Category Archives: politics

Pass it on

This has been making the rounds, so you may have already seen it, but if not I encourage you to email it to everyone you know, preferably with threats about what will happen to their family if they don’t forward it to everyone they know.

Let me get 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 five different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.

If you spend three 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 eight years as a state senator representing a district with more than 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, four years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with fewer than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people … you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising two beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a 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 lawyer 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 your 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.

It’s all clear now, right?

Quote of the day

Ezra sez,

“The Washington Post has a nice fact-check piece on Sarah Palin’s claim Alaska produces “nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.” This, it turns out, is not true. It’s not near true. It’s not good friends with true. It doesn’t go to parties with true, and occasionally sleep with true when it gets lonely. Rather, it’s false.”

More.

Spreading the (partisan) love

Love.

Love (starts about three minutes in):

So Much Love:

Jigga WHO?

So McCain chose … Sarah Palin as his running mate? This no computey. The main thrust of your argument against your opponent is his lack of experience, and you pick a woman with less than a year in office as your running mate? Whose previous experience was as mayor of a town of 3000? How does this make sense?

It’s about damn time

I must say, I found this year’s Democratic Convention almost totally satisfactory – a rare response the last few election years. Hillary: knocked it out of the park. Bill: home run. Joe Biden: a good start. Obama: legendary. I know the GOP attack machine is just getting geared up, and there’s a long, vicious road to go, but I honestly think the Dems put up the strongest front they have in years. I mean, would YOU want to follow that closing image? A jam-packed arena stadium filled with screaming, inspired democratic voters? You know the GOP operatives are scrambling tonight … and that’s a result I quite enjoy.

Linky Bits

What you could look at while I’m too stopped up to blog:

1. Ballotpedia should come in extremely handy this autumn.

2. The public school system, in case you were unaware, is totally FUBAR. I would love to see either of the presidential candidates address this in a meaningful way. But I ain’t holding my breath.

3. You know how diets don’t work? Weight loss surgery doesn’t, either.

4. This video kind of makes me feel better about the human race. (Watch through the awkwardness; it’s worth it.):

About that New Yorker Cover

Everyone in the liberal blogosphere seems to have their knickers in a twist about the latest New Yorker cover. Personally, I think the cover is brilliant; beyond that I have three more things to say about it:

1. Just because you don’t get a joke doesn’t mean it’s not funny.
2. Just because you can’t see the satire doesn’t mean it’s not there.
3. Just because the right-wing is so batshit insane that they attempt to defy satire on a daily basis, doesn’t mean that we don’t still have to make fun of them.

Tom Tomorrow, of course, is all over this, and this post in particular is a must-read.

Jon Swift (please note the name) also has an excellent take on the matter.

What a dickwad.

Rise, Hillary, Rise

For anyone who’s never understood why a progressive might choose Hillary over Obama, why some of us have found her campaign so important and uplifting, why we are so angry at her treatment in the press, watch this. It explains.

via Kate at Shakesville.

Random Tidbits

I got nothin’. The sickness is past, thank goodness, and we are back to being rascally toddlers again. I’m trying to get some writing done. Emphasis on “trying.” I enjoyed the Oscars. Aaaaaand … yeah. That’s all I got. But here, watch this:

And then you might want to get one of these.

Also, Emma Thompson is such a fucking GODDESS.