Obama's Speech to the Muslim World

As usual, the NY Times has an interactive transcript with video.

The White House is making translations of the speech available in 13 languages including Arabic, Chinese, Dari, French, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Malay, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish and Urdu.

Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu weighs in with a statement:

"The government of Israel expresses hope that President Obama's important speech will lead to a new period of reconciliation between the Arab and Muslim world, and Israel. We share Obama's hope that the American effort will bring about an end to the conflict and to pan-Arab recognition of Israel as the Jewish state.

"Israel is obligated to peace and will do as much as possible to help expand the circle of peace, while taking into consideration our national interests, the foremost of which is security."

Transcript from the White House.

YouTube - President Obama Speaks to the Muslim World from Cairo, Egypt

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Video fo MLK predicting a black president within 40 years...

BBC NEWS | Programmes | World News America

BBC World News America has unearthed a fascinating clip of Dr Martin Luther King speaking to the BBC's Bob McKenzie in 1964 in which Dr King predicts an African-American president "in less than 40 years."

Actually he says it could come in 25 years or less--- whoa MLK, that's a little crazy-- America wasn't that ready. 40 years we can do for you.

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'Safest' seat remarks gets Muslim family kicked off plane - CNN.com

Okay, folks, the insanity brought on by holiday craziness aside, this is a disturbing little item:

'Safest' seat remarks gets Muslim family kicked off plane: "A Muslim family removed from an airliner Thursday after passengers became concerned about their conversation say AirTran officials refused to rebook them, even after FBI investigators cleared them of wrongdoing.

Atif Irfan said federal authorities removed eight members of his extended family and a friend after passengers heard them discussing the safest place to sit and misconstrued the nature of the conversation."

More on CNN.com.

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500 Muslim Soldiers' Tombs Desecrated In France

Unbelievable. Who thought this was in ANY way a good way to make a statement???

500 Muslim Soldiers' Tombs Desecrated In France: "Vandals desecrated at least 500 tombs of Muslim soldiers in northern France on Monday _ an act President Nicolas Sarkozy denounced as 'repugnant racism.'

The desecration near the town of Arras appeared timed with the start of Eid al-Adha, the most important holiday in the Muslim calendar.

The administration for the Pas-de-Calais region said the damaged tombs were in the Muslim section of the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette cemetery, a well-groomed burial ground for World War I soldiers. Some had swastikas scrawled on the tombstone, others had lettering whose meaning was unclear."

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Paradigm Shifting

A map of newspaper endorsements ===>

In the category of "wow" endorsements of the day, the Economist has come out in support of Obama: "In terms of painting a brighter future for America and the world, Mr Obama has produced the more compelling and detailed portrait. He has campaigned with more style, intelligence and discipline than his opponent. Whether he can fulfil his immense potential remains to be seen. But Mr Obama deserves the presidency."

Politico looks at the effects Obama's voter turnout is having down the ballot: "Barack Obama is shaking up the South by greatly expanding the black vote and forcing Republicans to confront splits in the same white conservative base that has long fortified the GOP in Congress. Georgia's U.S. Senate race is Exhibit 1, as a record turnout by African-Americans in early voting has lifted the candidacy of Democrat Jim Martin against Saxby Chambliss, the Republican incumbent. At the same time, Wall Street's meltdown — punctuated by the state's own fiscal woes — has soured the mood for Republicans, and Chambliss must win back conservatives, angered by his vote for Treasury's $700 billion financial rescue plan."

You know what I also love about this election? I love the reminders of what we have in common across the nation. I love that there's a guy in Salem, Virginia who apparently lives in the woods, who feels the same way a ballet-crazy liberal in Japantown, San Francisco does. He's obsessed with the election, and so am I. He blogs from his laptop constantly. And so do I. America, we're not so different as you might imagine.

Here's how far we've come. The Austin-American Statesman offers this story of 109-year old Texan Amanda Jones, whose father was born into slavery. "Amanda Jones says she cast her first presidential vote for Franklin Roosevelt, but she doesn't recall which of his four terms that was. When she did vote, she paid a poll tax, her daughters said. That she is able, for the first time, to vote for a black presidential nominee for free fills her with joy, Jones said."

In a Wall St. Journal op-ed, Daniel Henninger defines the shift embedded in this election's outcome. "The political planets are aligned to make this achievable. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, prominent Democrats, European leaders in France and Germany and more U.S. newspaper articles than one can count have said that the crisis proves the need to permanently tame the American "free-market" model. P.O.W. Alan Greenspan is broadcasting confessions. The question is: Are the American people of a mind to throw in the towel on the system that got them here? This would be a historic shift, one post-Vietnam Democrats have been trying to achieve since their failed fight with Ronald Reagan's "Cowboy Capitalism."

Here's a little tidbit for those West Wing fans out there: "Four years later, the writers of The West Wing are watching in amazement as the election plays out. The parallels between the final two seasons of the series (it ended its run on NBC in May 2006) and the current political season are unmistakable. Fiction has, once again, foreshadowed reality... Online, some West Wing fans are wondering whether the show will wind up forecasting the real-life result as well. In Britain, where the series remains popular in syndication, a recent headline on a blog carried by the newspaper The Telegraph declared: "Barack Obama will win: It's all in The West Wing."

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"I Can't Believe..." Corner

Paris Hilton is still running for President, FYI. Check out her new music video for a little midday hilarity. Really, if it came down to a choice between Paris or Palin...?

Even Fox News' Shep Smith can't believe that Joe the Plumber's line about a "vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel." Do you even know Barack Obama's position on Israel, Shep asks Joe disbelievingly, I just wonder what it is that makes you think he's lying about that? Even Shep can't believe this nutter is getting the ear of the American public. "It just gets frightening some times," he says with a shake of his head.

And Timothy Garton Ash has this perspective in the UK Guardian, of an outsider observing the scene in Missouri. Very interesting stuff: "Because of the extraordinary Obama and his extraordinary neighbour-to-neighbour campaign, it has become a vast national conversation, not only about the US's future but also about its difficult past. The map of Missouri is weirdly strewn with old European names: Warsaw, Dresden, Windsor, Odessa, Versailles (correct pronunciation: Ver-sails). Old European cities with a lot of history, including much bloodshed and ethnic conflict. But I doubt that in any of them today, perhaps not even in Warsaw, Poland, the wounds of old wrongs still go as deep or throb as hard as they do in their quiet Missourian homonyms, where nice middle-aged Republican ladies can tell you at once who did what to whom nearly 150 years ago."

And for those of us who remember the Reagan years-- some of us not so fondly, perhaps-- still, progressive future has put together this great ad with audio taken from the Reagan closing argument in one of his debates. "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

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Memory Lane: My favorite Obama speeches

Some of my favorite speeches:

• Obama's DNC Keynote 2004: "There's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America."
• Launching the presidential campaign: "By ourselves, this change will not happen. Divided, we are bound to fail. But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible. He tells us that there is power in words. He tells us that there is power in conviction. That beneath all the differences of race and region, faith and station, we are one people. He tells us that there is power in hope."
• Yes We Can: " But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people. Yes we can." (The video that was inspired by this speech)
  
• Just Words: "Don't tell me that words don't matter. I have a dream. Just words. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Just words. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Just words... Don't tell me words don't matter, don't tell me ideals and inspiration don't matter, don't tell me hope doesn't matter. It's fascinating to me to see my campaign criticized because I talk about hope too much. 'He's talkin' about hope again, he's so naive, he's so idealistic, his head's in the clouds, he's a hope-monger...Nothing in this country worthwhile has ever happened except that someone was willing to hope. That's how this country was founded..."
  
• "A More Perfect Union" Speech on Racism: "I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes."
• Speech in Berlin: "People of the world – look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one."
• DNC Acceptance 2008: "What the naysayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me; it's about you."

• 

  Obama's Closing Argument: From Canton, Ohio "I knew that the size of our challenges had outgrown the smallness of our politics. I believed that Democrats and Republicans and Americans of every political stripe were hungry for new ideas, new leadership, and a new kind of politics – one that favors common sense over ideology; one that focuses on those values and ideals we hold in common as Americans. Most of all, I believed in your ability to make change happen. I knew that the American people were a decent, generous people who are willing to work hard and sacrifice for future generations. And I was convinced that when we come together, our voices are more powerful than the most entrenched lobbyists, or the most vicious political attacks, or the full force of a status quo in Washington that wants to keep things just the way they are. Twenty-one months later, my faith in the American people has been vindicated. That's how we've come so far and so close – because of you. That's how we'll change this country – with your help. And that's why we can't afford to slow down, sit back, or let up for one day, one minute, or one second in this last week. Not now. Not when so much is at stake."

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ONE WEEK TO GO !!!!

7 DAYS to the election!

Tomorrow, October 29, is official Happy Fun Day:

• Barack campaigns in Florida with Bill Clinton.
• He will also air his half hour of prime address-the-nation time at 8 pm local time. It appears from our DirecTV guide, that the speech will air on the West Coast at 8 pm PT on NBC and CBS (though oddly, not on ABC), and a half hour later at 8:30pm PT on Fox (delayed by the World Series Game 6), however, those of us on the West Coast can watch it at 5 pm PT on BET if you have cable. Woo-hoo!
• And extra bonus: Obama will be on Jon Stewart's Daily Show that night !!!! Double Woo-Hoo!!! (Stewart has a page on his site: What should Jon ask Barack....?)

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GOP: God's Own Psychos

I didn't really give this story a lot of time last week, but I mention it now as another example of how crazy these people are. Last week, Ashley Todd, a mentally disturbed McCain volunteer who claimed to have been attacked, perhaps even sexually assaulted by Obama supporters, was exposed as a liar, who created her own injuries and then lied to the police about the "attack." Okay, who would you rather be associated with? The crazy people like Michelle Bachman, Nancy Pfotenhauer and Ashley Todd? Or the nice, calm Obama people?

And what of John Moody, the Fox News Exec who said "on his blog there that "this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election. If Ms. Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee. If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."

Oh don't worry Ashley, you're not the only one: Crazy WFTV (Orlando) anchor Barbara West interviews Biden about Marxism:

"You may recognize this famous quote," she said during the interview, "From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs, that's from Karl Marx. How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?"

Biden laugh out loud: "Are you joking? Is this a joke?"

"No," she says.

"Is that a real question?" Joe seems a little disbelieving that this woman isn't from "This is Your Life."

"That's a question." West said.

But is McCain any more sane? Here he is on Meet the Press on Sunday answering what I even thought were pretty softball questions from Tom Brokaw. McCain on Meet the Press. In case you're wondering about senility, so am I-- McCain forgot George Schultz's name on his list of Secs of State who endorsed him. Once again, maybe I would have done the ame thing, but a) he's the one who brought the subject up and b) that's why I'm not running for president.

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More Cognitive Dissonance

In the Wonderfully Bizarre World: "Barack Obama, the first black major-party nominee, is positioned to win the largest share of white voters of any Democrat in more than three decades, according to an exclusive Politico analysis of recent Gallup and Pew Research Center polling....No Democrat has won a majority of white voters since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. John McCain has shuffled between 48 percent and 50 percent support in recent weeks — which would be the lowest share for a Republican candidate in a two-man race since Barry Goldwater's run."

Not that I'm saying it's going to be easy. Nate Silver reports the following bizarre story on FiveThirtyEight.com:

Last week, Julie Hensley made one of her thousands of phone calls on behalf of Barack Obama. A woman answered. As Hensley ran through her short script, the husband impatiently broke in.

"Ma'am, we're voting for the n***er." And hung up.

Hensley wasn't having it. "I went and made a couple other calls but chafed over this absurdity," she told us, "so I called them back, as I still had a couple questions for the wife." This time the man answered, asked pointedly who she was, and when she replied he hung up again.

Um, yeah. Y'know, here's what I say, Alright, FINE--as long as you're voting for Obama. I don't even care right now. We'll sort it out later when he's got his hand on the Bible.

In a slightly different take, but with marked similarities, Frank Rich points out in his Sunday NY Times column: "But the other, less noticed lesson of the year has to do with the white people the McCain campaign has been pandering to. As we saw first in the Democratic primary results and see now in the widespread revulsion at the McCain-Palin tactics, white Americans are not remotely the bigots the G.O.P. would have us believe. Just because a campaign trades in racism doesn't mean that the country is racist. It's past time to come to the unfairly maligned white America's defense. That includes acknowledging that the so-called liberal media, among their other failures this year, have helped ratchet up this election cycle's prevailing antiwhite bias. Ever since Obama declared his candidacy, the press's default setting has been to ominously intone that "in the privacy of the voting booth" ignorant, backward whites will never vote for a black man."

Endorsements

Okay, I've gotta just get past all that for now, because we got a wide variety of more positive things ahead.

Oh, SNAP! Sarah Palin's hometown paper, the Anchorage Daily News has endorsed Obama.

The Financial Times also endorsed Obama (jeez, who's next? The Wall Street Journal???): "A campaign is a test of leadership. Mr Obama ran his superbly; Mr McCain's has often looked a shambles. After eight years of George W. Bush, the steady competence of the Obama operation commands respect. Nor should one disdain Mr Obama's way with a crowd. Good presidents engage the country's attention; great ones inspire. Mr McCain, on form, is an adequate speaker but no more. Mr Obama, on form, is as fine a political orator as the country has heard in decades. Put to the right purposes, this is no mere decoration but a priceless asset...Mr Obama's purposes do seem mostly right, though in saying this we give him the benefit of the doubt. Above all, he prizes consensus and genuinely seeks to unite the country, something it wants. His call for change struck a mighty chord in a tired and demoralised nation – and who could promise real change more credibly than Mr Obama, a black man, whose very nomination was a historic advance in US politics?"

Even Hitler is against Sarah Palin. (From the Hitler "Downfall" meme flooding YouTube, basically you take this scene from the movie Downfall and you apply subtitles railing against the topic of your choice. Eric likes this one railing against jazz music.)

By the way, on the subject of newspaper endoprsements, Editor & Publisher, continues to list all the papers around the country that have endorsed either candidate and Obama leads by an astonishing 194 to 82. 38 papers have switched from Bush to Obama this year and in major swing states and red states, Obama has endorsements from (among many others) the Miami Herald, The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, St. Petersburg Times, Anchorage Daily News,The Denver Post, The Toledo Blade, Akron Beacon-Journal, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Des Moines Register, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Philly Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the NC News & Observer, Charleston (WV) Gazette, The Asheville Citizen, Houston Chronicle, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

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Powell Power

Columnist Maureen Dowd talked with Colin Powell about the general's endorsement last Sunday, in which he talks about the photo of Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan's grave that moved him so much. "Powell got a note from Feroze Khan [Kareem's father] this week thanking him for telling the world that Muslim-Americans are as good as any others. But he also received more e-mails insisting that Obama is a Muslim and one calling him "unconstitutional and unbiblical" for daring to support a socialist. He got a mass e-mail from a man wanting to spread the word that Obama was reading a book about the end of America written by a fellow Muslim. 'Holy cow!' Powell thought. Upon checking Amazon.com, he saw that it was a reference to Fareed Zakaria, a Muslim who writes a Newsweek column and hosts a CNN foreign affairs show. His latest book is The Post-American World...Even though he watched W. in 2000 make the argument that his lack of foreign policy experience would be offset by the fact that he was surrounded by pros — Powell himself was one of the regents brought in to guide the bumptious Texas dauphin — Powell makes that same argument now for Obama. 'Experience is helpful,' he says, 'but it is judgment that matters.'"

Please, please, help us educate this nation... because another GOP organization head, Marcia Stirman, head of the Republican Women of Otero County (New Mexico) just said, and I quote, "Muslims are our enemies... I don't trust them at all. They've sworn across the world that they are our enemies. Why we're trying to elect one is beside me."

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It's the Economy, STILL

Yesterday Barack held a panel discussion on the current state of the economy-- you can watch his opening remarks here. On the panel were governors of some of America's most swinging states as well as Eric Schmidt of Google and Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chair who also advises Obama on economic policy. Unfortunately I can't find video of the rest of the panel's remarks, but you can get an idea here.

Also Helene just sent along this terrific, passionate speech by the AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka. It's from much earlier in the year, but it lays out beautifully why the labor movement should get behind Obama, and why racism should be irrelevant to this election.

And in the unfounded rumor Dept.: Will Barack be on Saturday Night Live again? C'mon, all the cool kids are doing it...I guess we get a whole uninterrupted half hour of him on October 29 (8 pm, set your Tivo) so we can't be too greedy.

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What Up, Johnny Mac?

And in another incrutable maverick maneuver, the McCain campaign pulled an aide from a CNN interview that would have made them actually look GOOD. HuffPo sums it up here: "CNN host Rick Sanchez said he was 'mystified' by a last minute decision by the McCain campaign to pull a Muslim grassroots organizer from appearing on his show. The aide, Daniel Zubairi, had been scheduled to appear on Sanchez's mid-day program after he was caught on video talking down an anti-Muslim protester outside a McCain rally in Woodbridge, Virginia. But, even after telling the network that an interview was 'good to go,' the McCain shop pulled Zubairi at the last minute, leaving Sanchez in limbo on live TV. 'Wouldn't you think they would have wanted him to come on?' the CNN host would later tell the Huffington Post. 'What the guy did was courageous. I called him heroic. I'm mystified why they wouldn't embrace him for his actions. Maybe they didn't like the story, but I'll tell you. I thought it was presented it in a very transparent way, if anything I kind of gushed philosophically about how impressive and real his reaction was to the protester's hateful message. It seemed to show some of the best of McCain supporters, didn't it?'"

The World on Its Ear

In the upside down world in which Iceland is being bailed out by the IMF, Cuba has discovered that they are actually rich --oil rich that is. Apparently the island is sitting on a field that could yield 20 billion barrels of oil. Hello world... introducing the Kuwait of the Carribbean...Can I hear a pro-Cuba shout-out from the candidates...? No? Maybe later.

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Cognitive Dissonance Edition

Ben Smith from Politico reports on this email he received from a Republican political consultant who was conducting focus groups for McCain in the Midwest. I think that this pretty much defines the phrase "cognitive dissonance":

The two most unreal moments of my professional life of watching focus groups:

54 year-old white male, voted Kerry '04, Bush '00, Dole '96, hunter, NASCAR fan...hard for Obama said: "I'm gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He's gonna be a bad president. But I won't ever vote for another god-damn Republican. I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President."

The next was a woman, late 50s, Democrat but strongly pro-life. Loved B. and H. Clinton, loved Bush in 2000. "Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."

THANK YOU. THANK YOU, JESUS. I don't care, Really, I don't. Just vote for Obama. Pull that lever. We'll sort everything else out in your little brains after November 4.

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Desperate Times

Remember how a few weeks ago we said that desperate parties will reach for desperate measures? It's getting desperate out there for McCain.

Even former McCain strategist John Weaver is a little appalled at the frenzy of hate that has been whipped up at McCain and Palin rallies, saying, " top Republicans have a responsibility to temper this behavior. "People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, the differences with Sen. Obama are ideological, based on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to Sen. McCain, and from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive. Sen. Obama is a classic liberal with an outdated economic agenda. We should take that agenda on in a robust manner. As a party we should not and must not stand by as the small amount of haters in our society question whether he is as American as the rest of us. Shame on them and shame on us if we allow this to take hold."

Already , I think McCain may be finding that he can't control the beast that he has unleashed. At a rally on Friday, a McCain supporter went a little far, even for McCain's taste and he tried to dial things back. "I don't trust Obama," a woman said. "I have read about him. He's an Arab." "No, ma'am," McCain said several times, shaking his head in disagreement. "He's a decent, family man, [a] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about." The crown groaned its disapproval apparently, and booed him. Isn't it wonderful to know that as a full-grown adult you can still behave like you're a three-year old with a loaded weapon?

Obama praised McCain for tempering the tone, "'I want to acknowledge that Senator McCain tried to tone down the rhetoric in his town hall meeting yesterday,' Mr. Obama said, speaking at an early-morning rally in North Philadelphia. 'I appreciated his reminder that we can disagree while still being respectful of each other. I've said it before, and I'll say it again – Senator McCain has served this country with honor, and he deserves our thanks for that.'" My God, can ANYTHING ruffle this guy? Andrew Sullivan pits it this way: Americans "need a Valium. They can now vote for one for president."

Later in the weekend, Palin dropped the puck at a Philly Flyers hockey game, and was roundly booed. I could say she reaps what she has sown, but to be honest, I have to say I'm not deriving any pleasure at all out of this. I think it's just nasty ugly and so completely not what the country needs right now, or frankly at any time.

On the Road in Scranton

Hillary and Bill Clinton campaigned in the key area of Scranton with native son Joe Biden and his wife Jill. Just making sure Pennsylvania stays blue... Hillary reminded us: "Make no mistake about it. We've done it before and we will do it again. America will once again rise from the ashes of the Bushes."

Climate Change

Georgia Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, whom McCain has named as a figure he respects, said in a statement to Politico: "What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history," Lewis said in a statement issued today for Politico's Arena forum. "Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse."

Lewis didn't accuse McCain of imitating Wallace, but suggested there were similarities.

"George Wallace never threw a bomb," Lewis noted. "He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama."

McCain responded to this ouch moment:

"I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I've always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track," the GOP nominee said in a statement this afternoon.

He added: "I call on Senator Obama to immediately and personally repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments that are so clearly designed to shut down debate 24 days before the election. Our country must return to the important debate about the path forward for America."

And Obama's reply to that suggestion:

"Senator Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. "But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for President of the United States 'pals around with terrorists.'

"As Barack Obama has said himself, the last thing we need from either party is the kind of angry, divisive rhetoric that tears us apart at a time of crisis when we desperately need to come together. That is the kind of campaign Senator Obama will continue to run in the weeks ahead."

Jeez people, can we just get ON with it?

I'm reminded, a little sadly, of what Obama said at the DNC way back before any of this really took off, "But what I will not do is suggest that the Senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain."

It's been another bad week for McCain, whose reputation as a military hero took a hit with the Tim Dickinson Rolling Stone story, which recounted McCain's less-than-heroic actions on the day when the fuel tank on his jet caught fire on the deck of the USS Forrestal, setting off a missile and ultimately causing one of the worst disasters in modern U.S. naval history. McCain was not to be found at the forefront of fire-fighters, but rather in the ready room, where he retreated after jumping out of his damaged jet.

Jeff Stein at the Congressional Quarterly takes that story a step further, questioning whether McCain actually played a more pivotal role in the missile accident on the USS Forrestal. "According to these accounts, McCain, whose A4-E Skyhawk was queued up in a line of jets waiting to take off, "wet started" his engine, a prank designed to startle a trailing pilot with a flame of exploding kerosene."

Normally, it's a harmless, common stunt by "cowboy pilots." But on this occasion the exploding kerosene caused a six-foot long Zuni rocket under the trailing pilot's wing to launch across the flight deck.

"[It] ripped through the fuel tank of McCain's aircraft," Dickinson writes. "Hundreds of gallons of fuel splashed onto the deck and came ablaze. Then: Clank. Clank. Two 1,000-pound bombs dropped from under the belly of McCain's stubby A-4 . . . into the fire."

McCain rolled out of his cockpit onto the deck and ran for his life, Dickinson writes.

"Just then, one of his bombs 'cooked off,' blowing a crater in the deck and incinerating the sailors who had rushed past McCain with hoses and fire extinguishers."

But according to historian Mary Hershberger, writing on the liberal Truthdig.com site, McCain panicked.

"Some of those who were on the Forrestal and other persons familiar with the ordnance told me that because the rocket did not hit McCain's craft, only actions by the pilot could have caused any bomb to fall from McCain's Skyhawk," wrote Hershberger, who in 2005 published a biography, "Jane Fonda's War," advertised as "an antidote to the 'Hanoi Jane' myth."

"These sources . . . who spoke under the condition that they not be publicly identified," Hershberger wrote, "agree with each other that, if any bomb fell from the McCain airplane, it was because of actions that he took either in error or panic upon seeing the fire on the deck or in his hasty exit from the plane. Two switches in the cockpit of a Skyhawk need to be thrown to drop such a bomb, according to the sources."

It might set the In-the-tank-for-Obama-ites teeth on edge, will anyone pay attention? Probably not.

Anyway, one could argue that it' not necessary to dig into the past to help the McCain campaign implode. They seem to be doing fine all on their own thanks very much. This morning, Bill Kristol called McCain' campaign "pathetic" on Fox News Sunday. Andrew Sullivan hilariously characterizes McCain's effort as coyote-esque.

Over the weekend, CBS announced that McCain and Dave Letterman have tentatively made up-- or at least, McCain will appear on Dave's show. That could be good, or really bad...

And SNL ran a repeat this week, but through the magic of the internet, you can see them spoof the last McCain-Obama debate here. No Tina Fey, but still funny.

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Sarah Palin Humor Break

Since Sarah Palin joined this race, I've become obsessed with folksy sayin's. Y'know, like, "If ya put all her brains in a thimble, it'd rattle around like a b.b. in a boxcar." That's Eric's favorite.

Here's a fun little flowchart that Helene sent along. This pretty much describes the entire Sarah Palin Debate strategy...

And thanks to Dina for sending this little gem along -- someone has actually--ACTUALLY--attempted to diagram Sarah Palin's sentences, and lived to tell the tale. Oh, how proud my 8th grade English teacher would be.

The Race Card

From the New Yorker's panel discussion on "If I Ran the Campaign," former campaign strategists Ed Rollins, Alex Castellanos, and Donna Brazile offered their takes on this year's campaigns. "Toobin raised the specter of race in the campaign, and Brazile, 48, let loose with an impassioned, ad-libbed exhortation that could be seen as a prescient, preemptive strike to the race-and-religion baiting tactics ("strategies"?) employed by the increasingly-ugly McCain-Palin campaign. Donna's remarks in the link above; you can watch the entire video here."

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As the Stomach Turns Edition

Call this the "It-Looks-Right-If-You-Stand-on-Your-Head-Oh-and-Also-Turn-Yourself-Inside-Out" Edition. I'm gonna dedicate this edition to a dear friend who's passed on, but who SOOOOO would have giggled like a small child if she'd been here for it: Ellen Miller.

What did Frances McDormand say in "Fargo?" Oh yes, it was, "Think I'm gonna barf..."(Please, do hold your vomiting until we're done.)

Okay, Day Three of the RNC
It's going to be a long night. Pour yourself some gin and fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night. Let's start with a warm-up.

Yes, my darlings, if there's a microphone in front of you, pinned to you, or somewhere within fifty feet of you, consider it live. (Man, how are these people going to master Twitter when they don't get 20th century technology?) How Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan and Wall Street Journal columnist and Republican consultant Mike Murphy really talk when they think no one's looking. Noonan: "The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives. Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and that's not what they're good at, they blow it." Now THERE'S Straight Talk. The morning after, Noonan evaluates.

By the way, Wonkette is offering a free cookie to anyone who spots a black person on the floor of the RNC Convention. Washington Post reports that there are 36 of them there: "Only 36 of the 2,380 delegates seated on the convention floor are black, the lowest number since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies began tracking diversity at political conventions 40 years ago."

And now, folks, it's The Night of Old Republican Favorites. Remember dancing the night away to such hit-tunes as "It's Liberals," "The Scurrilous Media," and "9/11, 9/11, 9/11"? We're Monday Morning Quarterbacking, so remember, if you start feeling too nauseous, you can always go to Jim Drinkard's terrific article on the AP wire: Attacks, Praise Stretch Truth at GOP Convention to check the facts.

Let Mitt Romney make you swoon with "It's Opposite Day!" "What do you think Washington is right now, liberal or conservative? Is a Supreme Court liberal or conservative that awards Guantanamo terrorists with constitution rights? We need change all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington." The Liberals eat babies and defecate on American flag for breakfast. Yes, yes, [waves hand] we know. What else have you got?

And in case you haven't heard the rambling and thoroughly irrelevant story about the Arkansas teacher and desks story, Mike Huckabee is happy to trot it out for you again. Along with things best filed under Too Much Information. "Heck, I was in college before I found out it wasn't supposed to hurt to take a shower." Okay, Way Too Much Information.

Rudy "9/11" Giuliani, Offical Wart of these United States, leads the crowd (9/11) in a rousing chant of "Drill, baby, drill!" leading us all to wonder (9/11) just how much coke was made available backstage (9/11) so that this lengthy line of Republicans could go out there and whip this crowd up (9/11) by invoking Sarah Palin's record. Then there's this one(9/11) : "At exactly the right time, John McCain said, "(9/11) We're all Georgians." A restless America says, "Whuh-huh? But I'm not Southern. And why do I keep saying 9/11 to myself?"

And now, it's time for our headliner, America's Favorite Small Town Barracuda, Sarah Palin (of the Uncomfortable Family), who's such a maverick and a reformer that she's reading a speech written by, no joke, Matthew Scully, former speechwriter for none other than George W. Bush. Oh she's out to make a changes in Washington-- YEAH!: "I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone." Um... here's a little news flash, Sarah, actually we just consider you unqualified because you are unqualified.

Oh, and by the way, HuffPo says: "Here's a little newsflash for Sarah Palin, to paraphrase her speech: The media isn't writing about you to seek your good opinion — they're writing about you to serve the people of this country."

And Madame Unqualified also has a few words about Obama: "Listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the State Senate." If you're interested, read the list of Obama's record of sponsoring legislation. (Congresspedia)

We finish with a rousing chorus of John Rich's "We're all just raising McCain!"--no, seriously, that's the title--because, you know, he was dead. (YouTube)And well, frankly, I can't stomach any more, so I play a couple of Obama stump speeches and snarf down some Chocolate Guinness Ice Cream...

If you're playing along at home, A dictionary of Palin-guage: "Black teen pregnancies? A "crisis" in black America. White teen pregnancies? A "blessed event."

So what about the so-called liberal media? Time Magazine political commentator Joe Klein fires back at the McCain campaign: "There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme."

I dunno if making war on, oh, the people who get your message out--your so-called "base"-- is such a cool plan."The McCain camp has been unusually aggressive in pushing back against the media, and it seems to hope to persuade journalists to back off in their scrutiny of Palin," says Washington Post's Howard Kurtz with a few more words about the McCain tactics. "Those there that night now feel as if they are living in some sort of alternate reality in the Xcel Energy Center here," adds the NY Times' Jim Rutenberg.

As usual, we leave it to Jon Stewart to sum the struggle of a media circus up brilliantly. Interviewing Newt Gingrich last night, he laid out why he thinks it's fair game to talk about the pregnancy of Sarah Palin's teenaged daughter as relates to the "choice" issue: "She's saying 'Respect my family's ability to make this decision...and elect me, so I can keep your family from having the same opportunity."

Meanwhile, back in America

Obama was out in Ohio (20 electoral votes), Biden in Florida (27 electoral votes). No, no, you all just go on about your business. Don't mind us....We'll just be touring around...

Okay, so yes, we all have ulcers now, and no, there ain't enough Pepto in the world to make listening to Day 4 of this convention easy, but remember, we're going to win this thing. Long haul. Strategy. Ohio.

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