2008 USP(G)ET pt. II: counting the days to 2012 primary thread 1

being proud of /b/ is kind of like being proud of venereal disease, guys

better to have flunked your Wasserman test than never to have loved at all

Might have been linked already but HILARIOUS:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who was to star at two major California fundraisers and an Orange County rally for 15,000 next week, has canceled her two-day swing through the Golden State, campaign sources said.

The change is a shocker, because Palin's presence had electrified the GOP base in California. Party insiders were distributing 15,000 tickets to her Sept. 26 rally in Orange County -- and fundraisers reported an almost instantaneous sell-out of her two $1,000-a-head Sept. 25 fundraising events in Orange County and Santa Clara.

Both fundraisers had generated such high ticket sales that the OC Lincoln Club event was moved to the Orange County Performing Arts Center, and the Bay Area event was moved from the Woodside home of Tom Siebel to the huge Santa Clara Convention Center.

The change comes in the same week a new Field Poll showed that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama still leads Republican presidential candidate John McCain in California by a whopping 16-point margin.

So Palin's pullout from her Western state swing is sure to ramp up chatter that the GOP ticket -- which has insisted it will compete here -- may be reassessing its Golden State presence. (Team McCain says it's just a scheduling issue.)

On a resource/electoral-vote level question, not wasting time here makes sense, but only if they'd not planned on doing anything like this in the first place. And Orange County would have been perfect for her as a place for a quick visit if they did want to do seriously do something like this.

They've got to start over shoring it up in Indiana. They are so fucked.

Looks like they ended up rescheduling -- right after the debate with Biden. Read into that what you will.

I doubt they pulled out because they can't win CA; they never thought they'd win CA. A Californian Republican's vote may be worthless but their money is still worth something.

Oh it's all about some easy green with the dog and pony show, for sure. The cheap seats for the fundraisers are $2300 each, at least down here. In exchange Palin will get to be among her kind -- said it before, will say it again, she'd be a *perfect* county supervisor in OC.

Eh. Generally you're right, but in the newspaper scenes I suspected that, for Simon, shit happens = truth. You know, that old canard about how sad songs say so much.

Er, wrong thread!

Alfred I love it when you do that

We should talk about The Wire in every thread

every political thread is at a "Wire" level.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/13/in_anrchorage_an_anti-palin_pr.html?hpid=sec-politics

In Anchorage, an Anti-Palin Protest

By Karl Vick
ANCHORAGE -- A couple of hours after Gov. Sarah Palin returned to the Outside, as Alaskans call the Lower 48, her local critics swarmed an Anchorage intersection to correct the widespread impression that the whole of the Last Frontier endorses her candidacy.

The midday protest outside a city library drew a crowd in the high hundreds -- perhaps surging past a thousand -- from the city's relatively liberal environs, who seemed very happy to see one another and be reminded that they are not alone.

"The whole thing grew out of frustration," said Charla Sterne, one of the organizers, who like several people at the rally declined to say where they worked (several said they were state employees and feared retribution).

"Last week this was just ten women sitting around talking about this perception that all of Alaska supports Sarah Palin. We apparently hit a nerve and started a movement," Sterne said.

A sense of festival obtained. There was a woman in a polar bear suit representing "Polar Bear Moms Say: No Palin." Drivers on 36th Avenue saw a little girl waving a sign "Don't Ban My Books."

Maia Nolan, 29, wore a sticker reading, "My Mom for V.P."

"My mom is from Alaska. She's a working mother. She's good looking," said Nolan. "So she seems to be qualified to be vice president."

There were also a few score Palin supporters in the mix, most of them alerted to the event by a conservative talk show host.

Eddie Burke of KBYR-AM showed up in person, but while there was no evident friction between the two camps, cheerful chants of "O-bam-ah" effectively drowned out whatever he was saying to the cameras in the center of a mini-media scrum.

The din did not prevent reading the signs, pro and against:
Bush In A Skirt
Palin: She Be Failin'
I Love My Alaska Girl
Jesus Was a Community Organizer
We Luv Our Lady Guv
Palin: Thanks But No Thanks
Smearing Alaska's Good Name One Scandal @ a Time
Candidate To Nowhere
Rape Kits Should Be Free
Voted For Her Once: Never Again!
Community Organizers are the Real Patriots
Barbies for War
I Shall Not Be Pandered To
Give Palin Your Vote AND Your Draft Age Child
Sarah Palin: So Far Right She's Wrong
Sarah Palin Is My Hero
Alaska Is Not Frisco
Gun Rights
Coat Hangers for McCain
Sarah Palin, Undoing 150 Years of American Feminism
Hockey Mama for Obama (on a hockey stick)

last one is my fave

holy shit, the hannity video. i've never watched the guy. wow.

Candidate To Nowhere

this is the best

Palin: Thanks But No Thanks

my fave

Coat Hangers for McCain

damn.

Alaska Is Not Frisco

??

That was one of the anti-signs, from some local Limbaugh clone or something.

who talked about how the dems were lily-livered [or equivalent] 'maggots'

i like how 'Frisco' reminds us what century Alaska's in

Palin says she'll bring accountability back to DC by putting the Congressional checkbook online.

Obama, uh, did that already.

>Rape Kits Should Be Free

if you dont know the story behind this on, it's a bit off-putting

one

I like this photo(s):

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080909/capt.c785d9beb8ae4c32b76fbcf80b474455.obama_2008_micc118.jpg?x=400&y=284&q=85&sig=.VUBw_GBoUeWOg7GtwQv7Q--

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080909/capt.e1c7d550608243a19de036f333be9834.obama_2008_micc119.jpg?x=400&y=324&q=85&sig=j6WLGoEprD3MNwHqSAxk2g--

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/2339/z37086955vo1.jpg

Also, I attended a "Military Families for Obama" event/talk/whatever tonight at the Obama HQ in SE portland, where they had Gen. Tony McPeak, one of the co-chairs of the national campaign, along with other Oregon & Portland Metro speakers. It was a very emotional night, to be sure, but one of the speakers pointed out that one of the very few things that can overcome all the fear bullshit being spread around now is anger.

It's my hope that anger is becomes one of the motivating factors(expressed or not) in getting folks out to do something in the next 40-odd days. We've been so betrayed by these jackholes who've let things get so, SO fucked, that hopefully those rumblings will carry forth.

meanwhile

[...]"Sen. McCain bragged about how as chairman of the Commerce Committee in the Senate, he had oversight of every part of the economy. Well, all I can say to Sen. McCain is, 'Nice job. Nice job,'" Obama said at a rally at a baseball stadium in Las Vegas. "Where is he getting these lines? The lobbyists running his campaign?"

Obama later added: "I'm not making this up, you can't make this up. It's like a 'Saturday Night Live' routine."

The feistier, more sarcastic tone came as worried Democrats urged Obama to get tougher and show more passion. Obama has tried to assure donors and voters that he's been schooled by Chicago politics.

"I'm skinny but I'm tough," he says...

The Drudge pull quote was OBAMA TELLS SUPPORTERS "GET ANGRY, GET IN THEIR FACES"

Why do people (I mean real people, not strawmen - people who chat with me) still believe tax breaks for the wealthy help stimulate the economy? Is there any evidence that this is true?

Basically:

hordes of lines from the Democrat-affiliated booths
completely empty Republican-affiliated booths
legions of Obama pins and t-shirts
fewer than 20 McCain pins and t-shirts
award-winning seed art featuring elephants shitting and pissing on the Constitution, elephants merrily dancing off of a cliff, Obama cleaning up piles of elephant shit
an award-winning scarecrow of W holding a sign that said "MISSION BUNGLED"
It was pretty overwhelming.

OK so this isn't presidential but this is some MN state fair award winning anti-GOP seed art

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3076/2801056162_946d42471b.jpg

Seriously, are we living in a didactic morality play? Are we really presented with the choice between a person whose identity is defined by his time as a bomber in an American war of imperial aggression and a guy with a “Muslim” name who wears centuries of America’s violent racial oppression on his skin? Are you fucking serious?

http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2008/09/15/death-and-american-spectacles-take-three/

I mean real people, not strawmen - people who chat with me

lol

Palin/MyCane in bloody MN today. WHAT?

Hey, the Powerline guys wanted their rapture, they'll get it.

Haha they are going to Blaine. Blaine, people.

http://www.ci.blaine.mn.us/

http://www.northerntool.com/images/stores/storeimages/Blaine_MN.jpg

This actually makes me very happy.

http://www.blainehistory.org/images/hyattweb1.jpg

Why do people (I mean real people, not strawmen - people who chat with me) still believe tax breaks for the wealthy help stimulate the economy? Is there any evidence that this is true?

i don't know that there is any evidence to this; if you think people are naturally good and not motivated by greed it seems like a sound philosophy. unfortunately the people that believe in this economic philosophy seem to be more motivated by greed than anything else so in practice it doesn't seem to work.

It's called supply-side or Reaganomics, and it tends to fail every single time they try it.

yeah I know what it is. I'm just saying I understand, on one level, the reason why people would think it would work. sadly corporations are more interested in amassing wealth for themselves then helping out workers. it would be nice if this could be changed in some way.

anyway, with this new bailout proposed ("hundreds of billions of dollars") doesn't this mean that the bush tax cuts HAVE to go away? how the fuck are they going to pay for anything? this negates McCain's policies, doesn't it?

WAHT WHY ARE PALIN/MCBANE TALKING TO BLAINE THE MONO

LOL

The idea isn't that corporations will voluntarily share their largesse in the form of higher salaries or charitable donations or public works. The idea is literally that lower taxes equals more tax revenue for the government. The weird logic is that lower taxes on corporations leads to higher economic growth, which leads to corporations making lots more money than they would have otherwise, which leads to more money for the government even at the lower rate. I don't know if there's any evidence that this actually works, or has ever worked in the past. It might if there were no tax loopholes?

LOL curve

^^ high concept, i like it

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/09/19/ia_poll_obama_leads_in_colorado_mccain_ahead_in_virginia.html
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/09/19/arg_poll_mccain_ahead_in_indiana.html

or should i say i LAFFed

xp

Haha they are going to Blaine. Blaine, people.

― suzy, Friday, September 19, 2008 9:17 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

If you mix up the letters in the word "Blaine," mix 'em around, eventually, you'll come up with Nebali. Nebali. The name of a planet in a galaxy way, way, way... way far away.

omg blaine is real?