GOP solves all our problems. Moves on to complaining about Mile High Stadium. UPDATED with even more vintage whine.

Bizarrely, the Republican Party (the actual Party itself) recently began complaining that the stage for Sen. Obama’s speech looks like some kind of “Greek temple.” Many GOP fans have quickly followed suit with their own variations of faux outrage; as has their standard bearer (you decide whether their standard bearer is Sen. McCain or FOX).

Apparently the conservative partisans have too much time on their hands now that they’ve figured out solutions what’s wrong with the economy, health coverage, gas prices, Russia, the Taliban and more. Maybe they even figured out why bees keep dying and Dutch Elm Disease keeps spreading.

Wait. Their “solutions” are just rehashed versions of the same failed policies America’s been grappling with for the past 8 years?!

Dagnabbit. Foiled by the Chewbacca Defense again!

Of course, these complaints are actually about a half-built stage so the Republicans don’t even know what the final design will look like. Not that launching an attack despite not knowing all the facts has ever stopped any Republican. Then again, it might end up looking like a church instead of a temple, and then they’ll be real mad.

Here’s a quarter for the clue bus: Republicans use stages for their talks too. It’s not as if Sen. McCain has never used columns as a backdrop anyway… let alone spoken from a TV set designed to look like a church pulpit during the 2004 GOP convo.

Y’all are clearly running away from the Epic. Failure. of conservative policies over the last 8 years. All you’ve got left are these silly namby-pamby whines.

Go ahead, keep whining about completely irrelevant malarkey. In the end it’ll only serve to highlight the fact that Obama’s the only one with workable solutions and the capacity to put them into action.

Coincidentally, today is also the 45th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” which was delivered in front of an audience of nearly 250,000 people… Dr. King was, of course, standing on the steps of a Greek Temple (in the Doric style, for those keeping tracking) the Lincoln Memorial while giving that inspirational talk.

If asked, candidate McCain may be unsure if any of his homes are designed in the style of a Greek temple; although at least one of his “modest” homes has a small fireplace or two or three or four and looks like a home fit for a Spanish conquistador, not some Greek-column resting Senator, which is clearly way more Republicanner than uppity Greek columns.

Curiously, one of the McCains’ dining room tables (the one in the Sedona mansion) is actually resting on Greek columns.

Whoddathunkit?

–

UPDATE: Really?

Are the McCainiacs really this afraid of talking about his woeful flip-floppy record and the failure of conservative policies over these past many years?

McCain’s campaign just took this “Freedom Fry” idiocy to new lows. It’s fitting that what their complaining about is an acceptance speech being held in a sports arena… This constant namby-pamby complaining about unimportant baloney has them looking like whiners on the juice.

Obama assassination plot foiled in Colorado, Updated

What happens when political opponents decide to ignore legitimate policy debates to try and rip apart their opponent’s good character? Politics and policy do have the same root after all, so shouldn’t both our major party candidates be discussing their proposed solutions instead of having one of them start what most consider just a water balloon fight of ads featuring young blondes and Charlton Heston as Moses?

But what happens when that water balloon fight escalates?

What happens when the one side constantly smears the other as unpatriotic, treacherous and disloyal simply because they disagree with that side’s ideas, no matter how valid they may be…

when they constantly promote six degrees of separation to anyone even remotely considered “bad” (no matter how thin the connection) even though the candidate was never involved in any wrongdoing and has routinely repudiated those others’ despicable acts…

when lie after lie after lie is promulgated to falsely insinuate a candidate either sympathizes with terrorists or is one himself…

when the elitist billionaires of one political side use their money not to do charitable good for society but to tear down any with whom they disagree as if such acidic poison were what our Founding Fathers had always hoped for when fighting a war to launch our independent democracy…

when the most vile of heretical and blasphemous rhetoric is used to lie about a candidate and portray him as not just evil, but perhaps even the Anti-Christ and harbinger of the End Times…

…What happens when one side of the political spectrum, through fetid ranting over the course of a great many years, foments rage and anger and promotes and even glorifies violence in order to ‘pump up their base of voters’?

Idiots try to assassinate a presidential candidate, that’s what happens.

It doesn’t matter if they are alleged white supremacists or hopped up on meth. Something clearly pushed these people over the edge to think murder was somehow acceptable. Rational and sane folks do not simply load up a high-powered rifle and work on an assassination plot; something or someone prods them toward that disastrous destination.

And instead of taking a deep breath to consider whether or not their non-stop flow of bile might be contributing to such a heinous plot conservative partisans end up mocking it as if Cartman-clones dressed in inappropriate Halloween costumes and acting like everyone must respect their authoritayh had taken over some beyond-the-pale episode of South Park … only it was real life … and involved real rifles … and a real candidate who is not just a leader and an elected official but also a father, husband, and friend.

May all our nation’s candidates and their families, no matter the party and no matter the office, be safe throughout this and every other campaign season.

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Update: Libertarian Mark Draughn misinterprets what I wrote above to incorrectly suggest that I’m somehow equating right-wing pundits and these four white supremacist thugs… My response is posted at his Windypundit blog but the bottom line is no, what I’ve written does not imply that I’m blaming the right-wing for this domestic terrorist cell in Colorado.

Rather, as I conclude at Mr. Draughn’s blog, “Right-wing pundits didn’t make those 4 idiots do what they did. They simply created an atmosphere where it’s not too far a leap for those 4 to think it’s somehow ‘rational’ to do so in order to take care of ‘a problem’.”

‘…If we see his face turning red…’

LOL.

(Yes, it’s a parody. Don’t get your hopes up Obama haters.)

A study in contrasts

…The McCain Campaign has at times famously cordoned their candidate off from the media and continues to pre-screen people to allow only supporters into town halls. Essentially, they’re trying to perpetuate an image of their candidate rather than simply letting him talk with any and all Americans face to face.

(Our president is, after all, supposed to be the president for all Americans, not just the pre-screened and select few.)

In order for the McCain group to play the “quick, look over there” game to avoid discussing this obvious velvet rope-style elitism, they keep complaining that Sen. Obama is somehow the “elitist” in this race even though McCain has been the sheltered and hand-held candidate (not to mention the issue of his $500 shoes and seven+ mansions featured on the cover of Architectural Digest).

That’s the bizarro-world fiction the McCainiacs keep trying to sell everyone.

So how does a truly down-to-earth candidate handle talking with average joe and jane Americans? By actually listening to them even if they disagree or aren’t sure, then comprehending their concerns and explaining his values and beliefs and how those things translate into his solid plans for improving America.

Roll the tape…

Thank you McCain, for picking *that* veep

Quite literally as soon as the Obama veep selection was broken by the press, conservative pundits and the McCain camp started pooh-poohing Sen. Joe Biden. (As is in keeping with modern politics, the McCain camp likely had a series of negative attack points ready to slime any of the short listed veep nominees no matter who the final selection would’ve been … even if it had been their newfound best-friend-forever, Sen. Hillary Clinton.)

Aiding that smear effort was John Ruberry who posted a series of ad hominems attacking VP candidate Biden over the weekend. Mr. Ruberry is an arch-McCain supporter and conservative wannabe-pundit who sits in on the campaign’s national strategy conference calls and was rewarded with credentials to the GOP’s Twin Cities convention next week.

To illustrate the point that Mr. Ruberry’s attacks (and, by extension, the bulk of the cons’ smears) are hollow and petty, let’s swap the candidates’ names and use one of Mr. Ruberry’s own posts as an example of the conservative partisans’ pointless bleating….

For months John Ruberry has been mocking the John McCain campaign as the Cult of “Judgment”. To him, McCain’s “judgment” (aka, “experience”) is warmed-over failed conservative dogma from the past 8 years. But after McCain’s pick of that full-of-himself So-And-So to be his running mate, it’s hard even for McCainiacs to argue that this veep’s selection represents “judgment.”

McCain’s pick is definitely part of the mess of conservative ideology, as people with whom Ruberry agrees have noted in their own posts — posts that he’s simply echoing.

Obviously, that’s a parody of Mr. Ruberry’s original character assassination of the Obama-Biden ticket.

I suppose the intent of the conservatives’ empty attacks like this are to feed the media (and the American public) some hollow fodder in an attempt to boost Sen. Biden’s negatives… but the only affect they really have is to smudge over the real debates we need to be having in this country.

Instead of calling Veep picks “full-of-himself” and yelping that pragmatic policies are “warmed over”, we ought to be actually discussing what’s gone wrong with the conservative ideology we’ve had in place for the past many years and determine what elements of progressive solutions will likely work for the long-term.

We should even be talking about where we may find reasonable common ground and (gasp) compromise in order to work together and move America toward a better tomorrow as a united, rather than divided, country… If our partisan con friends can get past these childish foot-stompings that is.

GOP still whining that “Cheney” on Bush-Cheney signs was at half size?

No, not really…

But Republican partisans apparently are trying real hard to avoid talking about real issues like finding solutions for our national security, future energy platforms, the economy, strategic redeployment from Iraq and a host of other matters much more pressing than typefaces and colors on a sign.

Are conservative partisans honestly complaining about the Obama-Biden rally signs or have they run out of POW quips in their efforts to avoid calling out the fact they have no workable solutions to the challenges America is facing?

“We’re all in this together”

Sen. John McCain has been conducting radio addresses for several weeks now as the anticipated Republican presidential nominee.

Sen. Barack Obama has just aired first radio address in that same role for the Dems. Bursting the lead balloon of McCain’s recent hollow attacks on everything from “substance” to Iraq to comprehensive energy strategy, Sen. Obama lays out in very clear terms exactly why his course of action will work — on so many levels — for Americans by tying Iraq’s oil-driven budget surplus directly to the Bush Administration’s record deficits and the exorbitant $10 billion a month cost of the Iraq War to our own country’s need for economic growth.

In other words… hammer, meet nail head:

Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s Radio Address (aif audio file)

Some excerpts (rush transcript):

First, we learned that the federal budget deficit could reach nearly half a trillion dollars next year. Eight years after we had a record surplus, we’re now faced with record deficits. This mortgaging of our children’s future is a direct result of the Bush Administration’s dangerously failed fiscal policies.

The second thing we learned this week was that the Iraqi government now has a $79 billion budget surplus thanks to their windfall oil profits. And while this Iraqi money sits in American banks, American taxpayers continue to spend $10 billion a month to defend and rebuild Iraq.

That’s right. America faces a huge budget deficit. Iraq has a surplus. Now, Senator McCain promises to continue President Bush’s open-ended commitment to the war in Iraq, while refusing to pressure Iraqis to take responsibility for their own country.

…So, the choice in this election could not be clearer. The American people our worse off than they were eight years ago. Everywhere I go I meet people who are working hard for their families but are still falling behind.

Our government has lost touch with the most fundamental American values: the belief that everyone should be able to live the American dream; the sense that we are all in this together as Americans.

Senator McCain talks about putting our country first, but he is running for a third term of the very same policies that have set our country back. We can’t afford to take that chance. We can’t afford to keep running up record deficits while we favor the few over the many. We can’t prioritize a misguided war in Iraq over the urgent needs of the American people.

I believe that we need to move in a new direction.

It’s time to restore balance and fairness to our economy and give working people immediate and meaningful relief. It’s time to stop giving tax cuts to corporations that ship jobs overseas and to put a tax cut into the pocket of 95% of working Americans and their families. It’s time to end the war in Iraq responsibly by asking Iraqis to take responsibility for their future and to invest in their own country. It’s time to make a historic effort to end our dependence on foreign oil by investing $150 billion over the next decade in alternative energy and more fuel-efficient cars even as we push oil companies to increase production. This will create millions of new “green jobs”. Good jobs that lift up our families and communities.

This is a defining moment in our history. We can either continue down a failed course or we can choose a better future. …

(Emphasis added)

And here folks thought cons wanted a “comprehensive” energy plan

…Apparently they were for a comprehensive energy plan before they were against it.

Seems they were also for caring about Creation before the rubber hit the road and we learn, lo and behold, they are against it.

That political wind sock of theirs must get one heckuva work out with all that hot air the flip-flopping cons keep blowing its way.

(PS: No matter how many times conservative partisans click their heels together and no matter how tightly they squeeze their eyes shut as they wish it to be so… China still isn’t drilling off the coast of Cuba… or off the coast of Florida for that matter.)

Somewhat unrelated: It also turns out con partisans like Fran “G” Eaton were also for crying in their beer before they were against it. Who knew?

Archie plans their now-canceled late night galavanting for them. Then again, they could’ve just let their own resident gay-curious super-spy do the planning for them since he knows more about those hot spots than just about anyone around.

Somewhat related: I did conservatives’ math homework for them by comparing drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf versus common sense fuel conservation. Turns out the simplest answer sometimes is the easiest and quickest … and also leads to more fuel on the supply side of supply-and-demand.

Oil Spill

If you are easily bored by numbers and math… this post ain’t for you.

In recent days the national Republicans and their partisan supporters have doubled-down on their empty “drill here, drill now” rhetoric to advance their proposal to open up protected coastal waters to off-shore drilling. They’ve been handing out bumper stickers, staging their own live soap opera from the House floor in DC and (shocking!) poking fun at Sen. Obama’s sage advice to keep your tire pressure and engine tuning up to spec.

But why would I say it’s empty rhetoric and point out how silly it is?

Because every expert on the topic, including Bush Administration officials at the Dept. of Energy, admits that it will take years for any new rigs to be built off-shore and even then there simply isn’t that much oil for any new “straws” to suck out enough in a year to make an appreciable difference in fuel prices. Period.

The Republicans’ goals will have no effect whatsoever on the price of gas at the corner station. (What is having an effect on lowering prices, however, is the fact that Americans are using less gas.)