Sarah Palin Chastises Her Own Supporters!

More new material for Tina Fey and Saturday Night Live(CBS News)

Protesters at Sarah Palin’s rallies can always expect to be shot down with some choice words from the candidate. But at a rally here today, the confused Alaska governor mistakenly issued a stern rebuke to her own supporters.

The outdoor crowd was so massive that many were unable to hear Palin speak, so about midway through the Alaska governor’s remarks, some of them tried to take matters into their own hands, shouting in unison, “We can’t hear you!”

When that didn’t get the candidate’s attention, they tried a new tactic.

“Louder!” they shouted.

Palin appeared flustered as she stopped reading from the prepared remarks, which were coming across her teleprompter.

“I would hope at least that those protesters have the courage and the honor of thanking our veterans for giving them the right to protest!” she admonished the confused crowd.

Palin’s husband Todd tried to put an end to the awkward episode by approaching his wife on stage and telling her, “They just can’t hear you back there. That’s it.”

Republicans: a barrel of laughs!

Note to confused wingnuts: this actually happened today; it isn’t a SNL skit…yet.

Midday (Fall Break)

Yes, I am on campus as it is a parents visit day and I volunteered.

Hence I feel no guilt about blogging a bit:

A “Win Win Situation” Liberals love “win-win” situations where both camps are happy. Well, McCain says he has us right where he wants us. Cool! We’re pretty happy with things at the moment too!

Some conservative opinion:

Spot the Republican Politician: A survey of Republican incumbent websites shows that many are not going out of their way to describe themselves as Republicans.

Sample:

Look who is endorsing Obama: Christopher Hitchens!

…[T]he difference in character and temperament has become plainer by the day, and there is no decent way of avoiding the fact. Last week’s so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience.

McCain’s Health Care Plan: don’t get sick.

Is it really true that McCain will tax our employer health benefits?

Yes it is. Since the 40’s, Americans have received their health benefits through work in pre-tax dollars. Businesses have been able to deduct the cost of health benefits from their costs of doing business, and health benefits have not been counted toward compensation and income. Our health benefits have never been taxed.

But McCain wants to remove this tax exemption and for the first time, TAX your employer health benefits. I know its hard to beleive, but he has to find a source of revenue to give you his “$5000″ tax credit to buy insurance. So he will give you a tax credit, but will tax your benefits to pay for the credit.

As Obama said, “he giveth with one hand, and taketh away with the other.”

And what is likely to be the outcome of all this? Many employers will probably STOP offering health benefits to their employees. In fact, economists have estimated that as many as 20 million Americans will LOSE their employer coverage under McCain’s plan.

And what will happen to those 20 million people? They will have to buy coverage in the private, non-group health insurance market. And McCain not only will NOT regulate this market but he will DEREGULATE it. Just like he did with banking. He will allow companies to sell across state lines to avoid the little regulation that there currently is. You see, health insurance is regulated by the states. And if insurance companies can sell across state lines, and are allowed to disregard state regulations, we will have the same dispicable practices and greed that we saw in the banking industry – and we all lose under that scheme.

But what about that $5,000 tax credit? Well, that is a start but it is woefully inadequate. You see this is the tax credit for a FAMILY. And right now in the private non-group health insurance market the annual cost of a health insurance policy for a family is $12,000 a year. That leaves families holding the bag for $7000 plus a high deductible of about $2,000 plus all their cost-sharing and coinsurance.

And if anyone in your family has a pre-existing condition, forget about it. McCain will let the insurance companies continue to deny coverage to anyone for any reason. Basically under McCain’s plan, if you are sick or need insurance, you will not be able to buy it.

McCain’s plan is RADICAL. It will make Americans less secure. It will decrease employer based insurance. It will throw more Americans to the sharks in the for profit, private insurance market where they can pick off the healthy like cherries and throw those of us who are ill or have a chronic condition into the ditch — all but left for dead.

If you think “no, they (the conservatives) can’t possibly be that clueless, think again.

So back in the day, August 8, 2005, one of the wankers at Powerline wrote this gem:

It must be depressing to be Paul Krugman. No matter how well the economy performs, Krugman’s bitter vendetta against the Bush administration requires him to hunt for the black lining in a sky full of silvery clouds. With the economy now booming, what can Krugman possibly have to complain about? In today’s column, titled That Hissing Sound, Krugman says there is a housing bubble, and it’s about to burst…

There are, of course, obvious differences between houses and stocks. Most people own only one house at a time, and transaction costs make it impractical to buy and sell houses the way you buy and sell stocks. Krugman thinks the fact that James Glassman doesn’t buy the bubble theory is evidence in its favor, but if you read Glassman’s article on the subject, you’ll see that he actually makes some of the same points that Krugman does. But he argues, persuasively in my view, that there is little reason to fear a catastrophic collapse in home prices.

Krugman will have to come up with something much better, I think, to cause many others to share his pessimism.

The “depressed” Krugman can cry himself to sleep with his Nobel Prize, as well as the realization that yes, he was right and the wingnutosphere was once again proven tragically wrong.

Do you want to know what is almost comically ironic? I saw bumper stickers with this message on it a the McCain rally I attended:

But then McCain spent a good deal of time assuring his audience that they were angry and he was too! It wasn’t quite like this moron though:

I am glad that this “gentleman” is trying hard not to annoy us liberals.

What about the subprime fiasco? Guess what? It wasn’t those horrible poor people wanting houses after all.

McClatchy does its due diligence yet again, and slams down the last-gasp attempt of conservative mouth-breathers to save this election by blaming the financial meltdown on poor people.

As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail….

Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren’t true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.

Subprime lending offered high-cost loans to the weakest borrowers during the housing boom that lasted from 2001 to 2007. Subprime lending was at its height from 2004 to 2006.

Federal Reserve Board data show that:

* More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.

* Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.

* Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that’s being lambasted by conservative critics.

The “turmoil in financial markets clearly was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards for U.S. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 and extending into 2007,” the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets reported Friday.

Remember: many of the lenders made these risky loans “knowing” that if they mortgage holder were to default, the value of the house would go up and they (the lender) will still come out ahead.

This stick figure cartoon does a good job with explaining it.

The writing on the wall

This is a mailer for an incumbent Republican representative (Nebraska). A Republican is saying it is ok to vote for Obama. Nebraksa!

Oh yes, a new poll shows Obama “ahead” (45-43, MOE 4) in North Dakota. Ok, this is almost certainly probably an outlier. But it is funnier than all get-out.

Postsimian in the Jounral Star!

Sometime commenter and writer of the BlargenBlog “Postsimian” appeared in today’s Peoria Journal Star.

PDF file one

PDF file two

He goes by the name “Jason” in the above links.

Little did I know that when Jason and I drove to Springfield to see Obama introduce Biden that I was riding with a celebrity!

Anyway, follow the links above to read what Postsimian has to say about Barack Obama, John McCain and the 2008 Presidential election. Note that Elaine Hopkins (one of the other featured voters) writes Peoria Story.

Fall Break…sort of

Workout notes 4000 yard swim. Slow warm up, 500 yards drill/swim with zoomers, 5 x 100 on the 2 (fist) 1:40-1:43, 5 x 100 on the 2 (25 sfs, 75 free) 1:53-1:58, 200 side in 2:14, 300 of sly practice, 10 x 50 golf on the 1 (87-88), 400 IM (8:42 ….SLOW!), 3 x (100 pull, 100 paddle).

Assorted Stuff

Guess who won a Nobel Prize in Economics? Paul Krugman did. Do you know that he is a, gasp, liberal, who works for the New York Times?

Oh yes, he supports Barack Obama for President, though he backed Hillary Clinton in the primaries (still a good choice).

Political Humor Redstate update visited the last Obama-McCain debate.

Not so Funny

Al Jazeera talks to McCain supporters about Obama: (Ohio)

(another black eye for America)

McCain supporters in Pennsylvania

(via Wonkette)

Minister at the McCain rally in Davenport, Iowa

The rest of the rally wasn’t that bad; most people were very polite.