Another conservative for Obama

Wow. Folks are even coming back from the dead to endorse Obama. Can that guy communicate or what?

How revolting

A member of the Reagan revolution has just gone off the reservation. Ken Duberstein, former Reagan Chief of Staff, told CNN he is backing Obama. Apparently, he is another one of those Georgetown elites who has more respect for Colin the General than Joe the Plumber.

A different shade of lipstick

Politics: the art of the possible.

The Jewish Vote

Maybe its having a last name that rhymes with Osama or a middle name that rhymes with Hussein (not to mention that it is even spelled the same way, and uh, well, pronounced identically). Maybe it is the fact that older Jewish voters are liberal up to the point of having a shwatza in the White House. But anyway, the latest poll looks as though Obama will carry the Jewish vote. And apparently, Caribou Barbie had just a little something to do with that.

Obama is ahead in the God-off

That’s right, it’s something I thought I would never see in my lifetime. The Democrats are actually out-Godding the Republicans. What has put Obama over? Is it the fact that he said (without looking apoplectic) he had “received Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour” instead of the more politically-correct  “I hold a deep and abiding personal faith.” Or the fact that the benediction at the Democratic Convention was delivered by someone other than a New Age Unitarian lesbian agnostic as in years past? Or was it his long-format infomercial with its featured shots of a middle-class people studying their bibles and soundbites of the candidate promising to pray for someone? Or is it simply the fact that the choice of  Penecostal V.P. actually knock points off for conspicuous pandering? God only knows.

West Wing, the Sequel

In case you missed it, this year’s campaign has had an uncanny resemblence to the final season of TV’s West Wing. Jimmy Smits played the tall, inspirational, hope-mongering minority candidate with two adorable kids. Alan Alda played the too-moderate-for-the-base Mavericky crumudgeon. And, as Hollywood would have it, the liberal wins.

Obamathon

When you have deep pockets you can run 30-minute commercials instead of 30-second ones. Billionaire Ross Perot did it. Now Obama has done it. The unit was effective and moving. For like much of Obama’s rhetoric, the half hour ad was about we the people, not he the candidate. As Obama repeats “this election has never been about me, it’s been about you.” And so, we watched three or so stories of American families trying to get by. Not some cardboard cut-out shill called “Joe the plumber”, but real, living, breathing middle-class families with medical bills they can’t afford and retirements they can’t enjoy. It was a commercial about us. Which is the real irony of this election. The Democratic ads have been about middle-class Americans. The McCain ads have been all about Obama.

Reboot

That is what some of the true believer conservatives are saying about the election. Obama is a socialist and so is McCain. So is Dubya, for that matter. So write-in Ron Paul and let the Republicans take their lumps. Then, the view surmises, maybe the conservative movement will rise out of the ashes. A fellow named Roscoe at a conservative message board laments:

So what’s the point in voting for McCain this fall? I’ve concluded that there isn’t one considering the poor track record of his party. I’m either going to vote for Baldwin or write in Paul. Sure, Obama is very liberal and I expect he will do many things as president that I won’t agree with. I can’t in good conscience vote for him, and have no illusions that all will be well and we will all sit down and sing kumbaya under him. I won’t, however, be upset at this point if he wins. After all the big spending, big government ways of Bush (the bailout is the latest and probably greatest example), I’m not going to be scared into voting for the Republicans by calling for another round of tax cuts and decrying Obama as a big government liberal. As if Bush isn’t a big government liberal. In addition to increasing the size of government and the national debt, Bush’s policies have led to inflation because he has printed so much money. Ron Paul’s correct that this kind of inflation amounts to a tax raise, especially for the poor and the middle class when they go to buy things such as groceries and gas. Also, if Obama is a radical for hanging out with the likes of Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, what does that make McCain for having a neocon extremist such as Max Boot as one of his foreign policy advisors? And Palin simply isn’t qualified to be VP. So anyway, the Republicans just need to lose this fall.

Strange Coattails

Okay, it’s one thing for former Republican governors and renegade Republican press secretaries to endorse Obama. We all sort of saw the Colin Powell thing coming. But this is the weirdest one yet: Oregon Republican congressional candidate, Joel Haugen, is turning up the heat in his race by coming out for the Senator from Illinois.

Boo!

This must be why we hold elections so close to Halloween.

Pro-life Obama

That’s right, Obama the Muslim-Arab-baby-killing-flag-burning-socialist is more pro-life than McCain and Palin put together. It all depends on how narrowly or how broadly you define your terms. Jeff Schwietzer makes the following points:

A great irony in the debate about the sanctity of life is that pro-choice proponents and liberal Democrats are the greatest defenders of life, even though Republicans have incorrectly assumed the mantle of “pro-life.” Nothing could be further from the truth of that moniker stolen by the far right. When a conservative Republican spouts piously about the sanctity of life, he does not really mean that all life is sacred. He means human life, and only some human life…Bush, with McCain’s support, continues to decimate funding for family planning in the world’s poorest countries in Asia and Africa. We defund any group or organization that even mentions the word abortion. Bush just announced that we will no longer support any clinic that also receives funds from the highly respected British aid group, Marie Stopes International, which operates clinics in the most desperate regions. The clinics we no longer support provide primary health care for millions of women, and are often the only source for childhood immunizations. Due to this tragic action by religious zealots in Washington, at least 150,000 additional unwanted pregnancies will occur, leading to an additional 60,000 abortions that otherwise would not have been performed. That makes Bush and McCain the world’s leading cheerleaders for abortion.

Was the Gipper a pinko?

Joe Conason discusses how McCain’s socialism rants makes the “old McCain” a socialist, not to mention Ronald Reagan:

Finally, let’s discuss the other bit of demagoguery in McCain’s most recent speeches, when he complains about the “redistribution of wealth” and equates an income tax rebate for working people with “welfare.” Leaving aside the racial subtext of those remarks, it is hard to say whether they display ignorance, dishonesty or both. The American tax system, like all other taxation in modern nations, has always redistributed wealth. Sometimes it sends streams of money upward, from low-income taxpayers into the pockets of corporate executives; at other times it sends those streams downward, to assist the very poor.

But to cast socialist aspersions on a tax refund to working families whose incomes are too low to pay income taxes is to paint a big pink stripe onto McCain’s supposed idol, Ronald Reagan. In 1986, Reagan signed legislation greatly increasing the earned income tax credit, a credit for low-income workers that reduces the impact of payroll taxes in order to boost take-home pay above poverty levels. When the credit is more than the amount of federal income taxes owed by an individual, that person receives a tax “refund.” Reagan praised the earned income tax credit as the best “anti-poverty” and “pro-family” legislation ever enacted by Congress.

It must be troubling for Republicans to learn that according to McCain, the Gipper was a socialist, too.

Real America weighs in

The Anchorage Daily endorses Obama. Of course, they are so close to Russia, they might be communists.

[D]espite her formidable gifts, few who have worked closely with the governor would argue she is truly ready to assume command of the most important, powerful nation on earth. To step in and juggle the demands of an economic meltdown, two deadly wars and a deteriorating climate crisis would stretch the governor beyond her range. Like picking Sen. McCain for president, putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time.

White Power

According to Rush Limbaugh, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama was a black thing. But according to the latest statistics Obama has more support among whites than even Bill Clinton did 16 years ago. Apparently, this Democrat is being judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. Dr. King would be proud.