The Nappy Cat Chronicles

Rove on McCain:

WALLACE: All right, and for fair game, what is McCain doing that goes a step too far?

ROVE: Well, McCain has gone in some of his ads — similarly gone one step too far, and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100-percent-truth test. They don’t need to attack each other in this way. They have legitimate points to make about each other that are beyond, you know, the…

WALLACE: Real quick question — 30 seconds. Do they need to be 100 percent passing the truth? Just, in other words, when you were running Bush’s campaign, did you care whether some fact-check organization…

ROVE: No, and look, you can’t trust the fact-check organizations, with all due respect. They’re human beings. They’re individuals. They’ve got their own biases built in there. But both campaigns ought to be careful about it. They ought to — there ought to be an adult who says, “Do we really need to go that far in this ad? Don’t we make our point and won’t we get broader acceptance and deny the opposition an opportunity to attack us if we don’t include that one little last tweak in the ad?”

Greg Sargent on Rove on McCain:

Wow. This is a bit like being labeled a sleaze merchant by Bob Guccione or Larry Flynt.

Rove’s words will make a nice news cycle soundbite for the Obama campaign, but Sargent is incorrect. The McCain campaign is blatantly lying. Rove is aware that, because every word and every image is archived, a campaign can’t get away with that. Instead, a campaign should use three basic strategies:

• First, a campaign should remove context from its opposition’s quotes and repeat ad naseum. All that matters is that it’s 100% true that those words can be attributed to the opposition.
• The second strategy is infinitely more devious: If the truth is being taken for granted, raise doubts. For example, if one of Obama’s daughters was relatively pale-skinned, the McCain campaign could have hinted that Obama’s wife had an affair with a white man. Or, perhaps Obama smoked crack and had sex with a disabled gay man. As an added bonus, “value voters” love to swallow this sort of shit and will repeat it for free.
• Finally, a campaign should always grant its candidate plausible deniability. If a campaign is going to blatantly lie or use the preceding strategies, it must use proxies. Otherwise, the candidate is made vulnerable to attacks from the very journalists who should be dutifully transcribing the attacks made by the proxies.

Rove has used these strategies to successfully win elections for years. So, in all fairness, Rove is not calling the McCain campaign sleazy. He’s calling both campaigns inept.

The Sunday Telegraph has a must-read article that will be the first of many on Obama’s deteriorating poll numbers:

“These guys are on the verge of blowing the greatest gimme in the history of American politics. They’re the most arrogant bunch Ive ever seen. They won’t accept that they are losing and they won’t listen.”

After leading throughout the year, Mr Obama now trails Mr McCain by two to three points in national polls.

Party leaders and commentators say that the Democrat candidate spent too much of the summer enjoying his own popularity and not enough defining his positions on the economy - the number one issue for voters - or reaching out to those blue collar workers whose votes he needs if he is to beat Mr McCain.

Others concede that his trip to Europe was a distraction that enhanced his celebrity status rather than his electability on Main Street, USA.

Since Sarah Palin was unveiled as Mr McCain’s running mate, the Obama camp has faced accusations that it has been pushed off message and has been limp in responding to attacks.

One complaint: Was it necessary to quote Peggy Hyperbolizer-Noonan?

I think, in general, Republicans lie more than Democrats. When I imagine the typical Republican, I, as screenwriter Mark Andrus wrote, think of a man and I take away reason and accountability.

FOX News reported:

McCain supporters, claim[ed] they rescued 12,000 miniature American flags from the site of Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech last Thursday…McCain supporters said the flags were discovered by a vendor at Denver’s Invesco Field after the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention. The vendor supposedly found trash bags full of flags in and near garbage bins, and turned them over to the McCain campaign.

Of course, if they were abandoned, they were likely abandoned on accident. Can the Republicans account for every flag used at their convention? With all of the ejaculations that week, the answer is no. However, the truth is not permitted in the Eighth Circle of Hell.

Apparently the PUMAs, the Party Unity My Asses, have started a new Democratic Party. They feel that the old Democratic Party wasn’t sycophantic enough. Or something. The irony is mindblowing.

“She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long,” said Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain’s top advisers, making light of concerns about Mr. McCain’s health, which Mr. McCain’s doctors reported as excellent in May.

I don’t know which part of this quote is more significant: The “for the next four years” part or the “making light” of McCain’s age-health part. Why not “for the next eight years” and why even jokingly say that “We think he’ll make it four years.. Maybe longer!” That’s just not very funny.

Sarah brings brings a great deal of white-bred “true” conservative appeal. Right-of-center independents now have a choice between voting for the first female VP and voting for a “nigger with a funny soundin’ name.” That’s not a bad gamble on McCain’s part. Plus, some people have the romantic notion that Alaska’s an uncivilized tundra where you have to work hard and be tough all of the time to survive.

The largest negative and what’s most striking is the contrast between her and McCain. Relative to John McCain, Sarah is young and attractive. It’s going to make people notice his frailty and his unappealing age spots and combover. I think his VP pick should have been someone uglier (like Lieberman or someone from PBS).

So, if Obama’s the honor roll jock and Biden’s the guy at the senior center who dances with the widows, then McCain’s your grandfather who was military and Palin.. well.. she’s your mother. And that’s just gross.

A defining case of heads, I win:

and tails, you lose:

I have no first hand knowledge of this, but I am 100% sure that the McCain campaign had two other ads ready to rip in case Clinton was the VP pick. Democrats, take note: This is precisely why, in 1965, the chairman of the Republican Party in California declared, “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.”

Kevin Bryant is a Senator. Kevin Bryant posted this in order to “stimulate an examination of Sen. Barack Obama’s foreign policy.” (In case he takes it down, the following is a large screenshot of his original post.)

Kevin Bryant failed miserably to stimulate anything that can be deemed an “examination”. Understandably, most who commented fell into either the “Libruls can’t take jokes! Obama’s a Muslim! Hail Jesus!” category or the “That’s a fairly bigoted comparison” category.

Defending himself, Kevin writes:

The posting, not surprisingly, only drew out the virulent and vulgar members of the liberal left whose immediate reaction to any criticism of their candidate includes charges of ignorance and bigotry…I have no regrets from this picture…I refuse to cower to the cultural police who evermore seek to censor our political discussion.

Let me just say this about that: Even from an anarchical perspective, this comparison is ignorant and bigoted. And, really, to compare someone who has yet to kill many people to someone who has already killed many people is to not facilitate any semblance of a dialogue. In fact, Kevin confused his red army constituents so badly that at least one thought he was trying to be funny:

idiots [sic] Says:
July 19th, 2008 at 6:06 pm

it’s a joke. Also, anyone not scared to death that someone as unqualified as Obama may be the next President is stupid. He is not qualified. If he is elected, we are in big trouble. God save our country.

Anyway, it’s always amusing to me when dunderheads find humor in what amounts to nothing more than bullying. So, I had some fun with this one and will now try to interject some real chuckle-worthy humor into the discussion. Behold:

Since I’m not willing to assume he did this out of malice, I have to conclude that he just let this slip. But if he were President, we would need to count on him not to let things like this slip.

Dear Hilzoy,

Well, when you have a history of quacking like malicious idiot…

Cheers,

Will

I’m with Larison:

Sullivan says that “the notion that most Americans are incapable of seeing that [it is satire] strikes me as excessively paranoid and a little condescending,” but it is not so much a question of capability as it is one of willingness.  Some people will see it as a confirmation of what they already believe or suspect, others will “get” it but still find it outrageous, and still others may understand that the intent was satire but will still come away with the impression that there could be some element of truth to the stereotyping.  The fairly small number who just laugh at it and think that it skewers smear artists will not begin to offset the number of people who will either take offense or take the image all together too seriously.

But, Larison misses an important segment: The rightwing AM yockels. They will be told that this cover is further evidence that it’s the “libruls” who have engaged in the most vile racism this election. And they will believe it.

John McCain today:

I will veto every single beer[.]

In other news, today, new polling indicates that John McCain has lost all support among white working class individuals.

Mary Grabar

An Obama presidency would signal the final salvo by the Left in the culture wars. Obama’s advance troops have already taken over our college campuses, have bound and gagged our conservative professors, have ravished our virgins, have pillaged our stores of wisdom, and have ensconced themselves in the thrones of power in deans’, presidents’ and department heads’ offices.

The victory cry is heard across the land in the cheers of Obama’s constituency on college campuses.

This has been going on under the very noses of the Republicans…

[T]he traditions may lead back to the communist ideology of the nineteenth century and then through the heyday of radicalism in the sixties, but the means for inculcation are entrenched…

Obama, with his scantly resume, is an affirmative action candidate. But his record as a “community organizer” places him at an advantage with those who believe in “social activism” in the classroom.

War general? Check. Communist? Check. 60s radical? Check. Welfare nigger? Check. Scare quotes? Check check. Delusional yearning for a time that never existed? Incomparable.

The post-concession articles that I am looking forward to the most are the inevitable insider accounts of the long collapse of the Clinton campaign. Based upon even a cursory review of Clinton campaign news, you have to believe that there are many bruised egos and, if you believe that those involved in her campaign had them, hurt feelings.

All of the above would have been deemed worthwhile by all involved parties had their candidate obtained the Democratic nomination, which, because of the formidability of the Obama campaign and because of the high odds of a general election win by a Democrat, was the political equivalent of winning the ‘08 Super Bowl.

Today, The New York Times is out of the gate with a 5-internet-page article. Some highlights:

The Clinton campaign called a supporter for help. “I’ve got an angry president here and a candidate who wants to know whether or not she won,” a local campaign representative told the mayor, Thomas McDermott Jr. of Hammond, Ind. Mr. McDermott could hear Mr. Clinton railing in the background. “It’s not very often you basically have a former president yelling at you to get the numbers out,” he recalled.

Backed by Bill Clinton, Mr. Penn pushed for aggressive attacks on Mr. Obama, something other advisers resisted. At one point, Mr. Penn argued that Mrs. Clinton should find subtle ways to exploit what he called Mr. Obama’s “lack of American roots,” referring to his Kenyan father and his childhood years in Indonesia and even the offshore state of Hawaii, the campaign officials said. Mr. Penn recommended that Mrs. Clinton own the word “American” — she should talk about the “American century” and her “American Strategic Energy Fund,” and so forth. She should add flag symbols to her logo, he suggested.

In private, Mr. Clinton was making matters worse. On the night of the South Carolina primary, Mr. Clinton called and Mr. Clyburn said he told him to tone down his rhetoric against Mr. Obama. Mr. Clinton responded by calling him a rude name that Mr. Clyburn would not repeat in an interview. Mr. Clinton called back a few days later for what Mr. Clyburn called “a much more pleasant conversation,” but the damage was done. “Clinton was using code words that most of us in the South can recognize when we hear that kind of stuff,” Mr. Clyburn said.

The campaign shifted to a contest for the superdelegates, or party elders and elected officials like Mr. Altmire who can vote at the convention. Mrs. Clinton was too far behind to catch up to Mr. Obama among delegates selected by primaries and caucuses, so she hoped to persuade the superdelegates that she would be the stronger candidate in the fall. Only then did she agree to start calling superdelegates personally, something Mr. Obama had been doing for months.

While Mr. Penn had pushed to go on offense against Mr. Obama, seeing that as the only way to change the dynamics of the race, Mr. Garin steered in the other direction. “There were lots of people who spent a lot of time thinking about what to say about Barack Obama and not enough people waking up every morning thinking about how to make the case for Hillary Clinton,” he said in an interview.

Election night brought home the varied complex personal and political dynamics at play. Mr. Penn, once the most influential voice in the Clinton universe, showed up at campaign headquarters outside Washington to watch the returns but virtually no one would talk with him and he left early.

Joe Andrew, a former Democratic Party chairman who had switched allegiance to Mr. Obama from Mrs. Clinton, faced the wrath of her supporters firsthand when he drove up to the Washington hotel where party officials were meeting last weekend to resolve how to count Florida and Michigan delegates. Protesters shouting “traitor” descended upon his Chrysler minivan, denting it with punches and kicks, he said.

Via Andrew Sullivan:

The above reminds me of:

And:

Contrast those with this Obama anthem:

Is the Obama campaign some sort of creativity vortex? Clinton’s advertisements always seem garish and silly while Obama’s seem down to Earth and genuine. I’ve wondered that for awhile now and, based upon “Hillary in the House,” I can conclude with satisfaction that black holes can be Earth-based phenomena. The discrepancy is just too large to be a coincidence.

In light of Liz Trotta’s hilarious comment that both Osama Bin Laden and Barack Obama should be killed:

It behooves me to break out the News funnies collection:

I know Fox News is just asking the tough questions. As such, my all-time favorite tough question is:

You can find more hilarity here.