McCain Palin Roadshow

McCain tussles with Palin over whipping up a mob mentality

Video: the second presidential debate in 10 easy minutes

by Sarah Baxter

 

With his electoral prospects fading by the day, Senator John McCain has fallen out with his vice-presidential running mate about the direction of his White House campaign.

McCain has become alarmed about the fury unleashed by Sarah Palin, the moose-hunting "pitbull in lipstick", against Senator Barack Obama. Cries of "terrorist" and "kill him" have accompanied the tirades by the governor of Alaska against the Democratic nominee at Republican rallies.

Mark Salter, McCain's long-serving chief of staff, is understood to have told campaign insiders that he would prefer his boss, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, to suffer an "honourable defeat" rather than conduct a campaign that would be out of character – and likely to lose him the election.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article4926283.ece

Ringo gives finger to world

Sorry, No More Signing Stuff

Click Here to watch

 

Former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr has told fans to stop sending letters and requests for autographs, saying mail will be thrown away after October 20 because he has too much to do.

Starr, 68, made the announcement in a video message titled "Sorry, No More Signing Stuff" posted on his official web site www.ringostarr.com. Wearing sunglasses and flashing a peace sign, he says;

"I want to tell you after the 20th of October please do not send fan mail to any address you have. Nothing will be signed after the 20th of October. If that is the date on the envelope, it's gonna be tossed.

"I'm warning you with peace and love I have too much to do. So no more fan mail. Thank you, thank you. And no objects to be signed. Nothing."

Ringo

T-shirt of the week

Some people wrote and asked what the actual shirt would look like.
This is a photo of the shirt - you can see the tag :)

Black, red or blue shirts with white ink

$25
Slightly more for overseas

Time to order is running out.
A year from today, they'll say "Sarah who?"

$27
for long-sleeved

$36
for hoodies

You don't need a paypal account
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Click  to  Order

Help! Poor Black People Are Stealing the Election From Rich White Guys!

by Lloyd Hart

You may have noticed over the last week the word acorn or to be more
exact A.C.O.R.N. which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. I personally have known about this group for many years and nearly fell off my couch when I began to hear the accusations coming out of the McCain campaign that poor black people (A.C.O.R.N.) held a gun to Congress's head (cause black people, you know, they can get guns. (wink) ) and forced it to pass a law that forced rich white guys to stop redlining minority neighborhoods and to stop predatory lending practices in minority neighborhoods - a deliberate practice of banks not providing equal access to credit products like loans and mortgages at the same fare market value in terms of interest rates that the white folks received who were forced into the terrible exodus of white flight when they had to relocate to the suburbs when they were afraid their children might have sex with black folks if they lived next door to them and you know (wink) listened to their jazz music and smoked their marijuana.

Help! Poor black people are causing the total collapse of the Global Economy!

 

http://www.mytown.ca/ev.php?URL_ID=124943&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201

The Great Shlep

The Great Schlep aims to have Jewish grandchildren visit their grandparents in Florida, educate them about Obama, and therefore swing the crucial Florida vote in his favor. Don't have grandparents in Florida? Not Jewish? No problem! You can still become a schlepper and make change happen in 2008, simply by talking to your relatives about Obama.

 

http://www.thegreatschlep.com/site/index.html

 

The rich men paying to play rock'n'roll

Rich City types are desperate to relive their musical youth — and they're hiring the likes of Bill Wyman to put them on a fast track to success

Watch a video of one man's experience at Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy Camp

The posh summer party at the Serpentine Gallery, in Hyde Park, is not where you expect to be taken by a wannabe rock star yet to release his first album. Last month's event may have had a glamorous guest list — Naomi Campbell, Mario Testino, Lady Helen Taylor — but in truth it was a staid affair, attended mostly by bankers, financiers, CEOs and their designer-dressed wives.

Gavin Aldred goes every year. But the front man of the melodic rockers GTA is far from your average aspiring musician. For a start, he is 52. He is also a multimillionaire, having run a string of companies, latterly the fashion chain New Look. After semi-retiring to the south of France, Aldred installed a state-of the-art recording studio in his home and began making music. Or rather, began taking music seriously, having written songs as a hobby since his teens.

"I got my first guitar aged 10, and music has kept me sane ever since," says Aldred, a father of two twentysomethings who eschews the party's formal dress code for jeans and a quirky appliquéd jacket. "As kids, a friend and I played covers for fun, but I was always more interested in making my own music."

Aldred comes from a working-class family in Eccles, near Manchester, and insists that a career in music was never an option. At 13, he got his first job in a jeans shop; at 18, he joined Marks & Spencer as a management trainee. Despite his rapid rise through the retail ranks, he clung to his dream of rock stardom and is now using his personal fortune and business contacts to try to make it come true. GTA's first gig, two years ago, was at the Albert Hall, opening for Goldfrapp, after Aldred asked Roger Daltrey to add them to the bill at a Teenage Cancer Trust show. Their debut album, Songs for Sale (available from www.gta.la), was recorded in Dublin with Van Morrison's engineer and mixed by Robbie Adams (Beck, U2, Smashing Pumpkins) at Westlake Studios, in LA, where Michael Jackson made Thriller. Their first single, Feel, was stocked exclusively in M&S ("Stuart Rose is an old mate," explains Aldred), with all profits donated to the trust.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article4915562.ece

America the Banana Republic

 

The ongoing financial meltdown is just the latest example of a disturbing trend that, to this adoptive American, threatens to put the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave on a par with Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Equatorial Guinea.

by Christopher Hitchens

In a statement on the huge state-sponsored salvage of private bankruptcy that was first proposed last September, a group of Republican lawmakers, employing one of the very rudest words in their party's thesaurus, described the proposed rescue of the busted finance and discredited credit sectors as "socialistic." There was a sort of half-truth to what they said. But they would have been very much nearer the mark—and rather more ironic and revealing at their own expense—if they had completed the sentence and described the actual situation as what it is: "socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the rest."

I have heard arguments about whether it was Milton Friedman or Gore Vidal who first came up with this apt summary of a collusion between the overweening state and certain favored monopolistic concerns, whereby the profits can be privatized and the debts conveniently socialized, but another term for the same system would be "banana republic."

What are the main principles of a banana republic? A very salient one might be that it has a paper currency which is an international laughingstock: a definition that would immediately qualify today's United States of America. We may snicker at the thriller from Wasilla, who got her first passport only last year, yet millions of once well-traveled Americans are now forced to ask if they can afford even the simplest overseas trip when their folding money is apparently issued by the Boardwalk press of Atlantic City. But still, the chief principle of banana-ism is that of kleptocracy, whereby those in positions of influence use their time in office to maximize their own gains, always ensuring that any shortfall is made up by those unfortunates whose daily life involves earning money rather than making it. At all costs, therefore, the one principle that must not operate is the principle of accountability. In fact, if possible, even the similar-sounding term (deriving from the same root) of accountancy must be jettisoned as well. Just listen to Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as he explained how the legal guardians of fair and honest play had made those principles go away. On September 26, he announced that "the last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work." Now listen to how he enlarges on this somewhat lame statement. It seems to him on reflection that "voluntary regulation"

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/10/hitchens200810?printable=true&currentPage=all

Barack Obama palls around with a terrorist

Proof they had Palin dumbed down

Audio Proof    40 second clip

 At NaziCon 2008, she clearly said "nuclear" several times.
 After a month of coaching, she started saying "nukular." 

 They are trying to make her more appealing to stupid people.

Cramer to market: Everyone chill the f*@! out

 

October 10th, 2008  Earlier in the week everyone's favorite market prognosticator recommended a full-fledged panic. But now he's backing off those earlier advisements. In politics, McCain proclaimed it was, "time to get dirty with this bitch" and Obama blogged: "last night's debate was boring." Cramer to market - Everyone chill the fuck the out by Jim Cramer Last night's debate was boring by Barack Obama Mail Goggles reviewed by Dick Cheney Welcome to the got-damn cashless society by Samuel L. Jackson Let's get dirty with this bitch by John McCain I will kill you if you don't buy my DVD by Vladimir Putin Regards, The News Groper Editors www.newsgroper.com

News Groper is a network of fake parody blogs. Address: News Groper LLC, 18 Bridge St., Suite 2E, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA. Unsubscribe from News Groper's weekly newsletter Copyright © 2008 News Groper LLC. All rights reserved.

Oh boy, Charlie Brown

by Matt Groening

A masterpiece of joy and heartbreak

No one needs any formal introduction to Peanuts. From our infancies we've had our chins wiped with official Snoopy bibs and been swaddled in unofficial security blankets. Over the decades we've bought, received, worn, played with and stared at an endless series of Peanuts books, greeting cards, sweatshirts, shoestrings, coin banks, figurines, adverts and TV shows. (Lest you think this is a knock, remember I'm the Simpsons guy, and we've allowed Bart asthma inhaler holders and Duff Beer fishing lures.) But clear away the insurance commercials, billboards, dolls, apparel, stickers, soap dishes and the rest, and we're left with the real thing: the Peanuts comic strip itself, Charles Schulz's brilliant, angst-ridden, truly funny, 50-year-long masterpiece of joy and heartbreak.

I dug Peanuts from the time I could read, and as a kid spent way too many nights under the covers with a torch, poring through such nifty anthologies as You're Out Of Your Mind, Charlie Brown!, Who Do You Think You Are, Charlie Brown? and You Can't Win, Charlie Brown.

I was excited by the casual cruelty and offhand humiliations at the heart of the strip. Peanuts seemed emotionally real (and unlike anything else). Occasional sadness comes up (such as Charlie Brown's complaints that no one likes him, and Patty's un-sympathetic explanations of why this is so), but this is offset by a friendly drawing style, great jokes and a sense of childhood exuberance that makes the discouragements of life seem a worthy price to pay.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/oct/11/peanuts-matt-groening-jonathan-franzen

Wanted: Alan Greenspan

The Moment

by: John Cory, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Senator McCain. Was this the moment? The epiphany? The realization that stoking the flames of bigotry and fear had come home to roost?

    As I watched your town hall gathering, I wondered what was going through your mind when you came face to face with the incendiary results of your campaign tactics. What did you see and feel when that elderly woman said Obama was an Arab? Or the man who said he feared an Obama presidency? And all the others?

    I saw your face. I watched your body language as you took the microphone and quickly distanced yourself from that one.

    At that moment, did you see your reflection in the mirror of her eyes? A reflection, not of a maverick, but a pariah? Did you see the decades of American scar tissue? Birmingham? Burning crosses? The noose? Did you see that awful year in American history when Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, cut down in the prime of their dreams for a better America?

http://www.truthout.org/101308J

Did McCain get the RIGHT Palin? You decide...

Blaming the Poor

Sasha Abramsky

 

A funny thing has happened on the way to the forum. As the institutions of super-capitalism continue to implode, a number of conservative commentators have started to lay blame for the mess on poor people.

Now that might seem strange given that poor people control approximately no major financial institutions; and it might seem unfair in light of the unprecedented redistribution of wealth away from the working and middle classes and toward the wealthy these past several years. According to the Urban Institute, these days sixty percent of low-income families still don't own homes - despite years of the hard sell designed to get them to buy; more than a third of them don't own cars, which in many instances means they can't get jobs since they have no way of getting to work; and nine out of ten of them have no retirement savings. By contrast, Forbes recently estimated that America's 499 billionaires (a number that has doubled in the past eight years) control $1.4 trillion in assets -- or at least did until the catastrophic market failures of the past month.

It might even seem bizarre given the fact that millions of desperate men and women signed onto utterly manipulative, usurious, "creative" mortgages during the sub-prime gold-rush years, and, as a result, ended up losing what little capital they had accumulated over lifetimes of hard work as well as losing the roofs over their heads. To stretch a point, one could even view such a suggestion as offensive, since so many banks got into trouble by "bundling" mortgage securities that only preserved their value and generated profits so long as enough poor people signed on for the ride and agreed to be screwed.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sasha-abramsky/blaming-the-poor_b_133864.html

Scraping the bottom of the barrel

GOP’s latest ugly fable

by Gene Lyons

If the economic situation weren't so grim, it'd be darkly amusing watching conservatives hunting for a scapegoat other than Bush administration True Believers. Hey, they're all Brownies now. Heckuva job. For a generation, devotees of the very bad novelist Ayn Rand have assured us that greed is a virtue and government oversight of financial institutions an impediment to genius. In the "ownership society," financial regulations were for pantywaists. In GOP-think, governments exist purely to drop bombs and monitor other people's sex lives. Financial deregulation has been the Republican miracle elixir since Ronald Reagan. Back in March, Sen. John McCain reassured The Wall Street Journal that despite being "aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight" in debacles like the sub-prime lending crisis, "I am fundamentally a deregulator." In between winks and shout-outs to "Joe Sixpack" during the vice-presidential debate, Sarah Palin also wanted it both ways. She praised McCain for "pushing for even harder and tougher regulations." Then she said patriotism means saying, "Government, you know, you're not always the solution. In fact, too often you're the problem, so government... get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper." Meanwhile, naïve, otherworldly progressives argued that mortgage lenders needed regulators in the back room for the same reason they needed locks on the front door. You'd think that any adult who'd ever bought real estate, avoided losing his life savings to Nigerian e-mail scams or even spent rainy afternoons playing Monopoly as a child would understand this fundamental fact of human nature: If you make it easy for people to steal, they'll steal everything, including the silverware and Grandma's dentures.

Alas, too many heeded pie-in-the-sky GOP theology. The miracle-working market absolved us all from sin; hence, from the Reagan-created savings-and-loan crisis onward, corporate financial scandals have grown steadily larger and more dangerous. But abandon dogma? Never.

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/239622/

John McCain: I am an Arab and a Decent Man

by James Zogby

 

Today my office issued the following statement, which includes my comments:

Dr. James Zogby says, "Enough is enough!"

Washington D.C. - October 11, 2008 -We are disturbed by the degree to which 'Arab' has become the metaphorical mud to sling against your opponent. Last week, for example, the Republican Jewish Coalition released a document in which they use the term Pro-Arab as a pejorative accusation. For his part, Rush Limbaugh has joined in by declaring that Obama is in fact an Arab American. Then, last Friday, after a supporter called Senator Barak Obama "an Arab", Senator John McCain came to the defense of his political opponent by saying, "No, ma'am. He's a decent family man and citizen..." From this we are left to infer that an Arab man is less then a "decent family man."

Dr. James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute, says, "Enough is enough! From the beginning of this campaign there have been those who have used 'Muslim' and 'Arab' in an effort to smear Barack Obama. This exploitation of bigotry and the stoking of racist fires to forward an agenda is reprehensible. This is not only offensive to Arab Americans, but to all Americans. As any ethnic group who has ever been used to scare the electorate knows, this is a dangerous game that, tragically, can get innocent people hurt.

"And while we are pleased to see that the senator is trying to dispel rumors about Senator Obama, we feel the need to point out that Arab Americans are also decent men and women with full rights of citizenship as enumerated under the Constitution. Arab Americans are part of the great melting pot that is this country's strength. We work towards peace in the Middle East along side our Jewish partners. We raise our sons and daughters to be model citizens of this nation. We serve this country with honor. The suggestion that any ethnic group is treacherous and Anti-American is unacceptable, dangerous, and unbecoming of such a great nation."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby/john-mccain-i-am-an-arab_b_133884.html

Karla Rovelace