HITLER FINDS OUT ABOUT PALIN RESIGNATION

A powerful film clip from "The Rise and Fall of the Republican Party."

BUH-BYE

We're still celebrating Obama's win, and, in the spirit of Barack's magnanimous victory speech, we're trying to avoid taking cheap potshots at Sarah Palin. We're trying hard. Really. After all the attention and ballyhoo of the presidential race, Palin will be returning empty-handed to the frozen tundra, and no, we won't miss her shrill, ill informed musings, but on a human level it's kind of sad. On the other hand, we're not getting carried away with grief since we know this won't be the last we'll see of this neo-con Barbie. This ambitious politician will probably get retooled and freshly-painted for another big run (64% of Republicans polled want Palin to run again in 2012) but until then...we'll say buh-bye, Sarah. This song is for you. I think you'd better go now...



Sorry, we can't stop! There are a number of reports surfacing about tension between Palin and the McCain camp. Aides are coming forward with all the gory details. They describe her as a difficult diva behind the scenes, and many say they were concerned she simply didn't know enough to be Vice President. We agree, of course, but this is coming from inside the McCain camp!

We knew she wasn't exactly brilliant, and certainly no cartographer, but it turns out she thought Africa was a single country and not a continent. Even worse, and closer to home, she couldn't name the countries in North America. (Palin-supporters, take note: the countries are Canada, Mexico, and the USA.) Oh, and the $150,000 worth of expensive clothes? It's turned out to be much more--with $40,000 for husband Todd alone--it's expensive to have the common touch and look like a real hockey mom. According to this story, a GOP lawyer was dispatched to Alaska to retrieve some of the clothing (story here).

This news report details the backstage rift at McCain headquarters. Watch Bill O'Reilly trying to put a good spin on it, but this is hopeless.

YES! OBAMA WINS!

Barack Obama wins the presidential election with 349 electoral votes to John McCain's 147. Obama becomes the 44th president of the United States of America in the largest voter turnout in 90 years--since women got the vote.


Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert announce the historic news.


Juan Williams describes the road leading to the first black president in America's history, and gets a little choked up.


President-elect Obama's victory speech

VOTE COMMUNITY ORGANIZER

It's no surprise these Republican assholes sneer at "community organizers." After all, community organizers were key to the civil rights movement, the anti-war movements, the feminist movement, the environmental movement, the gay rights movement, and movements for affordable housing and healthcare. In other words, movements the Republicans violently opposed every step of the way.

Community organizers work on the grassroots level organizing communities for the common good, often working against powerful interests. No wonder the Republicans don't get it.

Martin Luther King, Jr., community organizer

When Barack Obama graduated from Harvard Law School, where he edited the prestigious law review, he could've easily joined some white shoe law firm and really raked in the bucks, but instead he went to Chicago to organize workers who had been stranded after the steel mills shut down. Call me naive, but I find this commendable. In fact, I believe this sense of service and sacrifice--along with a cool, formidable intelligence--will serve him well as President of the United States.

Cesar Chavez, community organizer

Sarah Palin can smirk and wink and say being mayor of Wasilla was like being a community organizer, only with responsibilities--but anyone who's ever worked as an organizer can tell you that's a load of horseshit. Organizers have plenty of responsibilities, and few resources, and they do everything from scratch. In the 1980s, I worked as a community organizer on Central America issues--fighting against Reagan's contra war (remember trading arms for hostages? Ollie North?)-- and my fellow community organizers worked harder than Palin ever did, I can assure you. I've never seen a more tireless, intelligent, and resourceful group of people in my life. And they never got a $150,000 clothing allowance, either.

Obama on community organizing, and the Republican comments:




Saul Alinsky is considered the father of modern community organizing. In the 1930s, Alinsky organized the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago (made infamous by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle about horrific working conditions in the stockyards). He coined the term "Think Globally, Act Locally."

Saul Alinsky, 1909-1972, community organizer

Alinsky influenced several generations of activists working for social change with his pragmatic primers Reveille for Radicals (1946) and Rules for Radicals (1972). In the opening paragraph of Rules, Alinsky wrote:

"What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away."

Here's the Daily Show take on the community organizers:

ONE MORE DAY

vote.

ONE MORE DAY (OF ELECTION ANXIETY)

In case you're just tuning in, this is the final day of the 2008 presidential campaign. Here's a wonderful one minute recap:

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Tomorrow is election day. Everyone I know is filled with election anxiety. What can you do? Drink too much, eat unwisely, scream at the television, lose sleep. These coping skills have always worked for me, but I'm sure there are better ways to deal with stress. Yoga, for example, or taking a walk, or talking to your plants. (My plants seem to be responding well to sarcasm and hurled invectives) Tomorrow night I'll be watching the election returns with some close friends, and I don't just mean Johnny Walker and Jack Daniels. Real friends. That will be a good way to weather the storm. A roller-coaster is always more fun with a group of people.

Larry David, neurotic creator of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, is also having trouble coping:

"I can't take much more of this...I'm at the end of my rope. I can't work. I can eat, but mostly standing up...Five times a day I'll still say to someone, 'I don't know what I'm going to do if McCain wins.'" --For more of David's election anxiety, click here.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, poll workers could say you're not on the rolls. Your eligibility could be challenged. The voting equipment itself could malfunction. The lines could be long.

According to the Huffington Post, already over 80,000 people have complained about voting problems. "Barbara Anwine of the Election Protection Coalition (1-866-OUR-VOTE), a nonpartisan group, told MSNBC about voter suppression tactics they have witnessed around the country."



If you experience any election day mishaps, click here. Or call the US Department of Justice (800-253-3931).

Make sure your vote counts--read this article in the Daily Journal here.

TWO DAYS MORE!

If you're like me, you love musicals. The footlights and the greasepaint, the synchronized high-kicking, people breaking into song for no apparent reason! My girlfriend Wendy and I often entertain dinner guests while dressed as characters from "Cats!" and we bring down the house singing "Memory" while tossing Almond Roca from a fake litter box. We also do a killer "Les Miserables," and when I leap over the couch waving the red banner for "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" there's not a dry eye in the house.

Okay, that's not true. Not a word. But we do like musicals. Some, however, are better than others.

The musical above is from John McCain. It's definitely not "Les Mis," which I'm sure Sarah Palin would call communistic with its peasants and revolution and subversive talk of spreading the wealth. You betcha. And french, besides! Thanks but no thanks.

Palling around with terrorists

Only two more days, and I'm a nervous wreck. The poll numbers look good for Obama, and the McCain/Palin propaganda doesn't seem to be working...and yet I'm anxious about last minute dirty tricks and possible election fraud or "mistakes" with ballots.

It's been quite a battle--not just the past twenty-one months, but years, decades. With a good voter turnout and no outright election chicanery (see posting on election theft here), Tuesday could bring us closer to economic justice, affordable housing, universal health care, genuine environmental protection, and ending the war. I'm not naive, just hopeful. I realize the enemy is entrenched, the institutions are self-perpetuating, and the powerful have a vested interest in resisting meaningful change.

But I'm hopeful. Keep your fingers crossed. And vote.


A scene from "Les Miserables," a musical Sarah Palin would call socialistic for its message of class war and spreading the wealth. Viva la revolution!

GET YOUR WAR ON!

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

We've always been big fans of David Rees and Get Your War On. Political cartoons have a long and glorious tradition dating back to Thomas Nast, to Daumier, to Goya, hell, probably to cave paintings, and Rees takes his place with the masters lampooning his age and its politics.

In the Rees strip, office workers chat on the phone or kill time around the water cooler, but don't expect Dilbert. Rees has an ear for dialog, and the language is natural and harsh as he directs his poison pen at hypocrites, war profiteers, and neo-cons, especially Bush and Company, McCain and Palin, and other cheerleaders for the "war on terror."

Compared to Nast and the masters, the strip is crude--the artwork is basically repetitive clip-art--but for capturing the political timbre of these soul-killing Bush years nobody comes close to Rees. He's lassoed the zeitgeist.

The office chatter is pitch perfect--picture Dilbert crossed with, um, Elmore Leonard. Anyway, after years of enjoying the strip, now we have an animated version. Not for everyone, I'll admit, bit I'm delighted to see the clip-art move. The strips are also available in book form, and the royalties of the first book are donated to landmine clearing efforts.

In 2007, his work was included with Jenny Holzer and Goya in the DISSENT! exhibition of protest art at Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum.

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Check out the Rees website for more strips here. Buy the new Rees collection here.

MAYBERRY BACKS OBAMA

Looks like Andy Griffith, Opie, and even The Fonz are backing Barack Obama. This does not bode well for McCain and Palin, who have aggressively waged a smear campaign of robo-calls and nasty character attacks in Mayberry.

Confronted with this small town rejection, an extremely well-dressed Palin had no comment, but reiterated that Obama was indeed a Muslim Socialist out to raise Aunt Bea's taxes and marry Floyd the barber. McCain only growled.

A great clip starring Ron Howard, Andy Griffith, and Henry Winkler.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF TED NUGENT

What's eating The Nuge? It sounds like The Motor City Madman got up on the wrong side of the futon this morning. Well-known as a cranky right-wing gun nut, this hairy rocker still manages to surprise us with his vitriolic shock 'n' y'all nonsense, and this morning the cranky caveman philosopher had me screaming at the computer. Instead of having an aneurysm, I decided to have some fun and "sublimate" the experience by conducting a make-believe interview with Ted--using his actual quotes from the Village Voice (Oct. 20, 08).

Call it Bob and Ted's Excellent Misadventure, and be warned there is a language advisory:

9lbhammer: How you feeling, Ted? You look a little deranged, to be honest. You eating right? Getting plenty of rest?

Ted Nugent: (all Ted's words are actual quotations) Well, I woke up one morning, as I do every morning, for the last 60 years. My middle finger was on fire. I roasted adequate amounts of marshmallows upon said flames and I thought I would share it with my fellow civilians.

9lbhammer: Other than roasting marshmallows on your middle finger, what have you been up to? Your last hit record was "Cat Scratch Fever" back in the seventies, and before that was "Tobacco Road" with the Amboy Dukes during the Nixon Administration. What are you doing these days? Still making records?

Ted: I have no current projects...If it wasn't for Sarah Palin, I'd move to fuckin' Sweden. It's pretty pathetic. I don't think you can be "pretty pathetic." It's mighty pathetic. Barack Obama, I guess if you want to be Mao Tse Tung I suppose you can be. I just don't think you should be the president of America. Call me weird. If you really study the Communist Party of America, if you go to their website and check out their bullet points, it is the Democrat Party bullet points. It is Barack Obama.

9lbhammer: If not for Palin, you'd move to Sweden? I hate to tell you, Ted, but Sweden is a socialist country. Has been for years. According to Forbes, "Cradle-to-grave security is the rule in Sweden, and has been since the early 1950s (the country went socialist in 1932). Go on the dole in Sweden, for example, and you can get 80% of your last job's pay for at least five years." And taxes? Sweden has the highest tax quota (as percentage of GDP) in the industrialized world. On top of that, around eighty percent of the Swedish labor force is unionized, and I know you hate unions.


Ted: Am I out of line here? Did I miss the reintroduction of communism and how it benefited society? Maybe that chapter evaded me. Remember a minute ago, when I said "fuck you?" You might want to play that over the loudspeaker system wherever you go.

9lbhammer: You're flogging a new book, Ted, White and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto, in which you espouse a crypto-fascist populism that makes the Michigan Militia sound like the Ballet Rousse. Frankly, I find your philosophy is a little disturbing. Why so cranky?

Ted: If you really study what Obama and Biden claim are the poverty level, how about this… fuck you. How about double fuck you. I do federal raids with federal marshals and the Texas rangers, and we kick down the doors of these fuckin' mongrels. And they're under the poverty level. But they've all got meth, they've all got crack, they all got whiskey, they all got a Monte Carlo with new fuckin' wheels on it.

9lbhammer: So much for the poor. What about immigrants? Your view of immigration is just short of Aryan Nations. Care to comment?

Ted: The Nugent family has no invaders. We don't have any welfare, we don't have any crime, we don't need anymore money thrown at our education....and we certainly don't have any invaders, because the message is loud and clear: invade the Nugent property and die. I'm not gonna say "hey you," I'm gonna shoot you in the fuckin' head. Just like all my fellow Texans. Be nice, I'll buy you a fuckin' brisket. Steal from my neighbor, I'll kill ya. Come on. Illegal invaders, especially during the war on terror, should die. Illegal invaders, war on terror, don't invade or we'll kill ya.

9lbhammer: It just came out that the Republicans spent Sarah Palin $150,000 for her hair and clothes in the last month, but she's got nothing on your sense of style. Do you think you could field-dress a moose faster than Palin?


Ted: I'm a disciplined man. I'm 60 years old, and I've gained about 20 pounds since I graduated from high school, mostly muscle, by the way.

9lbhammer: What would you say to the candidates?

Ted: Barack, fuck you. Joe, fuck you. John McCain...We are voting Republican this year, not because of John McCain as much as for Sarah Palin.

9lbhammer: Thanks, Ted.

Ted: Fuck you.

Ted and the last of the species.

Check the source: the interview in its entirety here.

LIVING OUTSIDE THE NARROW AMERICA

Sarah Palin remarked that she loved visiting the "pro-America" parts of the country, and maybe the McCain camp will clarify her statement, but probably not. They're too busy putting out fires--and starting them--as they continue to "go negative" in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.

With her statement, Palin implied that many of us live in an "anti-American" America, which is ludicrous, but maybe not to Palin. If by "pro-America," she means supporting her red-baiting, robo-calling, swift-boating, racially-overtoned, slanderous, Karl Rove-directed campaign, she might be right. In that case, her narrowly defined America--let's call it Narrow America--is rapidly shrinking and I'm not surprised she's sounding so desperate and shrill.

If by being "pro-America" she means shouting "Kill him!" when Obama's name is mentioned, or agreeing that Obama's tax plan is dangerous socialism, and that he "pals around with terrorists," then I live outside that Narrow America.

To Palin and Company, it seems that "pro-America" means anti-science, anti-feminist, anti-minority, anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-environment, and anti-intellectual.

If by "pro-America" she means waving a McCain placard, then most of the country wouldn't qualify. Obama is making serious inroads in the red states. The McCain camp is losing and feeling desperate, and if "pro-America" means running a campaign based on scare tactics and bald-faced lies, thank goodness we're not in that Narrow America.


If by "pro-America" she means supporting corporate profits over people, deregulation over consumer safety, racism over tolerance, superstition over science, and war over peace, I'm glad I don't live in Palin's Narrow America.

Outside Sarah Palin's narrowly-defined America, honesty is still important, and winning isn't the only thing, but winning fair and square. It may sound corny and naive, but throwing sand in your opponent's eyes isn't okay where I live. Outside Palin's Narrow America, the Constitution still carries some weight, and so does the Geneva Convention, even though they've both taken a beating these past eight years.

Vote.

DUELING PALINS

In case you worked the graveyard shift last night, or were up late studying Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, or had simply miscalculated the proper combination of drugs and alcohol and flamed out early, here is the much-ballyhooed Tina Fey and her dingy doppelganger Sarah Palin on SNL last night.

Once again the latte-drinking New York liberals practiced their godless comedy on good sport Sarah. Good sport, like aerial wolf-hunting. If there is a God, an all-powerful God who isn't just rolling dice and toying with us, may He (or She) bless our great nation and send Palin back tout de suite to her tiny world of pork barrel bridges and beauty pageants and small-town tundra corruption.

Somebody say Amen!

Tina Fey, as I know and love her

SAY IT AINT SO, JOE

Joe the Plumber sure came in handy during the last presidential debate. He was mentioned no less than two dozen times, and addressed directly by the candidates, and as a result, Joe was catapulted into fame as a symbol of the average working man facing "much higher taxes" under Obama's tax plan. Maybe he was a little too handy, in fact. It turns out Joe the Plummer (c) isn't exactly what he seems.

For starters, his name's not Joe, and he's not a licensed plumber.

"Joe the Plumber's story sprang a few leaks Thursday," says the Associated Press.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle (Story of Joe the Plumber Springs Many Leaks, Oct. 17, 2008) the "icon of the authentic working-class voter" is a fake.

"His first name isn't really Joe. It's Samuel.

He's not really a plumber--at least not a licensed one.

He's concerned about increased taxes - but hasn't paid his own income taxes.

And he's not exactly just a guy from Ohio.

He's lived in Arizona ... and Alaska.

He is registered as a Republican, and voted in the state's GOP primary in March, county elections records show. But he was previously registered, dating back to 2007, in the Natural Law Party." -SF Chronicle

According to FactCheck.org, an independent non-partisan group,"McCain said 'Joe the plumber' faced 'much higher taxes' under Obama’s tax plan and would pay a fine under Obama’s health care plan if he failed to provide coverage for his workers. But Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher would pay higher taxes only if the business he says he wants to buy puts his income over $200,000 a year, and his small business would be exempt from Obama’s requirement to provide coverage for workers."

Update from FactCheck: ABC News reported the morning after the debate that Wurzelbacher admitted to a reporter that he won't actually make enough from his new plumbing business to pay Obama's higher tax rates. ABC said his admission "would seem to indicate that he would be eligible for an Obama tax cut."

Read the SF Chronicle story HERE.

Candid shot of "That One" and "Fibber" McCain at the final debate

ALASKAN PANEL FINDS PALIN ABUSED POWER

"A legislative investigation has concluded that Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power in pushing for the firing of an Alaska state trooper who was once married to her sister, or by failing to prevent her husband Todd from doing so." - Anchorage Daily News, 10/10/08

"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin violated ethics laws and abused her power as governor in pressing to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, an independent legislative investigation concluded today." -- Los Angeles Times, 10/10/08

"No matter your partisan leanings, it's hard to see this as a good headline for Palin with less than a month to go before the election." - Washington Post, 10/10/08

THE REAL McCAIN? HE'S NO MAVERICK

First off, don't believe Sarah Palin. Five Myths about John McCain is a video by Tim Dickinson, contributing editor of Rolling Stone Magazine, extracted from his cover article, Make-Believe Maverick. This is a must-read essay in which Dickinson categorically debunks the "maverick" image McCain and his minions are trying to convey.

Dickinson's article, Make-Believe Maverick, is available here.

After McCain and Palin exaggerated Obama's connections with 60's radical Bill Ayers and claimed he was "palling around with terrorists," Obama hit back with information about McCain and the Keating Five scandal. If McCain wants to wrestle with the past, two can play this game. Actually, it's a different game entirely, because the Keating Five scandal has direct relevance to our current financial crisis.

This morning, the Obama camp directed people to a brand new web site, keatingeconomics.com, about McCain's involvement in the financial scandal. The website presents information and this 13-minute documentary called "Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis.''

You can watch it here:

IN CASE YOU MISSED THE VEEP DEBATE

McCAIN AND PALIN: FEAR AND LOATHING

McCain and Palin want to throw sand in your eyes. The collapsing economy--which McCain typified as rock solid just before it crashed--has left their campaign flatfooted, so they're pouring on the sleaze in the homestretch. Desperate to get their numbers up, and distract us from the real issues facing the nation, the Republicans are reverting to what they do best: attacking character. From now until the election, expect a campaign of fear and loathing.

According to the Washington Post, "McCain and his Republican allies are readying a newly aggressive assault on Sen. Barack Obama's character, believing that to win in November they must shift the conversation back to questions about the Democrat's judgment, honesty and personal associations, several top Republicans said."

Sarah Palin is claiming Obama doesn't believe in America, and he "pals around with terrorists." She is referring to Obama's association (what the NYTimes calls "sporadic interactions") with 60's radical, Bill Ayers, "a founder of the Weathermen who later became an education professor in Chicago and worked on education projects there with Mr. Obama." (New York Times)

According to the Associated Press, "...though [Palin} may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret."

I don't think he'll regret anything, if it works. Greg Strimple, one of his top advisers, said the campaign will be very aggressive the last 30 days. "We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans."

The trouble is, a campaign of bald-faced lies and dirty tricks can work!

According the Associated Press, "Effective character attacks have come earlier in campaigns. In June 1988, Republican George H.W. Bush criticized Democrat Michael Dukakis over the furlough granted to Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who then raped a woman and stabbed her companion. Related TV ads followed in September and October.

"The Vietnam-era Swift Boat veterans who attacked Democrat John Kerry's war record started in the spring of 2004 and gained traction in late summer."

From CBS News: "'We think the McCain campaign made a huge error by telling the press that their strategy was to distract from the most important issue facing voters,' a senior Obama official said. 'Every attack going forward will be easy to characterize for what it is - an attempt to distract from the Bush-McCain economic record.'"

For his part, Obama is preparing for the onslaught by sticking to his guns, taking the high ground, and countering the bullshit calmly and effectively. He slammed the McCain Campaign's "sordid attacks amid economic peril." His numbers are up, and he's gaining ground. Still, it's a long time till November 4th.

Read "Obama Warns Against McCain Smear Tactics," in today's Washington Post, HERE. Here's Obama's response to the latest wave of sleaze:


As usual, check the sources:
The New York Times story if HERE
The Associated Press story is HERE
The Washington Post story is HERE
The CBS News story is HERE

HOMER SIMPSON VOTES!

McCAIN DITCHES, LETTERMAN POUNCES

David Letterman riffed on McCain after the Senator canceled his appearance on the Letterman Show to fly back to Washington and take care of the economic crisis. Then Letterman discovered McCain down the hall with Katie Couric at the same time he was supposed to be taping "Late Night," and the sparks flew.

In this wonderful clip, Dave rips him a new one. After years of smarmy sleepwalking and inconsequential patter, Dave has his old fire back.

PALIN IS AN IDIOT

As you know, the Republicans have been hiding Sarah Palin from interviewers (28 days without a single news conference since her selection), and with good reason: she's dumb as a sack of hammers. After a high profile "meeting with world leaders," which was basically a photo-op with no press allowed, she was prepped in seclusion and jammed with talking points like the Manchurian Candidate, but still managed to sound woefully uninformed in an interview with Charles Gibson.

She sounded even worse in an interview with Katie Couric, which ran Wednesday and Thursday nights. Here's a clip...and yes, I'm rubbing it in. Coming on the heels of the McCain attempt to postpone his debate with Obama--and to bump the Palin/Biden debate completely--it all begins to make sense why they hid Palin from the press for so long.

In the words of today's Los Angeles Times, "if she's lucky, few are listening."

"The Alaska governor defended her puzzling claim that geographic proximity makes her some sort of expert on Russia; went nearly blank when queried about McCain's achievements as a big-business regulator; agreed America 'may find itself' on the road to another Great Depression; and, promoting a troop surge in Afghanistan, casually suggested that it 'will lead us to victory there, as it has proven to have done in Iraq.'" - LA Times, 9/26/08

dumb and dumber?

Here's Palin's confused (and confusing) take on the bailout:

" . . . where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh -- it's got to be all about job creation too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, um, scary thing, but 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that."

Sure, it's a jumbled mess. The problem is, there are plenty of dumb people out there...and if they link up with the confused, and connect with the folks who are too racist to ever vote for a black man, then Palin and McCain might have a chance of winning. God, I hope not.

For the LA Times article, click HERE.