(1994: Liddy makes the "aim for the head" comment. 1998: Liddy hosts a McCain fundraiser. 2007: McCain appears on Liddy's radio show.)

I do not say that to discredit it -- the Keating situation has been well-discussed for weeks, and I'm sure the site's facts will be analyzed in minute detail by the time I'm back online tomorrow morning.

Rather, my reaction is... yow. *That's* what campaign strategy looks like. McCain has been attempting to drop bombshells and flash campaign stunts for weeks now. Has he unleashed anything as comprehensive or well-documented as this?

How much does McCain gamble? How often? Does he have unpaid debts? How much is he in thrall to the gaming interests? What does his gambling habit reveal about his decision-making process?

etc. etc. etc.

Clip from the 9/28/08 NYT article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/us/politics/28gambling-web.html

As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America’s casinos, helping to transform the once-sleepy Indian gambling business into a $26-billion-a-year behemoth with 423 casinos across the country. He has won praise as a champion of economic development and self-governance on reservations.

“One of the founding fathers of Indian gaming” is what Steven Light, a University of North Dakota professor and a leading Indian gambling expert, called Mr. McCain.

As factions of the ferociously competitive gambling industry have vied for an edge, they have found it advantageous to cultivate a relationship with Mr. McCain or hire someone who has one, according to an examination based on more than 70 interviews and thousands of pages of documents.

Mr. McCain portrays himself as a Washington maverick unswayed by special interests, referring recently to lobbyists as “birds of prey.” Yet in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors.

The first, completely tinfoil-hat idea, which I've voiced before, is that someone on the right is going to stage and escalate some sort of incident and Bush will "be forced" to postpone the election indefinitely and declare martial law. I'm trying hard not to think about that one.

The other, more boring idea is that since they know they aren't going to win, they're just making as much of a mess as possible so that Obama has to spend the next four years just getting things back to something like where they were, by which time he will be more unpopular than Bush and they can run Palin or somebody against him in the certain knowledge that Americans will be sick and tired of having to pay for things and be responsible and so on, and ready for a little laissez-faire again. *deep breath* Thus the whole campaign is just making it look convincing before taking a dive in the eighth round. Which is more plausible if we're dealing with sane persons here.

He who fucks rats should look to it that he himself does not become a rat.

Scary thought: what if Palin is INTENDED as a stalking horse? That is, Palin is chosen as VP, everyone thinks that's crazy, but has to be careful in saying so so as not to come across looking sexist. Then the Troopergate judgement goes against her, she bows out "gracefully", "for the good of the country and the Republican Party" - THEN the Republicans nominate a new VP who is staid, respectable and boring (so wouldn't have been a vote winner normally) - but looks like a really nice safe pair of hands in contrast?

Any bets?

ll hl th bmtn!

McCain has to try to keep up the impression that Palin was a good pick. Anything that made her leave the ticket now makes him look completely erratic and utterly lacking in judgment. This is the way he looks already to most of America, it seems, but if he actually admits the hideous glaring mistake and jettisons Palin it'll all be over.

It looks to me more like McCain is the stalking horse and Palin is presenting herself as the dependable far-right-wing backup in case McCain dies in office. I wouldn't put it past them to bank on her mediocrity looking safe and reliable in comparison to (as you put it) his erratic lack of judgment.

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Dtt fr bm nd Bdn.

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gn, cn lrdy hr th crs f, "THY'R WY WRS THN W R!"

Fllwd by, "W HV T GT NGRY ND FGHT BCK BCS BNG NC BT T GTS S NWHR!"

Cn rs my hnd nd pt n vt f n-cnfdnc, n th trbl mntlty? n th nd fr md prsnlts nd md prfssnls (y nd Ptrck qlfy) t dn th gldtr's hlm nd mrch nt th rn wth vryn ls?

Responding to a question about how she wants the media to be more "balanced" and "objective" (this is on Fox but reported by ABC), she says:

"As we send our young men and women overseas in a war zone to fight for democracy and freedoms, including freedom of the press, we've really got to have a mutually beneficial relationship here with those fighting the freedom of the press, and then the press, though not taking advantage and exploiting a situation, perhaps they would want to capture and abuse the privilege. We just want truth, we want fairness, we want balance."

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/10/do-over-palin-a.html

The rest of her interview on Fox was used as a "do over" from the Couric interviews. NOW she can name newspapers she reads. NOW she can name Supreme Court decisions she disagrees with. Well duh, of course she can remember them NOW; she's had two weeks of intense briefing and instruction, but she still tends to have diarrhea of the mouth when asked her personal opinion, and not even Fox News can keep her from it!

Can I recommend "logorrhea" to you? It is slightly more pretentious, but has the advantage of not inducing such unpleasant images when I'm about to eat.

There is a tribe of people for whom this is all okay. They are Altermeyer's authoritarians, in leader and follower flavors. There are people who are confused and deceived about it, who follow any flag that captures their attention. There are people posing as alternatives who aren't. And there are a variety of overlapping but often conflicting groups interested in doing something about the malefactors.

But it does not begin with group identity in the sense you're talking about. It begins with people deciding that their gain and our loss is what they want, and being willing to work at it for decades, and getting away with it when they should have been checked long ago.

Obama has many bad features, and he listens to some people on the left side of that self-enrichment-driven conglomeration. But he also has good features. McCain, meanwhile, is hip deep among the enrichers, and has personally helped many of them, individually and in groups.

Furthermore, what exactly do you want us to say about the effectiveness of Obama's campaign, whether we agree with the specific policies or not? Are we not supposed to notice and be impressed by a well-crafted delivery and intelligent use of the net, or is it just not okay when a Democrat does something effective for a change in a contested campaign? If I look at it and think "That says something very well, and furthermore, this is something I've long thought needed to be forcefully said in public", should I be ashamed of it? It's not like it wipes out the blots of, say, Obama's FISA vote, but it's a good thing despite that.

That means you think quality and content of argument is irrelevant? A variety of reputable organizations are making credible, substantive allegations against McCain. OTOH, McCain's allegations against Obama are flimsy guilt-by-association attacks.

The logical extension to your argument is that the media should simply take every candidate at his or her word. Any sort of fact checking, or digging back into a candidate's past might expose something unsavory. And, well, that might lead to the well-researched Rolling Stone article you seem so unhappy with.

While I have the advantage of having not to delve that deeply into US electoral politics, your post still moves me to write a reaction.

But since I have now browsed your other posts, I will keep it short.
You do not like the two-party-system, forcing you to choose between just two candidates, and think of staying at home since no candidate is exactly on your side. Those who support on candidate, hoping for the lesser evil keeping the catastrophical evil at bay, are un-nuanced tribalists.

This is a very high-minded and morally pure conviction, staying above the fray and all that. I sincerely hope that there will be very, very few people in the US who share it.

In the words of that great liberal political hero* Jack Ryan: "Not black and white, Mr President. Right and wrong."

*I could wheel out the Why Tom Clancy Is A Liberal Writer rant now but choose not to...

That structure is created by

(1) The single-member district system for election to the House of Representatives.

(2) The one-at-a-time electoral system for election to the Senate (in effect a single-member district system)

(3) The fact that there can be only one president.

This creates a situation in which there can be only two viable political parties (a condition known to political science as Duverger's Law, after the French political scientist who first identified it back in 1951 in relation to the British political system). That is, only two parties capable of forming legislative majorities or winning the presidency.

It isn't a matter of McCain/Palin being evil, or Obama/Biden being agents of light. McCain and Palin promise the continuation of the past eight years of failed policies. Obama and Biden promise change, and change based on policies that have been carefully thought-through.

You may want other options, but there aren't any.

I know Republicans, even of the evangelical Christian tribe, who are wonderful people. In fact, I usually eat breakfast with one since an odd confluence of schedules makes us the only people around that early in the office.

And for the sake of my breakfast conversation, I am looking forward to a decrease in political heat and a general smoothing out of political waters. During the primaries, we could talk politics so long as it was still a horse race on both sides. Now, though, we have to confine ourselves to other topics, such as the wrongness of turkey bacon. Frankly, we beat that topic to a pulp months ago.

So, I get it. You're uncomfortable with this direct political rhetoric implying that the choice between candidates matters enough that ML would appear to take sides. And indeed, my breakfast conversation would go much smoother if we could safely wander over to politics and comfortably agree that everyone had both good sides and bad sides. There have been some awkward silences lately.

But you know what? I do more than eat breakfast. I am not completely insulated from what policies get enacted in Washington. I have to live with whatever happens, and do strongly believe that my life will be materially different given different policies.

And, yes, Obama isn't perfect. He veered way to hard to center after getting the nomination for my tastes. He has shown repeated issues with addressing grown women he's not close to as "Sweetie". My first reaction on hearing his VP pick was "He picked Biden? Edwards was irresponsible running for President with that affair waiting to explode, but you know what Edwards wouldn't have done? He wouldn't have picked Joe Bankruptcy Biden." I still think Biden has a lot to answer for his role in shaping and supporting the bankruptcy bill.

That being said, are you surprised that our hosts and the vast majority of commenters here see the Obama/Biden ticket as far, far preferable to the McCain/Palin ticket? Are you honestly surprised that Theresa would link to sites that, while partisan, make an argument from well-documented history, (*) and condemn the tactic of guilt-by-osmosis?

What site did you think you were reading? Our hosts are very well known to be: 1) progressives, and 2) political pragmatists. They've never shown to hold with the protest-left tactic of voting third party because the Democrats are ideologically sullied. I find your surprise and disappointment - if genuine - very puzzling.

(*) Mostly. The Keating five stuff is well documented, but I concur with SeanH@11 on the quality of "John McCain's Sweet Ride"

In short: He's the pastor who blessed her against witchcraft, who she says nice things about, and who, among other things, she credits for her gubernatorial win. In Kenya, he's implicated in at least one honest-to-God witch hunt, for his own political gain. He accused a little old lady of being a witch, had her jailed, forced her to "accept" his brand of Christianity, and then she fled town in fear of her life.

As far as I'm concerned, the most troubling aspect in him is not the opportunism and selfishness, but the temper.

The Republican party has already identified GLBT people as the other tribe. Dems, not quite as much. I have a choice between candidates who'll try to enact a federal Civil Unions bill, and will accept states that choose to allow full marriage, and ones who, while they won't vote for a federal marriage amendment, won't do anything else other than natter about how they really like certain gay people as friends.

GLBT people have been kicked in the teeth by Republicans enough to know who to vote against. After 8 years of dealing with Republicans, I'm a little gleeful at the prospect of having a President AND a Congress who'll probably work on something to advance the rights of same sex couples. I'm not thrilled with seperate but equal, but at least it's a step past nonexistent.

Also, I'd like a SCOTUS who won't overturn Roe v. Wade/ McCain has promised (for what that's worth) to point a judge who will overturn it if he can, and god knows what else. Scalia would overturn Griswold if he could. McCain wants more judges in that vein.

And finally, anyone who thinks the Iraq war was a good idea, and says he'd do it again is a fecking idjit, and should be kept way from political office by all right thinking folk.

I'm not so much on the Obama bandwagon, though there are things about him I admire. I'm hoping that the McCain bandwagon burns down, and I'd like to salt the earth under it afterward.

our current popular political zeitgeist pretends that the artificial black/white dichotomy is not only natural, but preferable.

I still believe all of us are political amalgams, and that no one party can represent us all the time in all ways. Certainly no candidate can do this.

Cue in Adam Savage saying that after he looks at what remains of a concrete-mixer truck after it's been loaded with hundreds of pounds of explosives.

He has always been very into politics (now he's a lawyer with the UN), and the first time he was old enough to vote was 2000. He argued with my mother a great deal about how it truly didn't matter which one he backed, because both Gore and Bush were totally unacceptable. In the end, he did not vote.

When the US invaded Iraq, he called my mother up and apologized, saying that he wouldn't make that same mistake again.

It may be a lesser-of-two-evil's situation, but don't ignore how much greater the evil in that greater-of-two-evils is. Too often, it's the difference between a fistfight and a gunfight.

I hope that nobody has to see much more of the greater-of-two-evils in action before people realize just how much of a difference there is between the lesser-evil and the greater-evil.

(Note that I do not in fact think either parties are in fact evil, but rather lesser/greater goods, but the terminology is standard and the same basics apply.)

If memory serves me right, following 9/11, Democrats put aside their dislike of Bush, for the good of the country. After which he and many Republican politicians proceeded to squander everybody's goodwill for their own personal, financial and political gains. So, I too am quite offended at being accused of tribalism.

That doesn't remotely mean that both sides are the same, or that there's nothing to choose from between them. The Republican party had unified control of the government for six years, about four of them in a widely-accepted state of national emergency. They made a hell of a mess, one we'll be trying to clean up for the next decade or two. For that alone, the current Republican candidate needs to lose the election, because (despite the common claims to the contrary) election results really do send a strong signal to political parties. If the Republicans suffer a crushing defeat this November, which I very much expect they will, it will shake things up within the party. With luck, the pain of losing power and patronage will encourage Republicans to find some better people, strategies, and (hopefully) ideas. That's important, because as Fragano says, our political system pretty much guarantees two big parties. We need them both to be mostly sane and decent. If we arrive in 2012 or 2016 with a Republican party that's no longer the party of torture or unlimited government power or invading half the countries on the globe, maybe one that marries the "thou shalt not" side of Christianity with the "do unto others as you'd have them do to you" side, then we will end up with a much better nation. Along with that, McCain has demonstrated time and again that he's not a great choice for president. IMO, his VP choice, alone, is enough to call his executive decisionmaking into question.

But that doesn't change the fact that a hell of a lot of folks on the left and right are playing rather fast and loose with logic and rules of evidence, in order to find ways to accuse each other of being devils.

Various links in my lj here, to avoid sticking so many links in this comment that it gets moderated.

The most plausible explanation, to me, is desperation. They can see that the wheels are coming off, that the band-aid they've managed to apply to the financial markets won't mask the disaster there for long, that they've chosen an embarrassment as a VP candidate, that the legacy of the Bush administration is too painful to overcome. They can look at the per-state polling numbers, where the economic pain is happening and is going to happen. They know how much of their base is mad as hell at them, how many folks aren't coming in to volunteer, how many aren't sending any money this year.

And so, they're desperate. The only thing they have left is fear--get people scared that Obama is a secret terrorist, that he'll nationalize the Fortune 500 (no, wait, I think that's a Bush Administration policy now), surrender to all our enemies, impose massive affirmative action and similar policies, etc. That he's an atheistic, elitist[1] super liberal, or a member of a radical black Christian church, or a fundamentalist Muslim, or maybe all three at once. Because if they can't scare a whole lot of their base to come out and vote, they've had it. They're making a lot of high-risk, moderate-reward decisions right now. Outside of incompetence, the best explanation is that they see themselves losing and are trying to salvage something.

It's going to be a brutal election for the Republicans this year. They've earned it.

[1] Because when you're the black child of a divorced white mom who was largely raised by your grandparents, and you're running against the son and grandson of admirals who is presently a multi-millionaire by marrying well, it's clear that you are the elitist. What could be more obvious?

If that's not what he'd meant, I apologize for misunderstanding him.

What you're reaching for isn't a tense, but the subjunctive mood. Currently on its way to extinction by most accounts, but useful for indicating hypothetical or counterfactual scenarios. Thus:

McCain has to try to keep up the impression that Palin was a good pick. -- Ok in the indicative.

Anything that made her leave the ticket now makes him look completely erratic and utterly lacking in judgment. -- You set up the hypothetical proposition correctly in the subjunctive, but the second clause, being the hypothetical consequence of that hypothetical scenario also needs the subjunctive: "... would make him look ...."

This is the way he looks already to most of America, it seems, -- Ok in the indicative.

but if he actually admits the hideous glaring mistake and jettisons Palin it'll all be over. -- "If" is always a good sign that we're entering hypothetical (and so, subjunctive) territory. Again, both the premise and its consequence are hypotheticals and call for the subjunctive: "... if he actually admitted ... it'd all be over."

I have sometimes contemplated founding a Society for the Promotion of Subjunctivity. But then I fall back on settling for correcting affect/effect errors in all my co-workers' writing.

The voting machines are still there. If the Republicans have the big brass ones, all they need is for polling results to be reported in such a way that the race seems close enough to swing on election day. (Cue much pious head-shaking about latent and un-admitted racism.) They can certainly get that; I can't imagine why they wouldn't get that.

Polarization in general, well, y'all are in a situation where you have very real differences of opinion about very substantial things. It looks, from outside and far away, like the syncretic Americanism civil religion is making a bid for long term survival through forcible suppression of all possible sources of dissent or contradiction. That this is crazy doesn't mean those involved are going to give up of their own will.

Forms of organization able to support large cities, distributed collaboration, and the advancement of science require a willingness to admit that you're wrong, readily and directly. It is not in any way optional.

If you're from a rigid hierarchy culture, where admitting to error is permission for others to abuse you, this is somewhere between really difficult and a hideous sin.

The two forms of social organization cannot co-exist in the long term; the rigid hierarchy types figured that out at least a generation ago, and are fine with the probable costs of destroying the collaborative, post-industrial, information age culture. The thing itself they hate, because by existing it means they're wrong, and they've been working for a generation to get rid of it.

Look at how much of the energy comes from making the "Liberal" side admit that it was in error to tell the "Conservative" side it was or is wrong about civil rights, full legal status of women, contraception, equitable labour laws, the entire New Deal package of financial reforms...

It's "how dare you tell us we're wrong", from a culture where admission of error is supinate surrender, not a normal part of building a consensus, and it's backed by a lot of money and effort. (In part because "wealth" is an unrestricted good in that syncretic religion; it doesn't matter how you got that way. Something that will tell you your means weren't wrong is presumably of value to all but the complete sociopaths.)

The two cultural streams are not compatible. Economic marginalization isn't enough. This one really is going to have to be comprehensively resolved, one way or another, and the electorate has started to notice.

The subjunctive version is more of an explanation of why he has NOT done that, because if he did, the consequences WOULD BE thus-and-so. I think you're correct in that that was SeanH's intent, but the other isn't bad either.

Btw, a friend of mine in college had a button that said "Save the subjunctive! ...would that we could."

Okay. I'll go back to lurking on-topic, now.

McCain will probably come out ahead because he was a professional bomber, with his institutional support and funding more severely impacting the people he bombed. Ayers was more of a hobbyist in comparison.

I am thinking the outrage this time around would be a bit more hot.

What kind of outrage would be required for the folks who own the voting machines to care?

Remember that they are in favour of a collapse of governmental legitimacy; no legitimate (meaning, people agree it's legitimate even when they disagree with it) government clears the field for the direct application of money and guns. They want that.

Were any to be required, this would be full, sufficient, and ample proof that those owners of the voting machines are not suffused with cleverness, but to do the experiment should prove it were a full grievous thing to have seen done.

All hail the Obamaton!

Woo. That's right out of the slaveholding disunionists' playbook for referencing President Lincoln. They had so many charming and intelligent appellations for him, such as 'President Apious', 'First Ape,' etc,

Love, C.

And that sounds just like the emergency situation that King George would need to begin his reign.

From today's Columbus Dispatch, in an article "Rock the Early Vote:"

"Preliminary data indicate that more than 60 percent of those who also registered to vote in Frankling County during the early voting period were younger than 34 years old -- and more than 80 percent of voters already registered with a party who cast absentee ballot were Democrats."

I've referenced these articles now and again, particularly the mavrik's history with his planes.

Love, C.

And according to Wikipedia, McCain's involvement with the Keating Five was minimal - he was pretty much exonerated by the Ethics Committee - "you did wrong, but not so wrong we should punish you."

So these "McCain Association" attacks may not work as well as the Obama Association attacks. Also, are we trying to exaggerate McCain's connection to these people, as the Right Wing Noise Machine is doing for Obama?

FOX News demonstrated that it was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party yesterday. Just after McSame announced his stepped-up personal attacks, Hannity had a special program on "Obama's History of Radicalism", playing up the Ayers and Rashid Khalidi connections, at least in the 7 minutes I saw.

SeanH @ 23: my mother's version of that is "mental constipation and verbal diarrhea". Which describes Palin's debate performance pretty well - not thinking much, but boy a lot of words come out.

But I got a piece of mail last week that disturbs me and in all my travels on the web I haven't seen anyone mention it. The timing is such that I'm betting it is tied to the upswing in attacks against Obama and his supposed ties to terrorists. Actually, I'd be amazed if it wasn't.

Has anyone else gotten a mailing from a group called The Clarion Fund containing a DVD titled Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against The West?

This is touted as a "pre-release" special one hour edition of what I think started as a legitimate documentary. The group mailing this out cites reviews and film festival awards and a short four word quote from the executive producer of the TV show "24", all to try to shore up that this is the real deal. All that is on the outside of the mailer.

When you open it, the hate starts. There is a picture of a tiny child holding a rifle on the right and links to a website www.radicalislam.org, where you can go to learn "activism ideas" for fighting radical Islam. The website is extremely twisted. I didn't spend much time there because swimming in filth is not my idea of a good time.

The kicker lines for me were where they urge you to use this information to make the right decision when voting in November.

I've been a registered Democrat since I was eighteen years old, which was a long time ago. I have to wonder how I got on The Clarion Fund's mailing list or why they thought I'd be receptive to this brand of hate mongering.

Has anyone else seen this or is this a special treat for living in Ohio?

It's not just you, but it is targeting the swing states primarily. There's strong suspicion that the distribution of this DVD was behind the terrorist attack described here.

According to Wikipedia? Wow!

McCain used to vacation in the Bahamas with Charlie Keating, on Keating's dime. McCain's wife and father-in-law had a business relationship with Charlie Keating.

McCain's involvement with Keating was deep, close, and long-standing.

Some observations in search of comment from people wiser than I:
1) I think the McCain campaign started pushing on the Ayers stuff only last week. Can you really do a documentary like this over a weekend? When was this made? Have they been holding on to this for a while now, waiting for the right occasion?

1') If I ever need to follow a "taking the high road, but pragmatically" strategy, I should remember to frame all of my negative stuff as "in response" to the other side's scurrilous attacks.

2) Prosecuting corruption cases is a matter of proving a "quid pro quo". The "quid" and the "quo" are usually easy to prove. But if you're even a little good at playing stupid, the "pro" is basically unprovable, unless you were dumb enough to put things in writing, or unless the quid you delivered was so bizarre as to be inexplicable except as "pro quo."

2') If somebody bribes me, I should remember to be their friend. That way, if I'm ever accused of being bribed, I'll be able to say that it was all a matter of friendship: I never sold influence for money; it's simply a case of my good friend giving me contributions for the sake of friendship, and me making sure that my old dear friend is getting a fair shake.

3) Random language aside: What happened to all the wonderful American accents we used to have on TV? Are there any more congresspeople who sound like Sen. Howell Heflin? I haven't heard that voice in the news since I was a kid, and it's a kind of a shame. What happened? Has Southern American English changed, or are people who speak so it so strongly getting elected less by their neighbors?

4) Does the swiftness of the Obama campaign's response here, plus the claims that this is in response to the McCain campaign's negative thrust, send a signal that they're sitting on several more of these?

[Note: Despite my sympathy for the a-plague-on-both-your-houses argument, I'm voting for Obama this year: looking at the last 16 years, I think rather spend the next four years being disappointed as I was by Clinton than being outraged as I have been by Bush the Younger. IMO, if an elected official you like does not disappoint you, this is a sign that your expectations are too low.]

The McCain campaign seems to be fielding only smear ads. The Obama campaign is fielding mostly positive ads. I'm also impressed by the production quality and the way they strive to paint Obama as a raving Moderate. Yay!

Sighted today, a car with an Obama sticker and "Choose Life" plates.

Note - I've absolutely no intention to turn this into an brtn thread - just amazed at the juxtaposition.

If McCain has already exhausted his potential, if there are no potential McCain voters beyond the ones who are already committed to him, then he will lose big. Elections take place at the margin.

From The Denver Post, Oct. 1:

"The discs were included as advertising supplements in newspapers including The Denver Post and via direct mail."

Neither of my newspapers has included it, but apparently it's shown up in a lot of Sunday supplements over the past two weeks.

The "Obsession" video(s) have been making the rounds in Orthodox Jewish circles for the past year or two. You can watch it in 10-minute segments on YouTube; that's where I saw it. It's mostly to remind us how the Arabs hate us. I find it bizarre/appalling that it's being circulated to encourage people to vote for Republicans in swing states, though.

I think there are different versions of different lengths, but they're all pretty repetitive, and mostly about Arab antisemitism, rather than anti-Americanism, although there was some anti-Americanism mixed into the version I've seen.

I saved my copy in case the library where I work would find it of interest, but it turns out they've already got a copy. I might take a look at it after the election, if that goes well, to analyze its persuasion techniques, but I don't think I'd be detached enough for it to do much now than raise my blood pressure.

On the hitting back against personal attacks, Obsidian Wings has some useful discussions going on now. I'd agree with the sentiment over there that the way to do it is to keep it focused, and tied to bad policy decisions on issues that voters care about. So if the Keating video, which I haven't yet seen, focuses on McCain's poor judgment in deregulation in that case, it should work well-- it's an issue salient right now, and you don't have to prove criminal wrongdoing on McCain's part for it to stick; horrible judgment suffices.

Some of the other stuff at the top of the post (like the HuffPo stuff) doesn't appear to be as focused, or (like the USVD stuff) is via questionable sources, so it may just come off as scattering mud to see what sticks. Obama's campaign shouldn't need to do that, and they can credibly call out McCain for doing it if Obama sticks to counterattacks related to the issues of governance.

I think it would be very effective to tell people that "McCain wants to do to your health-care what the administration just did to the banking industry - make the whole industry collapse, and then spend more of your money to bail it out." (And he wants to start by taking away any insurance you have.)

In the DC area (I don't remember if the station is in VA or MD), I've heard one Obama radio ad play several times in Spanish, quoting McCain's comment about how the fundamentals of the economy are sound in English, then translating it into Spanish and pointing out that his party and ideas are responsible for the present disaster. I burst into laughter hearing Obama's voice at the end: "Yo soy Barrack Obama, y yo apruebo esta mensaje."

The only other local media I get much of is public radio, which is thankfully free of ads. But MD is not a battleground state.

Yesterday I made a number of donations, both direct to the Obama and DNC organizations, and to outside PACs like Moveon and Planned Parenthood Action. (I think I might have just made more political donations than I'd made in my life up til now.)

The independent groups can run more aggressively critical (but still truthful) ads that dig a little harder. For example, Planned Parenthood Action has a TV ad about Palin's billing Wasilla rape victims for the evidence kits. I don't see how anyone normal can hear that and not go "Oh, ick."

We do get (would that we didn't*, though perhaps it's just as well that we do, as I don't know what else we'd use to get our fireplace started) a free newspaper-insert-style advertisement/grocery ads/outdated community news stories circular in our direct mail. I cannot swear that the DVD didn't arrive on the day that the circular did.

*Obligatory subjunctive content, and not any of this weaselly indicative conditional tense, nor that sneaky indicative future tensed used in the conditional sense! Discerning customers accept no substitutes for the Gen-yoo-ine Subjunctive Mode!

4. The domain was registered on 25th September, which suggests to me that it originated as a response to McCain's campaign suspension chicanery on the 24th. A week and a half is ample time to put something like this together. So I'd say that this isn't something from a general heap of prepped ammo.

You can see at fivethirtyeight.com how well it encouraged NC to break for McCain.

I have not yet watched it. On the one hand I want to. I want to know what is out there so I can fight it. On the other hand, I know it will make me physically ill. Raw hatred always does.

A few days ago I was talking politics with my dad and, while we agree on most things, there was one point on which we could not agree -- whether McCain is, in fact, a decent guy.

Thank you for posting these links. I'm definitely passing some of them his way later.

It did come direct mail, and no, I don't subscribe to any of the newspapers here in Columbus. I get news via the web or news magazines I buy on the newsstand. They could be pulling names off voting rolls for all I know.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that amidst the flood of election year mailings and ads that campaigns like this aren't commented on or reported more widely. When I don't see any mention anywhere I have to wonder if the hate campaigns are completely flying under the radar.

Or maybe there are so many of them these days no one has time to document them all.

Possibilities:
- The Obama campaign had been planning this website, and they were only waiting for an opportune moment.
- They had been planning this as a possibility, but intended to hold off unless the McCain campaign went negative.
- They had been planning to do this no matter what, but seized on the McCain campaign going negative first as a justification.
- I am giving too much weight to the sources that say that the Obama did this in reaction to McCain's negative turn; they are all just engaged in the post hoc ergo prompter hoc dance that forces all of history to make sense after the fact.
- Other.

As for Obsession, I think collecting a bunch of them and frisbeeing them into your local McCain HQ has merit. Let's let these bastards know we weren't born yesterday.

In Dallas. The reddest big city in Texas, a city nearly owned by the Southern Baptists and Church of Christ. Just about the last place where I'd expect to see such a thing.

Somebody with a fair amount of money is convinced enough that the bottom is falling out of the Christianist takeover attempt to gamble in the other direction. I hope they're right.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not sure I'd want to use a hate-filled DVD as a Christmas ornament.

I have no objection to careful production of pretty blue arcs from DVDs inserted into a microwave oven, though.

If you don't already have a favorite DVD destruction technique, I second Bill's suggestion of microwaving them. Very pretty indeed! (And if you haven't yet read Jon Singer's microwave page, you should.)

I like this bit in the make-ornaments article:

Now, the first step is to Glue two CDs together. Glue them together so that the label is facing in and the shiny side is facing out.

Perfect.

I've been following the 'Obsession' story at Talking Points Memo, where they're saying that the Clarion Fund has close ties to at least one extremely pro-Israel group. What's weird (to me) is that Obama hasn't given any indication that he won't back Israel (although he might not be as pro-Israel as, say, Palin, who needs it for her 'End Times' lunacy).

I am furious, still and always, with the media, who are treating the sleazy, fear-mongering attacks on Obama and the well-documented and unanswered attacks on McCain regarding the Keating 5 history as if the two campaigns were doing the same thing. Even NPR does this. When did the Lehrer Report turn into Fox News?

Also, if you intend to Xena a DVD, don't forget about the possibility that you've left your fingerprints on the disc.

Awww but I want to dip it in suet for the birds....

McCain has called Paul Weyrich, who helped steer the Republican Party to the right, a "pompous self-serving son of a bitch" who "possesses the attributes of a Dickensian villain."

IMO the article drops the ball when they describe McCain switching from sincerely (their interpretation) opposed to excessive use of the U.S. military to sincerely backing neoconservatism. There's no doubt that he has backed both positions, but I don't think he was ever committed to either one.

People** keep trying to invent a virtue for McCain because he would look too cardboard-villain-y otherwise (well, at LEAST he MUST have the courage of his convictions, right?), but reality isn't constrained by the need to eschew melodrama. Some people really are pompous self-serving sons of bitches who possess the attributes of a Dickensian villain, and while it may not strictly speaking take one to know one, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that that's what happened at least in this instance.

*This is only a figure of speech. Actually, it's quite possible and even fairly common for one evil person to dislike another.

**Or maybe what I really mean is that media people do this, and they do it because they don't want to look partisan. (Well, they don't want to look liberal. It's fine to look conservative - their bosses won't mind.)

Oh, and Teresa? Was it you who compared Palin to Glory? I've been watching Buffy Season 5 with my boyfriend (who has just discovered Buffy) and I keep giggling at inappropriate moments. Thanks for the mental imagery ...

Sten: "Methinks our current national crises (plural) are the result of our willingness to be tribalized by forces which stand to exploit this tribalization." No, they're not. They're the result of criminal collusion on the part of a fairly small group of people to profit from the nation at any expense to the rest of us, and also (in some of their cases) to deliberately destabilize the lives of the rest of us so that in a weakened and isolated condition, we will be better subjects.

Actually I think it's some of each. But the criminal collusion is the part I hope we can do something about this time.

Yes, and I intend to post about it here very soon.

It's an astounding piece of work.

Back in 1997, while I didn't vote for them, I cheered as loudly as anyone when New Labour under Tony Blair got into office. At that point the Conservative Party was unelectable and had lost the trust of the nation. It was true, even then, that many of the changes in the Labour Party made their policies much more like the Conservatives, but there was still a core of big-statism and social safety-net thinking that made me confident that things would improve.

And they did. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Britain in 2000 was a better place to live than it was in 1996. I was there, I remember.

But then all hell broke loose. Blair became Dubya's poodle and sent Our Brave Boys(tm) in alongside US troops. At which point people from all political walks of life started ignoring the positive changes that had occurred in the previous few years and started putting the boot into Blair. And again I was cheering, not because I am a flip-flopper, but because the government was wrong and needed to hear that it was wrong.

The world seems to think that America should vote for Obama. I'm inclined to agree, and I don't belong to either tribe in the argument. Of course he's wrong about some stuff. But if he's broadly right, which seems to be the opinion of the majority of the commenters above and elsewhere on the site, then vote him in and then agitate about the details afterwards.

The VP in charge of advertising got downright snippy about it:

"Jim McClure, vice president of display advertising for The N&O, declined to say what it is charging to deliver the DVD as part of today's newspaper. He dismissed allegations that it is inflammatory.

"'In the beginning of the DVD it clearly states it's not about Islam. It's about radical Islam,' McClure said."

We need a better regulated market in politicians. The free market is not that free for the likes of you and me. It has bid the price of politicians up to the point where only rich folks and corporations can afford to buy one. This kind of market power should be stopped before it grows into a monopoly. Also, we could use better product labeling; many politicians once purchased fail to perform as described in the sales literature.

But it was downright weird.

Omid Safi, a professor of Islamic studies at UNC-CH, has researched the video and the Clarion Fund. He says the producer of the video is a Canadian native who now is a rabbi and Zionist leader in Israel. Distribution was aided by a Christian Zionist organization headed by Texas evangelist John Hagee, he said, and a Clarion Fund Web site recently published, then removed, an article that endorsed John McCain over Barack Obama for president.

Safi noted that the DVD was placed in newspapers only in key election swing states, suggesting it's intended to scare voters into the McCain camp. "The whole premise of this film is that the West doesn't know what radical Islam represents," Safi said. "Fair enough. Tell us what you represent." My calls to the Clarion Fund were not returned.

The plot either thickens or becomes clearer, depending upon how one reads this.

Which is something to watch very closely for in the campaign rallies in this month. Today, the Washington Post reported that one man at a Palin rally responded "Kill him" in response to Palin's description of Obama and Ayers.

I don't want this exaggerated. TPM is already claiming that Palin was "getting members of the crowd to yell out 'Kill Him'". But the reporter only mentions hearing one person say it, and it's not clear that Palin heard him. I'm not aware of any video or audio recordings where we can hear it yelled out. And I don't know how others in the crowd reacted to the speaker. (Though the comments make it clear that the Secret Service has been informed, by readers of the article if no one else.)

That said, that kind of sentiment is something to take very seriously, and now that it's been reported, Palin and the rest of the McCain campaign should make it very clear that they categorically reject any call or threat of violence against their opponents. Particularly if there are any more incidents like this as campaign rallies. And folks who are worried about this nation's political climate going all Godwin's-Law on us may want to monitor, record, and if appropriate, report what's going on at these rallies.

I'm beyond angry about the whole thing. And no, I don't think it'll be as transparent to everyone all over.

Summer @118:
I've vetted Omid Safi pretty well in research of my own, and I'd definitely consider him a reliable source on the matter--if your quote needs backup.

I'm finding it increasingly difficult not to hate McCain and Palin for stimulating and encouraging this kind of madness.

A trend I consider heartening is that more Catholics are organizing around providing for the poor as their founder advised. The Pope made a public statement in May that caring for the poor is central to Catholic life. Church leaders have said that people should vote for whoever will best care for the poor and downtrodden. The license and bumper sticker juxtaposition may be a result of this trend.

Wouldn't it be nice if the Christians actually followed the teachings of Christ? (I know many do, of course, but the ones that are center stage right now seem pretty weak on the gospel, IMHO.)

You could use them as fish scales for an art car. There were several of those at Burning Man, the year I went.

Videorecord microwaving the DVD.

===

I wonder, would charging the McCain campaign or associated 527s with hate crimes, be likely to stick?!

At least one Making Light contributor has denoted that, specifically, I expressed the sentiment of being in favor of Obama not for endearment to Obama, but out of loathing for McCain and his agenda (appoint more judges like Scalia and his clone appointed by the Schmuck last year?!)(and at least as much loathing for Palin.... I think I mentioned that she reminds me of every noxious female schoolyard bully who contributed to making time in public school a living hell? (dI let out a cheer when graduation was done, I felt like the gate of hell and opened up and let me out at long last...)

Not Samson....

Well it's late at night here on Making Light, but the thread has a hundred plus posts,
And the pro-McCain posters are whining and nasty and bringing up rotten dead ghosts,
And the links from the thread start have webs that have spread but McCain's lies have corporate support,
And the rest of us read getting more and more upset that Karl Rove's not jailed by some court...

I'll make one more post on the thread, moderators, and hope that my vowels will stay,
And if it's full of typoes and malaprop'ed words, I hope that won't get in the way,
Cause it took me too many neutrons to fire to get through to words on the screen,
Here is a verse and I hope its not worse though the topic of Palin's obscene.....

And it's shortening times to the voting booths but the damned Diebold crap is still there,
And McCain and that Palin's hatemongering speeches designed very much to all scare,
And the blocking the phonelines with autodial calls was but one more Republican fraud,
But they're back by the media broadcasting cartel whose influence is way too broach...

I'll have one more try at warpversing Zander, as I try to work out what to say,
And to point out the world in deadly danger, please don't let McCain take the day,
For it took too many years to build up the good things ere 2001,
McCain and Palin will take what's left away and will blot out the rays of the sun

It's not peaceful down in a Christian hell that the church Palin goes to does claim
That everyone who is not of their beliefs to eternity shall twist in pain
And I sitting alone in my bed full of books and and disgusted to think of McCain....

I'll do one more verse of this thing I'm writing, the newest one as I compose,
To post in the forum against John McCain and that Palin who lies through her nose,
Cause it took me too many neutrons to fire to get through to words on the screen,
Here is a verse and I hope its not worse though the topic of Palin's obscene.....
Cause it took me too many neutrons to fire to get through to words on the screen,
Here is a verse and I hope its not worse though the topic of Palin's obscene.....

The radical right wing has broken out the nukes. They know if they lose this one, they're going down and the only thing they have left to run on is hate. It continues to astonish me that this election is close. Obama/Biden is superior to McCain/Palin from just about any viewpoint. A little common sense, please; this is the choice. I wish we had another, but we don't. It's not a hard choice, it's not like both tickets have substantial virtues. And yet somehow there are people of good will waffling. WtF?

I'm constantly amazed to hear that mentality described as "Pro-Israel." Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the End Times scenario end with all non-Christians, Israelis included, suffering horribly?

That's how I see it. There are a number of issues on which I disagree with Obama quite passionately; on the other hand, there's a reasonably good chance that he's at least talking with someone like me. The Republicans make spiting liberals and progressives at every turn a point of pride. Obama might actually care what I think, and I might be able to tug him in my direction. McCain? Not so much.

Also, let me say I am not impressed by Wonkette's summarizing skills. (Oh well; isn't this kind of implicit in the difference between the two sites?)

(OT technical whining dept: I'd love to have the textarea for comments wide enough for an URL of average length to fit in.)

Either you misread what I said or I'm misreading your reply - my point was that I don't think the website was created in response to McCain campaign's return to smears (on the 2nd), but was instead created in response to McCain's attempt to claim that he was suspending his campaign to rescue the economy (on the 24th).

Back to electoral strategy - Obama's doing fine. Yesterday was his best polling day so far, and 538 is currently giving two to one odds on a landslide, never mind a victory (the odds of which are approaching 90%). Which isn't to say "relax, boys and girls, this one's in the bag", just that Obama's campaign should be fine doing exactly what it's been doing so far: outstripping McCain on the ground and remaining calm and competent while his opponent flails. Why suddenly switch to the negative? Because McCain's doing it? Copying the guy who's losing isn't usually a good idea...

Maybe I'm some sort of extremist, but as far as I can see, almost everything Blair et al did that seemed good, turned out to be bad. Eg putting more money into the NHS, but doing so via the criminally expensive PFI, and they kept the bureacratic internal market. On the economy, they maintained a sort of steady hand, but then let a huge bubble develop.
And so on and so forth. I think they did something for child poverty, and havn't managed to completely wreck the schools, but the armed forces will tell you how much they were loved under the New labour gvt, and it doesn't seem to have been much.

#130: Right now, the election isn't that close. He has something like a 5 point lead in the meaningless national poll. This is outside the margin of error. What's important though is that the electoral count projections have Obama winning with over 300 electoral votes. Even taking into account the uncertainties of election day, fivethirtyeight.com gives him an 88.1% chance of winning.

This doesn't count as close. During the primary season, I suggested that Clinton was misguided because she campaigned as if the rules for the primary were the same as the rules for the general election. i.e., winner take all. IMHO, she campaigned stupidly. However, if the primary campaign had ended up in an effective tie, she could salvage this. She might point out that if she'd won the states in the general election that she did during the primaries, she would have trounced Obama. That might be a tactic to argue for winning the candidacy in the event of a tie. [Note that she did eventually do this. It was the exercise in futility we all expected.]

I got roundly trounced for either changing the rules in the middle of the game or evaluating the candidates by meaningless measures. One poster was especially scathing suggesting metrics even more meaningless than hypothetical electoral count.

So, no, right now, the election is not close. The battleground states are mostly breaking for Obama. He's polling well in Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. He's in an effective tie in Ohio. McCain no long contests Michigan, closing off many possible scenarios for him to reach 270 EVs.

The election is a month away. Obama hasn't completely put McCain away, and McCain hasn't imploded himself yet. Obama still has work to do. However, he stands a far better chance of winning than McCain.

I, like you though, am amazed that 46% of people polled would vote for McCain. It makes me wonder what their criteria are.

#133: Which web browser are you using? Safari lets you resize the textarea. Firefox has an optional add-on for the same.

Measuring NHS performance is largely a question of choosing your yardstick, but there are tens of thousands more doctors and nurses and it's reasonable to believe that they must be doing something healingish with their time. Whether the money has all been well spent or wasted through PFIs is a different issue, but general health of the population has increased.

The armed forces have been generally screwed over by both parties in the last few decades. The awful SA80 rifle was a Conservative purchase (to sweeten the soon-to-be-privatised manufacturer) but Labour made the decision to overhaul it at great expense rather than ditching it at the earliest opportunity and buying something sane like the C7 or the G36. Bowman, Westland Apache, Merlin, Nimrod MRA4, Eurofighter - all horrible, but all legacy projects from the Conservatives.

The infantry, at least, are now getting some really good kit (PRR, Javelin, Minimi, GMG, Viking, Vector, Cougar), but I think that's largely because of the wars.

Clifton Royston @ 81 - I like those PP ads too. But, like I said somewhere else, I think anyone who needs to hear that will just look at the messenger and assume it's some kind of bizarre truth-twisting. It's so... outside the bounds of basic humanity, it's easy to disbelieve. (I figured it was some kind of distortion at first, and I'm inclined to believe that Palin eats puppies for breakfast. But I looked into it, and lo and behold - she really did. What a piece of work.)

Simply to look at the good stuff and then say it was the wars what did it overlooks the very odd split mindedness of the party, and I have no idea how it is so. I have no problem with extra drs and nurses, but the simple fact is that billions have been wasted on the PFI (look up Coventry for example) and the gvt deliberately made it clear that no other possibility was allowed. It was PFI or nothing. The point is that the two things are not linked- you don't recruit lots more personnel and get a free PFI project, they could have happily recruited more personnel and not done PFI like a sensible person.
So, New Labour- a very strange fish indeed, part fowl as well, but the two parts are forever pulling in opposite directions.

I quite understand that such tendencies would not be clear to many people for a year or two. But even uneducated little old me could see them before 2001, and oddly enough I have never voted Labour...
(And of course looking at old Steve Bell cartoons, they seem quite prescient)

Of course, we're also getting Palin in Greenville today the same day Michele Obama is in Jacksonville. I'll be interested in seeing how much press time both women get this afternoon...

Since both my wife and I are registered Republicans, we've only gotten their campaign literature trying to bolster their voting base. However, last weekend for the first time ever, we had volunteers knocking on doors encouraging everyone to register and making sure we knew where we voted. I told the second volunteer she was covering ground already covered by the first couple (both groups from the Democrats), and she thanked me and said she'd revise her maps...

You are leaving out fraud, fear-mongering, uncertainty, deceit, hatermongering, swindling (a term that massively applies to the neocons and their bootlickers such as McCain), phone jamming, rigged ballot, rigged balloting machines, voter registration rejection and removal of voters from the rolls which they can;t find out about until it's unremediable for the election, interference in voting such as directing would-be voters to inapplicable places for them to allegedly vote at, selectively delivering voting equipment causing hours of delays for would be voters who then either go home or are still lined up when the polls close, and all manner of other fraud, deceit, misguidance, misdirection, and general maleovolence.

"Fair" elections would have have Gore in the White House and Kerry in the White House, instead of two terms of the most vicious slime to have ever has his ass in the Presidency of the United States of America. Harding was merely incompetent and inept and Grant unable to recognize swindlers who pretended to be friends (they bilked him personally, in addition to looting the taxpayers....)

"Barack Obama, she told 8,000 fans at a rally here Monday afternoon, "launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist!" This followed her earlier accusation that the Democrat pals around with terrorists. "This is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America," she told the Clearwater crowd. "I'm afraid this is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country." The crowd replied with boos.

McCain had said that racially explosive attacks related to Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are off-limits. But Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol in an interview published Monday: "I don't know why that association isn't discussed more."

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

"The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience."

(When the Florida Republican Party leader tried to suggest to Palin to tone down her rhetoric, she responded by banning him from riding in her campaign planes.)

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/National%20News/Unleashed--Palin-makes-a-pit-bull-look-tame

Yes, and most of the Christians will, too. The people who think that way don't believe anyone outside their church will be saved. (I think if they're going to run the world, I'd rather not be saved. And Ghu probably has other plans.)

Is it a Hallowe'en influence, all the skeletons starting to rattle in the closets, and the ghosts and skeletons coming out of McCain's closets?

Meanwhile, what is the situation now with Troopergate?

Perhaps the smell of blood in the water is getting strong enough that the former colluders for the fascist-promoting politicians, are doing the turncoat and attack the former allies things, to avoid an perceived vindicative massacre if/when the fascists go down?

Is it de-Ba'athification House cleaning time, and anyone too closely associated with those on the skids and headed out the door and with the covered-over illegalities of the departing misadministation, afraid of Fury-like wrath and retribution?

One of my favorite notes from the Rolling Stone article was that McCain graduated 894 in a class of 899 at Annapolis. Time for a smart president for a change!

While that's certainly true, I've always taken the phrase 'can't be all bad' to be a slightly ironic way of saying "has at least one good trait." McCain cannot be utterly without virtues if he dislikes Weyrich, because disliking Weyrich is itself a virtue. This does not make him, overall, a good person by any stretch of the imagination. In my opinion people who are all bad do not exist, and failing to see any virtues in someone is either a failure of data or a failure to resist allowing ideology to distort data.

I'm certain that Margaret Thatcher must have, and Jesse Helms must have had, some virtues. I'm unable to see them because I'm blinded by their terrible crimes.

Why this matters: Because finding a single virtue in a person should not be viewed as redeeming them entirely. Only if their virtues outweigh their faults should they be considered a good person. Claiming that your enemy is completely without virtues is foolish, because it's easily refuted and makes people disinclined to listen to your other, sounder arguments. As you point out, making someone a cardboard villain makes you look silly.

I agree wholeheartedly with everything else in this comment.

heresiarch 131: I'm constantly amazed to hear that mentality described as "Pro-Israel." Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the End Times scenario end with all non-Christians, Israelis included, suffering horribly?

See, you're confusing Israel with the Jewish People. (A common error, especially around here.) Israel doesn't always act in the best interest of the Jews as a whole (pause for shocked gasps). Supporting Israel (in a military sense, as opposed to, say, supporting peace) is a strategic move designed to draw Armageddon closer. Building up terrible weapons on both sides of a conflict is a good way to bring about the End of Days, whether in the BOR sense or just in the sense of humanity being wiped out.

They don't actually care about Israel, that's true. But Israel often mistakes itself for the Jewish People as well, and they'll take anything they can get.

I've talked with Jews who don't mistake Israel for the Jewish People (and there probably are a lot of them). They're not backing McCain either.

Israel is the only country in the world where Jews have rights as the majority rather than a(n oft-despised and discriminated institutionally against) minority.

Theodore Herzl founded Zionism specifically as a result of the realization that he couldn't assimilate into European mainstream society--converting to Christianity would not have put him on a equal playing field with the born-Christians. And when he came to that conscious realization, he looked for and created a paradigm change--all the other large tribal affialitions had been pushing nationalism for having their own territory where they wouldn't be subjected to second-class citizen treatment and denial of right;, Herzl decided there should be one for Jews. Jerusalem--which has been majority Jewish throughout most of recorded historical-- and its environs wasn't the only part of the world looked at, part of the "Pale of Settlement" where a large fraction of the Jews in the world lived--Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, parts of Poland, etc., and were all massively discriminated against (40 year mandatory military service for Jewish males with continuing proselytization in the Russian Army, for one example; Cossacks rampaging through the streets skewering anything that moved riding hanging from one foot in a stirrup, according to the descriptions my mother and her sisters gave me of their mother's eyewitness view peering out through a window to outside; pogroms and blood libel, bans on participation in various activities and work, special taxes... etc.), and other places. The final decision was the Levant, where Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and number other localities had been in continuous occupation by Jews for at least as far back as the records went, with the historical ties and continuing presence.

It was a very strange feeling for me in Israel, to be in a country where the default religion was Jewish and the civil services arranged for the convenience of Jews rather than being inconveniencing to Jews, as is the situation here--civil offices in the USA are closed on Sunday, there are local votes on Saturday, and Sunday is regarded as a Day of Rest civil-wise here. Jewish holidays aren't vacation days, but Christmas is, and Easter being a Sunday, most people have the day off other than retail which got the Blue Laws that used to ban Sunday business, torpedoed, and the hospitality industry, and critical services people.

There are lots of countries where Islam is a majority religion and usually the state religion--oh, that was something else about Europe in Herzl's time, state religions... which contributed to the abusive treatment of Jews.

Meanwhile, here the in USA, the Christian Dominionists, to which Palin has affiliations, are determined to make their brand of Christianity a state religion.... as are various other evangelizing Christian denominations, which have made life miserable for non-Christians at the federal military academies, and various military bases, etc.

McCain's low finish at Annapolis is not entirely related to his intelligence, Laurie@151. A good part of that was his demerits for not following procedures/orders and being a (party animal) (maverick) [choose one, depending on your party affiliation].

One of the nicest places I've ever worked was run by fairly Orthodox Jews. It was very easy for me to get work hours, since I was willing to work Fridays and Saturdays, and having the High Holy Days off was a nice treat.

I'm not much on Blue Laws either... workers do need holidays and breaks, but a Blue Law isn't going to do much to get them for people. OSHA and knowing federal labor law has always done more for me.

Judging by McCain's slightly startled reaction, he clearly didn't anticipate that reaction, and McCain's in no way responsible for the utterances of anybody in his audience. But he must have some idea of how deeply this fear/outsider/other meme has spread. A tripartite strategy isn't needed.

Even now the media cuts him undeserved slack. You choose to target such words to describe your opponent to people like that and then are surprised by the reaction? Then why use?b> those terms? No, this is what he wants to happen. There large elements of belief and behavior in each of us here that he could characterize in such a way to these same people and get the same response. Remember there were some white people lynched too during that long century of lynch seasons in this nation post the Civil War.

His lynch mob mentality is also part and parcel of palin's displays.

Both of them are doing it. She doesn't flinch, not even the first time. This is who she is. You saw it at the gop nom con -- she reveled in bringing up the howls.

Love, C.

Constance, #162: the bloodthirsty mobs are both predictable and terrifying. The Republicans have nothing else left and in Palin they've found someone willing to reap all the hate they've been sowing for the past 25 years. I've been predicting violence on election day for some time--I was expecting anti-Latino violence in LA--but now it seems it may be more widespread and more general. May law and cooler heads prevail.

It's because there is a lot of Israel-bashing, it seems to come in for special abuse compared to other democracies where one religion is perceived as being more privileged than others--particularly considering that when "Saudi Arabia" or "Indonesia" or Kazakhistan, or Uzbekistan, or Libya, or Egypt, or Turkey, or Albania, Malaysia, or Nigeria, or Sudan, or Somalia, or Morocco, or Algeria, Japan, the various European countries... get mentioned, I don't see the same identification and implicit religion-civil bashing going on... nor do I see Catholic bashing generally when mentioning the Vatican or Vatican-bashing when mentioning Catholics other than when discussing something which specifically involves Papal Bulls or other policy promulgated on Catholics from the Vatican, even though the Vatican is fully a monarchical theocracy.

I also don't see Christian bashing when condemning the USA/US Government for something unless it's from a particular denomination or alliance of them attempting to impose their religion on the rest of the country and the world (in which case the denomination(s)/their leaders and the promulgating politicians get bashed), or USA bashing when bashing a particular collection of Christians who live in the USA (unless the conditions immediate above are involved).

That is, there is an identification of Jews and Israel, however, LEGALLY, is it is significantly less intense than England and the Church of England, Indonesia and Islam, Turkey and Islam, most of the USA and Christianity (Christmas -is- a federal holiday and Sundays state, local, and federal offices are all closes and the voting is never on Sundays...), Iraq and Islam, Iran and Islam... all of which have elected governmental official running the countries.

Islam's holiest two sites are in Saudi Arabia, and there are sites sacred to various branches of Islam in Iraq and other countries... yet, again, the instant those countries get mentioned, I don;t getting see people popping up with "remember, the country and the religion that most of (in the case of Saudi Arabia, I think it's all of....) the citizens are, are NOT the same thing!"

And my perspective, again, is that there are two main reasons, one of them much more overwhelming than that other:
#1, Israel, again, is the ONLY country in the world that is majority Jewish
#2, the minor reason, all the Jewish religious sites are in or within proximity of Jerusalem--and the most important of those sites not only were completely inaccessible to Jews from 1948-1967, some of them REMAIN inaccessible. Please name a holy-to-Muslims site in Saudi Arabia, which Jews or Christians have access to, but not Muslims, or a similiar situation in a country that's has Christianity as state religion which allows people of other religions access but not Christians to their holy sites....

Her coat of arms has Sir Isaac Newton, an Admiral and the motto "Cherish Freedom". That's a good thing surely?

Yep. All kinds of horrible villains have redeeming qualities. Frex, the German army in WW2 was full of capable, determined, brave men fighting for an evil cause, as was the Confederate army in the US Civil War. People often get terribly angry when you point this out, as it's more comfortable to imagine your enemies as without any redeeming qualities.

McCain no doubt has many redeeming qualities, and so does Sarah Palin. They're just terribly unsuited to be president, is all. That doesn't mean they're bad people (though their behavior in this campaign and before (especially in Palin's case) suggests the possibility rather strongly), just that they're the wrong folks for the job.

The millenialist types may support Israel because they think they will bring about the End Times and the return of Jesus. But if you don't believe in any of that stuff (and surely, the leadership of Israel, AIPAC, etc., don't), then it's not too worrying.

I'm chilled by the report of Palin's hate-mongering, and enraged by reports of the go-bash-some-Muslims DVD. But it will be a good cold day in hell before I'm in favor of having political campaigns prosecuted for advocating even evil ideas. I'd like at least an even chance of not having the country of my birth turn into a nightmare state.

Among other things, consider who has appointed the people in charge of the Justice Department right now, and how likely it is that those political hacks would launch investigations against anything a Republican was doing. (They would be far too busy with the interrogation of the last of the Moveon.org holdouts.)

What the f--k is going to be left of the Republican party when this election is over? They have driven away a great many of their own supporters, betrayed most of their good ideas, and led the country and the world into several disasters. Now, they're running a campaign so nasty it almost can't help but backfire in big ways.

If there is anything resembling adult supervision in the Republican party, they need to find some way to reassert themselves and put a brake on this, because along with potentially doing horrible damage to the country, they're risking the near destruction of their party. Now, they didn't assert themselves when Bush and Rove were doing their worst for the country, and a lot of them have been pushed out of any position of power. Probably, they either can't or won't--most likely, such adult supervision as they once had has all been driven out.

But the worst case here is very, very fkng bad for the country and even worse for their party.

Two likely explanations suggest themselves from Teresa's earlier comments:

a. Palin is narcisistic and McCain is unable or unwilling to check her. She's doing stuff she doesn't know or care is insanely destructive and risky, and he's not stopping her. (My guess is that McCain and Palin at the top of the ticket means there is no adult supervision.)

b. Some folks in the Republican party deeply fear loss of control over the Justice department, and know that when the Democrats come to power and all the books are opened to them, a whole lot of them are going to prison. They fear that enough to take insane, destructive risks with their country in order to hang onto the white house.

Did they ever fix the problems Obama was having with security and the secret service? If I recall correctly, his protection was less than optimal.

It looked to me like the security was good. But that's anecdotal, and from someone who is very, very far from a security expert.

Over here(I'm an Israeli) everyone who's in the mainstream publicly accept that talking with the Palestinians will probably be what solves the conflict, including people who opposed Oslo with all their might like Netanyahu.The main arguments are "how much?" and whether we can trust the current crop of Palestinian leadership if they sign an agreement(Arrafat has given us good reason to question this), OTOH there seems to be an opposite move in Palestinian public debate, and I really hope that's just an illusion.

I personally think that Obama may do much good, if he's elected and chooses to try and intervene.If the more militant members of our government don't feel they have Washington's unconditional support it will probably shut them up some.

As to the Jews/Israel question:Israel was created, basically, so that Jewish refugees will have one place they can be assured of having shelter(and before you tout Britain and the US check their WW2 records)- in short, if something *real bad* happens and all the French Jews have to flee for their lives they have one place they know they can turn to.One of my friends characterized Israel once as "having the national equivalent of PTSD", and I don't think she's much wrong.

In my experience, it's largely an attempt to deflect accusations of anti-Semitism. People about to criticise Israel like to make clear that they are not criticising Jews, for obvious reasons. I should not like to lay every crime of the Israeli government and military on the head of every Jew (nor indeed the crimes of the American government on the head of every American, the UK government on the head of every Briton, etc).

You seem to be claiming that criticism of Israel (even Israel-bashing) entails Jew-bashing. I suppose it sometimes does. However, citing my name and comment number implies that *I* have done some Jew-bashing, when in fact I have done nothing of the sort at any point. Please either back off that implied claim or back it up with quotes, because your (implied) accusation of Jew-bashing is extremely offensive to me.

In other words, you're really pissing me off now. If you were just using my comment as a jumping-off point for one of your rants, please say so. Otherwise you'd better be able to point to something, anything, in my comments that amounts to Israel-bashing or Jew-bashing.

And incidentally, your claim that everyone just assumes that Saudi Arabia and Islam are equivalent entities is too absurd to bother discussing. Certainly it's a matter of some distress to Moslems of my acquaintance that the repressive Saudi state controls access to Mecca and Medina, and no one here would make such a patently silly claim.

Neil 166: Her coat of arms has Sir Isaac Newton, an Admiral and the motto "Cherish Freedom". That's a good thing surely?

I can't imagine why you would expect me to be rational on this topic, since I have already stated my inability to be fair to the Milk-Snatcher. For example, my reaction to her coat of arms is a) she must mean something different by 'cherish', 'freedom', or both than I or any sane person would mean, and b) how DARE she use Sir Isaac on her coat of arms!

It's a lost cause. Give it up. :-)

albatross 167: Frex, the German army in WW2 was full of capable, determined, brave men fighting for an evil cause, as was the Confederate army in the US Civil War. People often get terribly angry when you point this out, as it's more comfortable to imagine your enemies as without any redeeming qualities.

I agree, and this is one of the most distressing things about human beings. When I find it in myself, it's even more distressing. I think the deaths that occurred on the Confederate side are every bit as tragic as those that occurred on the Union side, and worst of all is the bitterness that persists between the two to this very day.

____ 169: What the f--k is going to be left of the Republican party when this election is over?

Hopefully, nothing. I think the GOP needs to either drastically reform or be utterly driven from American politics. I prefer the latter, personally. I'm just not sure who would be the left in this country once the Democrats are acknowledged to be the right.

...when the Democrats come to power and all the books are opened to them, a whole lot of them are going to prison.

Well, I don't think they can stop the Democratic takeover, and I hope you and they are right about a lot of DOJ people going to prison. Some cleaning needs to be done. I'm tired of living in a country run by a criminal conspiracy.

Frequently then, these 'rallies' became mobs that torched neighborhoods, beat up whoever they encountered, and lynched others.

It was the Depression. Lots of time on lots of peoples' hands. No jobs, no need to get up in the morning, not enough money for booze or other entertainment, and certainly not educated.

This is starting to resemble all too much the accounts of these times I've read about. No state was free of them either. The first accounts I ever read were in microfilmed North Dakota newspapers.

Love, C.

I was NOT accusing you of conflation! I was pointing out that generally there are these distinctions that I keep seeing/hearing popping up between Jews and Israel, that I rarely see made for other countries and the majority religions in them.

I didn't/don't have the time and attention at the moment to point out that I was concerned that what I was writing was going to get read at first order level where I was lumping in a bunch of diverse issues together, regarding other countries--Saudi Arabia the theocratic state religion monarchy (which however does not ban Shi'ites, Alawites, etc., from Mecca and Medina--Muslims have access to those places, others.... Sir Richard Burton committed cold-blooded murder to prevent his own death, for being a non-Muslim going to Mecca), Turkey the becoming-less-non-sectarian democracy, etc.,--my points were that generally there are not the disclaimers present that have the disclaimer linkages put in for Israel.

The surrounding countries' promotion of Protocols of Zion hatemongering doesn't help things--some of them at the same time condemn Israel and not Jews, while also pushing hatemongering stereotypes of Jews. And they almost all universally condemn "Zionism" while not acknowledging the exodus of Jews from them to what today is Israel, of more than 700,000 people, for institutionalized mistreatment up to and including mass murder versus the hope and aspirations to live in a country with full citizenship, rights, and not being a mistreated rights-denied minority (Islamic Law treats non-Muslims differently than Muslims, giving primacy to Muslims and taxing non-Muslims at higher rates, restricting opportunities, imposing social differentiations making it obvious that the non-Muslims are present on sufferance, etc. The situation with Christian countries in the Middle Ages for non-Christians, or unapproved of denominations, was even worse.... which was why Turkey was a much more desirable place for Jews to relocate to from Spain, than Christian Europe....)

The bottom line is that Israel, again, is the ONLY country in the entire world, where Jews have rights as other than a minority, and where if there were the situation of national hysteria, it wouldn't be Jews as minorities (and other minorities usually face the same types of discrimation and abuse and subjectivity to being made targets/scapegoats of....) who found themselves under attack and the victims of pogroms, riots, bigotry, intolerance, etc.

AND I AM NOT JUSTIFYING HYSTERIA AND ABUSE! I am saying that if/when it happens, it gets directed at minorities... and only in Israel, are Jews not minorities. 2500+ years of abusive treatment by other cultures with majorities, is a lot longer track record than e.g. democracy has of being in existence (Greek democracy was overrated, only white adult males had it, most of the population consisted of slave who had no vote etc., and of foreigners who in Athens were barred from citizenship because they weren't born Athenians....)

Xopher, and indeed everyone, remember that these are tense times, both inside the community and outwith it. Please be unlike wizards*; be clear in what you say and patient with each other.

----
* I used that quote about Microsoft Visual Studio Team Test today, because its wizards are both of those things, and bloody useless to boot.

Got something against Bakshi's Avatar?

About 75% of the reason I'm stoked to vote for Obama is not to vote for Obama, not to vote against McCain, but to vote against the Republican base, and particularly the racist Republican base (which I take to be about 1/2 of 25% of the population). I will vote with the specific intent of making their vicious little brains explode at the idea of a black U.S. president.

Pie!

Double Pie!

Ernq gb Puvyqera ibgr
Ibgr
Naq arire ohl nalguvat sebz n zna jub'f fryyvat srne.

---
What I mind most about the polarization is that I can no longer hear the words "I'm voting for McCain" without thinking very rude things about the speaker. Even if I force myself to stay quiet, I still have the conversation in my head about how unbelievable stupid and/or cynically evil that person is. I don't like thinking that about people -- at least not on one piece of evidence -- but right now, that one piece is sufficiently damning in my mind. And yet I know I have friends and family planning to vote for him.

There are some other reasons why people have fixated on voting for the more-interested-in-getting-laid-and-boozing-than-in-more-than-marginally-passing-grades parasite (to the tune of "he can survive on the old man's money," "he does real well on the rich wife's money"). I don't say they are good in my opinion reasons...
1. Inertia
2. Inertia especially of mental processes
3. Big Lie inculcation and osmosis adoption to where it's a given... (chorus of "Credo...")
4. Being bathed with environmental influences promoting McCain/deprecating Obama
5. Overexposure to unfairness doctrine broadcast and cablecast media, and print media, particularly Rupert Murdoch-makes-William-Randolph -Hearst-look-honorable fascist infotainment (add the Sinclair media empire to that, also CBS-Paramount-Viacom, NBC-GE, ABC-Disney...)
6. Lack of fairness doctrine policy, media, and access to distribution information.... the debasing of McCain opponents and critics of the current incumbent administration, involves the actual things that McCain, Rove, Libby, various Cabinet members, gagorder imposer and censoring and report rewriting political officer appartchiks (not to mention the corrupt greedy appointees and Mike Browns etc.), and the misadministration and its reach have done, that sound like stuff out of a really badly written novel full of stuff that makes Breslins The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight seem like everyday cheerful honest competence...
7. Inability to unsuspend the suspension of disbelief and inability to apply credulity filters-- in some cases due to a lack of information that parses as valid/credible (or lack of getting such information), in some cases due to being blind by desensitivization, and especially, due to:
8. Emotional structures which are threatened by having to consider/reconsider that McCain and Palin might be other than honorable and desirable and appropriate....
a) Remember Anita Bryant with her anti-homosexual screed and campaign, who it turned out was using that as emotion dump from marriage gone sour, and trying desperately to pretend to herself how wonderful her life was and how Important her values of homosexual intolerance was, because that's what the narrowminded bigoted values community her husband and she were in in her delusionary view of Real World Importance and Reality? When the last vestiges of her pretense to clinging to a failing/failed marriage and delusions of continued marriage to the fellowed died and the divorce was inevitable or in process, she stuck her head up, looked around, and admitted that she was confused and perhaps could be wrong about her view of homosexuality as vile and evil and despicable and a vile menace to civilization.
b) Membership in a community such as a giant superchurch like the one that Ted Haggerty hypocrite ran, or led by someone otherwise decreeing the community values shall be... which regard McCain and Palin as Upholders of America etc. etc. etc. and Obama and Democrats as unghodly menace... or which have fascist values and want the current wealth distribution status to continue on as it's been going....
c) having to suck up to the boss or someone else who's indicated which way to vote, or else suffering loss of job, excommunication, shunning, etc.
...
d) having to face the possibility that one has been a complete and utter fool/idiot/gull/chump, and who likes to admit they've been taking in by swindlers, for years?!
e) seeing a personal gain in some way or expecting one
f) single issue voter...

Okay, I'll take off the tinfoil hat now.

I suppose I could avoid the problem by listening on the radio.

"This is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America," she [Palin] told the Clearwater crowd.

I should hope not!

Wait a second, why was Palin speaking in Clearwater, Florida, of all places? Were there any celebrity supporters in attendance? (Note that I'm trying to ask this question in such a way that does not unduly alert the Google indexing spider; that may be an ultimately futile attempt, however.)

I should think Palin's religious pals do not think at all well of the group you are alluding to. After all, they're competitors in the mind-control cult business.

"Only a shadow never sees the sun."

10:11-ish: McCain announces that Teddy Roosevelt is his hero

Okay....

There are some crowds that apparently believe that whatever Israel wants, Israel should have, regardless of that want's connection to sanity; the thought of POTUS actually talking to the Iranian leadership has probably gotten some of them past the foaming-at-the-mouth stage (to dirty action). It's even possible that some of them believe McCain would be stupider than Bush, whose administration reportedly recently told Israel that it would not have U.S. backing if it attacked Iran. (Granted, this could just mean that Bush wants to pick his time -- but McCain is so impetuous he'd probably follow such an attack if it happened, regardless of how it would bleed the U.S.)

Paula: Jerusalem--which has been majority Jewish throughout most of recorded historical

Can you cite a plausible source for this? FWLIW, Wikipedia disagrees, pointing to several periods of legal bars and a tiny fraction when it was taken by the Crusaders. I have a similar opinion of many of your facts.

According to Miss Manners, unless one is royalty, the eldest living holder of a name is First Middle Last, while the next eldest is First Middle Last Jr., and the next younger is First Middle Last 3rd (or III, if they insist) and so on. As the elders drop out, the youngers bump up a place, like it or not.

The only time anyone is 'Sr.' is when the eldest dies leaving a widow. She would be socially Mrs. First Middle Last Sr. "to distinguish her from her son's wife" who is simply Mrs. First Middle Last.

It's apparently a good time to gift one's stationery down the tree, which is why I recall this stuff to begin with. I'm unaccountably fascinated by engraved stationery.

Constance @62:
It's not what they said that's important; it's the target demographic.

P J Evans @98:
Jews are traditionally Republicans because the Democrats are perceived as not being willing to immediately jump in should Israel be attacked. (There are so many things wrong about this perception that I can't possibly list them all — but start with the fact that Iran as a problem for Israel was caused by Cheney's pet war.)

George Smiley @183:
This was a dream election almost from the start: no matter what, either a woman or a black was going to be on the ballot in November. (fondly imagining narrow heads exploding)

Pardon?

87 percent of Jews vote Democrat

This reminds me of Ed Gorman's mystery series about detective Sam McCain, set in the late 1950. One of his buddies is complaining about Kennedy being a Catholic and how we all know what goes on in the basement of catholic churches. When McCain points to the other guy that he used to be a Catholic, and that he had been an altar boy, and he had seen the church's basement, the guy retorts that he was meant the subbasement.

Jerusalem--which has been majority Jewish throughout most of recorded historical

(The mumbles are because it depends on whose numbers you use.)

Hmmm, I'd better specify that in my will.

As for the thread where people are invited to mock Cindy McCain, I think I'll pass on that; it's useless except if you think that preaching to the choir is a good thing, and less than useless because such mocking has the potential of damaging the credibility of Making Light, in my opinion.

Except for George Herbert Walker Bush (yes, Bush senior was legitimately elected) James Earl Carter, Richard Milhous Nixon and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The resistance to describing someone as all bad isn't just that characters like that are (might be?) bad art. There's also a possibly sound feeling that unrestrained hatred is a very bad thing

On the other hand, there certainly are very bad people, whether they have a few minor good points or not. I don't know whether it works to hang on to the idea that giving in to full hatred is just so dangerous that you mustn't, no matter how bad your enemies are. Can this refusal be driven by abstract decency rather than specifics about the person?

Topic change: There's something about Palin's quote "I'm afraid this is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country." that leaves me feeling as though she's setting up the idea that anyone who thinks America is imperfect is on a path to being a terrorist. Does it hit anyone else that way?

Ottoman Empire--records exist showing Jerusalem majority Jewish
Roman Empire until a certain future emperor marched in and converted Jerusalem into whatever the Roman city name was--majority Jewish... and even then, after the invasion and conversion, apparently the legal prohibition and the actual state of affairs, differed...
Crusader kingdom-=-the city was majority Jewish until the Crusaders sacked it.
Saladin when kicking out the Crusaders, actually invited Jews to repopulate the city....

Other evidence--records from the Cairo Genizah of tribute trains to Jerusalem, from the Fustat community of Jews, because of the taxes and such on Jews in Jerusalem--for as long as the diaspora has existed, there has been money sent by Jews of the diaspora to the Levant for support of the Jewish communities there. It was one of the grudges that the Greek community in Alexandria had in Roman time, that the Jews of Alexandria were sending money they earned out of the area to Jerusalem to support Jews there, instead of spending it in the local economy... one of the results was the near-annihilation of the Jewish communities in Alexandria in massacres of extremely large numbers of people. (The main legacy of Judaism in Alexandria, ironically, is the influence of Philo of Alexandria on Christianity.... his influence on Judaism terminated with the annihilation of the large Alexandrian Jewish community).

I know that, but McCain apparently doesn't.
Actually, any more, a lot of people seem to keep the wrong number, because they're more comfortable with it. (In my family, this kind of naming tends to get you called 'big' or 'little' as appropriate, age notwithstanding.)

Not only that, but even socially: when the Sr was fairly notable for all sorts of civic and political stuff, it's useful to the Jr to be able to differentiate. People will still be referring to the Sr thirty years after his death.

IOW, Miss Manners is full of it, I do believe.

And it's not as if there weren't royal precedent. Imagine the state of Henry-ness in England, if when every time one died, the number changed.

Not that it's really her rule; she doesn't make these things up, just communicates them.

No, really.

Just as I'm sure it was a compounding psychological blow to return from captivity after five years and realize how much the world had changed in your absence, I can only imagine the trauma of the reality slowly breaking through to you now.

It's not my place to blame you for being captured by Bush and Rove in 2000, and under their torture anyone would have broken. Any of us might have come to identify with our captors.

Any of us might have given in to Stockholm syndrome, John. Just like you did.

The guilt is about to hit you like a hammer, I know, but you need not be ashamed to ask for help. Your government employee insurance will cover the best psychiatric care so that you can reclaim your dignity and live out the last of your sunset years in peace.

Ta da!

(BTW, that was the first time MarkR has commented here. Driveby?)

He is a 9/11 conspiracy debunker.

I think I've been reading too much fanfic; suffice it to say that my first thought was not about mooseburgers!

There's something about Palin's quote (...) that leaves me feeling as though she's setting up the idea that anyone who thinks America is imperfect is on a path to being a terrorist. Does it hit anyone else that way?

...it occurs to me that this might be "accusing your opponent of your own fault". Which in this case is downright terrifying....

What the heck does that make us to them?

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/flights.asp

Unindicted co-conspirators. "Have a nice day, Citizen!"

As for myself, I like the TV show.

They both have a Double U in their initials :-)

Palin pre-empts state report, clears self in probe

Apparently, in an attempt to head off the embarrassment of the abuse of power scandals, Palin's campaign team have taken the initiative of proclaiming Palin innocent of all wrong-doing.

There's unbiased investigation for you.

The official report is out, stating that Palin abused the power of her office for personal ends.

I was pretty much expecting that part. But there was something in there that surprised even my low expectations [additions in brackets mine]:

MS. BYRNE [executive secretary to Monegan, the commissioner of public safety later fired by Palin]: I think that he [Monegan] was disappointed with the legislative decision about budgeting for public safety, and when he came back I asked him how the meetings went, the hearings, et cetera. He said that it was basically very disheartening at the direction that the legislative session had gone because we were not going to receive the funding that we would need.
MR. BRANCHFLOWER [the investigator]: And was there mention made of Michael Wooten in the context of this conversation?
MS. BYRNE: Yes.
MR. BRANCHFLOWER: What did he tell you?
MS. BYRNE: That because of the fact that we still had Wooten in our employee, that we would continue to have the problems with budgeting.

In other words, *someone* was willing to monkey with the budget for the Department of Public Safety (which does exactly what it says on the tin) in order to pressure the commissioner to get that trooper fired.

I'm also a friend of Scraps DeSelby and was here checking on his condition. Nice to meet you.

According to Wikipedia? Wow!

McCain's involvement with Keating was deep, close, and long-standing.

a) That's not what I said. McCain's involvement with the Keating Five was minimal, not with Keating himself. He severed his connection with Keating as soon as he found out there were criminal charges involved, unlike DeConcini, Glenn and Cranston. The Ethics Committee found him the least culpable member of the group. The Wikipedia article discussing this is heavily footnoted, and can thus be checked for accuracy.

It takes a bit of fortitude to break with someone whom you considered a friend.

b) Apparently Posters can quote Wikipedia to establish a fact or set of facts as true (the press' dismissal of the Obama-Ayers connection), but Responders get snarked at for citing the same source? And insulted for pointing out the apparent inconsistency?

Is Wikipedia a reliable source or not, or only when it agrees with one?

His choices in advisers and campaign officials say he's still having ethical problems.

And yes, his current choice of advisers tell us he hasn't learned to pick friends more carefully. Piece on CrooksAndLiars today about some of his lobbyist campaign officials who also lobby for Russia. It points out that he's a staunch anti-Communist, still...

Maybe it's not such a coincidence that states that support him are called "red" states?

For the other 530 members of the House and Senate.... there was less involvement (elstwise we'd be talking about the Keatig 6, or 50, or, what have you).

So I think defending him as the least crooked member of that group is praising with, not so faint, damns.