On all of the “important” issues, yes – as McCain himself explains:
Category: Videos
This is a perfect description of how the Palin candidacy – and increasingly the McCain campaign overall – feels to me – “like a Ricky Gervais sketch” – where you want to look away, it’s so embarrassing and almost painful, but you keep watching. If only this weren’t so serious, it would be seriously funny.
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SNL Skewers McCain
SNL takes on McCain’s deceptive advertising. The best exchange comes after the line reader reads one of the new ads: “Barack Obama has fathered two black children in wedlock.”
McCain: My friends, I must say that reminds me of an attack that Bush made on me in 2000.
McCain aide: He won that election, right?
McCain: I’m John McCain and I approved this message.
Al Franken, the former SNL writer and current candidate for Minnesota Senator, suggested the idea for this piece to SNL’s head writer last week.
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Nader is so pathetic, this interview veers between humor and pathos. At times, it looks like Nader is about to cry. But he tries so hard to be in on the joke. He can’t seem to decide whether to attack the dog puppet or to try to get his vote – and he tries to do both. Towards the end of the interview, Nader attempts to defend himself in a sing-song voice:
Triumph: Come on – you screwed Al Gore. You campaigned in the swing states.
Nader: Politics has gone to the dogs! With two parties, Republicans and Democrats!
Triumph: [interrupting in a sing-song voice] You campaigned in the swing states. You campaigned in the swing states. Harder. Harder.
Nader: [interrupting, in a sing-song] You’re telling a canine lie. You’re telling a canine lie.
I would feel bad for the guy if this weren’t all of his own volition. He did seem to betray a feeling of guilt in how he defended his 2000 campaign – but he refused to acknowledge any responsibility – and deflected the blame onto the Republicans.
But if the past eight years has proven anything it is that Nader’s core message was wrong – that it wouldn’t make a difference if a Democrat or Republican was elected, if Gore or Bush won – both were equally bad. Nader rightfully has much criticism of our two-party system and how it exerts a stranglehold on power – but the Bush administration proved definitively that it matters who is elected. And Nader, after promising not to campaign in swing states to raise money, decided to campaign anyway and without his support in Florida, we would have had a different president.
Something to remember as we approached another Tuesday in November.
[digg-reddit-me]Yet again, Jon Stewart asks the questions no one else does and confronts another architect of the War in Iraq, the noted British liberal and former prime minister, Tony Blair.
Tony Blair: None of this is easy…
Jon Stewart: Look I know, and I do appreciate even having the conversation. No one believes they took the decisions lightly. The only point for me is: nineteen people flew into the towers; it seems hard for me to imagine that we could go to war enough to make the world safe enough that nineteen people wouldn’t want to do harm to us. So it seems we need to re-think a strategy that is less military-based and more [unintelligible].
This exchange comes towards the end of the interview with Blair, which overall, I don’t think was not one of Stewart’s best.
But the catharsis that comes when Jon Stewart confronts these powerful men and speaks common sense to these once formidable powers – it’s hard to describe. Somehow, it is as if he is doing more than anyone to hold the men and women who made the disastrous decisions that led to war in some way accountable.
Part 1 2 of interview with Blair
Part 2 1 of interview with Blair
As I wrote about Stewart confronting Douglas Feith earlier this year:
I’m not sure if it should be so cathartic to see one of the planners of this misbegotten gamble scolded by a comedian. But it was.
The New York Times reported on the struggle Obama is facing trying to break through the media fog that has focused on the small daily controversies the McCain camp keeps feeding the press. From Lipstick on a Pig to questions of patriotism and the never used Logan Act, this is the McCain camp’s deliberate strategy – distract and hope that by the time people start paying attention to the issues, it will be too late.
Given the financial crisis unfolding, and in an attempt to break through this fog, Obama released this simple ad – just two minutes of Obama speaking to the camera.
The Plan he asks you to check out is here.
Excerpts from his original speech on the subject a year ago today is here.
His follow-up speech as the crisis began to deepen this March is here.
My summary of his broad economic agenda is here.
The New York Times’ attempt to understand the underpinning of “Obamanomics” is here.
Some lies being spread about Obama’s tax plan and economic issues are here. The ad McCain released echoing these lies is here.
Categories
McCain: Without Honor
[digg-reddit-me]Pass it on…
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Saturday Night Live’s excellent season opener. If only the rest of the show had been so good.
[digg-reddit-me]McCain’s new ad:
Edit: McCain took down the ad from his YouTube page, but it is now posted on some others, so I have replaced the link to the ad in McCain’s YouTube with this copy of it.
The comments it is based on:
In Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver, he predicted this type of attack:
If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things.
The question is: Are the American people dumb enough to fall for it?
And it’s far from the first time he has.
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Now Is the Time to Give…
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This is an ad that could use some wide circulation. Every $5.01 you give helps. If you believe this election is important (here are some reasons to think it is), then it’s worth donating a few dollars. With John McCain getting an infusion of public cash and the Republican National Committee far outraising the Democratic National Committee, Obama is now evenly matched with McCain.
We need Obama to be able to run a 50-state campaign. We need him to win. To protect the internet, to prevent an(other) unnecessary war.
A few days ago, I received a mailing from the Obama campaign that came in an envelope that read:
It will only be different if we make it so.
Now is the time to give. Before it’s too late.