By reading Sadly, No!, that’s how:
Upon becoming president, Hussein Obama X’s very first act — after freeing Mumia, signing a reparations bill and implementing Sharia law, of course — should be to oust every single unqualified hack that Bush hired right out of Regent University and banish them from ever working again in any job. God knows how many more of them are out there.
I have never hesitated to beat up the mainstream media and my former colleagues in the press for their failings. What I don’t do is praise good work. Let me point to a couple of samples of good work:
The Washington Post thoroughly debunked the major thrust of Sen. John McCain’s recent outbursts and smears of Sen. Barack Obama’s recent visit to Germany.
And, on the same day, The New York Times weighs in with an editorial on McCain’s spurious and desperate lies about Obama. McCain and his campaign staff are now scurrying away from some of their serial lies.
The McCain campaign has taken an ugly turn. The mainstream media will have to be vigilant to call what McCain is doing what it is. Today, the Times and the Post, to their credit, were willing to do that.
Well, that certainly didn’t take long. On July 3, news reports said Senator John McCain, worried that he might lose the election before it truly started, opened his doors to disciples of Karl Rove from the 2004 campaign and the Bush White House. Less than a month later, the results are on full display. The candidate who started out talking about high-minded, civil debate has wholeheartedly adopted Mr. Rove’s low-minded and uncivil playbook.
In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has been waving the flag of fear (Senator Barack Obama wants to “lose” in Iraq), and issuing attacks that are sophomoric (suggesting that Mr. Obama is a socialist) and false (the presumptive Democratic nominee turned his back on wounded soldiers).
John Edwards calls R. Kelly from the bathroom stall for advice
A code blue: Some choice quotes.
“Ok, where are you now?”
“I’m in the bathroom stall.”
“You’ve just got to stand there and say no comment or just lie. Lie, lie, lie till you can’t lie no more.”
“This isn’t as bad as you think it is. . . . I need to get the rest of the team in on this.”
“I’m guessing there’s no window that you could sneak out of?”
“No, there’s no window.”
“You may have to take a hostage.”
“When it comes to sex scandals, we must set all petty differences aside and all band together. It’s the man code”
“I made my bone by whacking Marilyn Monroe when I was just 16. Yep, that was me.”
“Nobody is getting whacked, ok?”
“If whacking people is not an option, then what do we do?”
“John Edward’s got a code blue.”
“Thanks R. Kelly. I knew you’d come through for us.”
“Alright, John, here’s the plan . . . we’ll get our friends in the press to start covering this thing up ASAP.”
“Someday you may be asked to do a service for the Cheat Team.”
Alright, that’s enough.
“Same Old Politics”
http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1185304443
Take a look at Sen. Obama’s latest response to Sen. McCain’s negative ad blaming Obama for rising gas prices. It’s brilliant.
The ad begins with a clip from McCain’s ad rolling on a TV screen. Then a pallid-looking photo of McCain’s face appears next to the TV screen and the words “The same old politics.” are superimposed over the TV and McCain’s face. The word “old” appears right next to John McCain’s seventy-two-year-old nose. The ad then cuts to a vigorous-looking Obama holding a town meeting with his sleeves rolled up. The ad closes with a quick series of color shots and a narrator summarizing Obama’s positions.
I have a feeling that we’re going to be hearing the phrase “same old politics” quite a bit over the next 99 days. It’s an easy but indirect way for the Obama campaign to highlight McCain’s age, and polls have shown that McCain’s advanced age is of major concern for swing voters.
Cross-posted from Facebook.
Amid encouraging recent poll numbers, the Washington Post points out some obstacles to an Obama victory in the general election on Nov. 4.
At the heart of the Obama campaign’s strategy is a national effort to increase registration and turnout among the millions of Democratic-inclined Americans who have not been voting, particularly younger people and African Americans. The push began during the primaries but expanded this month to a nationwide registration drive led by 3,000 volunteers dispatched around the country.
Gaining greater African American support could well put Obama over the top in states where Democrats have come close in the past two elections, and could also help him retain the big swing states of Pennsylvania and Michigan.
There is no guarantee that African Americans will register to vote or, even if registered, would turn out to vote on election day. I covered (in the margins) the bitterly racial mayoral rematch between David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani in 1993 as a reporter for the New York Daily News.
I can offer anecdotal evidence: The fear that blacks felt of a Giuliani mayoralty (which were later borne out) was palpable on election night. But many of the black Harlem residents that I interviewed that election night, despite seemingly knowing what was at stake, did not bother showing up to vote.
The Obama candidacy is an opportunity for Americans to make a choice. It is also an opportunity for black Americans to make history. Sen. Obama bet his whole candidacy on democracy from the bottom up. The challenge is not just for well-meaning whites to vote for the clearly superior candidate in this election. The challenge is also to African Americans.
Or will they prove Obama wrong?
The big political news of the last week has been Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s embrace of Sen. Barack Obama’s position on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Sen. John McCain’s subsequent embrace of Maliki’s position on withdrawal. As Josh Marshall observes, “Sen. McCain has gone from predicting a decades long presence of American troops in Iraq and attacking any discussion of timetables for withdrawal to endorsing Maliki’s push for a 16 month timetable and tying himself in knots trying to explain why what Maliki’s endorsing is any different from Obama’s.”
On CNN on Friday, McCain insisted that his withdrawal plans are “conditions-based,” and suggested that Obama’s are not.
Nevermind that Obama’s withdrawal plans have always been contingent on conditions on the ground. He has said that he would be as careful getting out of Iraq as Bush was careless getting in. The sixteen month timetable has been Obama’s judgment of how long it would take to redeploy U.S. troops safely given conditions on the ground.
But what, exactly, are the conditions that matter to McCain? Journalists haven’t yet asked McCain that question.
My guess, based on McCain’s recent assertions that he would rather lose a campaign than lose a war, is that McCain’s key condition is the appearance of victory. If sectarian violence increases, or if the Iraqi government starts to crack, look for McCain to halt the withdrawal even if U.S. troops could withdraw safely. If it takes 100 years to win this war, then that’s how long McCain would leave our troops there.
In the end, I don’t think that McCain’s recent embrace of a 16-month timetable changes much other than his rhetoric. There are still deep differences between McCain and Obama and a real choice for the American people.
Cross-posted from Facebook.
Senator McCain crossed a line that he shouldn’t have this week when he said that Mr. Obama “would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.” It was a lousy comment, tantamount to calling Mr. Obama a traitor, and Senator McCain should apologize for it.
But what we’ve learned over the years is that Mr. McCain is one of those guys who never has to pay much of a price for his missteps and foul-ups and bad behavior. Can you imagine the firestorm of outrage and criticism that would have descended on Senator Obama if he had made the kind of factual mistakes that John McCain has repeatedly made in this campaign?
IT almost seems like a gag worthy of “Borat”: A smooth-talking rookie senator with an exotic name passes himself off as the incumbent American president to credulous foreigners. But to dismiss Barack Obama’s magical mystery tour through old Europe and two war zones as a media-made fairy tale would be to underestimate the ingenious politics of the moment. History was on the march well before Mr. Obama boarded his plane, and his trip was perfectly timed to reap the whirlwind. CONTINUE . . .
https://michaeloallen.com/ 