West of Sane
Tea-bagger Allen West is a’bettin’
Abbas is a gangster and Islam ain’t a religion.
But my favorite strategy
Of his has to be
Calling his opponent Ron Klein a cretin.
Month: October 2010
CA Gov: Whitman’s Hypocrisy on ‘Whore’ Issue Evokes Laughter from Debate Audience
The “Whoregate” controversy was front and center in the final California gubernatorial debate between Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman last night. The controversy arose last week after the release of a secretly recorded conversation among Brown and his aides in which an adviser suggested attacking Whitman as a “whore” because she had sold out her own strong opposition to unions in order to receive a union endorsement.
The Whitman campaign has repeatedly portrayed the comment as a misogynist slur. But Brown came to the debate prepared and, in a single deft stroke, he managed to put the gaffe in context, undercut Whitman’s manufactured outrage and expose her as a hypocrite:
WHITMAN: So Jerry, it’s not just me, it’s the people of California who deserve better than slurs and personal attacks. That’s not what California is about. It is not our better selves. And I, um, think people know exact…I think every Californian, and especially women, know exactly what’s going on here. And that is a deeply offensive term to women.
BROWN: Well, can I just interject? Have you chastised your chairman, Pete Wilson, who called Congress “whores” to the public sector unions?
WHITMAN: You know better than that Jerry. That’s a completely different thing. The fact you are defending your campaign…
[Derisive LAUGHTER from audience.]
‘Hitch’ on Why All Politicians are Whack-Jobs
Want to know how we ended up with the current slate of uninspiring persons and loonies running for political office? Professional gadfly Christopher Hitchens nails it:
What normal person would consider risking their career and their family life in order to undergo the incessant barrage of intrusive questioning about every aspect of their lives since well before college? To face the constant pettifogging and chatter of Facebook and Twitter and have to boast of how many false friends they had made in a weird cyberland? And if only that was the least of it. Then comes the treadmill of fundraising and the unending tyranny of the opinion polls, which many media systems now use as a substitute for news and as a means of creating stories rather than reporting them. And, even if it ‘works,’ most of your time in Washington would be spent raising the dough to hang on to your job. No wonder that the best lack all conviction.
Verbatim
The tactic of making female politicians into whores is nothing new … It’s part of this whole idea that female sexuality and serious work are incompatible.
— Virginia congressional candidate Krystal Ball (D), in a statement, after racy photos of her were made available on the Internet.
A Closeted Carl?
That Carl Paladino has a heavy touch —
He thinks a soft-peddle is just a crutch.
But if you listen to what he says
About “dysfunctional gays,”
Methinks he doth protest too much!
New Ad Drives Home Rick Scott’s Dirty Deals
It’s hard to watch this video from the Alex Sink campaign and not care if she or Rick Scott is elected governor of Florida. One of the many things that bother me about Scott is how much he doesn’t get the concept of answering to the people — and if he is elected, he will be working for us, not a private corporate board. When Jeb Bush was governor, we were used to arrogance in Tallahassee but it was a different type. Rick Scott truly thinks he can tell us only what he wants to, and the rest is none of our business. It ain’t that way.
Obama Has Created 863K Jobs in 2010, More Than Double Average Annual Creation under Bush
One of the most galling examples of Republican double-speak this year is their assertion on one hand that the government cannot create jobs — which is demonstrably false; states and cities hire private contractors to build and repair roads all the time, just as one example — and then on the other hand their habit of blaming Pres. Obama for the high unemployment and excoriating the government for not creating more jobs. Which is it?
“Bush … shows the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records.”
-Wall St. Journal
-Wall St. Journal
The GOP will keep making these mutually exclusive arguments until a) the corporate media catches on (so don’t hold your breath) or b) they take control of Congress in three weeks, at which point their corporate masters had better start hiring or Speaker Wanna-Be Boehner will find himself with an approval rating even lower than his current rating of 22 percent — a full 11 points lower than Speaker Pelosi’s.
Despite the high unemployment rate caused by the Bush Recession — and Republicans’ refusal to invest in state and local budgets to prevent teachers, police officers and other public sector employees from being laid off — Pres. Obama is doing a better job at job creation than Republicans and the corporate media will acknowledge, especially when compared with his predecessor, George Bush.
As of the end of September, Obama had created 863,000 private sector jobs this year:
Private-sector payroll employment increased in September for the ninth straight month (every month this year). The increase of 64,000 jobs last month brings the total number of private-sector jobs added this year to 863,000, which is the largest 9-month gain in private payroll employment since the summer of 2007 (see top chart above).
Obama’s record so far is more than double the 375,000 jobs created by Bush on average each year during his eight years in office. Here’s how the ultra-right wing Wall St. Journal described Bush’s record in job-creation:
Obama’s Approval 6 Points Higher Than Reagan or Clinton Three Weeks Out from First Mid-terms
According to Gallup, Pres. Obama’s approval rating is now positive 48 percent to 46 percent. That’s a reversal from Sept. 8-9, when his approval/disapproval was 44/48, and a slight uptick from Sept. 16-17, when it was 47/46.
And you wouldn’t know it from listening to the vitriol coming from the corporate media and the GOP’s tea bagger base, but Pres. Obama is polling six percentage points ahead of presidents Reagan or Clinton three weeks out from their first mid-term elections:
