friday funny: liberals fleeing to canada

Fictitious article about American liberals moving to Canada before the election out of fear of another 4 years of the neocons and religious right. Funny, but at the same time, a little too close to home. Thanks Linda.

From the MANITOBA HERALD, Canada

The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration.

The possibility of a McCain/Palin election is prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they’ll soon be required to hunt, pray, and agree with Bill O’Reilly.

Canadian border farmers say it’s not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night. ‘I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn,’ said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota . ‘The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken.’

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields. ‘Not real effective,’ he said. ‘The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn’t give milk.’

Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves. ‘A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions,’ an Ontario border patrolman said. ‘I found one carload without a drop of drinking water.’ They did have a nice little Napa Valley Cabernet, though.’

When liberals are caught, they’re sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about the McCain administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to shoot wolves from airplanes, deny evolution, and act out drills preparing them for the Rapture.

In recent days, liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers on Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney hits to prove they were alive in the ’50s. ‘If they can’t identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get suspicious about their age,’ an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies. ‘I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can’t support them,’ an Ottawa resident said. ‘How many art history and English majors does one country need?’

division of the gop?

It looks like the McCain-Palin campaign is on the verge of not only losing the presidential election but of also dividing the Republican Party. Rumors abound of infighting created by the selection of Palin as McCain’s running mate and the disgraceful campaign they have run. It’s not completely clear how it breaks down, but it appears to be the neoconservatives and the Religious Right on one side supporting the McCain-Palin train wreck and moderate Republicans (which I didn’t know still existed) on the other, shaking their head in disgust as much as the rest of us. Thank goodness. Let’s hope the few remaining moderates in the Republican Party wake up and kick the neocons and Religious Right to the door and return the party to the days of Eisenhower. Let the neocons and Religious Right run on a 3rd party ticket with a platform that truly represents their goals of unfettered free market capitalism, war at all costs, the creation of a two-class system, destruction of the environment, and removal of civil liberties and see how far it gets them.
 
A notable item from the article: Jim Nuzzo, a White House aid to George H.W. Bush, said Palin is the new Ronald Reagan. I was a baby when Reagan was elected to his first term, so I can’t speak from first-hand knowledge, but that sounds like an insult to Reagan. Was he as dimwitted as Palin? Perhaps Mr. Nuzzo was only referring to the similarities in their policy positions – laissez-faire economics; cutting taxes for the rich; slashing government programs, except for the military of course; removing regulations on everything including the environment, labor, financial markets, corporations, and industry; taking away women’s rights; and promoting religion in schools.
 
Republican fears of historic Obama landslide unleash civil war for the future of the party
Senior Republicans believe that John McCain is doomed to a landslide defeat which will hand Barack Obama more political power than any president in a generation.
By Tim Shipman in Durango, Colorado
Last Updated: 12:37AM BST 26 Oct 2008
 
Aides to George W.Bush, former Reagan White House staff and friends of John McCain have all told The Sunday Telegraph that they not only expect to lose on November 4, but also believe that Mr Obama is poised to win a crushing mandate.

They believe he will be powerful enough to remake the American political landscape with even more ease than Ronald Reagan did in 1980.

The prospect of an electoral rout has unleashed a bitter bout of recriminations both within the McCain campaign and the wider conservative movement, over who is to blame and what should be done to salvage the party’s future.

Mr McCain is now facing calls for him to sacrifice his own dwindling White House hopes and focus on saving vulnerable Republican Senate seats which are up for grabs on the same day.

Their fear is that Democrat candidates riding on Mr Obama’s popularity may win the nine extra seats they need in the Senate to give them unfettered power in Congress.

If the Democrat majority in the Senate is big enough – at least 60 seats to 40 – the Republicans will be unable to block legislation by use of a traditional filibuster – talking until legislation runs out of time. No president has had the support of such a majority since Jimmy Carter won the 1976 election. President Reagan achieved his political transformation partly through the power of his personality.

David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, told The Sunday Telegraph that Republicans should now concentrate all their fire on “the need for balanced government”.

“It’s hard to see a turnaround in the White House race,” he said. “This could look like an ideological as well as a party victory if we’re not careful. It could be 1980 in reverse.

“With this huge new role for federal government in the economy, the possibility for mischief making is very, very great. One man should not have a monopoly of political and financial power. That’s very dangerous.”

In North Carolina, where Senator Elizabeth Dole seems set to loose, Republicans are running adverts that appear to take an Obama victory for granted, warning that the Democrat will have a “blank cheque” if her rival Kay Hagen wins. “These liberals want complete control of government in a time of crisis,” the narrator says. “All branches of Government. No checks and balances.”

Democrats lead in eight of the 12 competitive Senate races and need just nine gains to reach their target of 60. Even Mitch McConnell, the leader of Senate Republicans, is at risk in Kentucky, normally a rock solid red state.

A private memo on the likely result of the congressional elections, leaked to Politico, has the Republicans losing 37 seats.

Ed Rollins, who masterminded Ronald Reagan’s second victory in 1984, said the election is already over and predicted: “This is going to turn into a landslide.”

A former White House official who still advises President Bush told The Sunday Telegraph: “McCain hasn’t won independents, nor has he inspired the base. It’s the worst of all worlds. He is dragging everyone else down with him. He needs to deploy people and money to salvage what we can in Congress.”

The prospect of defeat has unleashed what insiders describe as an “every man for himself” culture within the McCain campaign, with aides in a “circular firing squad” as blame is assigned.

More profoundly, it sparked the first salvoes in a Republican civil war with echoes of Tory infighting during their years in the political wilderness.

One wing believes the party has to emulate David Cameron, by adapting the issues to fight on and the positions they hold, while the other believes that a back to basics approach will reconnect with heartland voters and ensure success. Modernisers fear that would leave Republicans marginalised, like the Tories were during the Iain Duncan Smith years, condemning them to opposition for a decade.

Mr Frum argues that just as America is changing, so the Republican Party must adapt its economic message and find more to say about healthcare and the environment if it is to survive.

He said: “I don’t know that there’s a lot of realism in the Republican Party. We have an economic message that is largely irrelevant to most people.

“Cutting personal tax rates is not the answer to everything. The Bush years were largely prosperous but while national income was up the numbers for most individuals were not. Republicans find that a hard fact to process.”

Other Republicans have jumped ship completely. Ken Adelman, a Pentagon adviser on the Iraq war, Matthew Dowd, who was Mr Bush’s chief re-election strategist, and Scott McClellan, Mr Bush’s former press secretary, have all endorsed Mr Obama.

But the real bile has been saved for those conservatives who have balked at the selection of Sarah Palin.

In addition to Mr Frum, who thinks her not ready to be president, Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan’s greatest speechwriter and a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, condemned Mr McCain’s running mate as a “symptom and expression of a new vulgarisation of American politics.” Conservative columnist David Brooks called her a “fatal cancer to the Republican Party”.

The backlash that ensued last week revealed the fault lines of the coming civil war.

Rush Limbaugh, the doyen of right wing talk radio hosts, denounced Noonan, Brooks and Frum. Neconservative writer Charles Krauthammer condemned “the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama”, while fellow columnist Tony Blankley said that instead of collaborating in heralding Mr Obama’s arrival they should be fighting “in a struggle to the political death for the soul of the country”.

During the primaries the Democratic Party was bitterly divided between Barack Obama’s “latte liberals” and Hillary Clinton’s heartland supporters, but now the same cultural division threatens to tear the Republican Party apart.

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. David Brooks and David Frum and Peggy Noonan are dead people in the Republican Party. The litmus test will be: where did you stand on Palin?”

Mr Frum thinks that Mrs Palin’s brand of cultural conservatism appeals only to a dwindling number of voters.

He said: “She emerges from this election as the probable frontrunner for the 2012 nomination. Her supporters vastly outnumber her critics. But it will be extremely difficult for her to win the presidency.”

Mr Nuzzo, who believes this election is not a re-run of the 1980 Reagan revolution but of 1976, when an ageing Gerald Ford lost a close contest and then ceded the leadership of the Republican Party to Mr Reagan.

He said: “Win or lose, there is a ready made conservative candidate waiting in the wings. Sarah Palin is not the new Iain Duncan Smith, she is the new Ronald Reagan.” On the accuracy of that judgment, perhaps, rests the future of the Republican Party.

Link.

friday funny: palin interview interrupted

Watch this clip all the way through. Not only does it have the ridiculous non-answer from Palin about what newspapers and magazines she reads, but there’s also a little surprise at the end. Thanks Jen.
 

climate change picking up steam

More bad news on the environmental front. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) issued a report that climate change is happening faster than previously predicted.
 
Climate changing ‘faster, stronger, sooner’
By Matthew Knight
October 20, 2008

LONDON, England (CNN) — Climate change is happening faster than previously predicted according to a new World Wildlife Fund report.

Bringing together some of the most recent scientific reports and data, “Climate change: faster, stronger, sooner” reveals that global warming is accelerating more rapidly than the predictions made in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007.

One of the most concerning aspects of recent data is evidence that, in some places, the Arctic Ocean is losing sea ice 30 years ahead of current IPCC predictions.

Summer sea ice is now forecasted to completely disappear in the summer months sometime between 2013 and 2040 — something which hasn’t happened for over a million years.

The report’s author, geoscientist Dr Tina Tin told CNN: “Arctic sea ice is melting much faster than everybody had been expecting. Why? Well, maybe it’s because the positive feedback mechanisms have kicked in much quicker than we have been able to quantify.”

Positive feedback mechanisms amplify changes occurring in the climate. In the case of the Arctic region there is a sort of vicious circle of warming occurring. White ice sheets perform an important function in moderating global temperature by reflecting heat from the sun back into space. But they have begun to melt as the earth has warmed. The result is more dark sea water which absorbs heat, which in turn warms the earth more and encourages further melting.

Globally, sea levels are now expected to rise more than double the IPCC’s most recent forecast of 0.59 meters before the end of the century. This will put millions of people in coastal regions at risk.

World food production is also feeling the heat as yields of wheat, maize and barley had dwindled in recent months.

In Europe, ecosystems in the North and Baltic Sea are believed to be experiencing their warmest temperatures since records began. And the Mediterranean is likely to experience an increased frequency of droughts.

The WWF report also highlights a 2007 study conducted by the British Antarctic Survey. “Widespread acceleration of tidewater glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula” concluded that floating tide-water glaciers on the peninsula are losing ice faster and making a greater contribution to global sea level rise than was previously thought.

Earlier this month, the WWF highlighted the impact that global warming is likely to have on Antarctic penguin colonies.

According to Dr Tin, more Antarctic data is due to be published next year when the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research publish their findings.

Scheduled for release in spring 2009 the “Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment” is expected to reveal more evidence of damaging climate effects on the continent.

While Dr Tin says that it is true that parts of the Antarctic are not warming or perhaps even cooling, the Western Antarctic Peninsula has experienced some of the most rapid increases in warming.

“Over the past 50 years, it has warmed more than four times faster than the average rate of Earth’s overall warming,” Dr Tin said.

But Dr Tin remains unsure whether this most recent climate data represents the beginning of a tipping point. “We think there are possibly tipping points ahead and some scientists, in terms of the Arctic sea ice, think we have probably gone past the tipping point. But it’s very difficult to get a strong handle on,” she said.

Nevertheless, she describes her report as a “sobering overview” which “comes at a critical time during the political negotiations of the European Union’s climate and energy package”.

Newly elected Vice Chair of the IPCC and climate scientist, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele endorsed the WWF publication. “It is clear that climate change is already having a greater impact than most scientists had anticipated, so it’s vital that international mitigation and adaptation responses become swifter and more ambitious,” van Ypersele said.

Link.

website links

It was brought to my attention that several of the links on the interesting websites page were broken. They have been fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience.

friday funny: palin as president

Want to know what Sarah Palin would be like as president? Check out the Palin As President website. Just scroll around and click on various objects (requires audio).

Note: I’m really trying not to post so much about Palin since there are more critical issues with the McCain-Palin ticket that need to be addressed (e.g. their lying and fear mongering) but she makes it so easy.

 

ode to sean hannity

John Cleese wrote this short poem about one of the worst newscasters around, Sean Hannity from Fixed News.
 
Aping urbanity
Oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee
Faking humanity
Journalistic calamity
Intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity
You’re a profanity
Hannity

palin’s not a populist

Jim Hightower debunks the myth that Sarah Palin is a populist, pointing out that populists don’t support lax oversight of, and subsidies for, multinational corporations or shifting the tax burden onto the middle or lower classes. Populists fight for the common (wo)man, not the wealthy elites and corporations.
 
Sarah Palin’s Faux Populism
By Jim Hightower
9/11/08
 
It was not my intention to be writing about Sarah Palin, since everyone with a laptop, a No. 2 pencil or a red crayon seems to be covering that beat. But then came the pundits:

“She’s a populist,” gushed Karl Rove on Fox TV. Weird, since this right-wing political slime and corporate whore loathes, demonizes, mocks, fears and tries to destroy real populists.

“Perfect populist pitch,” beamed CBS analyst Jeff Greenfield right after Palin’s big speech at the GOP fawnfest in St. Paul. In his less infatuated moments, Greenfield surely must realize how ludicrous his comment was, since once, long ago, he co-authored a book that had “populist” in the title, so he has at least had a brush with the authentic people’s movement that the term encapsulates.

So they made me do it. Karl, Jeff and other pundits who are rushing to place the gleaming crown of populism atop the head of this shameless corporate servant — they are the ones who have driven me to write about Palin. Someone has to nail the media establishment for its willing perversion of language, American history and the substance of today’s genuine populism.

Palin might be popular, she might be able to field dress a moose, she might live in a small town, she might enjoy delivering “news flashes” to media elites, she might even become vice president — but none of this makes her a populist. To the contrary, she is to populism what bear is to beer, only not as close.

You want a taste of the real thing? Try this from another woman who hailed from a town (smaller than Wasilla, Alaska) and was renowned for her political oratory:

Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street and for Wall Street. … Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. …

There are thirty men in the United States whose aggregate wealth is over one and one-half billion dollars. There are half a million looking for work. … We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out. … We will stand by our homes and stay by our firesides by force if necessary, and will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the Government pays its debts to us.

The people are at bay, let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware.

That, my media friends, is populism. It comes from Mary Ellen Lease, who was speaking to the national convention of the populist party in Topeka, Kan., in 1890. In a time before women could vote, Lease traveled the countryside to rally a grassroots revolt against the corporate predators of her day, urging farmers to “raise less corn and more hell.” She didn’t need to brag that she was a pit bull in lipstick, because her message, idealism and actions made her an actual force for change.

America has been blessed with populist women ever since, including such honest and insistent voices as Ida Tarbell, Mother Jones, Dorothy Day, Rosa Parks, Rachel Carson, Karen Silkwood, Barbara Jordan, Molly Ivins, Barbara Ehrenreich and Granny D. Measure Sarah Palin against these.

Populism was and is a ground-level, democratic movement with the guts and gumption to go right at the moneyed elites. It is unabashedly class-based, confronting the Rockefellers on behalf of the Littlefellers. To be a populist is to challenge the very structure of corporate power that is running roughshod over workers, consumers, the environment, small farmers, poor people, the middle class — and America’s historic ideals of economic fairness, social justice and equal opportunity for all.

“Populist” is not an empty political buzzword that can be attached to someone like Palin, whose campaigns (lieutenant governor, governor and now Veep) are financed and even run by the lobbyists and executives of Big Oil, Wall Street bankers, drug companies, telecom giants and other entrenched economic interests.

Populists don’t support opening our national parks and coastlines to allow the ExxonMobils to take publicly owned oil and sell it to China. Palin does. Populists favor a windfall profits tax on oil companies that are robbing consumers at the pump while milking taxpayers for billions of dollars in subsidies. Palin doesn’t. Populists don’t hire corporate lobbyists to deliver a boatload of earmarked federal funds, then turn around and claim to be a heroic opponent of earmarks. Palin did. Populists favor shifting more of America’s tax burden from the middle class to the superwealthy, while opposing another huge tax giveaway for corporations. Palin doesn’t and doesn’t.

Another thing populists don’t do is sneer at community organizers, as Palin did in her nationally televised coming-out party. Indeed, populists of old were community organizers, as are today’s. They work in communities all across our great land, putting in long days at low pay to help empower ordinary folks who are besieged by the avarice and arrogance of Palin’s own corporate backers. Since the governor likes to put her fundamental Christianity on political display, she might give some thought to a new bumper sticker that expresses a bit of Biblical populism: “Jesus was a community organizer while Pontius Pilate was governor.”

Environmental justice groups, ACORN, living wage campaigns, the Bus Project, clean water efforts, union organizing drives, PIRG, Fighting Bob Fest, Jobs with Justice, Apollo Alliance, United Students Against Sweatshops, the Evangelical Environmental Network, clean election initiatives, stopping mountaintop removal, USAction, community supported agriculture, Campus Progress, local business alliances, Citizens Trade Campaign, Wellstone Action — these are but a few of those doing terrific community organizing today. They embody the vitality of modern populism, doing the essential grunt-level work of democracy.

What gives Palin any legitimacy to denigrate that? She embraces none of these causes, instead supporting the rich and powerful whom grassroots folks are having to battle. She’s a plutocrat, not a populist. Big difference.

Link.

mccain-palin mudslinging on a slippery slope

I’m shocked that McCain-Palin played the Ayers card again. Not only did nearly everyone with half a brain dismiss the significance of their association (Obama was 8 years old when Ayers was a part of the Weather Underground), but it seems pretty risky given Palin’s association with the Alaska Independence Party (AIP). Granted, the AIP isn’t a terrorist organization. However, its goal is secession from the United States, which is treason, and Palin was an adult when her husband was a member of the AIP (1995-2002) and when she gave a speech to the AIP (2008). We’re talking apples and acorns, folks.
Roland Martin from CNN adds a new twist to this discussion by pointing out McCain’s past association with bigots such as Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and Robert Byrd (he should of included McCain’s more recent association with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson).
 
Commentary: Why Ayers case is risky for McCain-Palin
By Roland Martin
10/08/08

(CNN) — During the Democratic primaries, I wrote a column for CNN.com about how easy it is for any candidate to tar and feather another about their associations with less-than-acceptable figures.

Sen. Hillary Clinton tried to blast Sen. Barack Obama for unsolicited comments made by Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, and folks like Fox News’ Sean Hannity were happy to run with it, saying it was evidence that the junior senator from Illinois was unfit to be president.

But critics like Hannity never bothered to raise the issue of former Republican vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp praising Farrakhan for his focus on self-help. Not only that, nearly everyone in the media was afraid to bring up the fact that Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell had high praise for Farrakhan when Rendell was mayor of Philadelphia, even as the Muslim leader sat just 20 feet away!

Again, blasting one person’s associations can come back to bite you.

We now see Gov. Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign trying to stir the pot by invoking William Ayers, a 1960s radical who was a major figure in the Weather Underground, a group that bombed the Pentagon and committed other unspeakable acts of terrorism against their own country.

Palin has been hammering home the point on the campaign trail that Obama and Ayers were friends, “palling around” the Windy City, even though the Weather Underground committed these crimes when Obama was just a child. And never mind the fact that Ayers and Obama were involved in a multimillion-dollar education grant that was funded by a right-wing Republican, media magnate Walter Annenberg. Do you hear any of them castigating this late Republican pillar?

The McCain camp, along with their right-wing media comrades, want to convince you that Obama should not have decided to serve with Ayers, who was named the Citizen of the Year in Chicago in 1987 for his education work, and who is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Now, if someone was seen as an acceptable figure by business, political and education figures, many of whom support both Democrats and Republicans, should Obama be faulted for sitting on a board with the guy?

So, let’s use that same logic and apply it to McCain.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., a Democrat from Chicago who serves as one of the national co-chairs for Obama, told me on The Tom Joyner Morning Show that if we are to use the association tag as evidence of a candidate being unfit for president, what about McCain serving and working alongside people with virulent bigoted pasts like Sens. Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd?

Do we have evidence that these individuals committed specific acts against African-Americans during Jim Crow? No. But we do know that their hateful words, and willingness to uphold laws that were absolutely anti-American, did not represent the best of this nation.

Thurmond ran for president as a Dixiecrat in 1948 with a platform of maintaining segregation. Based on Helms’ policies, he didn’t see blacks as full Americans.

Bombing the Pentagon is horrible and indefensible. But declaring yourself a patriot while you speak such hateful and venomous words against your own countrymen, who just happen to be black, and then trying to oppress them, is just as indefensible.

So, did McCain work with them? Did he not speak with them? Should McCain have declared that he would not work alongside these men because of their past? Should the self-described maverick who believes in integrity and character have taken the honorable stance of resigning from the Senate to protest these hateful characters serving in the U.S. Senate?

No. And this is why this association argument is so weak and impotent.

For goodness’ sakes, Byrd was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan, a domestic terrorist organization!

Now, if Ayers was involved in these despicable acts today — or Byrd and his late Senate colleagues — then it is fair game.

But no candidate should have to be held responsible for the actions of someone else that took place years ago.

I fundamentally believe that this is nothing but a smokescreen and effort to ignore the real issues we face. Nobody should care about any of this when they are losing their jobs and having their homes foreclosed and finding themselves unable to afford to send their kids to college and to get access to health care.

What I find to be more deplorable is to hear McCain advisers say they want to turn the page to anything but the issue number one — the economy.

If that kind of talk is coming from the camp of a guy who wants to be president, then that is something to be afraid of — not a candidate’s association with Ayers, or Thurmond, Helms or Byrd.

Link.

us healthcare crisis

Here’s an informative bookmark/flyer from Healthcare-Now on our healthcare crisis.