Something's not adding up.
McCain is slightly ahead of Obama in the polls? I couldn't wrap my mind around it until I began to question poll methodology.
In normal times, Gallup's polling methods, as explained here, should work fairly well. However, we do not live in normal times. We are in an economic downturn, to put it mildly.
I heard on the news that one in four hundred and sixteen homeowners will be facing foreclosure this month. I have heard that seven thousand homes foreclose each month. I have heard two statistics on the total number of homeowners that either faced foreclosure or who are behind on mortgage payments, but the one I can source is 6.82%.
Do you think the people behind on their mortgage payments or who are in foreclosure are answering their phones? How likely are they to vote for a guy who can't remember how many homes he owns?
Then, I read another statistic today: one in five households is either behind on credit card payments or over the limit on at least one card. That's twenty percent of American households. Do you think those people are answering their phones?
Gallup says that they randomly generate phone numbers--cell phones included, according to their FAQ--but if people aren't answering their phones, which is common with people who are behind on their bills and have autodialers calling them nine times a day or so, the statistics have to be skewed, do they not?
How likely do you think that the twenty percent of households where autodialers are constantly calling are answering their phones for Gallup? The polling company says they call back numbers where they haven't reached anyone, but I have trouble believing that they reach a significant enough number of these households to keep their polls from straying well outside of the margin of error.
The document from Gallup was written in 1997, and said that 95% of homes had a telephone (15% of homes use cell phones only, according to Gallup). How many homes have phones today? How many wrong or disconnected numbers do they get before getting enough good ones in their random sample? Are ten percent of the homes where bill collectors are also calling (inscessantly!) answering Gallup's polls? Fifteen? Five?
I think the methodology is no longer sound, because the probability of selection is not equal for all Americans anymore, and it is this probability of selection being equal that Gallup relies upon for statistical accuracy--as do all scientific polling organizations.
Showing posts with label McCain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label McCain. Show all posts
Monday, September 15, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
The Sarah Palin Hype
She's for more drilling for oil--in Alaska.
She doesn't even want victims of rape and incest to have access to safe abortions.
She's for teaching creationism along with evolution in the public schools.
She asked a librarian three times if she could have "objectionable" books banned. She never presented a list (the one circulating on the Internet started as a speculation and became "the" list--it was never real, because Palin only asked about the concept of banning books), but she asked the questions. Three. Times.
She's all for hunting wolves. People in Ohio and Michigan, at least, should know that the reason we can hunt so many deer every year is because our recent ancestors took out the timber wolves, so nothing was hunting them. That imbalance created by an absence of predation could have led to ecological disaster otherwise.
She doesn't want polar bears to be protected as an endangered species.
The above are facts, and they're all I need to know about Palin to dismiss her as someone I feel is not qualified to be President (let's face it: John McCain hasn't aged well. If he were in the same shape as my dad, I'd say he has a chance of living through his first term, but he didn't play soccer for forty years of his life). The idea that she would support banning books from a library at all tells me that she either hasn't read the Constitution, or that she doesn't care about it--and she has to swear to uphold it if she were to become McCain's VP.
So I hear all of these polls have Obama and McCain neck-and-neck, with indicators that show McCain is ahead.
Rubbish, I say. Rubbish.
That's putting it very gently.
What do we know about Sarah Palin, other than what I've posted above? Well, there are a lot of allegations and some more factual items I could post, but here's what America has heard out of her own mouth.
ONE FREAKING SPEECH!!!! ONE SPEECH SHE DIDN'T EVEN WRITE HERSELF!!!!
The writer was Matthew Scully, former speechwriter for George W. Bush. Palin didn't write it herself. She merely recited what someone else wrote for her.
I'm not saying that just anyone could do that. What I am saying that reading off a teleprompter can be done by plenty of people who shouldn't be President. Your local news anchor can read quite well off a teleprompter. Even if she memorized the speech, so what? I was in a musical and a play in high school, and I've memorized some Shakespeare and good poetry, and plenty of other people have, as well.
Remember how polished Dubya was during the campaign season in 2004? I stopped listening to him during the 2000 campaign after he said that the jury was still out on evolution, because that one phrase put my vote into the Democrat column for the first time since I began voting. I can't vote for an anti-science candidate. If both were anti-science, I'd have to go for the one who was going to do the least damage otherwise, but I'd have to hold my nose to do it. In any case, Bush was polished because he stayed on message--a message someone else wrote for him.
Now, remember Bush in the debates against John Kerry? Unless you were Rudolph Giuliani or Karen Hughes, whose spin came from Bizarro world, or unless you were anyone from Faux News Channel, there is no way you could come to the conclusion that Bush won.
Enter Sarah Palin's upcoming debate with Joe Biden. People keep talking about how people who watched the Kennedy-Nixon debate thought Kennedy won, and people who listened to the radio thought Nixon won; looks allegedly played a role. I say no. I think maybe the correlation is that radio listeners were more conservative than television viewers, since the TV viewers would be more technology-friendly and more likely to enjoy the entertainment offered on television over radio. Plus, Kennedy was very smart. I'm not saying Nixon wasn't, but Kennedy was sharp.
Can Palin think on her feet? We'll have to see. What I think is that she's going to speak in the abstract ("Victory is within sight in Iraq"), and Biden's probably going to tear her to shreds with details. She's going to look just as bad with Biden as Quayle did with Lloyd Bentson. Remember that moment? If not, view it here.
Yes, I know Bentsen was on the losing side of that election, but Dukakis was his running mate. What do you want?
Barack Obama isn't Michael Dukakis, fortunately. Sorry, Mr. Dukakis, but you didn't inspire me; Obama does. In fact, Obama has been the first candidate ever to have inspired me in any way. Wait--Dubya inspired me to work for the Kerry campaign, but that's just not the same, somehow.
In any case, Palin is meant to be a distraction--something to take any media scrutiny off of him and onto Palin. Not that the media has been doing much scrutiny where McCain has been concerned, but with it being all Palin, all the time, nobody's looking at the corpse-like John McCain. Nobody is paying attention to his lack of energy, his gaffes, his substance-free speeches. Nobody's looking at the old, bald dude.
Palin was a purely political choice. There are plenty of women--even in the Republican Party--who could have qualified to be John McCain's running mate. She was chosen because she's young, she's pretty, she's unknown, and she has the values of the rabid religious right. She's not there because she's qualified. Most women I know would be insulted by the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate. What woman doesn't look at Sarah Palin and then say, "Is she the best you do? Really?"
Sarah Palin is nothing but a political choice, a marketing ploy. They're sheltering her from the media (until they can successfully coach her on the talking points), while the media is still gushing about how she "hit it out of the park" with her RNC speech--which contained lies and insults.
What person in their right mind insults community organizers?
And Obama's right: Palin's comment about reading terrorists their rights is a flat-out insult to the Constitution she wants to pretend to uphold.
My final word for tonight is this: do not worry about the polls. Please, please ignore them. First of all, national polls mean very little, especially if they're even; only state-by-state polls do, because that's how electoral votes go. Something else is skewing the polls this year, though.
It's the economy.
People who found themselves suddenly paying interest rates approaching 30% on credit cards--just because the issuing banks could do it legally, when it used to be called "loan-sharking"--also found that they couldn't pay the minimum payments anymore, and they defaulted. Since bankruptcy is harder to declare, thanks to Republican policy, these people find no recourse but to let the bill collectors call them incessantly with autodialers. These people no longer answer their phones, and their numbers are large.
When a study shows a seventy percent increase in water bills, it's an indication that there are a lot of people with bill collectors calling about other unpaid services.
What about people facing foreclosure? I hear 8,000 per day, 7,000 per day--does anyone have the real number? I heard a staggering figure: just over 6% of homeowners are either behind on their mortgage payments or facing foreclosure right now. Do you think these people are going to vote for another Republican? Let's poll them and see if McCain has support anywhere close to Obama's. Oh, wait--they probably won't answer their phones, either.
So...if 6% of homeowners aren't answering their phones, add to it the percentage of people with delinquent credit card debt who also aren't answering their phones, and you have a great many unanswered phones involved in the polling process. Perhaps someone from a polling company will tell me they correct for that, but I somehow doubt it.
I'm going to say that Obama is actually ahead, and it's more like 58% of voters supporting him. I'm not saying you should stop working hard--work harder!--but I think the polls are horribly skewed this time.
She doesn't even want victims of rape and incest to have access to safe abortions.
She's for teaching creationism along with evolution in the public schools.
She asked a librarian three times if she could have "objectionable" books banned. She never presented a list (the one circulating on the Internet started as a speculation and became "the" list--it was never real, because Palin only asked about the concept of banning books), but she asked the questions. Three. Times.
She's all for hunting wolves. People in Ohio and Michigan, at least, should know that the reason we can hunt so many deer every year is because our recent ancestors took out the timber wolves, so nothing was hunting them. That imbalance created by an absence of predation could have led to ecological disaster otherwise.
She doesn't want polar bears to be protected as an endangered species.
The above are facts, and they're all I need to know about Palin to dismiss her as someone I feel is not qualified to be President (let's face it: John McCain hasn't aged well. If he were in the same shape as my dad, I'd say he has a chance of living through his first term, but he didn't play soccer for forty years of his life). The idea that she would support banning books from a library at all tells me that she either hasn't read the Constitution, or that she doesn't care about it--and she has to swear to uphold it if she were to become McCain's VP.
So I hear all of these polls have Obama and McCain neck-and-neck, with indicators that show McCain is ahead.
Rubbish, I say. Rubbish.
That's putting it very gently.
What do we know about Sarah Palin, other than what I've posted above? Well, there are a lot of allegations and some more factual items I could post, but here's what America has heard out of her own mouth.
ONE FREAKING SPEECH!!!! ONE SPEECH SHE DIDN'T EVEN WRITE HERSELF!!!!
The writer was Matthew Scully, former speechwriter for George W. Bush. Palin didn't write it herself. She merely recited what someone else wrote for her.
I'm not saying that just anyone could do that. What I am saying that reading off a teleprompter can be done by plenty of people who shouldn't be President. Your local news anchor can read quite well off a teleprompter. Even if she memorized the speech, so what? I was in a musical and a play in high school, and I've memorized some Shakespeare and good poetry, and plenty of other people have, as well.
Remember how polished Dubya was during the campaign season in 2004? I stopped listening to him during the 2000 campaign after he said that the jury was still out on evolution, because that one phrase put my vote into the Democrat column for the first time since I began voting. I can't vote for an anti-science candidate. If both were anti-science, I'd have to go for the one who was going to do the least damage otherwise, but I'd have to hold my nose to do it. In any case, Bush was polished because he stayed on message--a message someone else wrote for him.
Now, remember Bush in the debates against John Kerry? Unless you were Rudolph Giuliani or Karen Hughes, whose spin came from Bizarro world, or unless you were anyone from Faux News Channel, there is no way you could come to the conclusion that Bush won.
Enter Sarah Palin's upcoming debate with Joe Biden. People keep talking about how people who watched the Kennedy-Nixon debate thought Kennedy won, and people who listened to the radio thought Nixon won; looks allegedly played a role. I say no. I think maybe the correlation is that radio listeners were more conservative than television viewers, since the TV viewers would be more technology-friendly and more likely to enjoy the entertainment offered on television over radio. Plus, Kennedy was very smart. I'm not saying Nixon wasn't, but Kennedy was sharp.
Can Palin think on her feet? We'll have to see. What I think is that she's going to speak in the abstract ("Victory is within sight in Iraq"), and Biden's probably going to tear her to shreds with details. She's going to look just as bad with Biden as Quayle did with Lloyd Bentson. Remember that moment? If not, view it here.
Yes, I know Bentsen was on the losing side of that election, but Dukakis was his running mate. What do you want?
Barack Obama isn't Michael Dukakis, fortunately. Sorry, Mr. Dukakis, but you didn't inspire me; Obama does. In fact, Obama has been the first candidate ever to have inspired me in any way. Wait--Dubya inspired me to work for the Kerry campaign, but that's just not the same, somehow.
In any case, Palin is meant to be a distraction--something to take any media scrutiny off of him and onto Palin. Not that the media has been doing much scrutiny where McCain has been concerned, but with it being all Palin, all the time, nobody's looking at the corpse-like John McCain. Nobody is paying attention to his lack of energy, his gaffes, his substance-free speeches. Nobody's looking at the old, bald dude.
Palin was a purely political choice. There are plenty of women--even in the Republican Party--who could have qualified to be John McCain's running mate. She was chosen because she's young, she's pretty, she's unknown, and she has the values of the rabid religious right. She's not there because she's qualified. Most women I know would be insulted by the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate. What woman doesn't look at Sarah Palin and then say, "Is she the best you do? Really?"
Sarah Palin is nothing but a political choice, a marketing ploy. They're sheltering her from the media (until they can successfully coach her on the talking points), while the media is still gushing about how she "hit it out of the park" with her RNC speech--which contained lies and insults.
What person in their right mind insults community organizers?
And Obama's right: Palin's comment about reading terrorists their rights is a flat-out insult to the Constitution she wants to pretend to uphold.
My final word for tonight is this: do not worry about the polls. Please, please ignore them. First of all, national polls mean very little, especially if they're even; only state-by-state polls do, because that's how electoral votes go. Something else is skewing the polls this year, though.
It's the economy.
People who found themselves suddenly paying interest rates approaching 30% on credit cards--just because the issuing banks could do it legally, when it used to be called "loan-sharking"--also found that they couldn't pay the minimum payments anymore, and they defaulted. Since bankruptcy is harder to declare, thanks to Republican policy, these people find no recourse but to let the bill collectors call them incessantly with autodialers. These people no longer answer their phones, and their numbers are large.
When a study shows a seventy percent increase in water bills, it's an indication that there are a lot of people with bill collectors calling about other unpaid services.
What about people facing foreclosure? I hear 8,000 per day, 7,000 per day--does anyone have the real number? I heard a staggering figure: just over 6% of homeowners are either behind on their mortgage payments or facing foreclosure right now. Do you think these people are going to vote for another Republican? Let's poll them and see if McCain has support anywhere close to Obama's. Oh, wait--they probably won't answer their phones, either.
So...if 6% of homeowners aren't answering their phones, add to it the percentage of people with delinquent credit card debt who also aren't answering their phones, and you have a great many unanswered phones involved in the polling process. Perhaps someone from a polling company will tell me they correct for that, but I somehow doubt it.
I'm going to say that Obama is actually ahead, and it's more like 58% of voters supporting him. I'm not saying you should stop working hard--work harder!--but I think the polls are horribly skewed this time.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Oh, that crazy GOP
I think I've mentioned it before--yeah, it was on my first post on this blog. I somehow made it onto the GOP mailing list.
The problem is, the people they address in the messages at each of the two addresses where I receive GOP communications are not me. Perhaps James and William are my other personalities, but I don't have blank periods when I can't remember what I've done...
In any case, I've found their messages most...illuminating? No. Amusing? Perhaps. Disgusting? Definitely. Disingenuous? Absolutely.
I'm going to go through the points in each message and give my take on them.
Don't worry--I haven't forgotten about Michael Savage. He's still on my radar; I have just been so busy with personal and work projects, I haven't had time to hit his advertisers hard. I haven't even had time to update this blog with the new advertiser responses and the very few advertisers who haven't yet appeared on my list.
But hey--this blog isn't about Michael Savage. It's important that we hit him where it hurts, but I have opinions on quite a lot more than that piece of human garbage.
Speaking of Garbage, Often Putrid, let's get to the GOP's list of messages to my..other personalities? Sure.
Let's begin with their opinion that the choice of Senator Joe Biden shows poor judgment on the part of Barack Obama, since Biden has been one of his worst critics. Biden has been known to say that Obama is not yet ready to be President. However, their argument is exactly the opposite of the truth; the fact that Obama could get Joe Biden to be his running mate demonstrates how persuasive a leader he can be. If he could convince his worst critic (among Democrats, that is--and I would say second worst, but the GOP rates him chief among critics) that he is ready to be President, then he's quite the negotiator and has tremendous influence. Furthermore, it demonstrates how qualified he is to be our chief diplomat.
In any case, the message about Biden never criticizes Biden's credentials or character; it simply says that by picking his worst critic, Obama has shown poor judgment.
In the next message, McCain makes an appeal for more contributors. As of August 26th, he had 1.7 million contributors (Obama has surpassed 2 million already--by a long way). He's aiming for two million by the end of the RNC Convention.
Speaking of Rotten Nefarious Corruption, this message contains several claims I want to address. First, there's the question of matching federal funds for the major Presidential candidates. McCain criticizes Obama for "breaking his pledge" to go with federal funds in this election cycle, going on to whine about the support of MoveOn.org, "Big Labor", "Hollywood elites", and "other left-wing groups". Obama explained his move: he wanted to fund his campaign with individual contributions. Besides, McCain's side has the Snakes Bent Voraciously on Truthiness and other 527 groups to support him, because his McCain-Feingold bill left open a huge loophole for these organizations. Until that loophole closes, any candidate would be crazy to take federal matching funds. He complains about misleading negative attack ads, but he himself has engaged in such ads already, comparing Obama to ditzy celebrities, with no ability to lead. There is already a book and a movie about Obama, both full of falsehoods.
McCain goes on to complain about the "liberal" media. This "liberal" media has done 80% negative coverage on Obama, while giving McCain a free ride. Most of the media is corporated owned. Conservative talk has far more outlets on the radio than liberal talk, or even neutral talk. The television stations are corporate owned, and the news organizations have been absorbed into the entertainment divisions of the major networks. To call this media "liberal" is downright insane. If anything, they're drawn to conflict and celebrity worship.
These messages are out of date order. The next message I came across was an invitation to attend or host a Raucous, Negative Claptrap event. For the night of the Republican convention, I could sign up to get special materials for myself and my guests, invite people over to watch the convention with me, and manipulate them into voting for Bob Barr--or, if I'm really on my game, for Barack Obama.
The Saddleback Civil Forum gets mention in the next message. What a farce. It turns out that McCain heard all of the questions in advance and had opportunity to prepare his answers. Even so, I thought his answers were simplistic and stupid, but that's the subject of another post. I really do have to go through it bit by bit, because I found the critiques of Obama laughable, and the praise of McCain gratuitous--more of the same media free ride.
In the next message, McCain reveals his plan: let the RNC do his dirty work, so he can take matching funds and use that as a talking point against Barack Obama. No doubt, the Rancid Nabobs of Chicanery will join the 527 groups in throwing as much money as they can raise at the McCain campaign.
I laughed out loud at the next message. The GOP sent me an urgent message to download the RNC toolbar. They assured me that it would help McCain beat Obama at no cost to me. Well, unless Randy Naked Cuties are involved, I'm not interested, and since I know that Robbers, Ne'er-do-wells, and Cuthroats are behind this move, I'm definitely not taking them up on it. Come on! These are the rat bastards who admitted to illegal wiretapping! Why in the world would I want them watching over my internet activity? They probably already are, anyway. My firewall attack history lists several hits from Langley, VA, Arlington, VA, Washington, D.C., and one other place that escapes me at the moment. I'm not kidding.
Why is it that the Republicans think we should ignore the opinions of the other six billion people on the planet? The next message criticizes Obama for labeling himself a "citizen of the world". It also says that Obama is proposing to raise the U.S. support to the UN to $845 billion, then goes on to say that it's $2500 from each American taxpayer "at a time when people are struggling to make ends meet." Um...McCain? We have a progressive tax system. It's not like each and every American will have $2500 taken from them directly. How stupid must your base be to fall for that one? Also, the message never mentions what amount goes to the UN now. Furthermore, the money is to combat poverty, but McCain calls it "redistribution efforts". It's not just wealth redistribution, Swifty. It's an investment in our foreign neighbors--something that might keep them from coming here illegally to escape oppressive economic and political conditions in their own countries. It only makes us stronger and more secure, and keep illegal labor from being exploited. You're just worried that if people in foreign countries are better off, there won't be a cheap labor pool from which to draw.
I didn't know whether to laugh or be thoroughly disgusted at the next message, which was a criticism of Obama's example of a way to help reduce oil consumption, which was to properly inflate your tires. McCain and other Geriatrics On Prednisone are making this suggestion out to be Obama's entire energy policy. They're even giving away a tire guage that says, "OBAMA ENERGY PLAN" on it. How disingenuous. Never mind that it's a sound suggestion in and of itself. Proper inflation of your tires will, in fact, improve your fuel economy. My Republican colleague--oh, boy, is he a Republican, too--made that very suggestion on a team conference call last year, in addition to making sure you have oil changes and other proper vehicle maintenance, because fuel costs were about to rise significantly.
McCain's energy plan, by the way, is to lease even more land to oil companies, who already have leased millions of acres where they know there's oil, but they're doing nothing about it.
Enter Orrin Hatch. Hatch's message is supposed to instill fear into the Republican base of the loss of the "Republican firewall" in the Senate. Oh, you mean the President's yes men, who stand together to make sure nothing of value to the American people actually gets done? Yeah, we need to break that "firewall" of corruption and advocacy of unofficial American nobility. We need to get rid of the roadblocks to restoring the middle class and preventing economic slavery--slavery that many Americans are now in because of insane debt, outrageous interest rates, and the fact that ruined credit can block an individual from gainful employment. They're stuck at the bottom, while people of privilege enjoy what they're fed with silver--nay, platinum--spoons.
Here's a message from something called "The Small Cap Insider's Report". It calls Ted Kennedy "the drunkest man ever", and suggests that maybe Kennedy would give Obama a ride home and "narrow our choices this coming election." Wow. Then it warns Obama: "Watch out for those bridges, Barack!" Classless. Utterly classless. The man's battling a malignant brain tumor. The incident mentioned happened decades ago. If you're going to bring up the accidental death of one woman at the hands of a Kennedy, how about I bring up the death of 163 sailors at the hands of McCain?
On the USS Forrester, the aircraft carrier on which McCain was stationed, a young pilot decided to wet start the engines of his jet. Wet starting engines will cause flames to shoot out the exhaust end of the turbine, and shoot out they did--startling the pilot behind him, who accidently released two bombs. These bombs subsequently exploded and kill 163 members of our United States Navy. Because of a young John McCain's poor judgment, his fellow sailors died fiery deaths. You really want to play, Small Cap Insider's Report? Oh, I'll play.
In the next message, entitled "Beat the One", McCain's people list the consequences of an Obama Presidency and 60-seat majority in the Senate: "higher taxes, wasteful spending, more regulation on small businesses, more liberal activist judges on the Supreme Court and much more..." Okay, let's see what the Republicans have done:
Instead of higher taxes, we have deferred taxes. Someone, someday, is going to have to pay the national debt.
Wasteful spending? Wasteful spending?!?!? Are you kidding me? Bush rubber-stamped every single spending bill that came across his desk during the entire time the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress!!!! When Bush came into office, there was a budget surplus, which meant the debt remaining from Reagan and Bush the Elder could actually get paid. The darling of the Geritol Overdose Potentials worked with a Republican Congress to turn it into a half a trillion dollar deficit annually.
More regulation of small business? That's far better than the deregultion of big business, which has had devastating effects on the economy and the environment. Shall I mention the slap in the face the contracting of traditional military jobs to private companies represents, especially when the contractors make several times the average enlisted soldier's pay?
Liberal activist jugdes? Where? How about conservative activist judges and federal attorneys? No, not even conservative--Puritanical, radical reactionaries, fascists...
Speaking of Really Not Cool Groups Of People, how many Bush appointees were graduates of the unaccredited law school Pat Roberston founded? 150?
Finally--at least for now, I received a message about how awful it was that the Democrats apparently cared more about their vacation than about voting on an energy bill. In other words, the Rats Nesting in Congress Griped Over the Petty issue of the delay on the vote regarding drilling offshore. Why the Goofy, Overblown, Petty Republicans are so hot and bothered over plunging metal phalluses (or is it phalli? I think it's a word rooted in Greek, so it's probably not phalli) into Mother Earth is beyond me, especially when the oil companies have millions of acres of land where they already know there's oil, where they are allowed to drill, but they're doing nothing to extract it.
Until next time, Go Obama! Poor Republicans...Next Campaign...maybe. In 2016. When you grow up, get rid of the theocrats among you, understand what fiscal conservatism actually means, understand that investing in your neighbors makes the country stronger and living in America and in the wide world more comfortable; when you see taxes as an investment instead of an intrusion on your enormous fortunes...until you realize that what you did almost ruined America in eight short years, maybe, just maybe, you can put someone else in the White House.
(I don't know what came over me with the acronym play, but I hope you enjoyed it, and didn't just groan. Cheers!)
The problem is, the people they address in the messages at each of the two addresses where I receive GOP communications are not me. Perhaps James and William are my other personalities, but I don't have blank periods when I can't remember what I've done...
In any case, I've found their messages most...illuminating? No. Amusing? Perhaps. Disgusting? Definitely. Disingenuous? Absolutely.
I'm going to go through the points in each message and give my take on them.
Don't worry--I haven't forgotten about Michael Savage. He's still on my radar; I have just been so busy with personal and work projects, I haven't had time to hit his advertisers hard. I haven't even had time to update this blog with the new advertiser responses and the very few advertisers who haven't yet appeared on my list.
But hey--this blog isn't about Michael Savage. It's important that we hit him where it hurts, but I have opinions on quite a lot more than that piece of human garbage.
Speaking of Garbage, Often Putrid, let's get to the GOP's list of messages to my..other personalities? Sure.
Let's begin with their opinion that the choice of Senator Joe Biden shows poor judgment on the part of Barack Obama, since Biden has been one of his worst critics. Biden has been known to say that Obama is not yet ready to be President. However, their argument is exactly the opposite of the truth; the fact that Obama could get Joe Biden to be his running mate demonstrates how persuasive a leader he can be. If he could convince his worst critic (among Democrats, that is--and I would say second worst, but the GOP rates him chief among critics) that he is ready to be President, then he's quite the negotiator and has tremendous influence. Furthermore, it demonstrates how qualified he is to be our chief diplomat.
In any case, the message about Biden never criticizes Biden's credentials or character; it simply says that by picking his worst critic, Obama has shown poor judgment.
In the next message, McCain makes an appeal for more contributors. As of August 26th, he had 1.7 million contributors (Obama has surpassed 2 million already--by a long way). He's aiming for two million by the end of the RNC Convention.
Speaking of Rotten Nefarious Corruption, this message contains several claims I want to address. First, there's the question of matching federal funds for the major Presidential candidates. McCain criticizes Obama for "breaking his pledge" to go with federal funds in this election cycle, going on to whine about the support of MoveOn.org, "Big Labor", "Hollywood elites", and "other left-wing groups". Obama explained his move: he wanted to fund his campaign with individual contributions. Besides, McCain's side has the Snakes Bent Voraciously on Truthiness and other 527 groups to support him, because his McCain-Feingold bill left open a huge loophole for these organizations. Until that loophole closes, any candidate would be crazy to take federal matching funds. He complains about misleading negative attack ads, but he himself has engaged in such ads already, comparing Obama to ditzy celebrities, with no ability to lead. There is already a book and a movie about Obama, both full of falsehoods.
McCain goes on to complain about the "liberal" media. This "liberal" media has done 80% negative coverage on Obama, while giving McCain a free ride. Most of the media is corporated owned. Conservative talk has far more outlets on the radio than liberal talk, or even neutral talk. The television stations are corporate owned, and the news organizations have been absorbed into the entertainment divisions of the major networks. To call this media "liberal" is downright insane. If anything, they're drawn to conflict and celebrity worship.
These messages are out of date order. The next message I came across was an invitation to attend or host a Raucous, Negative Claptrap event. For the night of the Republican convention, I could sign up to get special materials for myself and my guests, invite people over to watch the convention with me, and manipulate them into voting for Bob Barr--or, if I'm really on my game, for Barack Obama.
The Saddleback Civil Forum gets mention in the next message. What a farce. It turns out that McCain heard all of the questions in advance and had opportunity to prepare his answers. Even so, I thought his answers were simplistic and stupid, but that's the subject of another post. I really do have to go through it bit by bit, because I found the critiques of Obama laughable, and the praise of McCain gratuitous--more of the same media free ride.
In the next message, McCain reveals his plan: let the RNC do his dirty work, so he can take matching funds and use that as a talking point against Barack Obama. No doubt, the Rancid Nabobs of Chicanery will join the 527 groups in throwing as much money as they can raise at the McCain campaign.
I laughed out loud at the next message. The GOP sent me an urgent message to download the RNC toolbar. They assured me that it would help McCain beat Obama at no cost to me. Well, unless Randy Naked Cuties are involved, I'm not interested, and since I know that Robbers, Ne'er-do-wells, and Cuthroats are behind this move, I'm definitely not taking them up on it. Come on! These are the rat bastards who admitted to illegal wiretapping! Why in the world would I want them watching over my internet activity? They probably already are, anyway. My firewall attack history lists several hits from Langley, VA, Arlington, VA, Washington, D.C., and one other place that escapes me at the moment. I'm not kidding.
Why is it that the Republicans think we should ignore the opinions of the other six billion people on the planet? The next message criticizes Obama for labeling himself a "citizen of the world". It also says that Obama is proposing to raise the U.S. support to the UN to $845 billion, then goes on to say that it's $2500 from each American taxpayer "at a time when people are struggling to make ends meet." Um...McCain? We have a progressive tax system. It's not like each and every American will have $2500 taken from them directly. How stupid must your base be to fall for that one? Also, the message never mentions what amount goes to the UN now. Furthermore, the money is to combat poverty, but McCain calls it "redistribution efforts". It's not just wealth redistribution, Swifty. It's an investment in our foreign neighbors--something that might keep them from coming here illegally to escape oppressive economic and political conditions in their own countries. It only makes us stronger and more secure, and keep illegal labor from being exploited. You're just worried that if people in foreign countries are better off, there won't be a cheap labor pool from which to draw.
I didn't know whether to laugh or be thoroughly disgusted at the next message, which was a criticism of Obama's example of a way to help reduce oil consumption, which was to properly inflate your tires. McCain and other Geriatrics On Prednisone are making this suggestion out to be Obama's entire energy policy. They're even giving away a tire guage that says, "OBAMA ENERGY PLAN" on it. How disingenuous. Never mind that it's a sound suggestion in and of itself. Proper inflation of your tires will, in fact, improve your fuel economy. My Republican colleague--oh, boy, is he a Republican, too--made that very suggestion on a team conference call last year, in addition to making sure you have oil changes and other proper vehicle maintenance, because fuel costs were about to rise significantly.
McCain's energy plan, by the way, is to lease even more land to oil companies, who already have leased millions of acres where they know there's oil, but they're doing nothing about it.
Enter Orrin Hatch. Hatch's message is supposed to instill fear into the Republican base of the loss of the "Republican firewall" in the Senate. Oh, you mean the President's yes men, who stand together to make sure nothing of value to the American people actually gets done? Yeah, we need to break that "firewall" of corruption and advocacy of unofficial American nobility. We need to get rid of the roadblocks to restoring the middle class and preventing economic slavery--slavery that many Americans are now in because of insane debt, outrageous interest rates, and the fact that ruined credit can block an individual from gainful employment. They're stuck at the bottom, while people of privilege enjoy what they're fed with silver--nay, platinum--spoons.
Here's a message from something called "The Small Cap Insider's Report". It calls Ted Kennedy "the drunkest man ever", and suggests that maybe Kennedy would give Obama a ride home and "narrow our choices this coming election." Wow. Then it warns Obama: "Watch out for those bridges, Barack!" Classless. Utterly classless. The man's battling a malignant brain tumor. The incident mentioned happened decades ago. If you're going to bring up the accidental death of one woman at the hands of a Kennedy, how about I bring up the death of 163 sailors at the hands of McCain?
On the USS Forrester, the aircraft carrier on which McCain was stationed, a young pilot decided to wet start the engines of his jet. Wet starting engines will cause flames to shoot out the exhaust end of the turbine, and shoot out they did--startling the pilot behind him, who accidently released two bombs. These bombs subsequently exploded and kill 163 members of our United States Navy. Because of a young John McCain's poor judgment, his fellow sailors died fiery deaths. You really want to play, Small Cap Insider's Report? Oh, I'll play.
In the next message, entitled "Beat the One", McCain's people list the consequences of an Obama Presidency and 60-seat majority in the Senate: "higher taxes, wasteful spending, more regulation on small businesses, more liberal activist judges on the Supreme Court and much more..." Okay, let's see what the Republicans have done:
Instead of higher taxes, we have deferred taxes. Someone, someday, is going to have to pay the national debt.
Wasteful spending? Wasteful spending?!?!? Are you kidding me? Bush rubber-stamped every single spending bill that came across his desk during the entire time the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress!!!! When Bush came into office, there was a budget surplus, which meant the debt remaining from Reagan and Bush the Elder could actually get paid. The darling of the Geritol Overdose Potentials worked with a Republican Congress to turn it into a half a trillion dollar deficit annually.
More regulation of small business? That's far better than the deregultion of big business, which has had devastating effects on the economy and the environment. Shall I mention the slap in the face the contracting of traditional military jobs to private companies represents, especially when the contractors make several times the average enlisted soldier's pay?
Liberal activist jugdes? Where? How about conservative activist judges and federal attorneys? No, not even conservative--Puritanical, radical reactionaries, fascists...
Speaking of Really Not Cool Groups Of People, how many Bush appointees were graduates of the unaccredited law school Pat Roberston founded? 150?
Finally--at least for now, I received a message about how awful it was that the Democrats apparently cared more about their vacation than about voting on an energy bill. In other words, the Rats Nesting in Congress Griped Over the Petty issue of the delay on the vote regarding drilling offshore. Why the Goofy, Overblown, Petty Republicans are so hot and bothered over plunging metal phalluses (or is it phalli? I think it's a word rooted in Greek, so it's probably not phalli) into Mother Earth is beyond me, especially when the oil companies have millions of acres of land where they already know there's oil, where they are allowed to drill, but they're doing nothing to extract it.
Until next time, Go Obama! Poor Republicans...Next Campaign...maybe. In 2016. When you grow up, get rid of the theocrats among you, understand what fiscal conservatism actually means, understand that investing in your neighbors makes the country stronger and living in America and in the wide world more comfortable; when you see taxes as an investment instead of an intrusion on your enormous fortunes...until you realize that what you did almost ruined America in eight short years, maybe, just maybe, you can put someone else in the White House.
(I don't know what came over me with the acronym play, but I hope you enjoyed it, and didn't just groan. Cheers!)
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