Hi, this is Rudy Giuliani and I’m calling for John McCain and the Republican National Committee, because you need to know that Barack Obama opposes mandatory prison sentences for sex offenders, drug dealers, and murderers. It’s true, I read Obama’s words myself. And recently, Congressional liberals introduced a bill to eliminate mandatory prison sentences for violent criminals — trying to give liberal judges the power to decide whether criminals are sent to jail or set free. With priorities like these, we just can’t trust the inexperience and judgment of Barack Obama and his liberal allies. This call was paid for […]
HEAR YE: Guns N’ Roses Chinese Democracy
INSTA-REVIEW: The title track is now up at Imeem, and the verdict is still: THIS took 15 years and $13 million to make? More HERE. CHRIS LARKIN: Wow. What a shot in the arm for the irrelevance industry.
GOP GOES DARK ON MISS MCCARTHY: National Republican Party Killing Ad Buys In Bachmann Race
HUFFINGTON POST: Two sources aware of ad buys in Minnesota say that the National Republican Congressional Committee is pulling its media purchases from Bachmann’s race. If true, it is a remarkable fall for a congresswoman who, until recently, seemed relatively safe in her predominantly conservative district. The race had become closer in recent days — the NRCC had transferred funds from Rep. Erik Paulsen (MN-03) to Bachmann a little over a week ago. In the days following her appearance on Hardball, however, Bachmann has watched as her challenger, El Tinklenberg raised more than a million dollars off her incendiary remarks. […]
WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT: Talking Constitutionality With Jonathan Hennesseyy
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Every school boy and girl is taught that the Constitution is the most sacred document in the history of human freedom, that its wisdom is unimpeachable and that its reach and authority shall not be denied by the tyranny of evil men. And then there is the actual history of the U.S. Constitution, which is not quite as tidy and high-minded as they teach you in school. Still, it remains a beacon of democratic hope in a dark and largely un-democratic world. With all this in mind, writer Jonathan Hennessey and illustrator Aaron McConnell bring us this […]
CARIBOU BARBIE MASK: Cut Out, Put On, Scare
WALL STREET JOURNAL POLL: Fifty-five percent of respondents say she’s not qualified to serve as president if the need arises, up five points from the previous poll. In addition, for the first time, more voters have a negative opinion of her than a positive one. In the survey, 47 percent view her negatively, versus 38 percent who see her in a positive light. That’s a striking shift since McCain chose Palin as his running mate in early September, when she held a 47 to 27 percent positive rating. MORE PEW RESEARCH CENTER FOR THE PEOPLE AND THE PRESS: In addition, […]
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS: The United States Ranks 36th In The World For Freedom Of The Press
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS 2008 PRESS FREEDOM INDEX: It is not economic prosperity but peace that guarantees press freedom. That is the main lesson to be drawn from the world press freedom index that Reporters Without Borders compiles every year and from the 2008 edition, released today. Another conclusion from the index — in which the bottom three rungs are again occupied by the “infernal trio” of Turkmenistan (171st), North Korea (172nd) and Eritrea (173rd) — is that the international community’s conduct towards authoritarian regimes such as Cuba (169th) and China (167th) is not effective enough to yield results. “The post-9/11 […]
YES WE CAN: Obama Opens Double Digit Lead
REUTERS: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has opened up a 10-point lead over Republican opponent John McCain two weeks before the November 4 U.S. election, according to Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released on Tuesday. The poll found 52 percent of voters favor Obama compared with 42 percent for McCain, up from a 6-point Obama edge two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal reported. The 10-point lead is the largest in the Journal/NBC poll to date and represents a steady climb for Obama since early September, when the political conventions concluded with the candidates in a statistical tie, the newspaper […]
WORST OF THE WORST: Bush Passes Buck On Gitmo
LA TIMES: Chalk it up as one last big win for Vice President Dick Cheney and his secretive — OK, that’s redundant when talking about a Cheney guy — chief of staff, David Addington. Remember when the U.S. Supreme Court last June rejected President Bush’s policy of holding foreign prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and said the men had a right to seek their freedom before a federal judge? Remember when the president said in August 2007, “it should be a goal of the nation to shut down Guantanamo?” (Of course, he added, closing it is easier said than done.) […]
NYT Nails Backstory On Inky Endorsementgate
NEW YORK TIMES: On the same page that the newspaper published a 901-word editorial supporting Mr. Obama, it ran just beneath it a 391-word dissent in support of Mr. McCain. […] So what happened? Brian Tierney, chief executive of the company that owns The Inquirer, Philadelphia Media Holdings, and who sits on the newspaper’s editorial board, would not say. In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Tierney would only say, “We don’t talk about what goes on on the editorial page.” Harold Jackson, the editor of the editorial page, also would not discuss the deliberations or vote total, but did say […]
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK: Bachmann’s McCarthyism Overdrive May Cost Her Re-Election
WASHINGTON POST: Those comments, made to Chris Matthews on “Hardball” last Friday, alleging that Barack Obama held “anti-American” views immediately lit up the blogosphere, energized the campaign of former Blaine Mayor Elwyn Tinklenberg (great name! -Ed.) and turned Bachmann’s race from an afterthought into one of the most high profile House races in the country. Tinklenberg has raised more than $800,000 in the aftermath of Bachmann’s comments and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee communications director Jen Crider has called this a “$1 million mistake” on the part of the Republican incumbent. The DCCC, sensing opportunity, began airing an ad hitting Bachmann […]
SIDEWALKING: Cellphoning It In
PHYSICAL GRAFFITTI: Men’s Room Wall, Drug Court, 1401 Arch St. 3:43 PM [Photo by JEFF DEENEY]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Nobel laureate Paul Krugman believes that increased public spending — akin to the efforts of the New Deal during the Great Depression — is the best way to escape the financial crisis and regain American global leadership. In his Oct. 16 column in The New York Times, Krugman writes, “It’s politically fashionable to rant against government spending and demand fiscal responsibility. But right now, increased government spending is just what the doctor ordered, and concerns about the budget deficit should be put on hold.” Paul Krugman is a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, and the […]
Q&A: The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] BY JONATHAN VALANIA If there’s anything missing from Stephin Merritt’s encyclopedic oeuvre — a kitchen-sink catchall that includes everything from wry country twang and sincere synth pop to tortured torch songs and prancing show tunes — it’s Stephin Merritt. A remarkably dexterous stylistic quick-change artist — for my next trick, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll pull the Human League out of Cole Porter’s top hat — he’s a master illustrator of character sketches, meticulously cross-hatching two-minute melodramas out of the delicacies and detritus of 20th-century popular song. But for all their rapier-like wit and chameleonic genre-hopping, Merritt’s […]