John McCain Campaigns for Reprehensible Saxby Chambliss in Georgia

In 18 days, voters in Georgia will vote in a run-off election between Republican incumbent Sen. Saxby Chambliss -- who won his seat after a dirty campaign which gleefully maligned Vietnam veteran and triple amputee, the very honorable Max Cleland -- and Democrat Jim Martin.

Wouldn't you know it, McCain, who soundly denounced Chambliss' 2002 tactics, flew specially down to Georgia yesterday to stump for Saxby. Saxby, let us not forget, is the guy who, before the election last week, tried rousing his supporters by direly warning that the "others" were coming out to vote and his people better get moving. Well, he needn't have worried. McCain carried Georgia except for the immediate Atlanta area.

Chambliss is everything that's bad, old, decayed, racist and pathetic about the Republican party. Please read this excellent article by Max Bernstein of The Huffington Post, entitled "In Georgia, McCain Saves the Worst for Last." If you can help Martin's campaign, there is a link in the article for more information how to do it.

Is this a look at the real McCain? You don't support a Southern hater like Chambliss without buying into his agenda. Sad, sad day for integrity, isn't it?

Media Matters for America -- All Over Conservative Media

I want to point out another excellent website we should all be following. Media Matters for America is, to quote their site, "a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." We're going to put a widget for them in our sidebar, so check for the latest headlines there.

Boy, do they have their job cut out for them. As MMfA is reporting, the right wing print pundits, radio/TV personalities, and websites out there are already working overtime, spewing out invectives and outrageous bullshit in the direction of our new President-elect. Surprise, right?

Bob Cesca on Huffington Post has an excellent article on the subject today, entitled "What Doesn't Kill the Far Right Only Makes Them Crazier". He touches on some of the more spurious recent developments from the extreme right wing. It would be almost amusing if these people weren't often armed and dangerous, you know? I'm sure you've read how the sale of semi-automatic weapons skyrocketed the day after Obama was elected. Comforting, eh?

Yikes. The very least the rest of us can do is keep an eye on these far-right-leaning rabble-rousers and fight for the truth wherever and whenever we can. You get a crazy right wing email from somebody, write back and tell them why it's wrong. You talk to somebody who's repeating idiocy from some Dem-hater, go back at them. It's time to stop being polite to these guys. They'll never return the favor.

Go forward with the truth!

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Speaks With Obama!

I'm going to send you over to The Huffington Post for this short article and a couple of videos of MSNBC personality Rachel Maddow -- we love her! -- who was at Barack Obama's rally in Florida last evening.

The enlightened and appealing Maddow's star has been rising this political season, her ratings lately bumping up as high as CNN's venerable Larry King, and she deserves it! She's a fresh face, a ferocious mind and with enough humor and charm to sell it to the viewers -- and by "it" I mean her smart take on politics with a brilliantly liberal point-of-view. We need it!

Go! Watch!!! Volunter for Obama-Biden!!! Encourage Your Friends!!! VOTE!!!

Obama Electrifies Denver, Colorado, Yesterday

Read this inspiring post from David Sirota on Huffington Post -- "The Moment Obama Grabbed 100,000 Coloradoans".

I think it will 1.) Make you wish you had been there and 2.) Make you proud to support Barack Obama, all over again.

Go! Read!! Volunteer for Obama-Biden!!!

Great Post by Alec Baldwin on Huffington Post

Check out this excellent blog by Alec Baldwin reflecting on his appearance this past Friday on HBO's always entertaining and engaging Real Time with Bill Maher. Baldwin was excellent on the show, but gives great credit to co-guest Garry Shandling for the best line of the night. I wanted to hear more from Baldwin, frankly; he's strong and unsparing when he speaks and writes, and absolutely compelling. Smart, passionate, serious -- he really is somebody to be proud of as an example as an involved artist.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour was also a guest, and you don't get much smarter than she is, but I felt she was a little too supportive of Sarah Palin's symbolic place on a Presidential ticket, citing all the high-ranking women in other countries. All well and good, but that the U.S. has such a lightweight, obviously unqualified and cynically chosen -- to reflect and appeal to a specific radical slice of the demographic out there -- lady on the ticket doesn't say anything good about the state of the U.S. and what we'll settle for. Amanpour put forward that she felt she needed to defend the notion of her on the ticket, but liking the idea of having a woman on the ticket certainly doesn't mean that it should have been this woman, or just any woman. And that's just about what we've got in Sarah Palin. I just love it when somebody refers to her, boastfully, to boost her up, as the governor of the "biggest state in the nation." Since when do we measure qualifications by the square foot? Yikes.

I will leave you with Maher's "New Rules" segment, which starts out with a few assorted funny bits then seques into a cogent and frightening riff on Sarah Palin's extreme religious views. Maher makes it funny, but he's also dead-on and it's scary stuff.

There are quite a few clips from this week's Real Time with Bill Maher on YouTube right now, and the whole show repeats many times during the week, until the new show on Friday.

Go! Read! Watch! Get Involved! Volunteer!!!

Huffington Post -- "6 Things Palin Pick Says About McCain"

Insightful article by Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris about the implications -- for both sides -- of McCain's pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate.