John McCain's Speech Writer Betty White

This is way too funny...

Will These Citizens Have Marriage Equality?

We will find out today, according to Undercurrents:

Same Sex Marriage Decision Today!

Today at 11:30 the CT Supreme Court will
release their decision on same-sex marriage.

Or will they be relegated to the status of second class human beings and citizens deprived of their rights to pursue their life, their liberty and their happiness?

Update [2008-10-10 11:47:4 by Connecticut Man1]: According to mattw at MLN, there is a party in Hartford tonight celebrating Equal Rights:

Thanks, Supreme Court:

Like these once prevalent views, our conventional understanding of marriage must yield to a more contemporary appreciation of the rights entitled to constitutional protection. Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same sex partner of their choice. To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others. The guarantee of equal protection under the law, and our obligation to uphold that command, forbids us from doing so. In accordance with these state constitutional requirements, same sex couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry.

Rally at 5:30, party at 7pm (tba).

Instead of fireworks activists and Bloggers supporting equal rights will be entertained by far right wingnut heads exploding all day long… heh

Will Wachovia's Flood of Money End Up Financing Shays?

Teetering on the edge of failure, Wachovia manages to scrape up 8 million bucks to give to the RNCC:

Wachovia Corp., a once-thriving financial giant now teetering on the brink of collapse, confirmed today that it was extending an $8 million loan to the cash-strapped National Republican Congressional Committee for last-minute activites to support GOP House candidates.

Wachovia's decision to lend money to the NRCC -- itself reeling from a damaging financial scandal earlier this year -- is sure to draw charges of favoritism, as Wachovia denies credit and freezes assets for thousands of other customers.

Allegations of favoritism are especially delicate for Wachovia, given the company's disproportionate support of Republican campaigns and organizations.

Should be interesting to watch which campaigns the RNCC dumps money into over the next little while...

Considering how the Republicans are about to get the beating of their political lives in November, and putting aside the ethics and morality of Wall Street and the GOP, would you consider this to be a good investment by Wachovia? And people wonder how the economy could have tanked so badly with all of that conservative deregulation stuff coupled with the GOP/'lobbyists revolving door on K Street in an incestuous marriage of money and Republican politics.

One More Reason To Boo The Flyers This Year

It was bad enough watching an inferior team get outrageously lucky and knock my Habs out of the playoffs last season, BUT NOW!

* One more reason to hate the Flyers: Sarah Palin will drop the puck at their opener.

BooMan and Atrios should get some of their Blogging buddies to convene a special Drinking Liberally meeting for that game and boo the hell out of her. And Palin better watch out - judging by the last time she was in Philly - because the Zamboni driver might run her over.

But you really don't have to be a Montreal Canadiens fan to get pissed about this:

Wachovia Corp., a once-thriving financial giant now teetering on the brink of collapse, confirmed today that it was extending an $8 million loan to the cash-strapped National Republican Congressional Committee for last-minute activites to support GOP House candidates.

Wachovia's decision to lend money to the NRCC -- itself reeling from a damaging financial scandal earlier this year -- is sure to draw charges of favoritism, as Wachovia denies credit and freezes assets for thousands of other customers.

Allegations of favoritism are especially delicate for Wachovia, given the company's disproportionate support of Republican campaigns and organizations.

The Flyers play at the Wachovia Center...

Anyways, Attytood has a lot more on the rabid right winger and owner of the Flyers, Ed Snider:

Ed Snider is a man with two missions in life -- one that I wholeheartedly support, and another that I don't, some parts of which I in fact find repulsive. His day job is to bring a championship to Philadelphia with the two teams that he runs through Comcast-Spectacor, the Flyers and the 76ers. Although he hasn't succeeded in 25 years, he tends to be what we want in a sports owner here in Philly, willing to spend money (albeit sometimes foolishly) or shake things up if that's what's needed on the ice or on the hardwood. So far, so good.

In his spare time, he takes the millions of dollars that he's earned with the blessings of the Philadelphia sports fan and used a big chunk of it to promote conservative causes, moving increasingly to the far right with each passing political season. That's his right in a free society, but I also believe that running a pro sports franchise in a big city like Philadelphia is a kind of a public trust. That may explain why state and city taxpayers were willing to lend a financial hand -- $20 million, according to this article -- to help Snider construct the CoreStates/First Union.Wachovia/Citi/Wells Fargo Center back in the mid-1990s.

Sports and politics should not mix, not here and not now, less than four weeks before such a critical presidential election. But that's exactly what rabid GOP supporter Ed Snider will be doing this weekend...

snip

Now, he's making a huge in-kind donation to the McCain-Palin campaign in the arena that we taxpayers kicked in for, giving her a chance to skate her stuff in from of 19,500 mostly upscale male hockey fans from the swing suburbs outside Philly. It will be a warm and fuzzy "hockey mom" event that will make people forget about her ugly and hate-filled rallies of the last week, where she charged that the Democratic candidate for president "pals around with terrorists" as a lynch-mob of an audience hooted and yelled out things like "kill him." (Odd as it sounds, hockey fans are more polite than Palin fans.) (read the whole thing...)

In a Speech Only Palin Could Understand

McCain makes this absurd statement:

"Across this country, this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners and the same standards of clarity and candor must now be applied to my opponent."

And the Caribou Barbie bobble head in the back gives an understanding nod with a "Yes, yessss!"



McCain has been hanging around Palin just a little too much because her manner of speakin' is beginin' to rub off on him. You betcha!

John McCain And the GI Bill

One of the many reasons Veteran groups give John McCain bad grades on his voting records:

John McCain skipped a vote on the GI Bill to go to a fundraiser in San Diego. How is that Country First?

There is a huge gap in how the two presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, treat veterans issues in general:

Barack Obama outscored his Republican rival, Vietnam veteran John McCain, in a report card issued by an influential, nonpartisan veterans’ group.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA’s) Action Fund gave the Arizona senator a “D” as part of its congressional report card. Obama received a “B” from the group.

Bank Crisis Over...

... since the banks, all of a sudden like, don't seem to need the 700 Billion dollars they demanded from us to keep them from going under - like "NOW! NOW! NOW!"

McCain Campaign Media Free Speech Zones

Via Think Progress, a note on the slippery slope of freedom of speech in the United States of America:

Palin staff keep journalists locked inside press area
to prevent them from writing ‘negative things.’

This is no different than the "free speech zones" that they are using to cage demonstrators in like animals. Are all of you journalists happy that you let the rights of citizens slip without speaking out?

Well? Here is your future headline if the media doesn't hit back hard on these things:

The incumbent kept the opposing candidates locked inside a
challengers area to prevent them from saying "negative things."

Here is an opportunity for the media to take back the truth. And, even, to give some sense of freedom back to the people. Freedoms are being stolen from the people, the media...

Who will be next? And will there be anyone remaining to publicly stand up for their rights?

Candidate Comparison Chart

(h/t Kdoug)

This is emblematic of how much the McCain campaign has derailed in light of the economy that the GOP and their failed neocon policies coupled with complete deregulation have ushered in...

Economy Derails and McCain says: Slime Obama!

Economy Derails and McCain says: Slime Obama!

Via Steven D at The Booman Tribune:

DOW Jones Industrial Index down nearly more than 300 400 500 points since the opening bell. NYSE Trading would be suspended one hour if there is an 1100 point decline in the DJIA before 2:00 pm today under current NYSE rules.

And $600 Billion Dollars of US assets frozen in UK bankruptcy involving Lehman Brothers.

In Europe and Asia markets are going nuts too.

And all McCain wants to do, via BooMan, is point to stupid GOP talking points about Barack Obama.

McCain's announced plan was to make every attempt to shift the focus of the campaign off of the economy and onto Barack Obama. In particular, McCain wanted to use a kind of Kevin Bacon seven-degrees-of-separation argument to tie Obama to the dubious activities of people for which Obama bears no responsibility. It was a weak strategy to begin with, but a tumbling stock market will make it impossible. Perhaps even more troublesome for McCain is the fact the Obama campaign has launched a major media campaign to re-raise and educate the public about the Keating 5 scandal.

Don't look at the economy that is running off the tracks and "ssshhhh! about all that Keating 5 stuff":

John "Keating 5" McCain can color me surprised...

I never noticed...

Bill Maher's "New Rule" asking people not to think the worst about John McCain just because he is white:

Now, take a look at these pictures. Here are the CEOs of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and the Lehman Brothers. I know the first thing that jumps out about these faces is that they all happen to be white, and they all happen to be responsible for stealing. But what you have to understand is that these whites are a product of a society that made them that way. It was the neighborhoods and the schools they went to: Harvard, Yale, the Wharton School of Business. They never learned the value of doing real, actual work and the first step to fixing that is better role models, so kids growing up white today don’t think the only way out of Westchester is corporate crime. Or a government handout or sailing. So I get it, the temptation is to look at McCain and vote against him because you don’t see an individual, you just see another typical welfare whitey.

And it’s true, he’s spent his entire life shuffling from one low-paying government job to another. Well, except those years he spent in prison. Typical! And between you and me, he’s not very articulate. Oh, he may have some street smarts, but he’s not what you call an educated man. He freely admits he’s ignorant about the economy. And apparently the only thing his white running mate knows how to do is crank out one baby after another. And now of course, her teenage daughter is pregnant out of wedlock. Because she learns it at home! But that doesn’t mean we should assume all white people are like that, just because so many of them are.

C&L has the video

It's not like John Keating 5 McCain should ever be damned for this kind of stuff just because he is white. McCain should be damned for this kind of stuff because he is in the GOP.

A little more on John "Keating 5" McCain:

During the 2000 Republican Presidential Primaries, Slate.com writer Chris Suellentrop wrote an excellent in-depth feature article about John McCain and his role in the Keating Five. This is a must read article for every American, especially for anyone who thinks John McCainis a hero.

Two Important things to know before you read the article:

1. John McCain admitted to intentionally filing false income tax returns to defraud the IRS by not claiming thousands of dollars in gifts McCain and his family received from Charles Keating and Keating’s company. Years later, when the IRS noticed Keating’s company had written off the gifts to McCain as business expenses, McCain fessed up and admitted filing false returns and made a “donation” to the U.S. Treasury to cover the amount he defrauded American tax payers. (Committing tax fraud is one of the least offensive things John McCain has done over his career, but this article just focuses on his role in the Keating Five, and the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal of the late 1980’s-early 1990’s). McCain also leaked information about the Keating Five to the press multiple times in an effort to appear above the other Senators in the scandal. A 1989 Phoenix New Times article summed it up best with their title - McCain: The Most Reprehensible of the Keating Five.

2. John McCain’s wife, Cindy McCain, along with her father, made a $359,000 investment in retail property owned by Charles Keating in 1986, a year before John McCain first met with federal regulators on behalf of Keating. Keating was later convicted on 73 counts of fraud, conspiracy, and other crimes. Years later, Cindy McCain sold her investment for $15,000,000.

For anyone not aware of the Keating Five, here’s a very simple summary.

Because some in the media don't want you to know about the Keating 5... It is just a little bit too maverICKY all over again.

Meanwhile, Sarah Winky Palin is out there screeching that "this election is all about a guy who did bad things when Obama was 8 years old, dontcha know?":

Sarah Palin recently accused Obama of palling around with terrorists. This is funny because she has her own radical extremist connections that could be construed as terrorists as well. Palin accused Obama of seeing America as so imperfect, that he was pallin around with a terrorist. Funny enough Palin for years was pallin around with a group of Alaskan radicals that saw America as imperfect enough that they wanted to secede from the union.

While Obama knew Ayers years after he had reformed and began making an honest contribution to society, Palin was a member and or strongly affiliated with a radical Alaskan secessionist party whose founder died in plastic explosives deal gone bad. Her husband was definitly a member from 1995-2002 according to voting records. While is is questionable to call them terrorists, they were definitely radical secessionists who did not fall in line with the Republican credo of ‘loving America’ or McCain’s slogan ‘Country First’.

If you want a really good idea of about what Sarah Palin's connections to the secessionist group AKIP are, that article at Blackplanet goes on to interview AKIP leadership to try and get to the bottom of it.

Meanwhile, while many have known about the radical Mark Chryson's - Sarah Palin's friend of 15 years - ties to AKIP, what many people miss is that Mark Chryson appears to be a batshit loopy bigoted Nazi sympathizing holocaust denying type.

Here are some of the web sites Sarah Palin's Mark Chryson hosts on his own personal web pages, and this is some weird, scary and wacky stuff:

Okay, it appears that web-ak.com is a webhosting company that is owned by this friend of Palin's. I went to this site and had a look around. Under the links page, we find something called the "Waco Holocaust Museum". Now, note that this is on the links page and is hosted on the same domain. In fact, it appears to be the only thing on the links page on the same domain. At the bottom of this Waco page, there are more links, a big list of them at the bottom. Half the links don't work (archive.org anyone?), but the ones that do work include:

"Seventh Seal" An 'apolitical' history of the Axis (Nazis).

"The Confederate Memorial Association"

"Brasscheck" Appears to be a 9/11 truther site.

"Real History Archives" Assorted conspiracy theories.


"Brood of Vipers" More conspiracy theories.

"Final Conflict" Incoherent website about Nationalism. The page has an article "Did six million really die?"

Enjoy!

Mark Chryson is one radical, scary and wacko dude.

And Mark Chryson was friends of the Palins for 15 years - the entire time Todd Palin was a member of this radical secessionist group, AKIP - and Chryson even helped Sarah Palin take down the Alaskan GOP chairman.

Now... That is all just Secessionist Sarah Palin's ties to the far reaches of wingnuttery batshit loopyness, but not all of her ties to it...

a builder named Steven Stoll, a computer repairman named Mark Chryson, and a third man named Mike Christ. All three subscribed to a bellicose, "Patriot" movement brand of politics -- far-right libertarianism with a John Birch streak.

According to Stein, Steven Stoll -- whose local nickname, according to Phil Munger, is "Black Helicopter Steve" -- was involved in militia organizing in Wasilla the 1990s, and subscribed to most of the movement's paranoid conspiracy theories: "The rumor was that he had wrapped his guns in plastic and buried them in his yard so he could get them after the New World Order took over."

This wasn't particularly unusual in the valley at the time. Like much of the rural Northwest, survivalist worldviews often led to Patriot organizing activity and its attendant paranoia: "There were other folks who also got all worked up about the supposed Y2K thing," Stein said, recalling a home he'd looked at with a full array of bunkers and stored food supplies.

But Stoll, Mike Christ, and Mark Chryson were a special case: "They would demonstrate in front of the Wasilla Council," recalled Stein, saying that the causes varied but invariably involved an animus to "socialist" government, such as planning and public education. "This same group [Stoll, Christ, and Chryson] also challenged me on whether my wife and I were married because she had kept her maiden name. So we literally had to produce a marriage certificate. And as I recall, they said, ‘Well, you could have forged that.’ "

And they were a vocal part of Sarah Palin's base of support.

Look... These two incompetent, corrupt and failed conservatives can try to distract you from the GOP's economic legacy that is unfolding before your very eyes right now with BS about Obama as an 8 year old BUT I guarantee we will talk about what these two have done as irresponsible adults.

And the GOP better realize...

What This Election Is Really About

Barrack Obama on what this election is really about:

This financial crisis is a direct result of the greed and irresponsibility that has dominated Washington and Wall Street for years. It’s the result of speculators who gamed the system, regulators who looked the other way, and lobbyists who bought their way into our government. It’s the result of an economic philosophy that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else; a philosophy that views even the most common-sense regulations as unwise and unnecessary. Well, this crisis is nothing less than a final verdict on this failed philosophy – and it’s a philosophy I’m running for President to end.

That’s what this election is all about.

Crooks and Liars has some video up:

“I don’t know what yardstick Senator McCain uses, but where I come from, there is nothing more ‘fundamental’ than a job. The fundamentals of our economy are not strong and it’s time we had a President who understands that.” - Barack Obama

Avoiding Transparency - Towns Shuttering Websites

Some small towns - like Lyme, Salem, Colbrook, and Harwinton - in Connecticut are shuttering their websites because of new transparency laws:

Bart Russell is the Executive Director of Connecticut's Council of Small Towns.

His group wants the state's FOI Commission to issue an advisory opinion on the law that went into effect Wednesday that requires municipalities to post information from public meetings on the Internet.

Under the new law, meeting agendas must be up twenty-four hours in advance and minutes posted within seven days after a meeting. Russell says the towns want to be transparent but the time constraints aren't reasonable.

I am trying to figure out what would make it so hard to comply here since all it takes is for the webmasters of these sites to add an easy "upload button" somewhere for the town workers to click on and upload files? I can understand some short delays as the code monkeys write up something and add a searchable section of the site to upload them to. If they are too cheap to pay for the sites they could easily do it on Blogger by cut and pasting the agendas and minutes into a Blog. It isn't that hard to do.

Look... It took me all of 20 minutes to set up that Sample Blog for New Milford and another minute to write a title for the post and to cut and paste the information out of an Open Office Document file and into the post.

If you or your town has internet access there is no excuse to skirt posting the information in a timely manner.

Just a video in honor of the many code monkeys that do volunteer to do this kind of community organizing for many towns across the USA for free.