So Oliver Stone's desperate attempt to rewrite history and undermine an election with leftist propaganda bombed at the box office, coming in not first, not second not even third but fourth with like six million in receipts. The reason that "W" failed at the BO according to the idiots in the media? "Tough economic times." Really. I'm not joking. Apparently people had just enough money to go see a movie called something like "The Secret Life of Bees" but then couldn't go see "W" cause they were broke.
Don't you idiots see how stupid you are? This is why we think Joe the Plumber -- ANY plumber -- is smarter than you self-important, elitist nothings.
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Yas, he can go whine with Zucker.
Here's why...no one cares about Bush, anymore...he's already forgotten...he's dull...he's of no interest. I wouldn't go to see this piece of irrelevant crap, myself, and I'm a leftist!
Also, it's far too sympathetic to the cretin...you should be dismayed.
"Don't you idiots see you stupid you are?"
NOW who's the elitist?
Explicit details of Ortloff case revealed in court papers
Ortloff admitted prior encounter, agent alleges
By JOE LoTEMPLIO
Staff Writer
Warning: Some readers may find the contents of this story offensive.
PLATTSBURGH — Court papers released Wednesday in the case against former Republican Assemblyman Chris Ortloff reveal conversations with an undercover agent in which he admitted to having sex with underage girls before and feared detection as he set up a tryst with an 11- and 12-year-old.
According to a motion for pretrial detention in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York Albany Division, Ortloff told an undercover agent that he had had sex with minors as an adult before.
Yes, that's why the REAL plumbers and their unions ENDORSE DEMOCRATS.
Where'd they find this impotent clown...does he LIKE shooting himself in the foot?
"An American Carol" from Wikipedia
Critical
The film was not screened for critics, as director David Zucker said this was because the studio did not believe it would get a fair hearing from critics due to its conservative political viewpoint.[9]
The film currently has a rating of 13% at Rotten Tomatoes based on 31 critics,[10] (the "cream of the crop" top critics polled rating it at 00%) and a score of 20 out of 100 at Metacritic based on 12 reviews.[11] All reviews were hardly negative, however: American radio host, Rush Limbaugh, in his review, said the film was "good and funny and will create and cause raucous laughter."
[edit] Commercial
An American Carol made only $3.8 million in its opening weekend, placing it ninth among movies that week. Since it was shown in 1,639 theaters, it had a per-screen average of just $2,325 ($3.8 million divided by 1,639). A film sometimes compared to it during its release, Religulous,[12] was the tenth-ranked movie, grossing $3.5 million in just 502 theaters, an average of $6,972 per screen.[13] However, the Religulous receipts were collected over a five-day period (the first two days in New York City and Los Angeles only), while those for An American Carol were collected over a three-day period.[14][15] [16]
For its second weekend, An American Carol had a 58.8% drop in box office receipts and dropped to #15, grossing only $1,505,000 at 1,621 theaters or just $928 per screen. Religulous only had a 35.5% drop in box office receipts and dropped to #13, grossing $2,200,000 at 568 theaters or $3,873 per screen.[17]
The film faded in the box office in its third weekend dropping 73.8% and finishing #21 at just 599 theaters grossing $365,000 or $609 per screen.[18]
To date, An American Carol has grossed under $7 million after having a production budget of $20 million. [19]
Yes, Virginia (And Ohio, and Missouri), Powell's Endorsement Matters
October 19, 2008, 1:48PM
Because I read polls, I know that 58% of Americans were cast into a yawning abyss of impossibility this morning. Their lives will never be the same. Why? That helpful Republican pollster, Scott Rasmussen, not only polled enough to learn that 12% of Americans would likely be influenced in their vote by Colin Powell's potential endorsement of Barack Obama -- he also posted, in a particularly brutal misstatement of his poll's own findings, that 42% of Americans considered a Powell endorsement of Obama "possible," implying that 58% considered it impossible.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/42_see_powell_endorsement_of_obama_as_possible
For the 58% who awoke this morning to that bewildering impossibility, we 42% have blankets, hot cocoa, and first responders to welcome you to a plane of reality you never thought you would inhabit. Happily, everything comforting you remember from your old world is true in ours -- gravity is unmodified, Scarlett Johansson is still twenty-three, and W. is weeks away from exile. But I kid. If you read the Rasmussen link, you see that 42% thought the endorsement likely (not merely possible), while others thought Powell would endorse McCain or were unsure. Great pollster, crappy lede.
In seriousness, though, folks, Colin Powell's endorsement matters, and matters a great deal. With respect to Genghis, who just took the contrary position in his blog last night, here's why:
1. "Only" 12% of Americans Reporting That Powell Would Influence Their Vote Is high, and Significant. Endorsements are famously irrelevant. Remember Hillary Clinton's taunt that with Kennedy's, Kerry's, and Deval Patrick's endorsements, Obama still got blown out in the Massachusetts primary? She was right. Fifteen percent right. For that reason, a slice of voters reporting that Powell's endorsement of Obama would likely sway them, especially late in an election season when preferences have hardened and the set of persuadables is probably in the low teens is significant.
2. Obama's Water Cooler Offensive of This Weekend Squelches Any Nascent McCain Momentum. If you read polls (and if you're on this site, you probably do), then you know that John McCain is experiencing his own little Dukakis/Dole Surge. The Double-D surge is a national poll spike too little, too late, coming in the second half of October, when everyone's expectation as to the inevitable winner is priced into late deciders' decisions.
And with McCain "surging" from -8 to -6 or so after his debate loss, what does Obama throw up this weekend? Hmm, vivid pictures from a rally of 100,000 people in a Bush state (Missouri), a crushing fundraising haul of $150,000,000 in September (now up with ads in The Weekly Reader, Cricket, Motor Trend, and hopefully soon, dagblog), and oh, by the way, the endorsement of the single most respected Republican military public servant-cum-celebrity. That was a weekend that sets the narrative for this upcoming week around the nation's water coolers, as the narrative arc of Obama's debate victories becomes a story of inevitability and pushing hard to the finish line.
3. The Powell Endorsement Is Insurance Against an October Surprise. One song that sets Democrats into their Doom Dance is the incantation that an October Surprise will be coming, and that the Obama campaign will surely founder upon the shoals of some crucial foreign policy happening. While Obama stood in the spring with roughly two dozen endorsees who were retired Generals and Admirals, and gave his convention speech in Denver with these military endorsers appearing en masse just before, the Powell endorsement is cred in a whole new league.
If al Qaeda attacked American interests, as it did eight years ago with month in bombing the USS Cole, both Obama and McCain would speak out strongly about the strength of the nation's resolve to fight back, and about how they would do it. Powell's endorsement of Obama confers further Presidential stature in that, one of the only hypotheticals that Republicans cling to as a potential election-changing event.
4. Most Importantly, Powell Bolsters Obama Support in Swing States That Have Gone Red in Recent Years. One great indicator that Powell's endorsement matters is that he is perceived as nonpartisan. How do we know this? Of those surveyed, 42% expected an endorsement of Obama, but 35% expected an endorsement of McCain. Powell had not tipped his hand, nor had he distanced himself from his background of serving Republican Presidents.
The most striking thing about Rasmussen's excellent polling about Powell is that his (extraordinarily strong) favorability ratings are distributed almost equally among Republicans (85%), independents (81%), and Democrats (77%). Little wonder. The UN fiasco aside, Powell has led a very distinguished career of service, authoring the Powell Doctrine that our nation must use the force necessary to accomplish decisively and well any military mission that it undertakes (a doctrine Rummy and W. unwisely and with grave consequences ignored in their Iraq military strategy), serving Reagan as national security adviser and Bush41 as chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the first Gulf War. He is seen as a statesman more than a partisan, and he has credibility with Republicans and independents, the very people Obama has been connecting with in previously red states like Virginia, Ohio, and as of late, Missouri. Powell's strongly worded criticism of the McCain campaign is a call to Republicans not to become a curdled bastion of distrust for the Other, but instead to address important national problems through a return to bipartisanship and its champion in this cycle, Barack Obama.
Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post was fond of saying earlier this year that if Barack Obama was to be elected President, he would have to be the least aggrieved African-American man in our history. Wrong. That would be Colin Powell. And just as Colin Powell's service to the nation is the service of a patriot, and is not viewed principally or even significantly through the lens of race, one hopes that not only his endorsement, but his call to more positive campaigning, is viewed as the advice of a leader -- not a partisan, or a member of any political or social group. Given his great popularity with Republican and independent voters, and Scott Rasmussen's 12% number, there is good reason to think people are listening.
Yes, the crisis makes moonbat films bomb. The crisis in their logic, that is.
"with like six million in receipts"
Except that it made 10.6 million. You know how long it took me to look that up? 3 seconds. I guess this is the sort of thing that happens when you support a political movement that shows nothing but sneering contempt to intellectualism.
Rank And File Anger Out Of GOP Hands
The Nation: After Inspiring The Worst In Its Base, Republican Party Cannot Control Irrational Fear And Resentment
Oct. 19, 2008
Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., right, takes back the microphone from Gayle Quinnell who said she read about Sen. Barack Obama and "that he was an Arab," during a question and answer time at a town hall meeting at Lakeville South High School Friday, Oct. 10, 2008 in Lakeville, Minn.
In case you haven't heard, there's a guy running for president named Barack Hussein Osama Nobama. This Nobama was born outside America and secretly schooled in Islamic terrorism at a Wahhabi madrassa. He then moved to the United States to take up the radical '60s teachings of the Weather Underground's Bill Ayers, while also organizing for ACORN, a subprime-lending, voter fraud-committing collective of affirmative-action welfare queens. All this happened before he became an elitist celebrity advocate of socialism, infanticide, the sexual abuse of children and treason.
Suffice it to say, this caricature stretches even the limits of comic imagination. The real Obama's Christianity, his patriotism, moderation and commitment to capitalism, law and order, and national security are matters of abundant public record--some of which displeases the left wing of his party. But this is of little import to the Republican rank and file. For them, the fallaciousness of the whole counts for less than the suggestive appeal of the parts. All John McCain, Sarah Palin and their surrogates need to do is raise the insidious question--"Who is the real Barack Obama?"--and the zealots conjure the rest, along with cries of "Treason!" "Kill him!" and "Off with his head!" The virulence of such rhetoric makes even Palin seem thoughtful; she at least inserts whole verb phrases like "palling around with" in between nouns like "Barack Obama" and "terrorists."
Such scenes are alarming not only because of the McCain campaign's willingness to stoke such murderous mania but also because of its apparent inability to control the madness once it has been unleashed. At more than one rally, McCain has been booed by the audience for attempting to interrupt panicked rants about the impending socialist or terrorist takeover of America. The crowd's immediate anger is directed not at Obama and the Democrats but at their own party's standard-bearers, who should be "representing us" but have so far refused to "take the gloves off" and "take it to Obama" and "hit him" in "a soft spot." If the GOP leaders don't give these folks what they want, they had best watch their own soft spots, for there is no shortage of backbenchers ready to seize the helm. Take Jeffrey Frederick, the 33-year-old chair of the Virginia Republican Party, who said that Obama and Osama bin Laden "both have friends that bombed the Pentagon." Denounced by the McCain campaign, Frederick has defiantly refused to apologize for his remark.
Perhaps he knows which way the wind blows: the Republican Party's electoral strategy of sowing resentment and fear--sprung from Nixon and nurtured by admen like Lee Atwater, Floyd Brown and the Swiftboaters--has finally taken on a life of its own. It thrives as a postmodern pastiche of conservative hate speech that no longer requires a master--a Frankenstein monster freed from his creator. What holds this beast together is not the fear and loathing of any particular despised identity so much as the idea that America is under siege, disordered, on the cusp of imminent and total collapse, threatened by terrorists abroad and undermined by enemies at home.
Of course, certain pariahs are useful in certain times. In the old lexicon it was Communists, feminists and gays who peopled the right wing's paranoid imagination, and if the sheer breadth of the slander by association against Obama is any indication, these bugaboos are still of value. But this time around the terror has been most sharply drawn along the lines of xenophobia and racism, a potent combination of hostile drives of which trolls like Andy Martin, the anti-Semite behind the "Obama is a Muslim" e-mails, are but minor instigators. The real enablers are demagogues like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck, who have made careers out of inciting frenzied aggression at anyone to the left of Joe McCarthy. Only now it seems that even these right-wing pundits have been outdone by their formerly loyal listeners. Coulter, whose contempt for Muslims ("invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity") is surpassed only by her scorn for liberals ("even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do"), has yet to call for the assassination of Barack Obama. But if she genuinely believes that liberals are more dangerous than Islamic terrorists, she should follow the courage of her convictions and do so.
To pre-empt such embarrassing displays of weakness, softer propagandists like Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens--who once brayed on and on about the left's "hatred of the United States" and its role as a "fifth column" "in favor of surrender and defeat"--have declared their support for Obama. But as Hitchens's recent endorsement in Slate amply demonstrates, he is not quite ready to give up the poisoned sword. Obama, he writes, is not a "capitulationist," even if he does "accept the support of the surrender faction."
If the polls are any indication, Obama will endure this smear campaign just fine, with or without the backhanded compliments of apologetic neocons. And if his election is not quite the ringing victory for civil rights and liberties, diplomacy and cosmopolitanism that we might like, it will at least beat back for a while the idea that defaming these values as traitorous constitutes sound electoral strategy. If Obama wins, and the barbarians do not show up to rattle the gates, what will the conservatives do next? For them, the barbarians were a solution, of sorts.
Colin Powell destroyed the last hope John McCain had to defeat Barack Obama and become president. I have never heard such a devastating and thoroughgoing critique of McCain's issue-free, fear-mongering campaign. While Powell's endorsing Obama on "Meet the Press" Sunday was expected, the way he did it was stunning. Powell's defense of American Muslims shouldn't be so remarkable, but it is. More than anything else, the Obama campaign's recent strength could show new limits to the politics of scapegoating and bullying that have defined the Bush years.
"Yes, the crisis makes moonbat films bomb. The crisis in their logic, that is."
Lol...this moron's got a crisis with REALITY.
They almost always do extremely well, whether they're from Big Mike or Bill Maher.
Atheism is getting very hot, lately...or haven't you noticed with your head up your ass?
Fourth at the box and over ten mil ...not bad at all for a political biopic.
Poor Sayet's still traumatized by his sicko buddy, Zucker's, disaster.
Now that was a bomb...and did you hear his excuse...the vast left wing conspiracy...hahahahaha:
As a result of the poor box office showing for the god-awful An American Carol, the film's website suggested that "ticket fraud" had occurred, where moviegoers had bought tickets for An American Carol, but had instead been given tickets to see another film, in an attempt to artificially minimize the film's box office draw. The page has since been taken down.
Also, the film was not screened for critics. Director David Zucker said that this was because the studio did not believe it would get a fair hearing from critics, due to its conservative political viewpoint.
Apparently, it's all part of a vast left-wing conspiracy to destroy all conservative films.
Yeah, whatever.
Hey, Zucker, did you ever think that maybe the film bombed because it sucks ass? I mean, really, this has got to be among the worst films I have ever seen, filled with horribly unfunny "jokes", nasty attacks against Michael Moore, and racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, and just plain ignorant ramblings.
Michael Moore could certainly be a good target for satire, but this movie isn't satire. It's nasty, ugly, mean, and, not to mention, highly unfunny. It's like a right-wing version of Seltzerburg.
Next time you make a movie, Zucker, why don't you try to actually, well, you know, be funny, instead of just trying to cram your bigoted views down people's throats.
A devastating blow to John McCain
Colin Powell destroyed the last hope John McCain had to defeat Barack Obama and become president. I have never heard such a devastating and thoroughgoing critique of McCain's issue-free, fear-mongering campaign. While Powell's endorsing Obama on "Meet the Press" Sunday was expected, the way he did it was stunning.
Powell called the current economic crisis "a final exam" for both candidates, and basically said McCain failed. "He was a little unsure how to deal with the economic problems. Every day there was a different approach," Powell told NBC's Tom Brokaw. Remarkably, he said he was "concerned at the selection of Gov. Palin," who he called "distinguished" but added, "I don't believe she's ready to be president, which is the job of the vice president." He saved his harshest words for his own Republican Party, which he said had "moved more to the right than I would like to see it." He blasted McCain and the party's focus on issues like Obama's connection to former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, specifically denouncing the shameful "robo-calls" tying Obama to Ayers and terrorism.
To focus on Powell's damning comments about McCain, Palin and the GOP should not obscure that his endorsement of Obama was enthusiastic and strong. He called Obama "a transformational figure," praised him for his "inclusive" campaign, his "intellectual curiosity" and his leadership. He acknowledged his 25-year friendship with McCain and sounded genuinely sad when he said, "It isn't easy for me to disappoint Sen. McCain as I have this morning, and I regret that."
It's hard for me not to see Powell's endorsement of Obama as a way to clear his conscience for the role he played in selling the Iraq war, which Obama opposed from the beginning. Powell brushed aside Brokaw's questions about his role in making the case for war, insisting it's "not a correct assessment by anybody that my leaving the administration would have stopped it."
Leaving all the politics aside, like Glenn Greenwald, I was most moved by Powell's attack on the way the GOP is using rumors that Obama is a Muslim.
"I'm also troubled by, not what Sen. McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said such things as: "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is: he is not a Muslim. He's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is: What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is: No, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she can be president?"
Powell's defense of American Muslims shouldn't be so remarkable, but it is. More than anything else, the Obama campaign's recent strength could show new limits to the politics of scapegoating and bullying that have defined the Bush years.
It's hard to know how many minds Powell will change. But combined with the astonishing $150 million Obama raised in September, it's going to be increasingly hard for McCain to gain ground in these closing days. Obama is right to warn supporters against complacence, but this race is closing fast.
Evan, who you have here are Daily Kos regulars.
These form Obama's bedrock base, but you can only hear them spewing venom and propaganidizing anonymously in the blogosphere while their Dear Leader tries to mainstream himself up on the surface and pretend that they don't exist.
Obama's fooling a lot of people.
POWELL IS DESPICABLE!! He owes EVERYTHING to Republicans, but BLACKNESS is the ONLY thing that matters!!! Obama want to RUIN THE MILITARY and bring down MAERICA to THIRD WORLD STATUS!!
... Dr. King's dream is dead. It's totally about the color of skin for these people. The content of ones character has ZERO bearing on their decision.
I've never posted at Daily Kos in my life, John.
McCain and Liddy are Pals… Old Friends… Good Buddy’s
McCain and Liddy are Pals…
David Letterman: ‘You will also admit that be cannot control who we interact with in our lives 100%…’
John McCain ‘…how long we interact with them and how we interact with them.’
David Letterman: ‘Did you not have a relationship with Gordon Liddy?’
John McCain: ‘Awhhhhh, I’ve met him.’
Letterman: ‘Did you attend a fundraiser at his house?’
John McCain: [Pause Puzzled Look] ‘…at Gordon Liddy’s? [Later} I know Gordon Liddy. He paid his debt. He went to prison. He paid his debt as people do. I am not in any way embarrassed to know Gordon Liddy…’
Facts: Over the years, Liddy has made at least four contributions totaling $5,000 to the senator’s campaigns–including $1,000 this year.
Last November, McCain went on Liddy’s radio show. Liddy greeted him as ‘an old friend,’ and McCain sounded like one. ‘I’m proud of you, I’m proud of your family’, McCain stated….
For more information on John Stumbling Bumbling McCain and his sick sidekick Sarah 666 Palin visit: http://www.ibelievethis.us
McCain's own treacherous buddies
Posted: October 17, 2008
First, this confession. Many years ago, while teaching high school in San Francisco, I lived in the same precinct as former Black Panther Angela Davis. I may even have said hello once or twice. Yes, I am a terrorist.
But I'm not the only one. As a young man, former North Vietnamese dictator Ho Chi Minh worked as a baker at Boston's famous Parker House Hotel. All those who worked with him in the kitchen? Lock 'em up! Terrorists!
Absurd? Of course! But no more absurd than John McCain's continuing accusations that Barack Obama is a terrorist sympathizer because of his relationship with Bill Ayers. As revealed in this column last week, their relationship is almost nonexistent.
Obama was 8 years old and living in Indonesia with his mother when Ayers helped found the Weatherman organization. By the time Obama met him, in 1995, Ayers was a tenured education professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago, consultant to the mayor on education reform and had been honored as Chicago's "Citizen of the Year." Along with dozens of others, Obama served on two charitable boards with Ayers and attended a political coffee in his home. Obama hasn't seen Ayers, or spoken with him, for three years.
That's it. End of story. But, based on that slim connection, McCain and running mate Sarah Palin accuse Obama of "palling around with terrorists." This is the kind of guilt-by-association politics – "Are you now, or have you ever been?" – we haven't seen since the days of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. And it's especially dangerous for John McCain, who's been "palling around" with some pretty unsavory characters himself – starting with Charles Keating, whose fraudulent business practices triggered the S&L crisis that cost taxpayers $3.4 billion.
(Column continues below)
McCain accepted over $150,000 in campaign contributions from Keating and associates. He and his family also often vacationed at Keating's Bahamas retreat and flew on his private jet. Cindy McCain invested in a Keating real estate project. They were business partners and personal buddies.
Then there's G. Gordon Liddy, who spent four years in federal prison for his role in the 1972 Watergate burglary. Liddy held a fundraiser for McCain in his home. In November 2007, as a candidate for president, McCain told Liddy on his radio show: "I'm proud of you. ... Congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."
What principles was McCain talking about? In his autobiography, Liddy admits plotting with co-conspirator Howard Hunt to kill journalist Jack Anderson. And in 1994, after the government's raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, Liddy told his listeners: "Now, if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot. ... Kill the sons of bitches." Are those are the principles that "keep our nation great"?
Retired Gen. John Singlaub is another McCain sidekick. In the 1980s, as a member of Congress, McCain sat on the advisory board of Singlaub's organization, the U.S. Council for World Freedom. Long linked to ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America, the council played a major role in the Reagan administration's Iran-Contra scandal, serving as the front group for Ollie North's illegal White House operation of selling arms to Iran in order to arm the contras.
McCain's own rogues gallery also includes Washington attorney William Timmons, whom McCain recently named to head his presidential transition team (as though he'll need one). Not only is Timmons a registered lobbyist – one of many lobbyists McCain has surrounded himself with, despite his daily promise to chase lobbyists out of Washington – he also counts among his previous clients: Saddam Hussein!
For five years, Timmons worked with a team of lobbyists to ease international sanctions against Iraq. Their lobbying activities occurred in the years immediately following the first Gulf War, when the United States had already branded Iraq as a rogue enemy state and a sponsor of terrorism.
In other words, in the warped thinking of the McCain campaign, John McCain hangs out with convicted felons, a would-be murderer, an illegal arms merchant and Saddam Hussein's lobbyist, and he's an American hero. Barack Obama serves on a charitable board with a man who conspired to commit illegal acts 26 years before he met him, yet he's a terrorist.
Go figure. Only Sarah Palin could follow that logic.
Obama lead back in double digits over McCain, new poll says
Barack Obama has stretched to a 10 point lead over John McCain in the latest edition of Gallup's daily tracking poll.
The lead, 52 percent to 42 percent not only cuts the undecided voters down to six percent, but it erases a late week mini-surge by McCain. After almost two weeks of double digit leads for Obama, and support among registered voters at or above 50 percent, McCain had looked to have cut that lead down to seven or eight points, and Obama's support fell below 50 percent, if only for one day.
Coming on top of the news that Obama raised more than $150 million in September, it would seem to indicate that he has both very broad and very comitted support.
Of course, it's a poll. Margin for error? It's +/- 2 pts. It's a national poll, not a state by state one, so it doesn't tell us anything about the electoral college.
But it is interesting both for the trend and the snapshot of the American mind, which is what, at their best, polls claim to be.
Has Move To Discredit Powell Over Obama Endorsement Begun?
October 19th, 2008
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
When former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama today, Powell’s explanations of why were a kind of laundry list of why many independent voters have recently been breaking for Obama over Republican Sen. John McCain.
The two immediate questions then became:
1. How would this impact Obama’s campaign and McCain’s campaign?
2. Would there be a move to discredit Powell — since the modus operendi of 21st century politics is that there is invariably an attempt to discredit politicians, journalists and other writers by partisans who seemingly feel threatened by viewpoints other than their own that could gather acceptance and steam.
On number one: it’s too early to tell. Pundits are speculating.
And on number two: the move to discredit Powell has already begun. Read TMV co-blogger Michael Sticking’s post HERE on Rush Limbaugh and George Will sugguesting, in effect, that Powell only endorsed Obama because he and Obama are black.
But also note these comments via The Politico on not for attribution comments from Republican operatives in response to Powell’s endorsement:
But one prominent ally of McCain voiced what is on the minds of many GOP loyalists after watching Powell this morning.
“Let’s be honest — do we think Powell would be doing this if Obama had been trailing 6 or 7 points in the polls?” asked this source. “It’s a profile in conventional wisdom.”
This is a classic example of discreding someone. Would this source have said the same thing if Powell had endorsed McCain? If you think so, then I can sell you THIS for $5.
Further, this Republican said, for all the former secretary of state’s criticism of McCain and his praise of Obama, the move had less to do with the two candidates for president than the current occupant of the Oval Office.
“Powell cares a lot about his reputation with Washington elites, and he thinks he was badly damaged by his relationship with the Bush administration,” said the source. “So this is a way to make up for what he regarded as not being treated well by the Bush administration, not being given the due deference he thinks he deserves.”
Again: it’s a not-so-subtle personal attack, charging that Powell is a weak-willed, vain, egotist.
But it’s more: it is EXACTLY the kind of mind-set and take-out-demonize-and-discredit politics that Powell made clear he found repugnant in the form or robocalls questioning Obama’s patriotism and the use of the Ayers issue to suggest that Obama is in effect a fellow traveler of terrorists.
The Politico also added this:
A friend of the former secretary of state sharply dismissed the idea that Powell’s move had anything to do with making up for his service in the Bush years.
“Anybody who is making the argument about ‘rehabilitation’ was not listening to what he had say today,” said the friend, suggesting Powell made clear that he was unhappy with the state of the party. “It’s absolute horse—.” [TMV uses newspaper standards so we edited the word, but it is a point well taken…]
The not-for-attribution attacks on Powell are not surprising. This is way politics is done. But here is one personal note:
There had been several reports recent days, and even a teaser by Meet The Press host Tom Brokaw that in effect said Powell could go on the Sunday morning TV show and not endorse but let his preference for Obama be known. But the events of the past few days with Obama being described as a quasi socialist, the use of the Ayers issue, the robocalls plus the continued surfacing of stories about fringe McCain supporter elements indulging in various forms of racism gave me a strong feeling this morning before the show came on:
He was going to endorse Obama in a big way. Powell — like so many independent voters who yearned for a post-Lee Atwater-post-Karl Rove era and a more foward-looking form of issue politics — would probably in effect say enough is enough.
And he did just that. In fact, in this You Tube via Andrew Sullivan you can see he was far more blunt in talking outside the studio. Powell, like so many other voters, respects McCain and the 2000 version of McCain, which seems to have been recalled by the manufacturer. None of this means Obama will win — or win easily. Demonization and negative campaigning show signs of sticking. But it does illustrate how McCain increasingly has to turn to the politics of polarization, which is turn-off politics to some.
Limbaugh Implies Powell Only Endorsed Obama Because He's Black
October 19, 2008 2:55 PM
Politico's Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen get an email from Rush Limbaugh about Gen. Colin Powell's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.
"Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race," Limbaugh wrote. "OK, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with.
"I was also unaware of his dislike for John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia. I guess he also regrets Reagan and Bush making him a four-star and secretary of state and appointing his son to head the FCC. Yes, let's hear it for transformational figures."
Powell said this morning that if this had been about race he would have endorsed Obama last year, as opposed to giving Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., campaign contributions. It was about the campaigns Obama and McCain have been waging, Powell said, and the candidates they have become.
It's probably is worth pointing out that there are a host of Bush Sr.-era Republicans who say they have been appalled at the rightward foreign policy direction of the Bush administration regarding Iraq, torture, Guantanamo, diplomacy, and other issues. Many say they think that McCain in many ways (though not all) seems even more conservative.
A good example is Powell's former long-time chief of staff, Col. Larry Wilkerson (Ret.), who has been very critical of the Bush administration since leaving its employ
NYU poll: US Jews favor Obama 2:1
By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
American Jews favor Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama by a ratio of two-to-one, according to survey results being released Monday by researchers at New York University.
The data, taken from a nationwide poll conducted in early September, indicates that Jews as a group are 30 percent more likely than other white, non-Hispanic voters to support Obama.
Surprisingly, the poll found that gap widened to nearly 40% among Jews who rank Israel "very high" as a factor in their choice of candidate, indicating that Israel is a key issue for Jews across the political spectrum.
"Jews always look at candidates in their own camp as more sympathetic to their positions as Jews, so liberal Jews will tend to feel Obama is more pro-Israel than conservative Jews do," lead researcher Steven Cohen, a professor of Jewish social policy at Hebrew Union College, told The Jerusalem Post.
"In fact, liberal Jews have an argument about why McCain is bad for Israel, just as conservative Jews have an argument for why Obama is bad for Israel," he said. "There's a tendency toward cognitive consistency."
Nonetheless, support for McCain tracked support for Israel, with 58% of Jews who said Israel was very important favoring McCain.
US Democratic presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., prays at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, in Jerusalem's Old City.
Photo: AP
Orthodox Jews - a category that encompasses Modern Orthodox and haredi respondents, Cohen said - were the likeliest to support McCain, with 73% indicating support for the Republican over just 27% for Obama.
Support for McCain was highest - 90% - among Orthodox Jews who said they socialized exclusively with other Jews, while only 60% of Orthodox respondents who said they had non-Jewish friends planned to vote for McCain.
Cohen said that while New York Senator Hillary Clinton might have had an easier time attracting Jewish voters than Obama has had, he did not believe large numbers of Jewish Democratic voters would change parties in November.
"I'm willing to speculate that Obama had a bit of a tougher time than Hillary - she's from New York, where most Jewish voters are, and she's familiar," Cohen said. "But if you look at the organized Jewish community, for years already you see that hardline pro-Israel Jews were arguing the Republicans were a better choice."
Yet even Jews who categorized themselves as conservative Republicans were far likelier to support Obama, with 7% indicating they planned to vote for the Democrat over just 1% of non-Jewish conservative white voters.
The difference was almost nil at the other end of the spectrum, where 97% of Jews who said they were liberal Democrats planned to vote for Obama, slightly more than the 96% of non-Jewish liberal Democrats.
Mark Mellman, a Democratic strategist, said Obama's recent surge in national polls and in states like Florida negated the possible electoral impact of a rightward swing among Jewish voters at the margin.
"The question in 2008 is, are we talking about 66% Jewish support for Obama or 75%? That's the range of difference," Mellman said. "In some years that could make the difference between winning and losing, but this year it's not likely to because so many other people are voting for Obama."
At the time of the survey, slightly more than half of all Jewish voters - 51% - favored Obama, while just 25% favored McCain and 24% were still undecided.
That translates into 67% for Obama versus 33% for McCain among those who had already made their choice - though Cohen estimated support for the Democrat among Jews at 75% today, based on his lead in more recent polls.
National polls released Sunday by Gallup and Reuters/C-Span/Zogby indicated a three-point lead for Obama, while an expanded Gallup poll of likely voters showed Obama as much as seven points ahead.
The NYU poll was conducted by Synovate, which contacted more than 1,500 Jewish respondents in September.
Another Synovate poll conducted on behalf of the American Jewish Committee in September indicated that 57% of Jews intended to support Obama, with 30% for McCain and just 13% undecided.
Republicans Jump Ship-TEN of Fifty-Three As Of Sunday Evening
Posted by: curtislwalker
The ENTIRE List As Of This Post Is 53
The latest added to the list:
Colin Powell (Sun Oct 19):
Colin Powell, former 4-star general, Reagan national security adviser, Bush Sr. chairman of the joint chiefs, and secretary of state, gave a full throated endorsement of Barack Obama and indictment of the McCain campaign and the Republican party.
Frank Luntz (Sat Oct 18):
Frank Luntz, GOP pollster and language expert, states bluntly: "I think Barack Obama is going to be the next president of the United States." He adds: "John McCain cannot communicate. Stevie Wonder reads a teleprompter better than John McCain."
Susan Collins (Fri Oct 17):
Embattled Republican Sen. Susan Collins is calling on John McCain to stop paying for automated phone calls which describe Barack Obama as having "worked closely" with "domestic terrorist Bill Ayers". "These kind of tactics have no place in Maine politics," said Collins spokesman Kevin Kelley. "Sen. Collins urges the McCain campaign to stop these calls immediately."
Michael Smerconish (Fri Oct 17):
On his talk show on WPHT today, conservative Philadelphian Michael Smerconish endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.
Chicago Tribune Editorial Board (Fri Oct 17):
For the first time in the 161 year history of the Chicago Tribune, the paper has endorsed a Democratic presidential nominee: Barack Obama.
Peter Spaulding (Fri Oct 17):
McCain's New Hampshire state chairman slams the campaign's tactic of launching robocalls accusing Obama of links to terrorists.
Kathleen Parker (Fri Oct 17):
National Review writer Kathleen Parker takes another big step away from the GOP, declaring that Republicans "do not, in fact, deserve to win this time, and someone [Chris Buckley] had to remind them why."
Richard Lugar (Wed Oct 15):
Richard Lugar, the seniormost Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, came close to a full endorsement of Obama by endorsing his approach to foreign policy - specifically, his emphasis on diplomacy.
RNC (in Wisconsin) (Wed Oct 15):
The RNC is giving up on McCain in Wisconsin. TV stations report that they've stopped airing ads attacking Obama, and won't comment on the pullout.
Rush Limbaugh (Tue Oct 14):
Rush Limbaugh all but accepted the fact that John McCain had lost this election, asking Sarah Palin "have you even thought about a political future beyond this campaign?" Obviously, if Limbaugh thought McCain could win...her political future would be as Vice President.
Do you see anything locally happening concerning local Republicans jumping ship or withdrawing endorsements and such?
Are all of these folks, who appear to be throwing in the towel, a tactic to get Democrats to feel safe, and not go to the voting booth?
Sarah Palin on SNL: She's Good as Tina Fey, and That's the Problem
I just saw Sarah Palin in the Saturday Night Live opener.
Palin's skit revolved around the indistinguishability of her and Tina Fey's impression of her. The highpoint was a bit in which Alec Baldwin - Fey's co-star on 30 Rock - mistakes Palin for Fey.
And Palin was excellent. And that's the problem.
Sarah Palin was able to play herself so well on SNL - so well and indistinguishable from Tina Fey - because Sarah Palin is, essentially, a comedienne, a joke.
I mean this, seriously. Palin knows how deliver lines and postures and poses. Whether she is intentionally funny, or just is that way, doesn't matter. Her candidacy and her performance is a joke - on all of America.
Do we really want a person with her shtick - a person whose whole program really has no more depth than Tina Fey's shtick - as our Vice President?
Tina Fey deserves our applause, because her routine as Sarah Palin is a performance by someone who is not running for such high office.
And Sarah Palin deserves what? Unfortunately, not our laughter, but our grave concern.
I'll post a video of the routine here, or a link to it, as soon as it's available.
(Palin also was game for pretty funny Weekend Live skit, later on the show.)
I'm a TPM man, myself, ditto head.
It will be a shame if Obama wins, I don't think they'll be able to come up with a funny movie about him. Or I bet they'll be 3-4 made during the 1st and only term. Plus the books, I think the Dewey Decimal system will have to come up with a new number just for them. Will that be fiction or fantasy? :-D
Dan:
I wasn't necessarily referring to you, and, furthermore, in no way defined a "DailtyKos regular" as a poster.
Regularly reading it suffices to qualify one as a "regular."
However, Dumb & Dumber here (i.e. "midnite" and simian) are most certainly Daily Kos Borg drones, and is a reason why they don't cite the sources of the polemic Kool Aid they post, and so are plagiarising.
For example, one of them posted this thuggery, uncited and unquoted,
as if speaking their own minds:
"This election is about the importance of not just winning, but breaking their backs and crushing their spirits."
...
"This isn't about winning. It's about destroying the conservative movement, and their dangerous incompetence has given us an historic opportunity to deliver a killing blow. Leave everything on the roa" (sic)
That was cut & pasted from Kos.
Dumb shit donno what a roa is!!
"roa" is what happens to "road" when sloppily cut for pasting.
Wow, the wingding's got his rotten teeth into a really big issue he can finally understand.
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