Open Thread - Dominating The News Cycle

If you haven't seen them yet, check out the animated version of the "Get Your War On" cartoons from the great David Rees. Start here, on dominating the news cycle: Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com. How are you dominating the[...]

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McCain banks on close vote as party starts the
inquest.

The Republican party have already started their inquest into what went wrong, with Palin vowing to "go rogue" in the last week to make sure the blame doesn't end up around her own throat, and yet McCain insists on Meet The Press that things are going fine.

The Republican presidential nominee predicted a "late night" next Tuesday, suggesting the voting would be close enough to have to wait for the final counts in some states. "This has been a very close race, and I believe I will win it," he said.

Even he doesn't actually believe that, as the evidence on the ground is too strong for even McCain to ignore.

But in a sign of how much of a mismatch the campaign has become, Obama, speaking on Saturday in Albuquerque, New Mexico - won in 2004 by George Bush - attracted a crowd of 45,000. McCain, speaking in the same city the same day drew only about 1,500 onlookers.

The truth is that the only thing we have left to discuss is the size of McCain's defeat and whether or not Obama's victory will do for the Democrats what Reagan's rout did for the Republicans in the early eighties.

538.com this morning give McCain a 3.3% chance of being the next president, which is about as dismal as it gets.

Even Alaska's main newspaper isn't backing the McCain/Palin ticket:

In another blow to McCain's campaign yesterday, the largest paper in Alaska, Sarah Palin's home state, endorsed Obama. The Anchorage Daily News said McCain had "stumbled and fumbled badly" in his response to the economic crisis and Palin was not ready to be vice-president.

The truth is that McCain has fought a simply disgraceful campaign. It was never going to be easy for a Republican to win an election following the damage done to the US by the Bush years, but McCain was a man who had suffered himself at the hands of the Bush/Rove political machine, he was a war hero and, if anyone could offer an alternative to the Obama/Democratic vision for the future it would surely have been him.

Sadly, it didn't turn out that way.

He fought a nasty campaign - one which Rove would have been proud of - based on demonstrable lies, which he continued to repeat even after they were shown to be demonstrable lies.

When he found himself to be behind in the polls he took a disgraceful risk in hiring Sarah Palin as his VP, destroying his argument of "Country First" and the whole notion that Obama was inexperienced.

It's been a train wreck.

His campaign has lacked any basic strategy, and appears to have been founded on the notion that McCain was a POW and Obama is not, so McCain deserves to be president for that reason alone.

David Frum, Bush's speechwriter, who wrote the Axis of Evil speech, suggested yesterday, in an opinion-piece for the Washington Post, that the party shifted resources from the presidential race "that is almost certainly lost" to Senate ones so that there would be a base on which to build a Republican revival after the election. "A beaten party needs a base from which to recover," Frum wrote.

McCain has been unfortunate enough to find himself trying to follow the disgraceful Bush presidency. He has made every attempt to distance himself from the previous Republican administration, but failed to do so because, whilst condemning the Bush years, he has shown himself to be only too willing to embrace their tactics. Bush is possibly the worst American president of all time, certainly he's is the top three of all time stinkers, so anyone attempting to follow him on the Republican ticket was facing a steep climb.

McCain could have fought an honourable campaign, distancing himself from Bush and emphasising the differences between himself and his predecessor. That would have been the only route with which he could have had any chance of victory. By showing that there was a different Republican party that the one which has appalled us all for the last eight years.

He didn't. McCain rather attempted to outdo the lies and smears which have epitomised the Bush years and, in doing so, has destroyed his reputation as an honourable man.

In Pennsylvania, Republicans are distancing themselves from an email sent to Jewish voters comparing a vote for Obama with the events of the 1930s leading to the Holocaust. The email warns of a "second holocaust" if Obama were elected, portraying him as a danger to Israel.

That's the kind of shit that has come to signify this campaign, an "anything goes" philosophy which the American electorate have become utterly disenchanted by.

The Republican party are going down the toilet, and they are going down it whilst insisting on things - "Obama is a Muslim!", "Obama is a terrorist!", "Obama's birth certificate proves he's not even an American!" - that are blatantly untrue.

When any party becomes so insane that it supporters have nothing to cling to other than obvious lies, then it deserves to die.

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Tags: McCain, Obama, US election 2008, lies

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Jim Nuzzo in 2012!

Geez, do I hope this Bush 41 aide is right: Jim Nuzzo, a White House aide to the first President Bush, dismissed Mrs Palin’s critics as “cocktail party conservatives” who “give aid and comfort to the enemy”.He told The Sunday Telegraph: “There’s going to be a bloodbath. A lot of people are going to be excommunicated. [...]

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Hospital crowding forces beds into hallways

Desperate times call for mild answers, right? That massive tax credit is going to solve all of our health care problems including overcrowding in ERs.

"They sent me up here to make room for other emergency patients," Gray, 78, said last week from his bed in the hall of a New York area hospital. "This is the way things are in hospitals."

It may not sound like ideal health care, but hospital officials nationwide are being urged to consider hallway medicine as a way to ease emergency department crowding, and some are trying it.

Leading the way is Stony Brook University Medical Center at Stony Brook, N.Y., where a study found that no harm was caused by moving emergency room patients to upper-floor hallways when they were ready for admission.

The study's lead author says all hospitals should look at the program's success.

"This is yet another battle cry for hospitals to get off their duffs and stop stacking people knee deep in the emergency department," said Dr. Peter Viccellio, who is clinical director of the hospital's emergency department.

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Hey, Sarah Palin, there are real American heroes,
even here in New York City

Hey, Sarah Palin, there are real American heroes, even here in New York City: ". This is not just the end of one of the dumbest, meanest Republican campaigns in history. It is also the most divisive. It is no longer liberals vs. conservatives, one[...]

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US Papers Mon: US Blamed For Attack in Syria

More great PR for America in Iraq today - Syria's government is blaming U.S.

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So What's The Real Story On McCain

Is he just a garden variety political liar? Or is he seriously delusional? Before you answer, please watch the 80 second clip:


video details and more



That was the short version; very much to the point, right? Joe Conason has a more nuanced analysis up at Salon, one that is no less devastating for John McCain and other Republican-- and some Democratic-- rubber stamps.

[D]espite McCain's claim to greater experience and judgment in foreign policy, he just doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. If he did, the latest developments in relations between Baghdad and Washington would dampen the Republican nominee's enthusiasm for a prolonged occupation.

Negotiations between the Bush administration and the government of Nouri al-Maliki over the presence of U.S. forces have reached an impasse that no longer seems certain to be resolved until George W. Bush has left office. If any resolution is achieved over the coming weeks, moreover, it will render McCain's hard-line position on the war null and void.

Gone are the fantasies-- if not the lies and the delusions of the seriously senile-- "of the neoconservatives, who once imagined the new Iraq as a permanent base for American troops in the Middle East, with a client government that would reflect U.S. priorities. What has come to exist instead is an Iraq much closer to Iran than to the United States, one that will countenance no permanent U.S. bases and prefers that our troops depart sooner rather than later." Tell it to McCain. He makes Bush look like a peacenik.

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Open Thread for Night Owls, Early Birds & Ex-Pats

Jennifer Oldham at the Los Angeles Times writes:

Popularity of mail-in voting surges in California, elsewhere

At least 40% of the state's registered voters already have decided they want to vote by mail, according to data compiled Friday by the California Assn. of Clerks and Elected Officials. The percentage is expected to grow as Tuesday's deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot approaches. ...

In California, voting by mail has been on the upswing since 2002, when a state law took effect allowing residents to permanently mark their ballots at home. The trend further escalated this year when many registrars, in an effort to decrease congestion at the polls, launched aggressive publicity campaigns to entice residents to apply for mail-in ballots.

Nearly half of the state's voters are expected to cast their ballots by mail this year. By comparison, 32% of voters used mail-in ballots in the 2004 presidential election and only 24% did so in 2000.

Lawmakers, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, are pushing to require all states to offer voting by mail without an excuse by the next federal election. ...

This election, faced with a 143-page voter information guide featuring 12 statewide propositions and a 15-page supplemental guide -- which some voter-education experts have dubbed "practically impenetrable" -- many California residents relish being able to mark their ballots in phases at home, saving the most difficult issues for last.

Oregon did away with polling places in 2000. Washington state is nearly 100% mail-in ballots. Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado all have a majority of citizens choosing to mail in their ballots. Twenty-eight states now allow absentee balloting without the traditional excuses (sickness, disability, being out of town on election day).

+ + +

The Overnight News Digest is posted and includes the story: After Ike, FEMA aid is hard to come by.

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Obama Desktop Background Contest

Many of you have commented or emailed me about my last post, telling me that you would like the raw[...]

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Blackwater hired as security in Somalia

What could possibly go wrong? AP:

Blackwater Worldwide and other private security firms ? some with a reputation for being quick on the trigger in Iraq ? are joining the battle against pirates plaguing one of the world's most important shipping lanes off the coast of Somalia.

The growing interest among merchant fleets to hire their own firepower is encouraged by the U.S. Navy and represents a new and potential lucrative market for security firms scaling back operations in Iraq.

But some maritime organizations told The Associated Press that armed guards may increase the danger to ships' crews or that overzealous contractors might accidentally fire on fishermen.

The record in Iraq of security companies like Blackwater, which is being investigated for its role in the fatal shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007, raises concerns about unregulated activity and possible legal wrangles.

"Security companies haven't always had the lightest of touches in Iraq, and I think Somalia is a pretty delicate situation," said Roger Middleton, who wrote a recent report on piracy in Somalia for Chatham House, a think tank in London.

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