[Quote:]

Citing his unassailable qualifications as a tortured POW, imprisoned U.S. citizen Jose Padilla has announced plans to run for U.S. President.

Spokesman Carolyn Jenkins said Padilla has proven his qualifications for President over the last several years, as he has been kidnapped, repeatedly tortured and then imprisoned. Jenkins said that Padilla main platform as a candidate will be to “Stop kidnapping, illegally holding, torturing and imprisoning U.S. citizens.”

Reactions to Padilla`s announcement were swift as many pundits quickly proclaimed that jailed terrorists have no business running for President.

“Padilla is a terrorist who wanted to kill as many people as he could for his own ideology,” said Charles Krauthammer. “The United States cannot afford to have a bloodthirsty ideologue run the nation.”

Jenkins reacted angrily to the disrespect shown to an American who has been tortured and held for years against his will by his own country.

“Right now there is a concerted effort on the part of the U.S. media and both major political parties to malign Mr. Padilla,” said Jenkins. “But without a shadow of a doubt, Mr. Padilla is uniquely qualified to be President due to his years of being held as a prisoner and his years of being tortured.”

Jenkins also was quick to brush aside arguments that Padilla was mentally incompetent and unfit for the challenges of the Presidency.

“First of all, as we have seen the last seven years, mental competency is not a prerequisite to becoming President,” said Jenkins. “Secondly, Mr. Padilla was pronounced to be mentally stable enough to be given 20 years in prison, so the argument is moot.”

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A college student claimed it was all a joke when he put his vote in this fall’s presidential election up for sale on the Web auction site eBay. But prosecutors didn’t see the humor.

University of Minnesota student Max P. Sanders, 19, was charged with a felony Thursday in Hennepin County District Court after allegedly asking for a minimum of $10 in exchange for voting for the bidder’s preferred candidate.

[..]

“We take it very seriously. Fundamentally, we believe it is wrong to sell your vote,” said John Aiken, a spokesman for the office. “There are people that have died for this country for our right to vote, and to take something that lightly, to say, ‘I can be bought.’

Could somebody point John Aiken to this?

[Quote:]

• Mike Huckabee: “When Katrina, a Cat-5 hurricane, hit the Gulf Coast, not one drop of oil was spilled off of those rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico.”

• Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal: You know, that’s one of the great unwritten success stories, after Katrina and Rita, these awful storms, no major spills.

• John McCain: As for offshore drilling, it’s safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston.

• George Will: “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed or damaged hundreds of drilling rigs without causing a large spill.”

• Wall Street Journal editorial: “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita flattened terminals across the Gulf of Mexico but didn’t cause a single oil spill.”

• Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne: “When Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast where we have about 4,000 oil and gas platforms, 3,000 were in the direct line of the storms - the most significant storms we’ve seen ever - and 3,000 of those had to be shut down. We had no significant oil spill. The system worked.”

• Fox News’ Dick Morris: “And by the way, the safety concerns, Hurricane Katrina didn’t cause any leakage or any spill in the Gulf of Mexico oil wells.”

VERSUS

A report prepared for the federal government by an international consulting firm, state that damages related to Hurricane Katrina resulted in 70 spills from outer continental shelf structures with a total volume of approximately 11,104 barrels of oil and petroleum products. http://mediamatters.org/items/200806270005?f=h_top

Satellite image with detail insets showing oil slicks in Gulf of Mexico following passage of Hurricane Katrina. Image taken on September 2, 2005. http://skytruth.mediatools.org/node/19981

[Quote:]

In a telephone interview with the Orange County Register earlier this week, John McCain acknowledged he was unaware of the price of gas. The OC Register’s Martin Wicksol reports:

WICKSOL: When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost?

MCCAIN: Oh, I don’t remember. Now there’s Secret Service protection. But I’ve done it for many, many years. I don’t recall and frankly, I don’t see how it matters.

I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of town hall meetings, many as short a time ago as yesterday. I communicate with the people and they communicate with me very effectively.

McCain’s cluelessness about gas prices is compounded by the fact that he is clueless about what to do about it.

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Those of you that watch The Colbert Report are aware of the John McCain Green Screen Challenge. McCain gave a speech that even Fox commentators felt boring, so Stephen Colbert kindly offered his help. Senator McCain was good enough to have his speech in front of a green backdrop, making it perfect to spice up using chroma key. The show has made available the raw materials for download, so if you’re handy with video editing, you can replace the green screen behind McCain with something more exciting (links below). Here are some of the better ones.

More here

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Three out of four Americans, including large numbers of Republicans, blame President Bush’s economic policies for making the country worse off during the last eight years, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released Wednesday, reflecting a sharp increase in public pessimism during the last year.

Nine percent of respondents said the country’s economic condition had improved since Bush became president, compared with 75% who said conditions had worsened. Among Republicans, 42% said the country was worse off, while 26% said it was about the same, and 22% thought economic conditions had improved.

And yet between 45 and 50% will vote for McCain, for a continuation of these policies. With minimum overlap, that would mean that 25-30% of the voters think continuing the economic decline is a great idea.

Who are these fucking morons?

[Quote:]

“It’s revealing that Barack Obama has now been forced to expand the states on his map because he’s so weak in traditional Democratic targets such as West Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and Florida, not to mention his ongoing problems in Pennsylvania and Ohio,” said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Looks like McCain has inherited the Bubble that W. lives in… Let’s see - McCain is doing badly in the polss in traditional R states like Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Main, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. In Florida is he’s polling pretty much tied.

While Obama currently leads McCain in six Bush states — NM, CO, IA, IN, OH, ad VA, McCain doesn’t lead Obama in a single Kerry state.

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Sonny Landham carved out a tough-guy reputation in a series of big-screen roles, from roughing up Sylvester Stallone to getting tossed out a window by Carl Weathers. He pulls no punches in his newest role: Libertarian challenger to a man known for political toughness, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Now 67 and living in northeastern Kentucky, the man who played Billy Bear in “48 Hours” and was killed by an alien in “Predator” admits his action-movie days are behind him. “I think I’m having wild action when I take two aspirin with my hot chocolate at night,” he quipped.

Don’t laugh too hard: both Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura were in Predator as well…

[Quote:]

This is not the Republicans’ year. There are omens all over the place. Some of them cosmic. As you may recall, Rep. Vito Fossella (R) ran a red light a few weeks ago and was stopped by a policeman who determined that (1) Fosella was drunk and (2) Fosella had a family in Virginia in addition to one on Staten Island. Vito Finito as the tabloids put it. With great difficulty, the Republicans managed to find a candidate to run in NY-13, an evenly split district that is the only Republican-held House seat in New York City. The candidate, Frank Powers, was a rich businessman who could finance the campaign himself, something the cash-strapped NRCC can’t do for him. Things were looking rosy for a bit and the Republicans thought they could possibly hold the seat against the Democratic contender, most likely New York City councilman Michael McMahon (Chris Van Hollen’s choice) although there is a primary in Sept. Got it so far? Enter the cosmic forces. Powers died of a heart attack yesterday. So it is back to square 1 for the GOP.

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Sen. Barack Obama’s historic victory in the Democratic primaries, celebrated in America and across much of the world as a symbol of racial progress and cultural unity, has also sparked an increase in racist and white supremacist activity, mainly on the Internet, according to leaders of hate groups and the organizations that track them.

Neo-Nazi, skinhead and segregationist groups have reported gains in numbers of visitors to their Web sites and in membership since the senator from Illinois secured the Democratic nomination June 3. His success has aroused a community of racists, experts said, concerned by the possibility of the country’s first black president.

“I haven’t seen this much anger in a long, long time,” said Billy Roper, a 36-year-old who runs a group called White Revolution in Russellville, Ark. “Nothing has awakened normally complacent white Americans more than the prospect of America having an overtly nonwhite president.”

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The Washington Post conducted a poll about all kinds of taboo stuff, like race and age. Three out of 10 Americans admit to racial prejudice yet nine out of 10 are at least open to the idea of a black President. However only two third of Americans are entirely comfortable with the idea. Clearly Barack Obama has a problem here.

On the other hand, the comfort level with geezers is even worse. Less than a third would be entirely comfortable with a 72-year-old President, something they will get if John McCain is inaugurated on Jan. 20. What the poll didn’t do is break down these numbers by political affiliation and geography. If the third of the people who are not comfortable with blacks are rednecks from the South, it doesn’t matter because they vote Republican anyway. If they are Reagan Democrats in Ohio, it matters a lot.

Rumors the Obama campaign shouldn’t try to correct.

More Obama facts.

Obama porn.

“Speaking of Barack Obama, yesterday, Barack Obama said, if he becomes president, he will replace the White House bowling alleys because it’s something he would never use. That’s what he said, yeah. Yeah, apparently, this is the same reason President Bush got rid of the White House library.”

–Conan O’Brien

“Barack Obama surprised a bunch of students in Chicago yesterday when he showed up unannounced at an eighth grade graduation. Gave a speech at the eighth grade graduation, pretty cool. Now, don’t confuse that with President Bush’s appearance last year at an eighth grade graduation. He was just there getting a diploma.”

–Jay Leno

[Quote:]

McCain has a mixed record on supporting off-shore drilling in the senate, but this decision seems to be a bit of a capitulation to the oil companies who are in favor of searching for new sources of oil. McCain is against drilling in ANWR.

“Tomorrow I’ll call for lifting the federal moratorium for states that choose to permit exploration,” McCain said. “I think that this and perhaps providing additional incentives for states to permit exploration off their coasts would be very helpful in the short term in resolving our energy crisis.”

“short” term is a relative thing:

[Quote:]

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently did a detailed study of the likely outcome of offshore drilling for their Annual Energy Outlook 2007, “Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).” The sobering conclusion:

The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.

And the impact of the projected 7% (!) increase in lower-48 oil production that might result in 2030 thanks to opening the OCS is … wait for it …

… any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.

Yes, the man who would be president has sold out his principles to garner support from the oil industry while achieving no benefit to the American gasoline-consuming public whatsoever even a quarter century from now!

[Quote:]

The famous “Yes We Can” video that spliced together clips of Barack Obama’s New Hampshire primary night speech and set it to music with celebrities singing along has won an Emmy award.

Produced by Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am, the video won in the first time “New Approaches in Daytime Entertainment” category that “recognizes innovative production techniques and the use of media enhancement to support content.”

[Quote:]

At the Texas Republican Convention this past weekend, the Dallas Morning News’ Trail Blazers blog reports, one vendor was selling the pin that appears with this post.

Well, we all remember this bandaid, so I guess we won’t be accusing anybody of having “class” any time soon…

Mind you, there’s some stunningly stupid stuff at democratmall.com as well - but it’s the same owner…

[Quote:]

On a perfectly related point, all you have to do is look at the current electoral vote projections from the independent groups — versus those by the media — to see how they shamelessly distort the facts to support their own faulty narrative of the race (or inexcusible bad political analysis):

                          Obama   McCain    Net

    Electoral-Vote.com     304     221    Obama +83
    FiveThirtyEight.com    300     238    Obama +62

    Real Clear Politics    238     190    Obama +48
    Rasmussen Reports      260     240    Obama +20

    MSNBC                  200     200    Tied
    CNN                    190     194    McCain +4

While the four independent groups see Obama leading in the electoral race by an average of more than 50, the two media organizations that have put out their own analysis show the race tied, or McCain even leading narrowly.

[Quote:]

Some of the unreleased pages in McCain’s Navy file may not reflect well upon his qualifications for the presidency. From day one in the Navy, McCain screwed-up again and again, only to be forgiven because his father and grandfather were four-star admirals. McCain’s sense of entitlement to privileged treatment bears an eerie resemblance to George W. Bush’s.