Thanks to Blaque for the tip. Imagine what the Republican ticket of 2012 might look like? Limbaugh-Palin? Limbaugh-Huckabee?Make no mistake. Right now, Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican party.
No other Republican is getting any attention, and you can credit whomever you want.
Maybe it is the brilliant scheming of Rahm Emanuel, David Plouffe, Paul Begala, and James Carville. They seem to think so.
How can this be? McKay thinks he knows:"Stop saying that!" my wife says to me. But this is not a high school football game and I'm not a cheerleader with a bad attitude. This is an election and as things stand now, we're gonna frickin' lose this thing. Obama and McCain at best are even in the polls nationally and in a recent Gallup poll McCain is ahead by four points.
Something is not right. We have a terrific candidate and a terrific VP candidate. We're coming off the worst eight years in our country's history. Six of those eight years the Congress, White House and even the Supreme Court were controlled by the Republicans and the last two years the R's have filibustered like tantrum throwing 4-year-olds, yet we're going to elect a Republican who voted with that leadership 90% of the time and a former sportscaster who wants to teach Adam and Eve as science? That's not odd as a difference of opinion, that's logically and mathematically queer.
So what is this house advantage the Republicans have? It's the press. There is no more fourth estate. Wait, hold on...I'm not going down some esoteric path with theories on the deregulation of the media and corporate bias and CNN versus Fox...I mean it: there is no more functioning press in this country. And without a real press the corporate and religious Republicans can lie all they want and get away with it. And that's the 51% advantage.
Think this is some opinion being wryly posited to titillate other bloggers and inspire dialogue with Tucker Carlson or Gore Vidal? Fuck that. Four corporations own all the TV channels. All of them. If they don't get ratings they get canceled or fired. All news is about sex, blame and anger, and fear. Exposing lies about amounts of money taken from lobbyists and votes cast for the agenda of the last eight years does not rate. The end.
So one side can lie and get away with it. Now let's throw in one more advantage. Voter caging and other corruption on the local level with voting. Check out the article here on HuffPost about Ohio messing with 600K voters. If only five thousand of those voters don't or can't vote that's a huge advantage in a contest that could be decided by literally dozens of votes. That takes us to about a 52 to 48% advantage.
I'm not even getting into the fact that the religious right teaches closed mindedness so it's almost impossible to gain new voters from their pool because people who disagree with them are agents of the devil. I just want to look at two inarguable realities: A) we have no more press and B) the Repubs are screwing with the voters on the local level.
The last paragraph is rather interesting, because McKay here alludes to an even deeper problem that America suffers from -- and then proceeds to ignore it (perhaps it's too scary for him to want to think about). It's scarier than the simple fact that the press isn't doing its job, because it means that a lot of people simply will not be educated into a better understanding of the issues. After all, we're talking about a country where being dumb, or at least ignorant, is seen as a virtue by a sizeable chunk of the population.There's a story I've heard (though I haven't found confirmation anywhere) that says that Bill Clinton, who is fluent in German, made use of that skill in casual conversations with Helmut Kohl at some international conferences. What's shocking, though, is that Clinton's handlers felt the need to keep this fact from the public. Yes, it was feared that being seen to be fluent in a foreign tongue was bad for the president's image. Just think about that for a moment. Then think about the Palin gaffes that have been covered by the media, and the fact that McCain went up in the polls after selecting her, in spite of this.
Yes, in America, ignorance is strength.
When questioned about the legitimacy of Wilson's seat as a Green, given he was elected as a Liberal, May countered that the Bloc Québécois was included in the national debates prior to 1993 federal election, despite none of the candidates being elected as Bloc members.Whatever you think of the Greens, or of floor-crossers, it would be hard to justify excluding May from the debate.
Harris's remarks come as the federal Conservatives are seeking to block May from the debates, citing a deal struck by May and Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion where they agreed not to run candidates against each other in their respective ridings.
"You can't have one leader onstage that has already endorsed the candidacy of another and signed an electoral co-operation agreement," Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas said.
The thing is, while widely perceived as left of centre (and some of their policies do fit that description), the Greens have a significant following among the dissatisfied right as well (don't forget that both May and her predecessor, Jim Harris, have had ties to the PCs in the past). As well, a lot of their supporters may be people who wouldn't otherwise vote. So if May makes a good impression on those folks, she could do harm to the Tories. Alternatively, if she makes a bad impression on left-leaning voters, or even fails to differentiate the Greens from the other parties on environmental issues (quite possible, since the parties' policies are pretty similar in that regard) those folks might be less likely to vote Green, and more likely to vote NDP, Bloc, or (ugh) Liberal, than they would if she wasn't in the debate.
Turning to that benighted country to our south, no doubt you've all heard by now that John McCain has selected Sarah Palin as his running mate, and that she hasn't exactly received the kind of media coverage that the Republicans might like. It's unfortunate that a disproportionate amount of the attention has been on her daughter's pregnancy, but I guess that's the part of the story that makes good copy (as compared with, say, the fact that she supports teaching creationism in schools, that she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and stuff like that). I guess it does help to highlight her stridently anti-abortion views, not to mention that she reportedly advocates abstinence-only sex ed. Still, I think those could have been pointed out without dragging her daughter into the mess. Incidentally, on this issue, wisdom sometimes comes from an unlikely source:
I've been watching the news all morning, like everyone else - and i keep hearing about the issues related to 'teen pregnancy'- It's all related to Sarah Palin and her 17 year old unmarried pregnant daughter. Well, I think the real problem comes from the fact that we are taking the focus off of getting to know Sarah Palin and her political views, and what she can do to make our country a less destructive place. Its distracting from the real issues, the real everyday problems that this country experiences.
I am concerned with the fact that Sarah Palin brought the attention to her daughter's pregnancy, rather than all world issues and what she believes she could possibly do to change them-if elected. I get Sarah Palin's views against abortion, but i would much prefer to hear more about what she can do for our country rather than how her daughter is going to have a child no matter what.
Maybe focus on delivering some words and policy with stronger impact like Joe Biden.
Thanks to writer in this babble thread for the link (come on now, you didn't think I've been lurking at Hollywood stars' blogs looking for tidbits like this, did you?)
