Wednesday’s Mini-Report

August 13, 2008

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* The networks are reporting that Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Bill Gwatney died this afternoon in a Little Rock hospital.

* About that cease-fire: “A column of Russian armor and troops moved deeper into Georgian territory on Wednesday in apparent violation of a new cease-fire agreement, according to Georgian officials and eyewitnesses. They said the Russian equipment was moving toward the Georgian capital

kupbezrecepty.com

, then turned north.”

* The Bush administration weighs in: “In Washington, President Bush said the United States planned a massive humanitarian effort involving American ships and aircraft, including a C-17 military cargo plane loaded with supplies that landed on Wednesday. Bush said he was sending in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to deal with the crisis, and she called on Russia to halt military operations in Georgia. ‘I have heard the Russian president say that his military operations are over. I am saying it is time for the Russian president to be true to his word,’ Rice said.”

* McCain really isn’t helping: “Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili on Wednesday called for John McCain and other American leaders to do more for Georgia in their response to the conflict in his country. ‘Yesterday, I heard Sen. McCain say, ‘We are all Georgians now,” Saakashvili said on CNN’s American Morning. ‘Well, very nice, you know, very cheering for us to hear that, but OK, it’s time to pass from this. From words to deeds.'”

* On a related note: “President Saakashvili today told Georgians that the US military was moving in to take over control of the countries air and seaports — which would be a pretty big deal since much of the country still appears to be an active war zone. And about five minutes later the Pentagon said he didn’t know what he was talking about…. John McCain says he’s talking to Saakashvili every day. What’s he telling him? Is he confusing the situation?”

* The gunman who shot the chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party died after his confrontation with police.

* One day after criticizing Congress for not being in session, Bush left for his ranch for a two-week vacation.

* Cindy McCain was briefly taken to a Michigan hospital with wrist pain today. She’s apparently fine and will return to the campaign trail tomorrow.

* Bloomberg: “Almost one-third of U.S. homeowners who bought in the last five years now owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth.”

* I thought it was impossible for Rush Limbaugh to appear even more classless. I underestimated him.

* What do you know, there really is a Colbert Bump.

* Some on the right are now blaming global warming on immigration.

* Good to see increased pressure on this: “It’s been a couple weeks since the Pentagon defied a Congressional subpoena and refused to let the military’s chief sexual assault expert testify at a hearing about sexual assault in the military. Lawmakers on the House oversight committee were definitely not happy about it at the time. Now the committee is stepping up its pressure on the Department of Defense to let Dr. Kaye Whitley, the director of the department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, speak on Capitol Hill.”

* And finally, China wanted to put on its best face for the Olympics — literally. During the opening ceremonies, a young girl sang “Ode to the Motherland,” but she was lip-synching, because the child who actually sang was deemed insufficiently cute. “We combined the perfect voice and the perfect performance,” a musical director acknowledged. “The audience will understand that it’s in the national interest.”

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

John McCain’s daughter has written a terrifying children’s horror story book about him!

http://novemberblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/john-mccains-daughter-write-terrifying.html

  • My condolences to Bill Gwatney’s friends and family, and to the shooter’s friends and family. All around a sad situation.

  • If there were one reason why Indecision 2008 matters all the more … consider the plight the Lower Classes risks facing all the more under more of the same “compassionate conservatism” in name only.

    And yet, all the while, the ones involved in such a mindset keep preaching the same platitudes and bromides about “mutual self-help” being their only chance towards “empowerment” and “self-reliance” within the free-market model.

  • Maybe I’m just grumpy but I’m not inspired by the Olympics. Some announcers were talking about Phelps “greatness” and stamina because he raced 5 one minutes races so far. I was just reading Generation Kill about GIs fighting almost solidly for 72 hours without sleep. The comparison was enlightening.

    These people beating each other by tenths of a second just doesn’t do it for me.

    And China is not a person with pride, or outrage or any other emotion. It’s a respressive state. Just ask Tibet.

    Didn’t the commies promise me that the State would wither away? Well I’m tired of States.

  • Cindy McCain was briefly taken to a Michigan hospital with wrist pain today.

    Repetitive stress. It takes a lot of wrist action to, uh, applaud an old man.

  • Hypocrisy is in the nation’s interest???

    We’ve been tolerating McCain’s tough guy rhetoric as ust part of the campaign but seriously…he’s about to try to involve us in a world war. Why is he talking to the Georgian president daily…he’s not a diplomat or a foreign policy adviser…just because Shunerman lobbied for Georgia doesn’t mean he represents the American people as McCain tries to pretend He does. Time for McCain to STFU and quit telling lies to Georgia pretending he’s president…clearly and dangerously overstepping his bounds.

    Damn it Obama will you say something…the situation cannot cater to your vacation. McCain appears in a suit and tie in front of two flags to speak about Georgia’s crisis and you appear outside in the rain with no tie and sleeves rolled up and speak very timidly…
    Tell McCain he’s no diplomat or Russian policy adviser and to stop letting lobbyists advise as if they represent the US. Georgia should have never fired on the Russians to begin with…and Shunerman no doubt promised McCain would get our military to back them…Fucking war mongering for lobbying fees…just pathetic.

  • That’s a pretty funny bit by Comedian Rush Limbaugh. Can’t someone call in to his show and ask him what Cindy McCain uses her mouth for? I mean, something must have motivated that low-life to cheat on his first wife, and I’m guessing it wasn’t Cindy’s sparkling wit.

  • Just waiting for the crack about Cindy McCain taking pain killers for her wrist. Then I can counter with something about Michelle.

  • About that cease-fire: “A column of Russian armor and troops moved deeper into Georgian territory on Wednesday in apparent violation of a new cease-fire agreement, according to Georgian officials and eyewitnesses. They said the Russian equipment was moving toward the Georgian capital, then turned north.”

    I had a VERY scary thought when I was reading about Mendelev saying the Russian advance had stopped while reports were coming in about looting in Gori.

    I wonder just how good Russia’s command and control systems really are. Is it possible that a few commanders on the ground are taking advantage of the situation to grab some money despite orders from above? We know a lot of Russian military officers made a pretty penny in the 90s selling off Russia’s arsenal to the highest bidders. And despite oil money coming in large segments of Russia’s military are still pretty debilitated.

  • I’m guessing Cindy was playfully tousling John’s hair, about to joke about it getting a li’l scruffy, when McMaverickety grabbed her wrist, snapped it back and said “what did I tell you LAST time, you c*nt?”

  • Why should I be shocked about China using a fake child prodigy to sing in the Olympics? They’ve been dealing in fake stuff for years—fake oil filters, fake medicines, fake dog food—so let’s just acknowledge that the host of the ’08 Summer Olympiad is FAKE CHINA, and be done with it.

    ‘Kay?

    And Chad, Cindy doesn’t need pain killers. She can just suck down another pony-keg of that swamp-swill she calls “beer.” Her facial expressions at Sturgis pretty much explained “that” habit—she had that “trophy-dead-thing’s-head-on-the-wall-of-my-den” look to her, don’t you know….

  • “Bush left for his ranch”

    The Knights who say Ni
    must’ve stopped by the White House and demanded their annual tribute

  • Dale said:
    Maybe I’m just grumpy but I’m not inspired by the Olympics. Some announcers were talking about Phelps “greatness” and stamina because he raced 5 one minutes races so far. I was just reading Generation Kill about GIs fighting almost solidly for 72 hours without sleep. The comparison was enlightening.

    These people beating each other by tenths of a second just doesn’t do it for me.

    To each his own.

    I watched the women’s gymnastics last night. Most of us couldn’t walk the length of the balance beam without falling off. Even fewer of us can do a standing backflip. For someone to be able to do a standing backflip and land it on land on a four inch wide wooden beam is amazing. For them to do it with the grace that these women do it is much more impressive than all the fireworks at the opening ceremony.

    The problem is that the Olympic athletes are able to make what they do appear so effortless that it seems unremarkable. What we don’t see is how much these people practice to be able to do what they do.

    I work with a woman whose 14 year old daughter hopes to compete in the Olympics in 2012. This girl practices more than 30 hours each week — Monday through Thursday from 6:30 to 9:30 in the morning and from 4:00 to 7:00 in the afternoon. She practices another six hours on Saturday. Michael Phelps swam more than 300 laps — thats 15 miles — every day to get where he is.

    It is inspiring to watch these people dedicate themselves to being the best in the world at something — or for most of them, to be the best that they can be at something. Most of these athletes can’t make a living at their sport. They’re doing it because they love it and they’re doing it because they want to test their limits. It’s certainly inspired me to get my doughy ass back to the gym. But it’s also inspired me to remember why I love my own career and to want to get even better at what I do.

  • Why is Cindy McCain even on the campaign trail. Wives and families are off-limits but she trails after the old man like she’s worried he’ll leave her for someone younger…

    You don’t see Michelle Obama trailing Barack around like that. Maybe that’s because she puts her children above politicking, whereas Cindy is more concerned about how her money is being spent. The children can be taken care of by the Nannies.

  • Two things that have me shrieking with glee:

    I’m guessing Cindy was playfully tousling John’s hair, about to joke about it getting a li’l scruffy, when McMaverickety grabbed her wrist, snapped it back and said “what did I tell you LAST time, you c*nt?”

    I smell a serious Alexander Haig moment here. I’m just waiting for McCain to say “I am in control here.”

  • Dale (#4) — It’s true that Phelps is swimming, which is not fighting for your life, not for five minutes or for an ungodly 72 hours straight or repeated tours of months’ long duty. But what he’s doing, like any sport, is interesting to those who swim. I’m a good swimmer and I’m not in my 20s, and Phelps swims about four to five times faster than I swim when I am, as the Masters coach used to say, “blazing” or “awesome” or “studly” (unisex adjective at the pool), Moreover, swimmers (unlike, say, boxers and basketball teams) tend to be modest and quiet and unargumentative — not that they’re perfect souls, but generally they don’t boast and cheer each other on. A Phelps story is not politics (although political reporting now imitates sports reporting, much to our detriment), but it’s interesting if you swim, and if you’re proud as punch to shave even ten seconds off an annual 1650 (a mile) swim — well, it’s pretty amazing.

  • They [Georgians] said the Russian equipment was moving toward the Georgian capital, then turned north.” — CB

    I’m sure they simply lost their way. After John Sidney (the Third and Least) told them to cut the BS, they began to withdraw but couldn’t find the Czechoslovakian/Georgian border on their maps.
    _______________________________

    * Some on the right are now blaming global warming on immigration. — CB

    From the TP article:
    CIS, whose founder Mark Krikorian has said that “immigration is incompatible with modern society […]

    The wondrous things one can learn, if one lives long enough and has an open mind… I never knew that Armenians were a Native-American tribe.

  • I’m an amateur athlete and I admire athletes for their skills and self-discipline, but I don’t need 2000 synchronized drummers, or to have police round up homeless people in order to enjoy it. The whole Olympics thing has gotten pretty sick with the politics, the corporatism, the infrastructure of obsessiveness aimed at kids.

  • Just so that we know what kind of a kkklever little lad is Chad, here’s his response to a comment I made on the McCain/lobbyist thread below. It seems to have been dead threaded so I repost it in full:

    19.
    On August 13th, 2008 at 5:34 pm, Chad said:

    It isn’t Obama who’s on the phone with the president of Georgia every day and it isn’t Obama who’s sending his own delegation to Georgia. You might be too much of a blinkered sycophant to notice though.

    No, Obama is on the phone everyday with his brother Odinga in Kenya carrying on some tribal war over there.

  • Doubtful(@2: Thank you for perhaps, seriously, the classiest comment I’ve seen here. We forget that both victims and killers have families.

    Gridlock: Doesn’t Cindy remind you of a nurse with her patient? One of my mothers worked in a nursing home, and my current neighborhood has a lot of elderly people who need help getting around, and the style looks very familiar.

  • Some announcers were talking about Phelps “greatness” and stamina because he raced 5 one minutes races so far. I was just reading Generation Kill about GIs fighting almost solidly for 72 hours without sleep. The comparison was enlightening.

    Yeah, I couldn’t resist commenting on this either. The graphic showed that yesterday, a competition day, he swam over 5 miles, between warm-ups, cool-downs and the races. For each of those races he was both going as full-out as possible, but also trying to keep something for the later races. Swimmers at that level spend hours and hours every day swimming and then throw in weightlifting and running for fun. At most universities, the swim teams win the awards for highest GPAs among varsity sports, too.

    I suppose you’re not going to like those track and field events either? For heaven’s sake, some of them only sprint for seconds at a time! Babies. Probably eat bonbons all day.

  • The deep shit is getting deeper. The ‘inside the beltway’ ‘conventional wisdom’ echos the McCrap position. Belligerence and bravado have replaced rational thought processes related to the Russia-Georgia war.

    Rally round the flags, boys. Bombs away. Rally round the president. It’s time for another war. Wave the flag. We can beat the Commies. There is no world problem that we can’t throw our military at. And anyone who says otherwise is an appeaser. No arguments allowed. No counter discussions.

    McCrap says ‘show our might’. McCrap says ‘don’t politicize’. McCrap says ‘you are politicizing this war if you disagree with me’.

    Where are the responsible voices? Bush has moved toward the McSame position of bluster and belligerence. The pundits that get airtime are all taking the same position. The corporate media is performing their ususal function as an echo chamber for rethug talking points. In general, the dumbocraps seem to be afraid to buck the ‘conventional wisdom’. As usual, the amerikan public is getting a one sided, incomplete, and misleading picture of the conflict.

    I again feel sad for my country.

  • McCain say, ‘We are all Georgians now,”

    That has got to be the dumbest line of the campaign so far.
    Not for the hubris or the sheer presumptuousness of it.
    Nor for the fact that McCain can bloviate this nonsense and not be called out on the carpet by the press or the president…

    But for the fact that one things repugs usually do well is create enemies for us to hate and bomb. But not old, bumbling Mister McGoo! Does he really expect me to ball up my fists and hate Russia? How utterly lame is that?

    Get a clue Mister McGoo:

    If you want to get us Americans to hate, the enemy should be brown-skinned, and preferably have beards and a different religion. We don’t normally bomb and hate caucasoids. And least we haven’t for three generations.

    Put bluntly: I don’t give a hoot about the Georgia and Russia spat. My neighbors don’t give a hoot either. All we know is that our army is played out in Iraq, and that normal middle class citizens can’t afford to pay the cable bill, or fill up the car, and that guy Phelps swims pretty well.

    And now McLame expects us to root for Georgia vs. Russia? And that I am supposed to be a Georgian now? WTF? Seriously? How out of touch with history and the average American’s plight can a candidate be? This clueless old man has actually managed to turn presidential politics into really bad porn. What an ignorant old eyesore…

  • * Good to see increased pressure on this: “It’s been a couple weeks since the Pentagon defied a Congressional subpoena and refused to let the military’s chief sexual assault expert testify at a hearing about sexual assault in the military. — CB

    And, for once, it seems to have worked (from TP):
    http://tinyurl.com/5bxyf6

  • So when McCain says that “in the 21st century nations don’t invade other nations” is he taking that option off the table? He will absolutely not invade Iran or any other country?

  • SF @ 21:

    But what he’s doing, like any sport, is interesting to those who swim. I’m a good swimmer and I’m not in my 20s, and Phelps swims about four to five times faster than I swim when I am, as the Masters coach used to say, “blazing” or “awesome” or “studly” (unisex adjective at the pool), Moreover, swimmers (unlike, say, boxers and basketball teams) tend to be modest and quiet and unargumentative — not that they’re perfect souls, but generally they don’t boast and cheer each other on. A Phelps story is not politics (although political reporting now imitates sports reporting, much to our detriment), but it’s interesting if you swim, and if you’re proud as punch to shave even ten seconds off an annual 1650 (a mile) swim — well, it’s pretty amazing.

    If you haven’t read it yet… get John Jerome’s Staying with it.
    It is one of the great books on sport and swimming ever.
    Jerome died in 2002. He was an enormously talented writer.

    Regarding Phelps and all those medals:

    I do not doubt his talent and will power. What I draw distinction with is that swimming races are not sufficiently differentiated. If they were… Phelps wouldn’t be winning all these golds. Rather there would be specialists winning each race.

    Think of it this way: You will sometimes see a track and field sprinter double in the 100 and 200 meter races. It is rare… but it happens now and then. But you never see a sprinter win the 100, 200, 400, and 800 meter races. That’s because the races are sufficiently differentiated so that each is won by its own specialist.

    Either swimming hasn’t evolved enough to enter the domain of super-specialists, or the races and the multitude of relays are by nature to tightly aligned to allow that differentiation.

    This also means that no other athletic discipline will ever produce individuals who win tons of individual gold medals. Phelps is the last of his breed. No one in track and field will ever emulate him. To have a chance there would have to be a lot of undifferentiated new events added to the extant list:

    A 50 meter dash.
    A 100 meter dash.
    A 150 meter dash.
    A 200 meter dash.
    A 4 X 100 relay.
    A 4 X 200 relay.
    Long Jump with a long runway.
    Long Jump with a short runway.

    All this is not to take away from Phelps accomplishments.
    I provide it only to give some context to what he has done…

  • I’m tempted to stop reading the blog based on the fact that you actually took the time to write a sentence about Cindy’s horrible wrist injury.

    :p

  • it is easy for us to joke with each other — all sharing a similar political viewpoint — about what a total classless, clueless, lying SOB John McCain is and how he thinks the public is stupid and he is running a terrible campaign.

    but now and then we need a reality check.


    According to a new Pew Research poll, Sen. Barack Obama’s national lead over Sen. John McCain has disappeared. The race is now a statistical tie, with Obama barely edging McCain, 46% to 43%. In late June, Obama held an eight point lead.

    Two reasons for the shift:

    McCain “is garnering more support from his base — including Republicans and white evangelical Protestants — than he was in June, and he also has steadily gained backing from white working class voters over this period.”

    McCain “has made gains on his leadership image. An even greater percentage of voters than in June now see McCain as the candidate who would use the best judgment in a crisis, and an increasing percentage see him as the candidate who can get things done.”

    Yep – even as he rolled out universally panned ads with Paris Hilton, and others that outright lied – the public decided McCain increasingly showed the best judgment.

    If this (and other recent) poll is to be believed, it is evident that Team Obama is not countering effectively right now. It appears the “white working class” is buying – and being repelled by – the celebrity charge. We underestimate the difficulty of this election – regardless of how awful McCain is – at our peril.

  • “in the 21st century nations don’t invade other nations” — McCain

    When is someone going to figure out that this “maverick” schtick is just a lack of discipline? The random utterances and positions of a joker whether or not a joke is appropriate?

  • I see the small-minded crowd still pats themselves on the back and pretends to represent the elite of liberal/progressive psyche.

    Oh the glory of an ignorant clique that sings each others praises worshipping flatulence as some sort of stroke of genius!

    Most of the windy-posteriors here would not recognize a progressive or liberal policy or reform it it fell from the sky onto their dinner plate.

    But that doesn’t matter because the same small-minded gang can just come here and pretend that they really ARE important and that somehow they matter.

    But its just all another version of atrio’s 101st keyboarding brigade.

  • And finally, China wanted to put on its best face for the Olympics — literally. During the opening ceremonies, a young girl sang “Ode to the Motherland,” but she was lip-synching, because the child who actually sang was deemed insufficiently cute.

    They have well over a billion people to choose from, couldn’t they find a cute one who could also sing?

  • I believe our esteemed Dale is just having a spell of August Cranky Pantsism, which often occurs after a heavy-duty primary season just before the conventions. It manifests itself in not being in the mood for what is perceived as other people’s bullshit, and often spills from politics to sporting events and the like. I’ve seen in play out as spousal spats over movie choices, oversized displays of pedestrian rage and an inability to find anything on a menu that looks good.

    As a longtime and acute sufferer, I sympathize. Right now I’m mildly agitato about the Pew poll–have been much of the day–and think zeitgeist has summed up the sitch perfectly. This should be a sweep, but I never believed it would be, and still, I’m not happy to see numbers I hoped we wouldn’t see until October showing up now.

  • DaleNot, are you always that mentally decrepit, or were you just making an exception? Yes, you win the gold in “making absurd and irrelevant comments that no one but you cares to read”. Congrats. Now, take your winy, knuckle dragging, flying monkey ass and try to actually learn something from someone w/out being such a butthole.

  • I appreciate the several comments (!) on my note re: Phelps. Whether or not swimming has “evolved” enough to truly specialize (though believe me, the difference between butterfly, freestyle and breaststroke is profound), whether or not it’s fair that others vie for one medal or two and gifted swimmers can scoop many, swimming is cool because It’s like flying, only in water — a different atmosphere, medium, world. There’s something truly magical to it; not for nothing have humans talked for hundreds of years about “sea change.” The butterfly has to be the most absurd idea anybody ever had for getting through water; it amounts to leapfrogging in water, with nothing to push off from. It defies sense and gravity. Amazing. Thanks for letting me think about something other than McCain, whose senility and split second contradictions make me crazy: this man might “lead us”? Have a nice evening.

  • Yesterday, CB reported the Republicans for Obama (www.republicansforobama.org ). I would like to add my two cents and ask all of your help.

    Republicans for Obama consists of some well known Republicans who do not think McCain is the answer to any question.

    This group of Republicans have decided to put country first.

    Pass this along to any of your friends who might think about voting for McCain. It doesn’t have to be about party. It has to, for once, be about US. (And don’t forget to watch this terrifying McCain video – and pass it along, too.)

    If you know Republicans who are voting for McCain, get this information to them. If they don’t like Obama, FINE!

    – Persuade them to vote for Barr.
    – Persuade them to vote for McKinney.
    – Persuade them to vote for Nader.
    – Persuade them to write in Ron Paul.

    Any vote not cast for McCain is a win for our country.

    And remember that every one of us knows someone who is voting for, or leaning towards McCain. Every one of us has to do our part.

  • The most likely solution to the column or armor is the simplest – it wasn’t attacking.

    Either it wasn’t actually there, or it was lost. Both very simple things.

    It’s not like military guys are good about planning how to leave.

  • Joanne

    How about writing in Bush.

    Third times the Charm.

    With the Lord and the Supreme Court on his side, give it a try and write in Bush.

  • Do not fool yourself into thinking GW is taking a vacation. He meets with folks that he does not want the public to know about when he heads to Texas. When was the last time you saw coverage from the ranch? See any of the oil countries visiting him in Washington?

  • @ 31

    Uhhh, I think you’ve missed it a bit there. Phelps swims 100s and 200s. He doesn’t swim the 50, nor is he a distance swimmer.

    BUT, swimmers are specialists. People who can swim the IM are rare to begin with. Many good IM’ers have the ability to do each of the strokes, a decent or better freestyle and have one good non-free stroke that they count on to really put them ahead.

    Phelps has two great strokes — his fly (and as someone noted above, doing that well, really, really well? Crazy hard. Swimmers hate fly!) and freestyle. You notice he wasn’t in the breaststroke or backstroke?

    Your “point” sort of makes your point in reverse. Phelps is great because he can do what he does. There have been three great swimmers (him, Biondi, Spitz) in how many decades?

    Your track analogy doesn’t really fit. It’s like he’s a decathlete who also competes in some other track and field events separately — they’re not more specialized, they’re just more.

  • Surely I’m not the only one who couldn’t tell the girl was lip-synching. Milli Vanilli put on a more convincing act.

    Pity their manager didn’t think of the “National Interest” argument.

  • My God, McCain is so desparate to look like he is doing something, anything, that he is seriously undermining the US response to this crisis. He is acting like a crazy woman that wants to make her husband seem like a wife abuser when the police show up. He is so old and out of touch, that he is dangerously egging on Russia and Georgia to have a war.
    I am not a Georgian. McCain, you shitbird, you do not speak for me. I think you are so presumptuous to try to stick your nose into this crisis. You sound completely incompetent. Are you trying to get us all killed???!!! You are the past asshole. Obama is the future. Republicans are dangerous and scary.

  • Ms. J: A personal note first. I haven’t started commenting at The Zoo because it requires you to register. Why? Other WP sites — like this one — don’t. They do require some form of anti-spam protection, but you don’t have to start your own WP blog to join, even if you don’t put anything in it. If you can, correct that, because I want to join in the fray there too.

    I agree with the comments about “Republicans for Obama” and remind everyone that the organization may not include John Dean, but he deserves the title and was one of the first.

    But, to return to a recent theme of mine:
    WE are Obama’s surrogates

    Again, I repeat that the real secret of the Bush victories was that people pay more attention to what they hear from friends and neighbors and co-workers than to anything they hear on ads, or from speeches, or even on the news. That’s why the RR was so important to him — despite the fact they really are not a tenth as numerous as they’d want you to believe.

    Sure, it is more fun sitting around here at the Carpetbagger Neighborhood Barbecue, swapping stories about McCain’s idiocy, venting, and throwing the ends of our hot dog buns at the passing trolls — but let’s face it, we’re mostly ‘preaching to the choir.’

    We can do a lot more good showing up at neighborhood functions — like real barbecues, PTA functions, or whatever, maybe wearing Obama buttons or t-shirts, and answering people who ask why we are. Even talking like this on the checkout line of a supermarket can be effective, and for those of us who go to church…

    And we can — as an ad can’t — shape our message to the individual. Lord knows we have a hundred different good points, from age to McCain’s lies, to Obama’s REAL accomplishments, to Sturgis — especially for conservatives and religious people — to telling people how long it would be before drilling would affect the price of gas, and how little an effect it would have, to, well, whatever we judge will work for that particular person. All we have to do is remember to stick strictly to the truth — so we can say “Look, don’t believe me, go here and see for yourself” — and to remain civil — a lesson some of us need to learn anyway.

    That’s why I’m making my contribution to Obama by buying t-shirts and buttons — and if you see you have made progress, offer the person a button — don’t push it on them, which will be self-defeating, so they can repeat your points, and the others that, once theirr curiosity is piqued, they’ll discover for themselves. Even my wife, who suffers from Social Anxiety Disorder — one reason why I am a semi-hermit myself — thinks this is important enough to try to do.

  • I am not a Georgian. McCain, you shitbird… Obama is the future. Republicans are dangerous and scary. — Patrick

    Unfortunately, for Republicans, the future is dangerous and scary. It’s the definition of conservatism. (Pleased to meet you — I’m not a Georgian either.)

  • Kinda late for this, but if anyone missed Harold Meyerson’s piece in the WPo today, it’s worth a look…

    The Drums of Change

    On or about last Friday, the world changed. With two very different coming-out parties — the opening ceremonies of the Olympics and the invasion of Georgia — China and Russia put everyone on notice that the power relationships of the past have been reshuffled and that formidable new powers are challenging the established order.

  • Following up on 51:

    My neighbor (he’s the Obama captain of a couple block chunk around here — we’re an Obama heavy section of PA) was saying that he only buys stuff as his donations now — yard signs, window (“rally”) signs, buttons. That way he can have them to give out whenever he’s converted someone and has them at hand for people just getting their feet wet politically.

    I hate talking to strangers, but I’ve started doing it more and more, just because I can’t take another 4 years. It’s not as hideous as it could be, though I still have a hard time thinking that I’m not making things worse!

  • Jen: If my wife, whose SAD is one reason she’s legally disabled, can consider doing it, so can you. And why worry about ‘making things worse.’ You’ve shown you know enough facts, and all you have to do is tell the truth, and to get a feel for which argument works best for a particular person.

  • Jen, it’s tough, even for those of us who loooooooooooove to talk. (I have no problem in casual conversation, but I still get tongue-tied during phonebanking and even GOTV efforts, and I’ve been doing both for years.) It does get easier as you go along. Sounds a little funny, but remember: You are better informed than at least 90 percent of voters. I say that not to encourage us all to feel superior, but to remind us that what we have to say to others about our candidate is important and worthy–and, very often, welcome news to them.

  • Shalimar said: The [Chinesse] have well over a billion people to choose from, couldn’t they find a cute one who could also sing?”

    Hey, that sporting clothes businessman wasn’t really running round the top of the stadium either. Some of the fakery is just more obvious than others.

    They found a cute girl who could sing and a okay girl who could sing better, then they decided to combine the two for better effect. Do you want to bet the seven year old’s teeth looked fine when they picked her to practice, then she started to lose her baby teeth right before the games?

  • Yeah, I’ve been doing it…and it’s better this election. The hardest part is as you talk to someone and realize how completely uninformed or wrongly informed they are. A couple of weekends ago I was in WV wearing an Obama shirt and I considered driving back there every weekend, just to wander stores and let people stare first and then ask questions!

    I may even have a shot with my Republicanforlife 85 yo mother. She likes Obama, but has never had a reason to think critically of McCain (being R gives them a pass on critical thinking). Each week she tells me whatever crazy rumor a friend is telling people and I show her where it’s been debunked or what the real story is lurking in the crazy one. I think she even goes back and corrects people — now that she’s older, she’s started doing that a lot more often!

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