October 27, 2008 – Turning Left

It’s official. The Steeler Nation has endorsed Barack Obama for President.

Very cool.

It must have been an awesome event in Pittsburgh’s Mellon Arena Monday. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, thousands showed up to hear the Senator from Illinois deliver his “closing argument” to the campaign:

Mr. Obama was introduced by Steelers President Dan Rooney whose presence sparked incongruous calls of “Here we go Steelers, Here we go,” in the home of the Penguins.

“Eight more days, eight more days,” the crowd chanted taking the lead of Sen. Bob Casey, who, along with Gov. Ed Rendell joined Mr. Obama on the arena floor. As they voiced their support for the Democratic nominee, thousands of other supporters still waited in the long line that wrapped around the Lower Hill site.

Obama brought his message of hope home to the voters of Pennsylvania:

“After decades of broken politics in Washington, eight years of failed policies from George Bush, and 21 months of a campaign that has taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are one week away from change in America,” he said as a wave of applause broke over the arena.

“I knew that the size of our challenges had outgrown the smallness of our politics. I believed that Democrats and Republicans and Americans of every political stripe were hungry for new ideas, new leadership, and a new kind of politics — one that favors common sense over ideology; one that focuses on those values and ideals we hold in common as Americans.”

And more:

“Now, Sen. McCain has served this country with distinction. And he can point to a few moments over the past eight years, on torture for example, where he has broken from George Bush,” Mr. Obama said. “But when it comes to the economy — when it comes to the central issue of this election all across then region, he don’t get it. The plain truth is that John McCain has stood with this president every step of the way. Voting for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that he once opposed.

“Voting for the Bush budgets that spent us into debt. He called for less regulation twenty-one times just this year. Those are the facts.”

As a Steeler fan, I have to admit seeing Dan Rooney with Barack was incredibly awesome. Look, I know Barack has been cheering many different sports teams all over this great country of ours. Pols do that all the time.

Today, one team cheered back with a thunderous roar.

The message is clear, Pennsylvania: Barack Obama is on our team now. Give him your vote.

Addendum: Franco Harris, who is also backing Barack Obama, attended the 55th Annual Autumn Leaf Festival parade on October 4 to campaign for Obama.

Editor’s Note: On Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton, one of the most beloved pols to ever visit the Keystone State will seek Democratic votes in Washington County. Our report on Turning Left will follow.

McCain Campaign Advisor Endorses and Votes for Obama

October 27, 2008 TL

Barack Obama Elections John McCain Republicans Strange White House

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A strange thing happened on the road to the White House last week…

Conservative legal scholar, Reagan Solicitor, prominent Republican and John McCain campaign adviser General Charles Fried, endorsed and voted for Barack Obama.

From the New Republic:

This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision “is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis.”

Fried further clarified his reasons for his move to Obama-Biden:

I admire Senator McCain and was glad to help in his campaign, and to be listed as doing so; but when I concluded that I must vote for Obama for the reason stated in my letter, I felt it wrong to appear to be recommending to others a vote that I was not prepared to cast myself. So it was more of an erasure than a public affirmation–although obviously my vote meant that I thought that Obama was preferable to McCain-Palin. I do not consider abstention a proper option.

Fried is listed in a May 6, 2008 press release on John McCain’s web site as a member of the McCain campaign’s steering committee. As late as September 15, 2008, McCain’s campaign had Fried listed as a member of McCain’s Honest and Open Election Committee.

Thanks to our friends at Drinking Liberally in New Milford for the nod on this one.

In other campaign news, salmon fisherman Seth Kantner apologized on behalf of the people of Alaska for inflicting the diva on the lower 48:

I’m an Alaskan — born in an igloo, enjoy whale muktuk, all that — and in case you aren’t sick of our state by now, I’ll start off with an apology for one of our residents: Sarah Palin.

We Alaskans are not generally so magazine-pretty like her, nor are we so confrontational and vapid. Most of us don’t have those peachy cheeks — we have sunburn, windburn and frostbite. Our fingernails are dirty from actually gutting moose, not yakking about it. Our hands are chapped from picking thousands of salmon out of nets, not holding one up for the camera.

Mr. Kantner brushes off Palin’s claim that being mayor gave her the administrative experience to serve as President of the United States:

Tougher in Alaska? Not necessarily. Here most anyone can be dogcatcher, city planner, governor, with little or no experience. That’s one beauty of our state — although, often the only thing keeping it all working is the lubrication provided by obscene amounts of money.

Sitting on this worn-to-the-hide bearskin chair of mine, scribbling, I pause to glance at a month-old newspaper before I stuff it in the stove. Lo! — there’s yet another photo of Gov. Palin; she’s sitting in a glass office in Anchorage, with a bearskin, too, draped across the back of her expensive couch. Sarah’s wearing heels. The bear’s wearing a fake head with a plastic snarl. In the foreground on a glass table crouches something with pincers — a taxidermied king crab!

I’ll have to show this photo to my Eskimo friends I grew up with. We simply never contemplated such wanton unAlaskanness. Why not eat the damn thing? We ate this bear I’m sitting on, including the paws and jaw and fat — some of which we ate raw; some got rendered for piecrusts.

It’s worth reading the whole piece.

Eight days and counting, er, my friends.