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Give McCain a Pass on the Whipping

Calling Alan Keyes:

So I think we all had one thing in mind when we heard the Good Ambassador was upset over spanking. It’s harder to be more of a selfish hedonist than when Spanking the Monkey. But no, he was referring to a comment by Barack,

“I don’t want to just win, I want to give this guy who is running against me a spanking,” Keyes quoted Obama as saying.

The conservative from Maryland said Obama then said that he wanted to give Keyes a spanking because he exemplified the “kind of scorched-earth, slash-and-burn negative campaign that has become the custom in Washington and it is the reason why we can’t get anything done.”

Now, most folks would take this as a basketball reference. But, not the Good Ambassador–it’s a slavery reference:

Keyes, whose rhetoric concerning gay marriage and abortion has stunned Illinois Republican Party leaders, said Obama’s use of the word spanking was “colorful language” and is “the language of the master who, when he is displeased with the slave, gives him a whipping.”

If he had made such comments, Keyes speculated that the media would accuse him of “some horrible crime against the dignity of my opponent.”

“I am sure if I had used this language about my opponent, one of you would have followed up with that kind of question, suggesting that I was showing the utmost insensitivity to the racial heritage of America and to the indignities that black Americans have suffered during the course of that heritage,” Keyes said.

No, but you might have been fitted with a straightjacket. Then again, you might still be. Though you might have asked what great moral principle in the Declaration spanking is related to or perhaps a cheeky joke about Spanking the Monkey.

Much like the Keyes campaign, it’s pretty clear John McCain doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing so trying to say he was being racist with whipping is a bit hard to buy. 3

Okay, so I wanted an excuse to reference Alan.

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You Idiots

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf6YKOkfFsE[/youtube]

You aren’t supposed to say it to McCain!

I can just imagine Karl Rove with his head in his hands thinking that he was never stupid enough to put Bush in the position of having to respond to purple bandaids and the such.

Eldred Bank Fails

15th of the Year. Most of my family on my Dad’s side has their money there and my aunt works there.  My grandparents kept their accounts there at least since the Depression and through many other hard times until my grandmother died a little over 2 years ago.  The bank had started in 1914 and survived an area hit hard by the Depression, great floods in 1943-4 (the 1927 flood wasn’t as bad along the Illinois) and 1993.

No more.

From the looks of it the deposits are generally safe.  I haven’t gotten a hold of my Dad to see if my aunt will keep her job.

Via Atrios

Funniest Post in Ages

From John Cole who has been mighty funny as of late:

I Feel Like Rich Lowry

The first half hour of Countdown tonight was the most fun I have had with my clothes on in years. Watching Shuster, Alter, and O’Donnell chronicle McCain’s attempted walkback of the mob, knowing full well that he once again undercut his campaign, as they just upped the ante on the crowd’s behavior by defending them, and while knowing the RNC has an ad out pushing the Ayers nonsense, was just glorious. These incompetent boobs have themselves twisted up into a knot and backed into a corner, with nowhere to go and the election two weeks out and Independents and moderates looking at the McCain campaign like they are junior brownshirts.

Then, when it was flashed across the screen that the Troopergate report has been released and it was determined Palin abused her authority, it was like David Shuster winked at me and it sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around my living room.

I need a shower and a cigarette.

Go read the rest.

Sidley & Austin: Dangerous Radical Law Firm

Parody stopped being possible long ago, but the McCain campaign keeps reaching for it…the nations sixth largest law firm employed both Dorhn and Michelle Obama so clearly there is a close connetion.

The McCain campaign is now broadening their attack on Obama’s past association with William Ayers to include Michelle Obama — even though McCain has repeatedly said spouses should be off limits during the campaign.

The attack? Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’ wife and fellow former Weatherman, went to work in 1984 for the major Chicago-based national law firm of Sidley & Austin, and three years later, Michelle joined the mega-firm as well.

That’s the entire attack. We wish we were joking. But we aren’t.

By this standard at least any law school student at Northwestern is now implicated in being a terrorist sympathizer since 1992.

We’ve descended into Clinton Chronicles land with the McCain campaign–something neither Dole nor Bush did with Clinton.

Hell To Pay: Nominate Dan

Hell to Pay: Nominations Hotlist

Fri Oct 10, 2008 at 02:30:03 PM CDT

I’m going to make no secret about who I think should be nominated this week for tomorrow night’s Hell to Pay fundraiser: Dan Seals, IL-10.

Aside from being a worthy candidate on his own merits–and being a repeat nominee for Hell to Pay help–this week it got personal. Very, very personal. As in an attack by his scummy rival not only on Seals, but on Daily Kos itself. It all began October 5 when the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll showed our Orange to Blue candidate Seals trailing Republican incumbent Republican Mark Kirk by a mere six points.

And thus an absurd freak-out by the Kirk campaign began, with Kirk’s pollster going nuts, claiming that the “ultra left-wing Web site Daily Kos” had undersampled Jewish voters (of course, a well-known Republican voting bloc) intentionally:

It is no surprise that DailyKos, which has come under attack by Democrats like Harold Ford Jr. and Lanny Davis for anti-Israel and anti-Semitic content, chose to conduct its poll on the Jewish High Holy Day of Rosh HaShanah.

Some kind of near-instant karma must have been at work, because just a day later, a Roll Call/Survey USA poll was released showing Seals –gasp!–ahead of Kirk by eight points. Markos caught the hilarity of the bind the Kirk campaign now found itself in:

But what’s really hilarious is that the Kirk campaign spent the entire day accusing us of being anti-semitic and fighting hard to discredit a poll in which they led. Now, just a day later, they face a poll, from a non-partisan news operation, that shows them getting their ass kicked.

Aside from the challenge to our Daily Kos honor at stake, there are also the reasons to back Seals this week that were laid out in previous nomination threads: his office was broken into, and the notorious right-wing money machine known as Freedom Watch did a massive cable ad buy against him.

Now the notion behind Hell to Pay has been, from the beginning, to inflict fiscal pain on Orange to Blue candidates’ rivals who get out of hand and smear Democrats, our O2B candidate, liberals in general or progressives. Surely smearing Daily Kos falls into that category. Other nominations this week are welcome in the comments as usual, and a poll will go up this evening with those suggestions. But for now, I urge the selection of Dan Seals this week to send an immediate message to the Kirk campaign. Nothing precludes people giving to other candidates as well on Orange to Blue during these fundraising drives; indeed, the spillover effect seems to be wonderful for all candidates, with all boats being raised a little higher after Saturday nights.

Note: Hell to Pay is for Orange to Blue candidates, so guys, please make your nominations from that list. Also, previous recipients — Andrew Rice, Al Franken, Darcy Burner and Charlie Brown — for now will be ineligible until our other candidates are taken care of as well (although feel free to donate to any and all worthies over on the list).

Nominate away. Remember the criteria: the opponent of an Orange to Blue candidate has smeared, lied or underhandedly attacked in an inappropriate way liberals, Democrats or their challenger. Please provide links and a summary argument about why he or she should be considered this week. These will be used in the voting thread later today.

You can also donate now to help us reach our new $1.25 million goal for all our candidates.

Anti-semitic my ass. Go forth and bring hell to pay.