Fox uses same old, tired attack on Obama
Brave New Films clearly shows us that FoxNews is using the same attacks on Barack Obama that they used on John Kerry in 2004.
Entries Tagged as 'Elections'
Biden: The silence was deafen
Tomorrow, I will chat with Dwight Mullen, UNCA professor of political science, on the Errington Thompson Show (streamed at www.880therevolution.com Saturday morning at 9 am EST). We will talk about the Democratic and Republican conventions.
Joe Biden is correct. The Republicans didn’t talk about issues. They talked about America and how much more they love America. They talked about fighting as an outsider in spite of the fact that they controlled Congress for most of the last 8 years. They still control the White House and they are trying to convince us that they are the outsiders.
Next they are going to try to sell Americans some ocean front property in Arizona.
More on Sarah Palin’s speech
Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com wrote (He is 100% correct):
With last night’s cheerfully vicious speeches from Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin, the Republicans did what they always do in order to win elections: they exploited raw cultural divides while mocking, belittling and demonizing Democratic leaders. Yet again, they delivered brutally effective and deeply personal blows to the Democratic presidential candidate grounded in the same manipulative and deceitful yet very potent themes they’ve been using for the last three decades.
Ever since Ronald Reagan’s election, this is what the Republicans do every four years. They render issues irrelevant and convert campaigns into cultural wars and personality referenda. They converted our elections into tawdry reality shows long before networks realized their entertainment value. And every four years, Democrats seems shocked and paralyzed by all of this and desperately delude themselves into believing that mean-spirited “negativity” and nastiness will alienate voters, while the media swoons at the potency of these attacks.
The derisive attacks on Obama’s character last night were exactly what Democrats decided — yet again — that they would studiously avoid at their own convention when discussing John McCain. On the third night of the DNC — after Biden spoke but before Obama spoke the next night — I wrote:
More politically damaging still is the absence of any truly stinging attacks on John McCain. Even Joe Biden’s speech — billed as the “attack dog” event — almost completely avoided any criticisms of McCain the Person, who will emerge from the four days here as a Wonderful, Honorable, Courageous Man — a friend to Democrats and Republicans alike — who just happens to be wrong on some issues. The Republicans will spend the next four days mercilessly ripping Barack Obama’s character to shreds, as they did to John Kerry in 2004. . . .The GOP’s attacks on Kerry in 2004 were mocking, scornful, derisive, demonizing and deeply personal — in speech after speech — and they were also highly effective. They weren’t the slightest bit deterred by the fact that Kerry was a war hero who was wounded multiple times in Vietnam while George Bush and Dick Cheney. . . . weren’t. Has there been anything remotely approaching those attacks on McCain by any of the prime-time Democratic speakers?
The GOP assaults on Barack Obama will be — have already been — even more vicious and personalized, which means by the end of their Convention next week, John McCain will be, by all accounts, an honor-bound, principled and courageous patriot (who, at worst, is wrong on some issues), while Barack Obama will be some vaguely foreign, weak, appeasing, super-ambitious, exotic, empty-headed, borderline un-American liberal extremist. Democrats seem to be banking on the fact that the agreement which most Americans have with their policy positions, along with widespread dissatisfaction with the current state of things, will outweigh the effects of this personality war — a war which they, yet again, have allowed to be one-sided.
None of this is to say that the GOP attacks will enable them to win the election. It is quite possible that enough Americans this year are so alienated from the GOP brand that they are now largely immune from these kinds of substance-free personality assaults, that they won’t be blinded by cultural tribalism and personality appeals into handing this political party an additional four years of power. But these tactics have worked in the past because cultural tribalism, resentment and alienation are very powerful influences in how people think — in general, they’re more powerful than rational assessments of policy positions or even one’s self-interest — and the Democrats’ gamble that they can win this election without really engaging those issues, while allowing that war to be waged in a one-sided manner yet again, is a true gamble.Even today, fresh off of watching Sarah Palin rip Barack Obama’s face off using the most intense forms of derision and condescension, Joe Biden — Obama’s “attack dog” — went on The Early Show and said he was “impressed” with Palin’s speech:
MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ: How do you think your Republican counterpart did here last night?SEN. BIDEN: Well, my plane was landing. I only caught the last two-thirds of the speech, but I was impressed. I think it was a skillfully delivered political speech with confidence and directness and so I think she did what she was supposed to do. I was impressed.
I was also impressed by what I didn’t hear in the speech. I didn’t hear a word–didn’t hear the phrase middle class mentioned, I didn’t hear a word about health care. I didn’t hear a single word about what we’re going to do about the housing crisis, college education, all the things that the middle class is being burdened by now. I didn’t hear the words Afghanistan or Pakistan where al-Qaeda lives and bin Laden resides, so I also, you know, there was a deafening silence about the hole that the Republicans have dug us into and any specific answers to how the McCain-Palin ticket is going to get us out of that hole.
What Biden said was arguably wise (attacking Palin personally — as opposed to McCain and/or Palin’s ideology — is a stupid strategy). Biden’s remarks were also all true, as far as they went. Palin’s speech — indeed, the entire GOP Convention — was almost entirely bereft of substance and “issues.” But it is that way by design.The Republicans are well aware that they can’t possibly win the election if it is even partially decided based on issues. They need and intend to win despite the fact that Americans hate their positions on the issues, and to do that, they want to ensure that a majority of Americans love and respect the strong, honorable, principled, culturally familiar all-American mavericks John McCain and Sarah Palin (even if they don’t agree with them on everything) while strongly disliking that wishy-washy, snooty, foreign, exotic, self-absorbed Eastern elitist Barack Obama (even if he says the right things on issues).
Democrats have clearly decided (yet again) to cede that lowly playing field to the GOP and are hoping (yet again) that those personality and cultural issues are not enough to outweigh the country’s dislike of Republican policies. This year is indeed different — dissatisfaction with the Government is higher than ever before, the GOP is as discredited as a party can be, and Obama is a more effective candidate than those who preceded him — but the attacks last night were only the beginning, not the end. If John McCain remains — even from the mouths of Democrats — the Honored, Honorable, Principled, Heroic Maverick, the GOP chances will be as high as they can be.
John McCain accepts nomination
I’ll have much more to say about this as the day unfolds. This week I’ve been on call which doesn’t give me a lot of time to listen to politics or read about politics.
Update: Sarah Palin at RNC
Really, what did you expect, Minnie Mouse? Governor Sarah Palin delivered the speech (full text) that everyone with half-a-brain expected. There were no surprises. She stood in the Xcel building and delivered the exact Republican Neoconservative attack speech that would make Karl Rove smile. We have seen this before whether it was Cheney, Condi or Dan Bartlett.
The good news is Sarah Palin is only a new face delivering the same old half-truths and lies.
From C&L:
Interesting choice on her part to repeat rank falsehoods that have already been debunked ten times over. A sample:
I suspended the state fuel tax, and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. Strike One.
I told the Congress “thanks, but no thanks,” for that Bridge to Nowhere. Strike Two.
If our state wanted a bridge, we’d build it ourselves. When oil and gas prices went up dramatically, and filled up the state treasury, I sent a large share of that revenue back where it belonged - directly to the people of Alaska. Strike Three.
Obama Campaign Spokesman Bill Burton responds:
“The speech that Governor Palin was well delivered, but it was written by George Bush’s speechwriter and sounds exactly like the same divisive, partisan attacks we’ve heard from George Bush for the last eight years. If Governor Palin and John McCain want to define ‘change’ as voting with George Bush 90% of the time, that’s their choice, but we don’t think the American people are ready to take a 10% chance on change.”
Update: Josh Marshall agrees with my assessment of Palin’s speech. He even has a catchy name - Rage you can beleive. I like that.
538 is on board.
DemFromCt does a great job explaining why Sarah Palin laid a big egg.
McCain—Pack Mule For Far Right
John McCain says he is a maverick.
Yet instead of picking Joe Lieberman of Connecticut as his running mate, as he had wanted to do, he chose a candidate to satisfy the far right.
Mr. McCain lacked the political courage to be his own man.
Instead of a maverick, Senator McCain is a pack mule for the far right. You see him there above–Carrying the load… Waiting for the next command.
Mr. McCain is not even “stubborn as a mule.” He just allows the right to strap that gay-baiting, book-banning, no sex ed, everybody for themselves load right on his back.
Anything to win an election.
Here is information about mules from the British Mule Society.
Palin, her church and funding
I haven’t had a change to do the background on this yet but a reader sent me a link which suggests that Sarah Palin helped her church get funding for a new youth center. Read for yourself. I have to get back to work. I’ll do a little bit more reading on this subject this afternoon.
Amy Goodman - Arrested for being Amy Goodman
Democracy in America seems to be taking a holiday in Minnesota. It completely sickens me. I thought we had a constitution to protect us from stuff like this? Maybe I was wrong.
Lieberman at the RNC
Completely and totally nauseating. I tried Pepto but that didn’t help.
From WaPo:
Obama voted “to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield.”
–Joe Lieberman on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 in St. Paul, Minn.
If Obama voted against funding the troops, so did Lieberman
Joe Lieberman, the independent senator from Connecticut, alleged in his speech at the Republican National Convention that Sen. Barack Obama had voted to cut off funding for men and women in uniform.
Rating: Barely True
Lieberman issued the attack almost as an aside as he praised Sen. John McCain’s approach to the war in Iraq.
“When others were silent about the war in Iraq, John McCain had the guts and the judgment to sound the alarm about the mistakes we were making in Iraq,” Lieberman said. “When others wanted to retreat in defeat from the field of battle, which would’ve been a disaster for the U.S.A. - when colleagues like Barack Obama were voting to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield - John McCain had the courage to stand against the tide of public opinion, advocate the surge, support the surge and because of that, today, America’s troops are coming home - thousands of them - and they’re coming home in honor!”
Republicans have made similar charges in the past, such as when McCain himself said on Aug. 11, 2008, that Obama “tried to prevent funding for the troops who carried out the surge.” We evaluated that claim here.
To support the charge, the McCain campaign has cited Obama’s vote of May 24, 2007, against an appropriations bill that included funding for the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (and passed, 80-14).
So was that a vote “to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield”?
Not primarily. [Read more →]
Bush Rallies Troops From Afar
President George W. Bush isn’t at the Republican Convention. Weird, isn’t it? Anyway, Bush rallies the Republican faithful and pumps up Senator John McCain while justifying the surge.
From the Washington Post:
The Republican National Convention got back on track tonight with a procession of high-profile speeches designed to illuminate Sen. John McCain’s life and record of service, after getting knocked off schedule by Hurricane Gustav and off message by controversies surrounding the GOP’s vice presidential pick.
In the most anticipated speech of the evening session, President Bush addressed the Xcel Energy Center crowd live via satellite from the White House, delivering a strong endorsement of the McCain-Palin ticket. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), the Democrat-turned-Independent who has endorsed McCain, and former GOP Senator and presidential candidate Fred Thompson are also on the speaking roster. (more… )
Republicans Running From Bush?
Is the Republican party running away from President George Bush? The official excuse is that the hurricane has prevented the president from being at the convention. I’m having a hard time buying this excuse. More likely, the Republican party and Senator John McCain are running away from Bush’s approval ratings.
Responsible? Not McCain.
Was John McCain being rash or irresponsible when he picked Governor Sarah Palin?
Sex, Lies, and Republican Hypocrisy
A friend whom I like and admire wrote me:
but for Democrats to smear someone for getting pregnant before marriage (which is the way the Republicans may spin it) is playing into their hands. I think they will try to turn it into a positive for the anti-choice crowd. It is a constant challenge for me — as much as I CAN’T STAND them — not to be as nasty as they are.
Here’s what I have to say about that:
Of course the Republicans and the out-of-the-ballpark-right-wing Christian dominionists are already spinning it that it would be a “smear” to point out that the Palins’ teenage daughter is pregnant before marriage. They’ve managed to convince Obama and Biden that “families are off limits.” The fundie spokespersons have also already spun Sarah Palin’s decision (on her daughter’s behalf) as a portrait of “someone who lives their convictions.”
So the Palins and their daughter are “living their convictions” in terms of not aborting the fetus — and demanding a halo of self-righteousness for doing so. For the moment let’s overlook the fact that these same people also insist that the rest of us live by THEIR convictions, regardless of our own beliefs.
What’s more to the point is that as they SIMULTANEOUSLY ignore their own convictions about “no sex before or outside of marriage,” they want — they demand, and for the most part the media gives them — a FREE PASS for that. And that’s where the hypocrisy becomes part of the political game.
Remember, Mommy Palin was pregnant when she had to marry Todd, her high school sweetheart, 20 years ago. Now her daughter is pregnant and has to marry her guy, too. But if the Republicans and, particularly, the dominionists have their way, NOBODY ELSE should ever be allowed to have sex before or outside of marriage, or to know the consequences of it — because, in Sarah Palin’s words, “explicit sex education” is wrong, and sex outside of marriage (and before marriage) is sinful, and ONLY abstinence education works to keep children pure. How well it worked with her own daughter!
These people are instantly ready to forgive all the “sins” that Republicans commit, because “everyone is human” and “has human failings.” But just let ONE DEMOCRAT have even the most minor sexual encounter outside of marriage, and watch him get impeached!
I simply can’t consider telling the truth and pointing out their lies and shameless hypocrisy to be nasty.
Republican For Obama
This life-long Republican admits that he is for Obama.
Obama Says Keep Families Out of This (Updated)
Democratic Nominee, Barack Obama has urged the press to back off of Governor Sarah Palin and her daughter.
Update: I agree with Obama on this issue. We all know that Palin is talking about personal responsibility on one hand, yet ignoring her own failures on the other hand. Since we need to focus on the important stuff, we need to ignore the rumors. I don’t think that she has had any aliens or alien babies but I do know that she has not idea about when the Pledge of Allegiance was written.
As a side note, Palin is still good buddies with indicted Senator Ted Stevens.
Models of Personal Responsibility
I thought that these social conservatives were supposed to be models of personal responsibility? Abstinence education, which Sarah Palin supports? I’m guessing that didn’t work. It never worked. After throwing millions of dollars into the abstinence education, the rate of teenage pregnancies hasn’t dropped.
Here’s the problem: Whenever you try to keep information away from people, it always backfires. If you give teenagers the information about sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and the like then let their parents give them the moral backbone, things will work out much better.
Thomas Sowell Didn’t Write This, But I’ll Comment Anyway
Thomas Sowell is not just any conservative syndicated columnist. He is also an economist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. Because this man happens to be black, I have received his same column titled “Random Thoughts” on three separate occasions. Unfortunately, this pile of non sequiturs and outright insults was not actually written by him. (Here is a list of his recent columns. Although 4 of them are titled “Random Thoughts,” none of them come close to this pile of garbage.)
There are about 20 or 30 emails that have been floating around the internet for approximately 18 months. They were all slanderous to Senator Barack Obama in one way or another. In this particular email, the author is saddened that General Colin Powell is not running for president instead of Barack Obama. Although Powell has served our country with bravery and distinction, he is also the same man who sat in front of the UN and spouted lies for over 30 minutes.
The Bush administration knew these lies that mobilized a nation to war were wrong at the time Powell delivered them. The “Downing Street memo and Ron Suskind’s new book clearly show that the Bush administration knew they were feeding us a huge pile of… lies. So, I’m not sure why the author of this email holds Powell up as a good example because he is just an example of what happens when you rush to war. Heck, the Bush administration didn’t even follow the Powell doctrine when we went into Iraq.
The author brings up the tired story of Jeremiah Wright once again. No other political figure, that I know of, has been asked to speak for his pastor. President George W. Bush is arguably the most religious president that we have seen in over a half a century. What church did he go to? Who was his pastor? We don’t know. We have no idea.
My mother has gone to a church in North Dallas for over 20 years. This church has had a series of pastors that range from nearly certifiable to truly honorable and religious men. I would hate for my mother or for me to be “linked” with some of those pastors. What is never been mentioned, or more correctly, rarely mentioned, is the fact that Jeremiah Wright has helped hundreds of young men and women. His church was revolutionary in the Chicago area in offering job training and also mentorship programs which introduced youths to some of the successful businessmen and women in the community. Jeremiah Wright served in the Marines and Army with distinction and honor but no one talks about that.
The list of insults continue. The partisan knucklehead who wrote this email brought up the saluting the flag issue, yet again. We know that Obama loves our country and salutes the flag. Actually, a civilian supposed to place their hand over their heart while saying the Pledge of Allegiance. The author of this email unfortunately doesn’t know that.
The author of this e-mail now turns his tirade into a full throated support of Sen. John McCain. John McCain is the same Sen. who did not support a holiday for Martin Luther King. He is the same Sen. who has voted against increased benefits for veterans including the recent G.I. Bill. The author, takes a big hit of what I imagine are Quaaludes or PCP, then is happy to endorse John McCain’s notoriously bad temper. For some reason, he/she thinks someone who is out of control, who loses rational thought, would be excellent at confronting the problems of the United States including North Korea, Venezuela and Iran. This may be the craziest thing in this e-mail. So this author endorses irrational behavior to confront irrational people. Has that approach ever worked? (I can tell you did doesn’t work in the ER with crazy patients.) This author needs to take a deep breath and stay on his prescribed medicines. It would seem to me that we, as Americans, we want someone who could rationally think through the multiple scenarios and responses to aggression from Iran, Russia or North Korea. When a gunboat in a Persian Gulf is barreling down on one of our warships, I want somebody who is cool, calm and collected. I want someone who will consider a full range of options everything from direct diplomacy to stealth bombers flattening Tehran.
The way we became the greatest country in the world was not through hair-trigger aggression. Instead we had a series of thoughtful, intelligent presidents who make the right decisions at the right time.
The author of the email then goes completely off the deep end. He starts talking about “towel headed morons.” Really? I’m not sure what name-calling really accomplishes. Doesn’t insulting their religion diminish our own? It sure seems that way to me. As I recall, the Ku Klux Klan tried to use the Bible to justify their white supremacist attitudes. Muslim extremists are using the Koran in the same way that the Klan used the Bible. Hundreds of thousands of men and women have died across the world because of religion or because of misinterpreting religion.
I want the next President of the United States to be able to protect my civil liberties and protect the country. I think it is possible to do both. I want the next president to believe in the Constitution and people of the United States. I want the next president to give us a full-throated support of the middle class over corporations. I would like the next president to believe that a quality education is more important than tax cuts for the wealthy. I would like the next president to believe that the rule of law applies to everyone and that no matter how much you don’t like Congress, thumbing your nose at Congress is unacceptable. Finally, I would like the next president to believe that the greatness of our nation lies not in our military or our magnificent buildings in Washington or even in the words of our Constitution, our greatness comes from us, the people of the United States. We are what makes the United States the envy of the world.
That’s my two cents. Please friends, don’t send me this article again, I’ll have to start taking antidepressants if I have to read one more time.
The Errington Thompson Show 8-30-08
Let’s chat about a GREAT convention. This week was the 45th anniversary of the famous March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech. I take some calls. I even find 50 seconds or so to talk about Sarah Palin. Great Show. Enjoy.
Palin, Naive Or Coy?
It is unfortunate that CNN didn’t date this video in which Governor Sarah Palin was asked if she thought she would be McCain’s vice presidential pick. She was either clueless or playing coy. Who knows?
Terrence Trent D’arby: “Wishing Well”
How many people have gotten bogged down in trying to figure out who this Palin person is? I know, or at least I think I know, that she isn’t Michael Palin from Monty Python. No matter. I’m not going to focus on that for now. I’m going to revel in the afterglow of the Democratic National Convention.
The convention wasn’t perfect. Everyone wanted some one to say something else or something more. Senator Hilary Clinton didn’t support Senator Barack Obama enough– Horse feathers. Obama didn’t talk about the blight of blacks in the inner city– Give me a break. This is was the most energized and progressive convention that I have ever witnessed. It was coordinated. It was harmonious. It was as good a convention as the Democrats can put on in my opinion. It was marvelous.
So, I’m going to continue basking in this glow for a little longer. The music selection for tonight will be Terrence Trent D’arby. There was so much fanfare surrounding this one huge mega-hit. He was supposed to be the next Prince. NOT. He had this one hit then a minor one then he was gone. Poof.
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Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, fulltime sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
