Fight Back Against McCain Attacks

By: Harry Waisbren

The Real McCain campaign at Brave New Films has come out with a new video aimed to entice McCain to disavow his dishonest Obama ad. Of course, there are many dishonest Obama ads they could be referring to, but McCain's recent exploitation of our soldiers is particulalry egregious.

The ad below highlights McCain's plans to attack Obama's treatment of our troops regardless of whether or not he visited them in Germany:



The ad is accompanied by a petition you can sign that highlights the bipartisan disgust over McCain's tactics. This sort of shameful conduct is not out of the norm for McCain though, as he has already been lying about his collpasing reputation amongst veterans organizations...a problem no doubt compounded by such ridiculous campaign tactics.

Moveon Attacks McCain "Gimmick"

By: Harry Waisbren

Moveon.org released a new ad today attacking John McCain's plan for reducing our dependence on foreign oil by increasing offshore drilling. Watch this ad, entitled "gimmick", below (via Huffington Post):



"Voters can see through gimmicks like offshore drilling, which will produce no oil for years and even then will hardly reduce the price of gas," describes Eli Pariser, MoveOn's Executive Director. "The question is, who do we trust to lead us to a post-oil economy - McCain, who has taken over a million dollars from oil companies and voted for billions in subsidies for Big Oil, or Obama who has a real plan to solve our energy crisis and to create millions of jobs doing it?"

This ad strikes McCain on a particularly vulnerable issue, considering the myriad of reasons for not lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling. In fact, this issue is so cut and dry that our very own Oil-Baron-in-Chief's top energy forecaster has said that it will not help at the pump. Furthermore, even one of McCain's top advisors admitted that it will have no immediate effect on gas prices.

Perhaps this decision has something to do with the flood of oil money--$1.1 million in the last month--that McCain has received after his flip flop on drilling. The oil companies can't help McCain's argument on the issue though, as he has already resorted to claiming that this is important despite the lack of immediate relief due to the "psychological impact" it'd have on rubes like the American people.

It's issues just like this one that led Brave New Films to create the video "Big Oil Fuels the Straight Talk Express". Check it out below (via Think Progress):

Obama Fights Back!

By: Harry Waisbren

It's about time Obama slams McCain and his media worshippers for the blatant hypocrisy inherrent in the "Straight Talk Express" all but saying that our country can't afford to elect an uppity terrorist darky:



This ad represents the tactic that John Kerry refused to employ: self respect. Obama isn't remotely going as far as he can, but at least he's exposing the unserious and contemptable nature of McCain's Rovian tactics. Obama's self defense has only come in response to McCain upping the anty of Rovian sleeze in a new ad relating Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears:



Chris Bowers noted the super-villain nature in this ad's utilization of all the worst forms of identity politics including how:

• Obama is a girly-man. The ad only compares Obama to female celebrities, which is a direct shot at Obama's "manliness."
• Obama will sleep with your white daughters: Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears are known for their sexuality as much as anything else. That must go for Barack Obama, too. And the history of attacking African-Americans in association with white women is such a positive one.
• Obama is too young: For a campaign that is hyper-sensitive to attacks on McCain's age, they certainly have no problem attacking Obama's age. Which is what comparing Obama to Spears and Hilton is.
• Obama is a Hollywood liberal: This is also a run of the mill attack on Obama as a Hollywood, liberal elite, in line with decades of conservative backlash narratives.

Good for Obama for fighting back against this narrative, but shame on our media for constantly helping the Republican party spread such unAmerican trash. If you don't yet believe the media is complicit in this shell game, maybe you'll be convinced by the venerable Jon Stewart:

Pledge to Hold the Media Accountable

By: Harry Waisbren

Media Matters has a new video and petition out designed to combat our media's McCain manlove:




This is an incredibly important issue for this election, especially considering our mainstream media is already going so far as to literally edit out McCain's mistakes. This sort of despicable conduct was not unexpected though, as it was explained in the Media Matters' produced book "Free Ride: John McCain and the Media". Fortuantely for the country, we have groups like Media Matters to help lead the pushback against the McCain media through actions just like this one:

Following a week of coverage focused on unfounded complaints of media bias by Sen. John McCain and his surrogates, Media Matters Action Network today launched an ad campaign highlighting the media’s long-held affection for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and seeking public support to hold the media accountable.The ad follows on the heels of a new study from the conservative Center for Media and Public Affairs, which reportedly found that during the initial phase of the general election, network evening news coverage has been more favorable toward John McCain than Barack Obama. Though Obama has received a greater volume of coverage at times, the tone of his coverage has been more negative, according to CMPA.

CMPA reportedly examined all statements by anchors and reporters on the network
evening news broadcasts between June 8, the day after Hillary Clinton dropped out of the Democratic race, and July 21. Though most of the comments were neutral in tone, CMPA reportedly found that when there was an opinion offered, it was more likely negative against Obama. Only 28% of the opinions offered about Obama were positive, while 72% were negative. McCain’s numbers were clearly better: 43% positive opinions versus 57% negative.

I know many people who recognize the problems with our media yet do not know how to work stop it. Media Matters is an incredible outlet to do just that, and I suggest to any progressive activist to begin working with Media Matters to expose the farce that our "unbiased" and "nonideological" press has become.

First "W." Movie Trailer

By: Harry Waisbren

The first trailer for "W.", the upcoming Oliver Stone Bush biopic, is embedded below and I highly recommend checking it out. The movie stars Josh Brolin as the second President Bush, Elizabeth Banks as Laura, and Richard Dreyfuss as Vice President/Supreme Overlord Cheney (via Huffington Post):

Despite the rush to release the film before the presidential election, Oliver Stone denies the charges that he is making a political hit piece:

''Bush may turn out to be the worst president in history,'' he declares as he peeks into room after room. ''I think history is going to be very tough on him. But that doesn't mean he isn't a great story. It's almost Capra-esque, the story of a guy who had very limited talents in life, except for the ability to sell himself. The fact that he had to overcome the shadow of his father and the weight of his family name — you have to admire his tenacity. There's almost an Andy Griffith quality to him, from A Face in the Crowd. If Fitzgerald were alive today, he might be writing about him. He's sort of a reverse Gatsby.''

Stone is creating quite the hard hitting portrait of our president with a focus on how his relationship with his father affected his presidency. It will also have some of the none too flattering depictions of his problem drinking that have been disappeared by our press corps, giving focus to the issues that should have been covered since the beginning and making the movie quite the fitting capstone to the most disasterous presidency our country has ever seen.

July 27th edition of Forward Forum

By: John Quinlan

This is John Quinlan. Please join me, co-host Harry Waisbren, and producer Stephanie Woods for this week's Forward Forum. On this week's show:

* With memories of last weekend's pride celebrations still fresh, Dane County proposes domestic partner benefits

* In a weekend of celebration for our Latino communities, a view into the virulent hatred being manipulated and targeted at courageous woman who is a longtime advocate of immigrants' rights along our southern border.... and much, much more.

"Forward Forum" airs Sunday evenings from 7-9 pm on WTDY, 1670 AM, and streams live and podcasts at www.wtdy.com. Join in the pre and post-show dialogue on our blog at http://madprogress.com/. Show website: www.forwardforum.net . Please join in our discussion by calling 321-1670, or toll free *123 for US Cellular users, and 1-877-867-1670 toll free, if calling from further afield.

Meet the Bloggers

By: Harry Waisbren


Meet the Bloggers is an impressively innovative and promising new program that will be a huge benefit to die hard bloggers and dead tree press readers (whose newspapers need to be torn from their cold dead hands) alike.

Meet the Bloggers is a live online video show created by Brave New Foundation which is broadcast online every Friday focusing on unconventional political opinion and analysis. Affiliate blogs include The Huffington Post, Think Progress, Alternet, Jack & Jill Politics and Of América. When not live, shows will be made available on-demand on meetthebloggers.org, as well as iTunes, and RSS Feeds. In addition to its web distribution, Meet The Bloggers will be televised on FreeSpeechTV and Link TV.

Cenk Uygur does a great job hosting, and they have already had a series of quality guests including some of my personal favorite bloggers Arianna Huffington, Marcy Wheeler, Nico Pitney, and Matt Stoller. The show also landed Senate Majority leader Harry Reid in its second episode, and it has Air America superstar Rachel Maddow coming up next week.

This show will be syndicated on Mad Progress from here on out, and for those of you who want to catch up I'm embedding the first two episodes below:



July 25, 2008: The energy crisis



July 18, 2008: Karl Rove in contempt