Judge: Palin a Child Abuser

Sarah Palin is a child abuser! A judge says so!

What's that you say? The judge actually said that Palin's constant harassment of her ex-brother-in-law "amounted to a form of child abuse?" And that's not the same thing as calling Palin herself a child abuser?

Really? You think calling Palin a child abuser is a distortion of the truth? Kind of like saying Obama wants to teach three-year-olds to have sex when the truth is that he might have supported a bill (which never passed) requiring existing sex-education classes to include how to avoid predators?

Picky, picky! A judge criticized Palin using the term "child abuse" - that's not in dispute. Nor is the fact that an Illinois Senate committee on which Obama served approved a bill that included the term "sex education."

Yet television stations all over the country are running McCain/Palin ads that falsely accuse Obama of wanting to teach three-year-olds how to put on condoms.

So I'm calling Caribou Barbie a child abuser. And I'm going to keep calling Miss Alaska runner-up a child abuser until the Obama campaign starts fighting fire with fire.

(X-rated Rude Pundit excerpts after the jump.)

Unless the Obama campaign starts throwing shit at McCain, it will be over. Yeah, Obama wants to change politics, but ask anyone who has ever tried to subvert a system: you gotta do it from the inside. And if you cringe at the idea of Obama stepping into the muck and mire of post-Atwater poltics, then ask yourself: will he get more done by keeping his shoes clean and losing?

The truly aggravating thing is watching opportunity after opportunity pass by the Obama campaign. Here's some advice to them: you are not living in subtle times. You are living in an era in our nation where people only react if you use a fucking mallet, not a stiletto, to get your point across.

SNIP

So, dear Obama campaign, you have to use the word "lie." You wanna make an ad about the Bridge to Nowhere? Call McCain and Palin's assertions "lies." People don't give a fuck about "exaggerations" or "misleading statements." That's lawyer talk. Don't you get it, you stupid fucks? You call the Bridge to Nowhere statement or the plane-on-E-bay line a lie, you say it everywhere you and your people go, and then the McCain campaign has to prove it's not a fucking lie. That's the way this cocksucking game works. The honorable part is in not being a fucking liar yourself.

Goddamnit. Every fucking election the Rude Pundit can remember the word "lie" has been out there, low fruit, ready to be plucked, but the Democratic candidates are just too pussified to reach for it. John Kerry went down in flames because he didn't call out liars.

And it's not only the issue of lying. Go after their personal weaknesses. You should be making ads that imply McCain is too old to be president. And if you're criticized for it, you gotta say, "I think it's up to Senator McCain to demonstrate he has the necessary energy for this job."

Stay angry. Again: The McCain campaign just said that Barack Obama wants to teach 6 year-olds how to fuck. That deserves a little more of a response than it's "perverse" or whatever shit the Obama campaign just put out.

You want the best route? Here it is: emasculate John McCain. Use Palin to cut his nuts off. Constantly say shit like, "Am I running against John McCain or Sarah Palin?" or "If the Republicans wanted her to be president, they should have nominated her" or "Maybe Republicans are used to a vice president that runs the show" or whatever. Make McCain have to defend himself. Turn him into Palin's bitch. It'll make him insane. And if there's one thing that Republicans hate most about women, it's the perception of the castrating bitch telling men what to do (see all the shit about Hillary Clinton).

In other words, Obama campaign, as so many others have advised, go on offense, and that means you have to offend.

And Sarah Palin is a child abuser.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

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Unfit for Any Office

Beyond the worse-than-Bush policies, past the lit-fuse temper, more than the war-is-always-the-answer philosophy, one thing above all proves John McCain is unfit to serve in any elected office, much less that of president.

Josh Marshall cuts to the point:

John McCain is running a campaign almost entirely based on straight up lies. Not just exaggerations or half truths but the sort of straight up, up-is-down mind-blowers we've become so accustomed to from the current occupants of the White House. And today McCain comes out with this rancid, race-baiting ad based on another lie.

SNIP

This is ugly stuff. And this is an ugly person. There's clearly no level of sleaze this guy won't stoop to to win this election.

SNIP

(More after the jump.)

Winning and losing is never fully in one's control -- not in politics or in life. What is always within our control is how we fight and bear up under pressure. It's easy to get twisted up in your head about strategy and message and optics. But what is already apparent is that John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes. So let's stopped being shocked and awed by every new example of it. It is undignified.

What can we do? We've got a dangerously reckless contender for the presidency and a vice presidential candidate who distinguished her self by abuse of office even on the comparatively small political stage of Alaska. They've both embraced a level of dishonesty that disqualifies them for high office. Democrats owe it to the country to make clear who these people are. No apologies or excuses. If Democrats can say at the end of this campaign that they made clear exactly how and why these two are unfit for high office they can be satisfied they served their country.

Kevin Drum goes further, pessimistically speculating that McCain's record-breaking campaign of lies may have already destroyed the ability of the next administration to accomplish anything - regardless of who wins.

John McCain has obviously decided that he can't win a straight-up fight, so he's decided instead to wage a battle of character assassination, relentless lies, and culture war armageddon. So what happens on November 5th?

If McCain wins, he'll face a Democratic congress that's beyond furious. Losing is one thing, but after eight years of George Bush and Karl Rove, losing a vicious campaign like this one will cause Dems to go berserk. They won't even return McCain's phone calls, let alone work with him on legislation. It'll be four years of all-out war.

And what if Obama wins? The last time a Democrat won after a resurgence of the culture war right, we got eight years of madness, climaxing in an impeachment spectacle unlike anything we'd seen in a century. If it happens again, with the lunatic brigade newly empowered and shrieking for blood, Obama will be another Clinton and we'll be in for another eight years of near psychotic dementia.

Am I exaggerating? Sure. Am I exaggerating a lot? I don't think so. McCain, in his overwhelming desire for office, is unloosing forces that are likely to make the country only barely governable no matter who wins. This would be very bad juju at any time, but George Bush has so seriously weakened the country over the course of his administration that we don't have a lot of room for error left if we want to avoid losing the war on terror for good and turning America into a banana republic while we're at it. We need to start turning the ship around now.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

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Finally on Offense

Two new Obama ads to run in battleground states, and both finally take the fight to McCain. The first one actually uses the L word, accusing McShame/Caribou Barbie of lying. The second attacks Walnuts Depends for taking money away from public education.

Enjoy.



(More after the jump)



Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

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The Baseball Campaign Ad That Democrats Should Run, But Won't

Here's the scenario:

FADE IN to a Major League baseball stadium. A game is under way, and it's in the later innings. A runner is on third base. A batter hits a fly ball to the right fielder. The right fielder zeros in on it and catches it like a first-rate pro. The runner tags up and goes for home plate. This outfielder has a rifle for an arm. But he throws the ball into the bleachers, and then does a victory dance, arms raised in triumph. The runner scores. Everyone in the stadium shakes their head. FADE OUT.

FADE IN: The right fielder comes to bat in the bottom half of the inning. There's a runner on first.

The right fielder nails a line drive into the left-center alley, and the ball goes all the way to the wall. It looks like a certain triple, and an RBI.

But the right fielder takes off in a sprint for third base, running the bases backasswards. The runner who was on first advances to second, but then pulls up, not sure what the hell to do.

The opposing team members look on in amazement when the right fielder rounds the bases, backasswards, with Ty Cobb aggression, and slides into first base, spikes up. Nobody will go near this fucking maniac, not even the umps.

FADE OUT TO BLACK. "A Voice" comes on, soft and fast, as in a disclaimer:

"Being able to get things done doesn't necessarily mean you will get them done right. The Republican Party has brought us George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, the Iraq war, Medicare cuts, and $4-a-gallon gasoline. They've done plenty, only backwards."

FADE IN, back to the right fielder aggressively sliding into first base from the wrong direction. "A Voice" again: "Don't you think we should change direction, and soon?

FADE OUT TO BLACK: "I'm Howard Dean, and I approved this message. ARRRRAAAAGGGHHHHAAAA!!!!

Crossposted at Manifesto Joe.

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