MORE SENSELESS ACTS OF BLOGGERY

ITEM: The Obama administration is seeking a law allowing law enforcement to interrogate terrorism suspects without informing them of their Miranda rights.

Why? Well, if you ask General Eric Holder, it’s because “interrogators needed greater flexibility to question terrorism suspects”, because fighting The Terrrorz isn’t about who you are, but who you know. Also:


Okay. General Holder didn’t actually say it like that. But the spirit was there.

I’ve posted stuff before on Mirandaphobia, why we have limitations on police power in the first place, and this bizarre tendency of Republicans to insist we treat all terrorists as though they’re necromancer demons whom no prison can hold instead of the maladroit punk-ass dingbats they are.

Those posts remain in effect.

But it’s still infuriating that the Obama crew is buying into the Mirandaphobia meme ... though sadly not surprising, as I’ve also blogged before about the Obama admin’s tendency to validate much of George W Bush’s poor civil rights record. I mean, seriously, we might as well have elected John McCain at this rate for all the "change" we're getting.

The only thing that would make this whole thing weirder would be if Glenn Beck actually agreed with me on the Miranda ...

Oh.

Well, that’s awkward.

Arrest that man,

This is dF

In case you haven’t heard:



Wow. 349-147 (give or take Georgia, Missouri and North Carolina, who are still counting as I type this). And as a bonus prize, solid controlling gains in Congress for the Demos. And seven new governorships for good measure. Prompting my favorite election joke: “The good news is the Republicans lost. The bad news is the Democrats won.”

Ha ha.

In fairness, though, the GOP had it coming, for well-documented reasons that need not be repeated here. If you have to ask, you probably voted for McCain. Frankly, they should have lost by an even bigger margin.

Speaking of which (and here is where I start jabbering at the TV again, so you might as well skip to the next post), the next phase of the election will be the right-wing OMG freakout as they realize that America just elected al Qaeda’s Kenya bureau chief and that by this time next year they’ll be living in the Gay Muslim Socialist Mexican Republic Of Allah (GMSMRA), where gay marriage is mandatory (Arizona, Florida), Christianity is punishable by death, Spain is the official language and the tax rate is something like 98%.

I’m exaggerating. I hope. But you’ll notice that Obama’s “landslide” victory was a much closer race in the pop vote. Something like 46% of the country voted for McCain – that’s around 55 million people. And a good chunk of them by their own proud admission voted for McCain because they think Obama is Teh Terrorz. They will not go quietly.

Just you watch. You thought talk radio was paranoid back in the mid-90s when Clinton ran his secret cocaine-funded real estate scams while his fleet of black helicopters transported the bodies of people he had “silenced” to secret airfields where unregistered C-130 cargo planes collected them and air-dropped them into a mass grave somewhere in Indonesia? Ha ha, Jim. The Obama fantasies will make Hillbillary Clinton look like John Wayne. As far as they’re concerned, McCain is the President of Real America and they will serve him, not Osama bin Laden’s personal butler.

Meanwhile, Obama will have his work cut out for him trying to clean up Junior Bush’s mess. Those of you hoping he’ll make good on his “Change” plank will be disappointed. He is not the American Jesus you’ve been waiting for, the recession is inevitable and the troops will not be home any time soon. And at least one state that voted for him (Florida) also amended its constitution to make marriage for heterosexuals only in the interest of national security. California looks as if it’s going to go the same way ditto. John McCain’s home state certainly did.

Bipartisanship!

Yes. Homophobic fuckwits. Call that change? Cos I don’t.

On the other hand, Michigan, South Dakota, Colorado and Massachusetts approved medical marijuana initiatives (at least until Donald Wildmon personally sues every state govt and beats activist judges with Bibles until they declare the referendums unconstitutional).

Progress!

Well, no matter. Rome wasn’t burned in a day. It took us over 200 years to elect a black dude President. It’ll probably be another hundred before Americans can handle the idea of a gay president (let alone – OMG! – a gay black president!).

Either way, it’s good to have Obama at the helm. He’s not just the first Non-Old-White-Guy president – he’s a reincarnation of the Horatio Alger mythology that defined the American Dream for the first half of the 20th Century before it was beaten to death by Joe McCarthy and Vegas casino enforcers in the 1950s or thereabouts.

Or is that laying things on too thick?

Okay then, let's say he’s the first post-Boomer president whose political views don’t ultimately hinge on whether Vietnam was a good or bad idea. That’s a good thing. He’s more in tune with the modern world than McCain ever was. And if he doesn’t accomplish anything else in the next four years, he’s already accomplished one of the most important items on his checklist – convincing the world to see America as a country they can work with and look up to instead of a country to fear and despise.

Believe it or not,

This is dF

#####

EDITED TO ADD [11/6]: The votes are in. California (which said Yes We Can to Obama) said "No You Can't" to gay marriage. Res ipsa loquitur.

Well, it’s almost time for the deal to go down, and I’m pretty sure that we all know who we wanted to vote for like eight whole months ago, but just in case the undecideds really are undecided and not just people who don’t want to say who they’re voting for in case they back the wrong horse, here’s something to help you make up yr mind: the Fafblog interview with John McCain.

And so on.

FUN FACT: Fafblog is also the blog that wrote the greatest argument in favor of Sarah Palin:

DISCLAIMER: If McCain/Palin win because I posted this, I’m sorry. It seemed really funny at the time.

Choose and lose,

This is dF

ITEM [via drhoz  and dinopollard ]: Ashley Todd, a McCain-Palin campaign volunteer in Pittsburgh, tells police she was robbed at an ATM by a ”large black man” who began beating her after seeing a John McCain bumper sticker on her car. For good measure he carved a backwards letter "B" in her cheek. “B” for “Barack”, she said.

Turns out she made the entire thing up, and the “B” was self-inflicted. She has a history of mental problems, they say.

Now, I know people are tempted to paint with a broad brush here and say, “O those insane Republicans!” But that wouldn’t be fair. Sure, every conservative blog on the planet initially believed every word of it (because Matt Drudge broke the story, and Matt is never, EVER wrong), but as details emerged even Michelle Malkin was saying, “Well, now wait just a minute here ...” (even though she went on to claim that actually liberals do this kind of stuff, like, all the time).

Besides, it’s not like young Republicans habitually beat themselves up and then claim they were attacked by Liberals. It only happens like twice every election cycle.

Still, the real story here is how several news organizations reported it as fact without checking up on it. CNN – which didn’t report the story initially and frankly is acting all smug about it – has a surprisingly good summary of this. Notice Hugh Hewiitt at the end talking bullshit.


It’s also worth mentioning that while I don’t for one moment believe McCain would have personally approved something like this, McCain’s spokesperson in Pennsylvania jumped all over the story and gave a more incendiary version of what happened than even Todd did.

Oops!

KDKA, the TV station that got the quotes, has since removed them from its web site, but Talking Points Memo still has them, if yr interested.

Anyway, the real crime here is not the hoax itself, but that it was exploited in the name of sensationalism, race baiting and/or political gain.

The weirdest response, incidentally, came from John Moody, executive VP of Fox News:


Sure. Because for all you know, it was Obama who ordered the hit.

Of course, Moody also said,  “If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.”

Well, gosh, I wonder whose fault that is?

Stop the press,

This is dF

ITEM [via the ever-vigilant lorilori ]: You’ve probably seen this, but just in case you were out mowing the lawn or something when this came over the wire, this is worth repeating:


Well, of course Bachmann has always been nuts. And I suppose it’s good news that calling for loyalty tests for Congress is not viewed favorably these days.

The thing is, we’ve been here before, from General John Ashcroft’s insistence that dissent is (kinda sorta don’t make me say it) treason to conservatives demanding the execution of Bill Keller.

More importantly, it’s not just about some lone dingbat Congressperson. Bachmann was basically riffing on Sarah Palin’s “I likes the Pro-America parts of America” b/w “Obama hates America because he thinks it needs fixing and pals around with Terrorists” line. It’s pretty hard to miss the message there, especially when you apply the Junior Bush Either/Or view of the world that Palin favors: Pro-Obama = Pro-Democrat = Anti-America = Pro-Taliban (or, you know, whoever).

And her ticket is pulling at least 40% of the vote. And at least some of them are people like this:


I'm just saying.

This is not yr country,

This is dF

You may or may not have heard that Christopher Buckley – son of William F – has endorsed Obama over McCain, and that he was forced to quit his post at the National Review – which William Buckley founded – as a result.

Both his columns explaining why he’s voting Democrat for the first time in his life and why he quit NR are worth reading – not just because of his eloquent and sensible arguments against McCain and for Obama, but because of his spot-on assessment of the state of both NR and the GOP:


He also has some choice words for NR readers who sent him all that vitrolic hate mail who accuse him of betraying his father’s ideals:

Indeed. I grew up watching Buckley on Firing Line, and while I didn’t always agree with him, I’d never accuse him of being dull or an idiot (mostly). Who else would title a collection of letters he sent to irate NR readers Cancel Your Own Goddamn Subscription?

But people like him (and his son, and people like PJ O’Rourke) are few and far between in these days where where political discourse (at least in the media) has devolved from reasoned and civil (if animated and a little heated) to name-calling and cries of “Traitor!”

And that’s just the dingbats in John McCain’s audience. Official GOP spokespeople are running off the goddamn end of the Earth with the “Obama is Teh Terrors” number, from robocalls saying “Obama pals around with the TERRORIST Bil Ayers” to the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party saying Obama and bin Laden "both have friends that bombed the Pentagon" (though he now claims he was just parroting Limbaugh, as if that makes it okay).

To say nothing of things like this classy number from the Sacramento County Republican Party:



Would Bill Buckley approve? I doubt it. But then he’s one of those elitist intellectuals that Republicans claim to hate on general principle. Ironic, no?

Stop making sense,

This is dF

Now I shall bore you with my political views. Aren’t you lucky?

As an international man of mystery, I am often asked by local friends and colleagues, “So, who do you support in the presidential election?” I will officially answer this question now.

I don’t normally endorse candidates, if only because I don’t care for either the Republican or Democratic Party. Truth be told, the last time I liked a major party candidate was 1992. That’d be Bubba Clinton. By 1996, I was voting independent. Make of that what you will. 

So much for ancient history.

Here in 2008, regular readers will have probably worked out that I’m in the Obama camp. And they’d be right. But I should explain why, because it’s not what yr thinking. You see, it's not about the issues. It's about this:



FIVE DEF SUPERFICIAL REASONS TO BACK BARACK

1. He’s young.
He’s only four years older than me, actually. That means he was molded outside of the Baby Boomer politics that have dominated the country since Vietnam. More to the point, that also means he is far more likely to be in touch with the modern world. I want a president who understands the world around him. John McCain doesn’t even have a computer. Who wants someone like that in charge in the Interwub Age?

2. He’s only been in Washington two years.
Inexperienced? Good. That means he’s more likely to think outside the machine and have fresh approaches. And don’t point to Junior Bush as an example of the dangers of inexperience. Junior’s problem wasn’t inexperience. His problem was being a goddamn delusional waterhead who let his equally waterheaded family pals loot the store before running it into the ground.

3. He’s elite.
Yr damn right I want the President to be smarter and more GQ than the average American. President Sixpack, my lily-white ass.

4. Conservatives will totally freak if he wins.
Frankly, there’s no better reason to vote for him. Which brings us to ...

5. I will never, EVER vote Republican under any circumstances as long as they keep portraying themselves as the Irrational Flag-Waving Heterosexual Xenophobic Jesus Party.
Seriously. Consider that eight years ago, McCain was the most level-headed person in the GOP (relatively speaking), and he had to drop that and suck up to the lunatic fringe to better his chances of winning. And that was BEFORE he selected Sarah Palin to secure the Moose Eating Fundamentalist Dingbat Vote. No thanks, I'd rather have inept, bumbling tax-and-spend Democrats run the country.

DISCLAIMER: None of the above is meant to infer that Obama will be a perfect president, or even a good one. For all his potential qualities, FactCheck proves regularly that he’s a politician who’s not above distortions and lies to beat the opposition. I fully expect to be disappointed by him, if for no other reason that Junior Bush has fucked up the country so badly that it will probably take two or three presidential terms worth of unpopular decisions to fix. Either way, I’m not convinced by many of Obama's ideas. And forget all his talk about changing Washington. He won’t.

To be honest, he was never my first choice in the Demo primaries. I wanted Mike Gravel, personally. And I’d probably be backing him now if he hadn’t lost the Libertarian race to Bob Barr (with whom I have a bad history).

But so what? Our choices are Obama and McCain, and it’s clear that all McCain has to offer is more of the same. The fact that he’s technically smarter than Bush is no consolation to me. I can get that from an Obama presidency, PLUS I get someone who at the very least is far more capable of restoring America’s rep and relations in the world. Trust me, that matters. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: you wanna lead the Free World, you gotta listen to what the Free World has to say. And you lead by example, not with ultimatums.

Okay. Enough talk. Let’s do this.

B to the A to the R-A-C-K-O-B-A-M-A,

This is dF and I approve this message

Just in case this election cycle isn’t weird enough for you:

ITEM: Karl Rove – yes, THAT one – has been tracking state polls, and has concluded that, based on the latest info (i.e. as of October 3) that if the election were held right now, Obama would have enough electoral votes to win the election.

Like so.



Basically, Rove says, Obama would win every state John Kerry won in 2004, as well as New Mexico, Iowa, and Colorado, putting him at 273 electoral votes. (A candidate needs 270 to win the ball game.) McCain would have 163. There are still 102 EVs that could go either way, but even if McCain gets all of them, he'll still lose.

Rove cautions that the latest data was taken before the VP debate, so you’ll have to wait until next week to see the impact in terms of statewide polls. And it goes without saying that four weeks is plenty of time to blow a lead and lose an election. They don’t call it the October Surprise for nothing.

But this is also the first time in this race that Obama’s projected EV count based on this kind of data has put him over the 270-vote mark. So unless McCain and Palin can successfully convince enough people that Obama spent his primary school years making pipe bombs in Bill Ayers’ basement, Obama may just have this in the bag.

On the other hand, this is Karl Rove we’re talking about here. So there MUST be some kind of evil reason for him to be saying all this.

Don’t dream it’s over,

This is dF

re Sarah Palin’s constant invocation of the term “Joe Six-Pack”:

I’m still waiting for someone to call her on this, since – in my mind – the term seems to imply an interpretation of the Working Class Guy as a beer-guzzling alcoholic. Which seems like an odd way to endear yrself to the blue-collar voting bloc, even if it's true.

Meanwhile, the AP’s Sharon Themier raises an even better question: who is this Joe Six-Pack anyway? Answer: he doesn’t exist.
DISCLAIMER: Technically, of course, Themier is incorrect in saying Joe Six-Pack doesn’t exist. He does. But he’s a beer correspondent for the Philadelphia Daily News, and I’m pretty sure that’s not who Sarah Palin means in her speeches. Unless he's secretly a lobbyist for the beer industry. Then it makes a little more sense – in as much as Sarah Palin makes sense about anything, that is.

More beer,

This is dF

Like most Americans, when there’s an election on and I have to make a choice between two candidates, I don’t worry about unimportant things like the issues. There’s only one way to truly gauge someone’s qualifications and character for the highest office in the land: what kind of car does he/she drive?

And seeing as how it’s the Year of the Car anyway, it’s only right and fair to take a look at what the Obamas and McCains use to get around.

The Obamamobile: 2008 Ford Escape hybrid



The McCainmobile: 2004 Cadillac CTS



The Cindy McCain fleet:



2006 Lexus
2005 Volkswagen
2001 Honda sedan
2007 half-ton Ford pickup truck
1960 Willys Jeep
2008 Jeep Wrangler
2000 Lincoln
2001 GMC SUV
Three 2000 NEV Gem electric vehicles

DISCLAIMER: Photos are for reference only and were Googled in something like five minutes.

PRODUCTION NOTE: Cindy McCain’s name is on all of the vehicles above except for the one she actually drives: the Lexus (top left), which is actually a Budweiser company car.

Note also that the above mosaic doesn’t include the Toyota Prius that Meghan McCain drives, as John McCain has backtracked on who actually bought it.

Note also that the Ford Escape is shared by both Barack and Michelle Obama.

FUN FACT: John McCain is a friend of the common man. Because everyone knows working-class people have at least nine or ten cars scattered around the country. What, you think they’re going to drive one car between the seven or eight houses they own? That’s preposterous. Not only is it hell on the transmission, do you have any idea how much it costs to fill a tank these days?

Who’s gonna drive you home,

This is dF