Michelle Bachmann: More Republicans Disrespect of the Citizenry

I received this email from my neice in Minnesota. One of Ms. Bachmann's constituents in Minnesota sent her an email in response to her whackjob rant that people need to be "armed and dangerous" against President Obama's supposedly "socialist" policies. Apparently, her constituent thought this was an irresponsible comment to make. One of her flunkies responded with the email that I post below:

Paul,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKjxFJfcrcA

Also:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/metaphor

Jack Tomczak
Political Director
Bachmann for Congress
651-324-9825

If you were to click on the link, you would find yourself watching a clip from Billy Madison wherein a man proceeds to berate the main character as rambling, incoherent and irrational. Then, for good measure, the flunky adds the weblink for a definition of the word "metaphor."

Let me suggest here and now that Republican is a metaphor for "elitist" and that Michelle Bachmann contributes daily to the dumbing down of her constituents, the state of Minnesota and America in general.

Pathetic Bachmann flunky: ask not for whom the dumbass bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

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Does McCain Have Control of his own Campaign?

The oft-asked question, answered daily, as McCain goes lower and lower: How low will he go? What would John McCain not do to achieve his goal of the Presidency?



Though he has pointed out Obama’s ambitions to become President, he ignores his own obvious ambitions and ignores the lengths that he has gone to in order to achieve those ambitions. His campaign has sunk SO low recently that even Republicans are complaining about the tactics he is using and the hate speech that the campaign is inspiring.

Check out this statement from an article on Yahoo News on Friday, Oct 10:

The raw emotions worry some in the party who believe the broader swath of swing voters are far more focused on their dwindling retirement accounts than on Obama’s background and associations and will be turned off by footage of the McCain events.
John Weaver, McCain’s former top strategist, said top Republicans have a responsibility to temper this behavior.
“People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, the differences with Sen. Obama are ideological, based on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to Sen. McCain,” Weaver said. “And from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081010/pl_politico/14445;_ylt=Agc6EwS_vqq.dZJuGSW7yhJWr7sF

After three weeks of ever-heightening accusations, smears and outright lies about Barack Obama made by the campaign during these rallies and “town halls,” even other Republicans were disgusted by the tone and tenor of the statements and the visceral reactions that were occurring daily on the campaign trail. So much so that McCain was finally forced to say something himself to ratchet down the vitriol.

And I assume that we are supposed to be impressed by the fact that he was willing to finally stand up and be decent. But, of course, that ignores the fact that he is the one whose campaign started down this ugly path to begin with. And he only partially ratcheted down the innuendo and continues to lie about Obama. Also, I have yet to see any evidence that Palin is going to do the same. I guess we’ll wait and see whatever it is she has to say at whatever campaign stop she is making today.



Though they are trying to distance themselves now, they are doing so half-heartedly and are not being let off the hook so easily. This from cbsnews.com:

Palin, at a fundraiser in Ohio on Friday, told supporters "it's not negative and it's not mean-spirited" to scrutinize Obama's iffy associations.
But Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania an author of 15 books on politics, says the vitriol has been encouraged by inflammatory words from the stage.
"Red-meat rhetoric elicits emotional responses in those already disposed by ads using words such as 'dangerous' 'dishonorable' and 'risky' to believe that the country would be endangered by election of the opposing candidate," she said.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/10/politics/main4514574.shtml


Having lead his followers down this road, how difficult will it be to turn them around? After all, they booed him when he corrected the folks at the Town Hall that were inferring that Obama was dangerous and an Arab. That is something that he might have considered before this whole mess began. (And perhaps, if any violence does ensue, his campaign and propagandists like Rush Limpballs should be charged with inciting a hate crime.)

Meanwhile, McCain is attempting to distance himself from this whole sordid affair. Déjà vu anyone-- McCain distancing himself?

And today we have a new smear, this time from the head of the republican party in Virginia. Check it out:

The chairman of the Virginia Republican Party has compared Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden because of the Illinois senator's past association with Bill Ayers, who has confessed to domestic bombings as a member of the Vietnam War-era Weather Underground…
According to a report in this week's Time magazine, the Virginia party chairman, Del. Jeffrey M. Frederick (R-Prince William), told Virginia volunteers working for GOP nominee John McCain that Obama and bin Laden "both have friends that bombed the Pentagon."
That is scary," Frederick said while providing talking points to GOP volunteers in western Prince William County as they prepared for a door-to-door canvass.
Yesterday, Frederick said he stood by the comparison, even though bin Laden planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon that killed 184 people and Obama was a child and hadn't met Ayers when the Weather Underground planted a bomb at the Pentagon in 1972. No one was hurt in that blast, in which a bomb exploded in a restroom and caused flooding and damage to computer tapes containing classified information.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/12/AR2008101201956.html

Further along in the same article, we see the pattern that has been established by the campaign; people close to the campaign or members of the Republican party say something nasty, then the campaign “distances” itself from the comment.

Gail Gitcho, a McCain spokeswoman, also denounced Frederick's remarks, calling them "not appropriate."
"While Barack Obama is associated with domestic terrorist William Ayers, the McCain campaign disagrees with the comparison that Jeff Frederick made," Gitcho said.
It was the third time in a little more than a week that Gitcho repudiated something said or written by someone affiliated with McCain's Virginia leadership team. Last week, the head of the McCain campaign in Buchanan County in southwest Virginia was forced to resign after a column surfaced in which he made disparaging remarks about Obama, African Americans and gay people. Last weekend, the McCain campaign distanced itself from McCain's brother, Joe McCain, after he referred to Alexandria and Arlington County as "communist country."

How do you “distance yourself” from your own brother? And am I the only one that noticed the back-handed way that this Gitmo person (Gitcho, whatever) attempted to distance McCain from the Frederick comment? She managed to link Obama with terrorists while denouncing Frederick's linkage of Obama to...terrorists.

Here is the pattern: somebody associated with the campaign says something outrageous that McCain does not have the balls to say himself, but that will appeal to the blood-sucking, salivating mob of ultra-conservative dittoheads. Then the campaign comes out with a message that McCain does not agree with the statement. Then, the next day, or sometimes the same day, somebody else comes out and makes a new outrageous statement.

Is this McCain’s way of having his cake and eating it too? His campaign appeals to the base and he stays above the fray by supposedly repudiating the appeal (obviously with a wink and a nod)?

Or is this evidence that McCain has no control over his campaign?



Either way, it does not instill confidence in his ability to lead a nation.

Please click on the title of this blog to read a beautifully written essay on what the McCain campaign's hate speech has wrought.

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Lies, Lies and More Lies Courtesy the McAin't Campaign

Todays News: More lies from the McCain campaign.

What a shocker.

Yesterday I read an article about how lying in political campaigns is some kind of time-honored tradition and that Americans actually admire politicians who lie. If that is true, we deserve exactly what we have gotten from the republicans for the last ten years. Since the republicans came up with the contract on America scam, they have played the same game in every single congressional and presidential campaign;

· republicans run on supposed moral superiority, but their behavior has often been immoral.
· republicans run against crime and support robust punishment of criminals, but their actions have been increasingly criminal and they have either gone unpunished or received slaps on the wrist.
· republicans run on their alleged moral character, but the number of Republicans that actually possess any character has become fewer and fewer.
· republicans ran on bringing “faith” into government, and then almost immediately broke faith with the Christian conservatives that worked so hard to put them there.
· republicans run on honesty and integrity…PLEASE!

It stretches the bounds of credulity that anyone would sell themselves as a maverick and a reformer after 25 years of going along with the status quo. If McCain is America’s Knight in Shining Armor, where the hell has he been while the country has been run into the ground? Voting with the ones who were driving us there! You might even say he was a co-pilot.

On what issues does he differ from the current regime? Zero, zilch, nada, bupkiss. He KNOWS what it means to be tortured and he wouldn’t even stand up to his own party about that, but he’ll use his experiences to garner sympathy. How disgusting.

How much more of this self-righteous hypocrisy, self-serving mendacity and delusional dishonesty are the American people going to stand for?

The McCain campaign lies so much, I have started calling him John McAin’t. (He McAin’t no maverick, he McAin’t no reformer and he McAin’t fit to be President).
The arguments that republicans make for their candidates would not even fly with a ten-year-old.

Today on The View, he actually made the case that Sarah Palin is qualified to be Vice President because of Alaska’s proximity to Russia. And in an interview with Charlie Gibson, Palin made the same argument, saying “"They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska." Great news for those of you who have ever seen a foreign country; you now have the foreign policy qualifications to be Vice President!

She has also cited a less-than-one-year stint as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission as “expertise” that would help her to bring about energy independence. And my one-year stint as Fundraising Chairman of the PTA makes me qualified to run a bank. (Makes just about as much sense).

Sarah Palin has been marketed by the campaign as a maverick and a straight-shooter. They say she reformed Alaskan government.

After spending weeks in seclusion from the press and media and repeating the same tired lies at campaign stop after campaign stop, the straight-shooter sure was SQUIRMING during her first press interview on ABC. It looked more like a game of dodgeball! After repeatedly attempting not to answer questions by repeating the same drivel she had been spouting at campaign stops, she finally had to answer some real questions and her answers were disturbingly enlightening.

Her foreign policy might be called “Leave No War Behind.”

· If Israel felt threatened, as Vice President, she would support them in a nuclear attack on Iran.
· As Vice President, she would welcome Georgia and Ukraine into NATO and be prepared to defend them in future “disagreements” with Russia.
· She is four-square behind McAin’t in leaving troops in Iraq (in the past he has stated that they may stay there for as much as one-hundred years).

It sounds like she thinks that we have an unending supply of troops. She is seemingly unconcerned about sending her “own troop” into endless war. Perhaps she is planning to repopulate the military with more of her “own troop(s).”

Meanwhile, the McAin’t campaign has surrounded her with veteran Bushies and special interest lobbyists. For the full run-down, check out “Palin Team Stocked with Bush Veterans.” On Yahoo.com:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/13323;_ylt=AtUbbBhgiu6p2n8m7uYex9Jh24cA

It looks as though McAin’t a maverick and Sarah Squirmin are planning to reform our government by adding more lobbyists and corporate insiders.

Hey, they said, “change,” but they never really explained what that change would be!

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A STAR IS BORN; INDEED.

The title of the famous movie was also the title of yesterday’s editorial by William Kristol. (If you choose, you can read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/opinion/01kristol.html?th&emc=th) Unfortunately for Kristol, if one stops long enough to think (which I am sure that his readers do not) about the reference to the oft-remade award-winner, one will recall that the story was one of a movie star with a career in decline and his romance with a star on the rise. Hardly the sort of picture Kristol would want to paint of McCain/Palin.

I don’t know why the NY Times continues to value the opinion of someone with such an exceptional track record of being WRONG on just about every issue. Yet Kristol continues to opine in its employ, so someone must be reading him.
After giving short praise to an Obama speech that was viewed by more people in this country than almost any other televised event aside from the SuperBowl, Kristol joins the conservative love-fest of Sarah Palin, John McCain’s arm candy of a Vice Presidential nominee.

“It’s amazing what a bold vice-presidential pick who gives a sterling performance when she’s introduced will do for a party’s spirits.”

Because that’s what you want out of a Vice Presidential nominee- a performance. Like she’s a trained monkey. Or is he touching back on that movie reference again? But I think he’s right; the kind of person that is still entertaining the idea of voting Republican probably LOVES Palin. Isn’t she pretty?? She sure knows how to accessorize. Love those pearls! Former beauty queen, you know.

This was actually pointed out by Cokie Roberts on the Sunday morning pundit-fest, This Week with George Stephanopolis. She was literally giddy as she pointed out that Ms. Palin was a BONA FIDE Miss Congeniality. Of course, thinking people would perhaps be a little leery of putting their country in the hands of a former beauty pageant contestant—she didn’t even win the thing—but, not our conservative friends. All shallow appearance and no substance, that’s what they like. They still back George W. Bush, after all, the most vacuous leader a country was ever forced to endure.

Then, and this is my favorite thing, Kristol tries to pretend that experience is not that important when choosing a President.

“There are Republicans who are unhappy about John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin. Many are insiders who highly value — who overly value — ‘experience.’”

As if the whole neo-con assembly of the Republican Party has not been harping endlessly, about how UNEXPERIENCED Barack Obama is. But now that the pretty, shiny lady has stepped into the limelight, that all just floats effortlessly out the window. Experience is JUST not that important. After all, she’s just the No. 2, as Kristol, sounding reasonable enough for the less-analytical reader, goes on to point out.

“…Obama supporters can’t get too indignant about Palin’s inexperience. She’s only running for the No. 2 job, after all, while their inexperienced standard-bearer is the nominee for the top position.”

So, what is the definition of the word “experience,” as applied to any nominee for high office?

Sarah Palin’s glittering resume contains two terms on the city council of Wasilla, AK, and one term as mayor. Wasilla, AK has, according to its website, a population of 6,715 people (per the 2000 census). Maybe that seems like a lot of people where she comes from, but not from where most of us sit. Also on her resume is an unfinished term (less than two years) as Governor, which is not even enough to judge whether she could be considered a SUCCESSFUL governor. But, I am sure that does not bother anyone who voted for George W. Bush, who must stand out as the least-successful “businessman” to ever have been called a businessman.

None of the punditry is comparing Palin’s paltry experience to Joe Biden’s, the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee. THAT would be laughable. No, they are instead comparing her lack of experience to what they claim is Obama’s lack of experience. Here is a look at the new math:



Maybe the reason the Republicans are doing such an abysmal job of running the country is because they can’t even properly perform a simple equation.

And this line of reasoning totally ignores the fact that McCain is 72 years old and has a history of cancer. It is not outside the realm of possibility that he might not last out a full term. Does Kristol genuinely believe that Palin would qualify as a good President?

And the next little gem that Kristol tosses out is actually supposed to be some kind of dig against Obama.

“And McCain doesn’t need a foreign policy expert as vice president to help him out.”

Wasn’t it John McCain that didn’t know the difference between a Sunni and a Shi’ite Muslim? Wasn’t it John McCain who confused Iran with Iraq? Has said that he would consider maintaining a troop presence in Iraq for the next 100 years? Wants to “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”? McCain has stumbled on basic facts concerning foreign policy enough times in public that he probably SHOULD have been looking for someone to shore him up.

Kristol at least admits that this choice of Palin is a gamble.

“But of course McCain needs Palin to do well to prove he’s a shrewd and prescient gambler.”

Does William Kristol think that our next President should be a gambler? Because I think most people are of the opinion that this country can’t afford any more gambling at this point. But then again, Kristol has been wrong so many times, perhaps he believes that at some point the odds will catch up with him. More of that poor Republican math.

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