I specifically said I was dubious about the report.

Is it because it has four links in, or is it that my comment regarding the question of whether I’m ‘Richard Farnos in drag’ is considered too saucy…?

Carlos the Carpenter

The point is that Obama either did not know that Auschwitz is in Poland, or he thought that the US army liberated Poland and other eastern territories. It is a pivotal fact of WW2 history that the Western Allies never went farther east than Germany, and all the territories to the east were conquered by the Red Army. And this fact determined the lines across which the ensuing Cold War was played out.

I would expect a US president to know these facts.

As for Obama’s tornado casualty comment, it betrays a lack of understanding of basic facts concerning the material world in which we live. Tornadoes, fearsome as they are, kill tens, or at most hundreds. Even hurricanes and wildfires kill less than the ten thousand figure Obama mentions, at least in the US. It is Asian typhoons and floods, and earthquakes, which are the big casualty-makers. I would expect any educated individual to know these facts, even if he has little scientific training, and even when he is tired.

‘energise the base’.

She did exactly that in spades. The only problem is Rovism is now dead killed by reality.

McCain appealed to the centre and independents, until he chose a darling of the right who is not so much stupid as arrogant and vicious.

What she doesn’t know she doesn’t need to know, its a virtue that her supporters adore in her.

The problem is that a Presidential election has never been won by energising the base but by energising the centre.

The base strategy only works when there is a wedge to drive through the centre forcing over approximately half the centre to join the base voters.

A wedge is a cultural dividing line that must be bigged up, fluffed up and sprayed like big hair to stay in place over what can be a very small head.

There were no wedges that worked, surprisingly when all the paranoias and neuroses of Black/communist/terrorists were played upon.

But it has long been observed that in extreme social situations, mental health improves as neuroses disappear.

When faced with a really threatening reality people tend to face it rather than make it up.

Now Karl Rove has said that the Republicans failed because they didn’t follow his advice;

‘KARL ROVE, FORMER BUSH ADVISER: Well, they should learn that we need to be able as a party and as a conservative movement to talk about the things that people are talking around the kitchen table about. What about their jobs, what about their health care, what about getting their kids schooled, getting their kids off to college, what about retirement security? And we need to talk about those issues in a way that makes sense to people sitting around the kitchen table.’
Well Karl Rove that might be what people were really talking about this election, but this is reality not a set of fabricated media generated ‘moral concerns’ about abortion and stem cell research and gay marriage.
This time the election was fought on the terrain of economic reality, a catastrophe that is really real, unlike the media cotton candy of ‘moral issues.
You weren’t paying attention this time Karl Rove,had McCain’s campaign concentrated on the the issue that looms large at every families table all the attention already focussed on that issue would have put the spotlight even more fully on the fact that the economic crisis occurred on the Republican watch.
All the spin in the world cannot make a wedge out of a economic catastrophe presided over by the policies of a party and a candidate that simply respond by urging more of the same.
In fact Mr Rove, your strategy was followed. Tthe base was energised they turned out to vote in droves, but they lost overwhelmingly on the highest turnout for decades.
Your strategy is dead Mr Rove, consumed by the economic carnage released by your party’s reckless ideologically driven wrecking party.
I would say its time to retire but you won’t and i don’t want you to. Please come back with Sarah Palin and her fanatically enthralled base for 2012, please give us more of the same, until you take your nasty, vindictive Rightwing Republican extremists into the wilderness with you.

VP candidates have been jokes before without hurting the Presidential candidate much. Agnew in 68 & Qualye in 88 were both seen as light-weights. Attacks that they were unprepared to become President failed to hurt Nixon or Bush Sr in any significant degree. Palin’s unpreparedness did hurt McCain who at 72 would have been the oldest person ever elected President, because people wanted to be reassured that if McCain died or became disabled, his Vice President was ready to take over. Palin was obviously not ready to become President and that rightly scared people.

Hmmm, I remember seeing a cartoon about that. Oh, here it is:

http://www.cagle.com/caglecards/main.asp?image=../../../working/081105/allie.jpg

In the interests of fairness, here’s one you may prefer:

http://www.cagle.com/caglecards/main.asp?image=http://cagle.com/working/081103/wolverton.jpg

“Bad grace. She has made far more deep gaffs.”

Gaffs…? I thought she was a hunter, not a fisher?

Oh, you mean ‘gaffes’…

“You wouldn’t hear it from me, got that? I did not participate in sneering at her pregnant daughter or Downs kid or make disparaging remarks about her being Miss Wasilla, capisce?..”

Why, no. Indeed. Not that you’ve just done so… ;)

“Are you Richard Farnos in drag?”

*peeks down blouse* Blimey, no! These are real…!