I doubt these two are going to lose their jobs over this prank call. Canadian comedians Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel managed to get through the campaign call screening and convince Sarah Palin she’s talking to Nicolas Sarkozy. Not hilarious, but definitely amusing as the would be Vice President misses load of hints that she’s being wound up. I bet the right wing blogosphere are up in arms about it.
And they come in waves.
“Whenever Obama builds a lead – that’s when you hear a new one,” said Reason Magazine writer David Weigel, the journalist who labored most in the vineyards of the fringe this cycle. “The calmest period for this stuff was the two weeks when McCain was ahead in the polls.”
The stories, he said, capture “a fear of the other that is given form in ways that most terrify the people who make this stuff up.”
Don’t want to be an American idiot.
Don’t want a nation under the new mania
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind fuck America.
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
For that’s enough to argue.
Well maybe I’m the faggot America.
I’m not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along to the age of paranoia.
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
For that’s enough to argue.
Don’t want to be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It’s calling out to idiot America.
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
For that’s enough to argue.
It comes as no surprise that racists were planning an attempt on BArack Obama’s life. There are probably a few dozen people at any time plotting to kill the US President or anyone likely to become the President. No doubt that number will rocket up if Obama gets the number one job.
Just over a week to go and the crazy keeps on coming.
A McCain volunteer claimed to have been attacked by a 6’4″ black man who scratched a backwards B on her cheek. The attack was revealed to be a figment of her imagination and the wound self inflicted, but not before the McCain campaign and various followers were all over it.
Sarah Palin’s had a huge amount spent on her wardrobe. Only now she can’t wear it because of the fuss. And she has claimed that the clothes are all only on loan to her anyway. So the next time the Republicans go looking for a female candidate for anything she’d best have the same measurements as Palin or they won’t be able to use the clothes they bought for the last one.
There’s more- there will always be more- but it’s a little late for me to go rooting around for links.
This latest fantasy has two prongs. On the one hand they believe there’s some deep dark secret about Obama’s birth certificate, which will prove that the front runner for the presidency is somehow not of the USA. I read a post last night where one of the idiots, accepting defeat, decided that there should be hundreds of private lawsuits filed after Obama’s elected, every one arguing his legitimacy. Whatever.
The other prong is a string of comments, from Sarah Palin on down, painting anyone who doesn’t vote Republican as unAmerican. I wonder where that phrase has been used before?
Update I found this, from one of Obama’s speeches. It seems appropriate-
And Spinneyhead is having one of its busiest days in a while, courtesy of pervs looking for naked pictures of Obama’s mother. Seriously guys, go register with Domai– full colour, high resolution, gorgeous and politically neutral- you’ll thank me.
The guy at Stop the ACLU who posted the version of the dumb rumour that I first found is defending it (yes, they’re off the naughty step for the time being). It’s all very convoluted, but I think he’s saying that because it’s even more baseless than the rumour about Palin faking her pregnancy he has every right to run with it. Elsewhere he’s defended his conspiracy theory because Communism is genetic and Obama’s parents- in his fantasy world- are a “Communist and a slut”. Classy.
Update Fleshbot, long time chroniclers of fake nudes, have looked at the pictures (NSFW, obviously) and are fairly confident they’re not of the woman the conspiracy nuts want them to be of.
The US right wing blogs I’m reading are getting desparate as they realise how pathetically their candidate is doing. One post from today is so moronic it’s funny. Stop The ACLU (still not getting a link, even if they didn’t delete my last comment there) got an email from some perv who’d been checking out vintage porn and swore he’d found a naked picture of Obama’s mother. He immediately went searching (it must have been hell for him to stare at all that pulchritude) and dug up some more, on which he used his finely tuned forensic skills to determine who Barack’s secret father is.
They are taken before Christmas by the decorations and unopened presents. Also a stereo and records that an expert could confirm as jazz records are in view.There is a distinctive grain to the wood floors. I do research including genealogical and had downloaded everything I could find. Not much. So when I saw the picture, I locked on the the ear lobes, chin, eyebrows. It is she. A nude photo,not distasteful, but posed, I believe, by a mature man who knows what he likes, including jazz and now we know young girls. One could ascertain the location of where the photos were taken.
And the shoes..not indigenous to Hawaii,but maybe not unsual for Helen Canfield Chicago socialite and Marshall’s second wife. The photos are important in the sense that they explain the going to Chicago and the immediate acceptance by the hard left, if his father is Frank Marshall Davis, not just his mentor
It’s Christmas- see, the man’s a genius- and there are records “that an expert could confirm as jazz records”- because only black men listened to jazz records at the time- and a distinctive grain to the wooden flooring. There, it’s conclusive. Apart from the shoes….. Oh, the shoes.
On November 5th this guy’s going to be sitting in his basement, wanking over his supposed pictures of Obama’s mother and crying because the rest of the world just can’t see what he sees.
Elsewhere, one supremely homophobic homeschooling mother is no doubt seeing a jump in visits to her blog after several people (me too now) have linked to her post fantasising about blowing up faggots. You could ask her to replace her various epithets with Christian and ask if she’d like to read the passage that results, but she’ll just ignore it, because she’ll only pay attention to answers with “Scripture instead of another meaningless cliche”.
The right wing isn’t going on about the ACORN voter registration scandal they invented as much. This is probably because the only person so far arrested for voter registration fraud is a Republican and cases against ACORN are being dropped all over because they’re baseless.
But it’s not all bad for McCain. One key group has come out in support of him- Al-Quaeda sympathisers.
Note I’d like to point out that there is absolutely nothing wrong with looking at images of naked women or men, vintage or otherwise, I was merely calling him a perv for satirical purposes.
Indeed, if he’s looking for a particularly good source of gorgeous naked women I’d highly recommend Domai (affiliate link). Many of the beauties there are from former Soviet republics, so he can have the added fantasy of only being able to see them because Ronald Reagan defeated Communism. Or, if he’s closeted- like I suspect so many of these guys are, he could try maleperfection.net (also an affiliate link).
The Build-O-Bama has a link to a downloadable papercraft Barack Obama for you to print out and build. They’re collecting pictures of little Baracks from around the world.
Here are a selection of Halloween masks based upon John McCain, Sarah Palin and others available to download. Then you can make your McCain Wreck guys to be symbolically burnt on November 5th.
via BoingBoing
palinaspresident.us Full of jokes about the campaign and the joke candidate.
I think I’m going to spend an hour or two finding interesting stuff on YouTube.
From The American President.
The ACLU is the American Civil Liberties Union. I’ve been sparring with some of the idiots over at a blog called Stop the ACLU (I’m not giving them any google juice, they delete my comments as soon as it becomes obvious that they’re losing, so they don’t deserve any credit), and kept remembering this clip. I can’t help wondering what’s wrong with them that they so hate an organisation set up to defend one of their country’s most noble ideals, or, for that matter, why such an organisation is needed in the first place. And it comes down to pretty much what Aaron Sorkin scripted here, they’re afraid of the truth and want to make up things for the electorate to be scared of instead.
Here’s the speech, as transcribed at IMDB (my paragraph breaks)-
President Andrew Shepherd: For the last couple of months, Senator Rumson has suggested that being president of this country was, to a certain extent, about character, and although I have not been willing to engage in his attacks on me, I’ve been here three years and three days, and I can tell you without hesitation: Being President of this country is entirely about character.
For the record: yes, I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU. But the more important question is why aren’t you, Bob?
Now, this is an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights, so it naturally begs the question: Why would a senator, his party’s most powerful spokesman and a candidate for President, choose to reject upholding the Constitution? If you can answer that question, folks, then you’re smarter than I am, because I didn’t understand it until a few hours ago.
America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can’t just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the “land of the free”.
I’ve known Bob Rumson for years, and I’ve been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn’t get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t get it. Bob’s problem is that he can’t sell it! We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character. And wave an old photo of the President’s girlfriend and you scream about patriotism and you tell them, she’s to blame for their lot in life, and you go on television and you call her a whore.
Sydney Ellen Wade has done nothing to you, Bob. She has done nothing but put herself through school, represent the interests of public school teachers, and lobby for the safety of our natural resources. You want a character debate, Bob? You better stick with me, ’cause Sydney Ellen Wade is way out of your league.
[pauses]
President Andrew Shepherd: I’ve loved two women in my life. I lost one to cancer, and I lost the other ’cause I was so busy keeping my job I forgot to do my job. Well, that ends right now.
Tomorrow morning, the White House is sending a bill to Congress for its consideration. It’s White House Resolution 455, an energy bill requiring a 20 percent reduction of the emission of fossil fuels over the next ten years. It is by far the most aggressive stride ever taken in the fight to reverse the effects of global warming. The other piece of legislation is the crime bill. As of today, it no longer exists. I’m throwing it out. I’m throwing it out writing a law that makes sense.
You cannot address crime prevention without getting rid of assault weapons and handguns. I consider them a threat to national security, and I will go door to door if I have to, but I’m gonna convince Americans that I’m right, and I’m gonna get the guns. We’ve got serious problems, and we need serious people, and if you want to talk about character, Bob, you’d better come at me with more than a burning flag and a membership card. If you want to talk about character and American values, fine. Just tell me where and when, and I’ll show up. This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up. My name is Andrew Shepherd, and I *am* the President.
The US elections are like a big, scary soap opera. They’d be more entertaining if they weren’t so important. So far all the best stories have come from, or been generated by, the Republicans.
The polling figures are so poor, and John McCain’s campaign so dire, that the right wing bloggers and commenters have descended to grabbing any fantasy solution that comes near them and holding on tight. Over the weekend I saw reports that Barack Obama was about to be arrested as part of someone else’s corruption scandal, that he had an affair (the details of that one look a lot like one of the plots from the first season of 24, they have a hard time with original thought on the right it would seem) and that he was somehow knee deep in an invented voter registration scandal involving a group called Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
I’ve done a little research into the ACORN “scandal” and it looks like a smear. The organisation is accused of voter registration fraud (cut down to voter fraud as part of the smear so that it can sound like an attempt to steal the election) because they turned in dubious or duplicate registration forms. ACORN hands over every registration form its workers generate, as they are required to, so if an individual gives them something fraudulent they’d be breaking the law if they discarded it. In fact, ACORN points out that they separate suspicious registrations out and flag them for the electoral commissions to investigate.
Meanwhile, Republican organisations are trying to remove people from the electoral roll. Specifically the sort of people who would be more likely to vote for Obama- the poor, blacks, people who have lost their homes as part of the mortgage meltdown. It’s a familiar story, basically the same methods they’ve used to steal the last two elections.
Meanwhile, Sarah Palin- whose husband was a member of a political party that wanted Alaska to break away from the United States- is accusing Obama of wanting to destroy the country because he worked with a reformed- if unrepentant- former member of the Weather Underground. This has struck such a chord with certain McCain/Palin supporters who prefer not to think that they’ve started parroting “terrorist”, “traitor” etc. at rallies. It’s got so bad that the people who started the name calling are now asking them to shut up and getting booed for it.
Whichever way the election goes it looks more and more like the USA wants to be two countries.
This post was inspired by an article on the Daily Mail website. It’s an expansion upon the comment I left there, which I expect, based upon past experience, won’t be published.
Make what you will of the symbolism of a Barack Obama dildo and George Bush butt plug. What I will say is that I’m not so sure about the Obama caricature. After looking at it for a while I realised it looks more like the Spiting Image Neil Kinnock.
The scary thing is, this happened in London. A man wearing a Barack Obama t-shirt was harassed whilst shopping by a man who later came back with an airgun and shot him. The attacker was obviously an unhinged racist looking for a reason to attack someone, but the Obama-hate is the sort of thing I expect to see more of from the right wing nuts in the US. All the morons currently going all Godwin and equating him to Hitler will go into full on armed uprising fantasies if (when? please make it when) he wins the election.
British servicemen dead in Iraq.
British servicemen dead in Afghanistan. Whilst I’ll concede that there was a point to invading Afghanistan as part of a campaign to destroy a particular band of terrorists, any chance of success was removed when Bush decided that Iraq was more important.
Violence in Iraq. It’s quite damning that there are no official figures for civilian deaths in Iraq. Even if the true figure is close to the 80,000+ minimum it’s far too high.
The United States is the one country that refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, setting back any progress we could hope to make.
A McCain presidency would see a continuation of Bush’s dumb and dangerous policies, on top of which, McCain has said he wants to bomb Iran. Which is obviously going to solve so many problems.
And if McCain were to win, this person would be one unhealthy old man away from the most powerful position in the world-
Vote Obama. That’s all I’m saying.
US elections are on November the 4th. Bonfire night is November the 5th (or the nearest Saturday as the tradition has become). Whichever way the election goes I think the burning of McCain/Palin effigies will be appropriate.
Also, as Trick or Treat has become so popular, where can I get a Ghostbusters costume so I can chase away annoying children at the end of this month?
The floating museum that is the World War 2 aircraft carrier USS Intrepid has returned to its berth in the Hudson river off Manhattan. After Harry told me about it I really wanted to go and check it out when I was over there last year, so Skippy and I headed off in search of it and were disappointed to find it wasn’t there. We did get a few interesting pictures and drink some nice beers though, so it wasn’t a complete loss.
The US Presidential election as a Mortal Kombat style game. Sadly I’m crap at fighting games so my little Obama went out in the first round. Also, his special attack appears to be a flock of doves, which do no damage, whereas Plin had a moose gun.
via io9
What’s the internet law about every discussion eventually citing Hitler?
I just read a pathetic whine from some right wing US blogger about how terrible it is that Obama is so popular and looks set to win the election. Irony free he blathered on about the terrible damage that will be done to America if McCain loses before likening himself to a citizen of Weimar Germany watching the rise of Adolf Hitler.
I’ve been saying for the last four or five years that the US economy was going to melt down some time soon. And now that it is, I just realised that I’d forgotten to say “I told you so”.
So. I told you so.
I mentioned this in the pub last night and said I wouldn’t put it on the blog. Well, like so much else about the McCain campaign for an opportunity to finish wrecking the USA, that turned out to be a lie.
The October Surprise is a US election cliche. From the wikipedia page on the October Surprise–
An October surprise is American political jargon describing a news event with the potential to influence the outcome of an election, particularly one for the presidency. It is so called because the presidential elections are held in early November, and therefore events that take place in October have greater potential to swing votes. “Historically, news outlets avoid investigative pieces critical of candidates within days of an election to avoid appearing partisan.” Particularly since the 1980 election, the term has been pre-emptively used to discredit late-campaign news by one side or the other.
The term usually applies to the acts of a sitting president, especially in military or foreign policy matters. But it can also apply to news stories unfavorable to the incumbent administration.
The McCain Wreck is looking worse every day. His popularity is dropping and the Palin bump is going down as more and more people realise how dangerous it would be to give her any sort of responsibility. But a really cynical and evil campaign manager could still use Palin to get a last minute boost.
Palin’s son Track went off to serve in Iraq earlier this month. I can just see someone in the McCain Wreck team wondering how much of a sympathy vote Governor Sarah would get if her eldest son were to be killed in a firefight with “al-Quaida”, and just how they could go about making it happen. “That’ll get the mothers’ vote” they’ll be thinking, “And the warmongers’ vote too!”
I hope that I’m just a bad person for thinking up scenarios like this, but I bet that some in the Republican party are waiting for the martyring of Track Palin because they think it will win them the White House.