The Three-Million Dollar Projector

John McCain made a huge deal out of an earmark that Barack Obama requested for an "overhead projector" in last night's debate. Turns out that it actually was a huge deal:

McCain's phrase suggests Obama spent $3 million on an old-fashioned piece of office equipment that projects charts and text on a wall screen. In fact, the money was for an overhaul of the theater system that projects images of stars and planets for educational shows at Chicago's Adler Planetarium. When he announced the $3 million earmark last year, Obama said the planetarium's 40-year-old projection system "has begun to fail, leaving the theater dark and groups of school students and other interested museum-goers without this very valuable and exciting learning experience."

The Adler Planetarium, which I visited on a school trip along time ago, was disturbed enough by McCain's bogus claims that they issued their own statement:

To clarify, the Adler Planetarium requested federal support - which was not funded - to replace the projector in its historic Sky Theater, the first planetarium theater in the Western Hemisphere. The Adler's Zeiss Mark VI projector - not an overhead projector - is the instrument that re-creates the night sky in a dome theater, the quintessential planetarium experience. The Adler's projector is nearly 40 years old and is no longer supported with parts or service by the manufacturer. It is only the second planetarium projector in the Adler's 78 years of operation.

Science literacy is an urgent issue in the United States. To remain competitive and ensure national security, it is vital that we educate and inspire the next generation of explorers to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math.

Senator McCain's statements about the Adler Planetarium's request for federal support do not accurately reflect the museum's legislative history or relationship with Senator Obama.

It should be noted that Senator Dick Durbin and six Chicago-area Congressman, three of whom are Republicans, also agreed to sponsor the $3 million earmark, which went unfunded anyway. Planetariums in New York and Los Angeles recently replaced their Zeiss projection systems with federal funding. As usual, the right-wing noise machine is revealed as short on facts and long on spin.

They're at it again (The MLK-GOP rumor)

The National Black Republican Association has put up billboards in Florida and South Carolina saying the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, a claim that black leaders say is ridiculous.

Told about the billboards, the Rev. Joseph Lowery let out a soft chuckle that grew stronger as he began to think more about the idea."These guys never give up, do they?" said Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King. "Lord have mercy."

Lowery, who knew King well, said there is no reason why anyone would think King was a Republican. He said King most certainly voted for President Kennedy, and the only time he openly talked about politics was when he criticized Republican Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential campaign.

"That was not the Martin I know and I don't think they can substantiate that by any shape, form or fashion. It's purely propaganda and poppycock," Lowery said. "Even if he was, he would have nothing to do with what the Republican Party stands for today. Do they think Martin would support George W. Bush and the war in Iraq?"

In "The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.," which was published after his death from his written material and records, King called the Republican national convention that nominated Barry Goldwater a "frenzied wedding ... of the KKK and the radical right. The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism."

This isn't the first time these asshats have tried to smear King's legacy with these claims. A local disturbed caucasian lad aging bigot even tried to perpetuate them a while back. The GOP flock of sheep run with talking points such as these and take glee in spreading their ignorance on the subject at hand. It's merely spin of the facts - their basis is semi-correct. Lincoln was a Republican, and southern Democrats fought the Civil Rights movement. But it was Democratic administrations, Kennedy and Johnson, who pushed for civil rights over the objections of the likes of George Bush Sr. and literally any Republican over the age of 70 today who was in power at that time. Including Hell's most recent addition to the spit, Jesse Helms.

These are the same clowns who convinced poor, working-class Americans that Republicans were looking out for their best interests and that Democrats were rich elitists, and then raised their taxes while cutting the tax burden of their uber-wealthy base.

I've got some news for you. . .unlike your Karl Rove hand puppet, America's poor and black citizens not only get the concept but can actually recite the phrase "Fool me once, shame on you - Fool me twice shame on me". They really won't get fooled again:

You're proud of this stupid mother fucker that can barely speak English? You attack the eloquent speech of Barack Obama? You want more of the same? Wassamatta U? I'm guessing you had no trouble reading THAT. . .and that you can't comprehend Obama since he uses complete sentences and proper syntax. Does it make you angry when you can't understand what we say? Is that why you resort to terms like Dumbocrats, Leftards, etc.? Is that how you falsely duped the common man into thinking that you represented them? By making fun of literacy?

FDR, who WAS wealthy AND an elitist, understood your methods, but he used them to pull our great nation together in a prior time of crisis while Prescott Bush and Henry Ford sold out to the Nazis in a manner eerily similar to today's world scenario. You have chosen to use it to divide us for greed and corporatism, and will do whatever is necessary to continue your sellout. 2006 was a wake-up call - 2008 will be the ever-out-of-reach alarm clock across the room. . .

Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships

You've read the spin - now get the facts:


Ben Smith over at Politico was one of the few voices of reason today regarding Barack Obama's remarks concerning "faith-based" initiatives. Smith points out that Obama isn't continuing the policies of George Bush, nor has he moved to the right on this issue.

From the Obama campaign:

Obama will offer remarks on what he will do as President to build a real partnership between faith-based organizations and the White House....

Obama will create a President’s Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

As Barack Obama has said many times, he believes that change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up, and few are closer to the people than our churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques. And many of the challenges we face today—from saving our planet to ending poverty—are simply too big for government to solve alone. We need all hands on deck.

That’s why Obama will help draw on their strength of these groups through the creation of a new President’s Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Obama does not believe that faith-based groups are an alternative to government or secular nonprofits, or that they’re better at lifting people but. But what he does believe is that we all have to work together to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. Obama’s Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will help empower grassroots faith-based and community groups to help meet these challenges.

The partnership will not endanger the separation of church and state—but will harness the energy of these critical groups

The new partnership will not endanger the separation of church and state, so long as a few basic principles are followed. First, if an organization gets a federal grant, it will not be permitted to use that grant money to proselytize to the people it serves, and the group will forbidden to discriminate against them on the basis of their religion. And groups will be required to comply with federal anti-discrimination laws in their hiring practices—including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques will only be allowed to go toward secular programs. And Obama will ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work.

Innovative new programs: training larger organizations to support smaller ones, and expanding summer learning programs to serve one million students

Barack Obama will work with the hundreds of religious and community groups that understand the process to train the thousands of groups that don’t. The Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will “train the trainers” by giving larger faith-based partners like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Services—and secular nonprofits like Public/Private Ventures—the support they need to help other groups build and run effective programs.

And the Council will target key challenges like closing the achievement gap. Obama will expand nonprofit summer learning programs to serve one million students by developing partnerships with faith-based and community groups. This partnership won’t just help children learn—it will help keep them off the streets during the summer so they don’t turn to crime.

Fox Attacks! - Rupert Murdock? ?

Obama is a rock star. It's fantastic. I love what he is saying about education. I want to meet him. I want to know if he's going to walk the walk.

- Rupert Murdock

Here comes the spin machine!:




Seriously, here's the REAL story:

Rupert Murdoch predicts landslide for Democrats:

CARLSBAD, California (Reuters) - News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch on Wednesday predicted a Democratic landslide in the U.S. presidential election against a gloomy economic backdrop over the next 18 months.

Murdoch has yet to endorse a U.S. presidential candidate but considers Barack Obama very promising, the media magnate said in an interview by two Wall Street Journal reporters at an annual conference for high-tech industry insiders.

Moving the Goalposts

Keith Olbermann offered another long diatribe against the Clinton campaign last night. He recited an exhaustive list of statements from Clinton and her supporters about which states should count, and why.

Watch the goal posts move, state by state:

THE FOX IS WRONG! (Obama version)

Brave New Films aces it once again!

FOX’s objective is clear: carpet bomb Barack Obama with negative stories, distortions, and smears before the Pennsylvania primary in an attempt to skew the outcome toward the Republicans’ preferred adversary, Hillary Clinton. But did FOX imagine that the “liberal” media would be such willing accomplices?

Check out our latest episode of the gameshow sensation that’s sweeping the nation — THE FOX IS WRONG: OBAMA! Play along as FOX guests and personalities distort and misrepresent the statements of Obama and those around him, only to have that pesky “liberal” media pick up the smears and keep on running! For the finale, watch in wonder and amazement as ABC’s George Stephanopoulos allows Sean Hannity to actually spoon-feed him a question on Hannity’s radio show, then parrots it almost word-for-word a day later during ABC’s infamous Democratic debate in Pennsylvania!

For an added bonus, check out our last video to see what nine minutes of FOX on Obama looks like (don’t worry, the video is just 54 seconds). There you can get a small taste of FOX’s strategy to saturate their viewers with as many negative Obama stories as a cable line can carry — FOX spews more Obama smears in nine minutes than most networks deliver all day! And remember, this is just a summary of NINE MINUTES on FOX — there are 1,440 minutes every day...

Watch the videos, sign the petition, and fasten your seatbelts — we’ve got a crazy few months ahead, and the media won’t reform itself…

Hillary's just a "good ol' girl"

Or is she channeling Dick Cheney??

While touring the Hoosier State yesterday, Hillary Clinton put on her "good 'ol girl" act" touting her experience with guns and hunting to crowds around the state. Clinton sucked up to "gun-toting liberals" on Saturday by hinting that she has some experience of her own pulling triggers. No mention of whether or not she was "packing" during her hair-raising mission to Bosnia.

And, as usual, she used the occasion to twist Barack Obama's statement on Friday regarding the bitterness and hopelessness many feel here in the rust belt in an attempt to sway voters. It seems to me that Hillary doesn't have much to say these days, so she instead pounces on every statement uttered by Obama that she feels she can spin into votes for her:

"I disagree with Sen. Obama's assertion that people in our country cling to guns and have certain attitudes about trade and immigration simply out of frustration," she began, referring to the Obama comments on small-town Americans that set off a political tumult on Friday.

She then introduced a fond memory from her youth.

"You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught be how to shoot when I was a little girl," she said. "You know, some people now continue to teach their children and their grandchildren. It's part of culture. It's part of a way of life. People enjoy hunting and shooting because it's an important part of who they are. Not because they are bitter."

Clinton said she has hunted ducks.

Later in the day, Clinton visited a restaurant in Crown Point, Indiana and shared a shot of whiskey with the locals:

Clinton stood by the bar and took a shot of Crown Royal whiskey. She took one sip of the shot, then another small sip, then a few seconds later threw her head back and finished off the whole thing. Clinton later sat down at a table and enjoyed some pizza and beer, and called over Mayor Tom McDermott of Hammond, Ind., to come join the table.

"Every time I get around you we start drinking, senator," the mayor exclaimed. Clinton nodded and raised her glass. "It's Saturday night, though, Tom," she said.

So, in summary, the elite Clinton would have you believe that she's a regular ol' gun carrying gal who likes to hang around the bar and do shots. Right. . .
Just what we need in a president, emulation of Dick Cheney and pandering to the worst in people.

Hillary Clinton's NAFTA Story Exposed

Hillary, once again, is busted by network video footage:

Blame Canada?

More accurate to blame Hillary:

Last week, the Conservative Canadian government interfered in the Democratic primary process by misrepresenting a communication between Obama economic advisor Austin Goolsby and a low-level Canadian official concerning Obama's position on NAFTA.

This CBC video report posted below reveals the Canadian government's mis-statement, and how John McCain and Hillary Clinton repeated that lie in nearly identical language - as though Hillary was running to be McCain's vice-president.

Paul Loeb reports:

As the Ohio primary approached, Obama was steadily closing what a month earlier had been a 20-point lead in the polls. He pointed out that the NAFTA trade agreement was a centerpiece of Bill Clinton's term and that it cost massive numbers of industrial jobs. Instead of creating a trade-fueled boom, NAFTA helped hollow out America's industrial base, with over 200,000 manufacturing jobs disappearing in Ohio alone since the 2000 election. Even Republicans I talked with while calling the state just before the primary made clear that they thought it was a disaster.

Given these sentiments, Hillary chose not to defend her husband's actions, but instead claimed Obama was distorting her position because she'd privately opposed the agreement at the time, had "long been a critic" and now similarly supported stronger labor and environmental standards. Echoing her reinvention on the Iraq War, these claims were flat-out nonsense. As David Sirota points out, she'd praised NAFTA repeatedly in public settings from the time of its inception, even praising corporations for mounting "a very effective business effort" on behalf of its passage. And as Obama highlighted their contrasting positions and approaches on this and other issues, he was gaining in the polls.

Then, on Feb 27, the Canadian network CTV reported that even as Obama was publicly attacking Bill's role in NAFTA, and arguing for a drastic overhaul, he'd had key economic advisor Austin Goolsby arrange a meeting with the Canadian ambassador where Goolsby reassured them that this was all just "political positioning," pandering for campaign trail. The likely source of the anonymous Valerie Plame-style leak was Ian Brodie, Chief of Staff, to a key Bush ally, right-wing Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and the US media jumped all over it as proof of Obama's hypocrisy. The Canadian embassy denied the story and Obama also said it was false. A follow-up March 3rd leak then sent a supposed memo summarizing the meeting to the major US media outlets, quoting Goolsby as saying Obama's statements were more "political positioning than the clear articulation of policy plans." Clinton made the controversy a centerpiece of her home stretch speeches and ads, saying "You come to Ohio and you both give speeches that are very critical of NAFTA and you send out misleading and false information about my position regarding NAFTA and then we find out that your chief economic advisor has gone to a foreign government and basically done the old wink wink, don't pay any attention this is just political rhetoric." She even ran a radio ad that misleadingly presenting itself as a news story, which concluded, "As Senator Obama was telling one story to Ohio, his campaign was telling a very different story to Canada."

John McCain similarly attacked Obama for the presumed contradiction in his stand, saying "I don't think it's appropriate to go to Ohio and tell people one thing while your aide is calling the Canadian Ambassador and telling him something else. I certainly don't think that's straight talk." The week before, key Clinton ally, Machinist's Union head Tom Buffenbarger used recycled language from ads the right-wing Club For Growth ran against Howard Dean by dismissing Obama supporters as "latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies." He now attacked Obama again by saying, "Working families cannot trust a candidate who telegraphs his real position to a foreign government and then dissembles in a nationally televised debate."

These attacks unquestionably made a difference. They flipped voter perceptions on an issue where Obama should have had a key advantage. In 1994, union, environmental, and social justice activists were so angry at Clinton's staking all his political chips to pass NAFTA that many sat out that critical election, helping lead to Gingrich's win. Now Clinton ended up getting a majority the 55 percent of Ohio voters who expressed a sense "that trade takes jobs away," a majority of those worried about their family's economic situation, and a majority of union members, whom Obama won in his recent victories. She won a 10 percent plurality in a state where Ohioans overwhelmingly picked the economy as the top issue. And she won overwhelmingly with late-breaking voters, the opposite of practically all of Obama's other campaigns. Most important, by casting doubt on Obama's integrity, the cornerstone of his campaign, they made him seem like just another hack politician who'd say anything to win. This gave the supposed scandal a probable impact in Texas and Rhode Island as well, even though NAFTA was less of a central issue there.

Indeed, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's chief of staff, Ian Brodie, was heard to say "Someone from (Hillary) Clinton's campaign is telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt. . . That someone called us and told us not to worry." In other words, the quote was flipped - from Clinton camp to Obama - and used to defeat him in a state where he likely would have won. Karl Rove must be very proud of Mrs. Clinton. . .