Race is run

The Repugnuicants have figured out a way to play the race card in the presidential race without appearing to play the race card.

They accuse Barack Obama of playing the race card.

“Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,’’ Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.’’

It's a sneaky strategy, but it likely isn't gonna work, because it's a bit obvious on whose side the truth lies.

Mr. Davis was alluding to comments that Mr. Obama made Wednesday in Missouri when he reacted to the increasingly negative tone, and negative ads that have been coming his way from the McCain campaign in recent days.

“So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,’’ Mr. Obama said Wednesday in Springfield, Mo., in remarks that he echoed throughout the day. “You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky. That’s essentially the argument they’re making.’’

It's the typical Repubnicant smear tactic. Just another way of swiftboating when the truth isn't in your favor.

Mr. Obama has made similar statements about the lines of attack against him before, and was even more direct last month when he said: “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?’’

The McCain campaign’s decision to make the charge now that Mr. Obama was playing the “race card” comes as it has adopted a far more aggressive, negative posture towards Mr. Obama in recent days, trying to tar him as arrogant, out of touch and unprepared for the presidency with a series of statements by Mr. McCain and a series of negative ads – some of which have been condemned as misleading.

Playing dirty's nothing new. Repugnicants have been doing it for years. Decades.

But then again, when your candidate is John McSame, promising four (8?) more years of the same corrupt Republican administration that has placed this country in the quagmire it's in, what choice do they have?

Sometimes the shortest path is through the mud.

And so it goes.

Rather be right...

And so it goes.

We-We

Hey, conservatives.
If WE decide to allow drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, will WE actually get any of that oil?

Hint: WE are already drilling and pumping oil out of Alaska by the thousands of barrels a day. Are WE benefiting? No, the oil is being sold to Japan.

If WE decide to allow offshore drilling in the Gulf, will WE actually get any of that oil? Even after the 10 years it'll take to actually get any of that oil?

Hint: WE are already drilling and pumping thousands of barrels a day from the Gulf. Are WE benefiting? No, the oil's going to Europe and China.

You see the problem with all this Repugnicant logic is the WE.

You see, when they say WE, they actually means the oil conglomerates. You know, those companies controlled by those same rich Repugnicants.

What will happen to that new drilling? Will WE get it? Of course not. It will be sold on the world market. At world market prices. It will go to the highest bidder. You know, China, Japan, Europe. Who is the WE that is going to buy out oil back for us? The government?

There is no caveat that oil drilled in the U.S. will stay in the U.S. The government doesn't drill. It doesn't refine. It doesn't sell. It simply allows oil companies to make money from our resources. Once they get it our of the ground, they can do with it whatever they want.

And in the end WE end up getting little or nothing in return.

Thanks for nothing. But WE decline.

And so it goes.

Aha!

The GOP finally begins to make sense.

And so it goes.

Drill this

Rarely does one come upon such pure, eloquent common sense in a relatively few paragraphs.
The Naples Daily News really came through this morning:

President Bush is following through on trying to lift bans on additional potential offshore sites for oil and natural gas.

In an election year, with $4-plus gasoline and a Republican president pushing a Democratic Congress to let each seaboard state decide for itself, politics is involved.

So is the potential for windfall profit — before the first drop of new oil is produced, thus driving up prices of whatever is produced even further.

That is why there is more sizzle than steak — or more slick than solution — to the president’s plan.

Democrats rightfully point out there is a substantial inventory of potential oil and gas exploration sites going unused.

Further, it is important to separate a sustainable long-term energy strategy from today’s panic mode. The United States cannot drill its way out of trouble. Oil is not the future. A combination of energy, including solar and biofuels as keenly advanced by Florida, is more in sync environmentally and economically.

It is vital for Florida to have its beaches and marine life intact long after the panic subsides. That is more important than profiteering and politics today.

Almost impossible to add anything.

Way to go, NDN.

Just hope all those blind Republican puppets around here actually read it. Any chance?

Naw.

Most just puppet the Shrub's (& John McSame's) talking points.

Please, don't mess my mind up with facts. Oh, the horror!

And so it goes.

One less bigot

I know I SHOULD be more compassionate and sympathetic. But I'm not.

Jesse Helms died yesterday.

He was the worst kind of ignorant, intolerant racist southern politician.

"He'll be remembered, in part, for the strong racist streak that articulated his politics and almost all of his political campaigns — they were racialized in the most negative ways," said Kerry Haynie, a political science professor at Duke University, who noted that unlike George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, Helms never repented for such tactics.

Helms, however, was an equal opportunity closed-minded intolerant SOB.

In 1993, when then-President Clinton sought confirmation for an openly homosexual assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Helms registered his disgust. "I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that," he said in a newspaper interview at the time. "If you want to call me a bigot, fine."

Charming fellow.

For someone like him to have died on July 4, the date of the Declaration of Independence, is really sad.

Nevertheless, there's one less racist in the world today.

See, you can find good in everything if you look.

And so it goes.