Well, the Nazi’s are at it again, or so it would seem. Apparently there have been rumors going around the anti-Palin blogosphere concerning her desire to compose a list of books to have banned while she was mayor of the small town in Alaska. This added to her now discovered false statements concerning selling jets on EBAY and firing official governor cooks is just more fodder for the ultra-paranoid left to write more blog posts attacking Palin and trying to get people to see just how wicked and Nazi-ish she really is.

Problem is, apparently this book burning story is completely false. I was watching Fox News today, you know to find out what the enemy is saying (apparently a WHOLE LOT LESS coverage of the Presidential election than MSNBC, which really REALLY surprised me.) They had some dude on there yacking about how the liberal media (by which they neglect to mention, they mean leftist blogs, which are NOT legitimate sources of news, regardless of how many people pretend that they are, and I mean this one too) were claiming that Palin tried to have books banned. I thought, “Huh, how about that… Good thing I don’t trust or even read leftist blogs, because I know every last site that presents commentary as if it were legitimate journalism is full of shit… Next Story.”

Then I get something from my friend Dave McReynolds in NYC that contained a mea culpa from some dude at www.flamesofdiscontent.org saying “Whoops. I got this book-burning story from someone I thought was a reliable source, and I heard the rumor on NPR, so I immediately wrote up a report and sent it out to presumably everyone on my email list. Sorry: it turns out it wasn’t correct after all, but that still doesn’t mean Palin isn’t dangerous.” Read the rest of this entry »

I want someone to go on television and say, “Well, the Republicans are fascists.” I want one of these pundits to discuss how the GOP is synonymous with the German Nazi Party. It’s a discussion that needs to be had. I just wanted to get that out there, in the blogosphere. In my opinion if you put a Republican Party activist and a Nazi with no german accent into a dark room and then asked them both to tell me what they believed, I don’t know that I would be able to tell which was which. The Republican Party is the Nazi Party of the United States, in my humble opinion. Period.

I’ve had the opportunity to tune in to a couple of the keynote speeches of the GOP convention now just ending. I watched Fred Thompson, Guilliani, Sarah Palin, and of course Mr McCain, the Republican Party’s nominee for President. I’ll dispense early with the speech I preferred of those four. John McCain’s speech was even. I noted a few jabs at his opponents, and the standard Republican fare we have all become accustomed to: More jobs, lower taxes, better schools, more money to religious institutions, against reproductive choice, middle class, Country first, military blah blah blah (notice he didn’t talk about immigration. That issue sort of lost salience when Tom Tancredo exited from the race). Not much new there. McCain’s speech, probably because he isn’t really that good a speaker (especially when compared to Obama), but more likely because I will bet he used his own speech (unlike Palin) was a decent speech, a nice rousing speech that I can’t find much fault in except it is for the Party of white millionaires Read the rest of this entry »

Today is the contest in the state of Pennsylvania. It is therefore apropos that the Wizard of S make a comment on it.

First the prediction: Clinton by 6 points, give or take 3.

What is behind the prediction? Well, let’s just call it a gut feeling. Clinton has been doing well in the state, though not as well today as a month ago. Obama has not been able to erode her support in the state to the point where he can win, so he will have to accept a single digit loss there. The cities are important for Obama, but the majority of the state is not city, and those areas tend to vote for Hillary. The “scandals” have not hurt Obama, but they also haven’t helped Clinton. So Clinton wins, as expected, and if I am wrong, I will issue a retraction.

Now to the accompanying analysis. Long have the political junkies in this country waited for another contest. SIX WEEKS! Over this time, we have seen the slugfest on television, but the one thing we haven’t seen is the effects that the hard campaign has had on the attitudes among not only the people in Pennsylvania, but also in the country. About a week or so ago, news reports began talking about Obama in terms of “When” not “if” he takes on McCain in the fall. Now Pundits say things like “What is Clinton doing?”, as if she had no reason to continue the process, and should have dropped out.

But these last few weeks demonstrate clearly why she stayed in the race after March. She has been able to continue promoting her agenda, even though she now faces an overwhelming tide of support for Obama in the country, on the television, and in people’s mind. She is now running the classic protest campaign, and I say good for her. The Socialist Party would do well to take at least this lesson from her: when you know you aren’t going to win, you stop trying to win and start saying what you really mean. She is in a position to put her real agenda out there, because it is very unlikely that she will have to implement any of it, OR defend it for very long. She knows she will probably not get the nomination, nor will she be considered for VP, so she has the latitude that Obama does not have, and that is the freedom to use the “kitchen sink” and whatnot.

Some seem to think that Clinton’s continued participation in the primaries is damaging the Democratic Party. Many television commentators discuss this ad infinitum. I think that Obama accurately stated it on the Daily Show last night when he said that by October, this will be old news, but not for the reason he said. He said that eventually voters will see that there is a real difference between what McCain proposes and what generic Democrat, probably Obama proposes, and they will forget the bickering. Yeah, but this is not why they will vote Democrat.

First consider this Hypothetical Distribution of votes in the US electorate this year. This is on the standard left-right spectrum, and everything is clearly labeled. Read the rest of this entry »