racists for obama?

Wow. This is one of the more memorable things I’ve read lately. And there’s been a lot.

 

So a canvasser goes to a woman’s door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she’s planning to vote for. She isn’t sure, has to ask her husband who she’s voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, “We’re votin’ for the n***er!”

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: “We’re voting for the n***er.”

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enough with the ACORN bogeyman already [updated]

Thank you to the New York Times for setting the record straight–and for those who have been suckered by the right-wing b.s. about this, for god’s sake, do your homework. The ACORN issue is so obviously a nonstarter, particularly the Obama connection, and comes up every year that Republicans want to discredit the voters most likely to vote Democratic. A favourite from the Rove playbook. Voter registration fraud (and it’s not intentional “fraud,” since it’s not ACORN, but individuals hoping to make more money for their work, who add names to their lists) does not affect actual votes on voting day, whereas the Republican strategies of denying American citizens their right to vote, whether already registered or wanting to, should have resulted in many more people tossed in jail over the years. I’ve not seen evidence that the right is concerned with policing its own, and, I daresay, has been more than thrilled about the “irregularites” that favoured Team GOP in 2000 and 2004.

 

Acorn is a nonprofit group that advocates for low- and moderate-income people and has mounted a major voter-registration drive this year. Acorn says that it has paid more than 8,000 canvassers who have registered about 1.3 million new voters, many of them poor people and members of racial minorities.

In recent weeks, the McCain campaign has accused the group of perpetrating voter fraud by intentionally submitting invalid registration forms, including some with fictional names like Mickey Mouse and others for voters who are already registered.

Based on the information that has come to light so far, the charges appear to be wildly overblown — and intended to hobble Acorn’s efforts.

The group concedes that some of its hired canvassers have turned in tainted forms, although they say the ones with phony names constitute no more than 1 percent of the total turned in. The group also says it reviews all of the registration forms that come in. Before delivering the forms to elections offices, its supervisors flag any that appear to have problems.

According to Acorn, most of the forms that are now causing controversy are ones that it flagged and that unsympathetic election officials then publicized.

UPDATE: Oh, now I get it. ACORN is what the GOP uses as an excuse for its voter suppression tactics. Do you doubt it? In which case, may I refer you to the DOJ 2006 attorney general scandal, which took down Alberto Gonzales, where the torture issue (amazingly) hadn’t already.

 

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strange days, indeed: agreeing with david brooks again

Brooks comes out with more than grudging respect for Obama. Very interesting full op-ed here.

 

. . . He doesn’t have F.D.R.’s joyful nature or Reagan’s happy outlook, but he is analytical. That’s why this William Ayers business doesn’t stick. He may be liberal, but he is never wild. His family is bourgeois. His instinct is to flee the revolutionary gesture in favor of the six-point plan.

This was not evident back in the “fierce urgency of now” days, but it is now. And it is easy to sketch out a scenario in which he could be a great president. He would be untroubled by self-destructive demons or indiscipline. With that cool manner, he would see reality unfiltered. He could gather — already has gathered — some of the smartest minds in public policy, and, untroubled by intellectual insecurity, he could give them free rein. Though he is young, it is easy to imagine him at the cabinet table, leading a subtle discussion of some long-term problem.

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paul krugman: let’s get fiscal

I really wanted to post the whole thing, but restrained myself. Please read it here:

 

Will the next administration do what’s needed to deal with the economic slump? Not if Mr. McCain pulls off an upset. What we need right now is more government spending — but when Mr. McCain was asked in one of the debates how he would deal with the economic crisis, he answered: “Well, the first thing we have to do is get spending under control.”

If Barack Obama becomes president, he won’t have the same knee-jerk opposition to spending. But he will face a chorus of inside-the-Beltway types telling him that he has to be responsible, that the big deficits the government will run next year if it does the right thing are unacceptable.

He should ignore that chorus. The responsible thing, right now, is to give the economy the help it needs. Now is not the time to worry about the deficit.

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joe biden repudiates palin’s “pro-america” insult

Thank you, Joe. I was so disgusted by her earlier comment today, as reported by the Washington Post (h/t Jed Report):

 

Palin also made a point of mentioning that she loved to visit the “pro-America” areas of the country, of which North Carolina is one. No word on which states she views as unpatriotic.

 

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So people who don’t agree with you are anti-American, Sarah? The right-wing nationalists who have hijacked true patriotism are contemptible, and yet it’s only the liberals whose love of country is called into question? Flag-wrapped hypocrisy at its worst.

If only the above quote were the most disturbing part of the article. You really should check out the whole thing. Palin is basically pursuing her “Lord, make a way” approach to the White House, as if the only religious people in this country are the ones who agree with the McCain-Palin ticket. Sounds awfully blasphemous to me.

 

“But yeah, sometimes you do get depressed watching what it is that they’re reporting and the spin and some of the distortion of what our message is and what we stand for. Sometimes that, that gets draining,” she continued. “But it’s at events like these and our rallies that we are so energized and inspired and we know that we are not alone. We feel your strength and we feel the power of prayer, so many of you tell us that you are praying for us and praying for our country and that’s why we so appreciate you being here.”

Giving credit to a higher power for the day’s poll ratings, the Alaska governor told the roughly 500-person audience that things might be changing. “We even saw today, thank the Lord,” she said, looking upwards and raising her fist, “We saw some movement.”

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sarah palin, destroyer of economies

Alright, alright, it might be a tad bit of hyperbole, but hey, consider it tit-for-tat right back at those Republicans who have been engaging in such outrageous distortions of Palin’s record (not to mention Obama’s, on the other side). If she’s a fiscal conservative, we’ve got a bridge in Ketchikan to sell you. Palin is fiscally conservative in the tradition of George Bush, i.e., NOT. You could argue that her record as governor is better than the mess she created in Wasilla, but there are also just a few more people involved in budgets at the state level. I find Palin’s record in Wasilla pretty disturbing. Another great video from the Wasilla Project. (h/t Mudflats)

 

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yet another conservative endorses obama

Goodness, are we starting to hit our “when it rains it pours” stride? (Still waiting on you, Colin Powell!) Jack Tapper at ABC News has excerpted more of the forthcoming Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed here, which Mr. Smerconish released to him in advance of publication. (h/t Jed Report)

 

On his talk show on WPHT today, conservative Philadelphian Michael Smerconish endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

Listen HERE.

Smerconish did so by reading a couple paragraphs from his pending op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“I’ve decided,” he said. “My conclusion comes after reading the candidates’ memoirs and campaign platforms, attending both party conventions, interviewing both men multiple times, and watching all primary and general election debates.
 
“John McCain is an honorable man who has served his country well. But he will not get my vote. For the first time since registering as a Republican 28 years ago, I’m voting for a Democrat for president.”

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chicago tribune endorses obama

First time the paper has endorsed the Democratic presidential candidate–and dear lord, it’s been around since the 19th century. The comment about McCain offering an unconditional victory in Iraq almost made me spew my coffee (beverages and political reading do not seem to mix well this election season), but otherwise it was a palatable read. Probably I’ll always get a tic reading editorials so heavy on the “we.” Workarounds in sentence structure, people, please! It only ever sounds like the royal “we,” no matter what.

 

On Dec. 6, 2006, this page encouraged Obama to join the presidential campaign. We wrote that he would celebrate our common values instead of exaggerate our differences. We said he would raise the tone of the campaign. We said his intellectual depth would sharpen the policy debate. In the ensuing 22 months he has done just that.

Many Americans say they’re uneasy about Obama. He’s pretty new to them.

We can provide some assurance. We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago. We have watched him, worked with him, argued with him as he rose from an effective state senator to an inspiring U.S. senator to the Democratic Party’s nominee for president.

We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions. He is ready.

The change that Obama talks about so much is not simply a change in this policy or that one. It is not fundamentally about lobbyists or Washington insiders. Obama envisions a change in the way we deal with one another in politics and government. His opponents may say this is empty, abstract rhetoric. In fact, it is hard to imagine how we are going to deal with the grave domestic and foreign crises we face without an end to the savagery and a return to civility in politics.

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nate silver: scrap the squigglies, aka debate dial-test results

Fun as so many found them to watch (although I preferred me my C-SPAN), and high though CNN’s ratings were, Nate makes excellent points about the downside of this newest debate-watching phenomenon. A couple excerpts from the longer post here, which is definitely worth the whole read:

 

It’s not that the squiggly lines aren’t fun to watch. Rather, they’re too much fun to watch. It’s hard to avert your eyes from them. It’s hard to separate your own, independent reaction from theirs. And it’s certainly hard to integrate back into to the non-squiggly universe once you’ve gotten hooked on the squigglys.

. . . The problem is that the squigglys may give thirty random strangers from Bumbleweed, Ohio just too damned much power to influence public perception. The squigglys influence the home viewers, the home viewers participate in the snap polls, the snap polls influence the pundits, the pundits influence the narrative and — voilà! — perceptions are entrenched.

Mind you, I’m not complaining about the post-debate snap polls really, like the ones that CNN and CBS conduct. I’d certainly rather look at those numbers than watch the pundits babble for hours on end, especially as pundits tend to watch for all the wrong things during the debates. But whereas the snap polls are scientific instruments with sample sizes of 500 or more, the probability of getting an unrepresentative reaction from a 30-person dial-testing group is much, much higher. First and foremost is the matter of sample size. You’d never see a poll conducted with just 30 respondents, because the margins of error would be around 18 (!) points.

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palin: don’t talk to me, and don’t talk to my supporters, either

Dear Lord. This just in from Andrew Sullivan:

 

We know that Palin refuses to have a press conference, or to allow even follow-up questions from Alaskan reporters on Troopergate, when she simply flatly denied reality. Now she has persuaded the secret service to bar reporters from even interviewing her supporters. Milbank:

 

In cooperation with the Palin campaign, they’ve started preventing reporters from leaving the press section to interview people in the crowd. This is a serious violation of their duty — protecting the protectee — and gets into assisting with the political aspirations of the candidate.

Sounds to me an awful lot like… oh, I don’t know… abuse of power? This woman is utterly shameless and unrepentant. And so blatantly obvious in her maneuvers, does she really think we won’t notice? Or, I guess, because we’re talking stratospheric hubris, she just doesn’t care. Disgusting that the secret service is complicit in this.

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