I’m surprised that most US blogs I read are still as hung up on the VP debate as they are, but there you go. Reading Michelle Malkin’s liveblogging of the event was an eye-opener though (not linking, google if you must). Talk about a totally different lens.

On with the main event (the next presidential debate is only a day away):
John McCain’s unprecedentedly ugly speech today
from Salon: Glenn Greenwald by Glenn Greenwald – McCain/Palin are pulling out all the bigotry stops now in order to smear Barack Obama.

McCain/Palin lashing out at the media as being to blame for all their campaign problems seems to have finally made some media outlets fall out of love with John McCain: Melissa at Shakesville discusses a story from the LA times which shows that his naval career wasn’t all that glorious.

A new website has been launched about the Keating Five Scandal that was at the heart of the Savings & Loan crisis that torpedoed 1000 US banks in 1987: Keating Economics. The Obama campaign has released a video (13 minutes) to accompany the launch (see it at the site).

McCain jettisons his ‘Maverick’ label: lawyer says Keating Five investigation was a setup
from Pam’s House Blend by Pam Spaulding – Pam righteously mocks the way that Senator Straight Talk can’t even stick to what he was saying six months ago when it comes to the Keating Five Scandal.

The death of GOP electoral tactics on the war
from Salon: Glenn Greenwald by Glenn Greenwald – Glenn shows that conventional wisdom earlier this year, that the war in Iraq would be a winning issue for Republicans, has now been shown by public reaction to the presidential and vice presidential debates to be just as wrongheaded as Glenn said at the time: the voters hate the GOP party line on the war. Check out the diagrams.

Finally, everyone worried about getting out the vote should read this comment by Teresa Nielsen Hayden from a thread at Making Light a while ago, citing instances of voter suppression and more during the Bush administration (follow all the links I’ve reproduced in the quote):

Terry Karney (7):

I heard a piece on NPR about this same thing being done in Virginia. Students who registered to vote with their college address got questionnaires challenging their residence, including the questions about dependent status.

They did indeed do this same thing in Virginia. That’s troubling on two counts.

First, it’s hard to see how the schools could have honestly come up with this erroneous new interpretation they’re peddling to their students. The pertinent tax codes and student financial aid regulations neither suggest nor support the idea that students can’t register to vote where they go to school if they’re listed as dependents on their parents’ tax returns.

Moreover, the rules being misinterpreted are not obscure. They’re some of the core laws pertaining to postsecondary institutions and the students who attend them. There is no way university administrators at major institutions can avoid being familiar with them.

Pause to summarize: it’s hard to see how university administrators could honestly make that mistake.

Second, I find it impossible to believe that the same brand-new misinterpretation could spontaneously arise at two (or more) universities during the same campaign season. This is an interstate conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their right to vote, and it’s originating within the national Republican organization.

Then there’s the foreclosure notice = challenge at the polls, and all the other varieties of general suppression.

It’s a general pattern at the national level, and it’s increasingly blatant. I’ve been writing about it since 2000: the false devaluation of exit polls. The exclusion of legitimate Florida voters from the rolls of registered voters. James Baker‘s bare-faced lie about computer counts being more accurate than hand counts. The attack on the Florida ballot recount by known Republican political operatives from out of state, whose expenses were being paid by the national organization. Numerous instances since then of vote suppression and politically motivated vote caging. The Diebold mess. The Republicans’ use of “voter fraud” as a code phrase for suppressing votes, and their profoundly improper firing of state attorneys general who didn’t adequately respond to White House pressure to pursue vote suppression schemes. (Even scarier: all those state attorneys general who weren’t fired, and are still in place for the 2008 elections.)

That’s not a party; it’s a national-level criminal conspiracy. As ever, I’m boggled by the sheer number of people who don’t understand that a political operation that suppresses voting, doesn’t count ballots, and lies constantly and shamelessly to the public, is not and cannot be on their side.

Categories: culture wars, Politics

Tags: barack obama, bigotry, elections, glenn greenwald, john mccain, shakesville