This press conference is really kinda painful to watch in a squirm-inducing way. Kinda like a reality show where Republican celebrities get root canal work.

It seems that the long-suffering public aren't the only ones who want Sarah Palin to pack up and go home and fade nicely and quietly back into the obscurity she deserves: So are her fellow Republican governors.

When asked if Palin was the best choice McCain could have made for a running mate, no one jumped to answer.

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who started the race in former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's corner but later worked for McCain, chimed in: "What happened here is the party and John dropped Sarah into the ninth inning of the World Series three runs down."

Crist initially demurred when asked separately if Palin was a legitimate future possibility for the White House.

"I think that's up to her to decide. It's a little early," Crist laughed.

And apparently they really hated being used as props for Palin's press conference yesterday:

One called it awkward: “I’m sure you could see it on some of our faces.”

Another Republican governor eyeing a presidential run in 2012 told CNN the event was “odd” and “weird,” and said it “unfortunately sent a message that she was the de facto leader of the party."

There has been palpable tension among some GOP governors gathered in Miami that Palin has been sucking up all the media oxygen.

I know the timer is running out on Palin's little fame bubble. But as long as flaming-red Republicans (76 percent of them) want her up there, she's going to be the face of the party. And the guys who think they should be the face of the GOP are already getting out the long knives.

It's like dropping a big flopping goldfish into a roomful of cats. Pass the popcorn, wouldja? Just don't make me watch any more Palin pressers ...

This story has little to do with sports, although you wouldn't know it from reading this article. Former center for the University of Texas Longhorns, Buck Burnette, made a racially charged threat against the president-elect of our nation and is lucky he only got kicked off his school's football team and didn't land himself in jail. The article brings up valid points about social networking sites and their potential pitfalls, but the real story here is about a racist pig who threatened our soon-to-be president.

AUSTIN — A template on facebook.com asks, “What are you doing right now?” An ill-advised response led to Buck Burnette’s expulsion from the University of Texas football team.

What began as a private text-message exchange on Election Night between Burnette and a friend soon became available for anybody with a computer to see.

In the status update section of his Facebook page, Burnette posted, “All the hunters gather up, we have a (slur) in the White House,” in reference to Obama’s becoming the first African-American elected to the presidency. Burnette said the comment was a text message he received from a friend and that he exercised bad judgment posting it on his page. He later apologized in a written note that was read by Brown during a team meeting. Read on...

Why is this bigot still a student at the University of Texas? My guess is that if he weren't a starting player for a nationally ranked football program he would already have been expelled and thrown out on his ass. People have been expelled for less, and I'm curious to know if the Secret Service has investigated the incident.

The Republican party is in shambles and wingnut/washed up rocker Ted Nugent knows just how to fix the party.

Make no mistake, conservative values and ideologies are embraced by Americans. The polls all indicate Americans are fed up with the Pelosi-led, do nothing congress, and do not support more government programs and control. Sounds to me like we have a conservative revolution brewing.

Conservative leaders and thinkers such as Newt Gingrich, Jed Babbin, Governor Jindal of Louisiana, Thomas Sowell, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, Governor Sarah Palin and others need to turn up the heat and bring this less government, more individual freedom and strong national defense revolution to a boil. It is time.

Ted calls his piece: Rino Season Is Now Open He's so delusional he doesn't seem to understand that Americans have voted down Conservatism completely by electing Obama with a huge mandate. And the Democrats are closing in on 60 seats in the Senate. Yes Ted, Americans sure are fired up about conservatives. And how does he feel about Obama?

Nugent: I was in Chicago last week I said---Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these you punk? Obama, he's a piece of shit and I told him to suck on one of my machine guns...Let's hear it for them. I was in NY and I said hey Hillary---you might want to ride one of these into the sunset you worthless bitch...Since I'm in California, I'm gonna find-- she might wanna suck on my machine gun! Hey, Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these you worthless whore. Any questions? Freeeeedom!

Download | Play    Download | Play
After Watching Brandon Marshall almost pull out a white and black glove to celebrate the unity he feels in America with the election of Barack Obama as President at the end of the Cleveland-Denver game after he scored the winning touch down last Thursday, I realized something...

"Barak Obama's election as the 44th president of the United States is a tremendous symbol of unity," Marshall said. "I want to create that symbol of unity because Obama inspires me... In my own way I wanted to pay respect to our nation that we've made so I got a white glove and painted it black, half and half. It's not about "It notabout black power, it's not about white or black, it's about U.S.A. red, white and blue. But Stokely came over and said it's too close a ball game, you might get flagged....

The American Right has a big decision to make as we move forward in the history of America and as Obama takes office. They can revert back to the Lee Atwater school of politics and try to tear this country apart or they can re-brand themselves and start over.

I have a feeling that they will take every opportunity they can to highlight bad behavior by African Americans and other minorities, kind of like FOX News on Election Day, promoting the phony Black Panthers story in Philly that was meant to scare whites. It was the same throughout the 2008 campaign.

So the Right can do just like they did with Willie Horton and nearly every presidential election since -- or they can take the high road, rebuild, move away from the Christian conservatives and become a more moderate party.

I was interviewed by the NY Daily News Sports columnist Michael O'Keefe and we talked about what the impact of Obama's victory on Nov. 4th would have in the sports world.

I knew that his election would spark a very positive reaction, but now I see it will have an even bigger impact. Obama has a chance to reach a new generation of voters through sports figures who were never touched by politics previously. When have you ever heard Tiger Woods make a political statement before?

"I think it's absolutely incredible," Woods told CNBC. "He represents America. He's multiracial. I was hoping it would happen in my lifetime. My father was hoping it would happen in his lifetime, but he didn't get to see it. I'm lucky enough to have seen a person of color in the White House." When asked by the cable news outlet how his father Earl would have reacted to Obama's election as the 44th President of the United States, Woods didn't hesitate. "He would have cried. Absolutely. No doubt about it."

More and more athletes will speak out about how proud they feel that Obama was elected just like Brandon Marshall and Tiger Woods did. We've talked about the youth vote before when discussing actual voter turnout, but Obama really can have an impact I think on future generations of voters with the help of these role models for the young. And yes, they are role models for many kids...

All minorities are standing up tall today, and that is bad business for Republicans. How will they deal with it? I think you already know, but we can all still hope they don't go down that path...

I saw this last week and didn't get a chance to make the clip, but Bay Buchanan was on CNN and told us how the right wing will bring bipartisanship to the table as Obama takes office.

BUCHANAN: Well, it all depends on which direction the country -- Obama wants to take the country. If he is really going to govern from the center and recognizes that the nation is center to right, then we're gonna work with him, just as we worked with Bill Clinton to get welfare reform...

Obama won a clear mandate to lead this country the way he sees fit and America wants to get things done. So this statement by Buchanan, and dozens of other conservative talking heads like her in the days since the election, is very dangerous for the Right. If they are perceived as obstructionists during this time of heavy economic crisis then their brand of politics will be damaged all the more.

Personally, I hope they do it. They helped make the case for Obama with their constant personal attacks as well as calling him a "Socialist" and a "Marxist." Keep up the good work, guys and gals. You are making my job so much easier. As for the talking point that America is a center-right country, Media Matters has more.

...a poll conducted November 4-5 showed strong support for the progressive positions that Obama has articulated on the issues, rebutting the claim that the United States is a conservative country.
Several in the media have claimed that President-elect Barack Obama won the election because he ran as a conservative and that notwithstanding Obama's victory, the United States is a conservative country.

In claiming that Obama ran as a conservative, these media figures ignore the central components of his platform, including repeal of tax cuts for the wealthy, near-universal health-care coverage, and redeployment of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.

Read about all the results here.

I'll admit that naming a mountain after President-elect Obama before he's even sworn in might be a tad over the top. But, it does show the overwhelming enthusiasm and support he is receiving from around the globe and the stark contrast between our new president and the outgoing national embarrassment that is George W. Bush.

The prime minister of Antigua wants to rename the island's highest mountain Mount Obama in honour of the US president-elect.

The prime minister, Baldwin Spencer, announced the plans on Wednesday in a congratulatory letter to Barack Obama.

Antigua's attorney general, Justin Simon, said he would find out if parliament needed to approve the name change. The political analyst Avel Grant said it could draw more tourists to the island. Read on...

As for Dubya? Well, the comedy world is going to miss him, but he's finding out that the rest of the world just isn't that into him:

In less than three months, President-elect Barack Obama will take office and the Bush administration will belong to history. With the president reportedly interested in writing about his White House years, publishers have a suggestion:

Take your time.

"If I were advising President Bush, given how the public feels about him right now, I think patience would probably be something that I would encourage," says Paul Bogaards, executive director of publicity for Alfred A. Knopf, which in 2004 released Bill Clinton's million-selling "My Life." Read on...

I got chills reading this brief, but very truthful op-ed from Paul Krugman at the New York Times. Barack Obama's win last night was just one step into the future, lets hope Krugman's words ring loud and clear for future generations - Beware the Monsters...

Last night wasn’t just a victory for tolerance; it wasn’t just a mandate for progressive change; it was also, I hope, the end of the monster years.

What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America’s political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer “therapy and understanding” to terrorists. Monsters like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to start torturing people.

And in our national discourse, we pretended that these monsters were reasonable, respectable people. To point out that the monsters were, in fact, monsters, was “shrill.”! Read on...

Paul Krugman gets it right.

Instead, the Republican rump, the party that’s left after the election, will be the party that attends Sarah Palin’s rallies, where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” It will be the party that harbors menacing fantasies about Barack Obama’s Marxist — or was that Islamic? — roots.

Why will the G.O.P. become more, not less, extreme? For one thing, projections suggest that this election will drive many of the remaining Republican moderates out of Congress, while leaving the hard right in place. 

{snip}

But the G.O.P.’s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat.
This will pose a dilemma for moderate conservatives. Many of them spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them have tried to maintain that denial through this year’s election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics have grown ever uglier. But one of these days they’re going to have to realize that the G.O.P. has become the party of intolerance. 

He's got it perfect. If Obama wins today, the Republican party with the help of FOX and talk radio will be the party of Screaming Zombies that will make the Clinton years look like a walk in the beach.

And as Digby tells us:

And it's obviously a long way from them believing that Americans are tired of conservatism. They will keep fighting.

Now, the villagers are already saying this is a victory for the "center-right" and are becoming apoplectic at the idea that the dirty hippies are coming to town to trash the place, so there will be very strong resistance to anything that doesn't look like centrism and bipartisanship. With the villagers' track record I would hope that a new administration armed with a mandate for change would be smart enough to ignore them.

The corporate media and the right wing blogs have followed The Drudge Report for years, looking for talking points and proper GOP framing for their reporting. As you can see from the above picture, and the headline "Obama Congratulates McCain," it appears Matt Drudge, along with the Republican Party is in complete meltdown.

By now most of you have seen or heard about Republican Elizabeth Dole's disgusting and desperate "Godless" commercial attacking her front-running opponent, Democrat Kay Hagan.

Not only has Hagan fired back with an ad of her own (posted above), her campaign has now filed a defamation lawsuit against Dole and fiercely punching back against what has to be the lowest of campaign smears in the 2008 campaign cycle. From The Hill:

Democratic challenger Kay Hagan has filed a defamation lawsuit against Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) for questioning Hagan's faith in what is shaping up as the nastiest campaign of this cycle.

Hagan announced the lawsuit after Dole refused to remove the ad, which suggests Hagan is an atheist and has become the subject of tough criticism from several newspaper editorials in North Carolina. Several polls show Dole trailing Hagan, a state senator.

“Elizabeth Dole would love nothing more than to distract from the issues and her record for the last five days of the campaign,” Flanagan said. “In filing this suit, we’ve made clear that these kind of despicable tactics will not be tolerated, and our campaign is moving forward with the most important task at hand: defeating Elizabeth Dole, and giving North Carolina’s families a voice in the U.S. Senate that they’ve been sorely missing.” Read on...

From TampaBays10:

The head of the Hillsborough GOP, David Storck, distributed an email from a Republican Party volunteer saying the voters are a threat.

That's because, as the volunteer says in the email, he sees "car loads of black Obama supporters coming from the inner city to cast their votes for Obama."

It goes on to say, "This is their chance to get a black president and they seem to care little the he is at minimum a socialist and probably Marxist in his core beliefs." The Republican volunteer says that is because, "After all he is black- no experience or accomplishments but he is black." Read on...

If the McCain/Palin campaign has done anything, it has exposed the worst in our society. Couple that with the hate talk that infests the once-public airwaves from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the xenophobic, racist rants of the right wing blogs and this is what you get.

(Photo courtesy The Improper)

Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin has been a treasure trove of highlights. Charges of Socialism, Communism and terrorism on the campaign trail have transformed her into the walking, talking poster child for failed Republican policies and talking points -- not to mention one of the biggest jokes in American political history.

According to the AP's Beth Fouhy, Sarah Palin's attempt at an energy policy speech in front of workers at a solar energy plant in Toledo, Ohio Wednesday didn't go over too well. Gee...I wonder why?

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Wednesday called for a "clean break" from the Bush administration's energy policies, which she says rely too much on importing foreign oil.

Palin spoke after touring Xunlight Corp., one of a handful of solar technology startup companies in Toledo, a struggling industrial city in this swing state. The city's leaders are hoping that the solar companies will create jobs to replace some of those lost by downsizing in the auto industry.

But Palin made only a passing reference to solar power in her speech and instead renewed her call for more drilling in U.S. coastal waters. She repeated her signature anthem, "drill, baby, drill," which seemed to fall a bit flat on the audience at the plant even as it's become a popular chant at her rallies. Read on...

October 22, 2008 MSNBC HARDBALL

Sometimes you have to wonder what Republicans have against democracy.

Because that's what this whole "voter fraud" foofara is about. John McCain and Sarah Palin and Lou Dobbs and the rest of the right-wing torch brigade that have been after ACORN and the Ohio Secretary of State aren't concerned about protecting people's right to vote -- and in fact, their efforts largely go toward directly stripping citizens of their legitimate voting rights.

Or more precisely, this is all about building a post-election narrative aimed at delegitimizing a Barack Obama presidency by claiming he won fraudulently. It's not just a handy excuse for the ass-kicking they deserve -- it's a whole right-wing conspiracy-theory cottage industry in the making that will nurture their paranoia and rage for years down the road.

This weekend, Sarah Palin was out whipping up a fine froth among the McCainiacs about ACORN's activities:

Palin demanded answers to “unanswered questions about his connections with ACORN.”

The fans screamed “Booo!” at least 10 times when Palin mentioned Obama’s name.

“ACORN is under investigation for rampant voter fraud in 13 states. ACORN received over $800,000 from the Obama campaign,” Palin said. All 13 are swing states like Indiana.

“Booo!” Palin’s supporters shouted. Obama has said the $800,000 was for voter canvassing during the primary election, not for voter registration during the general election.

Palin, of course, is just following her the lead of her boss, who claimed in Wednesday's debate that ACORN "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." And we're already seeing the violent results on the ground emanating from this kind of demagoguery.

And it's demagoguery on a massive scale. After all, everywhere that ACORN has been seriously examined -- from Indiana to Seattle, whenever issues have arisen they have been the result of individual canvassers trying to cheat ACORN, not with the organization itself.

And let's be clear: there is no evidence whatsoever that an actual voting fraud problem exists. Just in regards to ACORN, the bogus registrations have largely been flagged and caught. Moreover, there simply is no evidence that people actually register to vote illegally on anything more than an infinitesimal scale.

Continue reading »

Photo from Brett Marty, more from FiveThirtyEight:

Outside Obama's major economic policy speech in Toledo today. Feels like the End Times for somebody, I am forced to report.

[UPDATE] Just to be clear, we at FiveThirtyEight are against Muslim-murdering Presidential Christian babies !FOR! Ohio.