Breaking the Airwave Silence November 4, 2008

So, I’m sorry that I haven’t been posting as much. I kind of got election fatigue – thousands of posts a day about omg McCain said this and Obama did that and Palin is an idiot and Biden had a face lift can be really draining. However, today is the last (hopefully last?) day of all that, as by this time tomorrow we should know who is the next President-elect.

Should know. That is, if the countless reports of vote tampering, roll purging, defective machines, Bradley effects, long lines, Republican misinformation about polling dates, and the forces of Satan himself don’t come to fruition. But hey – I’m not worried. Don’t worry about me, as long as Obama wins. If he doesn’t, I may need to retreat to an undisclosed location for some time.

Of course, lots of things have happened since I last posted. Sarah Palin got punk’d, Obama put out a long infomercial, everybody and their sibling has been on SNL, Elizabeth Hasselbeck has been idioting it up over on The View, and conservatives at my school are whining because they feel underappreciated. If I even attempted to cover all that, it would be ridiculous (plus, you know, all the important things that I left out). So here’s what I’m going to do.

Links Round-Up! October 23, 2008

I don’t feel like typing a lot today, as I have a midterm to study for and a mouse bite on my finger to nurse (yes, for serious. Yes, it hurt quite a bit. Yes, I’m milking it for all it’s worth). So, here’s some recommendations on some of the topics being bandied about the blogosphere today:

• The incomparable David Sedaris on the election:
  

  To put [undecided voters] in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

  To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

If McCain loses, will it have been my fault? He seems to think so. October 21, 2008

Why thank you, Senator!

McCain blamed the “feminist left” for criticizing Sarah Palin since he announced his choice for a running mate.

Again, interesting choice of words for the senator, there. I wonder if he thinks that everyone on the left is feminist. Because while they certainly should be [<--- Liss's classic "Important Announcement" post - a must read] – I think I can say, fairly definitively, that they are not. Not when I’ve seen “Drill, Baby, Drill” shirts with Palin on them that were not talking about oil. Not when I heard about the new Sarah Palin porno (and no, I will not link to it. It’s not even good). And absolutely not during the primaries, when I got to listen to Obama and (to a lesser extent) Edwards supporters be every bit as misogynistic and narrow-minded and hateful as Rush Limbaugh, only it was okay because they hated him too! Gag me.

McCain admits Palin selection was anti-Feminist October 20, 2008

No, really. He totally did (via Feministing). In an interview with…idk, some dude, he said, and I quote, “she is a direct counterpoint to the liberal feminist agenda for America” to justify picking her to be his running mate. Watch it.

Which is rather rich, of course, as one of Palin’s major selling points (at least nominally) has been how she gives hope to women that we can be powerful too, and she isn’t afraid to stand up for what she believes in, and oh yeah – she explicitly calls herself a feminist (about 0:20 in the video below).

It’s Flowchart-Tastic! October 18, 2008

Just had to share this awesome flowchart from 236. It describes the thought process of those few Americans who are still “undecided” (seriously – how can anyone be undecided at this point? Haven’t we got the lay of the land by now?)

Debate Post-Mortem/Quick Hits October 17, 2008

Well, now that the dust has settled from the bloodbath that was Wednesday night’s debate (does that count as mixing metaphors?), some quasi-objective analysis may be attempted (if you haven’t yet, be sure to read the liveblog here).

• First, the man I know you’ve all been wondering about: Joe the plumber. In deciding to make him the lynchpin of McCain’s debate talking points, the campaign demonstrated the same thorough vetting capabilities as they did when selecting Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential nominee. Namely, Joe has a different first AND last name than McCain said he did, is not a registered plumber, owes more than $1000 on back taxes, and with his current income, would receive tax cuts under Obama’s plan. In addition, even if he were to buy a small business and end up making so much profit that his income was >$250,000, he would almost undoubtedly be better off under Obama’s plan, because there are only a couple percentage points between the two plans in that bracket and Obama’s comes with added breaks for small businesses. So….way to go, GOP! (It is mildly encouraging, though – they’re such awful liars, the quest for transparency in government would be that much easier to achieve).

Presidential Debatage 3.0 October 15, 2008

So tonight is the third (and last?) presidential debate, held at Hofstra University, in Some State Not Near Vaguely Near Me. Those In The Know say that McCain needs to unequivocally hit this one out of the park to have a snowball’s chance in Hell of a comeback. Those who are also In The Know say that such a resounding victory is unlikely, as expectations are high on both sides. McCain has said multiple times that he will “call Obama out” on the whole Ayers thingamajig, so if he doesn’t he will be viewed as weak and more talk-talking than walk-walking. However, if (when?) he does bring the matter up, he is almost positive to get trounced, as Obama will undoubtedly call McCain out on his racist and hate-filled speeches and movement within the Republican party, and also counter with the evidence that just surfaced about William Timmons, current member of his campaign team, having helped out Saddam Hussein. A valid criticism? Perhaps, perhaps not. But excellent for the whole “taste of his own medicine” idea.

Other things McCain is going to have to struggle to make look good:

Just so you know… October 14, 2008

Disclaimer: not voting for Barack Obama is not, in and of itself, racist. Certainly, there are racist reasons not to vote for him, but there are racially-neutral reasons to do as well (coming from both liberal and conservative viewpoints). I personally am not ecstatic with his stances on several issues, particularly on LGBT rights and women’s rights. He is not my ideal candidate, though in all respects he is much more in accord with my views than McCain. So, I am sympathetic to the notion that somebody might not buy into the messianic Obamania that has permeated the left in the past year, and not want to have to answer to cries of “racism!”.

Nonetheless, this much is true: a vote for McCain is a vote for racism. It is a vote for many other things; it’s a vote for misogyny, for idiocy, for fiscal irresponsibility, for homophobia, for ineptitude, and lots more fun stuff. But racism is what we will focus on today.

The Republican party, of course, has a long and storied tradition of racism (even more so than America in general has said history). Alternet has an excellent post on how if McCain were really more concerned with issues than party lines or ideology, he would have broken with the Republican tradition of bigotry and hatred.

What a sick joke: if McCain had been the maverick he thinks he is and expects to be taken for, if he had continued to tell George W. Bush to stuff it and conducted an honorable campaign, he might have single-handedly redeemed his own party, the party whose rank and file voters and most powerful member famously regarded him as some kind of traitor. But by trying to fit in and play by the established rules, he’s treated fence-sitters and swing voters to a sight designed to convince them that to support McCain/Palin is to sign on to march off a cliff with the rest of the caveman army.

As it stands now, however, even bigwig conservatives are distancing themselves from and condemning McCain’s tactics.

Post And A Half October 11, 2008

What’s new, cyber-denizens? I have about eleventy-50 articles and posts bookmarked for suitable blog posts, as I haven’t written anything substantive in days. However, I have several days of Fall Break ahead of me, with nothing to do but luxuriate in the awesomeness of home-cooked food and fuzzy puppies, so I expect to make up for lost time.

So, let’s see – the debate. A lot of people I’ve talked to agree that it was ridiculously boring, but lots of people also feel that McCain made a complete fool of himself, what with wandering around during Obama’s speeches, making faces, being overly condescending to the audience members, and the infamous “That one”. Most polls agree that Obama won, which is good – not that most debates have an objective winner, but if people think a certain candidate won, it’s because they like that one better, so that’s good. Alternet has, as with the first presidential debate, short essays by six different people on who won the debate and why.

It really is breathtaking to take in the magnitude of McCain’s lies – both in the debate and in other venues, like ads and rallies.

A-maz-ing: Les Misbarack October 5, 2008

Well, I’ve always been an unabashed Broadway junkie, and love Les Miserables in all of its melodramatic glory, so the following video makes me all sorts of tingly:

My favorite part is when the lead staffer, holding his coffee cup, walks behind someone who’s holding out a note for all he’s worth, and just tosses out a “One Day More!”, and keeps walking. Like – yes, this is a very moving musical number, but c’mon people! These electoral votes won’t win themselves!

One quibble, though – why are all of the staffers white? I’d imagine, and think I read somewhere, that the Obama campaign was one of the most racially diverse staff. Ah well. And I’m 99.9999% sure that they’re lip-synching, but if they weren’t, that would be several kinds of awesome. I think it was genius to use the McCain-Palin ticket as Javert and the Thenardiers; I nearly fell over laughing. Now, if they would only do “Master of the House” next…