just keep on livin

robot-heart:

spintree:southpol:sds:complicatedshoes:

This is the future. Remember this, bloggers, when you go into the booth on tuesday…

The Obama campaign has decided to heave out three newspapers from its plane for the final days of its blitz across battleground states — and all three endorsed Sen. John McCain for president!

The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs — and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Despite pleas from top editors of the three newspapers that have covered the campaign for months at extraordinary cost, the Obama campaign says their reporters — and possibly others — will have to vacate their coveted seats so more power players can document the final days of Sen. Barack Obama’s historic campaign to become the first black American president.

MORE

Some told the DRUDGE REPORT that the reporters are being ousted to bring on documentary film-makers to record the final days; others expect to see on board more sympathetic members of the media, including the NY TIMES’ Maureen Dowd, who once complained that she was barred from McCain’s Straight Talk Express airplane.

After a week of quiet but desperate behind-the-scenes negotiations, the reporters of the three papers heard last night that they were definitely off for the final swing. They are already planning how to cover the final days by flying commercial or driving from event to event.

Developing…

We’ll just ignore the fact that McCain and Palin have barely spoken to the press for the last three months, have refused to give press conferences since August, have more or less cut off all personal contact with the press members traveling with their campaign, and have been whining for the past couple of months that the press is being too critical of them, resulting in a boycott of major media outlets. Obama asking three critical members of the press traveling with his campaign to leave, though? OBSTRUCTION OF DEMOCRACY! No one is safe from the socialist, anti-America menace!

another unnoteworthy republican posting.

complicatedshoes:

muppetpants:

ohtrouble:

Seriously.  Since when did Americans want to be rescued?  Since when do they hold their hands out, happily taking whatever is given to them?

What she said.

American pride has been replaced with American guilt and American jealousy, where success is shameful and personal wealth a disgrace.

You’re supposed to feel bad for everything you ever achieved as long as there are people that have less than you.  Charity is not sufficent.  You must submit to the progressive tax code and be coerced into helping out the little guy.

More importantly, you must loathe all the people that have more than you.  It’s not enough to simply work hard to achieve what they have.  Oh no.  You have to belittle them.  You have to question how they achieved it.

Then you have to punish them.  They don’t deserve what they’ve achieved.  The little people do.  All the people they must have stepped on along the road to successs.  Those are the real heroes.  The American Dream is no longer that anyone can achieve anything.  The American Dream is now “You have what I want so you must be a total prick.  You’re going down!”  We’ve become a society that thrives on seeing the great among us fall.  The problem with that is before long, everyone’s on the bottom.

where are these people that want to be rescued? i certainly dont, and dont know anyone who does. and who wants people to fail? what america are you people living in? these sound more like imaginary enemies youve created to justify youre ideals.

muppetpants:

jeffmiller:

Drudge is pushing a story about Obama’s aunt living in a slum in Boston:

Zeituni Onyango, the aunt so affectionately described in Mr Obama’s best-selling memoirDreams from My Father, lives in a disabled-access flat on a rundown public housing estate in South Boston.

A few months ago, Drudge pushed a story about Obama’s half-brother, living in poverty in Kenya:

The Italian edition of Vanity Fair said that it had found George Hussein Onyango Obama living in a hut in a ramshackle town of Huruma on the outskirts of Nairobi… .

He told the magazine: “I live like a recluse, no-one knows I exist.”
Embarrassed by his penury, he said that he does not does not mention his famous half-brother in conversation.

Drudge’s point, obviously, is that maybe there’s something wrong with a politician who wants to spread everyone’s wealth around, but who won’t share his own wealth with his desperately poor relatives.  Is it fair to attack Obama this way?  The American press doesn’t seem to think so—most media outlets seem to have ignored or buried these stories.

I’m not sure what I think about this.  I don’t like the press prying into the personal lives of family members of politicians.  These family members didn’t do anything to thrust themselves into the spotlight, after all.

But Obama did thrust his relatives into the spotlight in Dreams From My Father—he made them big characters in his memoir, and thus, made them big characters in his life.  He used their circumstances and their words to shape his own image.  Reading now of their poverty, it feels like he used his relatives, that he exploited them.

And it is troubling, to me, that Obama wants to spread the wealth of others if he himself hasn’t shared his own within his family.  If these were nameless, faceless relatives he’d never met, then maybe I’d understand it.  But these were people he used in a memoir that made him lots of money … so what’s going on here?

I don’t know if this is fair at all.  Maybe I’m straying out of bounds.  But I do know that the New York Times dug deep into Cindy McCain’s life when they wrote this article, and that the New York Times wasn’t above tracking down people through through Facebook to probe the most tangential connections to her:

September 29 at 7:21pm

I saw on facebook that you went to Xavier, and if you don’t mind, I’d love to ask you some advice about a story. I’m a reporter at the New York Times, writing a profile of Cindy McCain, and we are trying to get a sense of what she is like as a mother. So I’m reaching out to fellow parents at her kids’ schools. My understanding is that some of her older kids went to Brophy/Xavier, but I’m trying to figure out what school her 16 year old daughter Bridget attends— and a few people said it was PCDS. Do you know if that’s right? Again, we’re not really reporting on the kids, just seeking some fellow parents who can talk about what Mrs. McCain is like.

Also, if you know anyone else who I should talk to— basically anyone who has encountered Mrs. McCain and might be able to share impressions— that would be great.

Thanks so much for any help you can give me.

Jodi Kantor
Political correspondent
New York Times

What matters more … how Barack Obama takes care of his half-brother and aunt, or how Cindy McCain takes care of her kids?  I don’t know, but I do know that the New York Times put their Cindy McCain article on the front page.

Similarly, with Palin, we’ve seen a full-court-press, as reporters track down quotes from any and every person who’s ever known her, from her mother-in-law, to her kids’ hockey coaches, to her college classmates, and it all makes you wonder … what is going on?  Where does the press draw its lines?  And are these lines drawn fairly?

John Dowd, Cindy McCain’s lawyer, sent a letter of complaint to Bill Keller, Editor of the New York Times.  He notes, ”You have not tried to find Barack Obama’s drug dealer that he wrote about in his book, Dreams of My Father,” or ”interviewed his poor relatives in Kenya and determined why Barack Obama has not rescued them.”  Dowd’s right to complain, isn’t he?  The paper delved deeply into Cindy McCain’s drug use.  Sure, it was a different circumstance, as Cindy’s drug use was more recent and the details of it are far more troubling  … but on the other hand, she isn’t running for President, and Obama is.

I don’t care that Obama tried cocaine.  (Indeed, I think it should be legal).  But I do think a journalist should have asked him, at some point in this campaign, whether Obama feels he should have been imprisoned for his drug possession, and whether his dealer should have spent a large portion of his life behind bars.  Obama should have to explain why prosecution of a young Barack Obama for drug use would or wouldn’t have been a good use of law enforcement resources.  If he is going to oversee the arrest of people for doing something that he himself did, why shouldn’t he have to explain why or how this is fair?

And yet, it’s off-limits.  No reporter will touch it.

The imbalance in coverage during this campaign isn’t simply because Obama’s campaign was “going well” and McCain wasn’t.  Not all of the reporting was simply “who won the day” or “who’s winning the polls” stuff.  Some of it was about Sarah Palin’s personal life, some of it was about Cindy McCain’s drug use, and some of it relayed little-sourced rumors of John McCain’s affair with a lobbyist, but little of it probed anywhere that could have hurt Barack Obama.  This is wrong, isn’t it?  Even you Obama partisans can see that, can’t you?

You really write some fantastic stuff.  This is a gem and I fully agree.  While I don’t give a shit what he does to his family, some people do.  And the people that care that McCain called his wife a cunt (as reported by a swift-boat book) come from the party of FDR (had a mistress), JFK (had many mistresses), and Bill Clinton (shoved a cigar in some other woman’s pussy).  Who?  Gives?  A?  Fuck?

Being a misogynist or a greedy bastard or a jerk of a person has nothing to do with how the run a country.  Do I think Obama’s a lair?  Yup.  Do I think McCain’s a lair?  Yup.  Get over their personal problems and vote on their policies.  But most importantly, GO PHILLIES.

why is this a gem? (made want to take a nap) if you think its because journalists are protecting obama, then i’d have to diagree. there are plenty of journlists rupert murdoch could sent out to africa to or boston, to write about this. or they could find obama’s drug dealer, where ever he is.

people have dug plenty into obma’s past. rezko, ayers, wright.

i agree when you say it doesnt matter, and thats why no one is writing about it. or, maybe, it WAS investigated and it turns out obama did try to help them.

jgh:

I didn’t, until I woke up shaking, feeling a sense of impending terror, with my heart beating a milion times a minute — and no nightmare, just out of sheer panic!

What a great start to a Monday!

Anxiety disorders FTL.

yeah, they dont tell you about those when youre growing up

‘i guarantee you, if john mccain had been president at the time of the cuban missle crisis, we wouldnt be here. the world would be a nuclear ash heap.’

- bill maher

making his point, that jfk handled the crisis so well because he was smart.

muppetpants:

Not saying he will, but here’s all that will be discussed if it occurs:

1. The voting machines were rigged
2. It’s racism
3. Everyone who doesn’t vote for is dumb

Granted #3 is already very much the state of discourse here anyhow.

not only that, what if he wins, and fucks things up. ugh. i’d rather be sorry i guess, than just be an angry complainer.