This is what a counter-punch looks like

I have to say, for me, Palin's recent humping of the Ayers dog has been a low point of the campaign so far. Her attempt to paint Obama with terrorist taint because of his acquaintanceship with Ayers, despite that fact Obama denounced Ayers former activities, is sickening, and frankly an attempt to tie into racist leanings that want to connect Obama to every dark-skinned, funny-named monster lurking in Joe SixPack's collective psyche.

So, here's the counter-punch, and the Obama campaign ought to go ahead and use it. David Talbot talks in Salon today about the Palins and the Alaska Independence Party. Founded by a continually-armed man whose rhetoric was incendiary to say the least and who spoke at the UN under the auspices of Iran, the AIP held Todd Palin as a member and their tactics were given the old Sarah Palin wink-and-nod when she was governor.

It is time for the Obama campaign to step things up a bit. If they want to fight a personality campaign, let's expose just how wretched, self-centered and hypocritical their personalities are.

In Al Franken's book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, he tells the story of the time Paul Wolfowitz said to him "Fuck you!" at the White House Press Dinner. And Franken concludes the book, which exposed so much Right-wing dissembling and treachery and malice, saying, and I paraphrase, "The next time an asshole like Paul Wolfowitz says 'Fuck you!,' look him in the eye and say, 'No, fuck YOU.'"

It is time to counter-punch, it is time to say to these two ruthless, lying (sons-a-)bitches, "No, fuck YOU."

McCain's New Smoke Grenade (For Once It's Not "I Was A POW")

I'm watching cable news right now and it just came in as "breaking news" that McCain has announced he's suspending his campaign tomorrow morning to go to Washington to "deal with" the financial crisis.

He made some sort of mamby-pamby remark about how after 9/11 that politicians all came together with no politics to deal with the emergency. He says we should be doing that during this emergency. I'm pretty sure he used the word patriotism at least once.

That they did that 7 years ago is complete bullshit, the GOP made 9/11 political from the very first second, and this is just a political ploy by McCain as he knows he needs to look like he knows something about dealing with the economy, because nobody believes he does.

He's also calling for postponing the first debate on Friday.

The Republicans sure do love to suspend democracy in times of crises. As for suspending politics? Do you believe for a minute that the McCain surrogates stop slamming Obama during this "suspension?"

Does anyone else think that this is more about John McCain's debate prep not going very well?

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TBO's Update: Naturally, Obama's not taking the bait, and uses the opportunity to raise the stakes:

"Presidents are going to have to deal with more than one thing at a time," he said, "it is not necessary for us to think we can do only one thing and suspend everything else."

Ad: Patriotic Act, & Why I don't want Biden's job

It didn't take the McCain long to jump on Biden's Good Morning America comments on tax increases for those making $250,000+/year and release this ad:



Deni handles well the underlying problem with McCain's attacks in the previous entry (how is paying taxes not patriotic, especially when fighting a war? - just because it isn't on the budget doesn't mean it ain't tax dollars feeding and clothing the military), and the independent Tax Policy Center has already done a better job of debunking the claims made than I could ever do. I just want to talk for a moment about this ad as an ad.

Because the first word that comes to mind is "slapdash." Seriously, this ad could be created on my 3+ year old Mac laptop in an hour. It isn't meant to have a long life, except to be passed among party faithful. It's the photocopied flyer version of a television ad.

Which I take as a recognition, somewhere down in the reptilian brain of the McCain campaign (how you like that illiteration?), that these kind of attack ads are nothing more than jabs, meant to keep the opponent off-balance and reactive while accepting that none of them will be a knock-out punch.

(I think that's why I didn't like this ad much - it seems like a cheap jab, when the opponent actually dropped the hands far enough to be taken out with roundhouse.)

All it took was one moment, one perhaps-not-ideal choice of phrase, by Biden to open up the attack.

And this is why I don't want Biden's job. Because he has to debate Palin.

Do I think Palin will "beat" Biden? The very idea made me spit-take tea all over the aforementioned laptop. No, that's not the problem.

I can't imagine being in his position, knowing you can mop the floor with this clueless, inexperienced candidate, and yet having to do it so carefully knowing that anything that can be spun into a misstep will be all over the campaign ads the next day. If he so much as smirks at one of Palin's ditzy non-answers, he'll be crucified. Hell, if he holds back, he'll still be crucified.

If something so benign as referring to the paying of taxes as a patriotic journey unleashes a flurry of jabs, how much of a minefield will it be to step into the ring with that intellectual flyweight?

Good luck, Joe. My best advice? Ignore the jabs, don't jab yourself, but take that uppercut opening when it comes, then walk quietly back to your corner for the standing eight. Then do it again.

No smirking. And watch your footwork.

AP via Yahoo!: Biden: Paying higher taxes patriotic for wealthy

Country First?

During an interview on Good Morning America, while explaining the Obama plan to cut taxes on 95% of Americans while raising them on people making over $250,000, Joe Biden said, “It’s time to be patriotic. Time to jump in. Time to be part of the deal. Time to help get America out of the rut.”

Of course the shameless people from the other ticket took that opportunity to slam Biden.

“To the rest of America that’s not patriotism. Raising taxes is about killing jobs and hurting small businesses and making things worse,” said faux hockey mom Ms. Pit Bull Lipstick.

Let's forget for a minute that that is not quite what Joe Biden said and also forget that Obama's tax plan will cut most people's taxes. Basically what Biden was saying was that it is time for the wealthy to step up and pay their fair share in this time of crises, but that wouldn't be attack-able enough for the shameless duo.

But let's address their slam anyway. Why isn't it patriotic? Isn't paying taxes an incredibly patriotic thing to do? Contributing to your country so it can function, so that we can have fire fighters, police officers, school systems, transportation and a national defense seems to me to be an incredibly patriotic thing to do.

And as Jonathan Cohn points out, paying higher taxes during a time of war has always been seen as the patriotic thing to do.

We are at war, are we not Mr. McCain and Mrs. Palin?

When exactly did "every man and family for themselves" become the patriotic thing, and helping your country survive and not pass on a huge debt to our children, the unpatriotic thing?

What McCain-Palin are doing is not even shameless.

It's shameful.


Read - Biden and Palin Tussle Over Taxes from the NYT politics blog
Read - Patriotism from Joe Klein at Time