First Door on the Left

Welcome to the last edition of Friday Night Cartoons before Election Day 2008. I hope you had the opportunity to vote early, but if not… please do not forget to vote this coming Tuesday.

And for those of you into such things, Happy Halloween.

Now, on to the definitive compilation of this week’s best editorial and political cartoons. Remember, as always, your mileage may vary. Click on a cartoon to make it bigger or to start a slide show. Enjoy!

As always, our thanks go to the talented and observant cartoonists who, each week, help us smile through the pain.

(Okay, so that last one was not a cartoon, but it was fun nonetheless so I threw it in. It is good to laugh.)

Saturday additions:

See you next week.

It seems that my hometown newspaper (along with two other right leaning newspapers) has been asked to give up their seat on the Obama campaign airplane… and they don’t seem to be terribly happy about the situation.

Think about it, though. You are in the final days of your campaign for the presidency of the United States. You have a limited number of seats on your airplane and a lot of people who want to sit in them. So, who are you going to ask to give up their seats?

1. A national newspaper or broadcast network that is favorable toward your campaign, or
2. A small, regional newspaper (daily circulation 300,000) in the heart of Bushland that is more favorable toward your opponent’s campaign.

Though I am sure the rabid right wing will scream about it and refuse to see the logic behind the decision, I think most of us would go with the second option.

I do not know if space is at a premium on Johnny McCain’s or Sarah Palin’s airplane (I kind of doubt that it is), but if it is who do you think is going to be asked to relinquish their boarding passes? Will it be Fox News? Somehow I kind of doubt it.

Update: Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, both of which lean about as far to the right as you can without actually falling into the muck, still have their seats on the plane.

UPDATE 11/02/08: If it were your campaign plane, would you want people who would stoop so low as to publish crap like this riding on it with you?

Via ABC News…

More than 33.5 million people watched Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s message Wednesday night on primetime television, according to today’s Nielsen ratings.

That’s really gotta piss off Johnny and the McCaniacs (and probably Sarah and the Palinistas, too, though they are already more focused on 2012 than they are on this election). More than 33.5 million people. Wow.

Also:

In addition to the more than 33 million people who watched the senator’s infomercial, Obama’s appearance on Comedy Central’s Daily Show last night sparked the highest-rated episode of the show’s history.

You are planning to vote, aren’t you? (If you haven’t already.)

UPDATE: A little bug whispered my ear a few moments ago that Johnny McCain is planning to appear on Saturday Night Live this coming Saturday night. Just two days before the election. He must figure that he doesn’t have a whole lot to lose at this point in the game. I mean, considering how well his running mate’s appearance on the show worked out for her and all…

Only five days left, folks. If you live in a state that has early voting, please be sure you take advantage of the opportunity if you have not already. Otherwise, please remember to vote next Tuesday.

Two new ads were released by the campaign this morning…

They’re both great, but I think the second one hits home just a little harder.

One of the big criticisms thrown at Senator Obama by the right wing Republicans over the summer was that it seemed that he couldn’t quite “close the deal.” I think he’s closing the deal.

P.S. This final video does not come from the Obama campaign. It was actually made for a GOTV campaign in North Carolina. I think everybody should see it, though. So, here it is…

Please. Vote. It’s the only legal way to cancel out your neighbors.

Here’s to perfect follow-up to Senator Obama’s excellent program last evening (see previous post)…

You’d almost think that someone on his senior staff could have checked to see if Joe was there before Johnny took the stage and perhaps let the Senator know that he was not. (Perhaps they did and he just forgot.)

It’s almost like they want him to look foolish. It really is.

(Joe was probably off meeting with his agent… he has an agent now, you know… working on his country music deal or maybe setting up his congressional campaign. Really, Joe the Plumber is thinking about running for Congress. I’m not joking, he really is. Or perhaps he could be Sarah Palin’s running mate in 2012? Seriously, cannot the Republicans see the joke their party is becoming? You’d almost think that someone would put a stop to it.)

P.S. There were about 6,000 people in attendance at Johnny McCain’s event in Ohio this morning. MSNBC reports that more than 4,000 of them were high school students who were bused in…

A local school district official confirmed after the event that of the 6,000 people estimated by the fire marshal to be in attendance this morning, more than 4,000 were bused in from schools in the area. The entire 2,500-student Defiance School District was in attendance, the official said, in addition to at least three other schools from neighboring districts, one of which sent 14 buses.

That’s just sad.

In the event that you missed it or you just want to watch it again, here is the 30-minute Barack Obama ‘infomercial’ that aired earlier this evening…

If you watched the program on television, you know that at the end there was a fade-in to a live Obama/Biden rally in Florida. That fade-in is not included in the video posted here.

Please vote on November 4. (Or earlier, if you are in a state that allows early voting.)

First, it was Sarah Palin not understanding the duties of the Vice President. Now, it’s John McCain misunderstanding the powers of the President.

Yesterday at a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Mr. McCain told the crowd: “No one will delay the World Series game with an infomercial when I’m president.” (He was, of course, referring to Senator Obama’s thirty-minute television special that will air this evening at 8 p.m. Eastern (7 p.m. Central) on CBS, NBC, Fox, Univision, BET, MSNBC and TV One. Don’t forget to watch!)

I am unable to find anywhere in the Constitution of the United States where the President of the United States is given the authority to determine whether or not an infomercial will delay the start of a World Series game. I don’t think it’s in there. I really don’t.

It’s a moot point anyway because it isn’t going to happen. The game, weather permitting, is scheduled to begin at approximately 8:37 p.m. Eastern time. That is, by my calculation, approximately seven minutes after Senator Obama’s program ends.

You would think that someone on Johnny McCain’s senior staff would 1) inform the Senator that the powers of the Presidency do not include the scheduling of infomercials and World Series games; and, 2) there is no conflict, anyway.

You would think that, wouldn’t you?

(And here all this time we were thinking that it was Bush and Cheney who were all about expanding the powers of the executive branch. McCain and Palin, should they somehow manage to get into office, will put Bush and Cheney to shame.)

Fix it. Make history on November 4. Vote early if you can.

New ad out today…

Don’t forget the 30 minute special tonight, 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Central on CBS, NBC, Fox, Univision, BET, MSNBC and TV One.

We’ve heard a lot during this campaign about bias in the media. You would be hard pressed these days to find many right wing Republicans who will not tell you that the media is “in the tank” for Barack Obama. Or, perhaps, the term “liberal media” will ring a bell with you.

With that in mind, I am going to recommend that you read an article that was just recommended to me by a friend who happens to author a conservative weblog. It was written by the editors of Politico and is entitled “Why McCain is getting hosed in the press.” Click on the title. Read the article. I think you’ll find it worth the few minutes it will take you to read it.

Today I was told in the comments on another post that I am snarky (or that this blog is snarky, or perhaps both… I’m not sure). The word snarky does not appear in my dictionary. I’m guessing the commentators meant it as a compliment. Snarky though it may be, my response to those who have complained to me about members of the liberal media has always been “Perhaps they are not as dumb as you think they are.”

At any rate, read the article. It’s a good article. Really, it is.

On another note, is anyone besides me finding it difficult to sleep in these final days leading up to the election? I’ve been tempted several times to call John McCain and ask him if he could spare an Ambien. (Was that snarky?)

P.S. We’re trying out some of those “social bookmarks” thingies at the bottom of each post. Go ahead a mouse over them and see what happens. Neat, huh?

One week from today Americans will go to the polls and choose their next president. One week from tomorrow the newspapers (and the right wing weblogs) are going to be filled with post-mortems of the Sarah Palin/John McCain campaign. They are all going to try to explain to us why Palin/McCain lost and Obama/Biden won. The thing is, we already know why. We’ve known for quite some time.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert gets a pretty good handle on it in his column today, entitled “A Choice and an Echo.”

With the country facing enormous problems (even before the meltdown of the credit and financial markets in recent months), the voters wanted more substance from their candidates. They wanted a greater sense of maturity and a more civil approach to campaigning. They were tired of the politics of personal destruction and the playbook that counseled “attack, attack, attack.”

Senator Obama was perfectly suited to this new approach. He told the crowd that trekked through the cold and snow to hear his victory speech at the Iowa caucuses:

“You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that’s consumed Washington. To end the political strategy that’s been all about division, and instead make it about addition. To build a coalition for change that stretches through red states and blue states.”

McCain-Palin

John McCain didn’t get it. He seemed as baffled by the new politics as an Al Jolson aficionado trying to make sense of the Beatles.

He answered the desire for a higher tone in politics with ads that likened Senator Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and with attacks that questioned Mr. Obama’s patriotism, blamed him for high gasoline prices and all-but-accused him of being a socialist.

Mr. Obama, said Mr. McCain, would convert the Internal Revenue Service into “a giant welfare agency.”

Get it?

Whether this is admirable or honorable is not the question here. In the current political and economic atmosphere, it seems very much like a roadmap to defeat.

The heyday of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove is over. Yet Senator McCain handed the reins of his campaign to Rove’s worshipful acolytes. With the nation in a high state of anxiety over the conflagration in the credit and financial markets, Senator McCain traveled the country ranting Rovelike about Bill Ayers, trying to instill a bogus belief that the onetime ’60s radical and Senator Obama were good buddies and perhaps involved in some nefarious doings together. Senator Obama was about 8 years old when Mr. Ayers was engaged in his nefarious doings.

It was the classic fear card that the Republicans have played to such brilliant effect for years. But times have changed. (Lately Senator McCain has been obsessively invoking the name of “Joe the Plumber” at his campaign appearances, as if that might be the phrase that finally sways the electorate in a way that the Bill Ayers mantra did not.)

Senator Hillary Clinton helped define the new political atmosphere with her own historic run for the White House. Senator McCain, demonstrating again his tone-deafness to the new reality, tried to capitalize on Mrs. Clinton’s remarkable achievement by cynically selecting Sarah Palin, the anti-Hillary, as his running mate.

Mr. McCain must never have noticed that the public turned overwhelmingly against the Bush administration because of its repeatedly demonstrated incompetence. Now here is Senator McCain, in the midst of a national crisis, with a running mate who is demonstrably incompetent to serve the nation as its president.

Ms. Palin is a walking affront to the many Republican women (not to mention women in general) who are, in fact, qualified to hold the highest office in the land.

John McCain could have traveled a higher road. He chose not to. He bet instead on one last gasping triumph of the politics of the past.

So the lot of you who are at this moment attacking your keyboards trying to come up with your bits of wisdom for next Wednesday morning can stop now. Mr. Herbert has done the work for you. I’m sure he would appreciate a word of gratitude.

P.S. If you’re thinking about leaving a comment to remind me that the election has not yet been held, I know that. Don’t you think I know that? Please, don’t waste your time or mine. Thank you.