"Liberals hate real Americans that work, and accomplish, and achieve, and believe in God."

This was said by North Carolina Republican Representative Robin Hayes during a McCain rally. I am continually confounded by the people that vehemently support McCain. Where does an assumption like this come from? This statement is both ignorant and so abstract I don't really know how to analyze it. It is a prime example of the desperate measures McCain's campaign and his supporters are willing to take to convince voters. It is disgusting and pathetic. Trying to sway people's votes by fear-mongering and lying WILL NOT WORK. Good will prevail here, I feel it.

But the saddest part about all this is that the people believe this stuff. People actually BELIEVE this stuff! All the lies spilled by McPalin's campaign are being sucked up by Republican lemmings. I swear, these last few days of the election are kind of like the movie Spaceballs: McCain is skipping straight to LUDICROUS SPEED. And just like the movie, Obama will make the logical decision to slow down while McCain tumbles straight to plaid. Sometimes it's hard not to agree with some liberal dirt and think that these people really are erratic.

But then again, that's probably just the America-hating, accomplishment-despising, achievement-jealous, anti-Christ liberal ways ingrained in my psyche speaking. I'll just go back to lounging in my mansion, payed for by hard-working, God-fearing Christians' tax dollars because I am "too lazy to get off my butt and work."

...as I write this at work...ya...

Nader and Ali G - Questions On the Rainforest!

"Your logic isn't complicated, it's just wrong."

Obamarama!! - Thanks Toby!

Possibly W's Favorite Game? Haha!

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Step1: Gain control of your own country. Anoint yourself ruler and immediately take command of all military resources. Use the military to commandeer all of the country's financial resources. Be somewhat benevolent or you may find yourself shot in your sleep.

Step2: Form friendly allegiances with as many countries as possible. Infiltrate their social and economic infrastructure until you dominate their culture and economic productivity. World domination is best achieved quietly. Use military action only to free oppressed people from oppressive dictators. They'll barely notice when you become their new dictator.

Step3: Build military bases in allied foreign countries. Offer military protection to all countries in need. Create joint military task forces with foreign powers but ensure that only your generals have the power to make any decisions.

Step4: Infiltrate unfriendly countries with persuasive individuals, a.k.a. spies, that advance your culture. Build discontent with the status quo while developing an armed rebel alliance. Convince the rebel alliance to topple their government for you, offer financial and military assistance to the new leadership.

Step5: Keep the excesses and bad habits of your family members out of the public arena. Live reasonably and express concern over the environment, poverty and freedom. Be seen as a ruler who merely wants to make the world a better place, not a despot with the goal of world domination. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Step6: Exert global domination publicly only if absolutely necessary. Rule the world privately but completely. Squash those who oppose you by discrediting them. Allow students to challenge authority but corrupt the best by giving them high-paying jobs and a pleasant lifestyle. Acknowledge condescendingly, that youth is merely a time of rebellion.

Step7: Rule the world. Revel in your success at world domination. Play life and death games with your friends, family and perfect strangers. Die knowing that your name is engraved on public buildings. Well, at least until the next evil genius figures out how to rule the world.

Don't Hate--Vote No on 8

I don't understand how people can be so ignorant and selfish as to put those "Vote Yes on 8" signs in their yards. Is it not obvious how horrendous this proposition is?

Let's play a game: how many negative words can be rhymed with "Proposition 8?"
*Hate
*Discriminate
*Penetrate (that one's for the supporters)
*Deregulate!

Oh, I love that game. A game I don't love is the "let's screw with the constitution and digress 150 years to a time when we, as Americans, actually thought it was okay to value one person's life over another" game. I mean, what the fuck America?! This has gone way past religious sanctity. This is a flagrant discriminatory act fueled by hate and fear.

"Preserve marriage?" Preserve marriage?! I have to wonder how many of these Prop 8 supporters are therapists that pay for their boats and Mercedes from the money they make off of children terrorized by divorce. I'm not sure what kind of "solidarity" these people expect from marriage these days but I would make a guess that same-sex couples who marry are more likely to stay together.

I would hate for any children of these people to fall in love with someone of the same sex. Of course, the fear of being brutalized or turned away by their parents probably solidifies the chance that they will never come out, ultimately leaving them empty, confused, and angry--that's a GREAT future for America.

If you truly love Jesus, can you, with all regard to his teachings, say he would deny someone the right to love someone else openly and honestly?

These are the building blocks of our so called "great nation," Sarah Palin

Keating 5 ring a bell?

McCain's past collides with the present Wall Street debacle.

Rosa Brooks
September 25, 2008

Once upon a time, a politician took campaign contributions and favors from a friendly constituent who happened to run a savings and loan association. The contributions were generous: They came to about $200,000 in today's dollars, and on top of that there were several free vacations for the politician and his family, along with private jet trips and other perks. The politician voted repeatedly against congressional efforts to tighten regulation of S&Ls, and in 1987, when he learned that his constituent's S&L was the target of a federal investigation, he met with regulators in an effort to get them to back off.

That politician was John McCain, and his generous friend was Charles Keating, head of Lincoln Savings & Loan. While he was courting McCain and other senators and urging them to oppose tougher regulation of S&Ls, Keating was also investing his depositors' federally insured savings in risky ventures. When those lost money, Keating tried to hide the losses from regulators by inducing his customers to switch from insured accounts to uninsured (and worthless) bonds issued by Lincoln's near-bankrupt parent company. In 1989, it went belly up -- and more than 20,000 Lincoln customers saw their savings vanish.

Keating went to prison, and McCain's Senate career almost ended. Together with the rest of the so-called Keating Five -- Sens. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), John Glenn (D-Ohio), Don Riegle (D-Mich.) and Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), all of whom had also accepted large donations from Keating and intervened on his behalf -- McCain was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and ultimately reprimanded for "poor judgment."

But the savings and loan crisis mushroomed. Eventually, the government spent about $125 billion in taxpayer dollars to bail out hundreds of failed S&Ls that, like Keating's, fell victim to a combination of private-sector greed and the "poor judgment" of politicians like McCain.

The $125 billion seems like small change compared to the $700-billion price tag for the Bush administration's proposed Wall Street bailout. But the root causes of both crises are the same: a lethal mix of deregulation and greed.

Today's meltdown began when unscrupulous mortgage lenders pushed naive borrowers to sign up for loans they couldn't afford to pay back. The original lenders didn't care: They pocketed the upfront fees and quickly sold the loans to others, who sold them to others still. With the government MIA, soon mortgage-backed securities were zipping around the globe. But by the time many ordinary people began to struggle to make their mortgage payments, the numerous "good" loans (held by borrowers able to pay) had gotten hopelessly mixed up with the bad loans. Investors and banks started to panic about being left with the hot potato -- securities backed mainly by worthless loans. And so began the downward spiral of a credit crunch, short-selling, stock sell-offs and bankruptcies.

Could all this have been prevented? Sure. It's not rocket science: A sensible package of regulatory reforms -- like those Barack Obama has been pushing since well before the current meltdown began -- could have kept this most recent crisis from escalating, just as maintaining reasonable regulatory regimes for S&Ls in the '80s could have prevented that crisis (McCain learned this the hard way).

But, despite his political near-death experience as a member of the Keating Five, McCain continued to champion deregulation, voting in 2000, for instance, against federal regulation of the kind of financial derivatives at the heart of today's crisis.

Shades of the Keating Five scandal don't end there. This week, for instance, news broke that until August, the lobbying firm owned by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis was paid $15,000 a month by Freddie Mac, one of the mortgage giants implicated in the current crisis (now taken over by the government and under investigation by the FBI). Apparently, Freddie Mac's plan was to gain influence with McCain's campaign in hopes that he would help shield it from pesky government regulations. And until very recently, Freddie Mac executives probably figured money paid to Davis' firm was money well spent. "I'm always in favor of less regulation," McCain told the Wall Street Journal in March.

These days, McCain is singing a different tune.

"There are no atheists in foxholes and no ideologues in financial crises," Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said last week, explaining the sudden mass conversion of so many onetime free marketeers into champions of robust government intervention. Fair enough. But as you try to figure out what and who can get us out of this mess, beware of those who now embrace regulation with the fervor of new converts.

**This is the latest article I picked out from the L.A. Times examining the should-be demise of Senator John McCain. How can people still be swayed to vote for this greedy, corrupt man? I'm flabbergasted.