Denial: Not Just A River In Egypt

[UPDATE]:

Heh. I guess it could be worse. In Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shuttered a newspaper for putting Obama on the cover.

------------------------------------------
Nope, that river runs through the heartland of America, too.

While America celebrates Barack Obama’s election victory, if not for political reasons than at least for the transformation in racial equality that it represents, certain stubborn pockets of the nation remain resistant.

First we have Sapulpa, OK, where the local newspaper refused to cover Obama’s victory:

The Sapulpa Daily Herald did not report that Barack Obama won the Presidential election in its Wednesday edition.

One paragraph on the front page did report the majority of Creek County voted for McCain.

"This is not only national, but it's also local. And this is our President; he's President of Sapulpa also," said Scott Gordon.

More than a dozen protesters stood in front of the Herald's downtown office Friday morning to get answers from publisher Darren Sumner.

Lest you think this is an isolated incident, my mother-in-law who lives in rural Western Kentucky reports that their local paper did not report on who won the presidential election, either. I’d say a lot of small town newspapers, steeped in denial, just couldn’t bring themselves to report the news.

It’s even worse a little further south in Mississippi, where teachers in Puckett and Pearl won’t even let students mention the president-elect’s name.

You guys do know that whether you talk about it or not, Barack Obama is still the president-elect, right?

Can You Hear Us Now?

John McCain said it best in his gracious concession speech: The American people have spoken.

No, we shouted. Can you hear us now?

We are tired of the politics of division. We’ve had enough of negative campaigning. Sleazy scare tactics and lies from partisan 527s will no longer swing an election.

Are you listening, Karl Rove, Jerome Corsi, Matt Drudge and Fox News?

We are no longer moved by hot-button “culture of life” issues. Abortion state amendments are not effective whips to rally the faithful on election day. “Moral values” issues include war, poverty, torture, and genocide, not just gays and abortion.

Are you listening James Dobson, Gary Bauer, and Donald Wildmon?

Elizabeth Dole ran a sleazy ad accusing her Presbyterian church elder/Sunday school teacher opponent of being an atheist. That not only backfired, it flipped the entire state of North Carolina blue .

Abortion bans in Colorado and South Dakota were crushed. Americans want women to have access to abortion, with only the most limited restrictions.

Are you listening John Roberts, Sarah Palin and George W. Bush?

We still have work to do, especially on issues like marriage equality. Americans wanted change, but not too much change. It appears California has voted to ban cramped cages for chickens but still won’t allow gays and lesbians to enter a legal contract known as marriage. We still have work to do.

But Americans voted for change. Americans voted for the better angels of our nature. We voted for unity and an end to bitter partisanship. The world has taken notice. Have you, Steve Gill, Bill Hobbs and Phil Valentine?

Have you heard us, Sinclair Broadcasting and Richard Mellon Scaife?

Americans voted to change course on our energy policy, for an economy grounded in new technology over the dying “drill baby drill.” We chose real science over faith-based initiatives.

Have you heard us ExxonMobil, Dick Cheney, and James Inhof?

After eight years of George W. Bush, America has turned a corner. I hope all of the pundits and opinion makers are listening.

President Barack Hussein Obama

Kerry States + Ohio + New Mexico = Obama win.

It's over.

Poll Report From Nashville

No big lines or waits here in Nashville. So many folks early voted that the polling places are reporting light activity.

The location I was assigned to poll watch voted about 20 people in 2 hours. I was told 65% of the precinct early voted.

This is good news, but I hope it doesn't inspire the Election Commission to cut back on early voting. People shouldn't have to wait in long lines to vote.

[UPDATE]:

My second polling location was slightly busier but still smooth sailing. No long lines. Forgot to mention that all day long I've been seeing a lot of first-time voters, young people, and inactive voters reactivating their registrations.

Wolf Blitzer of CNN just told me to stay tuned for a discussion of Sarah Palin's "historic role" in this election. Yeah, if by historic you mean retreading ground set by the Democrats and Geraldine Ferraro 20 years ago.

Please.

Happy Birthday, Laura Bush

Today is First Lady Laura Bush's birthday. For her birthday I'd like to send her something new, fresh, youthful and energetic: A president named Barack Obama. Laura Bush has a lot of class, and I'm sure she will appreciate it.

Meanwhile, Obama racks up his first election upset of the day: tiny Dixville Notch, N.H. has voted for a Democrat for president for the first time since 1968. Obama won, 15-6.

Remember: if you vote today, you get free Starbucks, Krispy Kreme and Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

Vote For Me

I've apparently taken the country by storm.

Despicable

Anti-choice group's mailer says Obama wouldn't save a baby from an oncoming train.

See the mailer here.

This is absolutely outrageous. I wonder how many House representatives supported by the Susan B. Anthony fund voted against the expansions of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)?

How about Jean Schmidt:

This plan makes no sense and does very little for those truly in need in Ohio and around the country.

How about Marsha Blackburn:

That legislation took the wrong approach to reauthorizing SCHIP, and the House of Representatives correctly upheld the President's veto on October 18th. Yet the House Democrat Leadership failed to learn from its mistakes.

How about Michelle Bachmann:

Michele Bachmann: Here's why we must resist SCHIP expansion

Shall I go on?

Face it. Babies are just stage props for these folks. You can say Obama wouldn't save a baby from an oncoming train all you want, but when it comes to the very real train wreck of America's healthcare system, these people not only did nothing, they threw the baby under the wheels.

Give It Up, Wingnuts

The far right’s cockamamie claim that Barack Obama is not eligible to be president because he was born in Kenya and his Hawaii birth certificate proves it (or something) has gone down in flames:

Judge tosses lawsuit challenging Obama citizenship

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging Barack Obama's qualifications to be president.

U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick on Friday night rejected the suit by attorney Philip J. Berg, who alleged that Obama was not a U.S. citizen and therefore ineligible for the presidency. Berg claimed that Obama is either a citizen of his father's native Kenya or became a citizen of Indonesia after he moved there as a boy.

Obama was born in Hawaii to an American mother and a Kenyan father. His parents divorced and his mother married an Indonesian man.

Internet-fueled conspiracy theories question whether Obama is a "natural-born citizen" as required by the Constitution for a presidential candidate and whether he lost his citizenship while living abroad.

Surrick ruled that Berg lacked standing to bring the case, saying any harm from an allegedly ineligible candidate was "too vague and its effects too attenuated to confer standing on any and all voters."

This whole storyline is so hilarious. Someone remind me, which state is Panama? The 51st? 52nd?

Comedy gold, I tell ya, comedy gold.

The Palin Effect

Sarah Palin is costing John McCain support among establishment conservatives, and today brings another one: Ken Adelman, Pentagon aide under Ronald Reagan, and a conservative who worked as a policy aide for the Ford, Nixon, and Bush administrations, has endorsed Obama:

Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.
When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.

Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.

That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.

But in addition to alienating the conservative punditry and policy makers, I think Sarah Palin scares the crap out of mainline conservatives.

According to the Washington Post:

In today's Post-ABC tracking poll, Obama is winning 22 percent of conservatives. That's his best showing yet among these voters, and if the percent holds on Election Day, it would be higher than conservative support for any Democratic nominee since 1980.

Obama also wins 12 percent support among Republicans in the tracking poll -- exactly double Kerry's 2004 Election Day haul.

Polls are funny things, but I’ve long believed that Sarah Palin was chosen because she appealed to the amygdala wing of the Republican Party. These are the people who vote on emotions--things like videos from Osama bin Laden, scare tactics about Democrats outlawing the Bible, the “threat” of gay marriage, etc.

But that’s not working so well this time, because people are even more frightened by something very real. The economic recession is not just a scary rumor of what might happen, it's a very real situation folks must face every day.

On top of all that, thinking people are rightfully alarmed at the strange and scary changes in John McCain over the past four years. There was a time when I considered him a less-evil alternative to Bush, I think most of us thought that. But this John McCain I see on TV now creeps me out. And his alliance to lobbyists like Charlie Black is more scary to me than some fake allegations about Bill Ayers.

Lost Another One

Last night someone came through my neighborhood and stole all of the Obama signs in everyone’s front yard. They also stole the ones in front of the Green Hills Library polling place.

Frankly I’m surprised it took them so long. My yard sign has been unmolested for months, whereas during the 2004 campaign, I went through nearly a dozen Kerry-Edwards signs in the course of four months. It got to the point of hilarity because what the thieves didn’t know is that I was the one responsible for bringing campaign signs to Music Row Democrats events. I had a couple hundred of them in my garage and if one disappeared, it was quickly replaced. Just as an act of defiance, I decided to replace every one stolen yard sign with two new ones. By election day I had them hanging from trees all over the yard.

The sign that lasted the longest was a carboard one we had attached to a wooden stake which was then set in Quikrete. I took great pleasure in imagining someone’s futile attempts to pull the stake out of the ground, getting a few splinters in the process. Alas, someone eventually figured out how to break the wooden stake, and even that yard sign disappeared.

I never understood the whole “steal the yard sign” tactic. It seems so juvenile. In fact, I always assumed it was kids perpetrating this petty act of vandalism until one morning I caught a man in his 50s pulling up my yard sign and chucking it in the back of a white pickup truck, which was filled with yard signs. He hopped in his car and drove off before I could accost him. So that’s when I realized it was probably campaign workers doing the evil deed.

I can’t speak for any other neighborhood in the city but at least on my street, no McCain Palin or Bush Cheney signs have been stolen in the past two elections. And that seems about right. I think we liberals are worried about more important stuff than trying to “control the message” by stealing someone’s yard sign.

I’m replacing my yard sign today. Like last election, I will probably replace every one sign stolen with two new ones. So a warning to the yard sign thieves: keep stealing them, and you will breed more. Remember: every yard sign represents a donation to the Obama campaign. So keep it up.

And I have another warning: I have three large dogs who leave very messy land mines all over the yard. And I’m not cleaning it up until after election day. So if you’re walking around my front yard in the dark, you’re likely to pay for it on the bottom of your shoes.

Pick One, Already

Last night Mr. Beale and I went to see essasyist David Sedaris read some of his work. Some of you may know Sedaris from his “Santaland Diaries,” which is a holiday staple on public radio and in community theater groups.

One of the pieces he read last night will appear in next week’s New Yorker and it’s about “undecided” voters. I won’t spoil the fun here but let me just say it was hilarious.

And I agree with Sedaris. If you’re still undecided at this point, you’re a moron and you don’t deserve to be mythologized by the mainstream media. You should be mocked.

This campaign has dragged on longer than any other. There have been debates and thousands of articles written; heck, both candidates have written autobiographies. If you still don’t know which way to go at this point, then you need to do some serious self-examination.

After the Nashville debate the Los Angeles Times wrote:

It's a bit odd that we give the Undecided Voter such a privileged place in American elections. Because from a civic standpoint, few creatures are as contemptible. This election has dominated every form of American news media for the better part of two years. Newspapers, magazines, networks, cable, radio, blogs, people on street corners with signs -- it's really been rather hard to miss. Further, it pits two extremely different candidates against each other. Whether your metric is age, ideology, temperament, race, funding sources, healthcare plans or Iraq strategies, it would be hard to imagine two men presenting a starker contrast.

But despite this, the Undecided Voter wakes up each morning and says, in effect, "I dunno." And the political system panders to him. Undecided voters are believed to be the decisive slice of the American electorate, so they get the debates and the ads and the focus groups (assuming, that is, that they live in a battleground state).

I’m tired of hearing from undecided voters, who at this point are the stupidest people in the American electorate. If you’re so clueless this close to election day, then I honestly wonder how you get up in the morning and find your way out the door with your pants zipped and your shoes tied.

Clearly, the mythic “undecided” is a person who has been too lazy to pay attention or simply doesn’t care that much to begin with. In this election, with so much at stake, that truly is a contemptible position. And frankly, I’m tired of hearing from the people who didn’t give enough of a shit to be following along with this stuff from the get-go anyway.

So, mainstream media, no more stories on the undecided voter. No more interviews or focus groups or panels. These people are morons who should be laughed at, not handed a microphone.

That is all.

TN Early Voting Hits Record

According to our daily fishwrap , Tennessee’s early voting set a record on Wednesday, with 108,573 people casting ballots statewide. Wednesday was the first day early voting was available here.

Here are some interesting tidbits:

About a third of those votes were cast in just two counties: Davidson and Shelby, according to the Tennessee Division of Elections.

For my out of state readers, Shelby County is Memphis and Davidson County is Nashville. Both are Democratic strongholds in the state. But before we toss the confetti, there’s also this:

Williamson County more than doubled its first-day early voting turnout, with 4,509 casting ballots on Wednesday, and Rutherford's 3,298 was more than a 50 percent increase.

Williamson County is so conservative that some of us affectionately refer to it as “outter wingnuttia.” In fact, its conservatism and the fact that no one knows how to drive down there are the two distinguishing characteristics of Williamson County. I’d say those folks were fired up by the Republican ticket.

But, not all conservative counties have McCain-Palin fever:

Wilson and Sumner Counties had small decreases.

[...]

The two largest urban centers in eastern Tennessee, Knox County and Hamilton County, home to Chattanooga, saw falloffs.

I’ll go out on a limb here and make the case that the economic turndown has influenced turnout in less affluent counties like Wilson, Sumner, Knox and Hamilton. These are traditional conservative strongholds, but they don’t have the affluence of Williamson County, which a few years ago ranked the 15th richest in the nation.

It certainly does look like Republicans, at least here in Tennessee, are not as fired up for their tickets as Democrats are.

I still have no doubts about where Tennessee’s 11 electoral votes are going, but I have to wonder if this says anything about other states.

Joe The Plumber?

I wonder if Joe the plumber knows Joe Six-Pack?

I wonder if Americans ever get tired of being stereotyped by political campaigns?

I've had to call a lot of plumbers in my day and I have to say I am not in the least bit surprised to learn that this guy's business earns more than $250,000 a year. Maybe the plumber is supposed to be shorthand for "average working guy" but I've never had a plumber leave my house for less than $200 bucks. And if the Joe the Plumbers of the country have a problem paying 3% more just on the earnings that exceed $250,000, then I think that's being petty, compared to the hysteria McCain is trying to drum up. I mean think about it. If a business earns $300,000, then you pay the current 36% rate on $250,000 of that, and 39% on the remaining $50,000.

Sure no one likes paying taxes but someone has to, it's how we pay for stuff that we need. Like, all of those defense contracts that John McCain wants to award to European companies.

Or how about lower healthcare costs for Joe's employees? I think if you look at more than the soundbite, paying that extra 3% on just a portion of his earnings will actually pay off better for Joe the Plumber.

Joe has pretty much said he's voting for McCain, though. So fine, pay 36% on all of your earnings, but now you're also going to have to pay taxes on the healthcare you provide your employees. Or maybe you'll be like so many other employers and just decide you don't want to offer healthcare at all.

I Voted For Barack Obama Today!

Early voting opened in Nashville today! I voted for Barack Obama and it felt great to make a statement for change.

Let me add: turnout was huge on this first day. There were so many cars that it caused a traffic jam on the street in front of the polling place. It was almost like a regular election day. I could have waited until later in the early voting period but I didn’t. I wanted to get it over with. It’s that important to me.

Yes, Tennessee is a red state. I have no delusions about which way this state is going to swing. But if we are so blessed as to have an electoral vote victory for Obama (knock on wood!), then I want the popular vote to show a clear mandate for him, as well. And if we are so unfortunate as to have an electoral vote win for John McCain, then I want to eat into that popular vote “mandate” -- which, if Bush/Cheney’s reaction to the last election is any judge, stands at barely more than 3 million votes.

So those of you in safely red state states and safely blue states, be sure to cast your vote. Because it will still matter.

Dumping Palin For ..... Roth?

Hey, anything is possible:

Bringing Sleaze To A New Level

[UPDATE]:

Atrios has more:

One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

This woman is even scarier than I thought. The right wing is becoming unhinged and she's holding the pliers.

----------------------

They’re now shouting ”Kill him!” at Sarah Palin rallies.

There are no words.

The War We Dare Not Speak Its Name

I thought the surge was supposed to be working :

20 dead as bombers strike at Shi'ite mosques in Iraq

Officials expect death toll to climb

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Suicide bombers targeting Shi'ite worshippers killed at least 20 people and injured dozens more at Baghdad mosques Thursday, officials said.

Both attacks took place as Shi'ites marked the first day of Eid, a three-day celebration that follows Ramadan, Islam's month of fasting.

Death tolls in the attacks probably will rise, officials said.

A suicide bomber strapped with explosives killed at least 12 worshippers and injured 25 as they left al-Rasoul mosque in Jadida, a largely Shi'ite district, police said. Officials described the bomber as a teenage male who detonated as guards were searching him near the gates of the mosque.

Bystanders were told not to help the wounded, said Mohammed Abu Mustafa, 45, who witnessed the blast. "The guards were shouting at people not to get close to the area because they feared there would be another explosion," he said.

Secondary explosions aimed at killing responders are common in Iraq.

Around the same time, at least eight people were killed and 10 injured in an attack in Zafaraniya, a neighborhood about 4 miles away. A suicide bomber driving a Mercedes-Benz packed with explosives is to blame, police said.

The bomber was trying to strike a Shi'ite mosque, officials said, but instead hit an Iraqi army vehicle parked in front of the mosque to protect worshippers.

My friends, this is not winning. This is an occupation bursting at the seams with violence. Caribou Barbie can say Obama refuses to admit the surge has worked all she wants, but when stuff like this is going on, he’s right to keep his mouth shut.

The media has stopped covering the war. You have to look for news on the war, and when you find it, it’s usually not good.

Joe Biden just sent his son off to Iraq. Sarah Palin sent her son last month. John McCain’s son is already serving there. This is unique for an election, and yet we don’t even talk about it.

No one wants to politicize the war but we can’t even talk about it except in the broadest of empty platitudes. That’s screwed up.

The war is still a burden on this country. It’s dragging us down economically and spiritually. And we won’t even talk about it.

I Get E-Mail

One of those "I'm a little confused" e-mails, to be precise:

• If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."

• Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

• If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

• Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

• Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

• Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

• If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

• If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

• If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

• If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

• If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

• If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

• If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

• If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude," with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

Everything all clear now?

None of these things are substantive issues, except perhaps the experience one. But these are all things that have dominated our political discourse for the past few weeks. And still, looking at the superficialities, I don't see how McCain-Palin stacks up.

I also think the differences between the two candidates outlined in chain e-mails like this (there are others floating around, too) kinda get at the nut of the difference between modern conservatism and liberalism. Conservative columnist Richard Cohen touched on it today in his piece, "Why Experience Matters." Cohen writes:

Conservatism was once a frankly elitist movement. Conservatives stood against radical egalitarianism and the destruction of rigorous standards. They stood up for classical education, hard-earned knowledge, experience and prudence. Wisdom was acquired through immersion in the best that has been thought and said.

But, especially in America, there has always been a separate, populist, strain. For those in this school, book knowledge is suspect but practical knowledge is respected. The city is corrupting and the universities are kindergartens for overeducated fools.

[...]

In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation’s founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not believe in a separate class of professional executives. They wanted rough and rooted people like Palin.

I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn’t just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.

And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.

I can't say I agree with everything in Cohen's hypothesis: the liberal movement has its classically educated roots and a separate, populist strain as well. But he hits quite a few right notes in his column.

Anyone paying half a bit of attention over the past seven years has to know that George W. Bush was a colossal failure as a president. He put cronies in positions of power, he listened only to a small inner circle of friends, he was incurious about issues that frankly demanded more leadership and in a thousand ways large and small this nation is worse off as a result of what happened in November 2000.

My friends, we can't afford to make a similar mistake.

Whaaaaahhhhh

I’m not sure these times call for a president who admits he is not an expert on Wall Street and a vice president who slashed the state budget by giving her oil field worker husband a red pen.

I want my mommy.

Lying About Lies

They’ll even lie about a lie debunked by FactCheck.org:

A McCain-Palin ad has FactCheck.org calling Obama's attacks on Palin "completely false" and "misleading." That's what we said, but it wasn't about Obama.

Our article criticized anonymous e-mail falsehoods and bogus claims about Palin posted around the Internet. We have no evidence that any of the claims we found to be false came from the Obama campaign.

The McCain-Palin ad also twists a quote from a Wall Street Journal columnist. He said the Obama camp had sent a team to Alaska to "dig into her record and background." The ad quotes the WSJ as saying the team was sent to "dig dirt."

Update, Sept. 10: Furthermore, the Obama campaign insists that no researchers have been sent to Alaska and that the Journal owes them a correction.

Analysis

We don't object to people reprinting our articles. In fact, our copyright policy encourages it. But we've also asked that "the editorial integrity of the article be preserved" and told those who use our items that "you should not edit the original in such a way as to alter the message."

But they have no integrity. How can they maintain FactCheck.org’s?

( h/t, Liberadio.)