This interview clip is heartening. President-elect Obama has put himself on record - he will “close Guantanamo” and he will “make sure that we don’t torture.”
The contrast between Obama’s remarks and the moral decay of the Bush administration is striking, and it is just one of the many reasons that November 4 marked a new era of hope for America.
In January, we can all celebrate our new President’s inauguration. And then we must do our job - we must hold him to his words.
Ralph Nader, in effect the best friend giant corporations ever had, may have completed the self-destruction of his entire legacy on election night. (Also, he somehow managed to make me think “I kind of like that Shepard Smith guy”).
Will Barack Obama be, Ralph asks, an “Uncle Tom for the giant corporations?”
Once upon a time, Nader’s stubborn sense of committment was a good thing. Now, his complete refusal to live in the real world seems to have combined with something else (insensitivity? racism? regular old narcissism?) to make him a really sad figure.
And Ralph appears to think that his way of advocating for important issues has changed. It seems that monkeying with presidential elections is now his way of contributing. Well, I must say that I really, really don’t like his last contribution. Not at all.
I’m humbly asking you to reconsider your vote, and to support Barack Obama for President of the United States. As election day is near, I will try to make my appeal brief. So, in the spirit of democracy and free exchange of ideas, I hope that you will consider the following five factors, in no particular order, before casting your vote:
1. The Supreme Court: John Paul Stevens is 88 years of age, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 75, Steven Breyer is 70, and David Souter is 69. If John McCain is elected, he will likely make at least one, maybe several SCOTUS appointments, and they will definitely be more conservative than any of the four justices mentioned above. This could have far-reaching influence over our nation for decades, especially since any McCain appointments would be joining the likes of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito to form an overwhelmingly arch-conservative court.
2. Energy and the Environment: I’ll leave it to the Sierra Club, who makes the case for Obama in a handy clean-energy scorecard. The difference between the two candidates is stark.
3. The Iraq War: We all know the difference: Obama had the foresight and good judgement to question this war from its inception, and is committed to ending it.
4. The Vice-Presidency: If Obama loses this election, Sarah Palin will be President of the United States if anything happens to John McCain. Sarah Palin. President. John McCain is a 72 year-old cancer survivor.
5. The 2000 Election: (This one speaks for itself).
Thank you for your consideration, and I hope that you will vote for the Obama-Biden ticket.
To me, the final numbers hinge on North Carolina and Florida. I think everything else will fall in line according to plan.
I think Florida is in the Obama column. And with North Carolina turning blue, I’d wager that the final count will be Obama 353, McCain 185. If the Tarheel state stays red, however, the numbers shift to Obama 338 and McCain 200. To my mind, these are the two most likely outcomes.
North Carolina is the closest race around; polling there indicates a tie or razor-thin margins for both candidates. But since this is the season of HOPE, I’m going for Carolina Blue. My prediction:
Obama 353, McCain 185
My final map:
And just a side note:
Even if McCain somehow manages to pick up North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, he still loses 270 to 268. Close but no cigar. He’d have to run the table on the mentioned states plus score Nevada to win. Good luck.
McCain mouthpiece Michael Goldfarb recently turned in one of the most stomach-turning performances of the entire campaign season. In this clip, Goldfarb takes the McCain camp’s desperate guilt-by-association strategy to new depths. Watch:
So, who is this other person? Is it that Goldfarb has no one else to offer, so he is being cryptic to hide his total lack of evidence for Obama’s alleged anti-Semitic ties? Or does he want us to think “ooooh…right…that Jeremiah Wright guy!” (In that case, he would be upholding the letter, but certainly not the spirit of the McCain campaign’s intent not to mention Wright. Wow. Such a sleazy way out). Or were his intentions even worse? Was he being evasive so as to allow viewers to plug in their worst fears? “Maybe it’s Bin Laden!” etc.
Michael - if you have evidence that Obama or anyone else is a racist or an anti-Semite, then share it. Otherwise, your pathetic, sleazy tactics demean your candidate and our political discourse. And they make you look like a sad, hateful, lying coward.
[UPDATE: Michael Goldfarb now officially joins Diane Fedele as a nominee for the Shameful Jackass of the Year Award. Good luck, Michael! (you jackass).]
The crowd actually erupts in cheers when McCain mocks nuclear safety. What is wrong with these people?
I’m sure many of those in the crowd could remember the partial meltdown of the nuclear plant at 3 Mile Island in the late 70s.
Or the devastating explosion of the Chernobyl reactor in the former Soviet Union in 1986.
Although McCain maintains that naval ships are safe, just last August the Navy was forced to admit that the USS Houston submarine had been leaking radioactive water for months before it was detected. In 2000, the Russians lost all hands on the nuclear sub Kursk. In fact, many nuclear-powered subs from both the Russian and US militaries lie on the bottom of the world’s oceans, posing an unknown threat to human and animal life.
And the comprehensive list of all military and civilian nuclear-related accidents is pretty damn sobering.
