Now That We Have Your Attention

So unconstitutionally using a narrow conservative majority of handpicked Supreme Court ideologues to steal the presidency for an unqualified boob who lost the election by a half million votes didn’t do it.

Diddling with their secret plan to invade and occupy a non-threatening, oil-rich country in the Middle East and reading My Pet Goat while terrorists determined to strike in the US finished their plans and killed thousands of Americans and turned the country inside out, didn’t make you mad.

Constructing a system of secret prisons around the world where we tortured and murdered innocent kidnapping victims just to show how tough we are, didn’t upset you at all.

Launching a disastrous, illegal war through a campaign of lies, deception and treason, that has killed thousands of US soldiers, destroyed our credibility and moral authority in the world, inspired unknown millions of Muslims to want see us harmed and will cost at least a trillion tax dollars before it’s done, didn’t stop you from voting for the miscreants.

Viciously and dishonestly smearing decorated war heroes, dedicated civil servants, honest journalists and millions of your countrymen while exposing secret intelligence and destroying CIA counter-WMD-proliferation operations in Iraq and Iran just to keep power for all the wrong reasons, didn’t even get a rise out of you – except perhaps to cheer a bit at their political success.

Conspiring with AT&T, Verizon and Comcast and committing serial felonies designed to shred your constitutional rights to be free from government spying on your private telephone and email communications and internet use, made you yawn.

Filling FEMA, the Justice Department, the Treasury, the EPA and just about every reach of the federal government with incompetent cronies to the point that the American people are doomed to suffer the worst from every made-made and natural disaster didn’t distract you from the latest episode of CSI.

But this finally has you royally, righteously angry.

Well, guess what? Republicans have been pissing down your back and telling you that it’s raining since the seventies. If this doesn’t cause you to actually finally manage to pull your head from the elephant’s ass and realize that it is only Democrats who care if government works for middle-class Americans like you, then you deserve whatever another four years of Republican rule brings down on you. Unfortunately for the rest of us, and your children, we’ll be coming along for the ride.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

She's a Witch!

I hope someone else caught the crowd reaction when John McCain announced at a campaign event his personal scapegoat for almost thirty years of “conservative” laisse faire economic policies. Do you suppose that even five of them knew what the SEC Chairman does or who Chris Cox is as they cheered “BURN ‘ER!”?

These people really shouldn’t be allowed to gather in public.


\"She's a Witch!\"


[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Exacting Change

"The McCain-Palin Administration will replace an outdated, patchwork quilt of regulatory oversight and bring transparency and accountability to Wall Street. We will have transparency and accountability and we will reform the regulatory bodies of government."

For Republicans, reality is a bitch. Actually, Republican reality is a bitch for everyone. Whether antagonistic, cruel, warmongering, or merely laissez faire, their very natures always lead us to economic woe, death and disaster.

So everyone else should ask themselves whether the Republican, twenty-six years in The Congress, the guy who a month ago was running as the “experienced” “de-regulator” and now wants you to see as the candidate of reform and regulation, should have any expectation of being believed. John McCain, within the context of this summer’s domestic economic policy and politics, is now running as a liberal Democrat.

Lest anyone think that this sort of spastic and craven political contortion will continue to be cost-free for him, now John McCain will have to put down some sort of actual, you know, policies, to back up his populist rhetoric as well as compare to Obama’s own policy proposals.

Then he’ll have to debate it. That should be good.

[Cross-posted at Dispassionate Liberal]

Qualifications (Part II)

Reasons you shouldn’t be a 72-year-old-heartbeat away from commanding the biggest military machine and nuclear war capability on the planet:

1 You were the two-term major of a remote town of 6,000.

2 You were the Governor of a remote state of 675,000 (for 20 months).

3) You are a “hockey-mom”.

4 You have “small-town American values”.

5) You’re a devout Evangelical Christian.

6) You’re Hot.

7) Your “1st Dude” is hot.

8) One of your five children has Down Syndrome

9) One of your five children is a soon-to-be-wed, soon-to-be-teenage-mother.

10) You “give a good speech”.

11) You’re a woman.

12) You don’t know (or probably care) what the “Bush Doctrine” is.

13) You think the media is being mean to you.

14) Millions of people who still say they approve of the job George W. Bush is doing as president, think you’re just like them and, therefore, qualified by education, temperament and judgment to be a 72-year-old-heartbeat away from commanding the biggest military machine and nuclear war capability on the planet.

15) You actually believe that you are qualified, by education, temperament and judgment to be a 72-year-old-heartbeat away from commanding the biggest military machine and nuclear war capability on the planet.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Saying Its Name

Andrew Sullivan gets beyond the lipstick:

So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil. When he knew that George W. Bush's war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first ahead of what he knew was best for the country.

And when the Senate and House voted overwhelmingly to condemn and end the torture regime of Bush and Cheney in 2006, McCain again had a clear choice between good and evil, and chose evil.

My own personal motto, to keep direction in the moral fog of politics, is that all political choices are necessarily a choice for the lesser of evils. Never has the choice been clearer.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Qualifications

"She's the first journalist ever to be nominated, I think, for the president or vice president, and she was a sportscaster on local television. So she has a lot of interesting background. And she has a lot of experience. Remember that, when people worry about how inexperienced she is, for two years she's been in charge of the Alaska National Guard."
-- Newt Gingrich on Sarah Palin's qualifications to sit one heartbeat from being the leader of the free world

Barack Obama rose from a single-parent, middle-class family to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1988, after being elected the first African–American editor of the Harvard Law Review.

After helping unemployed steel workers in south Chicago as a community organizer before law school, Obama went back to practice as a civil rights lawyer and taught at the University of Chicago Law School after graduating from Havard.

Obama published an autobiography in 1995 called Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance and won a Grammy for the audio version of the book.

At 35, Barack Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate where he worked with both Democrats and Republicans in drafting legislation on ethics, expanded health care services and early childhood education programs for the poor. He also created a state earned-income tax credit for the working poor. And after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.

In October 2002, against the strong political winds of the day, Obama warned about the looming war in Iraq: "I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne."

[snip]

"I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences," Obama continued. "I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda."

At 43, Barack Obama was elected to the US Senate with 70 % of the vote in the largest electoral victory in Illinois history.

As a US Senator, Obama partnered with Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana on a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Eastern Europe and Russia and then with Republican Sen. Tom Corburn of Oklahoma to create a website that tracks all federal spending.

Obama was the first to raise the threat of avian flu on the Senate floor, spoke out for victims of Hurricane Katrina, pushed for alternative energy development and championed improved veterans´ benefits. He also worked with Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin to eliminate gifts of travel on corporate jets by lobbyists to members of Congress.

In October 2006, he published his second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller.

In August of 2008, Barrack Obama won the Democratic nomination for President of the United States of America at the age of 47, about a year older than the youngest man ever to be elected president, John F Kennedy. Though discounted by political insiders as a far long shot, Obama designed and ran a campaign which defeated several of the top leaders of the Democratic Party, including John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.

Just the facts, Ma’am. I mean Ms. Palin.

[UPDATE: I should point out that Obama accomplished that last feat by raising a record $390 million, 96% of it from over 1.7 million individual contributors (another record), in an average donation of $68].

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Happy Groundhog Day

If 72-year-old two-time cancer survivor John McCain were to be elected President (god forbid), the person who would be one heart-beat away from the job would be a “non-partisan” Republican Christian cultist with (not even) one term as governor of a large state full of yahoos, no knowledge of foreign policy and strong ties to the oil bidness.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
--Albert Einstein

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Everyone. Take. A. Pill.

by shep

1) The poll numbers coming out of the Democratic Convention seldom bear any resemblance to the election results.

2) The upcoming debates and two months of advertising and “news” media wars will decide the election, just like those of the recent past.

3) Barack and Michelle Obama had one best chance to show that they are regular (not scary, or "other") people on a national stage and that’s what we’ve been watching.

4) They’re running against the Republicans.

5) The Obama campaign realizes that “the game” is about scorching the earth for your opponent with the disaffected dumbshits of American who, quite unfortunately, decide our elections.

6) Did I mention that they’re running against the Republicans?

7) Joe Biden is the Vice Presidential nominee and, in a debate, he can cut an opponent’s liver out and eat it with a charming smile.

8) The Villagers like Joe Biden.

9) The DFHs, via the intertubes and the establishment media’s desire to try to rescue themselves from their increasing irrelevancy, are influencing the narratives of the debate.

10) There probably aren’t enough racist throwbacks who vote left alive in America to continue to afflict us with their political choices, at least nationally.

One more thing: John McCain is a decrepit, paranoid, egomaniacal, phony with a short fuse and that won’t make a very favorable comparison with the handsome, self-possessed, dedicated, public servant who always keeps his cool and people will notice that as they are ever-more contrasted each day until the election.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Eleven

"Just 52 percent of self-identifying Clinton supporters say they are backing Obama while 21 percent are siding with John McCain and 27 percent are undecided or are looking for some other candidate to support.".

When asked “[i]f you honestly assessed yourself, is that something with which you're entirely comfortable, somewhat comfortable, somewhat uncomfortable or entirely uncomfortable,” 11% of respondents in a recent Washington Post/ABC poll reported that they would be at least somewhat uncomfortable that Barack Obama would be the first African-American president.

Now I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that the 11-percenters aren’t uncomfortable with the fact that it is Barack Obama who would be the first African-American president, rather the some other black candidate, and that the number of people willing to admit outright that they’re racists is probably somewhat smaller than the number of actual racists who would never vote for a black man to be president.

Is there some way I can stress to you the importance that these people, being psychologically incapable to vote for Barack Obama, be discouraged from voting for John McCain? Has there ever been such a miserable zero-sum game?

If those throwbacks who couldn’t be comfortable voting for someone who holds virtually the same experience, policies and views as their chosen candidate and would choose instead someone who embodies the antithesis of those policies and views, because of the former candidate’s skin color, that seems to me a perfectly reasonable basis for removing said throwbacks’ right to vote in perpetuity (as well as, perhaps, additional social disapproval). Failing that, rational citizens who care about the actual temperament, judgment and competence of the person who runs this ever-more monarchical country should marshal every argument to nullify the throwbacks’ race-based alternative choice: John McCain.

So at least 11% of voters who are undecided or think that McCain is an alternative to Clinton need to be convinced that John McCain should never, ever be given the keys to our military and foreign policy. Based just upon McCain’s public record, and the Obama campaign’s willingness to tell the public what they should know, that shouldn’t be too very hard.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

The New Politics

So the Democratic candidate for president is trying a new kind of politics where the Democrat offers fair policy-based critiques of his opponent, while the Republican opponent uses surrogates and a vast media-based propaganda network to dishonestly and relentlessly smear the Democrat in the most vile fashion. I’ve got news for you, Senator Obama, that’s been tried a couple of times lately, to generally disastrous effect (you might consider sitting down for a chat with Al Gore and John Kerry at your upcoming convention).

The way the game is played is that the Republican, having nothing to commend him, will scorch the earth for you with the drooling Republican base and the great, ignorant, passive-aggressive, independent middle of America. The new politics, invented by Atwater, perfected by Rove, is to make the opponent unacceptable and unelectable by indoctrinating the racists, the angry and the disaffected (who aren’t already slavishly following the Republican cue in typical right-wing-authoritarian-following fashion) with lies which assassinate your character.

I predict that they won’t refrain from doing so because you’ve asked them not to. Likewise, I doubt the success of making it a referendum on the Bush Administration’s policies – pssst, most of the people you need to win don’t have a clue what’s been going on the past eight years and who’s responsible because our establishment media has kept them in the dark due to their own complicity, stupidity and moral turpitude.

This is a good start:

On a conference call with reporters just now, senior Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice argued that there is "a pattern here of recklessness" when it comes to McCain's approach to various national security issues. She pointed out that McCain reacted too quickly with "aggressive and bellicose" rhetoric on the Russia-Georgia crisis, and contrasted that with Obama's measured response to the dust-up.
[snip]
"There's something to be said for letting facts drive judgment," Rice said, also referring to McCain's desire to target Iraq right after 9/11.
[snip]
Furthering the hothead meme, Richard Clarke was also on the call, and he described the Republican as "quick draw McCain" and "trigger-happy."

I particularly like that you are making good use of Clarke since it appears you fear the obvious choice of making him your Vice Presidential pick. "I'm sure he [McCain] loves his country. It's just that loving your country and lying to the American people are apparently not inconsistent in his view." Yeah, buddy.

But this is still too clever by half, or too clever for half-wits, if you will. I’d suggest something more basic, more appropriate for the lizard brain. Something that will make McCain seem, you know, unelectable. Try this:

McCain is Insane

Simple, memorable, frightening. You have the story, the pictures and the words from McCain’s own mouth to prove it. Don’t be shy, this really is a new kind of politics. The kind where the story used to make the opponent unelectable is 100% true.

P.S. Obviously, I don’t think that you should get your hands dirty with the ugly truth but some totally *cough* independent *cough* actor ought to get busy with it.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Right From the Horse’s Ass

AP’s Charles Babbington says “McCain's 'celebrity' taunts are bugging Obama” and he’s got the quote to prove it: “"If the celebrity issue were not hurting them, they would have ignored it."

The quote comes from…wait for it…Republican strategist Terry Holt.

My god, how do these idiots keep their jobs as political analysts. Maybe the better question is, why must you be an idiot to keep a job as a political analyst? (Why, Cokie?) Not like it isn’t an obvious GOP zombie, brain-eating talking point.

Quite clearly, to anyone whose objectivity and intellect and hasn’t been turned to mush from living in the media elite bubble, the Obama Campaign used the “celebrity” meme as a backdoor to wrap President Bush and the entrenched Beltway rot around John McCain. Obama’s people realize that, for normal people (i.e., not Republicans), it’s not really much of a sin for a US presidential nominee to be popular but it sure is a one these days to be to seen as part of Washington’s corrupt, out-of-touch, self-serving elites ($500 shoes anyone?). Babbington babbles: “For weeks, Obama has tried to frame the election largely as a referendum on President Bush, using every chance to tie McCain to the unpopular incumbent.”

Well, yeah, ya think? And you didn’t notice the six separate scenes of McCain and Bush practically ejaculating on one another? Of course the GOP lie factory will try to make any Obama ad, no matter how effective, somehow a problem for Obama. The only question is why anyone with his or her head outside his own or the GOP’s ass would believe a word of it. Oh, right.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Givin’ It Away

Bob Somerby thinks that liberals are blowing the presidential election (as usual) because of our too high-minded reaction to John McCain’s dogwhistles. Obviously, white people are still living in a bit of denial about American racism and the doubt went to the white guy over last week’s kafuffle, even as Obama’s charge about McCain trying to scare people by using Obama's face on our currency was revealed to be absolutely true. So let’s go with a different tack, shall we?

Dear Barack:

We’ve had our “issues” as of late but I still have no doubt that you’re a world better than the other guy, so here it is:

John McCain doesn’t seem to think you’re very smart. He thinks you can’t tell the difference between a campaign about the issues we all want to work on and one based on empty personal attacks. He thinks you want this campaign to be about Britney Spears and Charlton Heston and The Matrix.

I think that the American people are smarter than that. They don’t want to be fooled again into making a bad choice because of baseless attacks on someone’s character. They want a campaign based on the important issues and policies that are at stake in this election. So when you hear me compared with some celebrity, or super hero, or Moses, or that I’m too presumptuous, just remember that my opponent is playing you for a sucker.

That’s how you do jujitsu. I’m charging you for the next one.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Two Faces and No Brains

I wonder if the Village Gasbags will be able to figure out who is demeaning whose service?

“I can't speak for them, but we all know that General Clark, as high-ranking as he is, his record in his last command I think was somewhat less than stellar."
-- Orson Swindle, John McCain Campaign

Just in case there’s still some question what actually demeaning a war veteran’s service looks like:

Louis Letson: "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury."

Van O'Dell: "John Kerry lied to get his bronze star...I know, I was there, I saw what happened."

Jack Chenoweth: "His account of what happened and what actually happened are the difference between night and day."

Admiral Roy Hoffman: "John Kerry has not been honest."

Adrian Lonsdale: "And he lacks the capacity to lead."

Larry Thurlow: "When he chips were down, you could not count on John Kerry."

Bob Elder: "John Kerry is no war hero."

Grant Hibbard: "He betrayed all his shipmates...he lied before the Senate."

Joe Ponder: "He dishonored his country...he most certainly did."

Bob Hildreth: "I served with John Kerry...John Kerry cannot be trusted."

The plain fact is, the Gasbags have no moral or rational authority to judge the matter, they relinquished their credibility and responsibility to do so four years ago.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Playing by the Rules

I’ve always thought that one of the main reasons the Village Press hated the Clintons and Al Gore was because it was so obvious that Bill, Hillary and Al were much smarter people than them all. With egos at least as ginormous as any politician, that cleverness gap had to stick in their craws in a way that it never would, for obvious reasons, concerning any Republican. But, smart as they may have been, the Clintons and Vice President Gore never understood the new rules that were being invented just for them. They were playing a fool’s game – and the Clintons still managed to beat the Village at it – because they were playing as though there were still liberals in the corporate press and that reason and truth would prevail.

Which brings us to today’s campaign. Am I the only one who thinks that the Obama campaign is winning big here and that the media is being played badly? The conversation has begun – “it’s out there” as they say – does McCain’s record as a (not-very-good) fighter jock and POW more than thirty years ago in some way qualify him to be Commander-in-Chief? At the same time, Obama “rejects the statement” and “honors and respects Senator McCain’s service.” How is Obama hurt by this? How is McCain?

And now we can let the bloviators compare this honest question to what was done to John Kerry. Remember how Kerry’s record was fair game because he brought it up and Bush and Rove pretended like they had nothing to do with the SBVT? Democrats didn’t make them up but Obama seems to have learned the new rules. As Ara likes to say, if I were having any more fun, I’d have to be twins.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Poor, Stupid Joe

“I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.”
-- Gen. Wesley Clark

"Clark is just plain wrong when he says that "getting shot down" doesn't qualify as foreign policy experience."
-- Joe Klein

I’m not sure what to comment on here, that Joe Klein thinks that getting shot out of the sky and imprisoned in another country counts as “foreign policy experience,” or that he thinks that “experience” is the same thing as the qualification to be president.

Same result, I guess.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

You Shall Know Them by Their Fruitcake

It takes a wingnut to take someone else’s words, say they mean something completely different from what they are saying and then castigate the person for that twisted, unstated meaning. John McCain, having nothing to offer in public policy (he's a Republican) – other than perpetual war in the Middle East (and who knows where else) and short term, ineffective gimmicks – has been running his campaign on just those sort of distortions about what Barack Obama “is saying” when he is saying nothing of the kind.

But it takes a special kind of evangelical whackjob of a wingnut to attack someone by saying essentially the same thing they are.

Evangelical whackjob James Dobson says that, “[Barack] Obama should not be referencing antiquated dietary codes and passages from the Old Testament that are no longer relevant to the teachings of the New Testament,” in response to Obama saying exactly that:

"Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy?" Obama asked in the speech. "Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount?"

Dobson’s Focus on the Family spokesman, Tom Minnery, gets it exactly backward when he claims, "Many people have called [Sharpton] a black racist, and [Obama] is somehow equating [Dobson] with that and racial bigotry." Actually, Obama had contrasted not equated Sharpton and Dobson:

"Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's or Al Sharpton's?"

Dobson himself claimed that it is "lowest common denominator of morality," and that it is a "fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution," for Obama to say:

"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal rather than religion-specific values. It requires their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason."

Dobson can claim that reason, argument and universal values are immoral and pretend that the Establishment Clause of the Constitution doesn’t exist but that makes it pretty hard to argue that the other guy is the one who is nuts.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

September 10th Thinking

On September 10th, 2001, John McCain was a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, (his buddy Joe Leiberman was on, get this, the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats [emphasis mine] and Capabilities) where he failed to understand who our enemies were, how they threatened us and how and where to fight them. What's new?

[E Pluribus Unum]

AP Officially In The Tank For McCain

"When the AP starts taking sides and starts reading like The Washington Times, or The Nation, we're all in a lot of trouble."
Keith Olbermann, awarding the "Bronze" for Worst Person for calling Sen. Barack Obama "inexperienced in foreign affairs."

That was June 5th. Today, AP's Tim Talley traveled to the hamlet of Norman, Oklahoma to find that one Bush-Dog Democratic Congressman (the only Democrat from OK) who finds nothing suspicious that every time a Democrat runs for the presidency he mysteriously is discovered to be THE most liberal man in Washington D.C. Representative Dan Boren (D) claims he can't endorse Obama because he's the "most liberal Senator."

Okay, Talley didn't actually do the leg work involved by getting in a car and driving to Norman OK. He phoned it in, literally, in a phone interview. Nevertheless, the usual suspects in Wingnuttistan predictably love this story and are all over it, rejoicing in finding opposition to Obama within the Democratic family.

What the story does not note is that if the AP's reporter had actually gone down to Norman, OK, he'd have been just a stone's throw from Dallas, Texas, where he could have done a similar story about a Republican Congressman who refuses to endorse John McCain.

In fact, this particular Republican Congressman is still running against McCain for the Republican nomination. He's raised more money than McCain, is going to the Republican convention to fight McCain, and has his own campaign blimp.

Unlike the much more interesting, and damaging Ron Paul, Boren isn't fighting Obama's nomination, or his candidacy for president. In fact, despite his district voting 66% for Clinton, Boren is planning on voting for him at the convention and again in November. He just isn't going to balk the desires of his constituency by endorsing someone they didn't vote for. That would be insulting to the voters.

Once again the wingnuttosphere, without logic, reason or shame, takes an inconsequential factoid and blows it completely out of proportion -- deliberately missing the point to promote their alternate reality, one in which their putrid fecal matter emits no aroma.

Attention Righties, A Mirror Image Is Backwards

See here's how it works. If you want to accomplish something similar, but looking at things and doing them in exactly the opposite manner as how things have been the last eight years, you use a mirror.

Got it?

Like when the Vice President met privately with leaders of a disgraced industry to form energy policy is a mirror image, exactly the opposite phenomenon as when a a private citizen who did business with a company that is now disgraced along with its industry is commissioned to vet a Vice President, not to form policy for that industry.

I know it's kinda hard for folks foolish enough to still think our C+ Augustus is Teh Aw-Sum to grok in the abstract without talking-points arriving in their inbox, but it really is something quite different.

Now just for the record, the head of Obama's VP selection team didn't hand out fraudulent loans or anything, right? He wasn't a lobbyist for Countrywide, was he, or one of it's executives?

He was an extremely good credit risk who took out some loans with the company, and paid them back. So WTF? This isn't reporting, it's a smear job.

Carter Take Two? No Duh!

Hmm, coming off a divisive and disastrous war that wrecked havoc with the economy with oil prices out of control, and a stand-off with Iran, and a mandate to clean up after the most corrupt administration in our history.

Sounds like exactly the situation Carter inherited. Sounds just like what we're facing now.

If you're too young to appreciate Nixon's wage and price freeze and Ford's "WIN" buttons (kinda like "Mars Bitches!" but channeled towards Whipping Inflation Now), leading up to the oil embargo faced by Carter that pretty much sank what was left of the economy and doomed his reelection chances, then you might be one of the Dead Enders like Our Lady Of Internment Camps who buy into McCain and Fox Noise telling us that Obama = Carter, who supposedly was a monster.

A second Carter term of course would have brought about energy independence had we continued all his programs that Reagan chucked; and the Nobel Lauriate certainly would have made more progress on Arab-Israeli peace, something that has been stuck in the mud since Carter left office.

For the older generation, it might be the soft on Arabs/Muslims/terrorists/Islamofascists dog-whistle the righties are blowing with the Carter comparison. Now that the "Hussein" Obama meme that Barack has some kind of whacky religious problem, be it Islam or African Nationalism (yeah, whatever), the wingnutosphere is spending a lot of energy trying to make out that the Democratic nominee will bring about the fall of Jerico, that his supporters are anti-Semetic to the core based on a completely fabricated false flag operation, and he accosted that "revered Jewish figure" Joe LIEberman.

Utterly ignoring Obama's unambiguous hard line support for Israel and the distinction he makes about dealing with rival heads of state and dealing with terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah, count on wingnuttistan to go back to the "Obama hates Jews" meme again and again.