Capitalist Conspiracy?

Here's Why I'm Voting Obama

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com A black president of the United States who had been a community organizer in poor neighborhoods, married into a working-class black family, advocating that government do more to provide jobs, better education and health care while calling for black parents to do more to help their children succeed. It would be phenomenal. "This is a man who understands those problems, although we have to understand that he doesn't have a magic wand. All he can really do is help to steer this country to a better place."

Socialism: Hanging together rather than hanging separately

Last night Mom and I got onto the topic of socialism. Change is indeed in the air.

If you're reading this, Mom, the paragraph below pretty much sums up "socialism." Not a bad idea, huh?

clipped from www.buffalobeast.com Now, if you’re a wealthy person, then it is, perhaps, in your own self-interest to oppose socialism. Then again, there are rich Swedes, too. But if you want to know what socialism means to the average American, it means not having to fret constantly about how to afford health insurance, only to find that you are not covered when you actually need it. It means you can go to college without getting stuck with a huge, ever-expanding ball of debt you can never actually pay. It means getting too old to work doesn’t doom you to spend your remaining years in shameful poverty. It means you don’t have to step over old men in the street, feigning deafness to their pathetic pleas. It means, in real, non-metaphorical terms, a better life for all of us, with less worry, less fear, less dread that any day, for reasons beyond your control, a stroke of fate can cause your whole life to fall apart.

Change is in the air: Telemarketers walk rather than slime Obama!

We all need to learn from their lesson. Repeat after me: general strike, general strike, general strike...

clipped from tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents. Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and for voting against "protecting children from danger." "They walked out," Williams says of her daughter and her co-workers, adding that they weren't fired but willingly sacrificed pay rather than read the lines. "They were told [by supervisors], `If you all leave, you're not gonna get paid for the rest of the day."

An Obama assassination plot: Just the beginning?

No surprise, sadly. The rest of the world definitely has its problems, but the US seems constitutionally (no pun intended) incapable of dealing with its disastrous racial history. That we are still dealing with this shit in the age of global warming says a lot about this place and the idiots who populate it.

clipped from news.yahoo.com Federal agents have broken up a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 102 black people in a Tennessee murder spree, the ATF said Monday.

Wassup? Change

Take it from Opie and Andy, Richie and the Fonz: We need change

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

Bizzaro world commentary on Obama

What planet is this writer from? He's only now seeing Americans abandon rationality? What does he call "Orange Alerts" and "free speech zones"? He can be forgiven for his idiocy, though. He's a "die-hard conservative," which translates into English as "brain dead."

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places.

Secession? A new civil war?

I've long thought that the "Culture Wars" in the US would more appropriately be called the "Cold Civil War." While we shouldn't put too much stock (ok, any stock) in what one blog commentator says, it still chills me that this sentiment is floating around.

If Obama wins, what are all these incredibly disaffected reactionary theocrats going to do? Secede? Assassinate? Or just undermine?

Part of me wishes they would secede. At least then the rest of us could get along with the business of the 21st century, while these medieval morons burn the non-Bibles, grow their cotton and tobacco, and salivate contemplating all the hell-bound.

clipped from suzieqq.wordpress.com Thank you for making the suggestion that the Southern States should secede and form our own country again. Exactly as I as a Southerner was thinking. This campaign is almost exactly the way it was in 1861. Everyone in the South always is saying we shall rise again. Well now is our time. We would be a flourishing, happy and agreeing country lead by a great military hero as John Mccain is and helped by Sarah Palin, a truly devoted and smart woman. Let us stand up against the liberals in Washington and make Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and all the honorable Confederate soldiers proud of us today for standing up for God, what is right, and our beliefs. We have been held captive by the yankee liberals of the North far too long. It is time we form the Confederacy again. We would all agree politicly and not one ounce of our Southern Soil will be tainted by the foot of a liberal like Osama A.K.A. Obama.

It's also fun to remember that the "yankee liberals of the North" hold the South "in captivity" by supporting them with our tax dollars. Statistics show time and again that we, the liberal yankees, are the ones who pay taxes, get educations, have functioning marriages, etc. I guess this poster defines "flourishing" differently than do we damnyankees with our liberal, high-falutin' dictionaries.

(And yes, I know that many in the South don't share this poster's perspective from the shallow end of the gene pool, but come on, start repudiating these turds loud and clear.)

Supporting the economy by buying $150,000 wardrobes on the Republican party dime

clipped from www.rockymountainnews.com Who knew looking like a hockey mom was this darned expensive? Certainly not Wanda Routier, a proud hockey mom in Hewitt, Wis., who spends her time in sweat pants, turtlenecks, ankle boots and heavy coats. She was dismayed to hear Wednesday that the Republican Party had spent $150,000 on clothes, hair styling and accessories for Sarah Palin and her family from such upscale stores as Saks Fifth Avenue and Nieman Marcus. "I was put off by it," Routier said. "I mean, I know they have an image to project, but that's a lot of money when we're talking about the economy the way it is! And the burden on ordinary Americans."

Some people, i.e., those with real jobs who actually work for a living, will (hopefully) be very put off by this extravagance, particularly since it comes at the same time that they're bailing out other extravagant cocksuckers with their tax dollars.

Others, like the Connecticut bitch (referred to in the story, but not quoted above) for whom L.L. Bean is too gauche to be worn in public (and whose husband is most likely employed in screwing working people over), will find no problem at all with this story.

And it sounds like even some Republicans are upset about this one. (They must be closet Democrats, blame the media, hey look a terrorist, etc.)

clipped from marcambinder.theatlantic.com There is already an attempt to blame the media -- as in, the liberal media would have looked askance at Palin if she wasn't clad in Neiman Marcus, but this won't wash. Republicans, RNC donors and at least one RNC staff member have e-mailed me tonight to share their utter (and not-for-attribution) disgust at the expenditures. This sort of spending is without precedent -- the closest approximation for any campaign I've ever covered is make-up expenses for television interviews and commercial shoots -- , and Schmitt's weakly defensive response tonight indicates that the campaign is deeply embarrassed by it and has nothing to say in their defense. Spokespeople have clammed up, a sure sign that they're trying to figure out who authorized the expenses and who knew about them.

clipped from dyn.politico.com “As a Republican Eagle and a maxed-out contributor to McCain’s general campaign, I’d like my money back – he can still have my vote,” complained one irate donor on Wednesday. “I’m not one who says a candidate shouldn’t wear fine clothes,” he added. “I’d just like to think they were successful enough in the private sector to have afforded their wardrobe with their own money, not the party’s or the campaign’s, which is really our money as contributors.”

But hey, it might not be illegal, although there is a "gray area" involved. For people who talk black-and-white, Republicans sure like to hang out in the gray areas these days.

Palin values family, Alaska pays for them

I guess "family values" now includes getting the state to pay for your kids' airfare. What boggles my mind is that Palin's supporters will have no problem justifying this, but would be the first in line to denounce employer- or publicly-funded daycare and vacation time.

I guess helping (i.e., with money) people spend more time with their kids only works when those people are Republican politicians.

clipped from news.yahoo.com In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters' 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls. As governor, Palin justified having the state pay for the travel of her daughters — Bristol, 17; Willow, 14; and Piper, 7 — by noting on travel forms that the girls had been invited to attend or participate in events on the governor's schedule. But some organizers of these events said they were surprised when the Palin children showed up uninvited, or said they agreed to a request by the governor to allow the children to attend. Several other organizers said the children merely accompanied their mother and did not participate. The trips enabled Palin, whose main state office is in the capital of Juneau, to spend more time with her children.

Global Warming - Suspected since at least 1958

This video simply proves that we liberals are so insidious that we've mastered time travel just to make it look like the credible threat of global warming predates the 60s counter-culture. Wooohahahahahahaha!!!

What Wall Street means by "transparency"

I think what Paulson and his cronies call "transparency" is referred to by the rest of the world as "black Sharpie."

clipped from bailoutsleuth.com

"My fellow prisoners"

clipped from firstread.msnbc.msn.com "You and I together will confront the ten trillion dollar debt that the federal government has run up and balance the federal budget by the end of my term in office," McCain began, making his way to pork barrel spending. "Across this country this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners and the same standards of clarity and candor must now be applied to my opponent."

What?

Palin and Bachmann: Beavis and Butthead

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

Michele Bachmann: Deer in the headlights

Wow. This woman is an absolute f*ckwit. She's a vacuum personified.

I'm willing to bet that IQs across the nation dropped by several points as her vacant cranium siphoned off the energy needed to power her gazing, deer-like orbs. Hopefully she'll have her ass handed to her in the upcoming Congressional elections.

Adventures in electronic voting

Is this really the best that we can do to ensure that our votes are all recorded correctly?

And to those who say "it's just a coincidence" that the votes switched from Obama to McCain, you folks certainly believe in a hell of a lot of coincidences. The last eight years have been filled with so many coincidences that I'm beginning to suspect that word doesn't mean what we think it means. Perhaps it should be spelled "conspiracy."

But of course it is the voter's fault, according to the County Clerk's office. Most people voted without a problem, he said. But how do you know if you voted without a problem if you don't catch the computer switching the votes?

clipped from www.wvgazette.com At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win. Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates. "When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney, who lives in Kenna. When she reported the problem, she said, the poll worker in charge "responded that everything was all right. It was just that the screen was sensitive and I was touching the screen too hard. She instructed me to use only my fingernail." "Why didn't she [the polling clerk] tell me before I even used the machine that might happen? And how many people, especially my age, didn't notice that?

The coming collapse and our lack of a roadmap

Of course the author of this piece advocates using psychedelics as an adjunct to spiritual practice, and so he can be dismissed out of hand. I wonder what happens, though, when we try to dismiss the grim reality that he notes is unfolding around us.

Mother Nature bats last.

clipped from www.realitysandwich.com At best, we may have a year or 18 months before the system fails us entirely. After that, money, in its current form, may have no value at all, as basic trust in our institutions evaporates. If the global financial system goes down, what will have value, and how will value be exchanged? How will we maintain the inextricably complex support systems that sustain billions of human lives in our globalized world? Put in the simplest terms, then, our global society is going to have to undergo a rapid – almost instant – transition from competitive and possessive behavior to cooperation and sharing if we want our species to survive, let alone thrive, into the future. Considering the ecological crisis of species extinction and climate change and the fragility of our support systems, this change has to happen in an extraordinarily compressed timeframe. What we don’t have yet is a realistic plan of action that gets us from here to there.

"Values" voters and inconsistency

Alas, I don't think that too many "values" voters have a problem with cognitive dissonance, and so feel no need to have these inconsistencies pointed out (let alone clarified) to be taken seriously.

clipped from www.realitysandwich.com [T[he typical "values" perspective -- which usually implies some form of cultural conservatism -- has to clear up its inconsistencies if it is to deserve to be taken seriously. What does it mean to be "pro-life" when you are scouring the map for the next country to invade? What does it mean to preen yourself on your Christianity when you show nothing but contempt for Christ's commands to help the poor? What does it mean to sacralize the American flag when you are trampling on the freedoms it stands for?

Pavlovian politics

clipped from www.counterpunch.org [I]t doesn’t require much analysis to understand why John McCain and Sarah Palin resort to buzzwords such as: Ayers, terrorist, Rev. Wright, Socialist. It’s because the issues that most concern voters are the very issues that have been broken by arguably America’s most unready-to-lead President, George Bush. Consequently, rather than being Plan B, their approach is actually Plan A. And if McCain and Palin win, this approach will become a template for future electioneering. Why go to the expense and trouble of presenting a plan for the future? Why tell voters what you will do in office to make the US and the world a better place? Much easier to degrade and debase the other by using simple words, akin to “sit,” “heel,” “attack.” And watch the voters salivate.

Watch the voters salivate. Indeed. Too many Americans have been reduced to (or were never really more than) well-trained attack dogs who bare their teeth at the mention of certain words (e.g., socialism, liberal, Muslim, etc.) without actually understanding what those words mean.

That said, one thing the author does not mention is that the word "socialism" might not be the curse word for folks of my generation that it is for our predecessors. After all, we came of age when the Berlin Wall was falling and with it communism/socialism. So it was "OK" in college and in life to learn about the vanquished monster; what many of us learned is that socialism isn't worse than capitalism, and that for most of us, it might actually provide a more humane mode of existence.

So I'm interested in seeing how the "Obama is a socialist" meme plays out with the under-40 crowd. I think it might bring in voters, rather than dissuade them.

I'm a football fan all of the sudden

Palin filled with the holy spirit?

That's just one of the many loony comments made by USAmerica's best and brightest:



Thanks to The Onion's Videocracy website for this gem! Expect to see more of these videos posted here.

USAmerica: Not the greatest nation on Earth

clipped from www.dangerouscreation.com There was frequent mention that America was the greatest nation on earth. There was frequent mention that Americans were the best workers in the world, the most innovative, could achieve anything. There was mention of the grandness of spilling blood for the homeland as it went about saving the world from itself. There was mention of America’s devotion to Israel and sweeping statements that it would be protected at all costs. There was mention of nukes remaining on the table regarding Iran These feel-good statements have little or no connection with what is happening to America at this point in time. The reality is that America is demonstrably bankrupt. Delusions Of Grandeur The reality is that America is not the greatest nation on earth.

When terror strikes, don't discard your brain!

Too late for us in the US, I think.

clipped from www.boingboing.net

Missourians shown, McCain owned

On top, Obama with around 100,000 supporters in St. Louis. On bottom, McCain with a few hundred supporters in St. Charles.

clipped from www.dailykos.com

Support Obama, get your tires slashed

I fear this sort of "incivility" won't stop once Obama is elected. After eight years of working to establish a one-party government (even more one-party than the current corporate duopoly, that is), do we think Republicans are simply going to respect a landslide victory for their opponents?

clipped from www.fayobserver.com Someone slashed the tires of at least 30 vehicles parked outside the Crown Coliseum on Sunday during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, authorities said. Sarah Revis, who lives on Wilkes Road, said the slashed tires left several women, including a single mother and a toddler, stranded and upset. Lynne Steenstra said she thought that the slashings were scare tactics designed to keep her and others from supporting Obama.

Palin's glossolalia

This post is completely and utterly irrelevant. I just thought the quote was too funny not to reproduce here.

clipped from newsblaze.com When Sarah Palin speaks extemporaneously it seems like the Pentecostal hottie is speaking in tongues. I keep waiting for someone in the audience to stand up and interpret her utterance.