"PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ― Police sources tell KDKA that a campaign worker has now confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter "B" in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker.

Ashley Todd, 20, of Texas, initially told police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield and that the suspect became enraged and started beating her after seeing her GOP sticker on her car.

Police investigating the alleged attack, however, began to notice some inconsistencies in her story and administered a polygraph test.

Authorities, however, declined to release the results of that test.

Investigators did say that they received photos from the ATM machine and "the photographs were verified as not being the victim making the transaction." "

So much for that story.  I guess I shouldn't have gotten all worked up.

Any bets as to whether or not Drudge splashes this in huge red font.  The prick.

I wondered how long that would take.

Really these people need to be defeated.  For Gods sake they really have to.

http://www.local12.com/mostpopular/story .aspx?content_id=39c3f3ee-24f8-4126-9ea8 -f8b18ef1c2d1

So, the image I have in my mind is of a Philadelphia Eagle's player in this years first game against the Dallas Cowboys.  The guy had the ball and was sprinting to the easy touchdown.  The fellow, who's name I can't remember, Was feeling good and confident and then.....the idiot spikes the ball on the 2 yard line.

So my point may be a bit obvious but it is worth saying...WE HAVEN'T CROSSED THE GOALLINE YET!!!!

I know everybody is happy and all, hell I am too.  But we have to finish out the drive.  

We have to keep driving and we need each and every person on board and moving.  

The other side is going to lie cheat and steal and we need to so overwhelm the other side that they can't steal it.

I just gave more money to the obama campaign and I'm on my way to go volunteer.

What are you all doing?

Thanks for reading.

We are enjoying a good run here, it's exciting, and it's a hell of a lot more fun to read the political news lately.

I have one thought I'd like to share however.

DON'T LET UP!!!!!!!

We cannot have a Dewey/Truman moment or mindset.

We cannot relax, even as little.

We need to keep our collective knee on McCains throat and keep wailing away until Nov. 4th.

We arguably need to give more of our time, money, and energy to this fight untill the last moments of election day.

I only say this because it is easy for many to relax a bit when things start going your way.

Our opponent is too desperate, and the stakes or too high to let that happen.

We can rejoice in how the events are going our way.  Let's take that joy and turn this into a push for hope, change, and the future that makes history.

LET'S TAKE THIS ONE HOME!

ok....histrionics over....thanks for reading.

My 65 year old mother in law sent me this today and I thought I'd share it.  If it's redundant I apologize.

<>This is Your Nation on White Privilege

By Tim Wise

9/13/08

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while if you're black and believe in reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school, requires it), you are a dangerous and mushy liberal who isn't fit to safeguard American institutions.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto is "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college and the fact that she lives close to Russia--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because suddenly your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is when you can take nearly twenty-four hours to get to a hospital after beginning to leak amniotic fluid, and still be viewed as a great mom whose commitment to her children is unquestionable, and whose "next door neighbor" qualities make her ready to be VP, while if you're a black candidate for president and you let your children be interviewed for a few seconds on TV, you're irresponsibly exploiting them.

White privilege is being able to give a 36 minute speech in which you talk about lipstick and make fun of your opponent, while laying out no substantive policy positions on any issue at all, and still manage to be considered a legitimate candidate, while a black person who gives an hour speech the week before, in which he lays out specific policy proposals on several issues, is still criticized for being too vague about what he would do if elected.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to go to a prestigious prep school, then to Yale and then Harvard Business school, and yet, still be seen as just an average guy (George W. Bush) while being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then Occidental College, then Columbia, and then to Harvard Law, makes you "uppity," and a snob who probably looks down on regular folks.

White privilege is being able to graduate near the bottom of your college class (McCain), or graduate with a C average from Yale (W.) and that's OK, and you're cut out to be president, but if you're black and you graduate near the top of your class from Harvard Law, you can't be trusted to make good decisions in office.

White privilege is being able to dump your first wife after she's disfigured in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you're black and married for nearly twenty years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called "terrorist fist bumps."

White privilege is when you can develop a pain-killer addiction, having obtained your drug of choice illegally like Cindy McCain, go on to beat that addiction, and everyone praises you for being so strong, while being a black guy who smoked pot a few times in college and never became an addict means people will wonder if perhaps you still get high, and even ask whether or not you ever sold drugs.

White privilege is being able to sing a song about bombing Iran and still be viewed as a sober and rational statesman, with the maturity to be president, while being black and suggesting that the U.S. should speak with other nations, even when we have disagreements with them, makes you "dangerously naive and immature."

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism and an absent father is apparently among the "lesser adversities" faced by other politicians, as Sarah Palin explained in her convention speech.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because a lot of white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing.  Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem./

In midst of the all out war that this campaign has become, I think it's important to remember what i'd argue most of us here are fighting for.  

I've attached the excerpt here that sums it up for me...

<>There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina.  She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer.  And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care.  They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches.  Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice.  Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally.  But she didn't.  She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign.  They all have different stories and reasons.  Many bring up a specific issue.  And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time.  And Ashley asks him why he's there.  And he does not bring up a specific issue.  He does not say health care or the economy.  He does not say education or the war.   He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama.  He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."  

"I'm here because of Ashley."  By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough.  It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start.  It is where our union grows stronger.  And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.<>  

As McCain's sewage pours over the the country during this final stretch I hope we can remember what this is all about.  

Thanks

PS sorry I have yet to figure out block quoting.

So I was really discouraged recently over the turn the campaign was taking.  I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who felt this way.

I made the mistake of staying glued to the news broadcasts and talking head shows as wave after wave of political dysentary washed out of the ether and into my little existence.

Being demoralized kinda sucks, however I tried to wash it away by donating my time and money to the Obama campaing this week and that helped a bit.

Some folks have epiphanies in the shower, others gain insight on a long walk, My bright moment cam while choosing oranges at the market near my house:

McCain has decided that to win he has to be an asshole.

I'm not referring to the freindly, lets go have a beer, but he's my kind of asshole.  Rather McCain has decided to be the sneering overcompensating dick that pretty much everyone tries to get away from as fast as possible.

To throw even more levity into my realization, he's also decided to throw petulant child into the mix as well.  My four-year old starts to act out when she's not getting enough attention also, it just took me a little while to recognize McCain's behavior for what it is.

The trifecta is that unlike the swift-boat saga from four years ago, McCain is taking the asshole role onto himself.  Bush for all his myriad faults was smart enough to let someone else be the asshole in the campaign.  McCain either couldn't find anyone else willing to embrace their inner dick, or just couldn't keep his contained anymore.  

Will it fail, who knows?  But I gotta believe that a majority of the populace will grow quickly tired of the Sneering Petulant Asshole persona that has possessed Grampy as of late.

Just my two cents.

Hey all.  I read an artice today that really sent me over the top.  Mike Falcone over at "The Caucus" wrote an article about how the criminal Karl Rove was attacking Obama on abortion.

No big deal so far.  The really aggravating part came with this segment here

"Though he helped derail Senator McCain's presidential bid during the 2000 Republican primary, Mr. Rove lavished praise on his party's presumptive nominee on Friday. He spoke glowingly of Mr. McCain and his wife's decision to adopt a child from an orphanage in Bangladesh."

No note of the irony of the fact that Rove derailed McCain's 2000 campaign by raising the spectre of McCain HAVING FATHERED A BLACK CHILD.  This he now goes on to praise.

So I realize that this is minor compared to the more egregious distortions going on with that Donut delivery service laughingly caled the Associated Press.  But hey different straws for different camel's backs.

The point is I am fed up and pissed off.  

I have a burning desire to fight back lest my head explode.

I am pretty new at this whole game so I could use some help.  In fact I'm yelling out for it here.  

For instance does anybody know of a reliable way to get the e-mails for these various authors?  I wanted to point out to Mr. Falcone the irony I noted above but couldn't find his e-mail address.  

How else do you fight back?  I looking for advice from some of you more experienced hands out there.  How does one raise an effective stink outside our little echo-chamber here.  

How do we at least make it uncomfortable for them when the media lies or allows themselves to pass on lies.  

I'm tired of screaming at my computer.

So oh great and wise MyDD community...what advice might you have?