I had not seen this before, but it goes with what we were talking about earlier.
What a disgrace.
by John Cole| 17 Comments
This post is in: Mainstream Media's McCain Mancrush
I had not seen this before, but it goes with what we were talking about earlier.
What a disgrace.
This post is in: Open Threads
Your help is being requested:
A research team from the Psychology Department at New York University, headed by Professor Yaacov Trope and supported by the National Science Foundation, is investigating the cognitive causes of voting behavior, political preferences, and candidate evaluations throughout the course of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. This stage of the study focuses on the information people use to inform evaluations in the days immediately preceding the election. They seek respondents of all political leanings from all over the country (and from the rest of the world) to complete a 15-minute questionnaire, the responses to which will be completely anonymous. All respondents are entered into periodic random drawings for prizes of $100. Respondents will also receive detailed information about the research findings after data collection is completed.
The survey is here.
Totally unrelated, but the Princeton University Press has a new blog.
This post is in: Election 2008, Did You Know John McCain Was A POW?
For chrissakes, now “Joe the Plumber” is on the campaign trail stumping for McCain:
“I’m honestly scared for America,” Wurzelbacher said.
He later said Obama would end the democracy that the U.S. military had defended during wars.
“I love America. I hope it remains a democracy, not a socialist society. … If you look at spreading the wealth, that’s honestly right out of Karl Marx’s mouth,” Wurzelbacher said.
“No one can debate that. That’s not my opinion. That’s fact.”
Joe the Plumber is named Sam, isn’t actually a plumber, doesn’t have any plan to buy any business, makes nowhere near 250k a year, and would actually get a tax cut under Obama.
Yet they have him out there anyway, giving us his deep thoughts on socialism. You simply can not make this shit up. The McCain campaign is now a surrealist farce. Or maybe I meant surrealist force.
*** Update ***
Sam the non-plumber is also not a veteran or an Alaskan, not that it matters to Sarah Palin.
by John Cole| 51 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
One of my favorite things about running a website is the spam filter. It is nothing but joy going through the filter, trying to figure out what is an actual comment, what is an advertisement for a penis enlarger, and what is an advertisement for a penis enlarger masquerading as an actual comment, and so forth. Clearing the spam filter is EASILY the highlight of my day.
Thus, when I am cleaning the spam filter, nothing makes me happier than to see a commenter who has somehow or another been caught in the filter, and rather than take the hint, posts the SAME GOD DAMNED COMMENT EIGHT TIMES. Usually it starts out with the comment, then the second version of the same comment starts with a playful “The last comment got moderated, so I am trying this again” until it devolves into a paranoid conspiracy that requires all caps- “THIS IS THE ELEVENTY-THIRD TIME I HAVE TRIED TO SUBMIT THIS COMMENT, LET’S SEE IF THIS WORKS.”
Listen closely, folks- submitting the same comment multiple times to see if the next time, it will take, betrays a fundamental lack of understanding as to how machines work. The spam filter isn’t suddenly going to think to itself- “Gee, this guy seems really intent on getting this comment through, so I will let this 6th version of the same comment to go live, even though I stopped the previous five.”
In short, if you find yourself in the spam filter, you are there until I fish you out, so there is no point posting the same damned comment 8432 times, increasingly agitated with each successive attempt. All you do is make my life a bigger pain in the ass. And, to be honest, I have no idea why some of you end up in there. Sometimes it may be your IP address. Other times there are flagged words- “pussy” and “viagra” and “poker” and “lexipro” are some that I know get flagged.
Claim your kids.
by John Cole| 19 Comments
This post is in: Mainstream Media's McCain Mancrush
You can get the gist of this appalling Maeve Reston piece about her days with the McCain campaign at David Kurtz’s “Tire Swinging, A Love Story,” but for the more complete rundown, I would recommend Glenn.
It really was an embarrassing piece. And, it is worth remembering, that when the right-wingers bitch about tough press coverage for the McCain camp, the media had to go from all the way in McCain’s pocket to the current state. That is how bad his campaign has been. The tough coverage of McCain is not based on an unending love of Obama, but the result of McCain running a really, really, bad campaign.
A comparison of the treatment Obama receives versus what McCain receives.
by John Cole| 90 Comments
This post is in: Election 2008
The fake, sing-songy voice has me reaching for the remote in minutes. I am not sure what it is, but she seems to put the emphasis on the wrong word in a sentence, and combined with her fake folksiness, it drives me insane.
Right now she is giving an energy speech. I doubt she will point out that the sum total of her energy policy in Alaska is shaking down the oil companies and building a fantasy pipeline to nowhere.
What the hell was McCain thinking with this pick?
by John Cole| 38 Comments
This post is in: Election 2008, Assholes
Ari Flesicher, former Bush aide and current Bush sycophant, board member of Freedom’s watch, McCain supporter, and all-around scumbag was on Larry King Live last night, prattling on endlessly about… instincts. Got it? The guy who help prop up George Bush for all these years is now worried about Obama’s instincts. At any rate, at a debate a year and a half ago, apparently Obama did not immediately list Israel as an ally, and thus, he has bad instincts. I am serious:
ROSEN: Well, it’s — Ari said something before that must not go unanswered when he said that Barack Obama cannot be trusted to be a friend to Israel. I was in Florida last week, and that is the underground campaign that Republicans are trying to use against Barack Obama. They’re subtly trying to affect the Jewish vote, not so subtly affect the Jewish vote by saying he’s not going to be a friend to Israel, and that is just not true. The United States has always been a friend to Israel.
FLEISCHER: Then why didn’t he identify Israel as one of our three friends?
ROSEN: Barack Obama has committed over and over again that protecting Israel is a top priority for him, and these kinds of smear tactics and rhetorical nonsense…
FLEISCHER: I’m just quoting him from the first debate.
ROSEN: … that’s just trying to address people out of fear, and that doesn’t help American Jews and it doesn’t help Israeli Jews.
FLEISCHER: Hilary, it’s his lack of words. He’s the one who didn’t cite Israel…
ROSEN: You’re wrong, Ari.
FLEISCHER: … when asked.
ROSEN: You’re taking words out of context from two years ago.
FLEISCHER: No, it was a question from Brian Williams at the first debate.
ROSEN: And you’re not listening to everything he has said over the past year and a half. Directly in support of (INAUDIBLE).
KING: Well, all right, let’s ask you simply. Ari, do you think he’s opposed to Israel?
FLEISCHER: No, but I really do worry about his instincts when it comes to Israel. I think that Barack Obama wants so badly to be an accommodationist in the center when it comes to foreign policy.
I do so much love the Jew-baiting every four years. Later, Fleischer tries to spuin this to make Obama look not only anti-Israel, but stupid:
L. KING: Which of the three that he mentioned would you eliminate?
FLEISCHER: I think what I would have said is Great Britain, Israel and Japan. And I don’t think…
L. KING: You would eliminate NATO?
FLEISCHER: NATO’s not a country. He was asked which three countries.
Did he, Ari? To the tape:
Williams: Senator Obama, what are America’s three most important allies around the world?
Obama: Well, I think the European Union as a whole has been a long-standing ally of ours, and through NATO we’ve been able to make some significant progress. Afghanistan, in particular, is an area where we should be focusing. NATO has made real contributions there.
Unfortunately, because of the distraction of Iraq, we have not finished the job in terms of making certain that we are driving back the Taliban, stabilizing the Karzai government, capturing bin Laden and making sure that we’ve rooted out terrorism in that region.
We also have to look east, because increasingly, the center of gravity in this world is shifting to Asia. Japan has been an outstanding ally of ours for many years.
But, obviously, China is rising and it’s not going away.
They’re neither our enemy nor our friend. They’re competitors. But we have to make sure that we have enough military-to-military contact, and forge enough of a relationship with them that we can stabilize the region.
That’s something I’d like to do as president.
Why is Ari Fleischer not in jail or, at the very least, banned from television?