Summit VIDEO: Obama v. McCain. Oh snap!

By GottaLaff

I posted about this, and then some, a little earlier. Here's the video:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hey J-Sid, disrespecting the president won't work. He's smarter and quicker than you are.

President Obama calls out Eric Cantor

By GottaLaff

President Obama just now, to Eric Cantor at the health care summit:

When you do props like this, stack papers up, 2400 pages... Health care is complicated... would generate a bunch of pages. These are the political things we do that prevent us from having a conversation.

Our prez is certainly in "calling out" mode.

"Props" to Prez O! Yeah, I made that pun.

Quote-O'-The Day: R-E-S-P-E-C-T edition

By GottaLaff

Paraphrasing (very slightly) something John McCain just said at the Big Health Care Summit about Democrats meeting "behind closed doors" to put a deal together:

"I say 'unsavory deal making' with respect."

How does one say that "with respect"?

And how does one respect a guy who chose Palin as a running mate?

Bonus quote, Prez O to J-Sid:

"We're not campaigning any more. The election's over."

Respect that, J-Sid.

MUST SEE VIDEO- Sheldon Whitehouse: "The lying time is over....there will be a reckoning."

By GottaLaff

CORRECTION: I apologize. I had 2 videos up, and grabbed the wrong one. THIS is the video I meant to post.

Sheldon Whitehouse smacks down the GOP/Tea Baggers:



Suh-freakin'-NAP!

Rep. Alan Grayson on The Ed Show SLAMS Republicans: Liveblog

By GottaLaff

Grayson is on Ed's show. Here's what he said:

The people who should be apologizing are the Republicans... for dragging us all in the mud...

American is sick of you Republican party, you are a lie factory. Why don't you solve America's problems instead of making stuff up?

These people are No-Mongers, they have no answers to anything.... There's STILL no Republican plan!

If I have to choose between my job and saving thousands of lives a year, I know what my answer is.

We need Democrats with guts!

Elizabeth Edwards' smackdown of Maureen Dowd, Ann Coulter

By GottaLaff

Watch out MoDo and Madam's Apple, not everyone rolls over and plays dead:

For all those meanies who've been bashing Elizabeth Edwards in the press, she has some grenades to hurl right back. In response to a recent New York Times column by Maureen Dowd that called Edwards's new book, Resilience, "just a gratuitous peek into their lives, and one that exposes her kids, by peddling more dregs about their personal family life," Edwards says Dowd is way off base and adds that she'd have been "foolhardy" to think she'd be protecting her kids by not writing about her life.

"My children aren't protected from the death of their brother, my breast cancer, or any of the things that have happened in our family," says Edwards. "They're smart kids, they have Google alerts. They already know." Dowd, she adds, "has written an editorial where she clearly does not understand this."

And then Edwards had some choice words for Anne Coulter, the conservative commentator who once called John Edwards a "faggot" and joked that she "wished he'd been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

"I called Anne Coulter and complained, asking her if she doesn't feel some responsibility to raise the level of discussion," says Edwards.

Oh-h, (lady-like) suh-nap!

DNC Nails Michael Steele In Puppy Love Flip Flop

Remember this ad from yesterday where the RNC mocked Bo the Dog? Well, the DNC is not sitting down for that crap.

DNC chair Hari Sevugan wasted no time pouncing on the puppy love flip flop.

“This is the typical Washington politics that the American people voted to change last fall — tell folks during a campaign you “love puppies,” and then, when you’re in power — albeit at the RNC — you go negative on Bo,” Sevugan railed. “I’d say this type of Washington hypocrisy is ‘priceless,’ but really, the Master Card thing has been done to death.”

Snap. Via Greg.

Duke of Hurl

By GottaLaff

"Ouch" doesn't begin to say it:

An online petition seeking to rally support for a presidential pardon for convicted Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) has 13 signatures -- after three years.

The Economist endorses the socialist, trashes Gramm-pa McCain

By GottaLaff

Speaking of newspaper endorsements... Via Ambinder, we get a few choice words of suh-nap for Grammps:

"....the Candidate McCain of the past six months has too often seemed the victim of political sorcery, his good features magically inverted, his bad ones exaggerated. The fiscal conservative who once tackled Mr Bush over his unaffordable tax cuts now proposes not just to keep the cuts, but to deepen them. The man who denounced the religious right as "agents of intolerance" now embraces theocratic culture warriors. The campaigner against ethanol subsidies (who had a better record on global warming than most Democrats) came out in favour of a petrol-tax holiday. It has not all disappeared: his support for free trade has never wavered. Yet rather than heading towards the centre after he won the nomination, Mr McCain moved to the right.

Meanwhile his temperament, always perhaps his weak spot, has been found wanting. Sometimes the seat-of-the-pants method still works: his gut reaction over Georgia--to warn Russia off immediately--was the right one. Yet on the great issue of the campaign, the financial crisis, he has seemed all at sea, emitting panic and indecision. Mr McCain has never been particularly interested in economics, but, unlike Mr Obama, he has made little effort to catch up or to bring in good advisers (Doug Holtz-Eakin being the impressive exception).

The choice of Sarah Palin epitomised the sloppiness. It is not just that she is an unconvincing stand-in, nor even that she seems to have been chosen partly for her views on divisive social issues, notably abortion. Mr McCain made his most important appointment having met her just twice.

Ironically, given that he first won over so many independents by speaking his mind, the case for Mr McCain comes down to a piece of artifice: vote for him on the assumption that he does not believe a word of what he has been saying. Once he reaches the White House, runs this argument, he will put Mrs Palin back in her box, throw away his unrealistic tax plan and begin negotiations with the Democratic Congress. That is plausible; but it is a long way from the convincing case that Mr McCain could have made. Had he become president in 2000 instead of Mr Bush, the world might have had fewer problems. But this time it is beset by problems, and Mr McCain has not proved that he knows how to deal with them.

Oof!

Connecticut Rep. Chris Shays: "I just don't see how [McCain] can win,"

By GottaLaff

And this was before the infomercial, wink:

New England's lone House Republican appears to have publicly broken with his party's standard-bearer, saying John McCain has not run a clean campaign and is likely to lose his bid for the presidency.

"I just don't see how [McCain] can win," Connecticut Rep. Chris Shays told the Yale Daily News earlier this week. "He has lost his brand as a maverick; he did not live up to his pledge to fight a clean campaign." Shays, who in 2006 became the only Republican congressman from New England, perennially finds himself in a heated re-election race.

Rats. Ship. Leaving.

Suh-napage: IWRC* Palin, go to the back of the bus! edition

By GottaLaff

IWRC* Palin is an endless source of suh-napage:

The No Talk Express

An interesting tidbit from Robert Draper on Gov. Sarah Palin: "I've heard from one well-placed source that McCain has snubbed her on one long bus ride aboard the Straight Talk Express, to the embarrassment of those sitting nearby."

*"In What Respect, Charlie?"

VIDEO: Joe Biden v. wingnut anchorwoman. Guess who wins...

By GottaLaff

The woman is Orlando WFT tv anchorwoman Barbara West. It is from October 23, 2008.

She asks Biden if Obama is a Marxist. She asks him if the plan is to turn the United States into Sweden.

Biden so disliked West's line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate's wife.

"This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election," wrote Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign.

That's our Joe!

H/t: SeattleDan

Biden zingers

By GottaLaff

Suh-nap!

• “Sarah Palin says, 'You know, I was in second grade when Joe Biden was elected to the United States Senate at age 29,’” he said this afternoon. “That’s true, but she was in sixth grade the last time John had a new idea.”

• “You know, the hardest part, I’ve been the youngest everything for so much of my life,” Biden said. “Now I’m the old guy in the campaign. Thank God John McCain’s around.”

  “The second oldest,” a local man interrupted.
  
  “He’s still a few years older than I am,” Biden answered.

• This is the homogenized election, man. Same thing’s going on in my town of Wilmington, Delaware, [as are] going on in Liberty. … We’ve been dug into a very, very deep hole. Literally. No matter whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, no matter what your political persuasion. It’s virtually impossible to say things are better off today than they were eight years ago.”

This is the Joe we've been waiting for.

Palin press may boycott UN conference

By GottaLaff

And speaking of no access to IWRC* Palin, check out this little gem:

Journalists, displeased with Sarah Palin’s efforts to restrict their access to her, are threatening not to cover her events surrounding the United Nations conference here unless they're allowed more access.

The unfolding boycott is the latest development in a rocky relationship between Palin’s handlers and the press, in which the campaign has sought to tightly control her interactions with the media.

The campaign had originally indicated that the print reporters following her campaign would be among the small group of journalists allowed to attend the so-called “pool sprays” before Palin’s meetings with dignitaries on the sidelines of the U.N. meetings.

The sprays are basically glorified photo opportunities during which journalists can snap photos and film footage and – if they’re lucky – shout a question or two at Palin and her company before she adjourns for private meetings. [...]

But the imbroglio began developing Tuesday morning when Palin’s handlers informed the small print press contingent covering her campaign that the print reporter designated to cover the events, Elizabeth Holmes of the Wall Street Journal, would not be allowed to cover the sprays.

The campaign’s reasoning was that there were not going to be questions or statements at the sprays, so they were only appropriate for photographers and cameramen.

The campaign also at first moved to bar CNN, the television network designated for pool duty, from sending its editorial producer – basically a hybrid print/video journalist – though the campaign budged when the network threatened to withhold its cameras as well.

Oh-h-h-h, early-in-the-day suh-nap!

*In What Respect, Charlie?

The Bidenator

By GottaLaff

Oh, suh-nap!

Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden Wednesday hit the road in Ohio as he likened John McCain's economic "conversion" to the Bible story of Saul on the Road to Damascus.

"John said I’m always for less regulation. Here now John says he’s gonna go and crack down on the greed on Wall Street, the greed of American corporations," Biden said in Maumee, Ohio. "Let’s take a look at John’s conversion here -- something happened on the road to Damascus, John fell off his horse but he got back up on the same horse.”

Biden [...] spent much of his 40-minute remarks [...] hitting out at Republicans for de-regulating the economy in recent years.

"Look, if John cares so much, cares so much about this now, where was he a week ago? Where was he a month ago? Where was he five years ago? I’ll tell you where he was, he was bragging to the folks on Wall Street to the executives who now he calls ‘greedy.’ He was bragging to them how we’re going to shred the regulation that fetters them, that ties them down."

"Remember that scene in this administration where a bunch of folks, I think it was the Commerce Department, or maybe it was Treasury, took out a chainsaw. They had it on TV, a chainsaw, and cut through a whole batch of regulations. Well, they were cutting your bone and sinew. They were cutting right through the very things that protected ordinary people on Main Street."

Gramm-pa Sid's powerful, pithy, substance-filled response?

"No matter how fiery the sales job, Ohio voters prefer John McCain’s maverick record of reforming government and fighting for change," said McCain-Palin spokesman Ben Porritt.

With that kind of informative comeback, who needs attack ads?

Tim Kaine blasts Rove

By GottaLaff

Paddy, go take a nap. And thanks a million for holding down the fort while I had my 20 hours away, and for that absolutely scrumptiously adorable birthday video! And thanks to all of you for making my day better than ever!

In the meantime, this is how to slap down that puffed up piece of chickenfat named Rove (Hey Anon, see that link on the word "this"? If you click on it, you might figure out how it works. I report, you embarrass yourself):

It was a tough retort from Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia.

Kaine responded Sunday to comments made by Republican strategist Karl Rove earlier this month criticizing Kaine's potential vice presidential credentials.

On CBS' "Face the Nation," Rove jabbed at the governor, saying "again no disrespect to Gov. Kaine. He's been a governor for three years. He's been able but undistinguished. I don't think people could really name a big, important thing that he's done."

The Democratic governor — who is rumored to be on Barack Obama's potential VP list — pointed out that his state was voted best for business three years in a row by Forbes.com and said "maybe Karl Roves and the Republicans don't care about business climate, that would explain why we're in the situation that we're in".

"Governing Magazine was also named Virginia as the top governed state in America," Kaine told reporters, "maybe to Karl Rove that isn't an achievement that would explain a federal government that couldn't respond to a hurricane a Katrina and couldn't figure out how to start and manage a war."

Ohhh, suh-NAP and a half! If Tim Kaine ends up being the V.P. choice, we now know he can fend for himself and then some.