This is glorious, The Daily Show obliterates McCain’s acceptance speech by interspersing clips of Dubya’s acceptance speech. It’s funny that much of it is the same - WORD FOR WORD! So I guess that’s the change they keep talking about. Damn McCain, you crazy Mavrick! (sic)
This shows what I hate about the conservative “right” - blatant hypocrisy. As usual, The Daily Show highlights these … let’s say shifts of opinions, with recent videos that show them playing both sides of the issue, depending on the subject. If it was a liberal issue, they’re all over it, if the EXACT issue comes up with them, it’s off limits and we’re the “angry left” for bringing it up! Just watch a few minutes here, you’ll see what I mean.
Meanwhile Politico.com takes on the “liberal media’s” questioning and reporting this week in a commentary titled, Why the media should apologize. “On behalf of the media, I would like to say we are sorry. On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry. We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked. We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice? Bad questions. Bad media. Bad. It is not our job to ask questions. Or it shouldn’t be. To hear from the pols at the Republican National Convention this week, our job is to endorse and support the decisions of the pols…“ After all, why should the media ask questions to get facts for a story…damn liberal bias!
In a statement today, EFF reminds online service providers to stand firm against alleged terms of use violations that are used to bully and silience online critisims. We only need to look at EFF’s work with the MIT students at Defcon, and the fact that so many ISPs are now filterning previous unfettered access to Usenet newsgroups to know that these tactics are alive and used to push debate offline and away from the limelight. During this election season free speech must remain so as we debate and uncover facts about the people who are to lead America for the next 4 years. “As the country enters the most “wired” election season to date, EFF and the ACLU of Northern California strongly encourage online service providers (OSPs) and content owners to take special care to safeguard free speech. Copyright claims, trademark claims, and alleged terms of use violations can be misused to silence critics and stifle political dialogue online. Even temporary takedowns can harm open debate, as political speech depends on the spiritof the moment and the rapidly evolving arguments of the participants. The Internet can continue to revitalize our political lives — but only if service providers, content owners, and users all do their parts. No matter where you stand on the candidates or the issues, we should all agree on one principle: No downtime for online free speech!“
Dik needs no support from u.
Since its introduction, my beef with the iPhone has been obvious; buying it ties you to AT&T, a company that violated the law, and the rights of its customers, by allowing and assisting with the illegal wiretapping and data-mining for the NSA. Keep in mind, there were other phone companies asked … but AT&T is the one that said yes. So if you want to put your money where your mouth is, be like me and consider Credo Mobile. Their recent promo postcard (seen to the right) has a permanent place on my refrigerator, so I’ll wait until they sell Android based phones, or support an Openmoko phone (drool) to get rid of my ancient (aka- 1 year old) cell phone. The copy on the flip side of the postcard tells it like it is; if you’re paying AT&T for anything, you’re contributing to the current administration.
“Sorry to say, but the political action committee at AT&T contributed the maximum amount allowable by law to the Bush/Cheney campaign — twice. So, go ahead, check out your mobile phone company. And then check out the mobile phone alternative you can trust. It’s called CREDO Mobile, and it’s mobile phone service that stands up for your values, brought to you by Working Assets.
On the other hand, if you’re happy with your mobile service just the way it is, accept this photograph as your gift from a real, ahem, Richard.
To get your phone in line with your values, click here.”
Never forget
Moved by Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver? Yeah, me too. I wanted to find out how I could help highlight the differences in Obama’s vs McCain’s stances. Chris Bowers had some great points about finding factual McCain quotes and the easiest way to get these facts in front of voters is to raise their prominence in search engine results; this is my attempt to help. If you have a site and want to participate, read Chris’ comments here. So, lets get on with it:
If you are anything like me, you are sick and tired of the national image of John McCain as some sort of independent, principled, Republican moderate. Examples of McCain’s departure from the Bush administration’s agenda are truly few and far between. Despite reports to the contrary, he has consistently supported and facilitated the most egregiously radical aspects of that agenda. Further, in an attempt to improve his prospects for the Republican nomination in 2008, he has spent much of the last three years sucking up to the theocon wing of the Republican Party that he once decried. Most famously, this included retracting comments he made about Jerry Falwell and then speaking at Falwell’s Liberty University. Pandering to extremists you once denounced in order to improve your electoral prospects hardly sounds “principled” to me.
What especially irks me about McCain’s pure as the driven snow national image is how the Washington pundit elites have continued to help manufacture it. McCain is the most frequent guest on Sunday morning talk shows, whose hosts clearly have done a terrible job of exposing the truth about him. We simply can’t trust the gatekeepers of our conventional wisdom to treat John McCain with any skepticism whatsoever. I am sure we will see much of the same lapdog treatment from the pundit elite when it comes to the McCain doctrine, otherwise known as escalation in Iraq. Already, pundits are bending over backward to label this idea serious, and the people who support it as principled.
Well, I say enough is enough. The line on McCain’s national image will be drawn here, and drawn now. Today, I am proposing a long-term, anti-McCain googlebomb project similar to the Googlebomb the Elections campaign I founded in 2006. The goal on this project is the search engine optimization of articles from established news sources that tell the truth on John McCain. I want to make certain that when people search for information about John McCain online, that they are presented with the truth on John McCain. I hope you will join me in this campaign. Here is what it entails:
UPDATE: check it - now MoveOn has, free buttons available too.
It’s old news now, but earlier today Obama chose Senator Joe Biden to be his running mate. What a great pick, I’ve always been a fan of Biden, especially his appearances on The Daily Show. He has generally voted with Obama, and along party lines but has been outspoken on many issues. He’s a seasoned congressional veteran well-versed in foreign policy and national security issues which should help blunt Republican attacks on Obama’s lack of experience in these areas. You can get a Free Obama/Biden bumper sticker over at MoveOn. Man, November can’t come fast enough! Obama and Biden FTW in 08!
UPDATE: months after confusing Iran and Iraq, (multiple - times), M.c.Cain continues to try to upstage Bush’s famous canon of mis-spoken quotes by stating that Putin is President of Germany.
Say what you want about Barack Obama’s ‘change’ message, just know if you go with J.o.hn M.c.Cain you’re saying yes to four more years of Bush style politics. While he’s still hawking that ‘maverick’ tag, don’t believe the hype, instead, let’s look at some statements by the senator. Recently M.c.Cain perked my interest when he came out in favor of FISA, warrantless wiretapping/eavesdropping and executive power. Funny thing is, he had the exact opposite opinion on these topics when he was asked in December 2007!
On Wednesday, I documented J.o.hn M.c.Cain’s complete reversal of views — in the last six months alone — on FISA, warrantless eavesdropping and executive power. M.c.Cain’s diametrically opposite views were contained in a questionnaire M.c.Cain completed for The Boston Globe last December (wherein he rejected many of the Bush/Cheney theories of presidential omnipotence and warrantless eavesdropping) and then a statement M.c.Cain issued this week to National Review (wherein he embraced those same theories in order to persuade the Right that he approves of and would continue Bush’s lawless surveillance policies).
Another source states more of what transcribed at the National Review:
A top adviser to Senator J.o.hn M.c.Cain says Mr. M.c.Cain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.
In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. M.c.Cain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance…
I’m all for having opinions, but if a simple disagreement turns to violence, someone must be watching too much tv. The apparent argument was over a Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama argument! “…Jose Antonio Ortiz, a Clinton supporter, allegedly stabbed his brother-in-law Sean Shurelds in the stomach after they argued over the race for nomination. Shurelds, 41, an Obama supporter, told Ortiz his candidate was “trashing” Clinton, in reference to a string of recent victories by the Illinois senator in preliminary voting in various states. According to the police report, Ortiz replied that “Obama was not a realist” before the argument, in the kitchen of a Pennsylvania home, turned physical. After some mutual choking and punching, the 28-year-old allegedly stabbed Shurelds in the stomach. He has been charged with aggravated assault, among other charges, while Shurelds was flown to a nearby hospital, where he was admitted in critical condition.“ Uggg…so I assume Jose will be voting by ‘absentee’ ballot this year.
Watching the “coincidences” between political decisions and terror alerts since 2001 (we’re currently at Bert!) has been a favorite spectator sport of mine, but of course it takes Keith Olbermann to fully chronicle the ongoing Bush legacy. Called “The Nexus of Politics and Terror” it provides “…the Bush administration’s exploitation of terror threats for political gain. Olbermann’s exhaustive account weaves from each revelation of an intelligence failure or a Democratic political victory to an almost immediate orange alert or “new threat” from al Qaeda. The clip is 17 minutes long and entirely worth it, and its conclusion — “what we were told about terror, and not told, for security reasons, has overlapped considerably with what we were told about terror, and not told, for political reasons” — is a telling summary of our past six years. It will be interesting to see how history judges these events.
Watch:
I've been blogging since November 2001, with topics covering politics, geek interests, music, and the overall meaning of life. If there ever was an entry for me I would want it to say, "Mostly harmless". Thanks for stopping by, feel free to ask a question, start a conversation or subscribe to the RSS feed if interested. Thanks.
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