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Monday, October 20, 2008
The real Lincoln, not the e-mail Lincoln
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A list of bogus Lincoln quotes is making the e-mail circuit, including statements such as “You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong” and “You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.”
If you’ve ever read Lincoln, you know he could never write such trite garbage. The language is wrong and sounds nothing like the man. The sentiments are also clearly not those of Lincoln.
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital,” our greatest president said in his first annual message to Congress. “Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
He also had a profound understanding of true liberty and its challenges.
“The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act…,” he once said. “Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.”
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Judith Miller signs on at Fox News
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I see where Judith Miller, the author of widely discredited pre-war reporting on WMD in the New York Times, has taken a job with Fox News.
It’s an association that diminishes both parties.
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Most Americans reject Bizarroland
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The right-wing claim that the media are hiding the real truth about Barack Obama just cracks me up. For one thing, most of what the conservatives actually know for a fact about Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko were dug up by the same mainstream media they claim to be hiding the truth. (On the other hand, the things the right wing BELIEVES about Obama — that he was educated in a madrassa, was born overseas, is a Marxist/Muslim who hates America, etc., are their own invention.)
But you know what happened? The American people have read the facts and seen the Wright videos and they’ve decided that they just don’t care about such things. They’ve seen Obama for themselves and they’ve decided that he is not the radical that the right wing has attempted to paint him as.
However, to a conservative base obsessed with such matters, that thought is literally inconceivable. They cannot open their minds wide enough to allow that thought to enter. If the American people don’t share their obsessions, it can only be because the American people haven’t been told enough times!! Yeah, that’s the ticket!! It’s the media’s fault!!
It’s the same old paranoia that preached that Hillary was a lesbian who killed Vince Foster, that Bill was running cocaine out of Arkansas and raped a woman. It’s life in Bizarroland, and if Obama becomes president the paranoid ranting will be dialed up to 11.
Speaking of 11, that’s now the margin in the Gallup tracking poll …. about time for that “whitey tape?”
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15 days out, Obama reverses slide; Palin a drag on McCain
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As expected, Barack Obama has halted and even reversed John McCain’s rise in the wake of their performances in the third and final debate, according to at least two tracking polls.
In the latest Gallup three-day tracking numbers released Sunday, Obama’s lead is back up to 10 points. It had fallen to six points before the poll began to reflect reaction to the debate.
Obama has also doubled his lead in the latest Zogby tracking poll released this morning, with the Illinois senator reaching 49.8 percent. That’s Obama’s highest support level in the poll’s 14 days of surveying.
“This three-day rolling average of telephone polling now includes a sample taken entirely after the final presidential debate last Wednesday,” Zogby notes.
A new Washington Post/ABC News poll suggests that the McCain campaign may be preaching to its own choir, pleasing the already converted but not the independents they need to win Nov. 4.
“Overall, 52 percent of likely voters said they are less confident in McCain’s judgment because of his surprise selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin; 38 percent are more confident because of it. That is a stark reversal from the initial, positive public reaction to the pick,” the Post reports.
“Just after the GOP convention, 52 percent of independents, and 64 percent of independent women said the Palin pick made them more confident in how McCain would make presidential decisions - those numbers have now dipped to 39 and 37 percent, respectively.”
Voters who say they may still be persuadable are “among the least apt to see the new GOP focus on 1960s radical William Ayers and the community group ACORN as legitimate campaign issues.”
“Nearly seven in 10 movable voters said Obama’s past relationship with Ayers is not a legitimate issue; likewise, a narrow majority see the Obama campaign’s association with ACORN as not germane,” the poll found.
The party base will no doubt complain that Palin’s numbers have been driven down by a hostile media. On the other hand, the rest of America thinks the party base should open their damn eyes and ears and listen to what that woman actually says.
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