Why the 2008 Election Matters So Much...

John McCain admits he need to learn how to "get online".

The next President of the United States will need to lead our country into this new and much bigger world...

Take a look:

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Jack Cafferty Read My Mind...

If the thought of Sarah Palin being one 72 year old cancer paitient's heartbeat away from the Presidency doesn't scare the hell out of you, then you are not paying attention.

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Uh... Ok...

America meet Sarah Palin, She wants to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency...

Whaddya think?

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NO on Proposition 8

The GOP Says this election isn’t about “issues” but rather about the personalities and “life stories” of the candidates. Ok then, courtesy of the "internets" here is what the Republican Party is saying the real choice in November is all about:

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic & foriegn.'
* Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, you are a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real
leadership experience.

* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America.
* If you're husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

You know something? The GOP is right! The choice in November is MUCH clearer now.

Welcome New Readers!

SNL On Palin and Clinton- Brilliant

Tina Fey and Amy Pohler remind us how every once in a while, Saturday Night Live lives up to its own reputation.

Why I love the Republican National Convention...

It gives John Stewart the chance to show what BRILLIANT political analysis looks and sounds like:

Wow.... I mean.. really..., - WOW!

Hat tip to AMERICABLOG.org for this one...

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Wednesday, September 03, 2008
MUST-SEE TV: Top GOP pundits on accidental open-mic say Palin pick is 'bullsh*t,' race 'is over'
John Aravosis (DC) · 9/03/2008 05:37:00 PM ET ·

Two top Republican pundits, Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy, were just on MSNBC with Chuck Todd, and after their segment was over kept talking about McCain VP pick Sarah Palin. But their mics were still on. Oh my God. Everything we've suspected is true. The GOP is flipped out over this pick. Maybe the evangelical base is happy - maybe - but core Republicans, core conservatives, appears to be apoplectic and demoralized. Noonan was Reagan's most famous speech writer. She's no lightweight in the party, and she's no sexist. Here's the video, and the transcript is below.

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Here's the transcript, courtesy of TPM: (Talking Points Memo)

CHUCK TODD: Mike Murphy, lots of free advice, we'll see if Steve Schmidt and the boys were watching. We'll find out on your blackberry. Tonight voters will get their chance to hear from Sarah Palin and she will get the chance to show voters she's the right woman for the job Up next, one man who's already convinced and he'll us why Gov. Jon Huntsman.
(cut away)

PEGGY NOONAN: Yeah.

MIKE MURPHY: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys -- this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it's not gonna work. And --

PEGGY NOONAN: It's over.

MIKE MURPHY: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

CHUCK TODD: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

PEGGY NOONAN: Saw Kay this morning.

CHUCK TODD: Yeah, she's never looked comfortable about this --

MIKE MURPHY: They're all bummed out.

CHUCK TODD: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

PEGGY NOONAN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this -- excuse me-- political bullshit about narratives --

CHUCK TODD: Yeah they went to a narrative.

MIKE MURPHY: I totally agree.

PEGGY NOONAN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it.

MIKE MURPHY: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

CHUCK TODD: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

MIKE MURPHY: Yeah.

Not My Grandfather's Republican Party

Watching the spectacle of delusion and denial unfold at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul MN, the most striking aspect is the clear evidence that the GOP has become completely beholden to a rabidly neo-conservative evangelical base.

The GOP of 2008 bears little or no resemblance to the GOP of only twenty years ago, let alone the Party my Grandfather supported fifty years ago. Yes that's right, my Grandfather was a Republican. He believed in the ideals and values of the party that once elected Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency.

Yet I seriously doubt he, or Lincoln himself for that matter, would recognize the party meeting in St. Paul this week.

Abraham Lincoln believed in freeing the oppressed, uniting the nation, and punishing War Profiteers. John McCain's GOP ignores oppression in countries that don't have Oil or where the leaders are family friends. And ignores the fact that we have had a war profiteer as Vice President for the last 8 years.

Dwight Eisenhower viewed war is always a last desperate resort, and an unchecked military industrial complex is a threat to democracy. John McCain's GOP sees an unchecked military industrial complex is a crucial part of their "base."

Richard Nixon understood that we live in a world of interconnected global relationships. Constructive engagement and detente' are always more successful than direct conflict. John McCain's GOP blusters "You are with us or against us". To seek the cooperation of Foreign Leader or even to have respect of citizens of other nations is ridiculed as a sign of weakness.

Gerald Ford truly believed in duty, and that the interests of the nation are more important than polls or elections. He was a living example on how accepting responsibility for the actions you take in office, is a president's first obligation. John McCain's GOP sees transparency as a threat and can never under ANY circumstances admit a mistake.

Ronald Reagan saw that to achieve PEACE through strength, America's allies were the key to America's security. He knew that Big Government is never a substitute for American Ingenuity, and he understood that Faith is a private matter not a poltical platform. John McCain's GOP uses faith is political tool. America's historic allies are disposable, and big Government is great when it can make your base happy.

George HW Bush said it best in his inaugural address; "In crucial things, unity, in important things diversity, and in all things generosity. When America says something, America means it. Whether a treaty an agreement or a vow made on marble steps." He used Personal diplomacy to build a grand coalition of nations the likes of which had not been seen since World War II. John McCain's GOP thinks that the Geneva Convention is "Outdated and quaint", "public" meetings should only be open to hand picked supporters. And has given us a nation more divided than at anytime since the civil war. When we most needed strong alliances, we instead have a "Coalition of the Willing". A handful of countries with a handful of troops.

My Grandfather's Republican Party fought for smaller,less intrusive Government John McCain's GOP fights to amend the constitution to regulate the bedrooms and bodies of American Women. Along with a pledge to continue the largest and most costly expansion of the Federal Government in History.

My Grandfather's Republican Party sought to make the US the leader of Strong Global Alliances. John McCain's GOP loves to bash the UN, act unilaterally and recklessly, and trash traditional alliances calling them "Old".

My Grandfather's Republican Party understood fiscal responsibility, and that Jobs are the engine of the American Economy. John McCain's GOP, after only eight short years has given us massive Debt and deficits. Policies that tax the Lower and Middle Class to pay for tax breaks for the most wealthy, resulting in the loss of more jobs on their watch than any time since the days of Herbert Hoover.

This week in St. Paul we will hear a great deal about the GOP's "respect for life", an easily packaged label for a zealous push to eliminate reproductive rights for American women, and achieve theologically based government regulation of how life begins and ends.

"Defending families" will be the code phrase for the zealous push to deny any and all, rights, to Gay and Lesbian Americans no matter what the cost. Arabic translators who could in fact, help win the "war on terror" must be purged from the Department of Defense. Veterans who serve with honor and distinction must be demonized if they stand up and say who they are and who they love. Americans who have lost loved ones in Iraq or Afghanistan must be rendered silent and invisible. Denied any right to publicly grieve, because the soldier they mourn was their partner, and loved someone who was the same gender as they are.

John McCain's GOP easily sets aside issues like dealing the impending collapse of Medicare, the over 8 billion dollars missing from the Iraq reconstruction authority, the near 50 million Americans without health insurance, the problem of illegal immigration, massive trade and budget deficits, or the millions of cargo containers still entering our ports uninspected.

For John McCain's GOP, these and other inconvenient truths, are as easily overlooked as the record of the last eight years has been in the speeches at this weeks GOP Convention.

In an interview with Vatican television in 2003 then Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, spoke of the death penalty as one the great evils of the modern world. Religious leaders around the world have been critical of the conduct of the war on terror, American disengagement in the middle east peace process, and intense aversion to meaningful foreign development aid. Yet John McCain's GOP is not interested in hearing about Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses, or how wise stewardship of the environment is "Christian Value".

For John McCain's GOP the "culture of life" ends at the prison door. The Neo-Conservative Right, may hate abortion, but they love capital punishment. John McCain's GOP will rush to defend the lives of the unborn. Yet after you come out of the womb however, you get to join the John McCain's "ownership society" - meaning you are on your own.

For John McCain's GOP, when critics dare question, you call them traitors, you have your surrogates question their character, their motives and their very humanity. In that same inaugural address, George Bush's Father lamented a time in our nation where "not each other's ideas are questioned, but each others motives." Sixteen years later, the party John McCain now leads, has embraced the politics of personal destruction, making a new legacy of division, rancor and politically expedient hate.

We live in a time when the Republican Party seeks to define "American" as only those people who conform to a particular limited , fearful view of the world. It is a political party that history will remember for a legacy of "fifty percent plus one." Where the key to victory is to divide people as much as you can, then prevent any who oppose you from having equal access to the political process. Be they people of color, people who don't speak English, or people who are not Conservative Evangelical Heterosexuals.

This what John McCain and Sarah Palin will ask America to vote for in November.

Thanks, but no thanks. I suggest America follow the advice of another GOP icon, Nancy Reagan...

Just Say No.