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I can’t shake the feeling that Fox just got punked. I’ve explained why in Rose’s thread on topic, but the talking head consensus is that Jackson has helped Obama. I’d really like to see the whole thing, but apparently Fox isn’t going to release it in its entirety. I just can’t believe Jackson assumed his mike was off, and the whole thing seems just a little pat.
Addendum: And then…. ouch!
Second addendum: North Dakota too close to call?!
Third addendum: Bush pressuring the German government to deny Obama the opportunity to speak at the Brandenburg Gate? The funniest part of the post:
Obama currently leads McCain in German opinion polls by a staggering 72% to 11% — leading with an even more staggering 86% among adults with at least a high school diploma.
The North Coast Journal has an article entitled “Small Box” which briefly examines small business politics in Humboldt County. With all the debate about big box developments on this thread and elsewhere, I’m thinking of framing the discussion with a list of advantages and disadvantages of both, with the obvious caveat that it’s not necessarily and absolute choice between the two. You can have some of one and some of the other. But it would still help to lay out the relative positives and negatives and then discuss each of them. The biggest economic debate is jobs vs. prices with wages a matter of dispute. Then we can discuss the overall impacts on the community, positive and negative. Then we can discuss the particular locations of certain businesses, as in Eureka vs. Fortuna, etc.
Who knows? Maybe we can even discuss it rationally, with actual facts. Anything’s possible.
When Michael Moore visited Arcata some time ago, he expressed an opinion not quite in sync with local progressive sensibilities, although I think he sometimes says things for the shock value. But it’s worth bringing up, because there is not necessarily a consensus within progressive (nor conservative) constituencies on the subject. Sometimes blue conflicts with green. Sometimes new money conflicts with old money. There again, I love ironies like that. Spice of politics.
“You know in my town the small businesses that everyone wanted to protect? They were the people that supported all the right-wing groups. They were the Republicans in the town, they were in the Kiwanas, the Chamber of Commerce – people that kept the town all white. The small hardware salesman, the small clothing store salespersons, Jesse the Barber who signed his name three different times on three different petitions to recall me from the school board. Fuck all these small businesses – fuck ‘em all! Bring in the chains. The small business people are the rednecks that run the town and suppress the people. Fuck ‘em all. That’s how I feel.”
So I guess Michael won’t be endorsing Larry Glass?
The Bush campaign last time around consisted of a number of very tightly controlled events where questions asked of the president were screened and tickets very carefully distributed with reporters questioned about their ethnicity before being admitted. Although the mainstream press went to sleep, the blogs covered it in some detail.
Wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt to a presidential event will get you arrested. Wearing a Kerry sticker on your lapel will get you thrown out. Being recognized as a child of a Dem, without anything on your attire, will also get you thrown out. Wearing a pro-choice t-shirt that doesn’t mention campaigns or candidates at all will — you guessed it — also get you thrown out.These are boundaries that cry out for some tests. Fortunately, math professor John Prather of Wheeling, W.Va., is up to the challenge.
When we last heard from Prather, he went to two campaign rallies in the same area of Ohio on the same day. He wore a Kerry t-shirt to a Bush rally and a Bush t-shirt to a Kerry rally, curious to see what would happen. Predictably, at the Bush event, Prather says he was told to turn his Kerry shirt inside out. Shortly thereafter, he was told to remove the shirt altogether. Despite complying with both requests, he was escorted away by security. At the Kerry event, meanwhile, nothing happened and Prather was welcome to stay and listen to Kerry, regardless of his choice of attire.
It happened again. And again. And again. Google it and you’ll find that these links are just the tip of the iceberg.
It looks like McCain’s going the Bush route in method as well as madness, which gives this 60-year-old librarian’s sign an extra twist of irony.
Has anything even remotely similar happened at Obama rallies, some of which have numbered in the tens of thousands? Well, they did eject a couple of women from a rally for their Muslim appearance, but did so without Obama’s blessing and the candidate called them personally to apologize. How have anti-Obama protesters outside the events been treated? Did the Secret Service demand they leave? There were a few pro-Clinton protests. We are talking about the candidate who has broken records in terms of received death threats.
Maybe McCain’s nerves were rattled by protesters some weeks back.
Thing is, Kerry’s events didn’t quite inspire the way Obama’s do. The contrast is going to be profound, and incidents like these are going to be more difficult for the media to ignore.
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