Keith Olberman's Special Comment on Prop 8

Joe Scarborough (My Favorite Republican) on Colbert Report

6 minutes but the last line is theeee best!

Watch "Gender Auditors" and pledge to vote "NO on Prop 8"

When it comes to "privacy" arguments for protecting marriage equality, we couldn't have said it better than the arch-conservative Orange County Register:

"In an ideal world, the state would have little or no role in defining or regulating so intimate a relationship as marriage. However, the state has inserted itself into all too many aspects of our private lives. Given that it has done so, it is only fair that it afford equal protection to all who choose to make loving lifelong commitments to one another. We recommend a 'no' vote on Prop. 8."

Now, here's the crucial piece to the Prop 8 puzzle.

There's a little problem that we need your help to fix ASAP. Voters are confused about Prop 8, perhaps understandably. Intuitively wanting to "support" marriage equality, they assume that a "Yes" vote is the right vote. Wrong.

Here, Ellen DeGeneres does a better job of explaining it. And she's a lot funnier than I am:

The wording of Prop 8 is tricky. It's like if someone asked you, "You don't want dessert, right?" But you do want dessert so you say, "Yes," which really means you don't want dessert. And if you say, "No," which means you do want dessert -- it sounds like you don't. Either way, you don't get what you want. See -- confusing. Just like Prop. 8.

So, in case I haven't made myself clear, I'm FOR gay marriage. And in order to protect that right -- please VOTE NO on Proposition 8. And now that you're informed, spread the word. I'm begging you. I can't return the wedding gifts -- I love my new toaster.

McCain's Wondering Eye

Gwen Ifill on Meet the Press

In McCain's Own Words

Vote by Mail NOW in Many States

As a California resident, voting by mail with an absentee ballot is one of the easiest and most convenient ways of making your voice heard in this election.

Anyone registered to vote may apply for an absentee ballot. Applications to vote by absentee ballot must be received by Tuesday, October 28th

www.voteforchamge.com

It's safe, quick, and reliable. But most importantly, it allows you to vote early from the comfort of your own home, freeing you up to volunteer for the campaign on Election Day, November 4th.

Please note that you will need to print and sign your application, so give yourself time to send in your application so that it is received by October 28th.

Sarah Silverman's HILARIOUS Obama Video

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

In essence, Sarah Silverman is urging Jewish grandchildren everywhere to fly to Florida and convince their grandparents to vote for Obama. This is part of a larger, real, effort called "The Great Schlep,".

Note: as with all things Sarah Silverman, this is incredibly non-PC, so easily offended beware.

Fox News Living up to it's AKA Faux News

Boy am I glad I don't count on Fox News to make my business and financial decisions!!

Are You Registered to Vote? Are You Sure?

There's an easy way check your status to make sure you are registered to vote and if not get registered. Here's a link to a one-stop voter registration site, VoteForChange.com, lets you do it all: check your registration status, register to vote, request an absentee ballot, and find your early voting site or polling location.

Take a minute today to check out VoteForChange.com, and encourage your friends and family to do the same:

Easy Link to Absentee Vote

Just enter you zip code, and you get complete information on what you have to do to register to vote absentee. This works for every state in the country

Sometimes You Simply Can't Take the High Road

In the last few weeks the McCain campaign has come out with a deluge of not just negative ads but they have straight out lied...not even shading truth but very simply saying - I can't win this election on my own merits so I'll just be a bully to my opponent.

Sometimes you take the high road and sometimes you need to fight back. When I was a child a kid down the street hit me and threw my sweater in the gutter. I ran home crying and Inez, our housekeeper and my other mother told me I needed to go and hit that boy back. When I explained my parents said that I shouldn't do that she said your parents aren't here and I am now go hit that kid back. I did...and he never bothered me again. In life and in politics you gotta know when to fight back...it's time to stand up and fight back!

And They Think Charlie Gibson was Hard on Sarah Palin!

Bill O'Reilly goes on the attack and Barack responds brilliantly! Click on the link above to see the clips from the interview. Now, let's see Bill interview Sarah Palin - never gonna happen....he might not be deferential enough or respectful as the McCain campaign has complained the media has not been with her. Seriously, Charlie Gibson was too hard on her? What do they think that Ahmadinejad and Putin are going to invite her for tea?

Maureen the MARVELOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 9, 2008
The rain in Spain stays mainly in the Arctic plain ...

I hope John McCain doesn’t throw his slippers at Sarah Palin’s head or get as acerbic as Henry Higgins did with Eliza Doolittle when she did not learn quickly enough. McCain’s Pygmalion has to be careful, because his Galatea might be armed with more than a sharp tongue.

For the first time in American history, we have a “My Fair Lady” moment, as teams of experts bustle around the most famous woman in politics, intensely coaching her for her big moment at the ball — her first unscripted interview here this week with ABC News’s Charlie Gibson.

Eliza, by George, got it and brought off the coup of passing herself off as a Hungarian princess rather than a Covent Garden flower seller. Sarah’s challenge is far tougher, and that’s why she’s pulling the political equivalent of an all-nighter. She doesn’t have to pass herself off as a different class or change her voice or be more highfalutin. The McCain campaign is reveling in its anti-intellectual tenor.

Sarah, who is now so renowned that she is known merely by one name and has a name ID of 90 percent, has to be a Kmart mom who appeals to Kmart moms and dads. She’s already shown that she can shoot the pig, put lipstick on it, bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. Now all she has to do is also prove that she can be the leader of the free world on a moment’s notice, and field dress Putin as adeptly as she can a moose.

After devilishly mocking Obama — and successfully getting into his head — with ads about how he was just a frothy celebrity, like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, it turns out all the McCain camp wanted was an Obama of its own. Now that they have the electric Palin, they’ve stopped arguing that celebrity is bad. All they do is worship at her cult of celebrity. As Rick Davis, a top McCain adviser, said: “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”

Wasilla will be crawling with four groups — ABC staffers, frantically getting ready for the big showdown; McCain staffers, frantically tutoring Palin for the big showdown; McCain vetters, who are belatedly doing their job checking to see if Palin is a qualified White House contender and doing their best to shut down Troopergate and assembling a “truth squad” posse of Palinistas to rebut any criticism and push back any prying reporters; and journalists — from Sydney to Washington — who are here to draw back the curtain on the shiny reformer image that the McCain camp has conjured for their political ingénue and see what’s behind it.

Gibson has his work cut out for him. His problem isn’t coming up with a list of questions, but finding time to drill deeply enough into all the unknown territory of her life. It’s a task that dwarfs the drilling job the oil companies are doing on Alaska’s North Slope.

In the end, none of it may matter, since Palin has rocketed in the polls, drawing women and men with her vapid — if vivacious and visceral — scripted cheerleading. But if you’re reading this, Charlie, we want to know everything, including:

What kind of budget-cutter makes a show of getting rid of the state plane, then turns around and bills taxpayers for the travel of her husband and kids between Juneau and Wasilla and sticks the state with a per-diem tab to stay in her own home?

Why was Sarah for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, and why was she for earmarks before she was against them? And doesn’t all this make her just as big a flip-flopper as John Kerry?

What kind of fiscal conservative raises taxes and increases budgets in both her jobs — as mayor and as governor?

When the phone rings at 3 a.m., will she call the Wasilla Assembly of God congregation and ask them to pray on a response, as she asked them to pray for a natural gas pipeline?

Does she really think Adam, Eve, Satan and the dinosaurs mingled on the earth 5,000 years ago?

Why put out a press release about her teenage daughter’s pregnancy and then spend the next few days attacking the press for covering that press release?

As Troopergate unfolds here — an inquiry into whether Palin inappropriately fired the commissioner of public safety for refusing to fire her ex-brother-in-law — it raises this question: Who else is on her enemies list and what might she do with the F.B.I.?

Does she want a federal ban on trans fat in restaurants and a ban on abortion and Harry Potter? And which books exactly would have landed on the literature bonfire if she had had her way with that Wasilla librarian?

Just how is it that Fannie and Freddie have cost taxpayers money (since they haven’t yet)?

Does she talk in tongues or just eat caribou tongues?

What does she have against polar bears?

It's 2000 and 2004 all over again......

I am so fricken stressed out, I can't believe my ears....it's like watching a terrible car crash about to happen and you can't do anything about it. I'm trying to stay optimistic and a lot can happen between now and November 4th but as Bill Maher always says "the rebublicans can't run a country but they run brilliant campaigns" URGH!!!

From the L.A. Times

A Palin double standard
The McCain campaign is insisting on deference in the questioning of the vice presidential candidate.
Tim Rutten
September 10, 2008
Connoisseurs of campaign tactics tend to be a pretty cynical bunch, so they'll doubtless find much to admire in the adroit way Sen. John McCain's camp has handled Sarah Palin since she came aboard the ticket. Voters, who tend to nourish an inconvenient hunger for information, may be less impressed. One suspects that sooner rather than later, some will begin to wonder why the GOP is insisting that Palin is entitled to be treated according to a double standard.

McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, deserved full marks for chutzpah, for example, when he told Fox News' Chris Wallace that Palin would not answer reporters' questions "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference."

Deference?

Respect and courtesy, maybe. Everybody is entitled to those -- including candidates for office -- and journalists seldom look worse than when they forget that. But deference? The president does not require deference from his media interlocutors, but the ambitious governor of Alaska does?

Palin, Davis said, "will do interviews, but she'll do them on the terms and conditions" dictated by McCain's campaign -- which is to say, according to a standard that applies to no other candidate for office anywhere in the country. (ABC's Charles Gibson will conduct the first Palin interview Thursday; it will be interesting to see whether he agrees to preconditions.)

The McCain campaign's insistence on imposing a double standard for Palin is nowhere clearer than in the demand, voiced by many of the candidate's surrogates, that her religious affiliations and their implications be placed off-limits. The GOP was on firmer ground when it made a similar demand with regard to her children, though it's safe to say that if Sen. Barack Obama had appeared in Denver with his unmarried pregnant daughter and the father of her child, the religious right's outraged screams still would be echoing in the nation's ear.

Palin's religious convictions should be open to inquiry, not least because the McCain campaign so obviously welcomes the support of evangelicals who support the ticket because Palin believes as they do. More important, Obama has been held to answer -- and rightly so -- for his connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the pastor's intemperate views on everything from race to 9/11. Obama was forced to give a speech disassociating himself from Wright and finally to leave Wright's church.

Nobody seriously questioned the right of the media -- or, for that matter, the Illinois senator's political opponents -- to ask whether Obama agreed with what was being preached in the church he'd chosen to join. Similarly, no one turned a hair when Joe Biden was asked on national TV when he, as a Roman Catholic, believed life began. McCain has been asked the same question. Palin, apparently, operates in a parallel political universe -- or at least McCain's handlers would like to see that she does.

Less than a month ago, Palin sat in the pews at the Wasilla Bible Church, to which she and her family belong, and listened to a sermon by David Brickner, who heads Jews for Jesus, a group cited by the Anti-Defamation League for its "aggressive and deceptive" proselytizing of Jews. Brickner said that Arab terrorism against the state of Israel was an expression of God's judgment on the Jewish people for their rejection of Christ. After Brickner concluded his remarks, a special collection was taken up to support the sect's activities.

A spokesman for the McCain campaign said Palin does not agree with Brickner's views, but somehow it's the kind of question a candidate ought to be able to answer for herself. Voters might also like to know whether Palin supports, as does her church, an upcoming conference that promises to change gays and lesbians into heterosexuals through the power of prayer. That conference, by the way, is being put on by James Dobson's Focus on the Family, one of the national evangelical organizations that discovered a sudden enthusiasm for the GOP ticket when Palin joined.

Ingenious though it may be tactically, it's hard to imagine the Palin double standard enduring into the fall. Campaign connoisseurs not withstanding, politics isn't a sport, though it has at least one thing in common with the boxing ring -- you can run, but you can't hide.

As Always...Jon Stewart Says it Best

The Republican convention put me over the edge. I've been so angry after listening to the 3 day bash Barack fest. Everyone's entitled to their own opinions and perspectives but the hypocrisy is seismic! I've been traveling and haven't been able to take the time to pull together the facts and details to draft a comment for my blog. Fortunately I don't need to now.....here's Jon!

Obama Chooses Biden as Running Mate

I'm SO excited!!! I've been a fan of his for years and he was my 1st choice for Barack to pick. How amazing that for the 1st time in my life I am truly and sincerely supporting candidates that I believe in (as much as one can "believe" in a politician.)

Thank You, Mr. President

I saw Rory Kennedy interviewed on MSNBC and can't wait to watch this! Click the link above to see schedule of airings

A legend in political reporting, Helen Thomas has covered every president since John F. Kennedy, earning the nickname "First Lady of the Press." Now in her 80s, the venerable journalist sits down to review her life and career in depth for the first time, engaging in a one-on-one interview with award-winning director Rory Kennedy, when THANK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT: HELEN THOMAS AT THE WHITE HOUSE

Presented during an election season that finds the press playing a critical role in the future of the nation, THANK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT: HELEN THOMAS AT THE WHITE HOUSE traces the reporter's journey from her modest beginnings as the daughter of illiterate immigrants to her status as fearless journalist who stands up to the most powerful men in the world. Reflecting on her storied career, Thomas offers illuminating insights into the distinct personalities and foibles of the presidents she has covered, and remembers some of the scandals that have rocked the White House over the years.

The fact that Rory Kennedy, niece of John F. Kennedy, directed the film and interviewed Thomas seems particularly appropriate, given the fact that JFK was the first president Thomas covered (and was one she greatly revered). Their conversation is supplemented by archival clips of Thomas in action, as well as photos.

For more than six decades, Thomas has held a front row seat at White House press conferences, covering nine presidents. "I think that presidents deserve to be questioned, perhaps irreverently, to bring them down a size," Thomas says of her own role in the White House Press Corps, believing strongly that the White House press conference is the only forum where a president can be questioned on a regular basis and held accountable for his actions.

When she started working in Washington, Helen Thomas was one of a handful of women in the White House Press Corps. She joined United Press International (UPI) in 1943, and began covering presidents in 1960. While the tradition of opening and closing a news conference had been around since the Roosevelt era, Thomas became the first woman to both open a news conference with the first question and conclude the session with "Thank you, Mr. President," making the practice her signature. She recalls the first press conference where she used the closing, saying, "I could see President Kennedy was struggling. So, finally, I got up, and I said, 'Thank you, Mr. President.'...I got him off the hook."

Although Thomas admits she is sometimes star-struck, she adds, "I know I'm not a friend to these people." When Richard Nixon publicly congratulated her for being appointed the first female chief of UPI, instead of asking something uncontroversial, Thomas posed a hard-hitting question, "even after the President was so nice to me."

While THANK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT focuses primarily on Thomas's illustrious career as a journalist, it also offers glimpses of her life outside work. Born in 1920 to Syrian émigrés who could not read or write, Thomas says her mother and father instilled a strong sense of justice in her. When she saw her first byline in her high school paper, she knew she was hooked for life, and thought, "This is it." At the time, Thomas never imagined she would cover the White House, but she says she always wanted "to cover history and not fires in Detroit."

Idolized by many and despised by some, Thomas is a determined, steadfast journalist who maintains the utmost respect for the office of the presidency, even while knowing it is her job to ask the tough questions. After more than six decades of presiding over the White House Press Corps, she remains true to her journalistic ideals, noting, "If we don't ask the questions, then they won't get asked."

Meet the press - Tim Russert Tribute

I wonder if he knew how extraordinary we thought he was? Thousands probably tens of thousands of strangers, acquaintances, colleagues and friends missing him, missing his perspectives. Somehow, although I never knew the man, I just think he would be surprised by the outpouring of emotion and tears from so many strangers...maybe even a bit embarrassed.


Watching Barack Obama speak in Berlin today I couldn't help but think of Tim and what he would have to say about it. Most of us would like to believe we will leave a positive imprint on the world. Few leave a hole so big it simply can't be filled. Tim did. No one can fill his shoes. Whoever gets recruited to carry on Meet the Press will have to put on a new pair and step out to pave a new path.


A short video of excerpts from a select few interviews as shown on Meet the Press the Sunday after he passed away.

Russert the Lawyer versus David Duke

I had heard about this interview but hadn't seen it until Dan Abrams ran it on his show. It shows Tim at his best