New York Times electoral map

click to enlarge.

I love New York Times Op-Art section.

Wrestling

The Players:
Sarah "the Killa from Wazilla" Palin
Joe "Foot in the Mouth" Biden
Jimmy "The Georgia Cyclone" Carter
Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove
John "Nature Boy" Edwards
Scooter "Pardon Me Baby" Libby
Fred "The Butcher" Thompson
Geraldo "I'll Break Your Leg" Rivera
Gen Wes "Captain Krunch" Clark
Wolf "The Cannibal" Blitzer
Larry "Twinkle Toes" Craig
Elliot "The Go-Go Gorilla" Spitzer
William "Cold Cash" Jefferson
Jack "Cut Me Some Slack" Abermoff
John "Whatever" Kerry
Denny "Mr. Excitement" Hastert
Mike "Fuggedaboutit" Dukakis
Ann "Queen of Mean" Coulter
Dennis "The Impeacher" Kucinich
Brittany "I Voat 4 Kickin' Some Asses!" Spears
Dr. "You're A Damn Loser" Phil
Paris "I'm Like Already President, What?" Hilton

Check out YeeHaw's Etsy to buy the poster.
via Sacrebleu!

A missing perspective

A Muslim-American perspective:

"Over the past two years, we have witnessed a discourse which has consistently demeaned Muslims as less than American. In turn, American Muslims have been in hiding, resorting to our usual mix of self-pity and helplessness. The joke in Muslim circles is that if we really want Obama to win, then we would best off endorsing McCain. No one wants our endorsement. No one wants to meet with our leaders. No politician wants to be seen as Muslim-friendly. We have brought this upon ourselves.

If nothing else, this episode has shown us that we have to get more involved politically, that until we speak up, organize, and get our act together, and rid ourselves of our obsessions with our own victimization, not to mention our fixation with Palestine (at the expense of more pertinent issues for America like health care and education), we will be a political joke.

Anyway, Powell did us the service of telling us about a brave, courageous man – Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. I hadn't heard of him before yesterday. When I heard Powell's words, I was moved in a way I haven't been since Obama's speech on race in March. Powell's statement was one of those rare acts of moral courage that we so rarely see from our politicians. In March, Obama spoke to what makes America a truly exceptional country. And, yesterday, Powell did the same."

Via Daily

Wasilla Tour

Yes We Can (Hold Babies)

Yes we can (hold babies)

Politics of Political Portraiture

Every portrait is inherently false: a static, two-dimensional representation of an ever-changing, three-dimensional face. And accuracy is not the same thing as truth. Even without deliberate distortions, a still photo captures distractions that the mind edits out. Some retouching is nothing more than recreating on paper the image held in memory—removing, for instance, a bit of red from McCain’s eyes or a stray eyebrow hair from Newsweek’s Palin picture.

Read The Politics of Retouched Headshots here.

Via Daily.

Picture summary of the third debate

Seeding Racism

McCain's most motivated supporters

I've been thinking about this McCain-Palin Obama "palling around with terrorist" idea more lately. The saddest thing about many Republicans isn't just that they disagree with liberals on race--it's they are largely ignorant on race. When the McCain campaign cast the spell of diabolical jingoism, they have no idea of the forces they are toying with. We remember Martin Luther King's murder as a sad and tragic event. Less remembered is the fact that ground-work for King's murder was seeded, not simply by rank white supremacy, but by people who slandered King as a communist. - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Obama's ground work

"[The Obama] headquarters wasn't paying attention to how many voters we registered or how many doors we knocked that day--they were paying attention to how many one-on-one meetings we had, house meetings, neighborhood team leaders recruited, how many people we had convinced to come to this wonderful training in Columbus that we had. Yes, it was definitely scary to see how big our persuasion universe was and know that our first priority was not to just be tearing through that." -Regional Field Director for Southwest Ohio, Christen Linke Young

We will win. Read more here.

Ceramic ware for Obama/Biden

Ayumi Horrie
via Design Sponge

Fundraiser for Obama

Party to the people

hosted by d.chang

Sarah Palin the Great Debater

click to enlarge

via the Daily

Everymoment Now

Everymoment Now is a clean and easy way to read all the major headlines on the presidential candidates. I love how it is visually archived and managed to look stunning with only type and layout.
Simplicity is so elegant.

Obama Force One

"A Black man runs and a nation is behind him."
via wkstudio.
thanks, deep coterie and wescoasia.

everyone for obama buttons

more here!

Wasilla City Hall

Sarah Palin's stomping ground

Opps!

Talk Points Memo points out that the background behind McCain's acceptance speech was actually an image of Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, California. It seem like the coordinators made a huge mistake; it probably should have been Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Republican National Convention

Walter Reed Middle School

Peter Suderman:
If anything is true in this world, it’s that Republicans don’t do stagecraft. How can you tell? The puke green background was back!...when combined with the white shirt and yellow tie, it has the effect of making McCain’s skin look sickly and yellow – not exactly what you want when a crucial worry about your candidate is that he might be too old.

Let's put things in context

"If you're a minority and you're selected for a job over more qualified candidates you're a "token hire." If you're a conservative and you're selected for a job over more qualified candidates you're a "game changer."

If you live in an Urban area and you get a girl pregnant you're a "baby daddy." If you're the same in Alaska you're a "teen father."

Black teen pregnancies? A "crisis" in black America. White teen pregnancies? A "blessed event."

If you grow up in Hawaii you're "exotic." Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you're the quintessential "American story."

Similarly, if you name you kid Barack you're "unpatriotic." Name your kid Track, you're "colorful."

If you're a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the individual you're "reckless." A Republican who doesn't fully vet is a "maverick."

If you say that for the "first time in my adult lifetime I'm really proud of my country" it makes you "unfit" to be First Lady. If you are a registered member of a fringe political group that advocates secession that makes you "First Dude."

A DUI from twenty years ago is "old news." A speech given without proper citation from twenty years ago is "relevant information."

And, finally, if you're a man and you decide to run for office despite your wife's recurrence of cancer you're a "questionable spouse." If you're a woman and you decide to run for office despite having five kids including a newborn... Well, we don't know what that is 'cause THAT'S NOT A FAIR QUESTION TO ASK. "

Side note: I don't completely agree with the last sentiment (see previous post). But I have to say when Sarah Palin first introduced herself as the VP candidate she made her motherhood and her children a central part of her campaign narrative and now she is crying "foul"?

From the Huffington Post
via Poplicks

Update: Andrew Sullivan makes a point.

Talking about Sarah Palin

Junichi from Poplicks offers a Progressive's Guide to Criticizing (and not criticizing) Sarah Palin.

Inappropriate Criticisms of Governor Sarah Palin:

1. She is a woman.
2. She is a mother of five.
3. She is a mother of a newborn child.
4. She chose to have a baby with Down's Syndrome.
5. She chose to work soon after having her fifth child.
   
6. She has an unwed pregnant teenage daughter.
7. She is from Alaska.
8. She is from a very small town in Alaska.
9. She has only been in elected office for a few years.
10. She is relatively young.
11. She is a devout Christian.
12. She is sassy.
13. She looks like Tina Fey.
    

Appropriate Criticisms of Governor Sarah Palin:

1. She believes that a woman who has been impregnated and raped by her own father should be forced to have the child.
   


2. She believes that the state should incarcerate any doctor who aborts a fetus that is the byproduct of rape and incest.


3. She slashed funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers who need shelter.


4. She opposes hate-crime laws.


5. She sued the federal government to stop it from listing the polar bear as an endangered species.


6. She believes that climate change is not man-made.


7. She said that the Iraq war is "a task that is from God" and part of "God's plan."


8. She was in the pews of her church two weeks ago when a speaker described attacks on Israelis as God's "judgment of unbelief" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity.


9. She wants creationism taught in schools.
   


10. She wanted to ban books from the public library.


11. As governor, she asked for $198 million -- $295 per person -- in earmark requests for pet projects, which is more than any other state received, per person, from Congress for the current fiscal year.


12. She supported the Bridge to Nowhere in Ketchikan (before she opposed it).
    


13. She repeatedly attended the political convention of the Alaskan Independent Party, which supports secession from the United States and whose founder has expressed "hatred for the American government."


14. She is under investigation by the Alaska Legislature for firing the state public safety commissioner for refusing to dismiss a state trooper who was in an ugly divorce and custody dispute from Palin's sister.


15. To tout her foreign policy experience, she lied about visiting Ireland; in reality, she only stopped in Ireland for a refueling stop.
    


16. She opposes any school-based sexual education program that isn't abstinence-based.


17. She is an aerial wolf hunter.

link here.

Banning books, really? That is a insult to this blog.