substance standpoint. What made it exceptional was its utter hypocrisy, its total disregard for reality, it's total disregard for reality, it's absolute unrelation to the facts of our current political situation. After eight years of unprecedented corruption, incompetence, waste and greed, the party of Karl Rove understood that 50 million Americans would not demand solutions to any of these problems so long as they were given a new, new thing to beat their meat over.
Sarah Palin is that new, new thing, and in the end it won't matter that she's got an unmarried teenage kid with a bun in the oven. Of course, if the daughter of a black candidate like Barack Obama showed up at his convention with a five month bump and some sideways-cap-wearing, junior-grade Curtis Jackson (50 cent) holding her hand, the defenders of Traditional Morality would be up in arms. But the thing about being in the reality-making business is that you don't need to worry much about vetting; there are no facts in your candidate's bio that cannot be ignored or overcome.
One of the most amusing things about the Palin nomination has been the reaction of horrified progressives. The internet has been buzzing at full volume as would-be defenders of sanity and reason pore over the governor's record in search of the Damning Facts. My own telephone began ringing off the hook with calls from ex-Alaskans and friends of Alaskans determined to help get the "truth" about Sarah Palin into the major media. Pretty much anyone with an internet connection knows by know that Palin was originally for the "Bridge to Nowhere" before she opposed it (She actually endorsed the plan in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign), that even after the project was defeated she kept the money, that she didn't actually sell the Alaska governor's state luxury jet on eBay but instead sold it at a $600,000 loss to a campaign contributor (who is reportedly now seeking $50,000 in taxpayer money to pay maintenance costs).
Then there are the salacious tales of Palin's swinging-meat-cleaver management style, many of which seem to have a common thread: In addition to being ensconced in a messy ethics investigation over her firing of the chief of Alaska state troopers (dismissed after refusing to sack her sister's ex-husband), Palin also fired a campaign aide who had an affair with a friends wife. More ominously, as mayor of Wasilla, Palin tried to fire the town librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, who had resisted pressure to censor books Palin found objectionable.
Then there's the God stuff: Palin belongs to a church whose pastor, Ed Kalnins, believes that all criticisms of George Bush "Come from Hell" and wondered aloud if people who voted for John Kerry could be saved. Kalnins, looming as the answer to Obama's Jeremiah Wright, claims that Alaska is going to be a "refuge state" for Christians in the last days, last days which he sometimes speaks of in the present tense. Palin herself has been captured on video mouthing the inevitable born again idiocies, such as the idea that a recent oil-pipeline deal was "God's Will." She also described the Iraq War as a "task that is from God" and part of a heavenly "Plan." She supports teaching creationism and "Abstinence only" in public schools, opposes abortion even for victims of rape, has denied the science behind global warming and attends a church that seeks to convert Jews and cure homosexuals.
All of which tells you about what you'd expect from a raise-the-base choice like Palin: She's a puffed-up dimwit with primitive religious beliefs who had to be educated as to the fact that the constitution did not exactly envision government executives firing librarians. Judging from the importance progressive critics seem to attach to these revelations, you'd think that these were actually negatives in modern American politics. But Americans like politicians who hate books and see the face of Jesus in every tree stump. They like them stupid and mean and ignorant of the rules. Which is why Palin has only seemed to grow in popularity as more and more of these revelations have come out.
The same goes for the most damning aspect of her biography, her total lack of big-game experience. As governor of Alaska, Palin presides over a state whose entire population is barely the size of Memphis. This kind of thing might matter in a country that actually worried about whether its leader was prepared for his job â But not in America. In America, it takes about 2 weeks in the limelight for the whole country to think you've been around for years. To a certain extent, this is why Obama is getting a pass on the same issue. He's been on TV every day for two years and according to the standards of our instant-ramen culture, that's a lifetime of hands-on experience.
It is worth noting that the same criticisms of Palin also hold true for two other candidates in this race, John McCain and Barack Obama. As politicians, both men are more narrative than substance, with McCain rising to prominence on the back of his bio as a suffering war hero and Obama mostly playing the part of long-lost, future-embracing liberal dreamboat not seen on the national stage since Bobby Kennedy died. If your stomach turns to read how Palin's Kawasaki 704 glasses are flying off the shelves in Middle America, you have to accept that Middle America probably feels the same way when it hears Donatella Versace dedicated her collection to Obama during Milan Fashion Week. Or sees the throwing-panties-onstage-"I love you, Obama!" ritual at the Democratic nominee's town-hall appearances.
So, sure, Barack Obama might be every bit as much as a slick piece of imageering as Sarah Palin. The difference is in what the image represents. The Obama image represents tolerance, intelligence, education, patience with the notion of compromise and negotiation, and a willingness to stare ugly facts right in the face, all qualities we're actually going to need in government if we're going to get out of this huge mess we're in.
Here's what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins "Country First" buttons on his man titties and chants "U-S-A! U-S-A!" at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas
The truly disgusting thing about Sarah Palin isn't that she's totally unqualified, or a religious zealot, or married to a secessionist, or unable to educate her own daughter about sex, or a fake conservative who raised taxes and porked up earmark millions every chance she got. No, the most disgusting thing about her is what she says about us: That you can ram us in the ass for eight solid years, and we'll not only thank you for your trouble, we'll sign you up for eight more years, if only you promise to stroke us in the right spot for few hours around election time.
Democracy doesn't require a whole lot of work of its citizens, but it requires some: It requires taking a good look outside once in awhile, and considering the bad news and what it might mean, and making the occasional tough choice, and soberly taking stock of what your real interests are.
This is a very different thing from shopping, which involves passively letting sitcoms melt your brain all day long and then jumping straight into the TV screen to buy a southern Style Chicken Sandwich because the slob singing "I'm Lovin' It!" during the commercial break looks just like you. The joy of being a consumer is that it doesn't require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next.
And when it comes time to vote all you have to do is put your Country First â Just like that lady on TV who reminds you of your cousin. U-S-A, Baby. U-S-A! U-S-A! [?]

Brown Goes After McCain Over Sexist Treatment of Palin

I LOVE THIS STORY!!! Free Sarah Palin. Hahahahaha!

I laughed all the way through it! Way to go Campbell. I generally have a certain respectful lack of interest in Campbell Brown as a reporter, but she went at it today and my interest in her has peaked enormously as a result.

I was going to write a story on this issue (Palin being kept from all reporters at all times regardless of the reporter), but now that Campbell has gone ape-sh*t over it, it no longer seems that necessary to comment much further.

I do want to say that seeing O'Reilly, Cavuto, Dobbs, and Hannity fight over who gets to interview her and watching none of them get the gig until the campaign finally gave up and gave it to Hannity last week was hilarious. Now O'Reilly is just about to flip out daily and the others are quietly fuming about it.

On top of that, Palin can't talk to reporters not on a plane, not on a bus, not on a train, not in the rain, not in a house... you know the rest... (thanks Ted...rip). They let her out to speak with a prompter and they put her in front of reporters they know will be nice, but only RARELY...

It has been fun to watch them all at first make comments like "You are welcome at any time." Then it moved to "Well, I'm sure you'll be on soon". To now a quiet simmering of anger that's actually making Faux News fun to watch these days.

The real story though was totally nailed by Campbell. If this woman is supposed to be strong, smart, savvy and worldly enough to be president (which is the qualification to be VP), then why are they sheilding her from any scrutiny? Is it because they're sexist?

Campbell, today you are the woman who rocked me! LOL [?]

NO! NO! NO! and HELL NO!

Are you kidding me? $700 billion????

Seriously?

My shock is not lost on the general American public...

For years the financial industry has been a cash cow for the few and a gamble as much as the Superbowl for the rest of us.

The big wigs on the top took unbelievable salaries for a decade and ran their companies into the ground. The boards of directors looked the other way and everyone kept yelling the "P" word (privatization) as if it was the second coming of Christ.

McCain is deep in this. Remember as a member of the Keating 5 who raped the financial world in the 80's with the first wave of financial industry privatization under Reagan, he was exonerated for not KNOWING he was doing anything wrong, although they never did do anything about the fact that he DID do something wrong. Something really wrong that bankrupted Savings and Loans all around the country. Have you noticed there aren't any of those anymore? Banks, credit unions, and financial institutions, but no S & L's? You can thank McCain and his buddies for that.... It took 10 years, and billions to pull the banking industry out of that scandal and not until Clinton did the economy really recover.

Then deregulation/privatization rules kicked in with the help of guess who... John McCain. Now we have a complete and utter collapse of the financial industry in this country and these guys who personally stand to lose millions, no billions of dollars are running back to the same Congress who let them loose with their greed and begging for a bailout the size of the Titanic!

They are threatening the American public (we won't pay your paychecks!), they are threatening the world (we can't pay back our Iraq War debt!), they are threatening the media (this is too scary/frightening/terrifying to ignore), they are threatening Congress (do this NOW or we'll send you into an election with a new Great Depression that will make the 1929 crash look like the 2001 crash), they are threatening everyone in this country and there is a simple answer to all of this...

They COULD just give the money they stole back! I mean give me a break! Carly Fiorena got $50 mil for running HP into the ground, surely she could give back $40 of that... The investment firm CEO's make hundred's of millions annually (I'm NOT exaggerating) and surely they could do what they used to do in the past and give back their salaries this year to save the country...

I bet we could find 20 of them over $100 million annually, that would be $2 billion of the missing cash right there and we would only need to find another $698 bill more... I don't know about you, but to me $2 bill is $2 bill... more money than God in my world and $2 billion more than I'll ever see in MY lifetime.

In fact, I bet we could find 200 making that much on average and now we're up to $200 billion and with that kind of infusion, the taxpayers may not need to foot the bill at all.

Where is that $700 billion coming from by the way? They want to pri

User:Crwfd

From Blogging

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CHAPTER 10

Â§176. Respect for flag