Friday, October 31, 2008


The Nightowl Newswrap

Does McCain realize that at a certain point, "defiance" becomes a mental disorder You can look it up. McCain is getting surreal, lying like he believes the crap he's saying and making an utter ass of himself. At this point he is running a campaign that is vacillating between tragedy and farce. Doubling down with a barnstorming run through Ohio, he kicked it off in Defiance, outgunned on every front and trailing in the polls, he still insists he's going to pull it out.

But here is the sort of reality-type thing that makes his defiance pathological He doubled down at a rally in Columbus at an arena that holds 20,000 and the Friday before election day in 2004, Bush packed the joint to the rafters. For McCain today, a few thousands turned out, but huge sections of the arena were draped off so it wouldn't look to depressing for the rubes watching Fox News.

Damn, the corpse of the Bush administration ain't even cold yet Hell, there is still more than two and a half months of it left, and already the bitter repudiations have started. If this is the opening volley of conservatives firing shots at the Bush-Rove cabal, I can't wait to see the charge. I've wanted to see the sumbitch bloodied and broken and beaten and humiliated since 2000 - you think I don't love seeing the right wing turn on them? Let them destroy him, then we'll deal with their complicit asses - they played along with the Bush-Rove scheme when times were good, and they liked the idea of a "permanent republican majority - never forget that. But while they are tearing that fucker Bush limb-from-limb, leave them to it. We can wait, there is no statute of limitations on their crimes.

Liddy Dole needs to brush up on the "first rule of holes" But she has that shovel in her hands, and she can't stop digging. Not recognizing how counterproductive to her campaign the first one was, she has released a second "godless" ad attacking Kay Hagan. This race is the nastiest of the cycle.

Insult me no more with talk of a "liberal media" CNN is giving a full hour to right-wing pundits in an hour-long special titled Election Countdown: View from the Right. The panel will consist of Townhall.com's Amanda Carpenter, Washington Times' Brian DeBose, Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes and ex-Romney press sec. Kevin Madden. There will be no Election Countdown: View from the Left. Can you even stand it?

Quote of the day Al Gore, returning to the scene of the crime in Florida, addressing the economy while campaigning for Obama: “The economy started going downhill when the policies were changed, and it started on January 20, 2001. I know: I was the first one laid off.”



That's gotta sting Obama has it tied up in Arizona, and if the 2010 Senate race were held tomorrow, Democratic governor Janet Napolitano would win by seven points.

This is what delusional looks like John "Tears for Fears" Boehner has pronounced the DOJ politicized - in favor of Democrts. I kid you not. He actually said that, even after all the testimony we heard from Monica Goodling about how she violated the law by applying a political litmus test, and after an Attorney General was forced to resign in disgrace - there is a bias toward Democrats. Give. Me. A. Break.

More scandal for Norm Coleman This guy is so done. First it was revealed that he had a sweetheart deal on a republican operative's luxury apartment, then it was revealed that he was getting a lot of expensive togs on someone else's dime. Now it looks like bribes were funneled to him through the insurance company that employs his wife. This guy seriously needs to go to a holding cell for booking, not the U.S. Senate.

That's one way to stop something: Environmental activists chained themselves to a conveyor belt at one of Australia's largest coal-fired electricity plants on Saturday to protest slow government action on climate change, a spokeswoman said. Four protesters from the group Rising Tide, three men and one woman, carried out the action at the Bayswater plant north of Sydney, Rising Tide spokeswoman Georgina Woods told Reuters. Police were at the scene and had detained approximately 25 other protesters, Woods said, adding that electricity generation had also been disrupted. "They have chained themselves with piping. They have locked themselves there," she told Reuters. "They cannot be removed. The police will have to cut them off."

Yes--the day before the Presidential election, the verdict will be read: U.S. military jurors reached a verdict on Friday in the Guantanamo trial of Osama bin Laden's accused media chief, who is accused of inciting murder and inspiring Sept. 11 hijackers. But the verdict will not be announced until Yemeni defendant Ali Hamza al Bahlul, who could face life in prison, is brought back into the courtroom on Monday, one day before the U.S. presidential election. Moving prisoners from the detention center to the hilltop court at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is a laborious process and the judge, Air Force Col. Ron Gregory, wanted to give the guard staff the weekend off. The jury of nine U.S. military officers deliberated about four hours before reaching their verdict on charges that Bahlul conspired with al Qaeda to attack civilians, solicited murder and gave material support for terrorism. This is a bald-faced outrage--read the man's verdict now. Quit politicizing the war on terror. For fuck's sake--what's it gonna take?

The NGOs are leaving Congo: Faced with the upsurge of violence in eastern Congo, many international aid agencies are suspending operations and evacuating their staff from the volatile North Kivu region. One agency warned that children were at risk of being recruited or raped by armed groups as families fled fighting between rebels loyal to Renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda's and government forces. Another aid group reported that soldiers had overrun one of its offices and stolen its vehicles. World Vision, ActionAid, Save the Children and International Rescue Committee (IRC) have all declared they are halting work in the provincial capital Goma and are making arrangements for protection of staff in the area. The United Nations has advised international aid workers to leave Goma and recommended all national workers to stay at home...

Hostages freed: Two Austrian hostages held for months by Islamic militants in the Sahara have been freed and are now in the hands of Malian authorities, the Austrian and Malian governments said on Friday. Andrea Kloiber, then 43, and Wolfgang Ebner, then 51, disappeared in February while on holiday in Tunisia and are believed to have been held by al Qaeda's North African wing in a remote part of Mali deep in the Sahara.

It takes a thug to quell the thugs: Russia's troubled Ingushetia region appointed a tough paratroop commander as its new leader on Friday, a change the Kremlin is counting on to drag the region back from the brink of civil war. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday dumped Murat Zyazikov as president of Ingushetia, and nominated career soldier Yunus-Bek Yevkurov to replace him as head of the mainly Muslim region bordering Chechnya. The region suffers almost daily gunfights, ambushes and explosions -- alarming the Kremlin which is anxious to avoid a repeat of the separatist conflict in Chechnya in which thousands of people were killed. Yevkurov commanded the Russian troops who in 1999 took control of Pristina airport in Kosovo before advancing NATO troops could reach it, an operation that angered Washington but was seen at home as an audacious coup. "From what I hear, this is a tough guy, very tough," said Alexei Malashenko, a security analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank.

Bubbe, I love you! Jews my parents and grandparents age plan to vote for Obama in a greater percentage than Jews my age or my kids age! 74% to 68% and 67% respectively! So, Bubbe, Zaide - here's what you need to do. You need to schlep up to New York, or out to Vegas, or back to Overland Park; and you need to talk to your kids and your grandkids...Guilt them if you have to, threaten to change your will even - but get them to vote for Barack Obama!