Olbermann & Matthews/Palin & Ensler

Under Great Political Pressure MSNBC Removes Matthews' and Olberman's Anchor Status (about four fifths of the way down the page)

In media news, MSNBC has announced Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews will no longer anchor any of the network’s live political coverage for the rest of the presidential campaign season. NBC News’ White House correspondent David Gregory will become the primary host of the network’s coverage of the upcoming debates and on election night. In May, White House Counselor Ed Gillespie sent a letter to NBC News accusing Matthews and Olbermann of being “blatantly partisan.”

another take on it

Oh yeah! This is pretty moving:



Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and
activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues", wrote the
following about Sarah Palin:

Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares.

I dreamt last night thatshe was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around
their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears.

Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice.

Whatever it is, I need the
polar bears.

I don't like raging at women.

I am a Feminist and have spent
my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is
antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story
-- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering
women, giving young girls options, opening our minds,
deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most
dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country
chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the
destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never
recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke.

In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the
presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor.

In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list.

The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and
plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered.

As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God.

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth
control.

I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence
and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking.

From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a
tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference.

This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle.

She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right.

But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything
America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S.

but of the planet.

It will determine whether we create policies to save
the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack.

It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest
our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing.

It will determine whether America is a
free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills.

I think of
rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in
the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the
trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric
of this precious thing we call life?

Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008

~~~this is also very moving:

Punk Rock Regains it's Relevance Through Global Migration! Oi!

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/09/punks_not_dead_it_just_emigrat.html

"punk is kept alive in places like Cuba where simply criticising the communist regime can get your ass thrown in jail. As has been reported, that's what has happened to Gorki Águila Carrasco, leader singer of Porno para Ricardo, currently facing four years in prison for "peligrosidad" - literally meaning the dangerousness of his music - specifically for dismissing the ruling Castro brothers as "geriatrics". It's hardly GG Allin is it? Maybe it was their vaguely wacky song 'El Comandante' that upset, um, El Comandante.

Elsewhere the appetite for punk rock grows unabated. Readers of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel Persepolis or its film adaptation will know the type of trouble faced when caught with contraband punk music under the theocratic tyranny of Islamist fundamentalists in post-revolution Iran. And indeed, how that hunger for anti-social sounds merely grows when challenged. The Sex Pistols might be a joke today, but for millions of oppressed youth they still represent a signpost to freedom."

Listen now...

OH! pensions before parachutes! OH! OH!

THAT'S not the judgement we need. BAM! BAM!



I love it when he debunks jingoism and the part where he finds common sense/ground on every fucking devisive issue known to man... more-or-less.



We can not turn back! Shit... I'm a little phaclempt. Talk amongst ya'selves.

Also:

I guess the inexperience argument wasn't polling well.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/350759

McCain's Hail Mary Pass
posted by William Greider on 08/29/2008 @ 3:06pm

The news was so stunning I refused to believe it until I saw John McCain on the TV screen announcing his pick for Vice President. There's no need to disparage Sarah Palin. She's seems like a smart, serious person. But what the choice reveals about McCain is devastating with a capital D for Desperation.

Within forty-eight hours, all America will be talking about her. What people will say is, "You mean, if John McCain croaks, she becomes our president?" Gasp, yes. That is what McCain has decided. So much for "experience" and wise judgment as a campaign issue.

The Senator was widely thought to be on the fifty-yard line, nose to nose with Barack Obama. But this selection reveals the Republican campaign strategists knew better. Picking the obscure and under-experienced governor from Alaska for veep means McCain and his people recognize they are in a very weak position for the fall campaign. So weak they decided to throw a forty-year Hail Mary pass and hope audaciously for a lucky catch.

It won't succeed. In fact, I expect this gambit is going to drive far more voters to Obama's column than it does for McCain.

Choosing Palin kills the "experience" argument. Republicans must have recognized from their own market research that it wasn't working for them. For two months or more, McCain and his handlers have smeared and slandered Obama, mocked his star quality talents, belittled his lack of tenure in Washington back rooms and accused him of unpatriotic egotism. Clearly, their internal polling told them this line of character attack wasn't grabbing the public. Playing the wise old man was not going to be enough to overcome McCain's other significant handicaps, his somewhat doddering style and memory lapses, his deadly embrace of right-wing cant and G.W. Bush.

So, what the hell, let's take a wild shot and see what happens. The other veep possibilities are dull guys in good suits. Let's go with the young gal from Alaska. She's not only a woman--she's a mother! You want history-making? We Republicans can do history-making.

Their internal logic was obvious, it was also pathetic. Putting a woman on the ticket is supposed to draw away those discontented Clinton voters in the Democratic party. Not going to happen, I think. First, that group has dwindled considerably in the last few days--thanks to Hillary Clinton's straight-shooting endorsement of Obama and especially to Bill Clinton's brilliant blessing. The former President went the full mile in defending Obama as ready to be President by reminding everyone that he too had been dogged for a youthful lack of experience. Any remaining bitterness among Clinton voters will not be salved by supporting a hardcore right-winger on feminist issues.

The early returns I am hearing from people suggest that McCain's gambit may prove to be a home run (mixing my sports metaphors) for Obama. One young friend first heard the news from his mother who called to say, okay, she was switching to Obama. For months, she had rooted for Hillary and insisted Obama was too wet behind the ears. "You can stop arguing with your mother," she said.

Palin's previous political experience was as mayor in a town of 6,000. Did they mention this to John McCain? Or did he perhaps forget? Senator McCain says he has seasoned judgment, but he may have been over-cooked.

Dennis at the DNC

Cold War Continued Part 1

Undisclosed Military Vaccines

LOLOL