foreign policies

the 70's called — they want their foreign policy back!

♬ all mitt is saaaying, is ... ♬

a tale of two campaigns

and this is the way the debates end:

say what, governor?

booman tribune:

last night's debate was different for a lot or reasons. the president let himself get pushed around a little bit early on, but not without some resistance. and he eventually found the perfect moment to rope-a-dope Romney into the threshing blades with his comments on terrorism in benghazi. thereafter, obama was the undisputed alpha dog of the debate, which was capped by his good fortune in having the final say of the night. if it were a boxing match, romney was knocked down at least two times and the fight ended with mitt on the ropes taking a pummeling from the champion. the judges' cards were not close.

a tale of two campaigns

a tale of two campaigns

via twitter:

ari rabin-havt: clearly biden warmed up with some p90x tonight

oliver willis: fox calls ryan "the budget whiz." ffs.

jasons linkins: NOBODY BEATS THE WHIZ

a tale of two campaigns

let romney savor his moment.

he's worked his entire life for it.

orange alert

with election day 2012 just around the corner, america's enemies just seem to grow bolder:

'credible threats' made to US government
homeland security studying two-hour video from wednesday night

WASHINGTON (the borowitz report) — the department of homeland security said today that it was studying several "credible threats" made to the united states government in a two-hour broadcast wednesday night from a location believed to be the reagan library in simi valley, california.

homeland security spokesman harland dorinson said that the department did not want to alarm the american people, "but whenever you have a group of individuals threatening to dismantle the US government piece by piece, it has to be taken seriously."

in reviewing the two-hour tape, homeland security officials said they found threats to some of the most essential functions of the US government, from social security to the federal reserve.

while stopping short of saying that the speakers were engaged in some sort of jihad, mr. dorinson did note that a tone of religious extremism dominated the video.

"one speaker in particular, seemed bent on rolling back the advances of science and plunging america back into the dark ages," he said.

but the most terrifying moment in the tape came when that same speaker received thunderous applause from the audience after threatening to execute people.

"we're posting pictures of this individual on our website," mr. dorinson said. "hopefully he will be captured before he can carry out any of his plans."

help us obi-wan, part trois

i think CNN may be trying to kill us. they have announced who has been invited to their september 12th debate, and it includes, rather inexplicably, two "candidates" who aren't currently even running for the office:

in a statement, CNN announces its line-up for the september 12 tea party express co-sponsored debate in tampa: gov. rick perry, rep. michele bachmann, gov. mitt romney, rep. ron paul, newt gingrich, herman cain, rick santorum, and jon huntsman. the network adds that rudy giuliani and sarah palin were invited: "giuliani declined the debate invitation, while a palin representative has yet to respond to it."

you've got to be kidding me, right? we're still pretending rick santorum is somehow worthy of inclusion over, say, gary johnson or buddy roemer, but somehow CNN is still so hard up for slots that they're inviting two republicans who aren't even running? are we all that hard up for sarah palin news, that CNN is desperate to generate some whether she's running or not?

asked and answered

dispirited die-hard republicans commiserate over mccain's non-game-changing performance at the second presidential debate and wonder:

why on earth would the mccampaign finally be hitting these issues on the trail, and then he didn’t say one word about it (again!) in the debate when he had the eyes of the nation??? it’s like the man wants to lose. ayres is an absolutely legitimate concern. the (imo very real) possibility that obama isn’t even a natural-born citizen is an absolutely legitimate concern. the fact that in four years he took more money from fannie mae than any senator in history except dodd, is an absolutely legitimate concern. and nobody — i’m not counting rush — is talking about the real reason behind the financial meltdown, which is the government holding a gun to the head of banks, forcing them to make affirmative action mortgage loans that had no chance of being repaid. [link mine]

juan cole volunteers one theory:

in the real world of political ads, mccain and his surrogates are shouting ugly insults at barack obama. he is accused is saying that us airstrikes have killed innocents. this is true and mccain said it, too. they say he was on a committee with a professor who used to be a weatherman 40 years ago. and ... ? how nonsensical these attacks are is demonstrated by the inability of mccain to repeat them to obama's face. what sort of allegation won't hold up in a debate? a flimsy one. one with the form of propaganda. mccain's nasty personal attacks on obama were apparently felt by his campaign to be inappropriate to a live appearance. they feared such smears would look mean in the mouth of a presidential aspirant.

update: even obama himself all but calls mccain a chickenshit on national tv:

i am surprised that, you know, we've been seeing some pretty over-the-top attacks coming out of the mccain campaign over the last several days, that he wasn't willing to say it to my face. but i guess we've got one last debate. so presumably, if he ends up feeling that he needs to, he will raise it during the debate.

update #2: now biden's piling it on out on the trail:

all of the things they said about barack obama in the tv, on the tv, at their rallies, and now on youtube ... john mccain could not bring himself to look barack obama in the eye and say the same things to him. in my neighborhood, when you've got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.

update #3: oh snap! you know it's getting ridiculous when even members of the gray panther cheerleading squad start breaking ranks:

king:

michelle, are you not supporting the ticket?

laxalt:

look, i think — i can't believe the tone of this conversation. here we are, three conservative, loyal republican women. and we are talking about a female who could be the vice president of the united states of america. in my estimation, she is being used unfairly as a tool by a team who, by the way, do not even support, nor does their candidate, equal pay for women for equal work. so if she is going to be the traditional vice presidential attack dog — which i concur with bay, that's very much a traditional role — why didn't her male running mate, i.e. the candidate himself, man up and speak to those issues, calling his opponent essentially unpatriotic, calling him a terrorist? i'm sorry. this is not the republican party that bill buckley, that paul laxalt, that ronald reagan raised me on. and i don't believe the american people like this kind of dirty politics. if they can't win fair and square, they shouldn't trash the other guy.

i must admit, it tickles me to hear a paleoconservative biddy like laxalt throw down a neologism like "man up" to challenge the head of her ticket.

how far the mighty have fallen! it was only three months ago that wesley clark was mercilessly excoriated by the mccain camp, the right wing noise machine and the mainstream talking heads for daring to question the mere idea that prisoner of war status isn't necessarily a qualification for the presidency, which cost clark his place in the obama campaign. back then mccain could count on the eager defense of the media to protect him from almost any legitimate inquiry.

but in that time mccain has foolishly sacrificed the centerpiece of the narrative of his entire campaign: his not-to-be-questioned integrity, a facade which he'd been carefully crafting for decades. he figured that he had built up so much house credit, especially with the media, that he could gamble away some negligible portion of his integrity on a bet that he could quickly and permanently tarnish obama. unfortunately for mccain, clinton gambled first and lost, leaving mccain with no cards to play. like the inveterate gambler he's reputed to be, mccain stubbornly doubled-down and bet his integrity on an empty hand, and predictably lost. and when his camp began to attack the media for acknowledging the nasty turn of his campaign, he drove away his best allies.

without his integrity, he no longer has a compelling story for the voters, and without the support of the media, he no longer has anyone to sell it for him, and he's been flailing and flopping and lurching about ever since for some other reason to justify the continued existence of his campaign.

which just reveals how hollow the enterprise is. this is a vanity campaign. it's all about him. its all about how ex-p.o.w. john mccain deserved to win. now that the sterling biography's gone, and worse, now that the collapsing economy is reminding voters that the election is all about the voters, he can't even articulate a coherent narrative or plan that focuses on their lives and how he intends to improve it. he's nothing left to sell them.

the only question left seems to be whether he'll lose like a gentleman. the answer isn't looking good.

i didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms i believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. in truth, i wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. ... in truth, i'd had the ambition for a long time. — john mccain, worth the fighting for (2002)

if you know what i mean

i'm not aware of too many things, but i know what i know, and i know what i mean, starting with the realization that, despite the fanfare of both her convention and debate performances, sarah palin has outlived her usefulness to the mccain campaign.

while her fate was in dire question after her disastrous interviews with charlie gibson and especially katie couric, her circus-animal-like barking of freshly-injected and barely-understood republican talking points cemented her place in the hearts of social conservatives everywhere — while driving fingernails into the brains of anyone to the left of bill o'reilly:

it's become clear that palin is not winning mccain new voters. instead, she's proven only able to keep an increasingly shrinking and increasingly repugnant hard right bloc from jumping ship.

unfortunately for mccain, when you're drowning, treading water is a tactic, not a strategy. neither is climbing on the other guy's back.

knowing what i know now, i feel confident enough to call a landslide victory for obama:

this is what a coalescing landslide election looks like on a distribution map of all possible election outcomes in the electoral college based on polling on oct 2. there is no part of the distrubtion across the red line, shutting out a mccain victory. the highest peak of obama's blue lines now reaches 14% and it is for more than 350 electoral votes.

at the end of the democratic primary, i wrote that whoever won would be the de facto next president and that november will be simply a formality. the primary was, in effect, the general election. i wrote that because i saw then no chance for a republican victory, and i see now too many obstacles stacked against mccain, and none greater than his loss of credibility and even respect of the public, which was famously the best thing he had going for him.

in his attempt to alienate the voters from obama, mccain has only alienated them from mccain. and without any new muck to rake up for the voters, who found the old muck wanting when they heard it from clinton, mccain can only pointlessly sink further into the cesspit he's still digging for himself. still, there may yet be time for his loved ones to stage an intervention with some long-postponed straight talk:

lose with grace, you stupid bastard.

... that is, if the man wants to exit the stage with a semblance of his soul intact.

as for sarah, i predict for her a long career as a conservative darling and political footnote, someone republicans can always call on to help fill shrinking convention halls with downcast party apparatchiks looking for a little spunk, eye candy and stream-of-consciousness right-wing poetry.

so with a nod and a wink, this vid's for you, moose gal:

not just a river in egypt

overheard on the net:

am i the only one that thinks palin has been sandbagging in interviews to get biden to put his guard down? she came out so brilliantly when she was announced, and has seemed to fade a little.

i have this confident feeling that she's been setting up the enemy and she's going to knock 'em dead in the debate.

i know she's a great vp candidate and a very smart lady. i just have to wonder why she's been "homely" when it comes to interviews. i know that the interviews she has been in weren't appropriately conducted and that she is the only candidate asked hardball questions throughout her interviews.

quote of the day

from ex-republican¹-turned-democrat john cole @ balloon juice:

this is starting to turn into a ritual: dissatisfied with the debate here wednesday that drew widespread scorn, iowa republicans will discuss on friday the possibility of holding another forum before the january 3rd caucuses. the debate this week, sponsored by the des moines register and iowa public television, was to have been the final gathering of the gop contenders, but one well-placed iowa republican said tonight that they were interested in getting the candidates back together. "we'd prefer if the register debate did not leave a bad taste," said this source, who requested anonymity. "iowa deserves a little better than that." at some point, maybe after a few more debates, they are going to realize the problem is not the debate format, or the moderator, or the youtube videos, or the "drive-by media," or whatever else they will come up with to fool themselves. the problem is that the candidates suck. at any rate, i agree — iowa does deserve better. so does the rest of the country. which is why i am not voting republican next year.

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¹ read about john's halloween transformation @ "say hello to the newest member of the vast left wing conspiracy"

nevada debate preview

so, will fox viewers be watching this:

or, at long last, this?

(with apologies to charles schulz)

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update: well, it looks like democrats have decided to go for what's behind door number two:

senate majority leader harry reid and the nevada democratic party announced today that they are backing out of a fox news-sponsored presidential debate in august following fox president roger ailes's recent remarks comparing democratic senator barack obama to al qaeda terrorist osama bin laden. fox news did not answer calls seeking reaction to the decision. democratic presidential candidate john edwards had already announced that he would not participate in the fox debate. his party followed suit today, under pressure from the more than 265,000 people who signed a petition calling fox "a mouthpiece for the republican party, not a legitimate news channel" and urging nevada officials to cancel. danny coyle, a moveon.org member who serves on the executive board of the carson city democratic central committee, yesterday offered a resolution calling on the state party to drop fox, and it passed overwhelmingly among the grassroots democrats in attendance. "i am glad and relieved that the nevada democratic leadership has come to its senses," coyle said. "any kind of relationship with fox is bad for the party." at first, senator reid defended the decision to work with fox, reasoning that it might help democratic candidates reach out to right-leaning fox viewers. but party activists argued from the start that any connection with fox was a mistake. robert greenwald, director of the movie outfoxed, called the final decision a "victory for truth and journalism." some 280,000 people have viewed greenwald's new youtube film "fox attacks: obama" — located with the petition at www.foxattacks.com. "by standing up to fox's right-wing smears," greenwald said, "the patriotic grassroots, netroots, senator reid, senator edwards, and the nevada democrats have all worked together to protect one of the most important elements of a free society — the press." and eli pariser, executive director of moveon.org civic action, said he hoped the decision would "set a precedent within the party that fox should be treated as a right-wing mis-information network, not legitimized as a neutral source of news."