OBAMA CITY, JAPAN: Banners on parade and dancing in the streets with shouts in English "YES WE CAN"
KENYA: Dancing in the streets - 2 days of national holiday declared amid chants of "YES WE CAN"
FRANCE: People pour into the streets of Paris amid dancing and singing there are shouts "YES WE CAN"
LONDON, SOUTH AFRICA....ALL OVER THE WORLD: The REVOLUTION has been legitimized, accepted and praised.
WE actually won the 2nd revolution for the United States of America.
Read More »It is time for corporate media not to call an election before polling has closed in all states.
Digby writes:
I just want to add to what tristero said below --- if the networks call the election early they will not only run the risk of being wrong, they will likely lower turnout in the west. That will affect our congressional and senate races as well as important ballot initiatives.
This cannot be emphasized enough. By calling the presidential election before all voting is done with will depress turnout. By depressing turnout which will affect down ballot elections and initiatives is a disservice to the nation by corporate media.
From the New York Times:
A senior vice president of CBS News, Paul Friedman, said the prospects for Barack Obama or John McCain meeting the minimum threshold of electoral votes could be clear as soon as 8 p.m. — before polls in even New York and Rhode Island close, let alone those in Texas and California. At such a moment, determined from a combination of polling data and samples of actual votes, the network could share its preliminary projection with viewers, Mr. Friedman said.
Tristero writes:
People, this is democratic malpractice, voter suppression. Senate and House races will be affected by this, as will the tally to defeat odious ballot initiatives like Prop Hate in California.
Don't fall for it! Whatever the preliminary results, whatever you hear, get to the polls and vote as if your single ballot could single-handedly decide Florida in 2000. Why? Because it's true.
Every single vote for Obama repudiates conservatism. It is not enough for Obama to win. Republicans must lose and lose and lose. Republicans know = and for once, they are right - the election is NOT over. Why? Because it is NEVER over. The fight for 2012 began a long time ago. Assuming we are lucky enough to have an Obama victory tomorrow, the fight to destroy his presidency will begin immediately - in fact, it's already begun. The single best thing all Americans can do to prevent that from happening is to vote, no matter how long the lines, no matter how the election is called before all the polls are closed, no matter what.
Call or email the local television stations to NOT broadcast network feeds that go to call the election before all of the western states have closed their voting booths.
If you want to leave a comment about CBS4's news or programming, call (303) 830-6449.
Call 9NEWS Main #: 303.871.9999
Call Channel 7 News: (303) 832-7777
Call Fox 31 303-566-7600
Call Channel 2(303) 221-NEWS2
But the attack is much more insidious and subtle than that. The fact that it is being rolled out in the last week of the campaign suggests to me that the Republicans think that this is the most powerful shot left in their arsenal, and could be the game-changer they rely on to win the election at the last minute.
As McPalin describe it, the socialist accusation is a claim that Obama will take "your" hard earned money and give it to "them." Given the demographics of the group that is being targeted with this pitch - blue collar and middle class whites - it is not hard to see who "they" are.
Just as George H.W Bush's Willie Horton ads were not about crime, and Ronald Reagan's railing on about welfare Cadillacs was not about welfare reform, this socialist line is not about economics or even ideology. Nor is it about painting Obama as outside the main stream.
It is all about stoking the residual and ill- concealed racism that remains a powerful factor in America. It is designed to evoke stereotypes of lazy, shiftless, unemployed blacks in the south and Midwest, drunk Indians in the southwest, and illegal immigrants in big sombreros sleeping in the sun, all supported by the welfare funds taken from "your" hard earned dollars. The campaign is brilliantly indirect, but it is the nastiest attack yet on Obama. It is the McCain campaign playing the race card.
Maybe it is right for us to treat the attack as a throwback to McCarthyism that merely reflects on the age of McCain. Maybe the attack is too subtle and the American people too dumb to respond as the Republicans intend. Maybe America is not as racist as they think. Maybe the fall of communism makes the whole thing irrelevant. But the Republicans would not be rolling it out as their dying gasp of the campaign if they believed that.
The McCain Campaign is out answering the internet blogosphere again.
A continuation of the policy of smoke and mirrors...
"SO, Mr. McCain, what about the Economy?"
"uh, uh, HEY! Look over here...Obama stubbed his toe and he didn't bleed - proves he's a vampire!!!
Afterall,we knew he had to be...He runs with alien terrorists from MARS!!!!!
The Washington Post has films of the landing and met with their leader.....
We are demanding right here and now....RELEASE THE FILM!!!!!"
YES McCAIN and his Campaign are LIKE BUSH in one major way...
They will SAY anything (LIE); They think WE are STUPID; And when all else fails, blame the Democrats!
Read More »Is this what ABC should be doing? Asking people if a fantasy show is more important than the reality of who should be our next president? This exposes the essential greed of corporate television because high ratings translates into bigger advertising fees a network can charge for a show.
See ABC's promo here.
This ongoing negotiations between US and Iraq is not being reported by US corporate television or, especially, local television but it certainly is being followed by the rest of the world's nations. Since Mr. Bush is leaving office he simply doesn't care about what this nation used to stand for because he wants to lock in the US to Iraq for the next president.
From McClatchy Washington Bureau, reporters Roy Gutman and Leila Fadel write:
BAGHDAD _ The U.S. military has warned Iraq that it will shut down military operations and other vital services throughout the country on Jan. 1 if the Iraqi government doesn't agree to a new agreement on the status of U.S. forces or a renewed United Nations mandate for the American mission in Iraq.
Many Iraqi politicians view the move as akin to political blackmail, a top Iraqi official told McClatchy Sunday.
In addition to halting all military actions, U.S. forces would cease activities that support Iraq’s economy, educational sector and other areas _ "everything" _ said Tariq al Hashimi, the country’s Sunni Muslim vice president. "I didn’t know the Americans are rendering such wide-scale services."
While readers on this site will be outraged. It is time for our Senators to become involved. In the past Mr. Bush has tried to circumvent the Senate's confirmation of treaties power. This "Status of Forces Agreement" should roundly be condemned by Senators as a whole.
The only way this will happen if we put some pressure on our Senators to make this an issue.
Ask them is it ethical to blackmail Iraq "partner" into a new agreement by the torture and blackmail President? Ask them if "status of forces" agreement is a transparent attempt to circumvent the constitutional duty of the Senate to confirm "treaties"?
What do you think Senator Salazar would say? Allard? How about candidates Udall or Shaffer?
Digby says:
Have you ever watched people identified on TV as a "political consultant" and thought to yourself, "geez, I could do better than that." Well, now you can prove it...
This is a really fun concept. The ads are great and the idea that we can all contribute directly to put these ads on the air is a fantastic new empowerment tool.
And it's going to drive the insiders nuts ....
Here is the Blue America - SaysMe TV homepage to get started.
The ad will be narrowcast on cable channels NOT broadcast.
Seeing how well that's worked for the GOP candidate for President, Gov Palin now is saying her guilt is "resting after an extended squawk " (per CBS News)
"In a brief conference call with press reported by the Anchorage Daily News, Palin said, "I'm very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing … any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that."
And, as usual, the mainstream media rolled over obediently and moved on to the next question.
Folks, we need to make sure that our own little part of the 4th Estate that despite how many times the candidates deny there's a dead parrot in the cage, they need to follow up and report the truth.
The statement we need to repost on every news website is this:
"The report affirmed that, as governor, she had the constitutional right to hire and fire at will, and therefore her termination of Monegan was lawful.
However, the report found that Palin, her husband Todd, and her subordinates used pressure and intimidation to try to force the firing of Michael Wooten, beginning before her swearing-in ceremony took place, and therefore broke the law.
The investigation said she violated Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act, which states, "… each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust."
GET BUSY!!!
One of the most disagreable experiences I've had during this year's political campaign came when national, and local, groups viciously attacked the integrity, motivations and message of General Petraeus. Yet, on Wednesday the conservative Heritage Foundation heard policies and concepts from Petraeus that confirm the campaign platform of Barack Obama.
The complete story from the "Washington Independent" is in the Extended Post Text (via Foreign Policy magazine's Daily Brief service). This is an online news outlet associated with Colorado Confidential.
This can't stay a minor story. Petraeus' comments must be shared, and the Obama campaign should advertise these policies and tactics with enthusiasm.
Part of the value in this this is seeing a competent national leader, Obama, openly discuss a strategic vision and mission for the US military. Now we're seeing that a widely praised general is able to accept that mission and describe the operational policies and tactics to accomplish what is apparently Barack Obama's security policy in opposition to McCain's irrational Iraq fixation.
Read More »Watching Nightline last night they had a segment on "mud slinging" by both presidential campaigns. I could not find the entire segment on the Nightline website but could find an abridged segment in politics section of ABCNews.com.
As many others have noted is that corporate media is still insisting on the inaccurate view of making equivalences between "a" and "b" when there are none. Whereas McCain is utilizing "guilt by association" between Obama and Ayers (that has been debunked) the ABC Nightline segment then makes an equivalancy with Obama's website on McCain being a part of the Keating 5.
What the Nightline segment did was basically whitewash the involvement of McCain in Lincoln Savings and Loan, headed by Keating, which failed and that cost taxpayers over two billion dollars. The Chicago Sun-Times does a fact check.
Is this informing the viewer or is it just to keep the ratings up in the interest of garning viewers and higher profits?
Is SARAH PALIN For real? Read More »
Amy Goodman is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, widely recognized as the world’s premier award for personal courage and social transformation. The annual prize, also known as the Alternative Nobel, will be awarded in the Swedish Parliament on December 8, 2008. [From the Democracy Now! website.]
Show your love by supporting Democracy Now! on Channel 12 KBDI. Let KBDI know by calling them and telling them you watch Amy Goodman.
The Fools on the Hill......
I love that those all-knowing Grand Wizards of all things important, sitting on the Hill in D.C., are JUST figuring out what many have known for 10 friggin' years.
The so-called housing bubble, that churn and burn growth of a market based on air, was the ONLY thing propping up an economy that has needed to do an adjustment since 1998; Staved off by the Republicans in their bids to keep the sleazy corporatists going without oversight.....
UNFETTERED GROWTH without any natural controls is called CANCER....
Read More »From Talkingpointsmemo.com, Josh Marshall writes:
Sen. Obama is saying his spending programs may have to be delayed in light of the massive bailout bill...
And remember, if Obama wins, his Treasury Dept. would be administering a lot of this. So are they planning to pay premium prices for the worthless or near worthless paper the banks are trying to dump on the public (in order to recapitalize the banks at public expense)?
AP reporters Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Jeannine Aversa write:
WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke bluntly warned reluctant lawmakers Tuesday they risk a recession with higher unemployment and increased home foreclosures unless they act on the Bush administration's $700 billion plan to bail out the financial industry.
David Cay Johnston, Poynter Online.com, Pulitzer Prizer winner, asks:
The Administration has scared the markets and some key legislative leaders, but it has not laid out a coherent, specific and compelling need for this enormous proposal, which is the equivalent of a one-time 55 percent income tax surcharge. (Instead the money will be borrowed, so ask from whom and how this much can be raised so quickly if the credit markets are nearly seized up with fear.) [my empahsis-Ken]
Folks this is monumental scam taking place before a complict media...if it is such a crisis then why is Nightline taking a full week on "exotic peoples of the world" of which the Monday installment was on forgotten tribes of Brazillian rainforest.
There are no hard questions being asked by the media. If there are hard questions being asked by the Senate and House respective committees why are they being held "closed door"?
This, my friends, is to strait jacket the incoming president for doing anything constructive for the American people...expand SCHIP? Sorry Mr. Bush and his cronies carted off the money. Fix Medicaid? Sorry Sec. Treasury Paulson scammed all those tax dollars for his high finance rollers. Renewable energy development? Sorry Fed. chairman Benanke said that your tax dollars are spent on the bad debt of financial institutions at buying their worthless securities at premium prices not fire sale pricing.
This is not a 700 billion USD bailout but at least a 3 trillion dollar bailout.
Call your congressional representative and tell them "NO DEAL". It is purely political that this so-called crisis happened.
Remember, Republicans will vote against whatever proposal that comes out of Congress. They will run against it and win because this is a "win-win" for them in November.
It is time for Democratic groups to start running ads on framing this "crisis" as a "Republican crisis". But...they won't.
The legacy of Mr. Bush will be that your taxes will go up no matter who is elected in the fall because he is fiscally irresponsible. It is that simple. A nation that is in hock to the tune of trillions of dollars to other countries of the world must pay the price for such mismanagement. The price that will be paid is through higher taxes or by having a nation go into receivership; i.e., the nation will be forced to balance it's books through liquidation of it's assets. This is nothing new to countries that have defaulted on their loan obligations. This is nothing new to citizens who have defaulted on their debts.
What is happening now in this nation is that private companies are asking government to take on their bad debt due to their own decisions that is the bottom line.
From 2002 this is from usgov.info:
The June 28 deadline was announcement earlier this week by Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, who had previously not set a deadline by which Congress needed to increase the current $5.95 trillion debt limit. Should the national debt exceed the debt limit, the government is considered in default and loses its ability to borrow money necessary to keep the government running and pay the interest due on debt. President Bush's budget projects that the national debt could rise to $6.099 trillion at the end of fiscal year 2002 and to $6.489 trillion at the end of 2003.
This is from AP's Julie Hirschfeld Davis writing:
It also would raise the statutory limit on the national debt from $10.6 trillion to $11.3 trillion — making room for the massive rescue.
If our national debt is increasing by, on average, 20 percent every year (between 2002 and now) then there is no way to "grow" out of our debt through the conservative view of lower taxes means increased revenue due to economic growth. If sustainable economic growth is pegged at approximately 3 to 4 percent per year, which does not trigger inflationary pressures, and the tax rate for corporations and individuals remains the same under the Bush tax plan then it is fiscally impossible to continue such debt accumulation.
When AIG went under there was this little noticed rule that the Federal Reserve relaxed too. On September 14 the Financial Times writers Francesco Guerrera in London, Krishna Guha in Washington and Greg Farrell in New York reports:
The Fed also suspended rules that prohibit banks from using deposits to fund their investment banking subsidiaries.
And
It widened the set of assets eligible as collateral for loans of Treasuries to include all investment grade paper, and raised the size of these Treasury loans to $200bn.
This means that Level 3 investment paper is the equivalent to junk bonds; i.e., almost worthless in valuation, will be taken on by the federal government. What is Level 3? From North Coast Investment Research on what is the definition:
Level 1 assets have quoted prices in active markets. At the other extreme Level 3 assets have only unobservable inputs to measure value and are thus valued by reference to the banks’ own models.
Does this remind you of anything? Jim Willie writes:
Why were officers at Lehman permitted to remove box after box from their building, when it should be treated as a crime scene with yellow cordon tape?
Click2Houston.com reported on the collapse of Arthur Andersen accounting and it's criminal practice:
Former Andersen LLP partner David B. Duncan testified Monday that he knew he was breaking the law when he instructed employees to comply with the firm's document retention policy, which resulted in destruction of Enron Corp.-related materials.
Instead of clarifying this "crisis" Bernake and Paulson are aiming to muddy the waters further through nationalization of finance corporations. Roubini writes on the federalization of AIG:
AIG should have been allowed to go into bankruptcy court and any government financial help to avoid systemic risk should have occurred in the form of a formal debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing. Bankruptcy court have laws and a judicial history of how claims of an insolvent firm are treated and they provide clarity to the pecking order of such claims while avoiding – via a stay – some creditors running and be made whole while others are inflicted - because of such a run - even greater losses. So instead of doing the right thing – pushing AIG into bankruptcy court and providing government DIP financing – the Fed and Treasury have formally nationalized AIG and they have created a legal mess where there will be endless confusion and lack of transparency of the government claims relative to junior and senior creditors of AIG....
Contrary to what I've read and seen on commentators stating that this 500,000,000,000 USD bailout includes the previous "loans" to Bear and the rest- it does not. As a matter of fact what is coming out of the mouths of Paulson and Bernake understates the matter by a factor of about 6x. If all bad mortagages are taken into account along with the their associated "collateralized debt vehicles" created by financial corporations then the real bite out of us, the taxpayers, will be to the tune of 3,000,000,000,000 USD.
What is the underlying reason?
Bush and his conservative allies, like Grover Norquist, want to limit the what the next president can do. It is a manufactored financial "crisis" in order to strait jacket government's choices.
But who is hurt in the long term are not the CEO's and high rollers but the American people.
Without a ethics or a moral sense is what McCain has come down to which is what Brian Rogers is talking about. Thomas Edsall, Huffingtonpost.com, writes:
The McCain campaign is making no secret of its changed stance. "We recognize it's not going to be 2000 again," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers told Politico, referring to the campaign eight years ago when McCain was revered by the media for his transparency and accessibility.
"He lost then," Rogers said. "[Now] We're running a campaign to win. And we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it."
Isn't it about time for television stations to be held accountable for the ads that candidates are running which are outright lies? Those television stations are making money from political campaigns.
I believe that television stations ought to be held accountable for the airing of ads that are lies. If they can do analysis of whether or not the campaign ad is truthful or not then they should be held accountable for the airing of said ad rather then just taking the money and running to the bank.
We, as consumers of television ads, news, and entertainment now must exercise the power of the purse in telling television stations that political ads that are outright lies should not be aired if they do not want their stations boycotted.
BTW- have anybody noticed that McCain's ad about celebrity has been changed? There is no longer the reference to crowds at the beginning of the attack ad.
(updated)
The McCain Campaign has lied about the particulars of inexperienced but popular Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin's life in order to enhance her popularity. The McCain Campaign's half-truths, distortions, and outright lies have been well-documented in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.
McCain's strategy to get elected includes creating an image of Sarah Palin's "every-voter" credentials. At his very first introduction of Palin in Dayton, Ohio -- a state with a large unionized workforce -- just before Labor Day, McCain sought to burnish her kinship with working people, including the unsupported statement that Palin "was a union member":
[excerpt] When Sen. John McCain on Friday announced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his choice for vice president on the Republican ticket, McCain said Palin was a union member and is married to a union member.
Palin was associated with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, according to the McCain campaign, while her husband is a member of the United Steelworkers.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/sep/02/labor-picnic-serves-helping-of-politics/
"The person I am about to introduce was a union member..." --John McCain on video at 04:25 minute point:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/29/sarah-palin-john-mccain-i_n_122401.html?view=screen
Transcript of McCain's introduction:
The story of Palin's union membership has since fallen into a media black hole.
Fear of sexism, fear of appearing to beat up on the poor little lady....
The poor little Sarah, that sweet lil' thang.....that fighter for femininity and the rights of women everywhere in a sea of male domination....
Claiming the title of Feminist and the woman that will pick up the mantle dropped by Hillary so she can blast through that glass ceiling Read More »
Obama should deliver a prime-time speech Thurs or Friday (steal Palin media attention) on 21st century politics -- exactly akin to his race speech when the right attacked him this summer over Reverend Wright (unintended ironic homonym there...).
Speech should be soaring oration about what happened to the political discourse in this country over the last two weeks.
From 90,000 folks from all walks of life listening to normal citizens from all walks of life talking about their present and future ... and scads of great detailed policy ...
... to nothing but hate and vitriol around lipstick and hairdos.
He should do what he does best -- lead the way to the conversation we need to have, not the hate-fest we've come to...
That would put the McPainiacs completely on the defensive -- they then would have to justify their attacks and victim-play, or actually talk substance.
What did Obama say? As reported by Ben Smith, Politico.com, on June 14, 2008:
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said in Philadelphia last night. “Because from what I understand, folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.
The problem is that Republicans will not elevate the level of political discourse because what works, and can only work, for them is to appeal to their base who are fundamentalist cross bearing kooks, knuckle dragging xenophobes, mouth breathing warmongers, nosey-neighbor spies, craven chest thumping bullies, know nothing creationists, corporate facists, morality freaks, and are for the destruction of planet Earth.
By utilizing demagogery and fear in wrappers of patriotism and the "stars and bars" does the Republican Party trumpet their scam on the American people though the willing accomplices in the corporate owned mass media of TV and radio.
So this is what is unfolding as Kagro X, DailyKos.com, writes:
Once again, sporks to a gunfight. The McCain campaign is dispatching lawyers and operatives to Alaska, preparing to meet this issue and fight it head-on as if it were Florida 2000 all over again. Democrats, it seems, are pinning their hopes to state legislators and regular order.
Why should Dems approach this differently? We discussed the dangers of Troopergate yesterday. But let me reiterate the central points once again:
- Cheneyism -- that is, the legalistic resistance to oversight in every form and at every juncture -- is gelling as precedent and is spreading to the states.
- Sarah Barracuda GantryWindrip is now positioned to take the reins of a Vice Presidency gone wild, and marry her brand of Nixonism -- that is, the use of the power of office to settle personal and political scores by leveraging the mechanisms of state against her enemies -- to the principles of Cheneyism, which grafts the veneer of legality onto these vendettas, and (this is key) rebuffs all attempts to challenge this illegal exercise of power as "criminalizing politics."
What I am not seeing is that Obama's campaign should be "working the refs", i.e., the press, in telling the American people that the Republican Party working hand-in-hand with McCain's campaign is doing everything to undermine the whole American ideal as embodied in the Constitution. What they should be doing is to stop immediately with the whole schtick of "making nice" to the character of McCain and Palin.
What is happening is that there is much less enthusiasm for Obama by his supporters because he is not "fighting for liberal and progressive principals" and is running a "under the rock" campaign of letting the media know about how is fighting McCain's attacks on his character.
As other people have mentioned the fact that you take on the strength of your opponent in order to destroy him.
Obama can only make McCain self destruct by pushing him aggressively. As we can see that McCain is thin skinned and will exhibit the same actions as Bush when it comes to controlling the message.
While it is good to see that Obama is airing "The Same" ad it is still problematic. The goal is to not just tell people that McCain is the same as Bush but to actively destroy McCain's media created "strengths" of commander-in-chief, maverick, no Senate leadership role and likeable "rogue".
It is time to set up Truth Squads to every McCain and McCain surrogate event nationwide.
It is time to air ads questioning McCain's mental fitness for command by demanding that the Department of Defense release in toto his mental evaluation post POW experience. Ask McCain if he received any psychiatric counseling for PTSD.
To put it crudely, it is time to push McCain's buttons in order for the American people to see how he would react to real world pressure.
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