Starting to believe in Karma.

In 1 week Republicans have lost all ground to criticize Obama.
and here's 8 reasons why:

(UPDATE: I could make this a Top 10 list if I had added the Immigration flipflop and the say one thing do another attitude about keeping family members out of this.)

1. After Focus on the Family asks people to pray for epic rain during the DNC so that Obama's speech could not be delivered, the DNC experiences record attendance and record ratings all the while basking in perfect weather. While, the RNC is overshadowed by a hurricane following the same path as Katrina which laid bare the Bush administration management 3 years ago. (Oh, and I enjoyed my friend, Don Miller's little reference before his benediction at the DNC. Nicely done.)

2. After over half-a-year of Republicans belittling Obama's experience and calling him "not ready to lead" and touting John McCain as the experience candidate, Barack Obama chooses 36-year serving foreign policy expert Joe Biden. While, McCain chooses 20-month-serving Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate whose previous experience was serving as mayor of a town of 7,000, being runner-up in Miss Alaska, an undergrad degree in journalism from the Univ. of Idaho and whose foreign policy experience [according to Cindy McCain] is said to be her state's "close proximity to Russia" and who doesn't even "know what a VP does."
But don't you dare ask them about her limited experience as evidenced here.

3. After ludicrous attempts at undermining Barack and Michelle Obama's patriotism by Republicans from distractions like flag pins to Muslim lies, John McCain runs a "Country First" sloganed campaign. While, Sarah Palin's husband was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP), which since the 1970s, has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States. And while McCain's motto is "Country First," the AIP's motto is the exact opposite -- "Alaska First -- Alaska Always." Palin even did the welcome message at the 2008 AIP Convention!


4. The party of family values tries to paint Democrats as out of line with "moral America" and selects Palin to secure values voters and social conservatives. Palin, who champions abstinence-only-ed as the "only solution," her teenage daughter Bristol begs to differ as she is pregnant by a self-proclaimed, "f--in redneck" who will "kick anyone's ass." If this had happened in the Obama family he would have been crucified by Republicans but when it happens in their own ranks this just "makes her more real," "she's just like us," and "she lives her values." The very objections that Democrats raise about Palin, conservatives hold up as talking points. Example:

Summer Vanderbilt is the youngest member of the Colorado delegation. The 21-year-old college student from Colorado Springs, a center of Christian conservative activism, says Palin's pregnant teenage daughter is making "a pro-life statement."

"It's a very interesting turn of events," she says, laughing. "Look, we have a very exciting party. We have a very exciting time. We've got a hurricane. We've got a baby. ... We're just having fun with all the different turns and we just don't know what's happening next."

- [from NPR] (click the link and listen to it with audio, much more "fun and exciting" that way. Summer's quote starts at 4:30 in)

5. After abandoning his once somewhat legitimate reform credentials in an "anything to win" blitzkrieg to the White House over the past year, McCain now seeks to re-brand himself as the "Reform" candidate and hopes Palin's record will bolster that...too bad he didn't seriously vet her. The governor's past practice on earmarks stands in contrast to the branded views of her running mate, as well as her initial support the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" pork project, times spent as the director of a 527 group for indicted Sen. Ted Stevens, and her retention of his lobbying group in her campaign.

6. After years of sexist jokes toward Hillary Clinton from conservatives and even more years of opposition to equality protection laws for women, Republicans now have to pander to voters and pick a woman VP to try to shallowly pick up Clinton supporters for McCain to win and in doing so further insult and undermine women. (enjoy Samantha Bee's satire of this in the latter half of this Daily Show video on the Palin pick).

7. McCain. War Hero. Survivor of "Torture." Why is torture in quotes now? Well because apparently the McCain camp no longer calls it that. John McCain who as little as a year ago used to stand up against torture and decry it at all levels; McCain who "literally serves as the living embodiment" of the case against torture and has said, "One of the things that kept us going when I was in prison in North Vietnam was that we knew that if the situation were reversed, that we would not be doing to our captors what they were doing to us," has buckled on torture and now accepts it as long as you don't use THAT word. And in every speech last night supporting McCain at the RNC, Bush included, McCain's time as a POW in Vietnam now no longer includes "torture." Reason being: If it's put that way, if they describe what was done to McCain as torture, they have incriminated the Bush administration for war crimes.

8. And finally, and perhaps my favorite, Republicans have attempted over and over to tie Obama to every disreputable friend, co-worker, or acquaintance that he has ever known, met, or lived in the same state with. They even went so far as to create BarackBook, a Facebook type website to draw 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon attachments to Obama so as to attach the beliefs or actions of anyone and everyone to Obama despite evidence otherwise. The most obvious of these is of course the Jeremiah Wright spectacle which consumed the pundits talking points for a month and in which Obama could do no (w)right in conservatives eyes. Even with Hillary he had to famously "denounce" and "reject" Wright's comments as one verb meaning the same thing was not good enough. All the while, McCain was allowed to receive endorsements from all kinds of bigoted and xenophobic pastors from all walks of life. Meanwhile as of just TWO WEEKS ago, Sarah Palin sat in her Assembly of God church where a pastor gave this message:

Brickner described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's "judgment of unbelief" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity.

"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can't miss it."

But apparently it would be unfair to attribute Palin's views to Brickner, though not Obama's to Wright's.

The complete and utter hypocrisy in all of this is astounding.

"I have to say that the 2008 Minneapolis Convention and the 1968 Chicago Convention have some eerie parallels. An unpopular war, a deeply divided country, and a ruling party having a mental breakdown on live television. In Minneapolis, in some kind of freak political weather system, all the centrifugal forces that have been tearing at the GOP for two decades now have merged. The veneer of a serious governing party is colliding with the reality of a theocratic, fanatic base. The pull of foreign policy realism is busting up against an unrepentant neoconservatism made even more extreme by the McCain candidacy. The whole collision makes one want to look away.

And when you see who may inherit the spoils of this disaster, we can only breathe a sigh of relief. The Democrats do not have their version of Nixon to swoop in, and triumph. They already have their Reagan.

(It was close though.)" - Andrew Sullivan [Atlantic]

Oh, and just for fun...here's Lieberman on Obama two years ago.

and Cheney on invading Iraq 14 years ago.

Press Arrested for Legally Covering RNC protests

STATEMENT FROM DEMOCRACY NOW! & PBS

Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar Released After Illegal Arrest at RNC

Goodman Charged with Obstruction; Felony Riot Charges Pending Against Kouddous and Salazar

ST. PAUL--Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have all been released from police custody in St. Paul following their illegal arrest by Minneapolis Police on Monday afternoon.

All three were violently manhandled by law enforcement officers. Abdel Kouddous was slammed against a wall and the ground, leaving his arms scraped and bloodied. He sustained other injuries to his chest and back. Salazar's violent arrest by baton-wielding officers, during which she was slammed to the ground while yelling, "I'm Press! Press!," resulted in her nose bleeding, as well as causing facial pain. Goodman's arm was violently yanked by police as she was arrested.

On Tuesday, Democracy Now! will broadcast video of these arrests, as well as the broader police action. These will also be available on: www.democracynow.org

Goodman was arrested while questioning police about the unlawful detention of Kouddous and Salazar who were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman's crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were arrested on suspicion of rioting, a felony. While the three have been released, they all still face charges stemming from their unlawful arrest. Kouddous and Salazar face pending charges of suspicion of felony riot, while Goodman has been officially charged with obstruction of a legal process and interference with a "peace officer."

Democracy Now! forcefully rejects all of these charges as false and an attempt at intimidation of these journalists. We demand that the charges be immediately and completely dropped.

Democracy Now! stands by Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and condemns this action by Twin Cities' law enforcement as a clear violation of the freedom of the press and the First Amendment rights of these journalists.

During the demonstration in which the Democracy Now! team was arrested, law enforcement officers used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were also arrested during this action, including a photographer for the Associated Press.

Amy Goodman is one of the most well-known and well-respected journalists in the United States. She has received journalism's top honors for her reporting and has a distinguished reputation of bravery and courage. The arrest of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and the subsequent criminal charges and threat of charges are a transparent attempt to intimidate journalists.

Democracy Now! is a nationally-syndicated public TV and radio program that airs on over 700 radio and TV stations across the US and the globe.

The Best of the Sarah Palin Video Collection (no, not Skinemax)

Let's start with Colbert:

add some Stewart:

and a 2-parter from Palin "herself":