Obama Raises $66M in August; Adds 500,000 New Donors
I’m guessing the question of him not taking public financing will now be laid to rest.
Barack Obama is running a brilliant campaign and bringing hundreds of thousands of disaffected voters into the race. If you’re still confused about who will lead this country back to the right direction, I’d suggest comparing the campaigns.
One relies on Swiftboaters; the other on small donors giving $5 or more. Which of those is more representative of this country? Which candidate will be thinking of ordinary Americans on Day One? Which candidate will have debts to pay to special interests on Day One?
The latest negative I’ve heard is that people just don’t feel comfortable with Obama. Frankly, that’s codespeak that suggests they’re not comfortable with a black guy who gets stuff done. I strongly suggest those with discomfort try to set that aside and figure out based on facts and reality who will tell the truth and who will lie to them. The direction of the McCain campaign has certainly not erred on the side of truth since their convention.
And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?
What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.
Here’s a choice: Lies, more lies, and damn lies, about Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, taxes, and the economy served with a neocon twist. Or an honest effort to try to tackle some of our biggest problems and resolve them.
Doesn’t seem like much of a choice to me.
(Note: For excellent updates on the McCain campaign lies, subscribe to RoadKill Refugee’s blog. Roadkill updates the blog frequently with new lies and truths about McCain.)
The Power of Frames
My mom sent me this last night, and I love the way it compare and contrasts the way the media and the campaigns have framed the people. Here we go…
I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight…..
- If you grow up in Hawaii , raised by your grandparents, you’re “exotic, different.”
- Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.
- If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
- Name your kids Willow , Trig and Track, you’re a maverick.
- Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
- Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.
- If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
- If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive and next in line behind a man in his eighth decade.
- If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.
- If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and then left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a true Christian.
- If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
- If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.
- If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America ’s.
- If you’re husband is nicknamed “First Dude”, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
OK, much clearer now.
Sarah Palin sells war and lies on ABC
Wow. On the day Palin attends a deployment ceremony for her son, she advocates for war with Russia. This is just so wrong on so many levels…
GIBSON: Let’s start, because we are near Russia, let’s start with Russia and Georgia.
The administration has said we’ve got to maintain the territorial integrity of Georgia. Do you believe the United States should try to restore Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia?
PALIN: First off, we’re going to continue good relations with Saakashvili there. I was able to speak with him the other day and giving him my commitment, as John McCain’s running mate, that we will be committed to Georgia. And we’ve got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable and we have to keep… GIBSON: You believe unprovoked.
PALIN: I do believe unprovoked and we have got to keep our eyes on Russia, under the leadership there.
GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?
PALIN: They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.
Sarah Palin on Russia:
We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. We’ve learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.
We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it’s in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.
Now, let’s unpack this just a little bit. Russia was not unprovoked. As much as McCain/Palin want to paint the conflict in Russia as the big bad wolf eating the innocent Georgia, it didn’t really happen like that. In fact, following her logic about protecting smaller democratic countries, she should pay due respect to South Ossetia and acknowledge that Georgia was annexing them even as they expressed desire to be independent of Georgia. There was plenty of provocation.
Of course, it’s much more convenient to dumb down the argument to RNC talking points and argue that Georgia was somehow being punished by Russia for joining Nato. It’s also more convenient to ignore the fact of the gas pipeline crossing Georgia that the neo-cons desperately want to control.
Oh, but then I forgot. John McCain says Palin knows more about energy than possibly anyone else in the US.
Those gosh-darn Republicans sure are given to knowing everything, aren’t they? Just ask Meghan McCain.
Victory in Iraq: Not Defined
Keith Olbermann’s special comment last night echoed everything I’ve been saying whenever I hear John McCain pronounce that a) He knows how to win wars; and b) he will bring our troops home from Iraq after we ‘win’ and with honor.
Let me just say this here and now: I believe that our troops have honor just by virtue of the fact that they are serving, have served, have placed their lives at risk and have obeyed orders that they perhaps didn’t even agree with. Every day that they get up and put their boots on and go back out there, they serve with honor. There is absolutely nothing in the outcome to Iraq that will change the fact that these are honorable men and women serving their country with, yes, honor.
Olbermann’s special comment re: trademarking 9/11
With that said, every single time McCain makes the broad claims about victory and honor, I find myself screaming the words “Define victory!” at my television set. Or my car radio. Or even my iPod, on occasion.
The fact is, victory in Iraq is undefined now, and will forever be undefined. This is largely because there was no clearly-stated objective beyond getting rid of Saddam Hussein, and that objective was completed 5 or so years ago.
Even General Petraeus agrees. From an interview with the BBC:
Q: Do you think you will ever use the word “victory”?
Petraeus: I don’t know that I will. I think that all of us at different times have recognized the need for real restraint in our assessments, in our pronouncements, if you will. And we have tried to be very brutally honest and forthright in what we have provided to Congress, to the press, and to ourselves.
and
“This is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade…it’s not war with a simple slogan.
Once again, McCain lies and distorts for political gain. Oh, don’t we all want to puff out our chests and proclaim ‘victory’. And of course, McCain has to take that tack in order to lie about Barack Obama as being a ‘quitter’ who wants to ‘give up’ in Iraq, with quips and sound bites like this one:
“This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word `victory’ except when he’s talking about his own campaign.”
Now you hear Petraeus echoing more or less what Barack Obama has said throughout the campaign — that withdrawal from Iraq must be done with caution, but that it must be done, particularly with Afghanistan at grave risk.
Make no mistake about this: John McCain’s idea of honor IS victory — HIS. And he will lie and sell out to the highest bidder to be victorious.
John McCain is a Liar
Each and every ad debunked in this video was an ad approved by John McCain. After watching McCain and his spin machine lie to all of us, I’m just curious about what the word “honor” means to him. After all, he’s the one who said he’d run an “honorable campaign”. Last time I looked, the definition of ‘honorable’ didn’t include lies about everything from national security to legislative meaning and intent.
McCain has demonstrated his craven desire to wield power. Here is the choice for voters: Do you want yet another proven liar in office, or are you willing to take a chance on integrity this time around.
Since the press won’t call out the lies, I will. And so will these folks.
Will you?
The needle and the damage done…
Evidently Floridians have been injected with the offshore drilling meth now, too.
Have we become a nation of such uneducated, black and white thinkers that no one bothers to go beyond campaign rhetoric to the facts?
Of everything McCain has said in his campaign stops, his specious and irrational touting of offshore drilling as some sort of answer to oil prices (along with the suspension of the federal gas tax, which of course accomplishes nothing but screwing states out of road funds) is to me, the most despicable.
Blood money is funding his campaign. The blood of our shores, of our natural resources, of the wonders of our coasts, sold out to oil companies for campaign donations.
Remember, this is a train the Democrats cannot stop. They stand no chance of placing the moratorium into the budget, because Bush lifted the executive order and will not approve it.
