So just after 5 pm here on the Left Coast, I get this email:
Subject: We Want Our Money Back
From: "Vice President Joe Biden"
To: (my name, aka "Sucker")
Yesterday, President Obama announced our proposed Financial Crisis Responsibility
Fee on the country's largest banks:
"My commitment is to recover every single dime the American people are owed. And my
determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive
profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued
existence to the American people... We want our money back, and we're going to get
it."
The fee would recover every penny loaned to Wall Street during the financial crisis
and stop the reckless abuses and excesses that nearly caused the collapse of our
financial system in the first place.
But the banking industry -- among the most powerful lobbies in Washington -- is
already launching attacks to stop Congress from enacting the proposal.
Barack and I aren't backing down. But to win, we'll need the American people to add
their voice right away.
Thankfully, OFA supporters are already signing on to a bold statement of support:
"We want our money back -- and we stand with President Obama to make sure we get
it." You can add your name by clicking here:
The proposal is expected to recoup billions from the big banks, most of it from the
ten largest. As the President said, "If these companies are in good enough shape to
afford massive bonuses, they are surely in good enough shape to afford paying back
every penny to taxpayers."
There is much more work to do to reform the financial system and create a new era of
accountability. But the Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee is a crucial step. And
with the banks already working to tear it down, I hope that I can count on you to
speak out to show that Americans stand with us as we take them on.
Quite possibly the best thing happening with Afghanistan right now is President Obama's steady nerves and careful deliberation on what is the best and correct course of action for America to take.
Advocates of sending more troops to Afghanistan have been searching for a winning rationale to sell an escalation to the public. Despite public opinion polls saying support for the war is disappearing, more U.S. troops for Afghanistan seemed like a foregone conclusion.
Up until yesterday when five British troops were killed by an Afghan policeman, one of the more persuasive arguments has been that the West needs to train more Afghan soldiers so the Afghans can take charge of their country's own security.
The Obama campaign has updated their flickr account with behind-the-scenes photographs of Barack and his family on election night. These are intimate photographs of the senator as he shares the moments before he becomes the president-elect.
He and his family can be seen, tensely watching television from a hotel room as the results gradually come in.
For a man known for his deep-seated calmness, the beautiful behind the scenes images, taken by his official campaign photographer, David Katz, show the anxious moments before the results are declared.
Glenn Greenwald, writing for Salon, calls it "the single worst expression in American politics."
You may have your own nominees for that distinction, but his is "Commander in Chief," which is used these days as a substitute for President.
He quotes Joe Biden on the stump:
After next Tuesday, the very critics he has now and the rest of America will be calling him something else - they will be calling him the 44th president of the United States of America, our commander in chief Barack Obama!
Actually, I won't be calling him that if he wins on Tuesday. I got my discharge papers in 1970. I'm not in the military any more. And neither are most Americans.
Says Greenwald:
This is much more than a semantic irritant. It's a perversion of the Constitution, under which American civilians simply do not have a "commander in chief"; only those in the military -- when it's called into service -- have one.
The President is Commander in Chief only of active duty military personnel -- and only in wartime. (Some, including George Bush and Dick Cheney, would argue that we are now permanently "at war" on terrorism.)
Palin: I guess just people who think that they're better than everyone else...anyone who thinks that they are better than anyone else, I guess that's my definition of elitism.
Oh, and John McCain goes on to clarify that it's also anyone living in Washingotn DC or New York City...Rudy, I think he means you.
In remarks made over the weekend in Seattle, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Biden warned that Barack Obama, if elected president, would be compelled to take deeply unpopular actions in both domestic and foreign policy within months of taking office.
With a brilliant smile and a confident swagger, Sarah Palin faced Joe Biden, and America, in the first and only vice presidential debate. But the face she presented was that of shallow Pollyanna with a woefully insufficient grasp of issues and facts.
Brought to you by... News Corpse The Internet's Chronicle Of Media Decay.
Here's what Sarah Palin told an international audience about the information and attitudes she has toward Iran, a nation that will loom large in the next decade and more of America's future:
An armed, nuclear armed especially Iran is so extremely dangerous to consider. They cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons period. Israel is in jeopardy of course when we're dealing with Ahmadinejad as a leader of Iran. Iran claiming that Israel as he termed it, a stinking corpse, a country that should be wiped off the face of the earth. Now a leader like Ahmadinejad who is not sane or stable when he says things like that is not one whom we can allow to acquire nuclear energy, nuclear weapons.
{snip}
...leaders like Ahmadinejad who would seek to acquire nuclear weapons and wipe off the face of the earth an ally like we have in Israel...
and
dictators who hate America and hate what we stand for, with our freedoms...
Palin and her handlers must be aware that her words will be fact-checked. So you have to ask: where does she get her information? How does her information square with other sources of information about Ahmadinejad? If her information is not consistent with other facts and reports, who is wrong? Do Palin and her information sources know that their information is wrong? If so, WHY DO THEY PERSIST IN LYING? And if Palin and her handlers are lying, what can we assume about their character, their respect for the integrity of the communications process by which Americans make an extremely important decision -- the choice of the next leader of the nation; their respect for the people of the United States; their respect for Constitutional principles that are "what America stands for"?
Who hates America more, Sarah Palin and her handlers, or Ahmadinejad and Iran?
You decide.
Above the fold: What Sarah Palin said.
Below the fold: Eye witness accounts from religious and civic leaders who spoke with Dr. Ahmadinejad on September 24, 2008.
So in the 2008 vice presidential debate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said:
Well , first, McClellan did not say definitively the surge principles would not work in Afghanistan. Certainly, accounting for different conditions in that different country and conditions are certainly different. We have NATO allies helping us for one and even the geographic differences are huge but the counterinsurgency principles could work in Afghanistan. McClellan didn't say anything opposite of that. The counterinsurgency strategy going into Afghanistan, clearing, holding, rebuilding, the civil society and the infrastructure can work in Afghanistan. And those leaders who are over there, who have also been advising George Bush on this have not said anything different but that.
And you know, she's absolutely correct. However, she is only correct because she blew the name of the commanding general in Afghanistan.
One heart beat away. One seventy-two year old, multiple melanoma'd, Alzheimer's befuddled heart beat away. It doesn't get any crazier than this.
The neocons actually have their own version of reality where a person so colossally unqualified can be president. They've just had eight years of a stand-up cardboard cutout of a president so they assume that we'll just buy into another four years of their inbred belief system. This is un-fucking-believable.
I was going to put together some thoughtful essay on my first sixty years on this planet. In less than two hours I'll complete the Chinese calendar full cycle of twelve signs and five elements. It's a big deal in Asia. After tonight I'm thanking God for the transience of this life. I've lost two people very close to me over the last three weeks. Lucky them. They both went peacefully - while America is still more or less (mostly less) free. There are things far worse than death and we're just some hacked voting machines away from experiencing them.
As tonight's performance settles in there's one feeling just surging up in me. Just who the fuck do these people think they are insulting my intelligence with this ticket of a semi-senile old fart with no moral center and a valley-girl airhead? Talk radio Uhmerica will be falling all over themselves tomorrow saying how great she was. A very significant percentage of the population will gladly, no- make that eagerly, buy into that bullshit. What happened to this country? I can understand the inbreeding that takes place in some remote areas of the hillier landscape being a partial rationale but 40%+ ???
People have to be willfully ignorant to buy into such insanity. What I saw and heard tonight was a US senator and a high school beauty queen on the same stage applying for the number two spot in the executive branch.
At my age I admit to having gotten in under the legal wire on the stuff Owsley made - and therefore I was grandfathered in. But every time I checked out for a few hours I always came back to the same old reality. Is it possible that 40% of the population - almost all of whom seem highly unlikely to have shared the experience - has ingested some substance which the rest of us have somehow managed to avoid so far?
The worst part is that the oligarchy, or the powers that be, or whatever you want to call the masters, must be laughing their asses off at us for eating this shit. As I said in a comment yesterday, we have two choices from here on out: we either grab our ankles or stand up. I'm too old to be grabbing my ankles for anyone.
BRUSSELS, Belgium - European Union leaders will receive a stark warning next week of potential conflict with Russia over energy resources at the North Pole as global warning melts the ice cap and aggravates international security threats.
See video
However, Sarah Palin's selection as McCain's running mate has convinced the public change is coming no matter who wins. Even worse, the very same corporate media that complained Obama only offered "words" compared to Hillary Clinton's policy specifics during the primary season now argue that McCain's lack of specifics does not diminish his stature as a maverick. Is that fair? Of course not! But there is no sense whining about it. These are the cards we've been dealt.
So how do we change the narrative? The solution is to present the voting public with a stark choice: progress or calamity. Change vs. more of the same is stale and no longer resonates.
I know, I know...my alias is "grannyhelen", which I've used as a tribute to my own great-grandmother. I, myself, am a 40 year old stay-at-home mom of two in a small commuter city.
Wanna win my vote? It won't be as easy as simply nominating a "hockey mom", or even taking down the "maverick" image of John McCain. But women - and particularly mothers - may help decide this election, and it's obvious that the McCain campaign picked Governor Palin to appeal to women like me. In order to put Barack Obama in the White House, Democrats must compete successfully for these votes.
Follow me over the fold for some talking point do's and don'ts of this demographic.
March on Washington
