Iraq and Dubya's Lies
Dubya's lies. Olbermann says "shut the hell up," apparently only because he wasn't allowed to say "fuck" on tv.
Labels: Dubya, Iraq War, Keith Olbermann, Shut the hell up
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 5:29 PM
Thursday, November 13, 2008
An Oldie but a Goodie--Keith Olbermann calls Bush a Fascist
Labels: Dubya, fascist, George W. Bush, Keith Olbermann
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 5:25 PM
Keith Olbermann ROCKS
Keith Olbermann often warms the cockles of my heart, but this special commentary on the shameless passage of Prop 8 banning gay marriage in California is especially powerful, impassioned and spot on.
Labels: Constitutional Equal Protection under Law, gay marriage rights, Keith Olbermann, Proposition 8, repeap prop 8
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 5:09 PM
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Judith Warner Captures a Transgenerational Momement
November 6, 2008, 9:03 pm
Tears to Remember
By Judith Warner
New York Times
On Wednesday, Nov. 5, 1980, my 10th-grade American history teacher started class by unfurling The New York Times. She pointed to its triple banner headline: “Reagan Easily Beats Carter; Republicans Gain in Congress; D’Amato and Dodd are Victors.”
“Save this paper,” she told us. “This is the start of a whole new era.”
And it was. An era of unbridled deregulation, wealth-enhancing perks for the already well-off, and miserly indifference to the poor and middle class; of the recasting of greed as goodness, the equation of bellicose provincialism with patriotism, the reframing of bigotry as small-town decency.
In short, it was the start of our current era. The Reagan Revolution was the formative political experience of my generation’s lifetime, like the Great Depression, the Second World War or Vietnam for those before us. And in its intellectual and moral paucity, in its eventual hegemony, these years shut down, for some of us, the ability to fully imagine another way.
I will admit that back in January, when Barack Obama, in his post-Iowa victory speech, spoke about the “cynics,” the “they” who said “this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose,” he was talking about me.
I will admit that the call of “change” did not speak to me as an achievable goal.
Until it actually came.
On Wednesday, there was a run on newspapers, as voters rushed to grab a tangible piece of the history they’d made. My husband Max and I, unable to find extra copies, brought our own worn papers home to 8- and 11-year-old Emilie and Julia.
Sept. 11, the seismic event that we’d feared would forever form their political consciousness, shaping their world and constricting the boundaries of the possible, had actually been eclipsed, light blotting out darkness, the best of America at long last driving away the demons of fear. We wanted them to see that it was the end of an era.
“Look,” we said, pointing to the headline “Racial Barrier Falls.” “This is huge.”
We labored to make them understand that their world — art that day, and orchestra, and Baked Potato Bar at lunch — had irrevocably changed.
But how can you understand change when you’ve only known one way of being?
They were happy because we were happy. They rose to the occasion in that bemused way children do when adults tell them what they should feel. They were glad to be rid of George W. Bush and to be saved – for now – from the specter of Sarah Palin. (“It is not O.K. to say she’s an ‘idiot,’” I had snapped when they came home from school stoked by the mob. “Prove your case. Show, don’t tell.”)
They’d had, like many D.C. children, more than their share of politics. After first following the country into battle against the all-purpose boogeyman Saddam Hussein, they’d become antiwar. They had opinions on tax policy and spoke angrily about the “wealth gap.” In the past election year, they’d been fired up about the woman thing, in all its pretty girl versus smart girl iterations; in fact, they and their friends had remained hard-core Hillaryites long after their moms had moved on.
But the race thing? The groundbreaking immensity of the election of our country’s first African-American president?
“You’re being racist,” Emilie had said when I made a comment about how particularly earth-moving this election was for black voters. “Why should it matter if people are black or white?”
Theirs has often looked to me like a world drained of meaning. Girl power put to the service of selling Hannah Montana. Feel-good inclusiveness that occulted the very real conflicts, crimes and hatreds of history.
It isn’t easy to let go of the past to embrace something new, to risk heartbreak on the chance of the world’s actually having changed.
Or at least, it hasn’t been easy for me. But it comes naturally to some. Like the hundreds of George Washington University students who gathered in front of the White House on Tuesday night, cheering and screaming and shouting their goodbyes to the political era of their youth.
“Bliss it was to be alive, but to be young was very heaven,” Max emailed me, paraphrasing William Wordsworth on the French Revolution, at 11:30 p.m. on election night, after leaving his desk to walk among the revelers downtown. I, home with the kids, was in bed, sleeping the drugged sleep of an alcohol-abstaining migraineuse after drinking half a glass of celebratory champagne.
Colin Powell did not dance for joy over Obama’s victory; he wept.
“Look what we did. Look what we did,” he said, puffy-faced, red-eyed, fighting back more tears on CNN. “He’s won. It’s over.”
David Dinkins was similarly solemn. “Things do change. There is a God. They do get better,” said the mayor who presided over New York City at a time of toxic racial tensions.
Obama, too, resisted giddy gladness on Tuesday night. But he did proclaim an end to the world as we’ve known it for far too long.
“To those who would tear the world down: we will defeat you,” he promised. “This is our moment. This is our time.”
The glory of Barack Obama is that there are so many different kinds of us who can claim a piece of that “our.” African-Americans, Democrats, post-boomers, progressives, people who rose from essentially nowhere and through hard work and determination succeeded beyond their parents’ wildest dreams are the most obvious.
But there are also people who respect intelligence and good grammar. People who see their spouse as their “best friend,” as Barack called Michelle on Tuesday night. People whose children have the same knowing look as Sasha and Malia, who are probably more excited about their puppy than about their father’s presidency.
Two images will forever stay in my mind to mark this epoch-breaking Election Day. One is that of Jesse Jackson’s face, drenched in tears, in Chicago’s Grant Park on Tuesday evening.
And the other is a photo that ran in The Times on Wednesday. In it, a black mother and daughter sit on the floor of a church in Harlem. The mother, Latrice Barnes, having heard of Obama’s victory, is doubled up in tears; her daughter, Jasmine, is reaching a tentative hand up to soothe her. To me, she looks like the future, reaching out to heal the past.
Obama's victoryAt the First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, Latrice Barnes, right, is comforted by her daughter Jasmine Redd, 5. (David Goldman for The New York Times)
It is, I suppose, in part a matter of temperament, whether one shouts or weeps at happy transformative moments. But I also think it’s a matter of what has come before. The young people joyfully frolicking in front of the Bush White House never knew the universe whose passing was marked by Obama’s victory and Jackson’s tears.
This moment of triumph marks the end of such a long period of pain, of indignity and injustice for African-Americans. And for so many others of us, of the trampling and debasing of our most basic ideals, beliefs that we cherished every bit as deeply and passionately as those of the “values voters” around whose sensibilities we’ve had to tiptoe for the past 28 years.
The election brought the return of a country we’d lost for so long that it was almost forgotten under the accumulated scar tissue of accommodation and acceptance.
For me, this will be the enduring memory of election night 2008: One generation released its grief. The next looked up confusedly, eager to please and yet unable to comprehend just what the tears were about.
*
E-mail This
* Print
* Share
Tears to Remember
By Judith Warner
New York Times
On Wednesday, Nov. 5, 1980, my 10th-grade American history teacher started class by unfurling The New York Times. She pointed to its triple banner headline: “Reagan Easily Beats Carter; Republicans Gain in Congress; D’Amato and Dodd are Victors.”
“Save this paper,” she told us. “This is the start of a whole new era.”
And it was. An era of unbridled deregulation, wealth-enhancing perks for the already well-off, and miserly indifference to the poor and middle class; of the recasting of greed as goodness, the equation of bellicose provincialism with patriotism, the reframing of bigotry as small-town decency.
In short, it was the start of our current era. The Reagan Revolution was the formative political experience of my generation’s lifetime, like the Great Depression, the Second World War or Vietnam for those before us. And in its intellectual and moral paucity, in its eventual hegemony, these years shut down, for some of us, the ability to fully imagine another way.
I will admit that back in January, when Barack Obama, in his post-Iowa victory speech, spoke about the “cynics,” the “they” who said “this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose,” he was talking about me.
I will admit that the call of “change” did not speak to me as an achievable goal.
Until it actually came.
On Wednesday, there was a run on newspapers, as voters rushed to grab a tangible piece of the history they’d made. My husband Max and I, unable to find extra copies, brought our own worn papers home to 8- and 11-year-old Emilie and Julia.
Sept. 11, the seismic event that we’d feared would forever form their political consciousness, shaping their world and constricting the boundaries of the possible, had actually been eclipsed, light blotting out darkness, the best of America at long last driving away the demons of fear. We wanted them to see that it was the end of an era.
“Look,” we said, pointing to the headline “Racial Barrier Falls.” “This is huge.”
We labored to make them understand that their world — art that day, and orchestra, and Baked Potato Bar at lunch — had irrevocably changed.
But how can you understand change when you’ve only known one way of being?
They were happy because we were happy. They rose to the occasion in that bemused way children do when adults tell them what they should feel. They were glad to be rid of George W. Bush and to be saved – for now – from the specter of Sarah Palin. (“It is not O.K. to say she’s an ‘idiot,’” I had snapped when they came home from school stoked by the mob. “Prove your case. Show, don’t tell.”)
They’d had, like many D.C. children, more than their share of politics. After first following the country into battle against the all-purpose boogeyman Saddam Hussein, they’d become antiwar. They had opinions on tax policy and spoke angrily about the “wealth gap.” In the past election year, they’d been fired up about the woman thing, in all its pretty girl versus smart girl iterations; in fact, they and their friends had remained hard-core Hillaryites long after their moms had moved on.
But the race thing? The groundbreaking immensity of the election of our country’s first African-American president?
“You’re being racist,” Emilie had said when I made a comment about how particularly earth-moving this election was for black voters. “Why should it matter if people are black or white?”
Theirs has often looked to me like a world drained of meaning. Girl power put to the service of selling Hannah Montana. Feel-good inclusiveness that occulted the very real conflicts, crimes and hatreds of history.
It isn’t easy to let go of the past to embrace something new, to risk heartbreak on the chance of the world’s actually having changed.
Or at least, it hasn’t been easy for me. But it comes naturally to some. Like the hundreds of George Washington University students who gathered in front of the White House on Tuesday night, cheering and screaming and shouting their goodbyes to the political era of their youth.
“Bliss it was to be alive, but to be young was very heaven,” Max emailed me, paraphrasing William Wordsworth on the French Revolution, at 11:30 p.m. on election night, after leaving his desk to walk among the revelers downtown. I, home with the kids, was in bed, sleeping the drugged sleep of an alcohol-abstaining migraineuse after drinking half a glass of celebratory champagne.
Colin Powell did not dance for joy over Obama’s victory; he wept.
“Look what we did. Look what we did,” he said, puffy-faced, red-eyed, fighting back more tears on CNN. “He’s won. It’s over.”
David Dinkins was similarly solemn. “Things do change. There is a God. They do get better,” said the mayor who presided over New York City at a time of toxic racial tensions.
Obama, too, resisted giddy gladness on Tuesday night. But he did proclaim an end to the world as we’ve known it for far too long.
“To those who would tear the world down: we will defeat you,” he promised. “This is our moment. This is our time.”
The glory of Barack Obama is that there are so many different kinds of us who can claim a piece of that “our.” African-Americans, Democrats, post-boomers, progressives, people who rose from essentially nowhere and through hard work and determination succeeded beyond their parents’ wildest dreams are the most obvious.
But there are also people who respect intelligence and good grammar. People who see their spouse as their “best friend,” as Barack called Michelle on Tuesday night. People whose children have the same knowing look as Sasha and Malia, who are probably more excited about their puppy than about their father’s presidency.
Two images will forever stay in my mind to mark this epoch-breaking Election Day. One is that of Jesse Jackson’s face, drenched in tears, in Chicago’s Grant Park on Tuesday evening.
And the other is a photo that ran in The Times on Wednesday. In it, a black mother and daughter sit on the floor of a church in Harlem. The mother, Latrice Barnes, having heard of Obama’s victory, is doubled up in tears; her daughter, Jasmine, is reaching a tentative hand up to soothe her. To me, she looks like the future, reaching out to heal the past.
Obama's victoryAt the First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, Latrice Barnes, right, is comforted by her daughter Jasmine Redd, 5. (David Goldman for The New York Times)
It is, I suppose, in part a matter of temperament, whether one shouts or weeps at happy transformative moments. But I also think it’s a matter of what has come before. The young people joyfully frolicking in front of the Bush White House never knew the universe whose passing was marked by Obama’s victory and Jackson’s tears.
This moment of triumph marks the end of such a long period of pain, of indignity and injustice for African-Americans. And for so many others of us, of the trampling and debasing of our most basic ideals, beliefs that we cherished every bit as deeply and passionately as those of the “values voters” around whose sensibilities we’ve had to tiptoe for the past 28 years.
The election brought the return of a country we’d lost for so long that it was almost forgotten under the accumulated scar tissue of accommodation and acceptance.
For me, this will be the enduring memory of election night 2008: One generation released its grief. The next looked up confusedly, eager to please and yet unable to comprehend just what the tears were about.
*
E-mail This
* Share
Labels: Judith Warner, New York Times, Reagan Era Ends, What Obama means across generations
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 12:36 AM
Why the White House Needs a Greyhound
Why The White House Needs A Greyhound
11:50 AM on Sat Nov 8 2008
By hortense
Posted on Jezebel.com
Though President-Elect Obama's first press conference yesterday was meant to showcase his plans on how to ease the economy out of its current crisis, the question that garnered the most attention, and the question that has been flying all over the press in every country in the world, is this: What kind of dog are the Obamas going to get? We had some suggestions last week, with Goldendoodles, Bichon Frises and Poodles leading the hypoallergenic way, and though it seems likely that the girls will choose one of these adorable breeds, I'd like to make the case for another hypoallergenic, quiet, loyal, loving breed: the greyhound.
Greyhounds have a long and noble history; before greyhound racing became what they were best known for, greyhounds were actually protected by law during the Middle Ages, were the only dogs mentioned in the Bible, and were mentioned by Chaucer and Shakespeare, among others. America's favorite animated family, The Simpsons, adopted their greyhound, Santa's Little Helper, at the very start of the beloved series, and J.K. Rowling adopted a grey last year, which means, of course, that greyhounds are Gryffindor approved.
The Obamas are looking for two things: a rescue dog and a hypoallergenic dog. A greyhound fits both of these criteria. Greyhounds are also notoriously lazy, preferring to spend their days curled up in a ball, fast asleep. They're incredibly gentle, they don't shed, they very rarely bark, and they don't secrete the same oil as other dogs, which means they don't give off that "doggy smell" that other breeds seem to.
Even if the Obamas decide to go with a poodle or a doodle (which they will, most likely), greyhounds have already won one victory this week: voters in the State of Massachusetts voted to ban greyhound racing, a move that will close down the tracks that my retired racer used to run on. Thousands of dogs will now be placed in rescue shelters to await real homes. With 5,000-8,500 greyhounds being killed each year simply because they can't race anymore, the need for good homes and greyhound rescue awareness is higher than ever, and a Presidential adoption would do wonders for greyhound rescue efforts across the country.
When we first got Liffey, he was three years old and had never set foot in a home before. He didn't know how to climb stairs. He didn't understand that the face looking back at him in the mirror was his own, and not another dog's. He walked into the plate glass door twice, not knowing what windows were. He had spent his entire life in a crate, leaving only to pee, eat, or run.
A year and a half later, he's a bit of a rock star in our very small town. Kids will stop us every three feet when we go for walks, and he stands patiently as they pet him and tell him how neat they think he is. Sometimes when I watch him curled up in a ball on the couch, I think about the first three years of his life, when he was just a number on a track, locked in a cage at night, and I can't help but worry about the other greys out there who are still in need. A greyhound in the White House would be the best thing that ever happened to the Greyhound Rescue movement; but even if that doesn't happen, the steps being made in states like Massachusetts are definite signs that the country is beginning to realize that these animals deserve loving families, good homes, and a chance to live a cage-free life.
[Grey2kUsa]
Mass. Voters Approve Dog Racing Ban [Boston Globe]
J.K. Rowling Adopts An Abandoned Greyhound [Daily Record]
Who Should Be The First Dog? Here Are The Candidates [AP]
11:50 AM on Sat Nov 8 2008
By hortense
Posted on Jezebel.com
Though President-Elect Obama's first press conference yesterday was meant to showcase his plans on how to ease the economy out of its current crisis, the question that garnered the most attention, and the question that has been flying all over the press in every country in the world, is this: What kind of dog are the Obamas going to get? We had some suggestions last week, with Goldendoodles, Bichon Frises and Poodles leading the hypoallergenic way, and though it seems likely that the girls will choose one of these adorable breeds, I'd like to make the case for another hypoallergenic, quiet, loyal, loving breed: the greyhound.
Greyhounds have a long and noble history; before greyhound racing became what they were best known for, greyhounds were actually protected by law during the Middle Ages, were the only dogs mentioned in the Bible, and were mentioned by Chaucer and Shakespeare, among others. America's favorite animated family, The Simpsons, adopted their greyhound, Santa's Little Helper, at the very start of the beloved series, and J.K. Rowling adopted a grey last year, which means, of course, that greyhounds are Gryffindor approved.
The Obamas are looking for two things: a rescue dog and a hypoallergenic dog. A greyhound fits both of these criteria. Greyhounds are also notoriously lazy, preferring to spend their days curled up in a ball, fast asleep. They're incredibly gentle, they don't shed, they very rarely bark, and they don't secrete the same oil as other dogs, which means they don't give off that "doggy smell" that other breeds seem to.
Even if the Obamas decide to go with a poodle or a doodle (which they will, most likely), greyhounds have already won one victory this week: voters in the State of Massachusetts voted to ban greyhound racing, a move that will close down the tracks that my retired racer used to run on. Thousands of dogs will now be placed in rescue shelters to await real homes. With 5,000-8,500 greyhounds being killed each year simply because they can't race anymore, the need for good homes and greyhound rescue awareness is higher than ever, and a Presidential adoption would do wonders for greyhound rescue efforts across the country.
When we first got Liffey, he was three years old and had never set foot in a home before. He didn't know how to climb stairs. He didn't understand that the face looking back at him in the mirror was his own, and not another dog's. He walked into the plate glass door twice, not knowing what windows were. He had spent his entire life in a crate, leaving only to pee, eat, or run.
A year and a half later, he's a bit of a rock star in our very small town. Kids will stop us every three feet when we go for walks, and he stands patiently as they pet him and tell him how neat they think he is. Sometimes when I watch him curled up in a ball on the couch, I think about the first three years of his life, when he was just a number on a track, locked in a cage at night, and I can't help but worry about the other greys out there who are still in need. A greyhound in the White House would be the best thing that ever happened to the Greyhound Rescue movement; but even if that doesn't happen, the steps being made in states like Massachusetts are definite signs that the country is beginning to realize that these animals deserve loving families, good homes, and a chance to live a cage-free life.
[Grey2kUsa]
Mass. Voters Approve Dog Racing Ban [Boston Globe]
J.K. Rowling Adopts An Abandoned Greyhound [Daily Record]
Who Should Be The First Dog? Here Are The Candidates [AP]
Labels: animal protection, end greyhound racing, greyhound rescue, Malia and Sasha's puppy, Obama dog adoption, Obama Family in the White House
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 12:27 AM
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Gail Collins' Thinking of Good Vibrations
Thinking of Good Vibrations
By GAIL COLLINS
Op-Ed Columnist
Published: November 5, 2008
The New York Times
Tralalalalala.
We are only thinking cheerful thoughts today, people. America did good. Enjoy.
Even if you voted for John McCain, be happy. You’ve got the best of all worlds. Today, you can bask in the realization that there are billions of people around the planet who loathed our country last week but are now in awe of its capacity to rise above historic fears and prejudices, that once again, the United States will have a president the world wants to follow.
Then later, when things get screwed up, you can point out that it’s not your fault.
About the inevitable disasters: I am sorry to tell you, excited youth of America, that Barack Obama is going to make mistakes. And the country’s broke. Perhaps we should have mentioned this before. But let’s leave all that to 2009. When somebody runs one of the best presidential campaigns ever, he deserves a little time to enjoy the sweet spot between achievement of a goal and the arrival of the consequences.
Let’s hear it for the voters. Good turnout, guys — especially you Virginians who stood in line for seven hours. A professor at George Mason University who studies this sort of thing claims that there hasn’t been such a high participation level since 1908. You could turn out to be the ever-elusive answer to the question: “Name one thing that Barack Obama has in common with William Howard Taft?”
Let’s hear it for Hillary Clinton, who lost but made the country comfortable with the idea of a woman as chief executive. And Joe Biden, who actually ran a disciplined campaign, given his truly exceptional capacity to say weird things.
And let’s give a shout-out to John McCain. As desperate as he was, he still passed up opportunities to poke hard at the nation’s fault lines of race, religion and region — although he has probably created a permanent gap between the rest of us and segments of the country who feel under imminent threat from Bill Ayers.
McCain ran a dreadful campaign, but it’s over. Give the guy a break. He was stuck with George Bush. And the Republican Party. And the fact that he was constitutionally incapable of giving a decent speech. The road was hard, but he soldiered on and did a lovely concession Tuesday night. Kudos.
Sarah Palin did go over the top with her small towns vs. the world mantra. However, she does get credit for giving us a real understanding of the difference between a moose and a caribou.
O.K., there is nothing positive to say about Sarah Palin. And Alaska, are you re-electing Ted Stevens? What’s going on there? Did you actually believe him when he said that the court verdict was still up in the air? On the day after he was found guilty? By the way, if Stevens does win, it will be with about 106,000 votes. In total. There are more people than that in my immediate neighborhood! What kind of state is this, anyway?
But we’re in a good mood, so let’s forget Alaska. Instead, we’ll contemplate the fact that North Carolina tossed Elizabeth Dole out of office despite her ad campaign aimed at convincing the state that her opponent, Kay Hagan, was an atheist. This was accomplished, you may remember, through the creative strategy of showing Hagan’s picture along with another woman’s voice saying: “There is no God!” If Dole had won, by the next election we would have been bombarded with ads that appeared to show candidates saying “I support adultery!” or “Let’s kill the puppies!” Now that won’t happen. Thank you, North Carolina.
By the way, I believe that during the campaign McCain’s great friend Senator Lindsey Graham said something along the line of promising to drown himself if North Carolina went for Obama. I believe I speak for us all, Senator Graham, when I say that we are feeling extremely mellow today and you do not have to follow through.
Congratulations to Senator Susan Collins on her re-election. The entire moderate Republican caucus in the Senate may now wind up consisting of women from Maine. As Maine goes, so go the Supreme Court nominations.
Finally, on behalf of the baby-boom generation, I would like to hear a little round of applause before we cede the stage to the people who were too young to go to Woodstock and would appreciate not having to listen to the stories about it anymore. It looks as though we will be represented in history by only two presidents, one of whom is George W. Bush. Bummer.
The boomers didn’t win any wars and that business about being self-involved was not entirely unfounded. On the other hand, they made the nation get serious about the idea of everybody being created equal. And now American children are going to grow up unaware that there’s anything novel in an African-American president or a woman running for the White House.
We’ll settle for that.
By GAIL COLLINS
Op-Ed Columnist
Published: November 5, 2008
The New York Times
Tralalalalala.
We are only thinking cheerful thoughts today, people. America did good. Enjoy.
Even if you voted for John McCain, be happy. You’ve got the best of all worlds. Today, you can bask in the realization that there are billions of people around the planet who loathed our country last week but are now in awe of its capacity to rise above historic fears and prejudices, that once again, the United States will have a president the world wants to follow.
Then later, when things get screwed up, you can point out that it’s not your fault.
About the inevitable disasters: I am sorry to tell you, excited youth of America, that Barack Obama is going to make mistakes. And the country’s broke. Perhaps we should have mentioned this before. But let’s leave all that to 2009. When somebody runs one of the best presidential campaigns ever, he deserves a little time to enjoy the sweet spot between achievement of a goal and the arrival of the consequences.
Let’s hear it for the voters. Good turnout, guys — especially you Virginians who stood in line for seven hours. A professor at George Mason University who studies this sort of thing claims that there hasn’t been such a high participation level since 1908. You could turn out to be the ever-elusive answer to the question: “Name one thing that Barack Obama has in common with William Howard Taft?”
Let’s hear it for Hillary Clinton, who lost but made the country comfortable with the idea of a woman as chief executive. And Joe Biden, who actually ran a disciplined campaign, given his truly exceptional capacity to say weird things.
And let’s give a shout-out to John McCain. As desperate as he was, he still passed up opportunities to poke hard at the nation’s fault lines of race, religion and region — although he has probably created a permanent gap between the rest of us and segments of the country who feel under imminent threat from Bill Ayers.
McCain ran a dreadful campaign, but it’s over. Give the guy a break. He was stuck with George Bush. And the Republican Party. And the fact that he was constitutionally incapable of giving a decent speech. The road was hard, but he soldiered on and did a lovely concession Tuesday night. Kudos.
Sarah Palin did go over the top with her small towns vs. the world mantra. However, she does get credit for giving us a real understanding of the difference between a moose and a caribou.
O.K., there is nothing positive to say about Sarah Palin. And Alaska, are you re-electing Ted Stevens? What’s going on there? Did you actually believe him when he said that the court verdict was still up in the air? On the day after he was found guilty? By the way, if Stevens does win, it will be with about 106,000 votes. In total. There are more people than that in my immediate neighborhood! What kind of state is this, anyway?
But we’re in a good mood, so let’s forget Alaska. Instead, we’ll contemplate the fact that North Carolina tossed Elizabeth Dole out of office despite her ad campaign aimed at convincing the state that her opponent, Kay Hagan, was an atheist. This was accomplished, you may remember, through the creative strategy of showing Hagan’s picture along with another woman’s voice saying: “There is no God!” If Dole had won, by the next election we would have been bombarded with ads that appeared to show candidates saying “I support adultery!” or “Let’s kill the puppies!” Now that won’t happen. Thank you, North Carolina.
By the way, I believe that during the campaign McCain’s great friend Senator Lindsey Graham said something along the line of promising to drown himself if North Carolina went for Obama. I believe I speak for us all, Senator Graham, when I say that we are feeling extremely mellow today and you do not have to follow through.
Congratulations to Senator Susan Collins on her re-election. The entire moderate Republican caucus in the Senate may now wind up consisting of women from Maine. As Maine goes, so go the Supreme Court nominations.
Finally, on behalf of the baby-boom generation, I would like to hear a little round of applause before we cede the stage to the people who were too young to go to Woodstock and would appreciate not having to listen to the stories about it anymore. It looks as though we will be represented in history by only two presidents, one of whom is George W. Bush. Bummer.
The boomers didn’t win any wars and that business about being self-involved was not entirely unfounded. On the other hand, they made the nation get serious about the idea of everybody being created equal. And now American children are going to grow up unaware that there’s anything novel in an African-American president or a woman running for the White House.
We’ll settle for that.
Labels: 2008, 2008 Election Victory, Barack Obama, Gail Collins, New York Times, We Did It
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 6:25 PM
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Anna Quindlen on What Obama Means for Us: Living History
Living History
Occasionally America turns out to be every bit as good as its hype. It's thrilling to be around to witness one of those moments.
Anna Quindlen
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Nov 17, 2008
The American Museum of Natural History threw a spectacular party on New Year's Eve 1999, but perhaps the millennium really arrived there just a few weeks ago. A group of New York City schoolchildren were at an event marking the 150th birthday of Theodore Roosevelt, naturalist and president, and at the end of the visit one of the kids raised his hand. "I have a question," he said. "Was he black?"
History will record that on Nov. 4, 2008, Barack Hussein Obama was elected the first black president of the United States. It is impossible to overstate what that means to this nation.
America is as much a concept as it is a country, but it is a concept too often honored in the breach. The Statue of Liberty welcomes with the words "Give me your tired, your poor." Yet generation after generation of immigrants arrived here to face contempt and hatred until the passage of time, the flattening of accents, turned them into tolerated natives. The Declaration of Independence states unequivocally that all men are created equal. Yet for years the politicians and the powerful seemed to take the gender of that noun literally and denied all manner of rights to women.
But no injustice or prejudice brought to bear by this country against its own people can compare with how it has treated black men and women. Humiliation, degradation, lynchings, beatings, murders. The rights the United States pretended to confer upon all were unthinkingly and consistently denied them: the right to the franchise, to representation, to protection by the justice system.
Literal ownership gave way to something not so different: "When we are moved to better our lot," Richard Wright wrote in 1941, "we do not ask ourselves 'can we do it?' but 'will they let us do it?' " Henry Louis Gates Jr., in the memoir "Colored People," says simply, "For most of my childhood, we couldn't eat in restaurants or sleep in hotels, we couldn't use certain bathrooms or try on clothes in stores." Alice Walker left home for college on a bus and was ordered to move after a white woman complained that she was too near the front.
None of this was so very long ago.
Time passed. Things changed. John Lewis, a boy who loved books but was not permitted to enter the public library, a man whose skull was fractured by Alabama state troopers when he led a peaceful march across a bridge, now sits in Congress. Gates is a professor at Harvard, Walker a revered writer. Segregation as a matter of law has given way to segregation as a matter of class and custom. As President-elect Obama said when he gave a speech about race earlier this year, speaking of systemic poverty, bad schools and broken families, "Many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow."
But Obama said something else in that speech, something both simpler and more profound that has special resonance now that his improbable candidacy has prevailed. He made the political spiritual. "In the end, then," he said, "what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand—that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us." He asked the American people to be fair and just, to be kind and generous, to put prejudice behind them and be one people because that is, not a legal or social imperative, but a moral one.
There will be learned discussion in the years to come about the specific meaning of this moment, about whether it will be more symbolic than substantive, about whether having a black president will lull Americans into believing that racism is a thing of the past. But for just a moment consider this small fact: for a long time a black man in many parts of the United States was denied even the honorific "Mister" by the white community, and was instead called by his first name, like a child, no matter how elderly and esteemed he might be.
Now a black man will be called Mr. President.
They never thought they would see the day, people said, especially the older ones, who could remember the murders of Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. They wept, some of them, and so did I. Perhaps it was because this man seems so young and vigorous in a nation that seems old and tired. Perhaps it is because he promises change and hope, and both are so badly needed. He is the president for our children's generation, a more tolerant and diverse society, so insensible of bright dividing lines that one of them would idly wonder whether Theodore Roosevelt was a black man. They belie a time when there was a crayon labeled "flesh" in my Crayola box, a crayon that was a pale pink.
But I suspect that, like many others, I wept for myself, too, because I felt I was part of a country that was living its principles. Despite all our prejudices, seen and hidden, millions of citizens managed, in the words of Dr. King, to judge Barack Obama by the content of his character and not the color of his skin. There were many reasons to elect him president, but this was one collateral gift: to be able to watch America look an old evil in the eye and to say, no more. We must be better than that. We can be better than that. We are better than that.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/167571
© 2008
Occasionally America turns out to be every bit as good as its hype. It's thrilling to be around to witness one of those moments.
Anna Quindlen
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Nov 17, 2008
The American Museum of Natural History threw a spectacular party on New Year's Eve 1999, but perhaps the millennium really arrived there just a few weeks ago. A group of New York City schoolchildren were at an event marking the 150th birthday of Theodore Roosevelt, naturalist and president, and at the end of the visit one of the kids raised his hand. "I have a question," he said. "Was he black?"
History will record that on Nov. 4, 2008, Barack Hussein Obama was elected the first black president of the United States. It is impossible to overstate what that means to this nation.
America is as much a concept as it is a country, but it is a concept too often honored in the breach. The Statue of Liberty welcomes with the words "Give me your tired, your poor." Yet generation after generation of immigrants arrived here to face contempt and hatred until the passage of time, the flattening of accents, turned them into tolerated natives. The Declaration of Independence states unequivocally that all men are created equal. Yet for years the politicians and the powerful seemed to take the gender of that noun literally and denied all manner of rights to women.
But no injustice or prejudice brought to bear by this country against its own people can compare with how it has treated black men and women. Humiliation, degradation, lynchings, beatings, murders. The rights the United States pretended to confer upon all were unthinkingly and consistently denied them: the right to the franchise, to representation, to protection by the justice system.
Literal ownership gave way to something not so different: "When we are moved to better our lot," Richard Wright wrote in 1941, "we do not ask ourselves 'can we do it?' but 'will they let us do it?' " Henry Louis Gates Jr., in the memoir "Colored People," says simply, "For most of my childhood, we couldn't eat in restaurants or sleep in hotels, we couldn't use certain bathrooms or try on clothes in stores." Alice Walker left home for college on a bus and was ordered to move after a white woman complained that she was too near the front.
None of this was so very long ago.
Time passed. Things changed. John Lewis, a boy who loved books but was not permitted to enter the public library, a man whose skull was fractured by Alabama state troopers when he led a peaceful march across a bridge, now sits in Congress. Gates is a professor at Harvard, Walker a revered writer. Segregation as a matter of law has given way to segregation as a matter of class and custom. As President-elect Obama said when he gave a speech about race earlier this year, speaking of systemic poverty, bad schools and broken families, "Many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow."
But Obama said something else in that speech, something both simpler and more profound that has special resonance now that his improbable candidacy has prevailed. He made the political spiritual. "In the end, then," he said, "what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand—that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us." He asked the American people to be fair and just, to be kind and generous, to put prejudice behind them and be one people because that is, not a legal or social imperative, but a moral one.
There will be learned discussion in the years to come about the specific meaning of this moment, about whether it will be more symbolic than substantive, about whether having a black president will lull Americans into believing that racism is a thing of the past. But for just a moment consider this small fact: for a long time a black man in many parts of the United States was denied even the honorific "Mister" by the white community, and was instead called by his first name, like a child, no matter how elderly and esteemed he might be.
Now a black man will be called Mr. President.
They never thought they would see the day, people said, especially the older ones, who could remember the murders of Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. They wept, some of them, and so did I. Perhaps it was because this man seems so young and vigorous in a nation that seems old and tired. Perhaps it is because he promises change and hope, and both are so badly needed. He is the president for our children's generation, a more tolerant and diverse society, so insensible of bright dividing lines that one of them would idly wonder whether Theodore Roosevelt was a black man. They belie a time when there was a crayon labeled "flesh" in my Crayola box, a crayon that was a pale pink.
But I suspect that, like many others, I wept for myself, too, because I felt I was part of a country that was living its principles. Despite all our prejudices, seen and hidden, millions of citizens managed, in the words of Dr. King, to judge Barack Obama by the content of his character and not the color of his skin. There were many reasons to elect him president, but this was one collateral gift: to be able to watch America look an old evil in the eye and to say, no more. We must be better than that. We can be better than that. We are better than that.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/167571
© 2008
Labels: 2008 Election, Anna Quindlen, Barack Obama, First African-American President, healing America's wounds, Newsweek, Obama victory
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 11:23 PM
Barack Obama's election victory brings a new dawn of leadership
Barack Obama's election victory brings a new dawn of leadership
* Jonathan Freedland in Chicago
* guardian.co.uk
* Wednesday November 05 2008 06.57 GMT
The man who once described himself as a "skinny kid with a funny name" stood before a vast, euphoric crowd — and a watching world — and in a speech that was by turns sombre and inspirational, took upon his shoulders the great weight of leadership of the United States of America.
Barack Obama emerged onto the stage at Chicago's Grant Park as President-Elect to greet a crowd that had waited for several hours to see him — and for decades to witness such a moment. There had been tears all evening, as one key state after another fell — first Pennsylvania, then Ohio — turning the hope of victory into a certainty. But for many it was the sight of the man himself that finally made reality sink in. There he was: an African-American man who from today will be addressed as Mr President.
Obama himself seemed to understand the gravity of the moment. Save for a few thank-yous to his campaign team — and a message to his daughters that they had earned the new puppy that the Obamas will take with them to the White House — he did not deliver a cheery victory speech celebrating an electoral triumph. Instead he used the occasion to give the first address of his presidency.
He declared that "Change has come to America," but left no doubt that his election marked only the first step along a road that will prove long and hard. "We may not get there in one year or in one term," he cautioned. "But we will get there."
Reprising a line he had used in the stump speech that launched his "improbable journey" in the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire a year ago, he reminded his audience that they were a nation at war, with an economy in trouble, living on a planet in peril. He called on all Americans — including those who had not voted for him — to join him in the tough work ahead: "I hear your voices, I need your help and I will be your president too."
It was one of several calls for unity from the man who made his name with a 2004 plea for America to remember that it is not made up of blue states or red states, but must always be the United States. He seemed to be attempting to assemble a new coalition, even a government of national unity, to tackle the great challenges of the age. In a flourish that echoed John F Kennedy, he declared: "Let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other."
The crowd in Grant Park — scene of one of the most bruising chapters in recent US political history, the Chicago riots of 1968 — stood rapt. They listened as Obama seemed to steel them for a collective effort unseen since the days of FDR.
That crystallised a sense that had been building about Obama in the final weeks of his campaign: that he aspires to be not just a successful politician who wins elections, but a genuine leader — ready to steer his people through an onslaught of troubles. "America, we have come so far," he said, as if the entire nation were gathered before him. "We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do."
He also had a message to the rest of the world, one that will be welcomed almost everywhere. "To all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world – our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand."
In this speech, and with his victory, Barack Obama has drawn a line under the last eight years, ending an American era that few will mourn. For today marked nothing less than the first day of the Obama presidency.
* Jonathan Freedland in Chicago
* guardian.co.uk
* Wednesday November 05 2008 06.57 GMT
The man who once described himself as a "skinny kid with a funny name" stood before a vast, euphoric crowd — and a watching world — and in a speech that was by turns sombre and inspirational, took upon his shoulders the great weight of leadership of the United States of America.
Barack Obama emerged onto the stage at Chicago's Grant Park as President-Elect to greet a crowd that had waited for several hours to see him — and for decades to witness such a moment. There had been tears all evening, as one key state after another fell — first Pennsylvania, then Ohio — turning the hope of victory into a certainty. But for many it was the sight of the man himself that finally made reality sink in. There he was: an African-American man who from today will be addressed as Mr President.
Obama himself seemed to understand the gravity of the moment. Save for a few thank-yous to his campaign team — and a message to his daughters that they had earned the new puppy that the Obamas will take with them to the White House — he did not deliver a cheery victory speech celebrating an electoral triumph. Instead he used the occasion to give the first address of his presidency.
He declared that "Change has come to America," but left no doubt that his election marked only the first step along a road that will prove long and hard. "We may not get there in one year or in one term," he cautioned. "But we will get there."
Reprising a line he had used in the stump speech that launched his "improbable journey" in the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire a year ago, he reminded his audience that they were a nation at war, with an economy in trouble, living on a planet in peril. He called on all Americans — including those who had not voted for him — to join him in the tough work ahead: "I hear your voices, I need your help and I will be your president too."
It was one of several calls for unity from the man who made his name with a 2004 plea for America to remember that it is not made up of blue states or red states, but must always be the United States. He seemed to be attempting to assemble a new coalition, even a government of national unity, to tackle the great challenges of the age. In a flourish that echoed John F Kennedy, he declared: "Let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other."
The crowd in Grant Park — scene of one of the most bruising chapters in recent US political history, the Chicago riots of 1968 — stood rapt. They listened as Obama seemed to steel them for a collective effort unseen since the days of FDR.
That crystallised a sense that had been building about Obama in the final weeks of his campaign: that he aspires to be not just a successful politician who wins elections, but a genuine leader — ready to steer his people through an onslaught of troubles. "America, we have come so far," he said, as if the entire nation were gathered before him. "We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do."
He also had a message to the rest of the world, one that will be welcomed almost everywhere. "To all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world – our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand."
In this speech, and with his victory, Barack Obama has drawn a line under the last eight years, ending an American era that few will mourn. For today marked nothing less than the first day of the Obama presidency.
Labels: 2008 Election, An Historic Moment, Change We Need, Jonathan Freedland, Leadership, president barack obama, Renewing US credibility and respectability worldwide, The Guardian
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 9:08 PM
We Did It! Welcome President Elect Barack Obama
Watch Obama's Victory Speech
Obama Victory Speech Transcript
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.
Its the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.
Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.
Its the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
Its been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.
I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and hes fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nations promise in the months ahead.
I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.
I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nations next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy thats coming with us to the White House. And while shes no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.
To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics - you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what youve sacrificed to get it done.
But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to - it belongs to you.
I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didnt start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington - it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.
It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generations apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.
I know you didnt do this just to win an election and I know you didnt do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how theyll make the mortgage, or pay their doctors bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.
The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.
There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who wont agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government cant solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.
What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.
So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, its that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.
Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House - a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.
And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you. And to all those who have wondered if Americas beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.
For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one thats on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. Shes a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing - Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.
She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldnt vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.
And tonight, I think about all that shes seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we cant, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.
At a time when womens voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.
When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.
When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.
She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that We Shall Overcome. Yes we can.
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.
America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?
This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:
Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.
Labels: 2008 Election Victory, Obama's Victory Speech, president barack obama, Yes we can
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 2:06 PM
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
John McCain: No You Can't
From Election08 On Youtube
Presented by: The Public Service Administratioin
Andy Cobb
Josh Funk
Nyima Funk
Marc Evan Jackson
Mark Kienlen
David Pompeii
Marc Warzecha
Special guests:
Beth Farmer
Matt Craig
Rebecca Allen
Kai Pompeii
Kevin Douglas
Victor Lopez
The work that we face in our time is great
in a time of war
and the terrible sacrifices it entails
the promise of a better future is not always clear
there's gonna be other wars
I'm sorry to tell you there's gonna be other wars
there's gonna be a lot of combat wounds
and my friends it's gonna be tough
and we're gonna have a lot to do
That old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran?
Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb...
I'm still convinced that withdrawal means chaos
and if you think that things are bad now
if we withdraw--you ain't seen nothing yet
was the war a good idea, worth the price in blood and treasure?
It was a good idea
President Bush talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years
Maybe a hundred, that's fine with me
I don't think Americans are concerned if we're there for a hundred years, or a thousand years, or ten thousand years.
From: lessjobsmorewars
Added: February 13, 2008
NO, YOU CAN'T -- NO SE PUEDE. Status quo is Latin f...
NO, YOU CAN'T -- NO SE PUEDE.
Status quo is Latin for scandal, recession, Bush, McCain, global warming, children without healthcare, young men and women dying in Iraq for 100 years, and tax cuts for the super-rich while we rack up trillion dollar deficits. If you prefer more of the same, please stick with the Grand Ol' Party. If you want hope and change, there's that other guy running for president...
We made "No, You Can't" as a part parody/part homage (or "parage," if you will :-) ), to the original piece by will.i.am. We're inspired by the movement that Obama has set in motion, and wanted to poke fun at the entrenched interests and cynics who'll be pushing back harder and harder against us as our movement grows stronger.
Members of the power elite featured in this video include: Dick Cheney, Filmore Barrols, Ivy League-Legacy, Jen Trification, D. Forrest Callee, Monet Oliver de Place, Winsome Mandate, and Lily the Dog.
Brought to you by the same spoiled brats who brought you Billionaires for Bush http://billionairesforbush.com
Creative Team: Melody Bates (producer), Elissa Jiji (producer), Marco Ceglie (writer/post-production genius), Andrew Boyd (other writer/post-production sub-genius), Tom Blake (camera), Diana Solomon (hair and makeup), Eddie Martinez (editor), Ken Rosser (guitar), Ron Kidd (Dick Cheney), Brian Fairbanks & Justin Krebs & Cliff Tasner (co-conspirators), Kim & Philippo (dog wrangling).
+++
Lyrics
NO YOU CAN'T—NO SE PUEDE
...It was a creed, snuck into the founding documents that denied the destiny of a nation.
No, you can't.
It was decreed by bankers and landowners as they marched our monopolies westward.
No, you can't.
No you can't stop our power and privilege.
No you can't repeal our tax cuts for the wealthy few.
No you can't heal this nation.
No you can't end the war.
No you can't.
No matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of our power keeping us in power.
Status quo.
Now the hopes of the little girl who goes to a private school in Newport are the same as the dreams of the boy who parties in the clubs of LA.
We are not as divided as our portfolios suggest. We run this nation, and together we will stop this nonsense about writing the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea --
No. You. Can't.
VOTE GOP?
Labels: 2008 Election, john mccain, More reasons to take him DOWN, No You Can't, No You Cant', Vote for Barack Obama, Vote for Change
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 7:02 PM
YES! WE! CAN!
I am waiting for the new day to break. I am proud that the best we have in us has been called forth by the prospect of hope. Thank you, Barack Obama. We shall overcome.
Official song site:
http://www.yeswecansong.com
Obama Campaign Site:
http://www.barackobama.com/
Yes we can what?:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/
Is it true that he....?:
http://factcheck.barackobama.com/
Be a part of the video at:
http://www.hopeactchange.com
-Lyrics-
It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.
Yes we can.
It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom.
Yes we can.
It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.
Yes we can.
It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballots; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.
Yes we can to justice and equality.
Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.
Yes we can heal this nation.
Yes we can repair this world.
Yes we can.
We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.
We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics...they will only grow louder and more dissonant ........... We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.
But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
Now the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea --
Yes. We. Can.
Celebrities featured include: Jesse Dylan, Will.i.am, Common, Scarlett Johansson, Tatyana Ali, John Legend, Herbie Hancock, Kate Walsh, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Adam Rodriquez, Kelly Hu, Amber Valetta, Eric Balfour, Aisha Tyler, Nicole Scherzinger and Nick Cannon
Also check out this other great song and video inspired by Barack:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyJ72i...
Official song site:
http://www.yeswecansong.com
Obama Campaign Site:
http://www.barackobama.com/
Yes we can what?:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/
Is it true that he....?:
http://factcheck.barackobama.com/
Be a part of the video at:
http://www.hopeactchange.com
-Lyrics-
It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.
Yes we can.
It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom.
Yes we can.
It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.
Yes we can.
It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballots; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.
Yes we can to justice and equality.
Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.
Yes we can heal this nation.
Yes we can repair this world.
Yes we can.
We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.
We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics...they will only grow louder and more dissonant ........... We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.
But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
Now the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea --
Yes. We. Can.
Celebrities featured include: Jesse Dylan, Will.i.am, Common, Scarlett Johansson, Tatyana Ali, John Legend, Herbie Hancock, Kate Walsh, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Adam Rodriquez, Kelly Hu, Amber Valetta, Eric Balfour, Aisha Tyler, Nicole Scherzinger and Nick Cannon
Also check out this other great song and video inspired by Barack:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyJ72i...
Labels: 2008 Election, Obama for President, Si Se Peude, Yes we can
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 6:54 PM
Vote Yes on PROP 2 in California--Prevent Gratuitous Suffering
Dear Californians, please vote yes on Prop 2 today to fight back against the grotesque cruelty of factory farms. Give animals raised for food a little decency--the right to stand up, turn around, lie down and stretch their limbs. Is that really too much to ask? And if the wellbeing of the animals does not move you, consider the filthy and unsanitary conditions in which your food is being raised. Do the right thing and vote Yes on Prop 2.
Long Version
Long Version
Labels: animal rights, basic decency, battery cages, factory farms, gestation crates, humane living conditions, save the animals from misery, veal calf pens, Yes on proposition 2
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 6:32 PM
Vote NO on California's Discriminatory Prop 8
Here are but a few perspectives on why it is essential that we California's fight for what's right and vote down the despicable Proposition 8 with a landslide. The idea that we should write discriminatory, religion-driven intolerance and inequality into law is revolting. Anti-gay marriage legislation is the incestuous cousin of the anti-miscegenation Laws prohibition interracial marriage that were constitutional until 1967! Stamp out this kind of disgusting bigotry and descrimination. SAY NO TO PROP 8 in California, and any similar legislation like it across the country (and the world). The pursuit of life, liberty and happiness surely includes everyone regardless of whom they love. These are the real traditional American values to stand by and protect.
For a glimpse at the twisted logic behind the divisive Yes on Prop 8 people, take a look at this ridiculous mess of lies and scare tactics. It's like white racists in Little Rock fighting for their so-called "right" to not have their children schooled alongside African American kids, or white male clubs defending their "right" not admit people of color or women. This kind of blind, stupid hatred has no place in America, or anywhere for that matter. So fucking what if your kids learn that people who love each other can get married regardless of gender? I think the idea of raising a new generation of kids who are open-minded and tolerant is a beautiful fabulous idea.
For a glimpse at the twisted logic behind the divisive Yes on Prop 8 people, take a look at this ridiculous mess of lies and scare tactics. It's like white racists in Little Rock fighting for their so-called "right" to not have their children schooled alongside African American kids, or white male clubs defending their "right" not admit people of color or women. This kind of blind, stupid hatred has no place in America, or anywhere for that matter. So fucking what if your kids learn that people who love each other can get married regardless of gender? I think the idea of raising a new generation of kids who are open-minded and tolerant is a beautiful fabulous idea.
Labels: Constitutional Equal Protection under Law, Equality, Fairness, Justice, No on Prop 8, Proposition 8, Same-sex Marriage Rights, Say No to Descrimination, Tolerance, Vote No
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 6:04 PM
Yes. We. Can: Intelligent, Conscientious People Across the Spectrum Come Together for Obama
03 Nov 2008 12:30 pm
Barack Obama For President
By Andrew Sullivan
On a spectacular September morning more than seven years ago, our world changed. I remain one of those who believe that that day remains indelible, and its lesson unforgettable. The civilized democratic world came under attack from a small but lethal band of religious fanatics bent on destroying free societies, and, more terrifyingly, eager to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction that could make 9/11 look like a dry run.
We are still under attack.
This confluence of fundamentalism and lethal technology is the greatest danger of our time. And in the last seven years, the threat has not abated. Al Qaeda remains at large, and the very top leadership that planned and executed 9/11 is alive. They have reconstituted a base of sorts in Pakistan. They have scored several major propaganda victories - from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay to trapping most of the US military in an unending counter-insurgency in one country where al Qaeda was weak before 2002, Iraq. Islamist factions in Pakistan's government are horrifyingly close to nuclear technology. Iran has gained in power and influence in the Middle East and its ability to launch and use nuclear weapons is much greater than it was on 9/11. At its best, the Iraq war will lead to a fractured petro-state, closely allied with Iran, beset by constant infighting and terrorism. At its worst, Iraq will keep over 100,000 young Americans trapped there for the rest of our lives. The war in Afghanistan against the Taliban is at a seven year nadir.
Now the really bad news: the view of co-presidents Bush and Cheney is that this is a war that can and should be controlled by only one branch of government and a war in which the job of the citizenry is to shop. It is a global war where force of arms remains too often a first resort and in which talking to our enemies is regarded as "the white flag of surrender," instead of another tool at our disposal. It is a war where the American government has alienated - in some cases deeply - democratic allies whose police work and intelligence we desperately need. I do not doubt that military force is part of the mix to defeat this threat. (Like everyone else, I'm heartened that general Petraeus has introduced some minimal intelligence into the occupation of Iraq, although I fear it has merely made our presence more protracted and our withdrawal more difficult.) But the crudeness with which military force has been deployed, the absence of strategy or even due diligence in the execution of the long war, and the massive public relations blunders which have led the United States to lose a propaganda war against a bunch of murderous, medieval loons are unforgivable.
These mistakes were compounded - and in large part created - by what I believe will one day be seen as the core event of the last eight years: the collapse of constitutional order and the rule of law fomented in a mixture of hubris and laziness by the president himself. It is now indisputable that the president and vice-president of the United States engineered a de facto coup against the constitution after 9/11, declaring themselves above any law, any treaty, and any basic moral norm in their misguided mission to rid the world of evil. This blog has watched this process with increasing dismay - and watched several attempts to bring the US back to sanity foiled by a relentless and unhinged vice-president's office.
Cheney and Bush, unlike any presidency in American history, have dangerously pushed constitutional government to the brink of collapse. They did not merely assert a unified executive in which actions and regulations reserved to the executive branch were kept free from Congressional and judicial tampering. That is a perfectly defensible position, especially in wartime. They did not merely act in the immediate Agabuse wake of an emergency to protect American citizens swiftly - again a perfectly legitimate use of executive power, unhampered by Congress or courts. They declared such power to be unlimited; they asserted also that it was as permanent as the emergency they declared; they claimed their dictatorial powers were inherent in the presidency itself, and above any legal constraints; they ordered their own lawyers to provide retroactive and laughable legal immunity for their crimes; they by-passed all the usual and necessary checks within the executive branch to ensure prudence and legality and self-doubt in the conduct of a war; they asserted that emergency war powers applied to the territory of the United States itself; they claimed the right to seize anyone - anyone, citizen or not - they deemed an "enemy combatant," to hold them indefinitely with no due process and to torture them until they became incoherent, broken, brutalized shells of human beings, if they survived at all. They did this to the guilty and they did this to the innocent. But they also had no way of reliably knowing which was which and who was who. Never before in wartime has the precious, sacred inheritance of free people been treated with such contempt by the leaders of the democratic West.
They seized countless individuals with no trials and no hearings. They tortured dozens to death. They subjected many more to some of the worst psychological torture techniques devised by Communist totalitarians and the worst physical suffering devised by the Gestapo. They crossed lines no American president had ever crossed before. They withdrew the US from the Geneva Conventions - and did so secretly. They tapped American's phones without warrants, and forced many of their randomly grabbed prisoners into the black hole of insanity. They set up secret sites in former Soviet gulags to torture their victims. They single-handedly devastated America's reputation for human rights and the rule of law in the minds of the vast majority of people in other Western democracies, let alone the developing world, let alone the millions of Muslims across the Middle East who now suspect that America is not really better than their own thugocracies, that America also tortures when it wants to, that the shining city on a hill is actually a place where men above the law can do anything they want to other human beings in their custody.
No economic mismanagement can compare with this attack on the basic institutions of our democracy and the constitution. No incompetence in conducting an occupation can be deemed comparable with this level of criminality and indecency. No reaction to a natural disaster, however hapless and negligent, is as grave as this crime. No financial crisis eclipses it in gravity. The president's oath is to protect the constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. Instead, the president himself became an enemy to the constitution he swore to uphold.
This is the depth of the predicament the United States is in. The Islamist threat remains; but the Constitution is in deep disrepair, the military stretched to breaking point, the national debt doubled, and America's reputation in terrible shape. More important, the president and vice-president deeply damaged the reliability and integrity of America's intelligence services, creating a self-perpetuating loop of phony intelligence procured by torture which then justified more torture which led to worse intelligence. It will be decades before we learn the full extent of the damage Bush and Cheney have done to the country's ability to find out what the enemy is really up to, how much risk these sadists and goons have subjected us to, how much damage to this country they may have facilitated by filling intelligence with the garbage always created by torture. We do know that their policy has led to just one successful prosecution - and that many guilty figures will escape justice because torture has tainted the legal process beyond repair.
My great fear since 2004 is that this could have gotten even worse. Another attack and the abuse of power could have become much worse. A Romney or a Giuliani, empowered by religious fanaticism and a worship of state power, could have taken us down a path much darker than even the Cheney-Addington-Yoo cul-de-sac. Ron Paul emerged as the one Republican prepared to defend the rule of law, the Constitution and habeas corpus in the primaries. But, in the end, McCain emerged by default, a torture victim himself, and a critic of some aspects of the conduct of the war. But we saw in 2006 that, when push came to shove, even McCain acquiesced to the legalization of America's use of the very same torture techniques once used against him. And in this campaign, we have seen how no Republican candidate can escape the logic of bigotry, fanaticism and xenophobia that now grips and motivates the Republican party base. We have also learned, much more importantly, that McCain would appoint Justices to the Supreme Court who would acquiesce to and constitutionally entrench the dictatorial presidency that Bush-Cheney believe in as loyally as Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalia. That means we are one vote away from the court ever restraining this unchecked executive. It doesn't matter who that executive is and what party he or she belongs to. What matters is that the controls upon it - controls critical to the endurance of constitutional balance and individual freedom in America - have been frayed to the breaking point. There is no greater cause right now than repairing that.
If I were to give one reason why I believe electing Barack Obama is essential tomorrow, it would be an end to this dark, lawless period in American constitutional government. The domestic cultural and political reasons for an Obama presidency remain as strong as they were when I wrote "Goodbye To All That" over a year ago. His ability to get us past the culture war has been proven in this campaign, in the generation now coming of age that will elect him if they turn out, in Obama's staggering ability not to take the bait. His fiscal policies are too liberal for me - I don't believe in raising taxes, I believe in cutting entitlements for the middle classes as the way to fiscal balance. I don't believe in "progressive taxation", I support a flat tax. I don't want to give unions any more power. I'm sure there will be moments when a Democratic Congress will make me wince. But I also understand that money has to come from somewhere, and it will not come in any meaningful measure from freezing pork or the other transparent gimmicks advertized in advance by McCain. McCain is not serious on spending. But he is deadly serious in not touching taxes. So, on the core question of debt, on bringing America back to fiscal reason, Obama is still better than McCain. If I have to take an ideological hit to head toward fiscal solvency, I'll put country before ideology.
But none of this compares to the task of restoring the rule of law and Constitutional balance. Unlike McCain, Obama has never wavered on torture or habeas corpus or on keeping the executive branch under the law. His deep understanding and awareness of the Constitution eclipses McCain's. Coming from the opposing party, he will also be able to restore confidence that what lies within America's secret government - the one constructed by Bush and Cheney beyond any accountability, law or morality - will be ended or cleaned up. He can restore critically needed trust again - and force the Democratic party to take responsibility for a war which we all need to own, and take responsibility for, again.
We cannot win this war without regaining our democratic soul, ending torture, and returning to lawful governance. But these things won't win the war either. On that, we have a perilous task ahead. I don't know how Obama will be able to get out of Iraq in his first term. I fear that Bush and Cheney have made withdrawal deliberately difficult if not impossible. I fear the same in Afghanistan. I don't know how Obama will handle Iran, given the power that Bush and Cheney have ceded to the Islamist regime there, and the danger of a pre-emptive strike before Obama even gets inaugurated. But I do know that he will handle these wars with reason, with prudence and with care. Those are three qualities absent from the White House for eight years. And I do know that Obama's very person, and what he symbolizes, will do more to restore America's image and repair our global public relations than any single measure any new administration will be able to accomplish.
The truth is: we are in a war for the future of human civilization. We are fighting for a world in which destructive technology need not collide with fierce religious fundamentalism to annihilate us all; for a world in which dialogue across cultures and religions and regions (even within America) is essential if we are to survive. We need to win the argument in the developing world; we need to reach out and persuade the Muslim middle - especially the next generation in Iran and Iraq and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Western Europe - about the virtues of democracy and constitutionalism. We cannot do that if we trash our own values ourselves. It is self-defeating. We cannot be a beacon to the world until we have reformed ourselves. In this war, we are also fighting for an America that does not lose its soul in fighting our enemy. Just because we are fighting evil does not mean we cannot ourselves succumb to it. That is what my Christian faith teaches me - that no nation has a monopoly on virtue, and that every generation has to earn its own integrity. I fear and believe we have given away far too much - and that, while this loss is permanent, it can nonetheless be mitigated by a new start, a new direction, a new statement that the America the world once knew and loved is back.
It will not be easy. The world will soon remember why it resents America as well as loves it. But until this unlikely fellow with the funny ears and strange name and exotic biography emerged on the scene, I had begun to wonder if it was possible at all. I had almost given up hope, and he helped restore it. That is what is stirring out there; and although you are welcome to mock me for it, I remain unashamed. As someone once said, in the unlikely story of America, there is never anything false about hope. Obama, moreover, seems to bring out the best in people, and the calmest, and the sanest. He seems to me to have a blend of Midwestern good sense, an intuitive understanding of the developing world that is as much our future now as theirs', an analyst's mind and a poet's tongue. He is human. He is flawed. He will make mistakes. His passivity and ambiguity are sometimes weaknesses as well as strengths.
But there is something about his rise that is also supremely American, a reminder of why so many of us love this country so passionately and are filled with such grief at what has been done to it and in its name. I endorse Barack Obama because I will not give up on America, because I believe in America, and in her constitution and decency and character and strength.
And the world needs that America now as much as it ever has. Can we start that healing, that rebirth, tomorrow?
Yes. We. Can.
Thank You Andrew Sullivan for a Powerful Endorsement
Barack Obama For President
By Andrew Sullivan
On a spectacular September morning more than seven years ago, our world changed. I remain one of those who believe that that day remains indelible, and its lesson unforgettable. The civilized democratic world came under attack from a small but lethal band of religious fanatics bent on destroying free societies, and, more terrifyingly, eager to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction that could make 9/11 look like a dry run.
We are still under attack.
This confluence of fundamentalism and lethal technology is the greatest danger of our time. And in the last seven years, the threat has not abated. Al Qaeda remains at large, and the very top leadership that planned and executed 9/11 is alive. They have reconstituted a base of sorts in Pakistan. They have scored several major propaganda victories - from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay to trapping most of the US military in an unending counter-insurgency in one country where al Qaeda was weak before 2002, Iraq. Islamist factions in Pakistan's government are horrifyingly close to nuclear technology. Iran has gained in power and influence in the Middle East and its ability to launch and use nuclear weapons is much greater than it was on 9/11. At its best, the Iraq war will lead to a fractured petro-state, closely allied with Iran, beset by constant infighting and terrorism. At its worst, Iraq will keep over 100,000 young Americans trapped there for the rest of our lives. The war in Afghanistan against the Taliban is at a seven year nadir.
Now the really bad news: the view of co-presidents Bush and Cheney is that this is a war that can and should be controlled by only one branch of government and a war in which the job of the citizenry is to shop. It is a global war where force of arms remains too often a first resort and in which talking to our enemies is regarded as "the white flag of surrender," instead of another tool at our disposal. It is a war where the American government has alienated - in some cases deeply - democratic allies whose police work and intelligence we desperately need. I do not doubt that military force is part of the mix to defeat this threat. (Like everyone else, I'm heartened that general Petraeus has introduced some minimal intelligence into the occupation of Iraq, although I fear it has merely made our presence more protracted and our withdrawal more difficult.) But the crudeness with which military force has been deployed, the absence of strategy or even due diligence in the execution of the long war, and the massive public relations blunders which have led the United States to lose a propaganda war against a bunch of murderous, medieval loons are unforgivable.
These mistakes were compounded - and in large part created - by what I believe will one day be seen as the core event of the last eight years: the collapse of constitutional order and the rule of law fomented in a mixture of hubris and laziness by the president himself. It is now indisputable that the president and vice-president of the United States engineered a de facto coup against the constitution after 9/11, declaring themselves above any law, any treaty, and any basic moral norm in their misguided mission to rid the world of evil. This blog has watched this process with increasing dismay - and watched several attempts to bring the US back to sanity foiled by a relentless and unhinged vice-president's office.
Cheney and Bush, unlike any presidency in American history, have dangerously pushed constitutional government to the brink of collapse. They did not merely assert a unified executive in which actions and regulations reserved to the executive branch were kept free from Congressional and judicial tampering. That is a perfectly defensible position, especially in wartime. They did not merely act in the immediate Agabuse wake of an emergency to protect American citizens swiftly - again a perfectly legitimate use of executive power, unhampered by Congress or courts. They declared such power to be unlimited; they asserted also that it was as permanent as the emergency they declared; they claimed their dictatorial powers were inherent in the presidency itself, and above any legal constraints; they ordered their own lawyers to provide retroactive and laughable legal immunity for their crimes; they by-passed all the usual and necessary checks within the executive branch to ensure prudence and legality and self-doubt in the conduct of a war; they asserted that emergency war powers applied to the territory of the United States itself; they claimed the right to seize anyone - anyone, citizen or not - they deemed an "enemy combatant," to hold them indefinitely with no due process and to torture them until they became incoherent, broken, brutalized shells of human beings, if they survived at all. They did this to the guilty and they did this to the innocent. But they also had no way of reliably knowing which was which and who was who. Never before in wartime has the precious, sacred inheritance of free people been treated with such contempt by the leaders of the democratic West.
They seized countless individuals with no trials and no hearings. They tortured dozens to death. They subjected many more to some of the worst psychological torture techniques devised by Communist totalitarians and the worst physical suffering devised by the Gestapo. They crossed lines no American president had ever crossed before. They withdrew the US from the Geneva Conventions - and did so secretly. They tapped American's phones without warrants, and forced many of their randomly grabbed prisoners into the black hole of insanity. They set up secret sites in former Soviet gulags to torture their victims. They single-handedly devastated America's reputation for human rights and the rule of law in the minds of the vast majority of people in other Western democracies, let alone the developing world, let alone the millions of Muslims across the Middle East who now suspect that America is not really better than their own thugocracies, that America also tortures when it wants to, that the shining city on a hill is actually a place where men above the law can do anything they want to other human beings in their custody.
No economic mismanagement can compare with this attack on the basic institutions of our democracy and the constitution. No incompetence in conducting an occupation can be deemed comparable with this level of criminality and indecency. No reaction to a natural disaster, however hapless and negligent, is as grave as this crime. No financial crisis eclipses it in gravity. The president's oath is to protect the constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. Instead, the president himself became an enemy to the constitution he swore to uphold.
This is the depth of the predicament the United States is in. The Islamist threat remains; but the Constitution is in deep disrepair, the military stretched to breaking point, the national debt doubled, and America's reputation in terrible shape. More important, the president and vice-president deeply damaged the reliability and integrity of America's intelligence services, creating a self-perpetuating loop of phony intelligence procured by torture which then justified more torture which led to worse intelligence. It will be decades before we learn the full extent of the damage Bush and Cheney have done to the country's ability to find out what the enemy is really up to, how much risk these sadists and goons have subjected us to, how much damage to this country they may have facilitated by filling intelligence with the garbage always created by torture. We do know that their policy has led to just one successful prosecution - and that many guilty figures will escape justice because torture has tainted the legal process beyond repair.
My great fear since 2004 is that this could have gotten even worse. Another attack and the abuse of power could have become much worse. A Romney or a Giuliani, empowered by religious fanaticism and a worship of state power, could have taken us down a path much darker than even the Cheney-Addington-Yoo cul-de-sac. Ron Paul emerged as the one Republican prepared to defend the rule of law, the Constitution and habeas corpus in the primaries. But, in the end, McCain emerged by default, a torture victim himself, and a critic of some aspects of the conduct of the war. But we saw in 2006 that, when push came to shove, even McCain acquiesced to the legalization of America's use of the very same torture techniques once used against him. And in this campaign, we have seen how no Republican candidate can escape the logic of bigotry, fanaticism and xenophobia that now grips and motivates the Republican party base. We have also learned, much more importantly, that McCain would appoint Justices to the Supreme Court who would acquiesce to and constitutionally entrench the dictatorial presidency that Bush-Cheney believe in as loyally as Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalia. That means we are one vote away from the court ever restraining this unchecked executive. It doesn't matter who that executive is and what party he or she belongs to. What matters is that the controls upon it - controls critical to the endurance of constitutional balance and individual freedom in America - have been frayed to the breaking point. There is no greater cause right now than repairing that.
If I were to give one reason why I believe electing Barack Obama is essential tomorrow, it would be an end to this dark, lawless period in American constitutional government. The domestic cultural and political reasons for an Obama presidency remain as strong as they were when I wrote "Goodbye To All That" over a year ago. His ability to get us past the culture war has been proven in this campaign, in the generation now coming of age that will elect him if they turn out, in Obama's staggering ability not to take the bait. His fiscal policies are too liberal for me - I don't believe in raising taxes, I believe in cutting entitlements for the middle classes as the way to fiscal balance. I don't believe in "progressive taxation", I support a flat tax. I don't want to give unions any more power. I'm sure there will be moments when a Democratic Congress will make me wince. But I also understand that money has to come from somewhere, and it will not come in any meaningful measure from freezing pork or the other transparent gimmicks advertized in advance by McCain. McCain is not serious on spending. But he is deadly serious in not touching taxes. So, on the core question of debt, on bringing America back to fiscal reason, Obama is still better than McCain. If I have to take an ideological hit to head toward fiscal solvency, I'll put country before ideology.
But none of this compares to the task of restoring the rule of law and Constitutional balance. Unlike McCain, Obama has never wavered on torture or habeas corpus or on keeping the executive branch under the law. His deep understanding and awareness of the Constitution eclipses McCain's. Coming from the opposing party, he will also be able to restore confidence that what lies within America's secret government - the one constructed by Bush and Cheney beyond any accountability, law or morality - will be ended or cleaned up. He can restore critically needed trust again - and force the Democratic party to take responsibility for a war which we all need to own, and take responsibility for, again.
We cannot win this war without regaining our democratic soul, ending torture, and returning to lawful governance. But these things won't win the war either. On that, we have a perilous task ahead. I don't know how Obama will be able to get out of Iraq in his first term. I fear that Bush and Cheney have made withdrawal deliberately difficult if not impossible. I fear the same in Afghanistan. I don't know how Obama will handle Iran, given the power that Bush and Cheney have ceded to the Islamist regime there, and the danger of a pre-emptive strike before Obama even gets inaugurated. But I do know that he will handle these wars with reason, with prudence and with care. Those are three qualities absent from the White House for eight years. And I do know that Obama's very person, and what he symbolizes, will do more to restore America's image and repair our global public relations than any single measure any new administration will be able to accomplish.
The truth is: we are in a war for the future of human civilization. We are fighting for a world in which destructive technology need not collide with fierce religious fundamentalism to annihilate us all; for a world in which dialogue across cultures and religions and regions (even within America) is essential if we are to survive. We need to win the argument in the developing world; we need to reach out and persuade the Muslim middle - especially the next generation in Iran and Iraq and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Western Europe - about the virtues of democracy and constitutionalism. We cannot do that if we trash our own values ourselves. It is self-defeating. We cannot be a beacon to the world until we have reformed ourselves. In this war, we are also fighting for an America that does not lose its soul in fighting our enemy. Just because we are fighting evil does not mean we cannot ourselves succumb to it. That is what my Christian faith teaches me - that no nation has a monopoly on virtue, and that every generation has to earn its own integrity. I fear and believe we have given away far too much - and that, while this loss is permanent, it can nonetheless be mitigated by a new start, a new direction, a new statement that the America the world once knew and loved is back.
It will not be easy. The world will soon remember why it resents America as well as loves it. But until this unlikely fellow with the funny ears and strange name and exotic biography emerged on the scene, I had begun to wonder if it was possible at all. I had almost given up hope, and he helped restore it. That is what is stirring out there; and although you are welcome to mock me for it, I remain unashamed. As someone once said, in the unlikely story of America, there is never anything false about hope. Obama, moreover, seems to bring out the best in people, and the calmest, and the sanest. He seems to me to have a blend of Midwestern good sense, an intuitive understanding of the developing world that is as much our future now as theirs', an analyst's mind and a poet's tongue. He is human. He is flawed. He will make mistakes. His passivity and ambiguity are sometimes weaknesses as well as strengths.
But there is something about his rise that is also supremely American, a reminder of why so many of us love this country so passionately and are filled with such grief at what has been done to it and in its name. I endorse Barack Obama because I will not give up on America, because I believe in America, and in her constitution and decency and character and strength.
And the world needs that America now as much as it ever has. Can we start that healing, that rebirth, tomorrow?
Yes. We. Can.
Thank You Andrew Sullivan for a Powerful Endorsement
Labels: 2008 Election, Andrew Sullivan, Barack Obama, Change We Need, Defending the Constitution, Healing the Wounds of the Past Eight Years, Hope, Restoring America's Credibility, Vote for Change
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 5:31 PM
Hopes and Fears
22 Things About the Election that I am both Excited and Scared About
4 Nov 2008 Author: rikyrah
From We Are Respectable Negroes
22 Things About the Election that I am both Excited and Scared About
1. I am excited that the American people may be more mature, wise, and reflective than I would have guessed them ever capable of being. I am scared that they may not be.
2. I am excited that Obama’s victory could be a cathartic moment for our country as America moves one step closer to confronting, and maybe if we are really lucky, of conquering the demons that plague its racial subconscious. I am afraid those demons may be semi-permanent fixtures in our politics and culture.
3. I am excited about Obama winning. I am scared that if he loses, what that defeat says about America, our future, and the prospects for a truly shared and democratic political culture.
4. I am excited that Barack could be what America hopes and dreams him to be. I am scared that if Obama is just a man, if he is not superhuman, if he is merely just a good president, that this won’t be good enough.
5. I am excited that these last few months have been witness to conversations about race, class, and gender (even if they were often “coded”) that hint at a need and want for a real conversation about this country’s future and what is/was an often ugly and shared history. I am scared that these first steps will be final steps and that our much needed national conversation won’t continue.
6. I am excited that White Americans are displaying a bit more responsibility, courage, and wisdom as citizens than I would have ever thought them capable. I am scared that I am about to be disappointed.
7. I am excited that we are at the cusp of a great moment in our history. I am scared that we are investing too much in that one moment.
8. I am excited that the house that race built may be teetering just a wee bit more than it did a year, a decade, or certainly a century ago. I am scared that it will never fall down.
9. I am excited that a Black person will be president. I am scared that he won’t be free to simply be mediocre.
10. I am excited that the president of the United States may happen to be a Black man. I am scared that many will view Obama as a Black man who is president.
11. I am excited that a centrist may occupy the White House. I am scared that the wolves are already waiting at the door to attack him for not being “radical” enough.
12. I am excited that the Right-wing in this country has been dealt a devastating blow. I am scared that the Right will somehow find a way to profit from this moment.
13. I am excited that we may see history happen tomorrow. I am scared that we may instead witness history tomorrow.
14. I am excited about the future, our undiscovered country. I am scared that the force of history, of inertia, and of bad habits–a moribund nostalgia–will keep America from stepping into the future.
15. I am excited about being blown forward by the winds of change tomorrow. I am scared that there are too many whom will instead decide to stand against the winds of change tomorrow.
16. I am excited that an unapologetically Black man may be president. I am scared that Obama, as “white” as he is, may still be too “Black” to be president.
17. I am excited that many of us seem ready to move forward as a society, as a country, and as a community in order to salvage and resuscitate America’s influence and image in the world. I am scared that so many are going to have to be dragged into the future.
18. I am excited that we may be able to scratch one more item off of our list of “Black Firsts.” I am scared that list of Black Firsts is still too long.
19. I am excited that America will make the correct choice tomorrow. I am scared that America will make the wrong choice tomorrow.
20. I am excited about a Post-Racial future. I am scared about what a Post-Racial future may hold.
21. I am excited about what an Obama victory means for the Black Freedom Struggle. I am a scared about what an Obama victory may mean for Black politics.
22. I am excited about what it means to be an American tomorrow. I am scared about what it means to be an American tomorrow…and for every day thereafter if America stands against history and decides to not move forward with it.
@@@@
What are your thoughts? What are you excited about? What are you scared about? How will you spend tomorrow?
www.jackandjillpolitics.com
4 Nov 2008 Author: rikyrah
From We Are Respectable Negroes
22 Things About the Election that I am both Excited and Scared About
1. I am excited that the American people may be more mature, wise, and reflective than I would have guessed them ever capable of being. I am scared that they may not be.
2. I am excited that Obama’s victory could be a cathartic moment for our country as America moves one step closer to confronting, and maybe if we are really lucky, of conquering the demons that plague its racial subconscious. I am afraid those demons may be semi-permanent fixtures in our politics and culture.
3. I am excited about Obama winning. I am scared that if he loses, what that defeat says about America, our future, and the prospects for a truly shared and democratic political culture.
4. I am excited that Barack could be what America hopes and dreams him to be. I am scared that if Obama is just a man, if he is not superhuman, if he is merely just a good president, that this won’t be good enough.
5. I am excited that these last few months have been witness to conversations about race, class, and gender (even if they were often “coded”) that hint at a need and want for a real conversation about this country’s future and what is/was an often ugly and shared history. I am scared that these first steps will be final steps and that our much needed national conversation won’t continue.
6. I am excited that White Americans are displaying a bit more responsibility, courage, and wisdom as citizens than I would have ever thought them capable. I am scared that I am about to be disappointed.
7. I am excited that we are at the cusp of a great moment in our history. I am scared that we are investing too much in that one moment.
8. I am excited that the house that race built may be teetering just a wee bit more than it did a year, a decade, or certainly a century ago. I am scared that it will never fall down.
9. I am excited that a Black person will be president. I am scared that he won’t be free to simply be mediocre.
10. I am excited that the president of the United States may happen to be a Black man. I am scared that many will view Obama as a Black man who is president.
11. I am excited that a centrist may occupy the White House. I am scared that the wolves are already waiting at the door to attack him for not being “radical” enough.
12. I am excited that the Right-wing in this country has been dealt a devastating blow. I am scared that the Right will somehow find a way to profit from this moment.
13. I am excited that we may see history happen tomorrow. I am scared that we may instead witness history tomorrow.
14. I am excited about the future, our undiscovered country. I am scared that the force of history, of inertia, and of bad habits–a moribund nostalgia–will keep America from stepping into the future.
15. I am excited about being blown forward by the winds of change tomorrow. I am scared that there are too many whom will instead decide to stand against the winds of change tomorrow.
16. I am excited that an unapologetically Black man may be president. I am scared that Obama, as “white” as he is, may still be too “Black” to be president.
17. I am excited that many of us seem ready to move forward as a society, as a country, and as a community in order to salvage and resuscitate America’s influence and image in the world. I am scared that so many are going to have to be dragged into the future.
18. I am excited that we may be able to scratch one more item off of our list of “Black Firsts.” I am scared that list of Black Firsts is still too long.
19. I am excited that America will make the correct choice tomorrow. I am scared that America will make the wrong choice tomorrow.
20. I am excited about a Post-Racial future. I am scared about what a Post-Racial future may hold.
21. I am excited about what an Obama victory means for the Black Freedom Struggle. I am a scared about what an Obama victory may mean for Black politics.
22. I am excited about what it means to be an American tomorrow. I am scared about what it means to be an American tomorrow…and for every day thereafter if America stands against history and decides to not move forward with it.
@@@@
What are your thoughts? What are you excited about? What are you scared about? How will you spend tomorrow?
www.jackandjillpolitics.com
Labels: 2008 Presidential Race, African-American, African-American History, Barack Obama
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 5:06 PM
Monday, November 03, 2008
Learning about Hope
My wife made me canvas for Obama; here's what I learned
This election is not about major policies. It's about hope.
By Jonathan Curley
from the November 3, 2008 edition
The Christian Science Monitor
Charlotte, N.C. - There has been a lot of speculation that Barack Obama might win the election due to his better "ground game" and superior campaign organization.
I had the chance to view that organization up close this month when I canvassed for him. I'm not sure I learned much about his chances, but I learned a lot about myself and about this election.
Let me make it clear: I'm pretty conservative. I grew up in the suburbs. I voted for George H.W. Bush twice, and his son once. I was disappointed when Bill Clinton won, and disappointed he couldn't run again.
I encouraged my son to join the military. I was proud of him in Afghanistan, and happy when he came home, and angry when he was recalled because of the invasion of Iraq. I'm white, 55, I live in the South and I'm definitely going to get a bigger tax bill if Obama wins.
I am the dreaded swing voter.
So you can imagine my surprise when my wife suggested we spend a Saturday morning canvassing for Obama. I have never canvassed for any candidate. But I did, of course, what most middle-aged married men do: what I was told.
At the Obama headquarters, we stood in a group to receive our instructions. I wasn't the oldest, but close, and the youngest was maybe in high school. I watched a campaign organizer match up a young black man who looked to be college age with a white guy about my age to canvas together. It should not have been a big thing, but the beauty of the image did not escape me.
Instead of walking the tree-lined streets near our home, my wife and I were instructed to canvass a housing project. A middle-aged white couple with clipboards could not look more out of place in this predominantly black neighborhood.
We knocked on doors and voices from behind carefully locked doors shouted, "Who is it?"
"We're from the Obama campaign," we'd answer. And just like that doors opened and folks with wide smiles came out on the porch to talk.
Grandmothers kept one hand on their grandchildren and made sure they had all the information they needed for their son or daughter to vote for the first time.
Young people came to the door rubbing sleep from their eyes to find out where they could vote early, to make sure their vote got counted.
We knocked on every door we could find and checked off every name on our list. We did our job, but Obama may not have been the one who got the most out of the day's work.
I learned in just those three hours that this election is not about what we think of as the "big things."
It's not about taxes. I'm pretty sure mine are going to go up no matter who is elected.
It's not about foreign policy. I think we'll figure out a way to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan no matter which party controls the White House, mostly because the people who live there don't want us there anymore.
I don't see either of the candidates as having all the answers.
I've learned that this election is about the heart of America. It's about the young people who are losing hope and the old people who have been forgotten. It's about those who have worked all their lives and never fully realized the promise of America, but see that promise for their grandchildren in Barack Obama. The poor see a chance, when they often have few. I saw hope in the eyes and faces in those doorways.
My wife and I went out last weekend to knock on more doors. But this time, not because it was her idea. I don't know what it's going to do for the Obama campaign, but it's doing a lot for me.
Jonathan Curley is a banker. He voted for George H.W. Bush twice and George W. Bush once.
This election is not about major policies. It's about hope.
By Jonathan Curley
from the November 3, 2008 edition
The Christian Science Monitor
Charlotte, N.C. - There has been a lot of speculation that Barack Obama might win the election due to his better "ground game" and superior campaign organization.
I had the chance to view that organization up close this month when I canvassed for him. I'm not sure I learned much about his chances, but I learned a lot about myself and about this election.
Let me make it clear: I'm pretty conservative. I grew up in the suburbs. I voted for George H.W. Bush twice, and his son once. I was disappointed when Bill Clinton won, and disappointed he couldn't run again.
I encouraged my son to join the military. I was proud of him in Afghanistan, and happy when he came home, and angry when he was recalled because of the invasion of Iraq. I'm white, 55, I live in the South and I'm definitely going to get a bigger tax bill if Obama wins.
I am the dreaded swing voter.
So you can imagine my surprise when my wife suggested we spend a Saturday morning canvassing for Obama. I have never canvassed for any candidate. But I did, of course, what most middle-aged married men do: what I was told.
At the Obama headquarters, we stood in a group to receive our instructions. I wasn't the oldest, but close, and the youngest was maybe in high school. I watched a campaign organizer match up a young black man who looked to be college age with a white guy about my age to canvas together. It should not have been a big thing, but the beauty of the image did not escape me.
Instead of walking the tree-lined streets near our home, my wife and I were instructed to canvass a housing project. A middle-aged white couple with clipboards could not look more out of place in this predominantly black neighborhood.
We knocked on doors and voices from behind carefully locked doors shouted, "Who is it?"
"We're from the Obama campaign," we'd answer. And just like that doors opened and folks with wide smiles came out on the porch to talk.
Grandmothers kept one hand on their grandchildren and made sure they had all the information they needed for their son or daughter to vote for the first time.
Young people came to the door rubbing sleep from their eyes to find out where they could vote early, to make sure their vote got counted.
We knocked on every door we could find and checked off every name on our list. We did our job, but Obama may not have been the one who got the most out of the day's work.
I learned in just those three hours that this election is not about what we think of as the "big things."
It's not about taxes. I'm pretty sure mine are going to go up no matter who is elected.
It's not about foreign policy. I think we'll figure out a way to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan no matter which party controls the White House, mostly because the people who live there don't want us there anymore.
I don't see either of the candidates as having all the answers.
I've learned that this election is about the heart of America. It's about the young people who are losing hope and the old people who have been forgotten. It's about those who have worked all their lives and never fully realized the promise of America, but see that promise for their grandchildren in Barack Obama. The poor see a chance, when they often have few. I saw hope in the eyes and faces in those doorways.
My wife and I went out last weekend to knock on more doors. But this time, not because it was her idea. I don't know what it's going to do for the Obama campaign, but it's doing a lot for me.
Jonathan Curley is a banker. He voted for George H.W. Bush twice and George W. Bush once.
Labels: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Change We Need, Community Activism, Community Organizing, Hope, PLEASE VOTE
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 11:01 AM
Sunday, November 02, 2008
One word: MORON
MONTREAL — A Quebec comedy duo notorious for prank calls to celebrities and heads of state has reached Sarah Palin, convincing the Republican vice-presidential nominee she was speaking with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. This woman is scarily naive and boneheaded.
Transcript from Daily Kos
UPDATED TRANSCRIPT OF ENTIRE INTERVIEW (63+ / 0-)
Recommended by:
moeman, AggieDemocrat, SarahLee, askew, Hudson, ebradlee10, JTML, dkistner, rlamoureux, elfling, Creosote, ksh01, rioduran, webweaver, BarbinMD, snakelass, fritzrth, gmhowell, sawgrass727, beagledad, darcarama, theberle, liveparadox, Caoimhin Laochdha, 5x5, Articulating Arm, eastmt, maxalb, cville townie, VelvetElvis, craigbear, condorcet, RickMassimo, kaolin, dewley notid, statsone, Calouste, Lavocat, velvet blasphemy, geodemographics, DHinIA, Rick in Oz, abraxas, Oregonian Optimist, The Jester, DrFitz, Dr Gonzo, CA Physics Grad, Irony Raygun, Xtatic, Dr Ferg, nampa45, DParker, Ann Hedonia, Mizclark, page394, BellaNJ, kostalNH, crando47, Donna O, angrykeyboarder, Trizza, johnQpub
Working from CatM's great transcript, I changed a few things, added in the French and explained the cultural references.
SP Assist: This is Betsy.
MA: Hello, Betsy. This is Frank l’ouvrier (Frank the worker], I’m with President Sarkozy, on the line for Governor Palin.
SP Assist: One second please, can you hold on one second please?
MA: No problem.
SP Assist: Hi, I’m going to hand the phone over to her.
MA: Okay thank you very much I’m going to put the president on the line.
SP Assist: Ok he’s coming to the line.
SP: This is Sarah.
MA: Okay, Governor Palin?
SP: Hellloooo...(long drawn out, like Well, hellooooo)
MA: Just hold on for President Sarkozy, one moment.
SP [To someone in the room]: Oh, it’s not him yet, I always do that. I’ll just have people hand it to me right when it’s them.
FNS: Yes, hello, Governor Palin? Yes, hello, Mrs. Governor?
SP: Hello this is Sarah., how are you?
FNS: Fine, and you, this is Nicolas Sarkozy speaking, how are you?
SP: Oh...so good, it’s so good to hear you. Thank you for calling us.
FNS: Oh, it’s a pleasure.
SP: Thank you sir, we have such great respect for you, John McCain and I, we love you and thank you for spending a few minutes to talk to me.
FNS: I follow your campaigns closely with my special American Advisor Johnny Hallyday (the most famous French singer, looks like and sings like Elvis), you know?
SP: Yes! Good!
FNS: Excellent! Are you confident?
SP: Very confident and we’re thankful that the polls are showing that the race is tightening and--
FNS: Well I know very well that the campaign can be exhausting. How do you feel right now my dear?
SP: Ah, I feel so good. I feel like we’re in a marathon and at the very end of the marathon, you get your second wind and you plow to the finish—
FNS: You see, I got elected in France because I’m real and you seem to be someone who’s real as well.
SP: Yes, yeah, Nicolas, we so appreciate this opportunity.
FNS: You know, I see you as a president, one day, you too.
SP: [Muahaaa...weird laugh], maybe in 8 years. Haha
FNS: Well, ah, I hope for you. You know we have a lot in common because personally one of my favorite activities is to hunt too.
SP: [Giggle]o h very good, we should go hunting together.
FNS: Exactly! We could go try hunting by helicopter, like you did, I never did that.
SP: [Giggle]
FNS: Like we say in France, "on pourrait tuer des bébés phoques aussi" [Translation: We could also kill some baby seals.]
SP: [Giggle] Well I think we could have a lot of fun together as we’re getting work done, we can kill two birds with one stone that way.
FNS: I just love killing those animals. Mm, mm. Take away a life, that is so fun!
SP: [Hahahaha]
FNS: I’d really love to go as long as we don’t bring your Vice president Cheney, hahaha.
SP: No, I’ll be a careful shot, yes.
FNS: You know we have a lot in common also except that from my ass I can see Belgium. That’s kind of less interesting than you.
SP: Well, see, we’re right next door to other countries that we all need to be working with, yes.
FNS: Some people said in the last days, and I thought that was mean, that you weren’t experienced enough in foreign relations, and you know, that’s completely false, that’s the thing I said to my great friend, the Prime Minister of Canada, Stef Carse [Stephen Harper is the PM and Stef Carse is a Quebecois country singer who covered Billy Ray Cyrus' Achy Breaky Heart in French in the 90s].
SP: Well, he’s doing fine, too, and yeah when you come into a position underestimated, it gives you the opportunity to prove the pundits and the critics wrong. You work that much harder-
FNS: I, I was wondering because you are also next to him, one of my good friends, also, the prime minister of Quebec, Mr. Richard Z. Sirois [a famous Quebec radio host], have you met him recently? Did he come to one of your rallies?
SP: Uh, haven’t seen him at one of the rallies, but it’s been great working with the Canadian officials in my role as governor; we have a great cooperative effort there as we work on all of our resource development projects. You know I look forward to working with you and getting to meet you personally and your beautiful wife, oh my goodness, you’ve added a lot of energy to your country, even, with that beautiful family of yours.
FNS: Thank you very much. You know my wife, Carla, would love to meet you. You know even though she was a bit jealous that I was supposed to speak to you today. [Hahahaha]
SP: [Hahahha] Well give her a big hug from me.
FNS: You know my wife is a popular singer and a former top model and she’s so hot in bed. She even wrote a song for you.
SP: Oh my goodness! I didn’t know that.
FNS: Yes, in French, it’s called "Du rouge à lèvres sur une cochonne" [Translate: Lipstick for a sow literally (but not properly) but it actually means an uninhibited girl] or if you prefer in English Joe the Plumber, [sings] It’s his life, Joe the Plumber..."
SP: Maybe she understands some of the unfair criticism but I bet you she is such a hard worker, too, and she realizes you just plow through that criticism like
FNS: I just want to be sure, I don’t’ quite understand the phenomenon "Joe the Plumber," that’s not your husband, right?
SP: Mmhmm, that’s into my husband but he’s a normal American who just works hard and doesn’t want government to take his money.
FNS: Yes, yes, I understand, we have the equivalent of Joe the Plumber in France, it’s called, "Marcel, the guy with bread under his armpit, oui."
SP: Right. That’s what it’s all about, is the middle class, and government needing to work for them. You’re a very good example for us here.
FNS: I seen a bit about NBC even Fox News wasn’t an ally, an ally, sorry, about as much as usual.
SP: Yeah that’s what we’re up against.
FNS: I must say, Governor Palin, I love the documentary they made on your life, you know, Hustler’s "Nailin Palin."
SP: Oh, good, thank you. Yes.
FNS: That was really edgy.
SP: [Laughs] Well good.
FNS: I really love you. And I must say something, so, Governor, you’ve been pranked.
By the Master Avengers. We’re two comedians from Montreal
SP: Oohhh have we been pranked? And what radio station is this? [tries to force herself to sound nice but you can tell she’s pissed]
FNS: This is for CKOI in Montreal.
SP: In Montreal? Tell me the radio station call letters
[SP leaves phone, continuous griping in background, sounds like, "For chrissakes...that was ??? Just a radio station prank...chrissakes..."]
MA: Hello? If one voice can change the world for Obama, one Viagra can change the world for McCain.
[Man’s voice in background: hang up, hang up.]
SP Assist: Hi, I’m sorry, I have to let you go. Um, thank you.
by montsegur1234 on Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 03:43:03 PM PDT
Transcript from Daily Kos
UPDATED TRANSCRIPT OF ENTIRE INTERVIEW (63+ / 0-)
Recommended by:
moeman, AggieDemocrat, SarahLee, askew, Hudson, ebradlee10, JTML, dkistner, rlamoureux, elfling, Creosote, ksh01, rioduran, webweaver, BarbinMD, snakelass, fritzrth, gmhowell, sawgrass727, beagledad, darcarama, theberle, liveparadox, Caoimhin Laochdha, 5x5, Articulating Arm, eastmt, maxalb, cville townie, VelvetElvis, craigbear, condorcet, RickMassimo, kaolin, dewley notid, statsone, Calouste, Lavocat, velvet blasphemy, geodemographics, DHinIA, Rick in Oz, abraxas, Oregonian Optimist, The Jester, DrFitz, Dr Gonzo, CA Physics Grad, Irony Raygun, Xtatic, Dr Ferg, nampa45, DParker, Ann Hedonia, Mizclark, page394, BellaNJ, kostalNH, crando47, Donna O, angrykeyboarder, Trizza, johnQpub
Working from CatM's great transcript, I changed a few things, added in the French and explained the cultural references.
SP Assist: This is Betsy.
MA: Hello, Betsy. This is Frank l’ouvrier (Frank the worker], I’m with President Sarkozy, on the line for Governor Palin.
SP Assist: One second please, can you hold on one second please?
MA: No problem.
SP Assist: Hi, I’m going to hand the phone over to her.
MA: Okay thank you very much I’m going to put the president on the line.
SP Assist: Ok he’s coming to the line.
SP: This is Sarah.
MA: Okay, Governor Palin?
SP: Hellloooo...(long drawn out, like Well, hellooooo)
MA: Just hold on for President Sarkozy, one moment.
SP [To someone in the room]: Oh, it’s not him yet, I always do that. I’ll just have people hand it to me right when it’s them.
FNS: Yes, hello, Governor Palin? Yes, hello, Mrs. Governor?
SP: Hello this is Sarah., how are you?
FNS: Fine, and you, this is Nicolas Sarkozy speaking, how are you?
SP: Oh...so good, it’s so good to hear you. Thank you for calling us.
FNS: Oh, it’s a pleasure.
SP: Thank you sir, we have such great respect for you, John McCain and I, we love you and thank you for spending a few minutes to talk to me.
FNS: I follow your campaigns closely with my special American Advisor Johnny Hallyday (the most famous French singer, looks like and sings like Elvis), you know?
SP: Yes! Good!
FNS: Excellent! Are you confident?
SP: Very confident and we’re thankful that the polls are showing that the race is tightening and--
FNS: Well I know very well that the campaign can be exhausting. How do you feel right now my dear?
SP: Ah, I feel so good. I feel like we’re in a marathon and at the very end of the marathon, you get your second wind and you plow to the finish—
FNS: You see, I got elected in France because I’m real and you seem to be someone who’s real as well.
SP: Yes, yeah, Nicolas, we so appreciate this opportunity.
FNS: You know, I see you as a president, one day, you too.
SP: [Muahaaa...weird laugh], maybe in 8 years. Haha
FNS: Well, ah, I hope for you. You know we have a lot in common because personally one of my favorite activities is to hunt too.
SP: [Giggle]o h very good, we should go hunting together.
FNS: Exactly! We could go try hunting by helicopter, like you did, I never did that.
SP: [Giggle]
FNS: Like we say in France, "on pourrait tuer des bébés phoques aussi" [Translation: We could also kill some baby seals.]
SP: [Giggle] Well I think we could have a lot of fun together as we’re getting work done, we can kill two birds with one stone that way.
FNS: I just love killing those animals. Mm, mm. Take away a life, that is so fun!
SP: [Hahahaha]
FNS: I’d really love to go as long as we don’t bring your Vice president Cheney, hahaha.
SP: No, I’ll be a careful shot, yes.
FNS: You know we have a lot in common also except that from my ass I can see Belgium. That’s kind of less interesting than you.
SP: Well, see, we’re right next door to other countries that we all need to be working with, yes.
FNS: Some people said in the last days, and I thought that was mean, that you weren’t experienced enough in foreign relations, and you know, that’s completely false, that’s the thing I said to my great friend, the Prime Minister of Canada, Stef Carse [Stephen Harper is the PM and Stef Carse is a Quebecois country singer who covered Billy Ray Cyrus' Achy Breaky Heart in French in the 90s].
SP: Well, he’s doing fine, too, and yeah when you come into a position underestimated, it gives you the opportunity to prove the pundits and the critics wrong. You work that much harder-
FNS: I, I was wondering because you are also next to him, one of my good friends, also, the prime minister of Quebec, Mr. Richard Z. Sirois [a famous Quebec radio host], have you met him recently? Did he come to one of your rallies?
SP: Uh, haven’t seen him at one of the rallies, but it’s been great working with the Canadian officials in my role as governor; we have a great cooperative effort there as we work on all of our resource development projects. You know I look forward to working with you and getting to meet you personally and your beautiful wife, oh my goodness, you’ve added a lot of energy to your country, even, with that beautiful family of yours.
FNS: Thank you very much. You know my wife, Carla, would love to meet you. You know even though she was a bit jealous that I was supposed to speak to you today. [Hahahaha]
SP: [Hahahha] Well give her a big hug from me.
FNS: You know my wife is a popular singer and a former top model and she’s so hot in bed. She even wrote a song for you.
SP: Oh my goodness! I didn’t know that.
FNS: Yes, in French, it’s called "Du rouge à lèvres sur une cochonne" [Translate: Lipstick for a sow literally (but not properly) but it actually means an uninhibited girl] or if you prefer in English Joe the Plumber, [sings] It’s his life, Joe the Plumber..."
SP: Maybe she understands some of the unfair criticism but I bet you she is such a hard worker, too, and she realizes you just plow through that criticism like
FNS: I just want to be sure, I don’t’ quite understand the phenomenon "Joe the Plumber," that’s not your husband, right?
SP: Mmhmm, that’s into my husband but he’s a normal American who just works hard and doesn’t want government to take his money.
FNS: Yes, yes, I understand, we have the equivalent of Joe the Plumber in France, it’s called, "Marcel, the guy with bread under his armpit, oui."
SP: Right. That’s what it’s all about, is the middle class, and government needing to work for them. You’re a very good example for us here.
FNS: I seen a bit about NBC even Fox News wasn’t an ally, an ally, sorry, about as much as usual.
SP: Yeah that’s what we’re up against.
FNS: I must say, Governor Palin, I love the documentary they made on your life, you know, Hustler’s "Nailin Palin."
SP: Oh, good, thank you. Yes.
FNS: That was really edgy.
SP: [Laughs] Well good.
FNS: I really love you. And I must say something, so, Governor, you’ve been pranked.
By the Master Avengers. We’re two comedians from Montreal
SP: Oohhh have we been pranked? And what radio station is this? [tries to force herself to sound nice but you can tell she’s pissed]
FNS: This is for CKOI in Montreal.
SP: In Montreal? Tell me the radio station call letters
[SP leaves phone, continuous griping in background, sounds like, "For chrissakes...that was ??? Just a radio station prank...chrissakes..."]
MA: Hello? If one voice can change the world for Obama, one Viagra can change the world for McCain.
[Man’s voice in background: hang up, hang up.]
SP Assist: Hi, I’m sorry, I have to let you go. Um, thank you.
by montsegur1234 on Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 03:43:03 PM PDT
Labels: DJ Prank Call, Foreign Policy Experience, Sarah Palin gets owned
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 7:39 PM
Morgan sings a song about everyone's favourite Vice Presidential Candidate.
Labels: 2008 Election, Hey Deliliah, Hey Sarah Palin, john mccain, politcal parody, VP debate, Why to Vote
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 7:16 PM
Another Hey Sarah Palin
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 7:12 PM
A Tuneful and Well Produced Hey Sarah Palin
Matt Geiler sings a parody of The Plain White T's hit "Hey There Delilah." Lyrics by John Cates. Video by Jeff Vanroy.
Great Lyrics and hilarious video.
Great Lyrics and hilarious video.
Labels: Sarah Palin Plain White Ts parody comedy politics spoof JohnCates MattGeiler JeffVanroy
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 7:05 PM
"Hey Sarah Palin" parodies of Hey Delilah abound!
jessicamoose offers another Hey Sarah Palin song.
Hey Sarah Palin,
Oh, your makeup looks so pretty
Whats it like being the mayor of
A tiny little city?
Governer, too?
Wanna do mascara just like you
I swear its true.
Hey Sarah Palin,
Dont you worry about the distance
You hunt wolves and eat moose burgers
So just aim at the resistance,
Shoot em down
You deserved the Miss Alaska crown
So dont you frown.
Oh, for the presidency
Lets forget old John Mc C
McCain dont mean a thing to me
Its all about my girl SP
For our next VP
Hey Sarah Palin,
You just keep keeping it real
Let the others take their limousines,
You have a snowmobile
So let them hate
Alaska is the biggest state
I think its great.
Hey Sarah Palin,
Cant vote cause Im underage
But I hear that getting pregnant
When youre seventeens the rage
Ill try it out
Thats what abstinence is all about
I have no doubt.
Oh, for the presidency
Shes too good for just VP
She should win because shes a lady
Everyones a sexist SOB
A thousand miles seems pretty far,
But Wasilla, Alaskas where you are,
Even though we havent ever heard of it.
And nine thousand peoples not a lot,
But youll get the vote because youre hot
cause we dont need experience, not a bit.
Sarah Palin, I can say its true:
That if vice president goes to you,
The world will never ever be the same
And youre to blame
Hey Sarah Palin,
Im not being pessimistic
But according to your VP speech,
Youre just a dog with lipstick
By the way,
You look a lot like Tina Fey
And its just like you used to say:
What does VP do anyway?
What can I say?
Oh, for the presidency
You can have my liberty
Oh, no, choice is not for me
Oh, Ill keep my rape baby
Thank you, Sarah, P.
Lyrics by Jessica and Karissa Tom.
Guitar credit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVEPkf...
More From: jessicamoose
Hey Sarah Palin,
Oh, your makeup looks so pretty
Whats it like being the mayor of
A tiny little city?
Governer, too?
Wanna do mascara just like you
I swear its true.
Hey Sarah Palin,
Dont you worry about the distance
You hunt wolves and eat moose burgers
So just aim at the resistance,
Shoot em down
You deserved the Miss Alaska crown
So dont you frown.
Oh, for the presidency
Lets forget old John Mc C
McCain dont mean a thing to me
Its all about my girl SP
For our next VP
Hey Sarah Palin,
You just keep keeping it real
Let the others take their limousines,
You have a snowmobile
So let them hate
Alaska is the biggest state
I think its great.
Hey Sarah Palin,
Cant vote cause Im underage
But I hear that getting pregnant
When youre seventeens the rage
Ill try it out
Thats what abstinence is all about
I have no doubt.
Oh, for the presidency
Shes too good for just VP
She should win because shes a lady
Everyones a sexist SOB
A thousand miles seems pretty far,
But Wasilla, Alaskas where you are,
Even though we havent ever heard of it.
And nine thousand peoples not a lot,
But youll get the vote because youre hot
cause we dont need experience, not a bit.
Sarah Palin, I can say its true:
That if vice president goes to you,
The world will never ever be the same
And youre to blame
Hey Sarah Palin,
Im not being pessimistic
But according to your VP speech,
Youre just a dog with lipstick
By the way,
You look a lot like Tina Fey
And its just like you used to say:
What does VP do anyway?
What can I say?
Oh, for the presidency
You can have my liberty
Oh, no, choice is not for me
Oh, Ill keep my rape baby
Thank you, Sarah, P.
Lyrics by Jessica and Karissa Tom.
Guitar credit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVEPkf...
More From: jessicamoose
posted by Maya Kóvskaya at 7:01 PM
About Me
- Name: Maya Kóvskaya
- Location: Beijing, China
People have always complained that I'm too loud. My voice carries and the result isn't always euphonious. I'm the one that you can hear all the way across the restaurant/the bus/the lobby/the café. The one making the inappropriate remarks at the top of her voice. The one whose passionate opinions sometimes feel like a frontal assault. The one who is dying for you to be passionate and articulate enough about what you believe to convince me that I've been wrong about everything all along. I'm the one you look askance at sometimes when you think that I'm not looking. The one you sometimes wish was you. The one that you're mostly grateful you are not. The one who is called toward the great demotic flood of pedestrian humanity and the extraordinariness of the ordinary. The one who craves idealistic purity but lives with my hands dirty up the elbows with gorgeous quotidian life. The one who gets involved with all the wrong people, takes home strays, adopts lost causes, makes poor judgments, says all the wrong things and rages against disappointment because I've sworn to live with the consequences and to live without regret. Growing up meant realizing that this was going to be difficult.
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