Campaign videos are not usually my thing as the voiceovers make me want to put a brick through the screen. I swear, there must be a school where they teach the narrators to sound like that gravel-voiced guy who did all the movie trailers. But this hits every political point without once being obnoxious or hyperbolic, while still tapping into the shared cultural experience of well, just about anybody who ever watched commercial television. Brilliant.
Comment of The Day
[Flickr image by Nashmj]
At Talking Points Memo, on McCain volunteer Ashley Todd and the Obama-mugger that never was:
I was coming out of Starbucks this afternoon when a big fat hillbilly ran over to me and knocked my half-caf soy latte out of my hand and said “You look like an Obama supporter, I’m going to teach you to support McCain”. Then he knocked me to the ground and pulled out a swiss army knife. “I’m going to carve an ‘M’ in your face, liberal,” he insisted, and then he paused,”How do you spell, ‘M'” , he asked. “Well, then, I’m going to make you squeal like a pig…”
Or, maybe I just dreamed this at my desk after lunch. I did doze off for a moment…it is SO HARD to tell dreams from reality, these days.
Posted by c4Logic in reply to a comment from TheraP
UPDATE
I see the National College Republicans, for whom Todd worked, have about as much human feeling a the rest of their kind. Despite the fact McCain and Cindy jumped at Todd’s story, expressing public sympathy all over the airwaves when they thought they could use her to bolster the campaign with the racist base, now that she’s been found out she’s become a non-person.
CRNC Statement on Ashley Todd
When Ms. Todd initially contacted us claiming to have been attacked our first reaction was obviously to be concerned for her safety. We are as upset as anyone to learn of her deceit, Ashley must take full responsibility for her actions.
We have terminated her effective today.
Wahahaha. Guess Who?
‘If people only knew how frugal we are’
UPDATE: I knew my fashion antennae weren’t mistaken. The NYT via Steve Benen at AlterNet:
Some of the fashion experts consulted Wednesday, for instance, about the $150,000 in purchases that appeared on Federal Election Commission records were puzzled by where all of that money had gone, given what they had seen of Ms. Palin’s wardrobe.
Consider also the $4,902.45 charge at Atelier New York, a high-end men’s store, presumably for Ms. Palin’s husband, Todd, the famous First Dude.
Karlo Steel, an owner there, said he had gone through the store’s receipts for September, twice, and found no sales that matched that amount, nor any combination of sales that added up to the total. Because the store carries aggressively directional men’s wear, he caters to a small clientele and knows most of his customers by name, as well as the history of their purchases…. “We have no recollection of that sale and no idea what they are talking about,” Mr. Steel said.
Similarly, the RNC records show a charge of $98 at a high-end children’s boutique in Minneapolis, but after going through their receipts, the store owners found no record of the sale.
How very odd.
UPDATE II
It occurs to me that someone is quite possibly converting campaign money to his, her or their own use. I wonder who?
Well, I’ll Go To The Top Of Our Stairs
I’m indebted to M. Bouffant of Just Another Blog From LA for drawing my attention to this quote from white supremacist Bill White, of the American National Socialist Workers Party:
“There’s a real problem in what’s called the ‘white movement.’ One, there’s a lot of people who are just mentally ill, and we deal with those a lot. No. 2, there are people who have serious sexual problems.”
No! You don’t say!
Don’t Count Your Chickens
Despite more and more high profile Republican defections to Obama, party candidates McCain and Palin are still rolling with the all-hate, all-the-time roadshow, and the army of flying buttmonkeys is still on the march:
Indiana Star, Oct 23, 5:59 PM EDT
Clerk left letters calling Obama “black Hitler”
FRANKLIN, Ind. (AP) — A Republican county election clerk distributed copies of an apparent chain letter referring to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama as a “young, black Adolf Hitler” to two employees but later told police she intended it to be a joke.
The employees, who had voted for Obama in Indiana’s Democratic primary, discovered the letters at their desks after returning from Labor Day weekend, Deputy Sheriff Doug Cox said in a police report made public this week. One of the workers complained, and surveillance video showed Johnson County Clerk Jill Jackson placing an item one worker’s desk at 5:27 p.m. on the Friday of Labor Day weekend, Cox said.
From the text quoted in the article it may well have been this piece of crap , which has spammed just about every comment site out there.
Even the local Republican chair professed himself shocked:
Doug Lechner, Republican Party chairman in the county just south of Indianapolis, said the letter was unacceptable and taints Jackson’s ability to appear unbiased in administering this year’s election. County clerks are responsible for training poll workers, providing all voters an opportunity to cast their ballot without influence, and overseeing vote counts.
“She’s in a sensitive position and she has to give all the appearance of fairness,” Lechner said.
This is one county in one state. How many more thousands of others are just like it with politically biased election administrators?
I’ve blogged about Republican entryism before and how, over the past decade or more, the Right has taken control of the actual voting process by installing palpably biased election officials; the DOJ attorney scandal is just the logical flowering of a long process of deliberate political infiltration. Then there’s the voting machines and the caging and the foreclosure challenges and shutting down polling stations…take this one clerk and multiply her exponentially, produce an army of deliberate obstructionists and saboteurs.
We at the Christian Coalition are raising an army who cares. We are training people to be effective — to be elected to school boards, to city councils, to state legislatures, and to key positions in political parties…. By the end of this decade, if we work and give and organize and train, THE CHRISTIAN COALITION WILL BE THE MOST POWERFUL POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IN AMERICA
– Pat Robertson, in a fundraising letter, July 4, 1991There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the Constitution. It is a lie of the Left and we are not going to take it anymore.
Pat Robertson, address to his American Center for Law and Justice, November, 1993.
Taking political control over what should unbiased is part of the Right’s strategy and always has been: as Bush senior himself said more than once, politics at base is all about the process and who controls it. The netroots are all very well when it comes to raising funds, but how does that translate into Democrat election judges or supervisors to balance out the malignity of the GOP and maintain a fair election?
Those liberal bloggers celebrating early’d might want to hold their fire, because the results may not necessarily be what they expect. There’s a lot of damage to an unbiased vote that an army of obstructionists and saboteurs can do.
On the other hand, when even Scott McLellan is voting Obama, perhaps times are actually changing. But has anyone remembered to tell the troops?
[Image from Squidoo]