Breaking: Obama to address joint session of Congress September 9th on health care

If he's not crystal clear about the need for a strong public option, and if he doesn't address, condemn, refute, and/or ridicule the far right fringe astroturf propaganda groups terrorizing the American people with images of Hitler and Stalin, and if he doesn't demand that Congress pass something now, and if he doesn't chastise the Republicans (and Blue Dog Dems) in Congress who simply refuse to vote for any reasonable reform bill, then this speech will not accomplish anything.

No excuses.

Obama's "Justice" department crossed a line today by filing a hideously hateful brief in support of the Defense of Marriage Act. The brief contained legal arguments comparing gay marriage to incest and parroting far right homophobic viewpoints that would make Pat Robertson giddy. Worse, it said that DOMA is constitutional, and that denying gay people marriage equality is not the same thing as denying interracial couples the same equality that led to the Loving v. Virginia decision. Interestingly, today is the 42nd anniversary of that decision, which decriminalized interracial marriage nationwide. Obama sure has an odd way of celebrating that anniversary.

Obama has shown a consistent disregard, if not an open hostility, toward the GLBT community. During the campaign he hosted homophobic gospel singer Donnie McClurkin. He had the bigoted fundamentalist Rick Warren do the invocation at his inauguration. His stance opposing marriage equality was used by the hatemongers who helped pass Prop 8 in California.

Yet the GLBT community voted for him in droves. Why? Because he told us what we wanted to hear, and we were "realists" about the "fact" that he could "never support marriage equality" and still be a "viable candidate." We could still get him to overturn DOMA, we told ourselves, and pass the Matthew Shepard Act, and repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, etc. Marriage equality would have to wait until the bigots, overwhelmingly old and white, died off, and the new, progressive generation, could take full control of the political process.

You know what? Fuck that.

Fuck all of it.

Fuck political realism. Fuck expediency. Fuck it all to hell. And Fuck Obama.

Because we did all of that, we gave Obama the benefit of the doubt, we trusted the Democrats to do the right thing, and they shit all over us.

Not only that, but now Obama and his "Justice Department" are actively undermining us. At least the right wingers are honest about their intent to demonize us. The Democrats pretend to be our friends and then stab us in the back. Which is worse?

What's worse is that there are progressives today who are defending this atrocity of a legal brief supporting DOMA. Obama is a President who has to "uphold the law" and DOMA is "the law." The Justice Department is "legally required" to defend DOMA.

No. I'm sorry, but that's just not ok.

I work in family law. I spend my days working on divorce case after divorce case. Straight couples who have the right to marry, do so, and then rip each other to shreds when it doesn't work out. I don't even have that right, and sometimes it just kills me that I'm deconstructing marriages, when I can't legally enter into one.

This issue isn't about legalistic arguments or what someone is legally supposed to do. It's just not.

Marriage equality is an issue of moral outrage. It is legal discrimination against a class of people for no good reason.

By filing this hateful brief, the Obama administration has shown that they care more about the technicalities of the law than they do about correcting a civil rights injustice. Moreover, they've used every argument they can against marriage equality in such a brutally thorough manner that if their arguments succeed, they'll severely hurt anyone else's chances to get justice and equality through the courts.

If you support this opinion, or you believe Obama's Justice Department was right in writing it, then you are just as bad as the bigots who wrote it. I don't care what your reasoning is.

I want our community in the streets. This is Pride week in many cities. Let's put a little bit of moral outrage in our parades. Let's turn up the heat on Obama and show him that we won't take his homophobic bullshit sitting down.

And let's not give him or the Democrats the benefit of the doubt in the next elections. It's time to stop compromising. It's time to start organizing.

In case you're wondering, President Obama

This moment is where you lost my vote in 2012. I've had enough of giving you the benefit of the doubt. I live in a swing state now, and my vote actually counts.



I'm re-registering as an independent.

You want my vote back, Mr. President?

1) Repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell
2) Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act
3) Come out strongly in favor of marriage equality, anti-discrimination laws, workplace protection laws, and adoption equality laws.
4) Apologize for Donnie McClurkin and Rick Warren.
5) Apologize for allowing your words to be used to pass Prop H8.

That's not a menu of choices, Mr. President. Do all five, and you'll have my vote back. Do anything less, and I'm finding another candidate.

What the Christ is going on

with all of these Obama nominees having tax issues? Yeesh...

Big giant applause.

Breaking news on MSNBC right now:

BREAKING NEWS: Obama is set to issue order first week in office to close Guantanamo, AP reports

Awesome. Now let's do some war crimes investigations, shall we?

President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama Jr.: Time's Person of the Year

Not a surprising choice, but definitely a good one.

Obama's use of complete sentences stirs controversy

Funny article by Andy Borowitz. Excerpt:

The president-elect's stubborn insistence on using complete sentences has already attracted a rebuke from one of his harshest critics, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

"Talking with complete sentences there and also too talking in a way that ordinary Americans like Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder can't really do there, I think needing to do that isn't tapping into what Americans are needing also," she said.

Why I voted for Obama today

Eight years ago, I was a cynical, idealistic, radical, 21 year old college student. I didn't believe that there was a real difference between Bush and Gore, and I didn't think that either of them would do what I thought needed to be done. I saw Gore as a milquetoast corporate-controlled candidate, and I saw Bush as a far right moron. I voted for David McReynolds, the Socialist Party candidate for President, who got something like 7,000 votes nationwide.

Something happened to me between 2000 and 2004. I saw Bush do some really, really awful things to the country. I saw him fail to prevent the worst terrorist attack on America's soil. I saw him react to that disaster by attacking a country that had nothing to do with it. I saw him give tax breaks to the rich, gut social programs, and begin to create a surveillance society that started to break down constitutional barriers of privacy. I saw him take a hammer to the wall between church and state.

But I still had very little confidence that the Democrats would have been much better. I worked for a Democratic candidate for Congress in 2002, because I thought that I wanted to become a campaign worker and try to move the Democratic Party to the left.

In that campaign, I saw that the Democratic Party really did have different ideas from the Republican Party, and while in no way did the Democrats go as far as I would have liked, they would at least put a stop to the horrible things the Bush regime was inflicting on the country.

In 2004, I finally found myself inspired by a Democrat. Howard Dean had the kind of message that I was looking for. "You have the power," he said, and I believed him. His campaign was grassroots and real, and it was a movement of people who really cared about change. I worked my heart out for Dean's campaign, and I was crushed when he was destroyed by the media. I voted for Kerry, even though he ran a miserable campaign, and I was again crushed when Kerry conceded.

The 2008 primary campaign was a giant mess, and I didn't know who the hell to support. I saw Obama's campaign as inspiring but empty, and I hated Hillary. I vacillated between Edwards and Kucinich. By the time Oklahoma's primary came around, it was between Hillary and Obama, and I voted for Hillary. I still didn't see enough out of Obama to vote for him.

But then I saw Hillary's campaign take a nose dive into the toilet, and I saw Obama rise above the fray. I saw Obama's campaign finally go into substantive detail without losing the inspirational message that defined it. I shook off my shell of cynicism and began to believe again.

Obama has run an exemplary campaign, one that not only inspires passion among his followers but also has a coherent, defined policy message. He may not be as progressive as some of us might want, but he's at least honest and genuine about his positions. His positions in favor of "clean coal" bother me, but I can see myself agreeing with almost every one of his other policies. More importantly than that, however, Obama is fiercely intelligent, which will perhaps be the most dramatic change from the last eight years.

But it's not just about policies, as we all know. It's about hope. Obama's campaign has created a real grassroots movement and revived a spirit of optimism and belief that real change can happen in America. His message is simple: "Yes, we can." We can change politics from the bottom up. We can recover from the disasters of the Bush regime. We can rebuild America and get the economy moving again. We can regain our standing in the world.

Obama's historic candidacy represents the best of America. I'm proud to have voted for this extraordinary candidate, not just because he'll make history as the first African-American president, but because I see him as perhaps the next Kennedy or FDR, someone who unites the country around something bigger than the petty politics of the individual. I see Obama as someone who can take this great, positive energy that his campaign has generated across the nation and translate it to change profoundly the way America works, and make it a more cooperative, democratic, and free country.

Yes we can.

Something happened in the last few hours...

fivethirtyeight.com's electoral predictor has jumped down to a 1.9% McCain win percentage. That's down from more than 3% earlier today. There's just a thing that says "developing" with a Drudge-like siren on it right now, but I'm keeping an eye on it. Maybe something just broke?

Update: Here's the latest polling post. Looks good for tomorrow.

Sad news- Obama's grandmother dies a day before the election

That's sad. The woman who was instrumental in Barack's upbringing has died - one day before her grandson is to be (hopefully) elected President. My heart goes out to Senator Obama and his family on this tragic loss.

(This is a "breaking" news banner on CNN right now - no link available yet.)

Good stuff from internal poll data

NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll shows Obama with a significant 8% lead nationally. To put this in perspective, the final poll before the '04 election showed Bush ahead by 1%.

But here's what is really interesting:

Looking inside the numbers, Obama leads McCain among African Americans (90 percent to 3 percent), Latinos (68 to 27), 18- to 34-year-olds (59 to 38), independents (48 to 38), blue-collar voters (51 to 44), suburban voters (49 to 44) and Catholics (49 to 46).

McCain, meanwhile, has the advantage among evangelicals (78 percent to 19 percent), those 65 years old and older (53 to 40), white men (54 to 42) and white women (48 to 47).

This is not good news for McCain. Despite how loud and obnoxious they tend to be, evangelicals are not a huge portion of the electorate, and that lead isn't going to be able to overcome Obama's advantage in the other groups. Plus, evangelicals tend to concentrate themselves in states where McCain is already strong, and that's not going to help him in the purple states either. If McCain gets 100% of the evangelical vote in (for example) Utah, Oklahoma, and Idaho, it won't help him get to 270. Now, I will say that the evangelical vote might help him in certain purple states like Missouri, Virginia, and Colorado, but we'll just have to see where the chips fall.

McCain's leads with other groups are close enough that they're really not going to give McCain any kind of an advantage. Add to these statistics the massive number of early voters and the huge surge in vote from those groups who are supporting Obama in large numbers and you paint a pretty bleak picture for McCain.

Hey Okie Campaigns, You Knob, McCain's Transition Head Lobbied for Saddam

Okie Campaigns is saying Obama "personally benefitted" from funds linked to Saddam's regime. Meanwhile, McCain's transition team head lobbied directly for Saddam Hussein's regime.

God, the way these righties can just block off half of the information they hear and just hear the crap that the talking heads feed them. It's really something.

Not to mention the convoluted path that Okie weaves between Sadaam Hussein and Barack Obama seems to involve a bank in Paris, Tony Rezko, the Easter Bunny, the hanging gardens of Babylon, and a 6 year old boy named Timmy with lyme disease.

It boggles the mind. It really does.

Hank the Republican proposes redistribution of idiocy

Certain right-wing bloggers are trying to take the idea of "redistribution" (ooh what a scary scary concept) and apply it to other things. Ooh, what if we redistributed grades to make them more fair? Oooh what if we redistribute this or that?

Hey, what if we redistribute all of our country's wealth to the richest 5%, and then borrow zillions of dollars from China to pay for it? Oh wait, we did that already.

Look, you peckerheads. Obama isn't going to redistribute anything. Chances are, you're going to get a tax cut under Obama's tax plan. Unless you right wing bloggers are making over $250,000 a year.

The only redistribution of income Obama is talking about is changing the tax code back to where it was under President Clinton. Do you remember the 1990s? The economy was pretty damned stable. We had something unheard of: a budget surplus!

I might add that McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts Obama wants to repeal. That is, McCain opposed them until he started running for President.

God. I'm tired of the right wing idiocy in this state. I really am. Chances are most of the right wingers in this state are working or middle class, and they've been duped by Faux Noise and right wing talk radio and fundamentalist preachers into buying an extreme right wing political ideology that does not serve their own interest. The only people served by the kind of extreme conservatism that these bloggers spout are military contractors, CEOs, and millionaire televangelists. That's it. The bloggers are blogging against their own self-interest, because they've drunk too much of the poisoned kool-aid to know better.

I might also point out that I'm incredibly insulted by Sarah Palin's attempts to pander to Jewish seniors with her scare talk about Obama meeting with a PLO leader.

Um, idiots. Do you know who the PLO is? The PLO is the government of the Palestinian territories. They're the "good guys" over there. At least, they're the most reasonable, moderate force, and we've officially negotiated with them on many, many occasions. So, um, Obama meeting with a member of the Palestinian government? I'm not so worried about that. It might just mean that he's serious about the peace process.

Two Obama supporters nearly lynched by a violent mob after a McCain rally

After the rally, we witnessed a near-street riot involving the exiting McCain crowd and two Cuban-American Obama supporters. Tony Garcia, 63, and Raul Sorando, 31, were suddenly surrounded by an angry mob. There is a moment in a crowd when something goes from mere yelling to a feeling of danger, and that's what we witnessed. As photographers and police raced to the scene, the crowd elevated from stable to fast-moving scrum, and the two men were surrounded on all sides as we raced to the circle.

The event maybe lasted a minute, two at the most, before police competently managed to hustle the two away from the scene and out of the danger zone. Only FiveThirtyEight tracked the two men down for comment, a quarter mile down the street.

"People were screaming 'Terrorist!' 'Communist!' 'Socialist!'" Sorando said when we caught up with him. "I had a guy tell me he was gonna kill me."

Asked what had precipitated the event, "We were just chanting 'Obama!' and holding our signs. That was it. And the crowd suddenly got crazy."

Could we get this election over with, please?

Another story of someone hit by the Bush-McCain recession

More than houses or jobs, what George Bush's America cost me - and so many others like me - is our spirits, the sense of believing that what good you put out into the world will be returned to you in multiples. The sense of having a safety net, a cushion, a solid place in the daily world we could count on belonging. I've been robbed of my sense of humor and the hope that carried me through plenty of other lean times. There have been other tough times. Being a single mother, that was always to be expected. But there were never desperate times without hope. Now, for me and so many others, that's what's left.

America, we have one week.

Vote.

Now McCain Advisors are jumping ship and voting for Obama!

McCain advisor and prominent Reagan administration figure Charles Fried has now endorsed Obama, adding to a growing list of Republicans jumping ship and realizing their party is over (and other mixed metaphors).

McCain Staffer Admits Making Up Beating Story

A McCain staffer has admitted that she made up the story about an attacker at an ATM becoming enraged about her McCain sticker and carving a backwards "B" into her face.

Man, that's pathetic. That's so far beyond pathetic that to describe it as pathetic is an insult to the word pathetic.

Is that seriously all that the pitiful pile of rank sewage that has become the McCain campaign has left? That and accusing Obama of mounting a secret Mission: Impossible style effort to sneak into Hawaii and "change his birth certificate" under the guise of visiting his sick grandmother? Really, guys. When the monkeys who are throwing poo at each other look at you and think, "Man, those guys are disgusting," maybe it's time to stop.

Now those are numbers I like to see

Fivethirtyeight.com has McCain's win percentage down to 3.7%. New polls give Obama big leads all over the place, including in states like Montana and Indiana. This is like a (insert sports analogy here that depicts McCain as a big stinky loser).

More more pollgasms

Virginia GOP is "outclassed" by the Dems, North Dakota is in play, Obama's playing hardball in West Virginia, and even McCain's home state of Arizona might be winnable for Obama.

Is this going to be a Clinton vs. Dole election, a Dukakis vs. Bush election, or a Reagan vs. Mondale election?

Pollgasms

From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Carrie Dann
*** Swing states swinging to Obama: Most of the national polls -- including our NBC/WSJ survey -- are now showing Obama with a double-digit national lead. And here come a slew of brand-new state polls that also suggest Obama is in command of this presidential contest. The University of Wisconsin’s Big Ten Battleground polls have Obama up 10 points in Indiana (51%-41%), 13 points in Iowa (52%-39%), 22 in Michigan (58%-36%), 19 in Minnesota (57%-38%), 12 in Ohio (53%-41%), 11 in Pennsylvania (52%-41%), 13 in Wisconsin (53%-40%), and nearly 30 in Obama’s home state of Illinois (61%-32%). Meanwhile, there are new Quinnipiac surveys that show Obama up five points in Florida (49%-44%), 14 in Ohio (52%-38%), and 13 in Pennsylvania (53%-40%). And finally, new CNN/Time surveys find Obama ahead by five points among likely voters in Nevada (51%-46%), four points in North Carolina (51%-47%), four in Ohio (50%-46%), and 10 points in Virginia (54%-44%). The lone state survey that shows McCain ahead: CNN/Time’s West Virginia poll, where McCain’s nine (53%-44%

Boy I'm sure glad McCain is putting all his chips in that tight battleground state of Pennsylvania. That'll really help him. Lose.