The McSame to Gretchen Wieners Transformation is Complete. Oh Yeah, and 10 Days Till Obama Wins.

We're entering the final days of the campaign, so in the spirit of winding down, kick back and watch some TV.



Voting. Ohhhhh yeaahhhhhh...

This is so classic it's Beethoven:



Meanwhile, this is straddling the line between classic and creepy:

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Sigh. Ready for some reading, doggone it?

Let's start off with the deep, dark WTF that is the latest in a long blast of WTF diarrhea coming from the McSame camp.

I'm sure by now you've all heard about that truly unfortunate-looking McSame volunteer in Pittsburgh who claimed she was attacked and sexually assaulted by a big black man who didn't like her McSame bumper stickers. He even carved a letter "B" into her face with a knife so dull it looked almost like it had been drawn on with a marker.

And even more ingeniously, he carved it backwards, just as it would appear if this dumbass b*tch drew it on herself in a mirror. Smart guy.

Almost as smart as McSame campaign. They even knew all the details of the attack before the police released them! Come on, people, seriously: would you really rather vote for the guy whose first letter of his first name got drawn onto the cheek of the Pillsbury doughgirl, or the clairvoyant who magically knew the race-baiting completely-coincidentally-October-surprise-like details of the attack before anyone else?

Ya gotta hand it to him, folks. When that phone rang at 3am, McSame was all over that shit. It was the KKK, btw.

Here's the CNN article, including your new quote of the day:

"She said she has prior mental problems and doesn't know how the backward letter 'B' got on her face."

I bet one of those things is true.

Here's BarbinMD's diary, including a clip from MSNBC corroborating Barbin's evidence that this was all yet another disgutingly, disturbingly racist McSame campaign ploy.

Anyway...

Dana Milbank of WaPo writes an inspiring column about the Fake Americans trapped in Real America during Richmond VA's Obama rally.

Kula2316 at DailyKos once again writes a great morning roundup, which includes such juicy nuggets as MSM reactions to the news of Quaylin's bougie media whoredrobe as well as new national polls showing Obama with a more impressive lead than ever with only 10 days to go.

Heyyyyyah!

And here's some really great news: I, for one, kicked the sh*t out of my bank account on Saturday night (and again on Sunday) donating to Equality for All's campaign to vote No on Prop 8 in California, and I'm sure you all did your best...

IT WORKED. The LATimes reports that Prop 8 is once again losing ground in the polls, with people opposing it by 52%-44%.

LeftofArizona at DailyKos has the story.

Try not to die of shock: the NYTimes endorses Barack Obama. Worth a read.

I shudder to think how much money I could be bathing in if I were skilled at giving celebrity bikini waxes. No really. I shudder.

Okay so the polling isn't up-to-the-minute at this point, but this was the best read of the past few days.

And finally, to bring my McSame campaign = Mean Girls analogy of previous weeks around full circle: in light of all the real dumb sh*t the wingnuts have been saying - and subsequently apologizing for - about the "real" America, I believe it's safe to say that the entire GOP is suffering from a terrible case of what Cady Heron would call "word vomit."

I refer you to the Urban Dictionary search results.

Aaaand because I've made an extremely apt comparison of John McSame::Gretchen Wieners, please find in the below clip, only about 20 seconds in, the infamous scene in which "Gretchen Wieners cracks." This should illustrate my point nicely, as well as save you the trouble of listening to anything McSame says for the next 10 days. Because this is what he will say. Word for word.



Keep it up.

Egregious LOLZ and a message from Quaylin.

Was There Too Much Sex And Profanity In The HBO Presidential Debate?

"McCain seemed to be completely in his element when he said Senator Obama's foreign policy resume was shorter than a c*nt hair."

LOLZ.

So, I finally watched the Quaylin "Weekend Update" sketch on SNL. I was gathering my thoughts...I was preparing to write about how much Amy Poehler rocked that rap...and about how bizarre it was that Quaylin was sitting there boppin' along gosh darnit while she was being COMEDICALLY EVISCERATED...and then I read BestWeekEver and saw that Sara Schaefer has already done all relevant analysis for me. Clip included.

Today has been a pretty slow news day...don't know why. But it has been chock full of the juicy LOLZ we've come to expect at this magical time of year...

In excellent news: It's officially two weeks until we get to call George W. Bush a "lame duck" without getting wiretapped or having our library records searched! OMG!

In light of that news, I bring you this. To the good people of Vermont, we solute your empty symbolic gesture. No really. We do. What? I think it's funny.

And now, a message from the Republican Nominee for Leader of the Senate IMEAN Vice President:



Ya know what, fellas? If there's one thing real Amer'cans love about that doggone Sarah Palin even more than my gosh darn tootin' down home lovability and also my small-town talk-a-roony diddly doo, it would hafta be my record on fightin' all that dagnab gov'ment spendin'! Ya know, also, it's like, gov'ment get outta my way darnit!

Well...wait just a durn minute theer, gov'ment...ya know, before ya get outta my way - cuz also, ya know, I really do wantcha gone! - but if, also, before ya go theer, maybe ya could jus leave me, ya know, only maybe $21,000 theer for my daughters' travel expenses? Nooo, they weren't invited to those conferences, but, see right here I can just fill out this form right here and then it's the same thing as them, ya know, traveling for business! And then you can pay for it!

But then, ya know, get right outta my way, theer. And take that bridge with ya, also!

...Okay, so maybe I just like doing the Quaylin voice, even if it's only typed...But seriously. And that's nothing to the $150,000 the RNC spent to pay for the woman's outfits. No wonder they keep talking about how put-together and attractive she is! Sheesh.

Forget what you heard about the polls tightening in the home stretch: Pew has Obama up by 14 POINTS in their latest national poll. This is sure to drive the wingnuts' spirits even deeper into the mud. Speaking of which, Pew found that:

"Republicans also are increasingly pessimistic about their party’s chances next month. While there has been an across-the-board increase in the proportion of voters predicting an Obama victory since mid-September, the shift among Republicans has been particularly pronounced. About as many Republican voters now see an Obama victory as say McCain will win (40% Obama, 35% McCain). In mid-September, 70% of Republicans said McCain would win compared with just 13% who said Obama was more likely to win."

The shifted narrative is working, and the polls reflect that. We are on our way to a win. But with Obama taking a couple of days off the campaign trail to visit his ailing grandmother, it is more important than ever that we follow up on all of this great news.

Let's seal the deal!

Also in the polls, the NYTimes finally reports on Obama closing the polling gap in North Carolina. Oh, newspapers! It's so great to unfold your crisp, sweet smelling pages, pour a hot cup of coffee, and settle down to read last month's news!
Seriously, does anybody even read the paper any more? Better yet, why? And now for something else from the newspaper. Heh. NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman, of recent Nobel-prize related talk, takes a trip down memory lane to that foul year of our lord 1971, among others, to remind us that the modern conception of the GOP as the party of the average Samuel Wurzelbacher was forged by the Nixon spin machine through politics of hatred and division. But

"Whatever today’s G.O.P. is, it isn’t the party of working Americans."

You go, Paul Krugman. How bout cuttin me in on that prize money? Right.

I leave you with this though, readers: Because there's a tv playing the Faux News Channel at work, I got to see this amusing lil tidbit...

Bill O'Reilly apparently still thinks somebody gives a sh*t about the Bill Ayers thing.

GUFFAW!

And I'm done.

Weekend Roundup. Judgement Day Approacheth.

Well, kids, it's been a hell of a weekend. My eyes are bloodshot to hell and I wish I could say it was the result of some illicit activity, but actually I've just been staring at 6 computer screens for 8 hours a day. That's like staring at 48 computer screens for 1 hour a day.

Anyway, I'm sure you've all been riding the zany rollercoaster of politics that was the past 72 hours. From the parched desert that is the tightening of the polls, past the rocky hills of fake America to the sandy shore of the Colin Powell endorsement, join me, if you will, in this edition of the Weekend Roundup.

ICYMI: BestWeekEver brings us the Best Candidate Picture Ever, and then the even better version of it.

Also via BWE, Complex Blog keeps track of the most racist moments of the campaign.

Nate Silver's Saturday blog is all about perspective. He talks about the recent tightening of the national polls, and what they mean (or in this case, don't mean) for the election.

The conclusion? Don't fret too much, readers; not only is the tightening of the race a phenomenon which occurs every election year, but McSame shows basically zero improvement in the state polls. And of course, those numbers are closer to what will decide the election. Nate guesses the last debate pushed some of those unenthused republicans into the "likely voter" category that's getting them counted on the national polls.

So, to review: state polls = unmoved. Approval ratings = unmoved. Obama = definitely won the debate. So don't worry; but don't become complacent. Obama and our dem nominees for congress still need as much support as you can give.

The election is still 16 days away, and with new concerns popping up everyday about how the right will attempt to steal the election away, the last thing we should do is give them the opportunity.

ACT and DONATE.

Maybe you couldn't tell, but I do so adore being able to spin things for the left...and more than that, I love how our collective efforts to change the MSM narrative have worked, and now we can sit back and watch them spin it our way (with many obvious exceptions). Like, for instance, how the MSM has seized on this comment by McSame's Pfotenhauer (remember her?) that northern Virginia, where Obama has been making great gains, is not the "real Virginia."

And with all of the discussion of what, exactly, Quaylin and McSame consider to be "real" like the towns where Quaylin rallies, but unlike northern Virginia, Nate Silver throws up some statistics about what America looks like by race and income to both Quaylin and Obama.

And finally, on the topic of "real" America...a topic, BTW, as undeserving as any we've ever covered here at WTF, the repository of undeserving stories...if this ain't real, I don't know what is. Here are some pictures of the 75,000 people who turned out to see Obama in Kansas City on Saturday...and the 100,000 people who gathered to hear him speak in St. Louis. Man, fake America is really psyched about this election.

Nate Silver on the shifted election narrative:

"Contrary to some observers, I think that there is far more downside to the Republicans in resignation, fatalism and low morale than there is to the Democrats in complacency."

And our LOL of the Weekend is:

“Democratic capitalism remains the greatest system ever devised.”
~GWB

From Gail Collins' Friday column.

The column is worth a read - in addition to slinging some real zingers at W, it sums up the "Joe the Plumber" dramz pretty well, if you haven't been following.

Like my friend Kim says, the hilarious part of all the Joe Plumber biz is that he opposes the Obama "no tax cuts for those making more than $250,000" policy, not because HE makes more money than that, but because he hopes one day he MIGHT make more money than that.

And he'll be goddamned if he'll take any of those government handouts before he really earns 'em.

Meantime, Columnist Charles Blow at the NYT calls the election for Obama. And man, does he paint a beautiful picture of this country next January.

The wayward wizards of Wall Street delivered the election to Obama by pushing the economy to the verge of collapse, forcing leery voters to choose between their pocketbooks and their prejudices. McCain delivered it to Obama with his reckless pick of Sarah Palin. That stunt made everything that followed feel like a stunt, tarnishing McCain’s reputation and damaging his credibility so that when he went negative it backfired. And, some radical rabble among McCain’s supporters delivered it to Obama by mistaking his political rallies for lynch mobs.

This perfect storm of poor judgments has set the stage for an Obama victory. It’s over.

And Frank Rich's column in the NYTimes absolutely SPANKS McSame. Rich points out what the large majority of voters already know, perhaps subconsciously...that it is not McSame's 90% voting record with Bush that makes him like Bush, but the way he has run his campiagn (into the ground). That's why his continued dirty, negative, Rovian politics just keep pounding him further into the ground: we've heard it all before. It's too bad for McSame he didn't run his 200 campaign like he's run this one, 8 years before Americans figured out what this kind of campaigning says about a candidate's leadership skills.

"At least McCain had half a point on Wednesday night when he said, “I am not President Bush.” What he has offered his country this year is an older, crankier, more unsteady version of Bush."

Here's a shocker: All the GOP's whining about ACORN voter fraud was inevitably just a cover-up for the Repulsicans' own large-scale voter suppression efforts.

Take a minute to go to VotePoke and make sure you're registered and ready to go - don't get caught off-guard on election day by this sleaze.

In other dirty Republican tricks this weekend: It's tough trying to keep you abreast of the many and varied GOP attempts to steal our votes this year, but I'll try:

In North Carolina, a straight party ticket does not include the presidential race...

Voting touch screens in West Virginia check the "McSame" box no matter what box you touch...

And pending further information, you can check out Voter Suppression Wiki to find or report voter suppression attempts in your area, and rest easy knowing at least one of those a**holes got arrested.

Gear up Philadelphians! Apparently McSame thinks he's going to win over enough voters in Northeast and South Philly to turn Pennsylvania red! Let me be the first to say: NO F*CKING WAY!

Casperr at DailyKos is confident that this will inspire those canvassing for Obama to work even harder...and I'm sure they could use some help! If you have evenings or weekends free, get out there and join them!

And finally: no, I didn't see Quaylin on SNL last night. I don't have cable and I couldn't watch videos at work today, so you'll just have to wait for more snark on that. What I did see is THIS SITE WHICH HAS GIVEN ME A NEW PURPOSE IN LIFE. Find stencils to make your own Barack-O-Lantern and see pics of ones that other people carved.

YES WE CARVE!

Peace and happy week mofos.

DailyKos and Defeating CA's Proposition 8

Greetings, readers...a weekend roundup is forthcoming, but I wanted to make sure to plug tonight's "Hell to Pay" at DailyKos...

If you're not familiar with it it's a great Saturday night fundraising session...throughout the week the team at Kos keeps track of any and all despicable campaigning by the wingnuts...at the end of the week, Kossacks vote for the worst offense and Saturday evenings are spent raising ridiculous amounts of money for the offender's opponent. Kind of like a weekly version of what happened on Friday with newly outed McCarthy-esque psycho Michele Bachman and her Dem opponent with the goofy name, Elwyn Tinklenberg. Yeah, for the love of bob, donate to that guy.

But anyway, tonight's Hell to Pay is raising donations to help defeat California's Proposition 8, which would eliminate gay marriage in the state by writing discrimination into the constitution. No one in California really though Prop 8 would pass and, as a result, the religious wingnuts championing it gained a lot of ground. Now the polls show both sides are in for a fight, so go forth to DailyKos at 8pm and donate.

Equal Rights for all Americans! Defeat Prop 8!

Good News All Around: Obama Wins, Phils Win, Kenley Loses.

IT WAS A GREAT NIGHT.

So, I know the debate happened last night, and we'll get to that in a mo...not that it changed anything...

By now you all know how obsessed I am with FiveThirtyEight. Not least of all because I love looking at the little pie chart that now says there's a 95.1% probability that Obama will win the election. Not to mention a 53.6% chance of an Obama landslide. YEAH B*TCHES!

Hoo. Anyway, see what our old buddy Nate Silver (who was hard at work just as early as I was, apparently) has to say about the early voter turnout in swing states.

It's looking really good, people. The early votes show a MUCH bigger advantage for Obama than the state polls have. Of course, we can't take the early voting results as necessarily indicative of the overall election results...Nate says early voters are 98-99% strongly partisan, so it's not really those swing voters who are getting their votes in early...

On the other hand, in the past the early voter population has been older and more male than the overall population; in 200 and 2004, this translated to an early vote count that trended Republican. So what do the bright blue numbers mean?

"What these results would seem to suggest, however, is that there are fairly massive advantages for the Democrats in enthusiasm and/or turnout operations. They imply that Obama is quite likely to turn out his base in large numbers; the question is whether the Republicans will be able to do the same.

Keep in mind that there are veteran pollsters like Ann Selzer who think that most of her colleagues are vastly understating the degree to which youth and minority turnout is liable to improve in this election; Selzer's polls have been 5-6 points more favorable to Obama than the averages in the states that she's surveyed. So while these early voting numbers could turn out to be something of a curiosity, they could alternatively represent a canary in the coal mine for a coming Democratic turnout wave."

All signs point to victory.

And hekebolos at DailyKos has some personal insight into possible reasons for a great early voter turnout that also brings great hope for election day: apparently, the canvassing volunteers for the Obama campaign are incredibly well-prepared and well-organized. See, that's the kind of thing that makes me feel good about donating.

Oh, yeah, remember yesterday's blog when we talked about how negative advertising is all McSame has left? Yeah? Oh oh oh it's not working.

From Harold Moss, who animated the "History of the USA"segment from "Bowling for Columbine," a cartoon explaining the difference between what McSame and the GOP say about the Iraq War and the truth. That is to say, everything.

Now on to the debate, since we must! But first, Relevant Rhino cracked me up yesterday with his vision of how the debate would go.

So here's my reaction to the debate: THE PHILLIES ARE GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES!!!

No, seriously, I didn't really watch the debate. I just assumed it was going to be as boring as the last two...but I did catch some of it between commercials: the "I'm not Bush" line, the question about their nasty campaign ads, and the part where they spoke about abortion.

One thing I was really confused about on McSame's part was why in the name of bob he would BRING UP the comments of Rep John Lewis?? This is just one more example of his campaign keeps chopping off it's own legs in an effort to put even a scratch in Obama's lead. How McSame thought he was going to remind voters that his and Palin's conduct had been compared to that of a virulent racist, and simultaneouly make Obama look like the bad guy for not speaking out against what was a scalding and frankly apt comparison, I'll never know.

My impression was that McSame did quite well at giving the wingnuts what they wanted; thus, this debate became just another chapter in the long, tragic tale of how his campaign seems to have forgotten that they need to focus on winning INDEPENDENT voters.

And none of the Repulsicans seem to get that. Yesterday, WaPo asked five different pundits for their opinions on what might make tonight's debate actually mean something. It was interesting, not really as political analysis but as a partisan case study. The breakdown:

Democrats: "Obama will come out on top/Nothing McSame does will improve his chances."
Republicans: "McSame has a chance to shift the campaign momentum, and he should do it by attacking Obama and the left."
Me: "The debate will be boring/Kenley will lose or else/Go Phillies."

It's like the right never picks up a newspaper! I'm certain that's what his base wants to see - but to be frank, with the CBS/NYT poll showing only 39% of likely voters would pull the lever for McSame, I think it's clear he's gonna need to win over some folks outside of his base. And if they hadn't noticed, the negativity really isn't doing it for them.

Frankly, to me, the way McSame's been running his campaign is the ultimate proof that he's just another George W: they appear to have in common the uncanny ability to pursue a failed strategy in the face of almost universal disagreement and dismay. Beating a dead horse with another dead horse while a chorus of dead horses sing "The old gray mare just ain't what she used to be." Is that a strategy or a tactic?

Anyway, here's what the WaPo pundits had to say about the debate in today's "PostPartisan."

It's funny, but the fact that the debate was so much more interesting that the other three seems to have made the post-debate analysis proportionately more boring. But it was great to watch CNN's 360 crew last night as one by one the pundits agreed McSame had performed better than ever, and then the polls came in showing Obama won by an even bigger margin than he had the previous debates. That brief pause in which they all try to figure out how to reconcile McSame's "improved" performance with people "loving Barack Obama even more with each passing moment" was hi-larious.

Well, what can we expect, really? It was pretty much the end of all hope for the McSame campaign. StuHunter at DailyKos put together an impressive list of all of the right wing pundits jumping ship on the McSame campaign.

So what are the pundits supposed to say? Kula2316's post-debate roundup shows you their best efforts.

Peas and mushrooms. Donate.

Moose and Squirrel Always Win. (yesterday's blog)

Moose and squirrel? No? Anybody.

Number One Headline of All Time.

Philly to Quaylin: Get Your Ice Outta Here! (Yuk yuk yuk.)



Hear that roaring at the beginning? Yeah, that would be mass booing. So much booing that they turned up the music to try and drown it out.

I knew I could count on my surly Philly fans to boo the sh*t out of Quaylin! What were they thinking having her drop the puck in Philly?? (See BWE for more on that)As far as I'm concerned, she got off really easy...she probably took her kids out on the ice with her to prevent a battery-filled-snowball-related event. I don't want this woman eating my cheesesteaks and I sure as hell don't want her mojo near my hockey team. KEEP QUAYLIN OUT OF PHILLY! SHE'S SPEWING ALL OVER OUR BROTHERLY LOVE!

Gadzooks.

Kula2316 at DailyKos puts togather another fantabulous early morning roundup, featuring everyone's favorite painted-up pittbull lampooned by the Anchorage Daily News for her...singular...interpretation of the Troopergate findings...

...as well as the hype over McSame's soon- to-be-announced new economic plan. I'll give you a hint: it involves suspending something...t-rex arms...and a geriatric golf cart. GO!

Frank Rich at the NYTimes takes a closer look at the racist rhetoric the McSames are using to stoke the anger of the crazed, slobbering wingnut mobs.

Oh, BTW...Obama now leads by double digits in the WaPo/ABC and Gallup, Battleground and CBS/NYTimes polls. That could have something to do with his scrumtralescent big leads in 4 key states.

And here's an interesting article from WaPo analyzing the advertising from both campaigns. You've probably heard that Obama is far outspending McSame on TV ads (his campaign has more money since he declined to accept public funding and the spending limits that go along with it), but this goes into a bit more detail...for example, you may not have known (though you may have guessed) that 100% of McSame's advertising is now negative, while only a third of Obama's is negative. (The ROFLZ roll in when you find out that means they're putting out about the same number of negative ads.) It was also interesting to learn that the ads from the RNC are much less effective than ads put out by the McSame campiagn itself, because they cannot specifically endorse candidates, only discuss issues, and therefore are usually somewhat vague and almost always negative.

Oh, and speaking of the RNC, yeah they just gave up on McSame. The GOP is basically pulling out of the McSame camapign like a Wasilla contraceptive and is now just rushing around trying to save it's own ass in congress. HIlarity. Don't forget, we have them on the ru, and now is the time to FINISH THEM OFF! Visit ActBlue to find endless ways to turn our country blue, blue, blue this election. You can donate to key candidates and cool causes all over the country. Like Kos says, we will win, but let's not settle for mere victory: let's "break their backs and crush their spirits" and do our best to ensure a filibuster-proof democratic majority for years to come.

Roger Simon at Politico examines the mixed messages coming out of the McSame campaign, and - surprise, surprise - Quaylin's back to being a liability.

Last night I dreamed that I should write in the blog that a permanent copy of McSame's medical history was to go on display in Takeshi's Castle. And that it's written in braille.

Arianna (of the Huffington Post, natch) attacks McSame on his last tiny shred of campaign hope, foreign policy, and urges Obama and Biden to do the same.

I'm doing my blogging early today and the news is pretty slow - so on a whim I headed over to the BBC to see what kind of odds they were giving the flailing McSame. The answer, as I expected, is "not very good ones."

"Mr Obama has obviously energised both minority and young voters, two groups that historically turn out in lower numbers.

Democrats have scored very well in registering both. If they vote in numbers that Democrats hope for, Mr McCain's chances of running the table of contested states will be very, very slim. "

The BBC article, unlike most of it's American counterparts, openly denies the likelihood of the election being affected by the "Bradley effect." (Which you've probably heard of by now, but just in case: it's a highly disputed theory that far fewer voters will cast ballots for a person of color on election day than supported that candidate in the polls. You can read more about it here.

Oh, yeah and this just in: McSame Economic Plan:

*BELLS*lowertaxes*WHISTLES*fortherich*PIZAZZ*

In conclusion, I apologize for my extended absence...I was away over the weekend and even though I wrote this blog yesterday morning, since I had to get up at 3am for work, I kinda slipped into a coma on the couch when I got home and never posted it. But, look, I'm posting it so early today it's like I posted it late last night! Yea!

Until...later...20 days left! Act for Barack or turn congress blue. Go get 'em tigers.

And Of Course, Palin DID Abuse Her Power

In the Troopergate Scandal. This released moments ago and I have to go home, but I'd be amiss if I didn't link you in...

NYTimes coverage.