President-Elect Obama: the American Mutt

Yesterday, our president-elect held his first press conference. Lots of questions about the economy and what kind of steps Obama might take. He actually answered the questions more about approaches he is considering. Funny how I used to get annoyed by those kinds of answers during the primaries, but now I find them refreshing.

What is more refreshing is how Obama is so comfortable in his own skin in discussing matters of race. When asked about what kind of puppy the Obama family wants, he answered it smiling with an off-the-cuff comment:

Obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me. So whether we're going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household.

No wonder the Humane Society endorsed Obama this year--the first time it had ever endorsed a candidate for the presidence. He had been a leader in legislation to strengthen animal shelters and strengthen penalties to those who are cruel to animals. The above picture has him holding a dog who was rescued and has only three legs.

I think Obama is going to make a lot of us more comfortable in talking about our" mutts" --human or animal. Put a little love in your hearts, as the song goes. Here's a version by Mary Mary.

The More the Dow Goes Down, the Wingnuts Get Nastier, Part 1

Poor Wingnuts.

The stocks sunk another 300 points today. I'm nervous about it as my pension plan can't be rescued easily.

But Joe the Plummer the soon-to-be-less multi-mcMansion and multi-luxury car owners GOP are very nervous. McCain campaign especially.

Let's start with a bogus report by Pittsburgh station KDKA from last night:

http://kdka.com/video?id=47849@kdka.dayport.com

In case you have trouble getting to the video clip, Kos summed the incident up very well this morning:

Some poor white girl, 20-year-old Ashley Todd of Texas, was mugged at an ATM, but when the mugger (a big black guy) saw her car with the McCain sticker, he beat her and carved a letter "B" in her face with a knife. Apparently it was a dyslexic mugger because the "B" was carved backward, but whatever -- it proved that Obama's supporters were violent and craaazy!

Then Matt Drudge takes the story as "true news" and blasts it on his website. (sorry, not linking to it as it would give him more cash for his coffers) He never checks out the story, although to Drudge's credit, he's often said he's not a real journalist either.

In cohoots, Faux Noise, who takes every word Drudge (and McCain's campaign) passes on to them as gospel from the Good book, spreads the story. They don't check the story either.

And guess what? KDKA had to correct the story when the Obama campaign made inquiries to them to verify it the incident:

A campaign worker who claimed she was the victim of a politically-motivated attack in which she was beaten, kicked and cut, now admits that she made the whole story up.

Turns out that the McCain campaign was involved in pushing this story.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack.

(via the Huffington Post)


Ashley Todd, a 20 year old race-baiter who can't even self-mutilate a "B" correctly on her face. Not cute.

Sounds like Ms Todd wrote to either A) the McCain's about this and lied to them, and/or B) e-mailed Drudge this hoax. Probably both, and either both are gullible as hell, or they knew this was a bald-face, felonious lie. I suspect the latter. I'm waiting for Keith Olbermann to give his daily award for the "worst person in the world" tonight to Ms. Todd.

Maybe this was the October surprise that Lee Atwater and Karl Rove made up, but I'm still waiting for the Osama to come out and say he knows Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright, and has "palled around around with them."

Update: this pic sez it all (h/t to Iddybud)



More buzz l8tr in Part 2.