Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

The National Republican Trust is running ads trying to link Obama to Mohammad Atta and the other 9-11 terrorists, by claiming that Obama wants people like them to have driver’s licenses. Their advertising graphic shows a picture of Mohammad Atta’s “driver’s license,” which, they claim, could now happen as a result of Obama’s plan to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

Of course, they’re counting on the fact that you won’t know the truth about the 9-11 hijackers, which is that none of them were illegal immigrants!

Let’s clear some of this up, because this ad campaign is absolutely ridiculous.

1) Requiring drivers to be licensed and insured is a good thing. If you’ve ever found yourself in a car accident with no recourse because the other driver had no insurance, then you know this. It is to the benefit of public safety to encourage ALL drivers to become licensed through the DMV and obtain insurance. Further, aren’t we better off having a state database of people residing here, rather than have millions of people flying completely under the radar?

2. Every one of the 9-11 terrorists – every single one – was in the country on valid visas. They had full permission to be in this country. People with valid visas can already obtain driver’s licenses.

But they don’t want you to know that.

Even the Orange County Register has come out against Prop 8. Yay! I just hope its readers will listen!

A great editorial from the NY Times…

Obama camp calls for special prosecutor in fraud investigation – CNN.com.

My favorite quote from the Republican team:

"Rest assured that, despite these threats, the McCain-Palin campaign will continue to address the serious issue of voter registration fraud by ACORN and other partisan groups, and compliance by states with the Help America Vote Act's requirement of matching new voter registrations with state data bases to prevent voter fraud," Porritt added.

Yeah. And OJ Simpson will keep trying to find the real killer.

Biden lashes out at Palin’s ‘pro-America’ comment – CNN.com.

Sarah Palin says:

“We believe that the best of America is in the small towns that we get to visit, and in the wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation.”

Yeah. Um. Opposed to like… where all the people live?

Secret Service denies someone yelled ‘Kill him’ at Palin rallies. Interestingly, the Secret Service agents they interviewed were NOT there on security. My guess is they were attending to show support for Palin. So what exactly would be their motivation to admit to hearing death threats levied at Obama? And why did their investigation only include interviews of other Secret Service agents? How about interviewing the other reporters? But no – they might actually get information they don’t want, if they do that!

Secret Service starts helping McCain/Palin keep secrets, blocks journalists from crowds. I have to agree with Dan Savage: If Sarah Palin isn’t going to talk to journalists, the media should either demand access, or even better, just put a freeze on any story related to Sarah Palin. If she doesn’t want to be covered in the media, then they should obey her wishes, and she should be excised from it.

Then again… America needs to see how out of touch she is.

Meanwhile, over at the Department of Justice, which has played Bush Lackey in the past, is stepping up to the GOP plate again with its “investigation” of ACORN. OR IS IT? Who really knows? At least they recognize that this is a highly partisan conflict: ACORN wants underrepresented portions of the American electorate to vote… and the GOP does not. Highly partisan.

I think we all know where this is leading – the GOP wants some excuse, any excuse, to invalidate more than one million registrations submitted by ACORN – even though only a couple thousand of them were invalid. 1) ACORN is required by law to submit all registrations it receives. Invalid registrations won’t be verified, so no voter fraud will take place. Estimates are that no more than 2% of them are likely to be invalid, and not one of the invalid registrations will actually be approved. 2) Can we just review here, for a minute, the real voter fraud that occurs every day by GOP operatives? For more details, review my previous post on GOP voter fraud. This whole ACORN business is one giant “Hey, look over there!”

I seem to recall that at LEAST a few thousand signatures were dropped from the Prop 8 signature count because they were invalid. Wait, did I say a few thousand? More like a few hundred thousand.

Here is the random sample signature data for Prop 8 (PDF). Let’s look at some interesting details:

TOTALS
Raw count: 1,120,801
Random sample (full check): 43,191
Now, JUST in the random sample data – that is, ONLY out of the 43,191, we have these statistics:
Valid signatures: 36,560
Invalid signatures: 6,621
Duplicate signatures: 236

Therefore, projected count of valid signatures: 781,873
Percent accuract: 79.51%

Let’s do a tiny bit of math here: If 781,873 signatures were projected to be valid by the random sample check, that means that 338,928 signatures were projected to be INVALID. The real number could be much higher than that.

If we’re going to have a conversation about mass voter fraud, let’s start there. Hey FBI – I’ve got an investigation for ya.

ACORN, my ass. The Republican party is all about voter fraud – they are just pulling the “hey, look over there” bullshit they always pull. Hopefully with breaking stories like this one, in which voters say they were duped into registering as Republicans, people will start seeing through their lies.

How much of a geek am I, that I had to actually open Google Earth and see the giant stuffed pink bunny for myself?

It’s there! I’m so amused.

FOXNews.com – Idaho Mother Gets 10-Year Sentence After Boyfriend Impregnates 9-Year-Old Daughter – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News.

Read the last sentence. No, seriously. Did anybody expect that? I sure as hell didn’t. On what planet is it reasonable for a 9-year-old child to have a baby?

McCain faces uphill climb in campaign’s final weeks:

My favorite line:

"Unless there is something really dramatic that happens externally, like Osama bin Laden is brought home in chains, or there is some sort of really dramatic foreign crisis where Obama stumbles, it's not likely McCain can climb back," Hinshaw said.

Bin Laden’s body should be coming out of the freezer in Dick Cheney’s undisclosed bunker any minute now… watch for it, folks. Watch for it.

No, like, seriously.

YouTube – No on 8 PSA: FAMILY Molly Ringwald.

For an old guy, McCain sure has a short memory – did he really call segregation the worst chapter in American history?

Um… has he forgotten SLAVERY?

I am on a few conservative newsletter lists – you know, just to keep an eye on those who would spread lies and try to brainwash people in the right wing. I got an email from Human Events today that made me snort. Here’s the line that really got me:

“We will not stand for the stealing of elections — the tainting of our democracy — by those who wish to subvert the rule of law.”

OH REALLY? A particular Supreme Court decision comes to mind that indicates otherwise.

No, seriously? The conservatives – INVENTORS of voter disenfranchisement – are concerned that the Democrats are going to “steal” this election?

Seriously?

Let’s review here: ACORN, a relatively small blip on the radar of this election, is required BY LAW to submit every voter registration that it receives, regardless of whether it personally feels that a form is suspect. None of these registrations will actually be PROCESSED if they cannot be confirmed. Nobody is going to accidentally send Mickey Mouse a sample ballot. I promise.

Compare this alleged “voter fraud” (which is actually not voter fraud, but rather, registration fraud – and not on the part of ACORN) to voter registration in Nevada in the last Bush election, when it was discovered that the Republicans had held a voter drive and then destroyed and thrown away Democratic voter registrations so that those voters would turn up on election day and be unable to cast a ballot.

Compare it to the 2000 Florida election, when thousands of Floridians were prohibited from voting because their names were “similar” to the names of felons and former felons, or people whose voting rights had been restored, or who had only been convicted of misdemeanors, which does not eliminate the right to vote.

How about the police roadblocks that kept black Floridians from voting in that same election?

How about the Diebold CEO that promised to “deliver” Ohio to Bush in 2004? Those machines, you know, the ones with no paper trail, which studies have shown are easily hacked, and which can be programmed to ignore votes cast for certain candidates?

How about THIS election, where Republicans are looking at every possible option to prevent people from voting, including lying to students about their voting eligibility based on their parents’ tax returns, and seeking to block any person whose house is in the process of foreclosure by claiming that they no longer have an eligible address from which to register (even if they still LIVE there)???

Seriously? The Republicans are going to start talking about voter fraud and election-theft? The Republicans, who fare better when fewer people are allowed to vote?

Absolutely. Let’s talk about it.

Kennedy Townsend: ACORN Smear is Effort to Cover Up Massive GOP Push to Undermine 2008 Elections Through Coast-to-Coast Vote Suppression – MarketWatch.

A must-read – you wouldn’t believe what the Republicans are doing to try to keep people from voting in this election!

Testing Google’s Drunk E-Mail Protector – TIME.

I love it! It’s an amusing article.

AWESOME. Send to everybody you know. There is SO MUCH MORE we could be worried about right now. I saw that one couple sacrificed all their vacations for the next couple of years so they could donate $35,000 to the Yes on 8 campaign. Holy crap. Do you know how many LIVES you could have saved with that money? And you wasted it on Prop 8? It’s like being granted a wish, any wish in the world, and wasting it on designer jeans or a cute purebred puppy. If you want to make sacrifices for the greater good, make it mean something. Like our Yom Kippur prayer book said, “Always look after your own soul and another’s body, not another’s soul and your own body.”

YouTube – No on 8 PSA: NO vs YES

Don’t leave until you read this whole post! You won’t regret it!

Restaurant.com has an AMAZING deal right now – they are offering 80% off their already-reduced dining gift certificates when you enter code EIGHTY at checkout – DON’T FORGET to enter the promo code or else you won’t get the discount. This deal expires October 15, 2008 – that’s tomorrow – so if you want in, you’d better hurry up!

My guess is that this is meant to encourage people to keep going out to eat in this ridiculous economy, especially since most of the restaurants listed are smaller restaurants that tend not to be huge chains. That said, there are some chains on there, and we found a handful of our favorite restaurants there. I can’t wait to start eating!

There are minimum purchase amounts (usually $35 to use a $25 coupon) but that usually isn’t hard to reach unless you’re eating at a fast-food restaurant – and if you have a few people, you know you’ll reach the minimum. Let me tell you, this is an amazing deal. Their prices are already pretty good – $25 certificates are normally $10. Right now, they are $2. $10 gift cards are even less; they’re $0.60! I got about $80 worth of gift cards – for $16!

Can you do better than that?

Well, actually, you can! As it turns out, eBates, a rewards program that gives you cash back four times a year, offers 15% cash back on Restaurant.com – that’s a way generous rebate. So of my $16, I’ll get 15%, or $2.40, deposited into my eBates account. (I’ve gotten checks from them before, so I know it’s legit!) That’s just too awesome.

BUT WAIT! It gets EVEN better. If you sign up for eBates through this link before October 31, 2008 you’ll get a $10 welcome deposit into your eBates account, instead of the usual $5. So not only can you get 80% off your Restaurant.com dining gift certificates, but they will practically pay for themselves (ha, depending on how much you spend) if you sign up for eBates and make your Restaurant.com purchase through their link.

Now how awesome is that?

Joe. My. God.: Yes On 8 Worker Attacked.

Wow. I have never read such a blatantly biased article about something that may or may not have happened like they said it happened. They’ve been killing us, beating us, and torturing us for YEARS, and encouraging violence against us, but god forbid one of them gets a black eye and a couple of stitches, and suddenly they’re brutally beaten, “seriously injured,” and are turned into martyrs for the cause? Let’s ask Matthew Shepard how badly he thinks Jose was injured. Maybe we could see what Lawrence King thinks of Jose’s black eye. Let’s ask Sakia Gunn if she thinks Jose’s injury is serious.

Oh wait, we can’t – because they’re DEAD.

Then again, it’s entirely possible this “assault” was staged in order to garner negative publicity for the No on 8 campaign. At this point I wouldn’t put anything past the Yes on 8 bigots.

The REALLY funny thing is that this guy is a “native of Mexico” who “just” became a citizen 2 months ago. Hm. Weren’t you people (Yes-on-8ers) the same ones voting to deny public services to “natives of Mexico” only a few years ago? Aren’t you the same people who rail on Mexicans, whether or not they are citizens? Aren’t you the ones who try to fight any Spanish-language education in our schools for fear that Spanish will replace English as the national language? And yet suddenly you’re willing to use them as poster children for your cause?

What. The. Fuck. Seriously?

Ex-Gays Demand Non-Discrimination Inclusion, File DC Suit / Queerty.

This is just bullshit. It’s like including “Jews for Jesus” in protection aimed at reducing anti-Semitism – counterproductive at best, subversive attempt to destroy the population from within, at worst. It’s inviting the wolves in just because they’re wearing a nice woolen coat. Why should they be protected when their whole purpose is to annihilate the group they claim to be part of?

Now, to be fair, most “ex-gays” really are gay and closeted, whereas most “Jews for Jesus” were never Jewish to begin with, and are just faking it to try to convince actual Jews that their “choice” is a valid one. So really, protection for “ex-gays” would be more logical than protection for “Jews for Jesus.” But I think it’s kind of funny that by asking for protection as “ex-gays,” these people are admitting that in fact they are still gay – because if they weren’t, they’d be calling themselves “straight,” and wouldn’t need protection. But that should come as no surprise, because we all know that most “ex-gays” are just self-hating gay people who have somehow been brainwashed by the religious right into believing that they are doing the right thing by denying themselves the gift that God has given them. But you can’t lie forever, and many of the most high-profile “ex-gays” have been caught doing exactly what they claim they’ve given up. Yep – men.

And if you’re calling yourself “ex-gay” and are now in a satisfying hetero relationship? Hey, guess what? YOU WEREN’T GAY IN THE FIRST PLACE. Call yourself “bisexual” and get off your self-righteous martyr trip. You didn’t do anything special.

Your dreams (and nightmares) about Sarah Palin. – By Abby Callard and David Plotz – Slate Magazine.

So I guess I’m not the only one having Palin nightmares – although in mine she brings about the apocalypse and seems to enjoy doing it…

U.S. ready to debut plan – Oct. 13, 2008.

Do you ever wonder if this isn’t just the greatest heist of all time? Do you wake up in the middle of the night sometimes wondering how much of that $700 billion of our money is going to wind up in the offshore bank accounts of the top .05% of America’s wealthiest Republican puppeteers? Do you ever wonder if King Georgie is going to help himself to a share of it before he heads out of office? How many of Wall Street’s CEOs are REALLY not going to see massive financial perks from this bailout?

How much of this money is going to bail out the economy, and how much of it is going to leak out of the economy into the wealthiest Americans’ personal vaults?

I have no answers – only lots and LOTS of questions.

Bush: ‘Lot of work to do’ before leaving office – CNN.com.

Please, Mr. Bush, we can’t afford any more of your “work.” Try not to destroy the world any more in the last few months, okay? Just give it a rest. You deserve a rest – you’ve already done such a bang-up job… just leave well enough alone and don’t break anything else? Please? FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS SACRED AND HOLY?

So it looks like it’s not enough to call Obama by his first name – radical wingnuts have started calling him “Barack Hussein Mohammad Obama.” I am not sure if they are just trying to make some kind of “subtle” point, or if they really believe that his middle name is Hussein Mohammad. Either way, they’re delusional. The name “Mohammad” appears nowhere in Obama’s name, and the only reason “Hussein” is in there is that he was named after his father, Barack Hussein Obama.

By the way, let’s look at that name, Hussein. What is so wrong with that name, other than the mere coincidence of it being connected to Saddam Hussein? There are plenty of patriotic Americans who have names like Hussein, Hasan, Huseyn, etc. Are you going to point fingers and say that every single person in this country whose last name is McVeigh is a domestic terrorist, or that every person named Adolph, Adolf, Adolfo, or any similar derivative might as well just come out as a Nazi right now? Perhaps the opposite is true and every person named Moses is a prophet, and everybody named Albert is a genius.

By the way, might I remind people that King Hussein of Jordan was a friend of Yitzhak Rabin (he even spoke at his funeral), and was one of the first leaders of an Arab nation to actually make peace with Israel? If we have to call Barack Hussein Obama by his full name, who is to say the inference people make shouldn’t be that he is somehow connected to THAT Hussein instead of the more unfortunate comparison to the Iraqi dictator?

Words are tricky things, “my friends,” but they’re not opaque. If you’re going to start trying to use word tricks to turn people’s opinions, be prepared for people to see right through them.

With friends like Sarah Palin, who needs enemies?! I would rather see somebody supporting Israel by trying to further peace in the Middle East, rather than supporting Israel blindly in the hopes that the resulting wars will bring about the End of Days just a little bit sooner, or because as long as Israel holds out, there’s still a chance all the Jews will move there and either accept Jesus or die.

I don’t want this woman anywhere near the international peace process – or the proverbial “red button.” Religion is a personal matter, but not when her religious motivations will guide her every move in office. A religious politician – EVERY politician, really – has to have some level of humility; as we’ve seen from the past 8 years, when an official believes he has God’s mandate to rule and has been placed there to do God’s work and have God speak through him… well… I think we know how well that goes.

Does Sarah Palin Have a Pentecostal Problem? – TIME:

And finally, a videotape surfaced of a 2005 service at the Wasilla Assembly of God Church, the Pentecostal church that Palin attended for most of her life. In the scene captured on video, Palin stands at the front of the sanctuary while a visiting African pastor prays that God will help her gubernatorial campaign and protect her “from every form of witchcraft.” Later in the same service, the pastor complains that “Israelites” held too many prominent positions in business, a comment that has further alienated Jewish voters.

Sarah Palin And The Anti-Semitism Question – The Jed Report:

Yesterday, Ben Smith posted a remarkable story about Sarah Palin’s attendance at an anti-Semitic sermon delivered at her church just two weeks ago.

The sermon, given by the executive director of Jews for Jesus, blamed Jewish victims of terrorism for the attacks which claimed their lives. If Jews had just converted to Christianity, he said, they would have lived.

This is crazy, paranoid stuff, and it is far beyond anything Jeremiah Wright ever said, yet we went through six weeks of nonstop scrutiny over his politically extreme statements.

Sarah Palin and the Jewish community | Op-Ed Contributors | Jerusalem Post:

FINALLY, THERE is the matter of two anti-Israel politicians – Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan. In February Palin in an interview lavished praise on Ron Paul. There is also a controversy over whether Palin has supported former presidential aspirant Pat Buchanan. To be fair there is no evidence that Palin shares either of these Republicans’ anti-Israel creed. However, since the beginning of the GOP narrative within the Jewish community is that Obama can not be trusted because of a handful of people who have endorsed him. If this guilt by association standard is one the McCain stands by, then they also need to deal with Palin’s past support for anti-Israel politicians.

Sarah Palin’s Jewish Problem – Michael Fox – Open Salon:

In his talk at Wasilla on August 17, 2008, with Palin in the audience, Brickner described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's "judgment of unbelief" on Jews who have not converted to Christianity.
…
At the conclusion of Brickner's sermon, the congregation contributed money for Jews for Jesus' mission of converting
the Jews and and prayed that Jews would come to accept Jesus.
…
John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate has already cost him the vote of at least one prominent Jewish politician — former New York City Mayor Ed Koch.

Koch, who endorsed George W. Bush in 2004, said that McCain’s choice of Palin has led him to endorse Barack Obama.

“She’s scary,” Koch said.

Let me say it one more time: I do not believe John McCain is being sincere when he tries to “calm down” his supporters by telling them they don’t have to “fear” Obama. If McCain really wanted to tone down the rhetoric and stop the fear-mongering, he would tell his vice-maniac (and I really do think she’s gone maniacal at this point) to back the hell off. Is he telling her to tone it down? Nope. Instead, he’s letting her run around saying whatever she wants, and getting the crowds all riled up, and then he gets to come out with a little wink and pretend to be the good guy, being all, “now now, let’s not get crazy or anything… here, have some more Palin Kool Aid!”

Seriously. John McCain, if you really want to tone down the hate-mongering and vile rhetoric, then tell Sarah Palin to shut her freakin’ trap and stop trying to paint Obama as a radical Arab Islamist terrorist baby-killer, and stop letting Palin encourage and incite vile mob behavior in her audiences, who have been known to shout racial epithets and death threats.