McCain and Palin Unleashed
Both Newsweek and The New York Times say McCain and Palin had little contact with each other. McCain aides had numerous complaints about Palin. She was unwilling or unable to find the time and energy to prep for her disastrous interview with Couric. And when she did study, she astonished her handlers by her unsophisticated views. She didn't know Africa was a continent, according to Newsweek. Fox News revealed that during her cramming, she couldn't name the three countries that belong to the North American Free Trade Agreement: the United States, Canada and Mexico. There is one comment in particular from a McCain aide that guaranteed to heighten friction between the two camps. The angry aide described the Palin family shopping spree to Newsweek as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast."
Make Your Vote Count
Voting season is upon us, and thanks to the incredible efforts of progressive organizations and inspired activists, election 2008 has some dazzling online innovations to make voting as simple as possible -- from comprehensive one-stop shop resources like the League of Women Voters' Vote411.org site, to the Moveon.org - and Catalist.us-sponsored VotePoke.org tool that helps you check your registration status, to the Twitter Vote Report, an easy way for voters to use their cell phones to report on problems that they face, be they long lines, voter ID issues or problems with student voting. Here is a list of resources and tips for how to use the best online tools to make voting as simple as possible and how you can protect your vote.
NASA Astronauts Vote from Space
Well, try voting from 220 miles above Earth while traveling at 17,500 miles per hour. That's exactly what two American astronauts will be doing onboard the International Space Station in the next few days. Commander Edward Michael Fincke and Flight Engineer and Science Officer Greg Chamitoff, who are serving on the space station with one Russian cosmonaut, have both received their ballots and have until Tuesday to send them back to Earth.
What Voters Need to Know in Order to Succeed at the Polls
Election Day is less than a week away, and early voting sites are crowded. Record turnout is expected Tuesday, and election officials are bracing for possible problems at the polls. Many voters this year are new and unfamiliar with the balloting process. Even experienced voters could find themselves facing new equipment and rules. A recent CNN poll found that more than 40 percent of people surveyed weren't confident their votes would be accurately cast and counted. Here are answers to some questions about what lies ahead in the next week.
The World Hangs on for U.S. Election Results
With due respect to Republican candidate John McCain, we have to agree with the over 90 per cent of the rest of the world that it is Barack Obama who offers this world its best hope for these turbulent times. Former US secretary of state and a member of the Republican Party, General Colin Powell (we are proud of his Jamaican ancestry), said in an MSNBC Meet the Press interview, "I have come to the conclusion that because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is. he has both style and substance, he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president." For those who doubt our abilities and possibilities, the Barack Obama story reminds us that anyone can achieve anything with the right guidance, a good education, a positive attitude and a moral compass. From start to finish, the Obama campaign has stayed on message, calling for a higher level of politics and national unity, refusing to retaliate even as the McCain campaign resorted to fear-mongering "robo-calls" and incendiary rally speeches. When the crowd at his Sarasota rally began booing at a reference to the Bush-McCain alliance, Obama silenced them with, "You don't need to boo - you need to vote."
The World is Watching
Many believe Obama's international experience would go a long way in helping repair damage caused by the unpopular U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with recent opinion polls from more than 70 nations favoring him a resounding three-to-one over Republican John McCain. "Obama the best hope for U.S. revival," an editorial in The Australian Financial Review said Monday, arguing that "the world craves American leadership and never more so than now." The Gulf News, an English-language paper in the United Arab Emirates, had a similar take, saying only he could "undo the great damage done by the Bush administration to America's image," especially the Middle East. Few if any in the sleepy Japanese coastal town of Obama — which translates as 'little beach' — would disagree. Images of the Democratic candidate adorn banners along a main shopping street and preparations for an election day victory party were in full swing Monday. Koichi Inoue, who makes traditional Japanese sweet bean cakes, said his factory was working at double normal production because he had promised free handouts for every customer if Obama won. "It looks like he is going to win from the polls so I've got to be ready," he said.
Your Salary Eight Years from Now Under Obama, or McCain
Middle-class families will earn about $13,000 more in eight years if Obama wins and $5,000 if McCain wins.During his acceptance speech at Invesco Field in August, Barack Obama earned big applause for a line that compared Democratic and Republican economic policies. "We measure progress," he told the partisan crowd, "in the twenty-three million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was president -- when the average American family saw its income go up $7,500, instead of go down $2,000, like it has under George Bush." As rhetoric, it was effective. But was it a fair point, or a cheap shot? It's true that the Bush expansion was one of the weakest economic recoveries in postwar history, but can you really lay the blame for that at the feet of the president? Isn't it the case that, ritual campaign promises to the contrary, presidents actually have very little influence on the economy? The conventional wisdom among economists says yes, but a growing mountain of historical data suggests that they may be wrong. In the postwar era, it turns out, Democratic presidents consistently produce higher growth rates, lower unemployment, better stock market growth, and less income inequality than Republican presidents. Nobody quite knows why, but the results are surprisingly robust. MORE COVERAGE ON THE ECONOMY, CLICK HERE
Which Political Party is Better for Your Wallet?
Since 1929, Republicans and Democrats have each controlled the presidency for nearly 40 years. So which party has been better for American pocketbooks and capitalism as a whole?
Fight Back Against Pesky Deceptive Robocalls
"John McCain has launched a new round of false, vicious robocalls, mailers, and attack ads – despite being warned to change his tone by a string of Republican leaders including Colin Powell and four sitting Republican senators. To combat his renewed effort to smear Barack Obama, the Obama campaign today launched a fact-checking campaign centered around a new website," the Obama campaign said. The website "allows voters to report new attacks that pop up in their area – and get the facts about smears they’ve heard," it said.
The GOP Plays Dirty Using Coal to Fuel Their Fake News Story
Lies, Half Truths and Contradictions: Chronicle ''Hidden'' Audio on Obama's Coal Comments. It's not true. But the Drudge Report, the Republican National Committee and apparently even GOP VP candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fell for completely fabricated news from a shady website called Newsbusters today suggesting the San Francisco Chronicle has ''hidden'' audio with Sen. Barack Obama regarding his statements on coal. pparently neither campaign, until now, ever felt there was much worth mentioning regarding Obama's coal comments. But it's now two days before the election and McCain is in a do-or-die battle in Pennsylvania and Ohio. A final note: the shoddy Newsbusters blog has been caught in the past simply fabricating news regarding the Chronicle's coverage. Our paper has demanded corrections for their fiction, but to no avail. We contacted Bill Riggs, regional press secretary of the Republican National Committee tonight on his emailing of this erroneous report suggesting a ''hidden'' Chronicle audiotape to political reporters. His response: he didn't confirm it, or write the headline. He just sent it out. He got taken. And so did the rest. [EDITOR: Energy and water are becoming the biggest international concerns. We must find clean safe ways to produce energy. Our first choice must be to learn how to conserve. The dirty truth is that coal is the absolute worst energy choice we can make. Coal fired power plants are the leading cause of global warming, death and disease. For more on that subject, please visit JobsAndEnergy.com in Michigan.]
Former Michigan (Republican) Governor Milliken backs away from McCain
GRAND RAPIDS -- He endorsed John McCain in the presidential primary, but now former Republican Gov. William Milliken is expressing doubts about his party's nominee. "He is not the McCain I endorsed," said Milliken, reached at his Traverse City home Thursday. "He keeps saying, 'Who is Barack Obama?' I would ask the question, 'Who is John McCain?' because his campaign has become rather disappointing to me.
Dick Cheney’s Hometown Newspaper Endorses Obama
Today, Vice President Cheney’s hometown newspaper, the Casper Star-Tribune in Wyoming, endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) for president. The paper endorsed Bush-Cheney in 2004. Today’s editorial states: The next occupant of the White House will inherit a national economy that’s collapsing and two wars our nation has been fighting for years, depleting valuable resources we need to fix a multitude of domestic problems. Far too many of our nation’s citizens live paycheck to paycheck, worried about whether they’ll have a job next week or if a medical crisis will bankrupt them. What America needs most in these troubled times is a president who will move the country in a positive direction. The candidate who is most likely to chart a new course that will lead us to better days is Obama. Moreover, he is the best candidate for Wyoming.
Al-Qaida Endorses McCain
The U.S. may occasionally have a hard time calculating its interests. Al Qaeda, on the other hand, tends to know what's good for it. Al-Qaida supporters suggested in a Web site message this week they would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to usher in a McCain presidency. The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, "impetuous" Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier," the message said. "Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush."
Dick "War at Any Cost" Cheney Endorses McCain
Vice President Dick Cheney was in Wyoming yesterday, where he expressed his support for the McCain-Palin ticket. Cheney has been at the center of most of the worst policy choices in U.S. history, including the lies and deceptions that lead to the war on Iraq. Obama and Biden jumped on the endorsement and used it to further link McCain to the Bush administration and the last 8 years.
Republican's for Obama List Rapidly Growing
WASHINGTON - The list of famous-name Republicans lining up behind Barack Obama grew a little longer on Thursday. A granddaughter of a conservative Republican icon, the late Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, CC Goldwater, announced that she would not be voting for her state’s senator, John McCain, on Nov. 4. Goldwater says she and her sibling — and a few cousins — are casting their lot with Democrat Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. And Goldwater says it’s a no-brainer. “Nothing about the Republican ticket offers the hope America needs to regain it’s standing in the world. That’s why we’re going to support Barack Obama,” she said.
The Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News endorses Obama
The Anchorage Daily News, Alaska's largest newspaper, has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president. The newspaper said Sunday the Democrat "brings far more promise to the office. In a time of grave economic crisis, he displays thoughtful analysis, enlists wise counsel and operates with a cool, steady hand." The Daily News said since the economic crisis has emerged, Republican presidential candidate John McCain has "stumbled and fumbled badly" in dealing with it. "Of the two candidates, Sen. Obama better understands the mortgage meltdown's root causes and has the judgment and intelligence to shape a solution, as well as the leadership to rally the country behind it."
Newsday Endorses Obama
Leading the nation through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, two wars and excruciating anxiety about what the future holds will demand intellect, judgment, pragmatism and the more intangible ability to nourish the American spirit. The need to make fundamental changes in how we power our cars, heat our homes, pay our doctors, earn our livings and secure our retirements is unnerving. The times demand a president who can see promise beyond the peril and articulate that vision for the rest of us. We believe this profile best fits one candidate in this race for the White House: Democrat Barack Obama.
New York Times Endorses Barack Obama
Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance. Skip to next paragraph Related Times Topics: Barack Obama Readers' Comments Share your thoughts on this editorial. * Post a Comment » * Read All Comments (143) » The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable. As tough as the times are, the selection of a new president is easy. After nearly two years of a grueling and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States.
Financial Times Supports Obama
US presidential elections involve a fabulous expense of time, effort and money. Doubtless it is all too much – but, by the end, nobody can complain that the candidates have been too little scrutinised. We have learnt a lot about Barack Obama and John McCain during this campaign. In our view, it is enough to be confident that Mr Obama is the right choice.
Financial Times Supports Obama
US presidential elections involve a fabulous expense of time, effort and money. Doubtless it is all too much – but, by the end, nobody can complain that the candidates have been too little scrutinised. We have learnt a lot about Barack Obama and John McCain during this campaign. In our view, it is enough to be confident that Mr Obama is the right choice.
Republican Scott McClellan Endorses Obama
McClellan told CNN that Obama's message "is very similar to the one that Governor Bush ran on in 2000," apparently referring to the current president's early pitch as a reformer and a moderate. "From the very beginning I have said I am going to support the candidate that has the best chance for changing the way Washington works and getting things done and I will be voting for Barack Obama," McClellan said during the interview, which was taped for the Saturday broadcast of a new CNN show, "D.L. Hughley Breaks the News." McClellan's endorsement marks the latest prominent Republican to defect to Obama. Former secretary of state Colin Powell last Sunday threw his endorsement behind the Illinois senator while sharply criticizing the campaign tactics of GOP candidate John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Republican Colin Powell Backs Obama
Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, Gen. Colin Powell announced that Democrat Barack Obama will get his vote in November. Powell's endorsement is a major cross-party defection. The four-star general has served in three Republican administrations. He was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush during the first Gulf War. And as George W. Bush's secretary of state, he went to the United Nations to press the case against Iraq. Powell said it wasn't easy to disappoint John McCain, whom he's known for more than 25 years. But Powell pointed to the choice of running mate Sarah Palin and said it raised questions about McCain's judgment. He also expressed concern about the direction of his party, and he passionately criticized his fellow Republicans for what they've been saying about Obama
Wall Street Journal: The super-rich are voting for Barack
In Richistan, I wrote about a new political divide emerging among the wealthy. While most Lower Richistani’s ($1 million to $10 million in net worth) were voting Republican, most Middle-and Upper Richistanis (those worth $10 million plus and $100 million plus) were voting Democrat. Lower Richistanis tended to vote almost exclusively based on taxes. But Upper Richistanis placed a higher priority on longer-term societal issues like health care, the environment and education, which are traditional Democrat issues. Some say Upper Richistanis can afford to minimize taxes, since they have plenty of money even after the government takes its share. Others say the ultra-rich have better tax attorneys so they don’t care as much about tax rates. Yet a new survey shows that the Richistan split is not only alive and well, but it may even be growing.
The Triumph of Ignorance
How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the United States come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama is a Muslim and a terrorist? Like most people on this side of the Atlantic, I have spent my adult life mystified by American politics. It wasn't always like this. The founding fathers of the republic -- men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton -- were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W. Bush and Sarah Palin?
Republican Problems Run Deeper
On October 24, 2008, John McCain's communications director for Pennsylvania, Peter Feldman, fanned the flames of racial bigotry to score political points. But the Republicans' dream of exploiting the incident to scare white people in Pennsylvania (and nationally) quickly unraveled when the whole thing was exposed as a pathetic hoax perpetrated by a disturbed young woman and an equally disturbed presidential campaign. Matt Drudge, Mark Noonans, and Brent Bozell's "Newsbusters" were among the most vociferous purveyors of this racist hoax. The phony attack story revealed just how willing and eager are the denizens of the right-wing blogosphere and Republican echo chamber to fan the flames of racial hatred if they think it will benefit their candidate. President George W. Bush still has eighty-four days, left in office and it seems that the dominant corporate "elites" have already turned against him. He used to be their favorite plaything, but that was before he so badly mismanaged the Empire. He turned his foreign policy over to a gang of neo-conservatives. They led most of the world's people to despise us; and so strained and privatized the military they have undermined America's ability to launch new attacks and to strike fear in the hearts of its adversaries. Their "Unipolar Moment" has long passed, except perhaps in the mind of McCain, who still advocates attacking Iran.
Fight Back Against Pesky Deceptive Robocalls
"John McCain has launched a new round of false, vicious robocalls, mailers, and attack ads – despite being warned to change his tone by a string of Republican leaders including Colin Powell and four sitting Republican senators. To combat his renewed effort to smear Barack Obama, the Obama campaign today launched a fact-checking campaign centered around a new website," the Obama campaign said. The website "allows voters to report new attacks that pop up in their area – and get the facts about smears they’ve heard," it said.
They Eat Their Own
THE US presidential race took another twist yesterday when the White House was forced to defend itself, not from Democrat Barack Obama but Republican John McCain. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino found herself deflecting some of the harshest attacks yet on George W.Bush - by the contender from the President's party. "We just let things get completely out of hand," Senator McCain said of the fiscal policies under Mr Bush, who has presided over a doubling of the country's national debt to more than $US11trillion ($16.5 trillion). He added that his own party got drunk with power. Senator McCain's attacks came amid a series of dire polls in the campaign's key battleground states. The numbers in the Big Ten survey represent a big surge for Senator Obama in the past few days. According to the poll, Senator Obama leads by 12 points in Ohio, 11 in Pennsylvania and 13 in Wisconsin. In Michigan, where Senator McCain's campaign has pulled out, Senator Obama's lead is 22 points. In Indiana, a traditional red state, his lead is 10 points, larger than in other recent polls. Quinnipiac also released polls yesterday that showed that Senator Obama was leading in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. In these surveys, his lead in Pennsylvania is 13 points. In Ohio, which is a must-win state for Senator McCain, Senator Obama's lead is 14 points.
What the World Thinks about the U.S. Election
Many people now fear rather than warm to America. In France 25% of voters say relations with the U.S. are tense, against 38% who say they are friendly and 39% who think they are neutral. In Japan only 16% say friendship and 19% tension, with 62% neutral. In no country does a majority think relations should be described as friendly. Even America's two neighbouring states are sceptical of U.S. intentions. Only 23% of Mexicans describe relations as friendly and 28% say they are tense. In Canada, which has just re-elected a Conservative minority government, voters are strongly supportive of a Democratic presidency; 43% say relations with the U.S. are friendly and 14% tense. The survey also finds strong opposition to any attack on Iran and -- in the six countries questioned on the issue -- majority support for a rapid withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
The 10 Dirtiest Election Tricks the Republicans Have Tried So Far
From intimidating minority voters to whipping up racism and hatred at political rallies, the GOP has pulled out all the stops. An increasingly desperate John McCain and the GOP are throwing the kitchen sink at Barack Obama. No wonder they called Joe the Plumber. So this week brought racist mailers, a tidal wave of robo-calls, more Bill Ayers, Sarah Palin's love of the "pro-American areas of this great nation" and McCain's outlandish claim that ACORN is "destroying the fabric of democracy."
A critical US Supreme Court decision against GOP voter meddling in Ohio may prove temporary
In its on-going campaign to inject chaos and confusion into the voting process, the GOP has sued Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, demanding that she release to county boards of elections lists of registered voters whose information does not precisely match government data bases. The right to vote of such registrants---by most estimates as many as 200,000 in Ohio alone--- could then be challenged on a case-by-case basis. George W. Bush was awarded Ohio's 20 electoral votes in 2004 with an official margin of less than 119,000 votes, though more than 100,000 votes cast in that election remain uncounted. The 200,000 voters targeted by the Republican Party were all registered since January 1, 2008. News source estimates suggest 75-80% of these newly-registered voters are Obama supporters.
Real Plumbers disavow Joe
Real plumbers don't like Joe. About 100 union plumbers from a Boston-based local plan to knock on union members' doors Saturday in Portsmouth, N.H., and "Joe the Plumber" is certain to be a topic of conversation, said Kevin L. Cotter, business manager of Local 12 Plumbers and Gasfitters union. The group will be urging union members to vote for Obama. "He's impersonating a plumber," Cotter said, referring to Joe Wurzelbacher, the Ohio man who confronted Obama about his tax plans and who became a media celebrity after John McCain repeatedly referred to him during the presidential debate Wednesday night. [Editor: Investigators discovered that Joe the Plumber does not even have a plumbers license, he can't possibly afford t purchase the plumbing business he hypothesized in this question, and he is $12,000 in arrears on his taxes.]
Pinocchio Politics
Last week, the McCain-Palin message was ugly: that Obama "pals around" with terrorists, implying Obama is therefore a terrorist himself. This incited ugly behavior by their supporters, who openly called Obama a "terrorist." Americans recoiled in horror, and Obama surged to a commanding 8% lead in the polls. McCain read the polls, freaked out, and adopted an entirely new message Lies, Damn Lies, and Pinocchio Politics
GOP Fears 1.3 Million New Voters
Now they're attacking ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), one of the strongest, hardest-working, most dedicated community organizations in 40 states across the U.S. Why are they after ACORN? Well, I'm sure they're going to come up with a lot of "reasons" in the coming days. But the real reason is obvious: Because ACORN, along with Project Vote, just announced that they had successfully registered 1.3 million poor people this year. Get that? 1.3 million, including 148,000 in Pennsylvania, 152,000 in Florida, 217,000 in Michigan, and 238,000 in Ohio. No wonder the GOP is up in arms. They're scared of too many poor people preparing to vote this year. [Editor: Why? Because a great many people are middle class people who are "newly poor" as the result of GOP deregulation and Bush policies, they are overwhelmingly inclined to vote Democrat.]
Maybe Now People Will Take Their Votes More Seriously
For the nitwits who vote for the man or woman they'd most like to have over for dinner, or hang out at a barbecue with, I suggest you take a look at how well your 401(k) is doing, or how easy it will be to meet the mortgage this month, or whether the college fund you've been trying to build for your kids is as robust as you'd like it to be. Voters in the George W. Bush era gave the Republican Party nearly complete control of the federal government. Now the financial markets are in turmoil, top government and corporate leaders are on the verge of panic and scholars are dusting off treatises that analyzed the causes of the Great Depression. Mr. Bush was never viewed as a policy or intellectual heavyweight. But he seemed like a nicer guy to a lot of voters than Al Gore. It's not just the economy. While the United States has been fighting a useless and irresponsible war in Iraq, Afghanistan -- the home base of the terrorists who struck us on 9/11 -- has been allowed to fall into a state of chaos. Osama bin Laden is still at large. New Orleans is still on its knees. And so on. Voting has consequences. The budget was balanced and a surplus realized under Bill Clinton, but soon the "fiscal conservatives" were back in the driver's seat. "Deficits don't matter," said Dick Cheney, and the wildest, most reckless of economic rides was on.
Republian Attacks on American Voters Turn Desperate, Ugly and Dangerous
The GOP assault on American voters has hit full stride as John McCain and the economy tank in synch. With just over three weeks until election day, the Republicans have mounted an all-out attack against newly registered voters and the organizations working to sign them up. As many as 75% of these new voters are expected to vote Democratic, but the attacks have also spread to long-established voters as well. Recent calculations show more than a million more newly registered Democrats in Ohio than Republicans. The usual drumbeat claiming massive voter fraud has become ceaseless at Fox "News" and other right wing media mouthpieces. As expected, the assault centers in Ohio, which once again could decide the presidency, but has manifested throughout the nation:
The Truth About ACORN's Voter Registration Drive
Election Day is less than a month away, and our efforts to make sure that low-income and minority voters have a voice and vote on November 4th are in full swing. Unfortunately, just as we've seen in previous election cycles, the more success we have in empowering these voters, the more attacks we have to fend off from partisan forces making unfounded accusations to disparage our work and help maintain the status quo of an unbalanced electorate. We want to take this opportunity to separate the facts of our successes from the falsehoods of our attackers. We collected over 151,000 registrations in Florida, 153,000 in Pennsylvania, 215,000 in Michigan, and nearly 250,000 in Ohio. As The Nation pointed out recently, ACORN's success in registering millions of low-income and minority voters has made it "something of a right-wing bogeyman." Though ACORN believes that the right to vote is not, and should never be, a partisan issue, attacks from groups threatened by our historic success continue to come, motivated by partisan politics and often perpetuated by the media without full investigation of the facts
Scoring the 2nd Obama/McCain Debate
On a night when he had to change the dynamics of a presidential race he's losing, John McCain wandered all over the place during Tuesday's presidential debate, both figuratively and literally. Sometimes walking around to no purpose as Barack Obama spoke, McCain even had the bad luck at the end of blocking the camera, an Abe Simpson moment that separated moderator Tom Brokaw from his teleprompter. The U.S. just took over our largest insurance company and made a $700 billion bail-, er, rescue of our largest banks. Now the Republican candidate in the race wants to take ownership of hundreds of thousands of American mortgages, a massive aid proposal that could keep Americans in their homes at the cost of a ginormous new bureaucracy. The party of small government has become the party of all government. President Bush is one guayabera shirt from being Fidel Castro. Now if we could just get our right-wing socialists to bail out uninsured Americans the way they rescued unscrupulous Wall Street bankers. Barack Obama and John McCain debate in Nashville, Tenn.Because he doesn't develop his ideas -- throwing them out as recklessly as he chose Sarah Palin -- McCain can't sell them in a manner that engenders confidence in his ability to carry them out. As Obama spoke about the need to help middle-class people, McCain instead referred twice to how we have to "buy up these bad loans," a phrase that took CNN's wired-up undecideds straight to their unhappy place.
Debate Moves Undecided Voters
Democracy Corps had a focus group of undecided voters in Nevada watch last night's debate: "Unlike the first debate, when Democracy Corps research showed half the voters remaining undecided and the two candidates splitting the other half, the vote following the second debate showed a decisive shift toward Senator Obama. This debate was a clear victory for Obama who made major gains not just in the vote but also on personal favorability and key attributes like 'has what it takes to be President,' which ultimately drove undecided voters into his column."
A Voter Guide to the Economy
A Gallup poll released this week showed that a majority of Americans -- 53 percent -- are angry about the financial crisis. And 41 percent are afraid. The system, Americans believe, has failed them. It only takes a glance at the morning news -- or a look at rising food and gas prices -- to see that these fears and frustrations are not without good reason. Every day, more and more people lose their homes and their health care and see their retirement funds erode. Or rather, they watch as these things get taken from them. It's infuriating to watch and painful to experience, and it's understandable to be mad as hell. It's OK because when a large enough number of people get angry enough, that's when things start to change. So, our question to you is, Are you mad enough yet? Because this crisis is about all of us. Are you sure your 401K is secure? Do you know how many of your tax dollars are being spent in Iraq -- a country that's sitting on an $80 billion surplus? Have you considered how you'll pay for your health care if Medicare goes broke? The answers to these questions aren't pretty. Fortunately, Nov. 4 gives us a chance to change things.
Bush binges; Obama and McCain will pay
The next president won't have the time or money to make good on campaign promises. He'll be too busy recovering from the costly Bush agenda.
When Change Is Not Enough
There's something implacable, earnest, and righteously angry in the air. And it raises all kinds of questions for burned-out Boomers and jaded Gen Xers who've been ground down to the stump by the mostly losing battles of the past 30 years. Can it be -- at long last -- that Americans have, simply, had enough? Are we, finally, stepping out to take back our government -- and with it, control of our own future? Is this simply a shifting political season -- the kind we get every 20 to 30 years -- or is there something deeper going on here? Do we dare to raise our hopes that this time, we're going to finally win a few? Just how ready is this country for big, serious, forward-looking change? And now, thanks to 28 years of conservative misrule, we are now at the point where "manifest reality breaks away from anticipated reality;" and the breach is creating political turbulence. The average American has seen his or her standard of living contract by fits and starts since about 1972. Upper classes have broken faith with society's other groups, and began to openly prey on them in ways that threatened their very future. Not surprisingly, the other groups soon united, took up arms, and rebelled. And here we are again: Conservative policies have opened the wealth gap to Depression levels; put workers at the total mercy of their employers; and deprived the working and middle classes of access to education, home ownership, health care, capital, legal redress, and their expectations of a better future for their kids. You can only get away with blaming this on gays and Mexicans for so long before people get wise to the game. And as the primaries are making clear: Americans are getting wise. Between our corporate-owned Congress and the spectacularly bad judgment of Bush's executive branch, there's never been a government in American history more inept, corrupt, and criminally negligent than this one -- or more shockingly out of touch with what the average American is going through.
Union Leader Confronts Race Issue In Campaign
Trumka told the story of a conversation he had the day of the Pennsylvania primary in his hometown of Nemacolin in the southwest corner of the state. "This woman walks up to me. I'd known her for a long time, and I ask her 'Have you decided who you gonna vote for?' " "There's no way I'd ever vote for Barack Obama," the woman responded. Trumka said he pressed her as to why. First, she said it's because Obama is "a Muslim." Trumka responded that Obama is actually a Christian. Then, she told him Obama never wears an American flag pin on his lapel. Trumka told her that, too, is false, then asked her why she wasn't wearing one if that is such an important issue. Trumka said he continued to push, until "her eyes dropped down and she said to me, 'Well, he's a black man.' " Trumka said he told her to look around at their town, the mining community where they both had lived for so long. "And I said to her, 'This town is dying — literally dying.' " "Our kids are moving away because there's no future here," Trumka said in the United Steelworkers convention address. "And here's a man, Barack Obama, who's going to fight for people like us, and you won't vote for him because of the color of his skin? Are you out of your ever-loving mind?" Confronting this, Trumka said, is labor's responsibility "because we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people."
Election 2008 and White Privilege
For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help. White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay. White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin’ redneck," like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug. White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action. White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re "untested."
The Presidential Election Is Life or Death for Many
This election could be a make-or-break moment in history for the Yucca Mountain Project. This is the ill-conceived plan to bury nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Everyone in this state knows the problems inherent in this project and should be on alert. But also this should serve as a "heads-up" to everyone in the country. People are in a panic about how to solve the nation's energy deficit problems and it's easy to talk about building nuclear power plants as a solution. In the meantime, the Yucca Mountain Project controversy is never -- never -- mentioned. The fact is the only site ever seriously considered for storage of the inevitable deadly waste generated by nuclear power plants was Yucca Mountain. Study after study has shown it is a hazardous location for storing nuclear waste for the millions of years the waste continues to emit deadly radioactive ions. Of the many drawbacks cited, one of the most frightening is that Yucca Mountain sits in an active earthquake zone.
Dem's Defend Right to Vote
The Obama campaign yesterday went to court to block what it alleged was an attempt by Republicans in Michigan to stop people who lost their homes in the mortgage crisis from voting in November's election. The suit, filed in a Michigan court, is the latest sign of contention over voting procedures. Voting rights activists in several battleground states have reported an aggressive push by Republican elected officials and activists to make it harder to vote. In Macomb county, Michigan, a swing constituency, Republican officials for the first time tried to use America's housing crisis as a way of striking people off lists. The situation came to light last week when the Republican party chairman of Macomb county told a local newspaper he planned to draw on publicly available lists of home foreclosures to bar people from casting their vote. "We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren't voting from those addresses," the official, James Carabelli, told the Michigan Messenger. Voting rights activists in Ohio and Missouri have also reported attempts to use the housing crisis to try to disqualify voters. In Wisconsin, the state's Republican attorney general has gone to court to try to compel poll workers to match voters' names against driving licence records. Florida, which has a Republican governor, also moved last week to require poll workers to check voters' names against a government database.
How Republicans Quietly Hijacked the Justice Department to Swing Elections
The GOP may have committed massive vote fraud in plain sight by encouraging widespread voter purges and restricting registration campaigns. Jim Crow has returned to American elections, only in the twenty-first century, instead of men in white robes or a barrel-chested sheriff menacingly patrolling voting precincts, we are more likely to see a lawyer carrying a folder filled with briefing papers and proposed legislation about "voter fraud" and other measures to supposedly protect the sanctity of the vote.
Election 2008 : Secret Money Project
Remember the Swift Boat ad four years ago: the 60-second video that knee-capped Democratic presidential candidate and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry? That ad is the most powerful evidence yet of the shadow realm in American politics — a place where big donors legally give unrestricted sums, often with no public disclosure. This year we expect to see a record volume of Swift Boat-type messages on the air, in print and over the phone.
How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America
The most sweeping takeover of the new millennium didn't take place among the telecoms or the big oil companies, or in Silicon Valley. It took place in Washington, but we can see and hear and feel its effects nationwide on our televisions, radios, and computer screens. And America is much the worse because of it. I'm talking about the takeover of the Republican Party by its own lunatic fringe, and the Right's hijacking of America.
Ten Conservative Myths About National Security
I hate having been right about this, though I can hardly blame average citizens for succumbing to the sirens of chaos. Americans trying to make correct sense of the new reality found their efforts stymied everywhere they turned. With the White House distorting intelligence to sell a war, corporate opportunists fanning the coals of panic to heat up vast new business opportunities, media editors milking the drama to keep their ratings high, and terrified hordes quick to shout "treason" whenever anyone dared to question the path we were taking, it was hard for even thoughtful Americans to locate the truth of the matter. And as long as confusion reigned, the terrorists really did keep winning.
People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. ~Hermann Göring
How Lethally Stupid Can One Country Be?
Watching George W. Bush in operation these last couple of weeks is like having an out-of-body experience. On acid. During a nightmare. In a different galaxy. As he presides over the latest disaster of his administration (No, it's not a terrorist attack -- that was 2001! No, it's not a catastrophic war -- that was 2003! No, it's not a drowning city -- that was 2005! This one is an economic meltdown ... But let's give credit where credit is due. This is precisely by design. This is exactly the outcome intended by the greatest propaganda-promulgating regime since Hermann Göring set fire to the Reichstag. It was Göring himself who famously reminded us that, "Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Sure worked in Germany. And it worked even better here...
Election can be stolen in “under a minute” with Diebold machines
Researchers at Princeton University announced Wednesday that common electronic voting machines can be subverted by installing software which undetectably alters vote totals and, as a computer virus, spreads itself from one voting machine to the next. Computer science professor Edward Felten, along with graduate students Ariel Feldman and J. Alex Halderman, published a paper in which they demonstrated the ease of installing malicious software onto a Diebold AccuVote-TS touchscreen voting machine which would alter vote totals in a real election, but be undetectable to election officials by allowing the logic and accuracy tests to pass, and by deleting itself from the voting machines at the end of the election. “This report should finally put to rest the myth that the current generation of e-voting machines adequately protects the integrity of the electoral process,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Matt Zimmerman.
GOP cyber-security expert suggests Diebold tampered with 2002 election
A leading cyber-security expert and former adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) says he has fresh evidence regarding election fraud on Diebold electronic voting machines during the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senatorial elections. Stephen Spoonamore is the founder and until recently the CEO of Cybrinth LLC, an information technology policy and security firm that serves Fortune 100 companies. At a little noticed press conference in Columbus, Ohio Thursday, he discussed his investigation of a computer patch that was applied to Diebold Election Systems voting machines in Georgia right before that state's November 2002 election.
What May Be in Store for America
It is easy enough to take one's eyes off the ball when concentrating on campaign speeches and strategies for winning over the hearts and minds of Americans. So what things might change the landscape of the current contest and tilt it in favor of the McCain camp? First, the guarded optimism of Obama supporters assumes that the voting process will be largely a fair one. However, attention to past irregularities suggests otherwise. There are several familiar ways in which the election could be stolen. Some of these ways would be to disenfranchise African American voters and other would-be Obama supporters by purging them from voting lists, losing or failing to send out their registrations, deceiving these citizens about their proper voting precincts, and misallocating voting machines in precincts likely to go for Obama. These, among other illegal and unethical tactics, were employed in key battleground states such as Florida and Ohio in both the 2000 and 2004 elections. It is pie-in-the-sky optimism to think that these same tactics won't be used, perhaps even more systematically, again in 2008. Meanwhile, faulty, insecure, and hackable electronic voting machines attached to malfunctioning printers will be used to record ballots. In addition to these more conventional manners of voter fraud, there are also other possible ways to steal the election. All electronic voting machines transport their data over telephone lines to a central computer where tabulations of votes are made. These telephone lines are not secure, however, because, in putting into operation its unlawful warrantless surveillance program, the Bush Administration had installed computer technology at major telecom company hubs, such as those of AT&T, which intercepts and reads messages before they reach their final destination. It is therefore quite conceivable that the balloting data being transported from individual voting precincts could be intercepted and reconfigured before it reaches its main tabulation point.
Memo to Obama, McCain: No one wins in a war
Barack Obama and John McCain continue to argue about war. McCain says to keep the troops in Iraq until we "win" and supports sending more troops to Afghanistan. Obama says to withdraw some (not all) troops from Iraq and send them to fight and "win" in Afghanistan. > For someone like myself, who fought in World War II, and since then has protested against war, I must ask: Have our political leaders gone mad? Have they learned nothing from recent history? Have they not learned that no one "wins" in a war, but that hundreds of thousands of humans die, most of them civilians, many of them children?
Big Business Is Making Sure It Wins the Presidency
Remember the total, hideous, inexcusable absence of oversight that has been the great hallmark of George Bush's America for almost eight years now? Well, now we're getting to see that same regulatory malfeasance applied to yet another cornerstone of our political system. The Federal Election Commission -- the body that supposedly enforces campaign-finance laws in this country -- has been out of business for more than six months. That's because Congress was dragging its feet over confirmation hearings for new FEC commissioners, leaving the agency without a quorum. The commission just started work again for the first time on July 10th under its new chairman, Donald McGahn, a classic Republican Party yahoo whose chief qualifications include representing Tom DeLay, the corrupt ex-speaker of the House, in matters of campaign finance.
McClellan's Memoirs Hurt McCain Just as Much as Bush
Americans don’t like being lied to by their leaders, especially if there are casualties involved and especially if there’s no accountability. We view it as a crime story, and we won’t be satisfied until there’s a resolution. That’s why the original sin of the war’s conception remains a political flash point, however much we tune out Iraq as it grinds on today. Even a figure as puny as Mr. McClellan can ignite it. The Democrats portray Mr. McCain as offering a third Bush term, but it’s a third term of the war that’s his bigger problem. Even if he locks the president away in a private home, the war will keep seeping under the door, like the blood in “Sweeney Todd.”
Why Women Should Vote
This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago. Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote. The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women
Bob & Harvey's 3-Step Plan for fair and reliable voting and vote counts
America is awash in suspect and stolen elections. Since January, 2001, the nation has been saddled with an unelected chief executive. The consequences have been predictably horrific. Along the way, three US Senate contests in 2002 and numerous other Congressional and local elections have been subjected to partisan disenfranchisement of qualified voters, and vote counts that smack of theft and fraud. Even now the primary in New Hampshire is rightly being challenged to do an expensive but necessary recount procedure that could and should have been avoided. As has been shown in the stolen 2000 and 2004 presidential contests, there are scores of ways by which elections can and have been rigged and ripped off in this new century. And there are scores of cures that can be put forth.
Busted
Michigan doesn’t have a shortage of money, as Democrats argue. The state’s budget is $43 billion annually. Nor are its taxes too high, as Republicans assert. Michigan has a shortage of ideas, vision, and willingness to collaborate. So long as the state’s budget is devoted to building more roads not regional rapid transit, promoting farm products in the farm-killing global commodity markets, subsidizing sprawl in rural areas, selling state forests and other assets at bargain prices, and cutting funding to higher education in the knowledge economy, we all lose.
A Blank Check to Continue the War
They were elected in 2006 to end the war, but House Democrats helped continue it last week with $162 billion in extra funding. "The president basically gets a blank check to dump this war on the next president," says Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern, who voted against letting Bush off the hook – and against setting up a situation where the next commander-in-chief, be he Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, will be "a war president."
The Presidential Election Will Not Be Close
The November presidential election is not going to be close. Barack Obama is going to beat John McCain by 8 to 10 points in the national popular vote and win 300 to 350 electoral votes. Obama is going to wipe out McCain mano a mano. The problem with McCain is that his brain is no longer working. There is something wrong. Many doctor friends of mine hypothesize Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is consistent with his 5½ years of great stress in prison and which can explain his violent temper, his memory lapses and his frequent mental disconnects. It also is possible that he is suffering mini-strokes, which cause momentary double vision, partial blackouts and confusion, and which could explain why he can say incredibly stupid things, sometimes the same dumb thing several times in one day, without appearing to understand what he just said. Whatever the specific cause, he is not healthy, and mentally he is struggling to hold it together. What we are going to see in the general election from McCain is a ton of mistakes. Voters are going to default to Obama because it will become obvious that McCain simply is not up to the task of being president. This is going to be the first not-close presidential election since 1988. You heard it here first.
Is the GOP Cooking the Books to Avoid Recession Until After Election Day?
Is the worst over? Are we on the road to recovery? Will the next president take office against a backdrop of economic improvement, as Bill Clinton did in 1993? Or has something deeper and more intractable gone wrong? Thus far the dollar has fallen, but it hasn't collapsed. Will it? There are two big threats. The first is the financial crisis itself, which is a problem of trust not only in the ordinary borrower, and not only in the banks, but in the American dollar. Why is the rest of the world nervous? Because the fundamental trust that they have always had—that the United States was a safe place to put your money—has come into question. The second threat, not often mentioned, is our reckless foreign policy, including the invasion of Iraq, bellicosity toward Iran, and the ongoing subtext of hostility toward China. Since the Middle East has the oil and China holds our debts, all this is spitting in the soup, big time. It may not by itself wreck the financial system. But it doesn't exactly build up the reserve of good will that we may need when the financial going gets tough. [Editor: I guess the GOP didn't make it through election day as planned.]
Prepared to Lead
With the economy in tatters at home and two wars still raging abroad, Senator Barack Obama’s team is preparing for a fast start. Mr. Obama’s advisers are sifting résumés, compiling policy options and discussing where to hold his first news conference as president-elect. Democrats say Mr. Obama hopes to name key members of his White House, economic and security teams soon after the election. His transition chief has even drafted a sample Inaugural Address. Neither campaign would publicly discuss its transition planning for fear of appearing presumptuous with little more than a week to go before voters render their judgment. But as the nation braces to change leaders for the first time since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, White House officials and independent analysts said it was especially imperative for both campaigns to be prepared because of the acute economic and national security threats confronting the country.
Barack Obama's impressive road to the White House
The presidential race does have the great merit of being the most intense audition for the job. It is one huge stress test of a candidate's temperament, ideas, judgment, strategic capacity, organisational skills and resilience. Obama has proved that he is durable. To get here, the rookie senator has out-campaigned both the Republicans and the Clintons, besting America's two most formidable political machines by building from scratch an even better organisation of his own. At the climax, his campaign is so flush with donations that he can afford to buy 30 minutes of airtime in prime time across the networks while his opponent is running on empty and calling himself 'the underdog' to try to make a desperate virtue out of being behind. They call it no drama, Obama. After two years under the searing spotlight of the most saturated media in the world, there has not been a single occasion when he has publicly lost self-control. Nor has his organisation lapsed in its self-discipline. It is a testimony to his ability to select and lead a team that his campaign has been so smooth in comparison with those of his rivals. There has been none of the internecine warfare which riddled the Clinton campaign and is now erupting within the McCain camp even before they know for certain that they've lost. One thing that particularly impresses me is that he knows what he doesn't know. He has the confidence to acknowledge his deficits in experience and expertise by gathering around him a pretty stellar cast of advisers on both foreign and domestic policy. Of course, that does not in itself guarantee a successful time in the White House. A President also needs the capacity to understand the advice he is given and to choose between competing counsels. From what we have seen of Obama, he has that capacity. He is analytical, pragmatic, open-minded, considered and subtle - qualities all notable by their absence from the White House during the last eight years. Joe Klein puts it very well: 'He seems a grown-up, in a nation that badly needs some adult supervision.' The big lesson is that the politics of unity and hope can still beat those of division and fear. At least, the world is united in hoping so.
FactCheck: Obama
He stuck close to the facts. He said McCain would fail to lower taxes for 100 million Americans while his own plan would cut taxes for 95 percent of “working” families. But an independent analysis puts the number who would see no benefit from McCain’s plan at 66 million and finds that Obama’s plan would benefit 81 percent of all households when retirees and those without children are figured in. Obama proposes to raise taxes to pre-Bush levels for families earning more than $250,000 a year and singles making more than $200,000 (raising taxes for the super rich only), yielding additional revenue. Obama's plan cuts taxes for 81.3 percent of all households in 2009 (working families), according to the Tax Policy Center. The TPC also says McCain’s tax plan would leave 65.8 million households without a cut, not 100 million. The Obama tax plan would reduce taxes for low- and moderate-income families, but raise them significantly for high-bracket taxpayers. ... By 2012, middle-income taxpayers would see their after-tax income rise by about 5 percent, or nearly $2,200 annually. Those in the top 1 percent would face a $19,000 average tax increase — a 1.5 percent reduction in after-tax income.
FactCheck: NRA Targets Obama
The National Rifle Association falsely claims in mailers and TV ads that Obama plans to ban handguns, hunting ammo and use of a gun for home defense. Summary A National Rifle Association advertising campaign distorts Obama's position on gun control beyond recognition. The NRA is circulating printed material and running TV ads making unsubstantiated claims that Obama plans to ban use of firearms for home defense, ban possession and manufacture of handguns, close 90 percent of gun shops and ban hunting ammunition. Much of what the NRA passes off as Obama's "10 Point Plan to 'Change' the Second Amendment" is actually contrary to what he has said throughout his campaign: that he "respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms" and "will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport, and use guns." Obama is not proposing to ban hunting ammunition. And he did not, as claimed in an NRA TV spot featuring a Virginia hunter named Karl Rusch, vote to "ban virtually all deer hunting ammunition." What Obama voted for was a measure to ban "armor-piercing" ammunition, which the measure's sponsor has said repeatedly would not cover hunting ammunition. The amendment applied only to handgun ammunition "capable of penetrating body armor" and to rifle ammunition that is "designed or marketed as having armor piercing capability," however.
Hillary Clinton makes the case for Barack Obama
On Tuesday, New Yorkers and Americans have a big decision to make. Do we continue to pursue the policies of the past eight years or do we chart a new course? I believe we can and we must chart a new course led by President Barack Obama. How can it be any other way? We find ourselves in an economic crisis born and bred by the failed policies of Washington Republicans: gut regulations; cut taxes for billionaires and big corporations instead of the middle class; continue tax breaks for oil companies, drug companies, insurance companies, and companies that ship jobs overseas; deny the home mortgage crisis; ignore the energy crisis; and dismiss the health care crisis.
Obama's Green Jobs Revolution
Barack Obama is promising a $150bn "Apollo project" to bring jobs and energy security to the US through a new alternative energy economy, if his final push for votes brings victory in the presidential election on Tuesday. "That's going to be my number one priority when I get into office," Mr Obama has said of his "green recovery" plans. Making his arguments in a radio address yesterday, the Democratic favourite promised: "If you give me your vote on Tuesday, we won't just win this election. Together, we will change this country and change the world."
Obama Holds an 810 12 Point Lead and Growing
With less than two weeks before the November 4 election, Obama leads McCain 52 percent to 40 percent among likely voters in the latest three-day tracking poll, which had a margin of error of 2.9 points. Obama has made steady gains over the last four days and has tripled his lead on McCain in the past week of polling. "Obama's expansion is really across the board," pollster John Zogby said. "It seems to be among almost every demographic group." Independent voters, who have been the target of intense campaign efforts by both sides, have now swung behind Obama by a 30-point margin. He now has the support of 21 percent of self-described conservatives -- his best showing with those voters.
Obama leading all Midwest states in Big Ten Battleground Poll
As the race for the White House enters its final days, the Big Ten Battleground Poll shows Barack Obama holds significant leads over John McCain in eight crucial Midwest states. In Michigan Barack Obama holds a 22% lead (Obama 58% vs McCain 36%.) The results of this rare regional poll -- a partnership involving eight Big Ten universities – will be featured during a 90-minute show called Big Ten Battleground: Campaign 2008, which airs at 3 p.m. CDT (4 p.m. EDT) today (Oct. 23) on the Big Ten Network.
Obama Draws Massive Crowds, McCain Not So Much
Obama continues to draw jaw-dropping, record-shattering crowds while McCain struggles to fill small venues. The contrast was most glaring Saturday in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a state McCain desperately needs for the inside straight draw he needs to reach the 270 electoral votes necessary for victory. That day, McCain pulled fewer than 1,000 people to a sun-dappled plaza in the New Mexico State Fair grounds despite the campaign’s best efforts to drum up a crowd. That evening, Obama drew what police said were about 45,000 to a rally several miles away –- and more than tripled that total the next day at two rallies in Colorado, another battleground state.
Obama leading all Midwest states in Big Ten Battleground Poll
As the race for the White House enters its final days, the Big Ten Battleground Poll shows Barack Obama holds significant leads over John McCain in eight crucial Midwest states. In Michigan Barack Obama holds a 22% lead (Obama 58% vs McCain 36%.) The results of this rare regional poll -- a partnership involving eight Big Ten universities – will be featured during a 90-minute show called Big Ten Battleground: Campaign 2008, which airs at 3 p.m. CDT (4 p.m. EDT) today (Oct. 23) on the Big Ten Network.
Why I Believe Barack Obama Should be the Next President
There are all sorts of reasons for hoping that Barack Hussein Obama will be the next president of the United States. He seems highly intelligent. He has an air of courtesy and sincerity. Unlike the current occupant of the White House, he has no difficulty in orally extemporising a series of grammatical English sentences, each containing a main verb. Unlike his opponent, he visibly incarnates change and hope, at a time when America desperately needs both. The recent collapse of the banking system, and the humiliating resort to semi-socialist solutions, has done a great deal to discredit - in some people's eyes - the idea of free-market capitalism. Democracy and capitalism are the two great pillars of the American idea. To have rocked one of those pillars may be regarded as a misfortune. To have damaged the reputation of both, at home and abroad, is a pretty stunning achievement for an American president.
Obama looked presidential and McCain--not
It turned out that Joe-the-plumber had a bigger role than Bill Ayers at this evening's debate, and Sen. McCain may have just lost him, too. McCain sounded desperate and anxious. When Obama successfully parried some of his claims, he was irritable, even stunned. He simply did not look like he'd do well with the 3 a.m. call or negotiating with either Congress or foreign leaders. In his closing remarks, Obama notably mentioned the risks of continuing "the same failed policies and the same failed politics." McCain did everything possible during the debate to illustrate Obama's point.
Obama Take a Campagign Break to Visit His Sick grandmother
It comes as no surprise that Barack Obama is taking precious time off from the crucial final days of his presidential campaign to visit the grandmother he calls “Toot” (from Tutu the Hawaiian word for grandparent). Wouldn't any of us do the same? Specially for a grandmother who had done as much for us as Madelyn Dunham did for her grandson. She and her husband helped to raise Barack in Hawaii from his birth until he left for college. At the Democratic Convention he expressed his gratitude: “She poured everything she had into me.” Obama's mother died in 1995, so for the past 13 years his grandmother has been the only maternal figure in his life. Now she is 85 and unwell. No wonder he is dropping everything to be with her. He recognises the special relationship between grandmothers and their grandchildren - the two-way unconditional love that starts in babyhood and continues, for the lucky ones, into adult life.
Evangelicals and Rural Americans Are Breaking Big for Obama
There's clearly a new political landscape forming in the U.S. That's what the polls are telling us. It's not just that the first major-party black candidate for President is leading by significant margins in the national polls; it's not just that North Dakota, a state George W. Bush won in 2004 by 64%, is believed to be "in play"; it's not just that Virginia which, like North Dakota, was last carried by a Democrat in the sweep year of 1964, is, according to the most recent Washington Post poll and others, in the Obama camp by at least 8 points, or that he's leading in a remarkable number of states Bush took in 2004, or even that Democratic Senate and House candidates are making a run of it in previously ridiculous places.
Obama: Three for Three
On the day that the Dow went down 733 points -- the most ever in a single day -- after going up almost a 1,000 the day before yesterday -- also the most in a single day -- John McCain showed that he really can't change at all. McCain had to transform his method and tone of communicating to have any chance of gaining any ground against the unflappable Obama. But McCain couldn't change at all and, in fact, did worse. His scripted Joe Plumber scenario didn't pay off and left the viewers confused. His attacks about Bill Ayers reduced his favorables consistent with poll results. McCain has been on a losing streak for almost two months, and there is no sign he can break out of his self-imposed straightjacket and dependence on the Rovian tactics that have consistently proved unpopular except for his ever-narrowing hard core base. All McCain could do was ratchet up the persona he displayed in the first two debates -- he was more pushy, more agitated, more scripted, more aggressive, and as a result, he got nowhere. The two of them could debate 50 times and the results would be the same: Grumpy old man losses to smart, calm, cool and collected every time.
'Joe the Plummer' Better Off Under Obama Tax Plan
An Ohio plumber named Joe Wurzelbacher has been cited by the McCain campaign as the type of person who could be hurt by Barack Obama's tax plans. Wurzelbacher is hoping to buy a plumbing company he works for and that could put his income above $250,000. But he could make many business deductions before reaching that threshold and even if he exceeds it, he probably wouldn't face a major tax bite. In fact as it turns out, Joe the plummer doesn't like paying taxes at all; he and currently owes $12,000 in unpaid back taxes.
Obama Cool, Calm, and Capable: Rises Above Attacks
"This is not a time for ideology – it’s a time for common sense and a politics of pragmatism," he said this morning as he continues an economics-based tour of Ohio, a key battleground on Nov. 4. "The test of an idea must not be whether it is liberal or conservative – the test should be whether it works for the American people. That’s what we should all be focused on in the days and weeks ahead." Obama quoted Franklin Roosevelt's admonition during the Great Depression, declaring, "Now is not the time for fear. Now is not the time for panic. Now is the time for resolve and steady leadership."
Obama Assures the Undecided
Barack Obama delivered a reassuring economic message and a combative John McCain blistered his opponent as ill-prepared and opportunistic as the two entered the final four weeks of the marathon presidential campaign with swings through the battleground states of the Midwest. Obama followed Tuesday night's debate in Nashville with a rollicking rally in this normally reliably Republican state, delivering an optimistic view that the economic crisis is simply the latest challenge for a nation that has overcome worse.
Obama Taking the Lead in GOP Territory
Virginia hasn't backed a Democrat for president in 44 years, but economic concerns and changing demographics are giving Sen. Barack Obama a chance to steal the once reliably red state from Republicans. The latest CNN poll of polls has Obama leading McCain 49 percent to 45 percent. A CNN/TIME/Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted September 28-30 shows Obama with an even bigger lead over McCain, 53 percent to 44 percent.
Military Families Closing Ranks Around Obama
One of the largest U.S. marine bases in the world is located in Quantico, a tidy town with scant election fanfare. Everyone who lives here just assumes Republicans have a lock on the military vote. And so when Obama signs began to appear, tongues began to wag. John McCain assumes he has the military vote -- but does he? At a bar or a party, everyone tells me they're voting for Obama," said Thomas Singleton, 27, a former military telecommunications specialist, People in all branches of the service are getting tired of repeated deployments. "I think more of them will vote for Obama," said Jennings. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, deployed troops are putting their money where their mouth is: they've given four times as much money to Obama as McCain.
Former Republican Senator Supporting Obama
Senator Lincoln Chafee looks ahead to tonight's second presidential debate. The former Republican talks about switching political parties and why he now supports Sen. Barack Obama's bid for the White House.
Demographically Obama Leads 2 to 1 Over McCain
Democrat Barack Obama now leads Republican John McCain by a 61%-32% among registered voters under 30, an advantage that is swamping McCain's competitive position among older voters. In contrast, McCain leads Obama among seniors 65 and older by four percentage points, according to the Gallup daily tracking poll. In the survey, 75% of younger Americans say they're registered to vote and 64% say they're paying "quite a lot" of attention to the presidential race. Among those who are registered, three of four say they plan to vote — 30% of them for the first time.
Mary Anderson and the Gentleman
Mary Menth Andersen was 31 years old at the time and had just married Norwegian Dag Andersen. She was looking forward to starting a new life in Åsgårdstrand in Vestfold with him. But first she had to get all of her belongings across to Norway. The date was November 2nd, 1988. At the airport in Miami things were hectic as usual, with long lines at the check-in counters. When it was finally Mary’s turn and she had placed her luggage on the baggage line, she got the message that would crush her bubbling feeling of happiness. -You’ll have to pay a 103 dollar surcharge if you want to bring both those suitcases to Norway, the man behind the counter said. Mary had no money. Her new husband had travelled ahead of her to Norway, and she had no one else to call. -I was completely desperate and tried to think which of my things I could manage without. But I had already made such a careful selection of my most prized possessions, says Mary. Although she explained the situation to the man behind the counter, he showed no signs of mercy. -I started to cry, tears were pouring down my face and I had no idea what to do. Then I heard a gentle and friendly voice behind me saying, That’s OK, I’ll pay for her. READ UNTRANSLATED STORY
Voters Concerned About Economy Favor Obama
Obama now leads McCain among likely voters by 52 percent to 43 percent, according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll. That is a significant swing from the most recent ABC/Washington Post poll earlier this month that gave McCain a slight 49-47 point edge. "You have to go back to 1948 for the last time when a candidate having this kind of a lead in late September lost," Stephanopoulos said. On the question of which candidate voters feel understands the Americans economic problems better, Obama now has a 24 percentage point lead over the Arizona senator.
Economists Favor Obama
As the financial crisis pushes the economy back to the top of voters’ concerns, Barack Obama is starting to open up a clear lead over John McCain in the opinion polls. But among those who study economics for a living, Mr Obama’s lead is much more commanding. A survey of academic economists by The Economist finds the majority—by overwhelming margins—believe Mr Obama has the superior economic plan, a firmer grasp of economics and will appoint better economic advisers.
Obama Leading McCain in Key States
A new poll shows U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama leads John McCain in three states that are critical to winning the White House. The U.S. survey released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University shows that support for Senator Obama jumped to 50 percent or more in the so-called "swing-states". The survey found an increase in confidence that Senator Obama can handle the economic crisis.
Obama May Win in Alaska, you betcha
One would think that the Republican rally celebrating the hometown girl, in her very very red state would have drawn a huge crowd, and that the Obama rally would be a few brave intrepid souls with a couple signs shivering by the side of the road. One would be wrong. By 1:00, at the Obama rally, there were more than a thousand people milling around with signs, kids, dogs and huge smiles. This was definitely a feel-good place. It was after 1:30 and I knew if I didn't get to the McCain Palin rally soon, I'd never go. So I ripped myself away from all the positive energy and the fresh air, and hurried over to the Dana'ina Center where I was greeted by 3 people who stood outside waving signs. I felt like I had entered an empty chair convention. A lady scooted up to me and said, "We'd really like everyone to be up at the front and towards the center, not all spread out." Ah...can't have the news cameras getting all those vacant chairs.
61 Nobel Laureates Endorse Obama
A group of 61 Nobel Laureates have gotten together to endorse Barack Obama for President. Their letter and the signatories are below. This is the largest number of Nobel Laureates to ever endorse a candidate for office, more than endorsed either Gore or Kerry. (Kerry had 48 total.) That is a remarkable statement. Every year since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for peace. The Nobel Prize is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation.
Obama has 13+point Michigan lead over McCain
The Detroit Free Press/Local 4 Michigan Poll shows the Democratic senator from Illinois with a commanding lead of 13 points over Republican John McCain in the presidential race. Obama’s lead of 51% to 38% in the poll is nearly double the edge he had a month ago in a Michigan Poll taken just before the Democratic convention in Denver. The poll showed momentum swinging clearly to Obama in almost every demographic. Among women, his lead is now 54%-35% -- eight points better than it was a month ago, before the Democratic and Republican national conventions and McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. Among independents, Obama enjoys a 14-point lead. As for what’s driving it – it’s the economy. Asked who is best able to fix the problems with the U.S. economy, Obama did even better than the head-to-head with McCain, 52% to 37% among the 602 likely voters polled from Monday to Wednesday of this week by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, Iowa. Asked which candidate was more likely to fight for the concerns most important to you and your family, 56% of respondents said Obama, compared to 36% for McCain.
Obama Understands It, McCain Does Not
It's time for FDR's regulatory system to adapt to the 21st century. Barack Obama understands this. John McCain does not. With wiser leadership, that framework might have prevented the current meltdown. For years, Senator Paul Sarbanes pressed for anti-predatory lending measures that would have slowed the disastrous subprime boom. At the Federal Reserve, the late Ned Gramlich sought new scrutiny of loans by the barely regulated bank affiliates with the worst portfolios. Arthur Levitt, then chairing the Securities and Exchange Commission, opposed the deregulation of the credit default swaps market in which AIG placed its most disastrous bets. And only months ago, Representative Barney Frank pressed for aggressive federal action to work out defaulting loans and stem the decline of foreclosures. But policymakers put too much faith in "market discipline" to stem excess risk, and now here we are.
All Calm in Obama Land
He sounds like a man who is ahead by 10 points. He implored voters to join his campaign for change and attacked John McCain—but he wasn't urgent or exercised, either. He unveiled no new gambits. The only moment of sparkle came when he questioned whether McCain could make good on his challenge to take on the "old boys' network." With so many former lobbyists in his campaign, said Obama, the old boys' network is what they call a staff meeting. Why are they so calm in Obama-land? I can't find an account of Obama yelling at anyone during the entire campaign, and it's not just the candidate who seems calm. His aides aren't perfect, but given the level of chatter in the political echo chamber doubting their work, you'd expect them to be more snappish or bleary-eyed. There are no blind quotes from disgruntled aides sniping at each other in the press, which seems almost to defy human nature—even in the sunniest organizations, pressure plus high stakes usually creates at least one misanthrope (or, as we like to call them: sources). Even the famously disciplined Bush 2000 operation went squirrely in August under the pressure.
History Sides With Obama’s Economic Plan
Many Americans know that there are characteristic policy differences between the two parties. But few are aware of two important facts about the post-World War II era, both of which are brilliantly delineated in a new book, “Unequal Democracy,” by Larry M. Bartels, a professor of political science at Princeton. Understanding them might help voters see what could be at stake, economically speaking, in November. I call the first fact the Great Partisan Growth Divide. Simply put, the United States economy has grown faster, on average, under Democratic presidents than under Republicans. [Editor: This November we need to elect a leader who is well-educated, dignified, and is someone we can look up to and trust to deal with world leaders with intelligence, tact, and diplomacy; not necessarily somebody we can see ourselves drinking a beer with, or shooting wolves from an airplane, or gutting a moose with.]
Obama Understands It, McCain Does Not
It's time for FDR's regulatory system to adapt to the 21st century. Barack Obama understands this. John McCain does not. With wiser leadership, that framework might have prevented the current meltdown. For years, Senator Paul Sarbanes pressed for anti-predatory lending measures that would have slowed the disastrous subprime boom. At the Federal Reserve, the late Ned Gramlich sought new scrutiny of loans by the barely regulated bank affiliates with the worst portfolios. Arthur Levitt, then chairing the Securities and Exchange Commission, opposed the deregulation of the credit default swaps market in which AIG placed its most disastrous bets. And only months ago, Representative Barney Frank pressed for aggressive federal action to work out defaulting loans and stem the decline of foreclosures. But policymakers put too much faith in "market discipline" to stem excess risk, and now here we are.
The World Community Wants Obama as U.S. President
Democrat Mr Obama was favoured by a four-to-one margin across the 22,500 people polled in 22 countries. In 17 countries, the most common view was that US relations with the rest of the world would improve under Mr Obama. The countries most optimistic that an Obama presidency would improve ties were US Nato allies - Canada (69%), Italy (64%), France (62%), Germany (61%), and the UK (54%) - as well as Australia (62%), along with Kenya (87%) and Nigeria (71%).
Poll Finds the Choices is Clear : Obama by a Landslide!
If the world could vote, Barack Obama would most likely win in a landslide. The poll could still be good news on the foreign policy front for Obama, should he win in November. Several of the nations most enthusiastic about an Obama presidency are key allies.
Five Reasons the World Wants Obama
While Americans spend the next three months pondering which candidate is worthy of becoming the next U.S. president, the rest of the world made up its mind a long time ago: they want Barack Obama for president. This is evident in global polling conducted throughout the summer, showing that publics abroad prefer Senator Obama over Senator McCain by considerable margins. To elect Obama would paint American society as mature and tolerant. It would demonstrate that the American public possesses qualities that people abroad want it to posses (which are, not coincidentally, qualities that American society itself claims to posses).
Bush’s laws will be scrutinized if I become president, Obama says
Maybe it’s his background teaching constitutional law. If elected president, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama said one of the first things he wants to do is ensure the constitutionality of all the laws and executive orders passed while Republican President George W. Bush has been in office. Those that don’t pass muster will be overturned, he said. During a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama — a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School — was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office. “I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution,” said Obama
Republican adviser declares interest in Obama
A senior adviser to Republican favourite John McCain has promised to stand aside if Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination because of his admiration for the Illinois senator. Mark MacKinnon, who designs Mr McCain's advertisements, said he could not face being part of a campaign that "would inevitably be attacking" Mr Obama. The confession by Mr MacKinnon, who was a Democrat before joining George W Bush's presidential campaigns, underscores the respect and affection that many moderate Republicans and independents feel for Mr Obama as he attempts to become the first black US president.
Obama preempts McCain dishonest assault advertising
Branding his opponent as “erratic in a crisis,” Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is preempting plans by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to portray him as having sinister connections to controversial Chicagoans. Obama officials call it political jujitsu – turning the attacks back on the attacker. McCain officials had said early in the weekend that they plan to begin advertising after Tuesday’s debate that will tie Obama to convicted money launderer Tony Rezko and former Weathermen radical William Ayers. But Obama isn’t waiting to respond. His campaign is going up Monday on national cable stations with a scathing ad saying: “Three quarters of a million jobs lost this year. Our financial system in turmoil. And John McCain? Erratic in a crisis. Out of touch on the economy. No wonder his campaign wants to change the subject. “Turn the page on the financial crisis by launching dishonorable, dishonest ‘assaults’ against Barack Obama. Struggling families can't turn the page on this economy, and we can't afford another president who is this out of touch.” Obama-Biden communications director Dan Pfeiffer said about the new ads: “If John McCain thinks he can ‘turn the page’ on the economic crisis facing American families, he is even more out of touch than we imagined. Now there may be no good answers for John McCain due to his erratic response to the financial crisis, but his desire to avoid discussing the economy is something we will remind voters of everyday for the next month.”
Obama Campaign Vows Response to GOP Attacks
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said Friday in an e-mail to reporters that Republican nominee John McCain "has shown that he is willing to go into the gutter to win this election. His campaign has become nothing but a series of smears, lies, and cynical attempts to distract from the issues. . . . We will not allow John McCain and his band of Karl Rove disciples to make this big election about small things." Obama released two ads -- one positive, the other an attack that avoids mentioning Palin but accuses McCain of being out of touch with the country after 26 years in Washington: "He admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send e-mail. Still doesn't understand the economy, and favors $200 billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class." "After one president who was out of touch," the ad concludes, "we just can't afford more of the same." The independent watch dog group FactCheck.org quickly weighed in on McCain's "Disrespectful" ad, which aired in Denver, saying it continues takes quotes of context and twists meaning in order to draw its conclusions. "The new McCain-Palin ad . . . goes down new paths of deception," Factcheck.org said.
Tidying up for the Revolution
Thanks to us and to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, great progress is being made in healing two old wounds that have festered for centuries on the American landscape. The two wounds are racism and sexism, and healing them means that America can reclaim its destiny as the world's leader of enlightened behavior. There is much to celebrate. The historic nomination battle between Obama and Clinton heralded the coming social revolution that will elevate feminine values and bring more balance to national life. Like Clinton, Obama represents these values -- peace, family, health, unity, compassion, and power.
Who won the vice presidential debate?
The New York Times, Mark J. Penn stated that, "Thursday night, Senator Joe Biden did something we have not seen enough of in presidential debates in the last decade -- he gave knowledgeable, fact-based answers that were based on understanding the issues facing this country." To the mainstream U.S. media, it was clear that Joe Biden had won the debate. But what about the rest of the world? A report from Israel's Haaretz indicates agreement with U.S. media. Pakistan's Daily Times applauded Biden's consideration of Pakistani issues. And bloggers? Mexican blogger Brainiac Conspiracy concurs with the media:... read on
Though small in size, Delaware big on Biden
Part of Biden's appeal here can be ascribed to the uniqueness of a state that is about the size of some congressional districts. A quick sampling finds people who say they knew Biden's father, sister or children, lived near his boyhood home, went to Catholic high school with him, lived in the same dormitory at the University of Delaware, encountered him at the drugstore or dined with him at a fundraiser. Since meeting Biden at a peach festival about a decade ago, Judy Fisher, 73, of Middletown has proudly displayed a sticker on her van that says only "Joe."
Biden Slams McCain on Economy
"I could walk from here to Lansing, and I wouldn't run into a single person who thought our economy was doing well -- unless I ran into John McCain." In his remarks in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, Biden said, "John McCain has confessed, and I quote -- I want to make sure I get it right -- he said, 'It's easy for me to be in Washington and frankly be somewhat divorced from the day-to-day challenges people have.' Well, he's right. He's right. If all you do is walk the halls of power, all you'll hear is the wants of the powerful. Ladies and gentleman, I believe that's why John McCain could say with a straight face as recently as this morning, and this is a quote, 'the fundamentals of the economy are strong.'
Believe McCain? I've got a bridge to sell you in Alaska
“It’s great that John McCain now wants to talk about putting corporate lobbyists in their place. But he needs to explain why he put seven of them in charge of his campaign,” he said at an outdoor rally under a cloudless Colorado sky. “If you think those lobbyists are working day and night for John McCain just to put themselves out of business, well I’ve got a bridge to sell you up in Alaska.”
What makes people vote Republican or Democrat?
Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity" -- a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.
We've Seen this Movie Before
Eight years ago, a man ran for President who claimed he was different, not a typical Republican. He called himself a reformer. He admitted that his Party, the Republican Party, had been wrong about things from time to time. He promised to work with Democrats and said he’d been doing that for a long time. That candidate was George W. Bush. Remember that? Remember the promise to reach across the aisle? To change the tone? To restore honor and dignity to the White House? We saw how that story ends. A record number of home foreclosures. Home values, tumbling. And the disturbing news that the crisis you’ve been facing on Main Street is now hitting Wall Street, taking down Lehman Brothers and threatening other financial institutions. We’ve seen eight straight months of job losses. Nearly 46 million Americans without health insurance. Average incomes down, while the price of everything — from gas to groceries — has skyrocketed. A military stretched thin from two wars and multiple deployments. A nation more polarized than I’ve ever seen in my career. And a culture in Washington where the very few wealthy and powerful have a seat at the table and everybody else is on the menu. Eight years later, we have another Republican nominee who’s telling us the exact same thing: This time it will be different, it really will. This time he’s going to put country before party, to change the tone, reach across the aisle, change the Republican Party, change the way Washington works. We’ve seen this movie before, folks. But as everyone knows, the sequel is always worse than the original.
American People on McCain/Palin Socialism
John McCain and Joe the Plumber are campaigning for Barack Obama, and they don't even know it. The more McCain has ramped up his attacks on Obama as a "spreader of wealth," the more the country has lined up behind the Democrat's plan to spread the wealth. If McCain's economic agenda was a gun and his attacks on Obama's agenda the bullets, the old soldier would have shot both his feet clean off a long time ago. Watching the GOP's coordinated if increasingly delirious attacks on Obama's economic plan, it's clear that the party is even further out of touch with the America of 2008 than previously imagined. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Republican hammer-and-sickle-themed haunted house: Nobody showed. The McCain campaign's attempts to smear Obama as a Trojan donkey for socialistic un-Americanism have belly-flopped, if not backfired. Charges of socialism are especially discordant coming from the McCain campaign. The top marginal income tax rate held steady at 50 percent for five years under McCain's hero, Ronald Reagan. His other hero, Teddy Roosevelt, was a fierce and early booster for federal income and estate taxes. And Sarah Palin? It wouldn't be all that surprising to see her turn up at a commemoration of this year's 70th anniversary of the Fourth International. As Hendrik Hertzberg noted in one of many recent New Yorker pieces debunking the newest GOP attack line, the redistributive principle is practiced with particular gusto in Palin's Alaska, where the governor spreads the oil wealth like creamy butter around the state's absorbent white bread.
McCain volunteer made up robbery story
A McCain campaign volunteer made up a story of being robbed, pinned to the ground and having the letter "B" scratched on her face in what she had said was a politically inspired attack, police said Friday. Todd was awaiting arraignment Friday on the misdemeanor false-report charge, which is punishable by up to two years in prison. She will be housed in a mental health unit at the county jail for her safety. Todd worked in New York for the College Republican National Committee before moving two weeks ago to Pennsylvania, where her duties included recruiting college students, the committee's executive director, Ethan Eilon, has said.
Rashid Khalidi: More McNonsense
This Khalidi business is really desperate nonsense. OK, Obama went to his going away party as he left the University of Chicago for Columbia. In regards to Khalidi, however, the guilt-by-association game burns John McCain as well. During the 1990s, while he served as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), McCain distributed several grants to the Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi, including one worth half a million dollars. A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank. (See grant number 5180, "West Bank: CPRS" on page 14 of this PDF.)
The relationship extends back as far as 1993, when John McCain joined IRI as chairman in January. Foreign Affairs noted in September of that year that IRI had helped fund several extensive studies in Palestine run by Khalidi's group, including over 30 public opinion polls and a study of "sociopolitical attitudes."
McCain’s Everyman Joe the Plumber - Blows off his appearance
Maybe Joe the Plumber was out on a job. But he wasn’t out campaigning with Sen. John McCain Thursday morning. Joe Wurzelbacher has been a regular part of McCain’s stump speech for the last several weeks, and so anticipation was high this morning in Defiance, Ohio, when McCain seemed set to finally meet his middle class foil. But when McCain acknowledged him in front of the crowd, Joe was no where to be seen.
McCain Media Coverage More Negative
Of the stories about Obama, 36 percent have been mostly positive, 35 percent mixed, and 29 percent negative, the study said. Of the coverage of McCain, only 14 percent was generally positive, while 29 percent was mixed, and 57 percent was negative.
McCain Losing in His Home State
Democrats are circulating a poll showing Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) losing ground in his own state, an ominous sign for his beleaguered campaign as state after state turns blues. Some leading Republicans say they believe that the Democrats can pick up one and possibly two Congressional seats now held by Republicans. That would give them a majority of Arizona's Congressional delegation -- now with eight members -- for the first time since 1966.
McCain Pushed Regulators For Land Swap
Years after he resurrected his political fortunes from the Keating Five savings and loan investigation, John McCain promoted an Arizona land swap that would've benefited a former mentor and partner of the scandal's central figure. The owners of the Spur Cross Ranch, a dramatic 2,154-acre tract of Sonoran desert just north of Phoenix, in the late 1990s sought to sell it to a developer who planned to build a premier golf course surrounded by 390 luxury homes.
McCain Turned His Back on the Man Who Saved Him
Sunday, Oct. 26 marked the 41st anniversary of John McCain's plane being shot down. It's a narrative that has become a central theme of McCain's presidential campaign -- but in the four decades since his capture, the story has become revisionist history invented in McCain's mind.
Republican Party Spends Twice as Much on Makeup for McCain than Palin
The Republican National Committee spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup for Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) in September -- in addition to the more than $150,000 the RNC has spent on clothing and accessories for Palin. AMERICAblog points out the amount is just half of what the RNC spends on makeup for Sen. John McCain: The RNC shelled out $8,672.55 for McCain's makeup in September, employing celebrity makeup artist Tifanie White.
FactCheck: McCain ad wrongly claims Obama plans "painful tax increases" for working families
The ad is plain wrong about higher taxes on working families. In fact, Obama's economic plan would produce a tax cut for the majority of American households, with middle-income earners benefiting most. As for "years of deficits," exactly the same claim could be made about McCain's program. It's unlikely either Obama or McCain would balance the budget, and both are projected to increase the debt by trillions. Claims like these have led us to say that McCain's campaign is engaging in a "pattern of deceit" when it comes to describing Obama's tax plan. This most recent ad fits right into the template. McCain's tax plan would bring about a projected $5 trillion additional debt. McCain senior economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin sent The Washington Post's editorial board a copy of McCain's plan in support of the candidate's claim. But the board concluded, in its July 14 editorial, that the plan was "not credible."
The Politics of Division
The Republican nominees are increasingly relying on a strategy of race-baiting and fear-mongering to win this election. It's completely unacceptable and it has to stop. — Click here to see the email we sent to our members. — Watch the video from Brave New Films showing the McCain/Palin campaign and its supporters in action. Then, please sign the open letter demanding that they reject the politics of division and fear. We'll publicize the letter and make the sure the McCain campaign has to respond. When you're done, please pass the video and the letter on to your friends and family and ask them to do the same.
Defeating McCain: Ending Not Only Neocon Policies, but Also Tactics
Numerous commentators have condemned the McCain campaign's despicable -- and patently false -- attack on Professor Rashid Khalidi as an "anti-Semite," deployed in order, yet again, to insinuate that Barack Obama is an American-hating, Muslim/Arab radical. Even Fred Hiatt's Washington Post Editorial Page this morning called McCain's comments about Rashidi "a vile smear," "simply ludicrous," and "itself condemnable," and favorably cited Rashidi's response when asked by The Post if he wanted to address the controversy: "I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over." It's true, as those commentators point out, that this episode is just the latest in the McCain campaign's increasingly desperate (and laughably inept) attempt to win by sinking lower and lower into McCarthyite muck. But it goes far beyond just the McCain campaign. The neoconservative Right has been doing exactly this for a long time -- playing frivolous games with the "anti-semitism" accusation, casually tossing it at anyone who utters any criticism of Israel or who advocates some even-handed approach to Israel's conflicts with its various enemies.
McCain Transition Chief Aided Saddam Hussein In Lobbying Effort
William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime. Timmons who worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later plead that he had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government. Timmons declined to comment for this story. An office manager who works for him said that he has made it his practice during his public career to never speak to the press.
Becoming President in the Age of the Internet
McCain is running a textbook Rovian race: fear-based, smear-based, anything goes. But it isn't working. The glitch in the well-oiled machine? The Internet. "We are witnessing the end of Rovian politics," Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google told me. And YouTube, which Google bought in 2006 for $1.65 billion, is one of the causes of its demise. Thanks to YouTube -- and blogging and instant fact-checking and viral emails -- it is getting harder and harder to get away with repeating brazen lies without paying a price, or to run under-the-radar smear campaigns without being exposed. But the McCain campaign hasn't gotten the message, hence the blizzard of racist, alarmist, xenophobic, innuendo-laden accusations being splattered at Obama. [Editor: Needless to say, a free and open internet is now under attack by powerful special interests.]
McCain Employing GOP Operative Accused of Voter Registration Fraud
According to campaign finance records, a joint committee of the McCain-Palin campaign, the RNC and the the California Republican Party, made a $175,000 payment to the group Lincoln Strategy in June for purposes of "registering voters." The managing partner of that firm is Nathan Sproul, a renowned GOP operative who has been investigated on multiple occasions for suppressing Democratic voter turnout, throwing away registration forms and even spearheading efforts to get Ralph Nader on ballots to hinder the Democratic ticket. In a letter to the Justice Department last October, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said that that Sproul's alleged activities "clearly suppress votes and violate the law." "It should certainly take away from McCain's argument," said Bob Grossfeld, a progressive political consultant based in Arizona who has followed Sproul's career. "Without knowing anything of what is going on with ACORN, there is a clear history with Mr. Sproul either going over the line or sure as hell kicking dirt on it, and doing it for profit and usually fairly substantive profit."
Al-Qaida Endorses McCain
The U.S. may occasionally have a hard time calculating its interests. Al Qaeda, on the other hand, tends to know what's good for it. Al-Qaida supporters suggested in a Web site message this week they would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to usher in a McCain presidency. The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, "impetuous" Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier," the message said. "Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush."
McCain campaign and the GOP launch deceptive 'robocalls' in battleground states
McCain's candidacy has stalled as the nation's economic problems have deepened, and his campaign has increasingly focused on raising questions about Obama's character and background. In the latest round, McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee this week began sending at least four different recorded telephone messages to voters in about a dozen battleground states, including Maine and New Hampshire. The most widely played is a sinister description of Obama's relationship with William Ayers, who led a radical antiwar group that bombed government buildings in the early 1970s. The caller says, "You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the US Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans."
John McCain Aspires to Be Dictator (in his own words)
Can this man be trusted with the federal budget, let alone the Nuclear Codes?
McCain finishes just behind Ayers
For days now, we've heard from the John McCain campaign, and various right-wing cheerleaders, and people at Republican rallies who seem to have missed their last anger management meeting, that McCain needed to attack Barack Obama about Ayers to change all those discouraging poll results. Wednesday evening, in the final debate, Bill Ayers -- the 1960s Weatherman bomber turned into Chicago education professor and Obama acquaintance -- finally came up. In terms of changing the campaign, he might as well have stayed in Chicago. If that was John McCain's last stand, Custer needs to move over.
McCain Transition Chief Aided Saddam Hussein In Lobbying Effort
William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime. Timmons who worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later plead that he had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government. Timmons declined to comment for this story. An office manager who works for him said that he has made it his practice during his public career to never speak to the press.
Joe the Plumber not the guy to fix the leak
It turned out that the man whom McCain put at the center of his tax debate allegedly is delinquent on his taxes. He isn't quite an independent swing voter, either, having voted Republican in this year's primary. Even his plumber status is an issue. Turns out he's unlicensed, although the plumbing company for which he works is licensed. Still, according to reports, the local plumbers union is mad at him. Most important to the presidential debate, a host of experts said Joe's taxes probably would not be increased under the Obama tax plan. In fact, if Obama's health-care proposal and tax breaks went into effect, Joe's new business might fare better than they would under McCain's tax plans. All of which led to new questions as to whether anyone in McCain's campaign bothered to check Joe's background before McCain used him as a debate foil—and whether Joe might have been vetted by the same genius who vetted Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be McCain's running mate.
'Joe The Plumber' Will Actually be Better Off With Obama Tax Plan
An Ohio plumber named Joe Wurzelbacher has been cited by the McCain campaign as the type of person who could be hurt by Barack Obama's tax plans. Wurzelbacher is hoping to buy a plumbing company he works for and that could put his income above $250,000. But he could make many business deductions before reaching that threshold and even if he exceeds it, he probably wouldn't face a major tax bite. In fact as it turns out, Joe the plummer doesn't like paying taxes at all; he and currently owes $12,000 in unpaid back taxes.
John McCain: The Deregulator
For the previous two decades, McCain has been a noted anti-regulator. He was criticized - to say the least - by Senate colleagues for his role in the Keating Five corruption scandal. Never before has he supported corporate regulation. Therefore it is unsurprising that John McCain is unable to regulate his rage reactions, his moods and his impulsive outbursts. He cannot regulate himself. He cannot regulate his supporters. And he cannot regulate Sarah Palin who has become an out-of-control attack dog. In psychiatry we speak of "affect regulation", meaning the ability to regulate one's emotions, to control them enough so they don't result in impulsive behavior. In order not to lose his temper in the first two debates, McCain tried to regulate himself by repeating rote phrases. In the first debate McCain said the Obama "doesn't understand" foreign policy; in the second debate McCain kept repeating "my friends". In neither debate could he look Obama in the face. This is not passive-aggressive behavior, fear-driven, or even racist - he was simply protecting himself from blowing his stack. Obama's calm must drive him crazy. Characters like John McCain add color to our political landscape, but they have no place in the White House, where they have the ultimate power to destroy us all.
Attacks Backfire on McCain
The McCain campaign’s recent angry tone and sharply personal attacks on Senator Barack Obama appear to have backfired and tarnished Senator John McCain more than their intended target, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll has found. Voters who said their opinions of Mr. Obama had changed recently were twice as likely to say they had grown more favorable as to say they had worsened. And voters who said that their views of Mr. McCain had changed were three times more likely to say that they had worsened than to say they had improved.
Seeds of Hatred
Toxic language can lead to destructive behavior." So when McCain and Palin supporters shout ‘'traitor,'' ‘'terrorist,'' ‘'treason,'' ‘'liar'' and even ‘'off with his head'' at campaign stops in reference to Barack Obama - and when reporters are threatened and castigated with racist remarks - it's time for all truly patriotic Americans to stand up and speak out. Instead, McCain denounced Lewis' remarks as "shocking and beyond the pale." But it has really been his campaign - and his running mate Sarah "Beyond the" Palin - who have stepped over the line of acceptable political discourse by floating absurd charges such as the laughable one that Obama has been as ‘'palling around with terrorists.'' After all, terrorists present a mortal threat to this country - and we all know what happens to them when they're finally caught... John McCain: You're better than that! Stop the hate speech before it's too late. If not, I fear the fire next time may consume us all for decades to come...
The Politics of Division
The Republican nominees are increasingly relying on a strategy of race-baiting and fear-mongering to win this election. It's completely unacceptable and it has to stop. — Click here to see the email we sent to our members. — Watch the video from Brave New Films showing the McCain/Palin campaign and its supporters in action. Then, please sign the open letter demanding that they reject the politics of division and fear. We'll publicize the letter and make the sure the McCain campaign has to respond. When you're done, please pass the video and the letter on to your friends and family and ask them to do the same.
John McCain's Radical Right
Has John McCain, inadvertently perhaps, become the midwife of a new movement built around fear, xenophobia, racism and anger? McCain has clearly become uneasy with some of the forces that have gathered around him. He has begun to insist, against the sometimes loud protests from his crowds, that Barack Obama is, among other things, a "decent person." Yet McCain's own campaign is playing with powerful extremist themes to denigrate Obama. When his running mate, Sarah Palin, first brought up Obama's association with 1960s radical Bill Ayers, who has become a centerpiece of McCain's attacks, she accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists." What other "terrorists" was she thinking about? Because Obama was a child when Ayers was part of the Weather Underground, and because even Republicans have served on boards with Ayers, this is classic guilt by association. False claims that Obama is a Muslim, that he trained to overthrow the government, that he was educated in Wahhabi Muslim schools, are a standard part of the political discussion. These fake stories come from voices on the ultra right that have dabbled in other forms of conspiracy, including classic anti-Semitism. McCain and his campaign do not pick up the most extreme charges. They just fan the flames by suggesting that voters don't really know who Obama is, hinting at a sinister back story without filling in the details. That is left to the voters' imaginations. The tragic irony here is that McCain was the victim of some of the very same extremist forces in the 2000 South Carolina primary.
Republican leaders break ranks with McCain
Senior members of the Republican party are in open mutiny against John McCain's presidential campaign. From inside and outside his inner circle, Mr McCain is being told to tone down attacks on his rival which have sometimes whipped up a mob-like atmosphere at Republican rallies. Two former rivals for the party nomination, Mitt Romney and Tommy Thompson, went on the record over the weekend about the disarray in the Republican camp. And a string of other senior party figures said Mr McCain's erratic performance risks taking the party down to heavy losses not just in the presidential race but also in contests for Congressional seats.
Kill Him!
Dissonance is the soundtrack of any faltering political campaign. Things get said to jar the ear and maybe shock the conscience. It grabs attention that reasonable coherence alone couldn't deliver. Sometimes it works. It did four years ago, when an incompetent president defeated his challenger by conjuring up fears and slanders that played into what was left of the electorate's 9/11 stupor. Look what it got us. The re-elected incompetence proved worse than even George W. Bush's core supporters could imagine, now that he's officially less liked than Richard Nixon at his impeachable lowest. His heirs, Sarah Palin and John McCain, aren't proposing much more than a change of accents and actuarial risks in the White House even as the whole country begins to get a sense of what it must've been like to be in the New Orleans Superdome after Katrina. With all their chatter about cleaning Washington, the same Washington McCain spent the past 25 years furnishing, McCain and Palin sound like a pair of Hoovers vacuuming the luxury deck of the Titanic while it sinks. Since their poll numbers have been sinking along, they've reverted to conjuring fears and slanders of their own -- nothing unexpected, nothing we didn't see coming from reactionaries enraged at the notion of a black liberal with an African first name, an Arab middle name and a drumroll of a last name vaulting to their no-longer-white-only presidency. Palin rallies have become accelerants of inflammatory hate that, in Florida last week, turned dangerous.
GOP Battles the Spread of Democracy
One Bush administration cover story for going to war in Iraq to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in no-bid contracts for Halliburton and other corporate cronies was that it was to spread democracy in the Mideast. Meanwhile, the president's party continues to battle the spread of democracy in the Midwest. With less than a month to go before the election, the collateral damage from Republican efforts to fight the spread of democracy continues to pile up. The latest victims are convicted felons who are looking to get jobs to support themselves and their families without resorting to crime. A Republican National Committee official has attacked voter registration groups in Wisconsin for employing convicted felons. The party's chief lawyer said the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) hired seven convicted felons to register voters. The natural reaction to such an accusation should be: So what? Even though Republican legislators are constantly trying to demonize ex-offenders, state law recognizes that it's very much in the public interest for felons to be able to obtain legitimate employment. In fact, it's against the law to discriminate against a job applicant solely on the basis of a criminal record unless the crime has some possible connection with the job responsibilities.
McCain / Palin Knocked Down for Illegal Use of Music
You’d think after getting smacked down by the Foo Fighters, John Mellencamp, Heart and Jackson Browne (who actually filed suit against McCain for using “Running on Empty” in an ad broadcast in Ohio) that someone, anyone, in the McCain camp would vet song choices at least as thoroughly as they vetted vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin (OK, maybe that’s a bad example). But in the latest song snafu, the guitarist for ’80s rockers Survivor has asked the McCain/Palin campaign to stop using their “Rocky III” anthem “Eye of the Tiger” at events, according to a post on the band’s official Web site. “Survivor has no affiliation with John McCain or Sarah Palin. They have no right to use ‘Eye of the Tiger’ in any way as part of their campaign. Using our music without our permission can give people the impression that we are supporters — this is not the case,” guitarist Frankie Sullivan wrote in a statement. READ STATEMENT
What Would the Economy Look Like Under John McCain?
About a year ago, I had a memorable chat with a high-ranking Republican operative. The presidential primaries were revving up, and he asked me which Republican candidate I feared the most. Without hesitating, I answered McCain. In 2001, when the richest one percent of households held 18% of all income, he said he could not "in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans." In 2003, when we had gone through a recession, were waging an expensive war, and the federal budget had flipped from surplus to deficit, he voted against another round of tax cuts for the wealthiest, this time arguing that "At a time of war, at a time of economic stagnation, at a time of rising national debt ... one might expect our national leaders to pursue policies calling for shared sacrifice to achieve shared benefits. Regrettably, that is not the case." The most recent data show that in 2006, 23% of all income is held by the richest 1%, the highest level on record but for one year: 1928 (right before the Great Depression of 1929). Spending on the war has not abated, and the budget deficit is on the rise. Middle-class Americans, who allegedly weighed so heavily on McCain's conscience circa 2001, are much more squeezed now than they were then. [Editor: As with any budget, we cannot keep spending money we don't have on war and bailing out the super wealthy who took a risk on junk sub-prime mortgages, and lost their bed; and not raise taxes to pay the tab. The U.S. has an all time record debt, and we are sinking into a morass by billions more each day. We need to cut spending and increase taxes on the super wealthy who have not been paying anywhere near their fair share under the Bush administration. Borrowing money from China, to pay the the middle east, for the gas we pour into our SUV's has got to come to and end, before we create an even greater calamity. There is no other way out of this mess other than to raise tax revenues from those who can most afford it, and reduce expenditures. I propose a "flat tax rate" for all, plus a "luxury tax" on non-essential luxury goods.]
John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis
The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s. John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal. When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion. The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history. [Editor: And here we find ourselves in a similar situation on the hook for $700-Billion.]THE REST OF THE STORY
What Every Voter Must Know About John McCain
Pick an issue. Any issue; from John McCain’s Extreme Record on the Economy, to Energy & the Environment, to Health Care, Taxes, Women ... anything
Viewpoint: The impetuous John McCain
In private the impetuous, nearly manic nature of the Republican running for president is exhilarating - in public it's beginning to look like volatility, a cause for alarm among friends and foes alike. Aside from an unfortunate reference to his opponent as "that one", McCain gave a rather restrained performance on Tuesday in the debate at Nashville, Tennessee. It was a strategy to show voters he had, as he put it, "a steady hand at the tiller". But contrast the mellow McCain of Nashville to the warrior of the first debate in Oxford, Mississippi, where he gripped the podium with an expression of suppressed fury, and seemed on the verge of swinging a fist at Democratic candidate Barack Obama. Viewers could easily draw the conclusion that the candidate is dominated by his passing moods.
Make-Believe Maverick
A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty. In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches. We have now watched McCain run twice for president. The first time he positioned himself as a principled centrist and decried the politics of Karl Rove and the influence of the religious right, imploring voters to judge candidates "by the example we set, by the way we conduct our campaigns, by the way we personally practice politics." After he lost in 2000, he jagged hard to the left — breaking with the president over taxes, drilling, judicial appointments, even flirting with joining the Democratic Party. In his current campaign, however, McCain has become the kind of politician he ran against in 2000. He has embraced those he once denounced as "agents of intolerance," promised more drilling and deeper tax cuts, even compromised his vaunted opposition to torture. Intent on winning the presidency at all costs, he has reassembled the very team that so viciously smeared him and his family eight years ago, selecting as his running mate a born-again moose hunter whose only qualification for office is her ability to electrify Rove's base. And he has engaged in a "practice of politics" so deceptive that even Rove himself has denounced it, saying that the outright lies in McCain's campaign ads go "too far" and fail the "truth test." "John has made a pact with the devil," says Lincoln Chafee, the former GOP senator, who has been appalled at his one-time colleague's readiness to sacrifice principle for power. Chafee and McCain were the only Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts. They locked arms in opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And they worked together in the "Gang of 14," which blocked some of Bush's worst judges from the federal bench. "On all three — sadly, sadly, sadly — McCain has flip-flopped," Chafee says. And forget all the "Country First" sloganeering, he adds. "McCain is putting himself first. He's putting himself first in blinking neon lights."
Some of What We Know About John McCain
McCain's whole campaign is based on his status as a war hero. But if he's really the hero he claims to be, why not release the records pertaining to MIA/POW's? Why change and embellish the few stories he likes to repeat? Why not help others who are still missing their soldiers in Vietnam after all these years? Why not speak out for better treatment of GI's and veterans? Why not talk about his experiences candidly and answer questions frankly instead of holding them up as a banner of unimpeachable glory? Is this the kind of president we want? One who hides behind the flag, whose only focus is war, and who gets his advice from the lobbyists who work to subvert our economy and our rights? I don't think so! Here are a few things that we know so far about the man who would be president 1. McCain graduated at the bottom of his class at the naval academy. Some reports state that he wouldn't have graduated at all if not for his father, the decorated admiral. 2. He crashed five planes. 3. He broke both his arms, not from abuse by Viet Cong but failing to hold them in when he ejected after being down. 4. He received special treatment in POW camps due to his father's position. 5. He gave military and other information to his captors in exchange for medical treatment not afforded other prisoners. 6. He made 32 propaganda films/tapes for the Viet Cong. 7. He was given access to dignitaries and international reporters. 8. He was kept away from other prisoners much of the time (which makes verification conveniently tough). 9. He was given the nickname "Songbird" because he so freely gave out information. 10. He snubbed the villager that saved his life after the crash, but maintained a life-long relationship with one of his captors. 11. He was not promoted after being released, which is often the case (and highly unusual and suspicious). 12. He went to great lengths to have his military and POW records sealed. 13. He also fought to seal the records of other MIA/POW's and prevent their families from investigating and trying to recover their loved ones. 14. He continues to hedge against benefits for GI's, even though he is the recipient of those benefits.
Republicans Allege McCain Covered Up His Collaboration with the North Vietnamese While a POW
A 1992 video featuring a Republican senator, Republican congressman and top Capitol Hill staffers who worked on Vietnam prisoner of war and missing in action issues say John McCain collaborated with North Vietnamese while a POW, and then covered up that involvement to the detriment of POW/MIA families seeking access to classified Pentagon records about their own family members. McCain worked to kill legislation that would have opened the Pentagon's classified archive of POW/MIA files. "Many, many documents were held back for no reason," former Sen. Smith said. Dorman said legislation that passed the House with no opposing votes was single-handedly blocked in the Senate by McCain. "On the Senate side, we had one person standing in the way," Dornan said, referring to McCain. Dumas then gave the reason why - the Pentagon's records would reveal McCain had collaborated with the Vietnamese. Dumas said. "He gave the enemy information they wanted."
John McCain Has a Bizarre History of Hiding Evidence About His Fellow POWs
John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. The Pentagon had been withholding significant information from POW families for years. What's more, the Pentagon's POW/MIA operation had been publicly shamed by internal whistleblowers and POW families for holding back documents as part of a policy of "debunking" POW intelligence even when the information was obviously credible. There is also evidence that in the first months of Reagan's presidency, the White House received a ransom proposal for a number of POWs being held by Hanoi. The offer, which was passed to Washington from an official of a third country, was apparently discussed at a meeting in the Roosevelt Room attended by Reagan, Vice President George H.W. Bush, CIA director William Casey and National Security Adviser Richard Allen.
POW says McCain is "not cut out to be President"
I Spent Years as a POW with John McCain, and His Finger Should Not Be Near the Red Button
A fellow Vietnam POW of McCain's warns of the candidate's "quick and explosive temper" and suggests McCain is exaggerating his imprisonment. When I was a Plebe (4th classman, or freshman) at the Naval Academy in 1957-58, I was assigned to the 17th Company for my four years there. In those days we had about 3,600 midshipmen spread among 24 companies, thus about 150 midshipmen to a company. As fortune would have it, John, a First Classman (senior) and his room mate lived directly across the hall from me and my two room mates. McCain barely managed to graduate, standing 5th from the bottom of his 800 man graduating class. I and many others have speculated that the main reason he did graduate was because his father was an Admiral, and also his grandfather, both U.S. Naval Academy graduates. I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button. It is also disappointing to see him take on and support Bush's war in Iraq, even stating we might be there for another 100 years. For me John represents the entrenched and bankrupt policies of Washington-as-usual. The past 7 years have proven to be disastrous for our country. And I believe John's views on war, foreign policy, economics, environment, health care, education, national infrastructure and other important areas are much the same as those of the Bush administration.
Unfit for Service and a Traitor to the United States?
People are having problems with the fact that McCain was one of 5 senators who were accused in the Keating 5 lobbying/Savings and Loan scandal and narrowly survived prosecution. He has used this for years to political advantage by saying mea culpa-to-a-degree, but-I-learned and promising a lifelong mission to curtail lobbying-while he has stacked his present campaign staff with 150 lobbyists.) Remember also he was a POW for 5 years but he was no hero. When tortured, he signed one of the "confessions" denouncing the United States, making him a traitor, not a hero. (Others, who were POWs for as much as 8 years did NOT sign confessions.) (Source: His own book, Faith of My Fathers, who in fact he betrayed.) We have his own admission in another of his books that until the age of 20 he was given to rages so intense that he would pass out, and we have abundant comments from colleagues in the Senate that these rages continue-see below for one example of his rage in bullying a witness. And, that he admiral father became such a drunk later in life that he was mentally off. We have the report of a pilot who roomed across the hall at the Naval Academy that McCain seemed out to break every rule that existed at the Academy, graduated 5th from the bottom of his class, and almost certainly only graduated because his father and grandfather were 4-star Navy Admirals. Now, he has emerged as the ultimate Flip Flopper, reversing himself on numerous major issues and lifetime political commitments, to get elected. In the last week and many times before he has said that "The U.S. economy is fundamentally sound." And he has described himself as a "deregulator", committed to not regulating banking and business-but when this was assailed "tone deaf" and out of touch both to economic realities and to the desperate economic plight of millions of Americans he quickly flipped: Yesterday he was promising to fire the chief the securities exchange and to create an office, the "MFI", that would advise and work with banks and business. Altogether, we are reminded of colleagues' admonitions that this man is "frighteningly unfit for the presidency." [Editor: In his most recent book, "Hard Choices," McCain describes how, on his last bombing mission over Hanoi, he heard the warning tone of an enemy SAM missile locking on to his plane. Bravely, or rashly, McCain did not take evasive maneuvers but rather kept on flying straight in an attempt to deliver his bombs on target. The missile blew off his right wing, and he spent the next five years in captivity. Over the subsequent years, mostly spent in politics, McCain has learned to "jink and juke," in pilots' parlance, but he often still demonstrates a willfulness that can be just plain foolhardy. (McCain was captured because he ignored the warning system designed to protect him. We do not need this kind of martyr mentality running our country. McCain is careless, a loose cannon, and a risk to all of us.]
They're Stealing From Y0u and Me
John McCain is a lifelong deregulator and believer in letting brokers and bankers do as they please -- remember Lincoln Savings and Loan and his intervention with federal regulators in behalf of his friend Charles Keating, who then went to prison? Remember Neil Bush, the brother of the C.O., who, as a director of Silverado S&L, bestowed enormous loans on his friends without telling fellow directors that the friends were friends and who, when the loans failed, paid a small fine and went skipping off to other things? McCain now decries greed on Wall Street and suggests a commission be formed to look into the problem. Some say the tab might come to a trillion dollars. Nobody knows. And McCain has not one moment of doubt or regret. He switches from First Deregulation Church to Our Lady of Strict Vigilance like you might go from decaf to latte. Where is the straight talk? Does the man have no conscience? It wasn't their money they were playing with. It was yours. Where were the cops? What we are seeing is the stuff of a novel, the public corruption of an American war hero. It is painful. McCain seems willing to say anything, do anything, to get to the White House so he can go to war with Iran. If he needs to recline naked in a department store window, he would do that, or eat live chickens, or claim to be a reformer. Obviously you can fool a lot of people for a while and maybe he can stretch it out until mid-November. But the truth is marching on. A few true conservatives led the charge against the bailout. Good for them. But how about admitting that their cowboy economic philosophy was at fault here?
Unions Mobilize Against McCain-Palin
Organized labor is on the move for Obama. The same day that the food and commercial workers union launched an anti-McCain ad, one day after a nurses union's attack, and two days after the AFL-CIO said it would blanket members with political mail, the National Education Association announced a "blitz" of 500,000 mailers lambasting McCain's health care plan in battleground states. Seperately, the union-backed Alliance for Retired Americans is running a TV ad critical of McCain's stance on Social Security.
Buh-Bye John, and Good Riddance
Good-bye Wolverines, good-bye $8 million in mad ad money, good-bye 17 electoral votes, and, probably, so long, farewell to that object number of such intense, contemporary love and desire: 270. John McCain & Co. meekly announced during the obsessive run-up to the vice-presidential debate Thursday that the maverick in chief was packing his mess kit -- what an aptly named metaphor -- and headin' out of Dodge. Well, Detroit, actually, as well as every other hamlet within the boundaries of Michigan. McCain, admits a campaign insider, "now must win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Minnesota in order to get enough electoral votes to win the presidency." Bush, by the way, lost all three, both times. Even Ohio and Florida are trending for Obama.
McCain's Michigan concession may mean more than you think
The move on McCain's part was the latest in campaign that appears to be running more like a full balloon with its end open than a well-oiled machine. Coming on the heels of McCain suspending his campaign to try to convince people that he had any clout to affect the economic crises talks last week (He didn't), it appears that McCain may be hearing the end of an opera somewhere. And if he'll give up on a state, what makes you think he wouldn't give up on America?
McCain camp leaves Michigan
John McCain's campaign is pulling up stakes in Michigan and moving on, effectively conceding the state and its 17 Electoral College votes to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama in order to fight on elsewhere. Advertisement The campaign made its abrupt decision known Thursday -- a day when Obama was in Grand Rapids and East Lansing and the focus was expected to be on the vice presidential debate in Missouri -- with McCain's strategists declaring Michigan "the worst state of all the states that are in play" for the Republican nominee. Recent polls, draw a grim picture for the McCain campaign. Leads for McCain in key states have largely evaporated.
The Palin's Support of Alaska's Indpendence from the United States as an Independent Country
How much does Sarah Palin love America? She loves it so much that she once belonged to an Alaskan political party, the Alaskan Independence Party, that wanted to secede from the Union. She loves America so much that she preferred not to be a citizen of America, but a citizen of an autonomous Alaska.
Invisible and Inaccessible
Say this for Sarah Palin: The Alaska governor knows how to shelter herself from public scrutiny, even when debating on national television. Early on, she turned to Sen. Joe Biden and brazenly announced: "I may not answer the questions the way you or the moderator want to hear. ... I'm talking directly to the American people." In case you missed it, "talking directly to the American people" meant deflecting direct questions by retreating to the comfort of talking points about Democrats raising taxes, the detachment of the Washington elite from the concerns of Joe Six-Pack and repeated reminders that she and John McCain were the true "mavericks" of this race.
For McCain, 'Country First' Means Taking the Country Down with Him
Why would a man who forever advertises his own honor toy so selfishly with our national interest at a time of crisis? For all the focus on Friday night's deadlocked debate, it still can't obscure what preceded it: When John McCain gratuitously parachuted into Washington on Thursday, he didn't care if his grandstanding might precipitate an even deeper economic collapse. All he cared about was whether he might save his campaign. George Bush put more deliberation into invading Iraq than McCain did into his own reckless invasion of the delicate Congressional negotiations on the bailout plan. By the time he arrived, there already was a bipartisan agreement in principle. It collapsed hours later at the meeting convened by the president in the Cabinet Room. Rather than help try to resuscitate Wall Street's bloodied bulls, McCain was determined to be the bull in Washington's legislative china shop, running around town and playing both sides of his divided party against Congress's middle. Once others eventually forged a path out of the wreckage, he'd inflate, if not outright fictionalize, his own role in cleaning up the mess his mischief helped make. Or so he hoped, until his ignominious retreat.
McCain Loses His Head
Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street..." It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?
Keating Five Ring a Bell?
McCain's past collides with the present Wall Street debacle. Once upon a time, a politician took campaign contributions and favors from a friendly constituent who happened to run a savings and loan association. The contributions were generous: They came to about $200,000 in today's dollars, and on top of that there were several free vacations for the politician and his family, along with private jet trips and other perks. The politician voted repeatedly against congressional efforts to tighten regulation of S&Ls, and in 1987, when he learned that his constituent's S&L was the target of a federal investigation, he met with regulators in an effort to get them to back off. That politician was John McCain, and his generous friend was Charles Keating, head of Lincoln Savings & Loan. Keating went to prison, and McCain's Senate career almost ended. McCain was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and ultimately reprimanded for "poor judgment." Could all this have been prevented? Sure. It's not rocket science: A sensible package of regulatory reforms - like those Barack Obama has been pushing since well before the current meltdown began - could have kept this most recent crisis from escalating, Shades of the Keating Five scandal don't end there. This week, for instance, news broke that until August, the lobbying firm owned by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis was paid $15,000 a month by Freddie Mac, one of the mortgage giants implicated in the current crisis (now taken over by the government and under investigation by the FBI). Apparently, Freddie Mac's plan was to gain influence with McCain's campaign in hopes that he would help shield it from pesky government regulations. "I'm always in favor of less regulation," McCain told the Wall Street Journal in March. These days, McCain is singing a different tune.
McCain Enabled Our Economic Meltdown
McCain voted for abolishing all of the significant rules put in place at the time of the Great Depression designed to prevent a repeat. Seriously, 20 minutes of Google searches should be sufficient to convince all but the dimwits among us that John McCain has been a master of the special-interest giveaways to Wall Street that enabled this meltdown. He voted for abolishing all of the significant rules put in place at the time of the Great Depression designed to prevent a repeat. The two main bills accomplishing that, bills which McCain enthusiastically supported, were the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The Gramm is former Sen. Phil Gramm, who was chair of the Senate Banking Committee when he acted as chief sponsor of both pieces of legislation. The same Gramm that McCain picked to co-chair his presidential campaign. Barack Obama has been way ahead of McCain in grasping the severity of the problem and back in March offered a scorching criticism of the deregulation mania, in particular the Gramm-Leach-Bliley law, which allowed the stockbrokers, insurance companies and banks to merge for the first time since the 1930s, ushering in this era of irresponsibility.
McCain Reaches Dead End
Republican John McCain has maneuvered himself into a political dead end and has five weeks to find his way out. Last Wednesday, McCain suspended his presidential campaign to insert himself into a $700 billion effort to rescue America's crumbling financial structure. In so doing, he tied himself far more tightly to the bill than did his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama. Obama had predicted trouble last week when he said the four-term Arizona senator was wrongly inserting red-hot presidential politics into a critical bailout plan even as the package was finding little support among voters. McCain has "fought against commonsense regulations for decades, he's even called for less regulation 20 times just this year [and we can see where that has gotten us.] McCain has been routinely wrong-footed on the slumping U.S. economy throughout the campaign, starting last year when he said he was not as up on that subject as he would like to be. Polls consistently have shown voters place greater trust in Obama to pull the country out of a financial crisis that has not been matched since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
What Will McCain Try Next
Well, he could always try suspending the election… With exactly five weeks to go before voting day, who knows what the McCain campaign is going to try next? August and September have been anything but boring. And with a poll showing Barack Obama won last Friday’s debate, the prospect for an even more interesting October seems likely. Two months of surprises The American electorate has been on a roller coaster of surprises from Team McCain.
Palin's troubles mount for McCain in White House
Mocked by comedians, derided by prominent conservatives and reeling from flustered interviews with national media, Sarah Palin is proving a risky gamble in Republican John McCain's quest for the White House. "Palin is Ready? Please" a headline in Newsweek said this week of the moose-hunting Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate, capping a turbulent week in which Palin's fitness for the job came under growing scrutiny. "Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president," Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria wrote. "She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start," he said. ...the governor's troubles are piling up -- from a stubborn investigation into charges that as governor she abused her power by firing a public safety commissioner to her latest stumbles with the media. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks called her candidacy "embarrassing."
McCain’s Suspension Bridge to Nowhere
What we learned last week is that the man who always puts his “country first” will take the country down with him if that’s what it takes to get to the White House. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Barry Blitt Go to Columnist Page » Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Frank Rich Readers' Comments Share your thoughts on this article. * Post a Comment » For all the focus on Friday night’s deadlocked debate, it still can’t obscure what preceded it: When John McCain gratuitously parachuted into Washington on Thursday, he didn’t care if his grandstanding might precipitate an even deeper economic collapse. All he cared about was whether he might save his campaign. McCain was determined to be the bull in Washington’s legislative china shop, running around town and playing both sides of his divided party against Congress’s middle. Once others eventually forged a path out of the wreckage, he’d inflate, if not outright fictionalize, his own role in cleaning up the mess his mischief helped make. Or so he hoped, until his ignominious retreat.
McCain has Many Ties to Gambling Industry
Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Alex Wong/Getty Images HONING AN IMAGE Senator John McCain, as chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, at a hearing in 2005 to examine accusations of misconduct made by six Indian tribes against their former lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Multimedia McCain and Tribal GamingInteractive Feature McCain and Tribal Gaming Related Top Ten Gambling Industry Donors to McCain (September 28, 2008) Blog The Caucus The CaucusThe latest political news from around the nation. Join the discussion. * Election Guide | More Politics News Enlarge This Image Tim Cook/The Day, via Associated Press BETS Mr. McCain supported tax breaks for casinos over the years, including one that helped Foxwoods in Connecticut. He has also gambled there. A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table.
McCain Hasn’t Even Read the Bush Bailout Plan
Un*believable. And I am talking about the Bush/Paulson plan that was submitted to Congress nearly ten days ago. ANCHOR: The crunch question. Would you vote for it as it’s presently constructed? JSMcCain: I have not had a chance to see it in writing so I have to examine that. The video is from September 23. Two days ago. The Emergency Bush/Paulson bailout plan was three pages long, and basically demanded money, eliminated oversight, abolished courts and made Paulson Lord Emperor of the Universe. McCain is so divorced from reality that he did not read a three page document for ten days. You know, maybe McCain finally read it yesterday, and he realized, for the first time, that the economy really is in serious straights, and maybe he realized how woofully unprepared he is to deal with the crisis and/or how unprepared he is to debate.
The Staggering Cynicism Of John McCain
The familiar frat boy smirk was absent when George Bush went before the nation last night to cry wolf. The man speaking from the White House had recently managed the feat of polling disapproval ratings lower than Richard Nixon during the week before he resigned, while the people objecting most vociferously to the $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout plan being engineered by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The only surprise of the evening was that John McCain was back in the ‘hood (he hadn’t shown up for a Senate vote since early Apri)l, and was ready to rumble. McCain rejected Obama’s call for the bailout package to include oversight provisions, cap executive salaries and help foreclosed homeowners. His campaign then announced then that, in so many words, it was pulling the rug out from under the entire purpose of the joint statement and injected a huge shot of campaign politics into the deliberations. Presto change-o! In a matter of a few hours, attention had been diverted from the imploding McCain-Palin campaign. In a matter of a few hours, the bailout deliberations had been unnecessarily complicated. Except that Obama wasn’t buying. And, according to overnight polls, neither are most voters.
McCain's Stunt Crashes
Whoops, John McCain. He tried pulling off an Evel Knievel stunt, but half way over the Grand Canyon, he crashed and burned. Remember those negotiations over the proposed financial bailout that caused McCain to suspend his campaign? So he could help? Well, most everything got hammered out in a stunning bit of bipartisanship in Congress this afternoon. All that's left to do now is dot some I's and cross some T's in the legislative language, enter final negotiations with the Treasury Department, and get the President to sign it. With the legislative crisis adverted, McCain has no reason to keep his campaign in suspension, and unless he feels like making a giant fool of himself, there's little reason for the debate this Friday to be postponed. John, you should have spent the time preparing, instead of pulling hasty stunts.
McLame excuses and Wall Street's obscene bailouts
John McCain decided to call the whole election off because he would have everyone believe he has to rush back to Washington to save the American economy from catastrophe. Ten days ago, he insisted that the economy was fundamentally strong and intact. Now it's on the ledge. Fact is, John's services in DC are not required. There's already a sitting President and Congress grinding away on the fix. The real fact is that John McCain's also bailing because his election bid, and Vice Presidential sidekick, are both tanking in tandem with the Wall Street five. So it's a double bailout and fortunately Obama isn't letting him off the hook. And neither is David Letterman who was also stood up yesterday when McCain suddenly canceled his appearance on that show to save the economy. "You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. Then he joked: "I think someone's putting something in his metamucil. He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sarah Palin. Where is she? What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"
McCain's cancellation of his appearance on Letterman's show
"You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves." And he joked: "I think someone's putting something in his McCain's cancellation of his appearance on Letterman's showmetamucil." "He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sara Palin. Where is she?" "What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"
McCain takes another 'Hail Mary pass'
American football fans know it as the "Hail Mary pass" - a desperate final throw of the ball by the team sliding towards defeat. It is a tactic that John McCain has used more than once as he struggles to change the dynamic of a presidential race that again seems to be shifting in favour of Barack Obama. His latest "Hail Mary" came yesterday, when the Arizona senator suspended campaigning to focus on the financial crisis and called for today's televised presidential debate to be postponed. It was the kind of bold and impulsive decision for which Mr McCain has become known, rivalling for drama and shock value his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate last month.
McCain Seeks to Delay First Debate
Senator John McCain said Wednesday that he planned to suspend campaigning on Thursday, and seek a delay in this week’s planned presidential debate, so that he could return to Washington to try to forge a consensus on a financial bailout package. Many are reacting skeptically to Mr. McCain’s surprise announcement, charging that it seemed like a political ploy to try to gain the confidence of voters concerned about the economy. “What, does McCain think the Senate will still be working at 9 p.m. Friday?” Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania said in an interview, referring to the scheduled start time of the debate. “I think this is all political — I wish McCain had shown the same concern when he didn’t show up in the Senate to vote on the extension of the renewable energy tax credit.”
The Lying Game
"The biggest liar in modern political history," writes Michael Tomasky, the editor of the Guardian America, about John McCain. There are indeed so many lies associated with the Republican campaign that one can pick and choose at random. My favorites are the efforts by the McCain campaign to portray Obama as being in favor of teaching sex education to 5-year-olds and the Spanish language ad accusing him of opposing immigration reform. Your favorites might include McCain's claim that Obama will raise taxes on the middle class or his statement to the women of "The View" that Sarah Palin never requested earmarks. McCain's propensity to lie has become what political junkies call a meme, an idea or behavior that runs, seemingly unstoppably, from one media outlet to another. Before we get carried away with enthusiasm about all this, though, we should keep two things in mind. One is that we are so quick to label McCain a liar that we tend to forget how much, and with what horrendous consequences, George W. Bush possessed the same character flaw. The other is that Republicans lie so frequently, not because the party just happened to settle upon one serial liar after another to run for high office, but because the form of conservatism to which they all adhere demands that if they are to win they have no choice but to lie.
The Media Call McCain and Palin on Their Trail of Lies
The McCain campaign has spent the last couple weeks making claims and accusations of dubious accuracy, mocking independent fact checkers, and telling everyone who will listen that the "media filter" doesn't matter. They better hope they're right, because they're getting a lot of pushback. The reviews are in on McCain's strategy of distorting, distracting and outright lying to the American people and what that says about his character, but the St. Petersburg Times put it best when they said his "campaign of lies disgraces McCain" and "McCain's straight talk has become a toxic mix of lies and double-speak. It is leaving a permanent stain on his reputation for integrity." The American people, especially viewers of a popular right-wing news network, need to know the truth.
McCain Campaign Willing to Destroy Relationship with Europe to Conceal Confusion
McCain seemed to think he was a Latin American autocrat -- despite the reporter repeatedly saying "I am talking about Spain." This gaffe would seem to have very significant implications. Not knowing who the leader of Spain was or thinking Spain was in Latin America would not really be shocking coming from his running mate, but McCain has run on his foreign policy expertise and such confusion completely undercuts his credibility. Furthermore this gaffe would bring up real questions about his age. Is McCain really prepared to deal with a crisis at 3AM, when he can't even remember who the leader of Spain is during a late evening interview? McCain won't meet with a NATO ally, that has nearly 1,000 troops in Afghanistan, that has lost more than 20 soldiers there, has been brutally attacked by Al Qaeda, is incredibly influential in Latin America, has the seventh largest economy in the world, is a DEMOCRACY, and is a large and influential country in the EU. Won't meet with them?
Down Days for McCain
This year a calamity has occurred in the financial world. The nonsense about Sarah Palin's family dynamics and other matters, down to and including lipstick on pigs, has been banished by the mayhem on Wall Street as ruthlessly as the Condit story was erased seven years ago. Once again, New York is the focus of the nation, and the amount of mass media concentrated there guarantees that this economic crisis will remain where it belongs -- at the center of attention. McCain stumbled at the outset with a comment that the economy is "fundamentally sound," and the Democrats pounced. Obama, campaigning in Colorado, delivered an unusually tough critique of McCain's long record as an advocate of deregulating markets. Obama's message was reinforced by an orchestrated chorus of Democratic voices, liberated from their preoccupation with the governor of Alaska and her family. That lack of content does not reduce the political significance of what has happened. For months, McCain's managers have understood that his biggest challenge is that eight out of 10 Americans think the country is moving in the wrong direction. There are relatively few things McCain can do to overcome the voters' natural inclination. Wall Street and its woes are causing big problems for John McCain.
Confronted
Confronted with unprecedented turmoil in the financial sector, Republican presidential candidate John McCain first resorted to a cliche, insisting that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." But the bad news keeps on coming - first the failure of the investment house Lehman Brothers, and now the $85 billion federal bailout of the insurer AIG. Belatedly, McCain has repackaged himself as a crusading populist. On Tuesday, he denounced the "excess, greed, and corruption of Wall Street."
Conservatives Turn On McCain-Palin
In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation's founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn't just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice. And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence. ... But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.
McCain and Palin Take Political Lying to the Next Dimension
Until two weeks ago, it would have been hard to believe that any political figure would have had the audacity to step into the national spotlight by telling the bald-faced lies that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has. Yet, many Americans have embraced her enthusiastically and don't want to hear anything negative about her.
Country First? Not for Republicans
Let's say that you enjoyed watching last week's Republican National Convention on television. Let's say you drank in the almost uniformly white faces and the regimented revivalism, you clapped when speakers belittled Barack Obama's work organizing impoverished communities, indeed, you cheered with Rudy Giuliani's zinger, "Drill, baby, drill!" Let's further stipulate that you were not at all discomfited by the convention's incessant "Country First" mantra that defines loyalty to America as lockstep fealty to the Republican Party. Let's say -- for sheer argument's sake, of course -- all of this is true. What, then, of the substance? Stripping away the partisanship, passion and propaganda, what about the veracity of the claim that the GOP puts this country first? Well, let's just say it's a little dicey.
McCain/Palin : Playing Gutter Politics
The Washington Post has an article today on the repeated lies and lack of accountability in the presidential race: From the moment Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin declared that she had opposed the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," critics, the news media and nonpartisan fact checkers have called it a fabrication or, at best, a half-truth. But yesterday in Lebanon, Ohio, and again in Lancaster, Pa., she crossed that bridge again.
McCain and Palin's Top 20 Lies and Myths
The corporate media won't say it and the Obama campaign isn't saying it enough, so we're saying it loud and clear: John McCain is a liar. And so is the woman he now shares the Republican ticket with. Yes, Sarah Palin is a liar, too. Together they are responsible for one of the most inaccurate and misleading presidential campaigns, in a business known for inaccuracy and misdirection. But even by the standards of American politics, the McCain-Palin ticket seems to be in a race with itself to set new standards of low. This isn't opinion, this is fact. Time and time again, on the campaign trail, in press briefings and in interviews, McCain and Palin flip-flop on the issues, propagate myths they know to be false, and flat-out lie to the American people. Unlike the McCain campaign, we have to back up our assertions, so here is a quick, short and cited list of the top 20 lies, myths and flip-flops that have come from the McCain/ Palin ticket so far.
Make No Mistake, McCain Is a Neocon
Since clinching the Republican presidential nomination, John McCain has sought to hide the forest of his neoconservative alignment with George W. Bush amid the trees of details, such as stressing differences over military tactics used in Iraq. But the larger reality should be clear: McCain is a hard-line neoconservative who buys into Bush's "preemptive war" theories abroad and his concept of an all-powerful "unitary executive" at home. From McCain's pre-Iraq invasion speeches to his campaign's recent embrace of Bush's imperial presidency, American voters should realize that if they choose John McCain, they will be locking in at least four more years of war with much of the Islamic world while selling out the Founders' vision of a democratic Republic where no one is above the law.
McCain Stumbles over Pigskin and Lipstick
Perhaps its age or the daunting schedule. But Senator John McCain’s attempt to smear Barack Obama over the lipstick and pig comment blew back badly today. The media began playing excerpts of Arizona’s senior senator using that exact phrase in the exact context half a dozen times. And unfortunately for the 72 year old maverick. They also caught him discussing the infamous bridge to nowhere, on a day when reporters dug up and ran video of Sarah praising that self same bridge she still claims she was against. But getting caught in that lie was nothing compared to the newest revelations concerning the GOP Veep’s actions in trooper gate. Newly released court transcripts reveal Sarah Palin, and her entire family were admonished by a judge from the bench to stop harassing the trooper. It seems even before Sarah Palin was Governor, she was already skillful at making up stories and truth twisting. It would seem the mainstream media’s initial infatuation with Alaska’s Governor is collapsing under an avalanche of hard fact. Truth that starkly contradicts reformist claims on the stump. We now know she lied about the bridge to nowhere, she lied about having sold a state jet on e-bay and she lied about trooper gate. Today we learned the hockey Mom Governor who loves to drive herself home from work, has been caught with her hand in the expense pad cookie jar. Records released reveal she was submitting sixty dollar a day per-Diem vouchers for travel nights she was actually at home. And it couldn’t have been some innocent clerical mistake of perhaps forgetting where she was once or twice over the course of a busy year, Nope the reform Governor padded her expense account more than three hundred separate times on that scheme alone.
John McCain - Lost in Space
The man is half-deranged and can't even get his lies straight. He's worse than what most of us hoped would be the worst president of the last 100 years. Why do the controllers want this guy? Because he will be easy to manage.
GOP Convention Spin
Joe Lieberman and his former Senate colleague Fred Thompson both made misleading claims about Obama in their prime time GOP convention speeches on Tuesday. We've heard two of them before – many times.
GOP Convention Spin, Part II
Palin trips up on her facts, and Giuliani and Huckabee have their own stumbles on Night 3 of the Republican confab. Sarah Palin’s much-awaited speech at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night may have shown she could play the role of attack dog, but it also showed her to be short on facts when it came to touting her own record and going after Obama’s. We found Rudy Giuliani, who introduced her, to be as factually challenged as he sometimes was back when he was in the race. But Mike Huckabee may have laid the biggest egg of all
McCain's Shallow Mindset
In his acceptance speech, Senator McCain stated his learned position to be against war. Notwithstanding, he uttered the word “fight” more than a dozen times, and he invited his fellow Americans to join him in “the fight”. However, the Senator from Arizona did not find time to discuss social cohesion, AIDS, ballooning budget deficits, mortgages, regulation of financial markets or rebuilding infrastructure. An observer from a distance will wonder whether it is just a poor choice of words or a true reflection of the mindset. Someone ought to tell Mr. McCain, “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead”. The selection of a thinly-educated, inexperienced running mate makes a distant observer muse whether Mr. McCain wants to have an imperial, selfish and typically Middle Eastern approach as president for life (Hosni Mubarak, Yasser Arafat, Hafiz Assad, Saddam or Franco come to mind), or perhaps he has confused the party convention with a coronation of a man that can realistically serve as a single-term president but as an interim door opener for the radical right of his party. The selection of Governor Palin as a vice presidential candidate is a hurried sketch to energize the rural, religious base of the party with an old soap opera —a governor from a nostalgic western state (Ronald Reagan) to succeed a senator from Arizona (Barry Goldwater). Mrs. Palin has come on the scene to revive nostalgia about a simple person from the beautiful frontiers and the mountainous west, a woman standing shoulder to shoulder with her man to hunt their food as they put the wagons in a circle and shoot at redskins in a dangerous wild world out there.
McCain Misleads
We checked the accuracy of McCain’s speech accepting the Republican nomination and noted the following. McCain mispeaks, misleads, and deceives a number of times. For instance; McCain claimed that Obama’s health care plan would "force small businesses to cut jobs" and would put "a bureaucrat ... between you and your doctor." In fact, the plan exempts small businesses, and those who have insurance now could keep the coverage they have. McCain attacked Obama for voting for "corporate welfare" for oil companies. In fact, the bill Obama voted for raised taxes on oil companies by $300 million over 11 years while providing $5.8 billion in subsidies for renewable energy, energy efficiency and alternative fuels.
Paying for War at the Pump
What’s it got to do with the price of gas? Would some reporter with access to the Republican presidential candidate please ask John McCain why he wants to continue President Bush’s Mideast policy when it has proved so ruinous for American taxpayers? Because McCain is determined to ignore our economic meltdown and shift the debate to foreign policy, shouldn’t he have to explain why an open-ended military presence in the Mideast will make us economically and militarily more secure when the opposite is clearly the case? Let’s not waste too much time on the military side of the equation. The argument that troops on the ground have made us militarily more secure is absurd on its face. American resources and lives have been squandered in an inane effort that McCain aptly criticized before becoming a presidential candidate.
Maverick Misleads
A McCain ad comparing Palin to Obama isn't all above board. The Associated Press report raises some questions about Palin's credentials, saying: "She is younger and less experienced than the first-term Illinois senator, and brings an ethical shadow to the ticket." It also says, "Palin's lack of experience undercuts GOP charges that Obama is not ready to be commander in chief."
McCain Even Lies About the Facts Posted at FactCheck.org
With its latest ad, released Sept. 10, the McCain-Palin campaign has altered our message in a fashion we consider less than honest. The ad strives to convey the message that FactCheck.org said "completely false" attacks on Gov. Sarah Palin had come from Sen. Barack Obama. We said no such thing. We have yet to dispute any claim from the Obama campaign about Palin. They call the ad "Fact Check." It says "the attacks on Gov. Palin have been called 'completely false' ... 'misleading.' " On screen is a still photo of a grim-faced Obama. Our words are accurately quoted, but they had nothing to do with Obama.
McCain's Phony Earmark Ploy
McCain promises to slash earmarks and save us money. But earmarks are a tiny fraction of the federal budget -- less than 1 percent in 2008. "I got an old ink pen, my friends, and the first pork-barrel-laden earmark, big spending bill that comes across my desk, I will veto it. You will know their names. I will make them famous, and we'll stop this corruption," McCain said at a campaign stop in Washington, D.C., this week. McCain claims that eliminating earmarks could save the federal government $100 billion over two years without cutting funding for federal agencies. This claim is dubious at best. If McCain were to make good on his promise, it would effectively be an assault on the power of the legislative branch. "No president likes earmarks because they impinge on the latitude of the executive branch to spend on the things they want to fund," says Scott Lilly, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who has written extensively on earmarks.
McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps of American Citizens
WASHINGTON — A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration. In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that Mr. Bush has the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.
How Is John McCain's Affair Different from John Edwards'?
We have this weird notion in America now that if a politician is caught in an affair that his career is done. We seem to be saying that what he did in his private life effects his policies or how he governs. But we all know that isn't true. We know that because almost all of our great presidents, and great leaders throughout history, have had numerous affairs. Obviously it didn't hurt how they governed at all. I love the idea of someone saying Alexander the Great can't lead his empire because he's cheating on his wife (by the way, doesn't Alexander's bisexuality single-handedly destroy the idea that gays can't serve in the military). How about Genghis Khan? He had so many affairs that nearly 1% of the entire world population has his genes. Not fit to lead? And there have also been men of great compassion who led noble fights while still doing ignoble things in their private lives. We are all human at home.
Election Idiocies
What seems long forgotten is the original rationale for the surge, which was not simply to quell violence but to establish Iraq's ability to govern itself, setting the stage for American withdrawal. That would constitute true "success," although leaving has already been designated "surrender" by both Bush and McCain. But the real reason for the surge has always been to indefinitely prolong the conversation about withdrawal that was made inevitable by the 2006 elections. And in that sense, the surge has been an unparalleled success.
What's So Heroic About Being Shot Down While Bombing Innocent Civilians?
John McCain flew 23 bombing missions over North Vietnam in a campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder. During this bombing campaign, which lasted for almost 44 months, U.S. forces flew 307,000 attack sorties, dropping 643,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam (roughly the same tonnage dropped in the Pacific during all of World War II). Though the stated targets were factories, bridges, and power plants, thousands of bombs also fell on homes, schools, and hospitals. In the midst of the campaign, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara estimated that we were killing 1,000 civilians a week. That's more than one 9/11 every single month -- for 44 months. What's not heroic about that? Is it any wonder all politicians speaking in public about John McCain are required to preface their remarks with a fawning admiration for his war service? When McCain was shot down, on October 26, 1967, he was busy bombing what he would describe as a "heavily populated part of Hanoi." I would like to see one brave reporter during the election season ask this simple question of John McCain: "Is it morally right to drop bombs and missiles in a 'heavily populated' area where hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians will perish?" [Editor: In his most recent book, "Hard Choices," McCain describes how, on his last bombing mission over Hanoi, he heard the warning tone of an enemy SAM missile locking on to his plane. Bravely, or rashly, McCain did not take evasive maneuvers but rather kept on flying straight in an attempt to deliver his bombs on target. The missile blew off his right wing, and he spent the next five years in captivity. Over the subsequent years, mostly spent in politics, McCain has learned to "jink and juke," in pilots' parlance, but he often still demonstrates a willfulness that can be just plain foolhardy. (McCain was captured because he ignored the warning system designed to protect him. We do not need this kind of martyr mentality running our country. McCain is careless, a loose cannon, and a risk to all of us.]
McCain's Bush Problem
On the Daily Show last night, John Stewart asked John McCain if he would renounce George Bush (since polls show Bush is a bigger problem for McCain than Reverend Wright is for Obama!). McCain got up and walked off the set—then pretended his mic didn't work. Bush is a major problem for McCain—So we're launching a new push to get voters to take the Challenge in the next few days. Will you take 5 minutes right now and take the challenge?
McCain Finds a Thorny Path in Ethics Effort
Sorting out the lobbying entanglements of his campaign advisers is proving to be a messy business for Senator John McCain. On Monday, just days after it issued new rules to address conflicts of interest, the McCain campaign was furiously sifting through the business records of aides and advisers. The new rules were prompted by disclosures that led to the abrupt departure from the campaign of a number of aides who worked as lobbyists, including some with ties to foreign governments.
McCain's wife sells Sudan-related investments
Cindy McCain, whose husband has been a critic of the violence in Sudan, sold off more than $2 million in mutual funds whose holdings include companies that do business in the African nation. The sale on Wednesday came after The Associated Press questioned the investments in light of calls by John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, for international financial sanctions against the Sudanese leadership.
McCain's Pastor Problem: The Video
McCain's Pastor Problem: The Video The preacher McCain calls a "spiritual guide" calls on America to see the "false religion" of Islam "destroyed." Still, the candidate won't reject Rod Parsley's endorsement.
Smearing Obama
Each election cycle, we're exposed to editorial-page tooth-gnashing about the media's relentless focus on political personalities over issues. While everyone is meant to make frowny-faces over this, for the GOP, it's the natural state of affairs. After all, its positions on the issues aren't going to win any elections: Help the rich get richer, ignore anyone who's hurt by economic downturns, deny people medical care, promote cultural division, and keep supporting a highly unpopular war. That's a whole lot of hard sells, right there; why go to the public with that when you can just accuse your opponent of being the Antichrist? Such has been the approach of the GOP for the last 25 years or so, and it worked so well with Bill Clinton (well, except for the little detail of him winning two elections), Republicans see no reason to change the script for Barack Obama. Is he a radical Islamist terrorist, or a reverse-racist Christian fanatic? Is he a fist-bumping ghetto gangsta, or an arugula-munching metrosexual elitist? Is he too black, or not black enough? In this guide to the perplexed, we'll help our right-wing brethren get their stories straight by laying out the case (however bogus) against Obama...
A Time to Reap
My friend Dan was on his way home the other day, and found an American flag crumpled in a gutter outside his apartment building. The flag, perhaps as big as the cover of a book, had been used as a decoration for some pre-Fourth of July party, but afterwards was merely thrown aside like litter for the street-sweepers to collect. Dan gathered it up, smoothed the creases, and hung it from a nearby railing. The motivation for his actions was hard for him to explain, but it came down to this: Everything else in America is so screwed up, but this American thing before him would not be defiled within reach of his arm. My friend, surrounded by the chaos of a flailing nation and filled with the need to act, found some solace in the rescue of that flag. He is not alone in his sentiments, not alone in his desire to make things right again within reach of his arm. There is something happening today in America. With the right kind of ears, you can hear it in the sound of millions of brows slowly furrowing in anger and disgust. It feels like those tense moments just before the eruption of a summer thunderstorm, those moments when the air is electric, the ozone reek of spent lightning fills the world, and you know something very loud is about to happen. What is happening, what can be heard and smelled and sensed all across the land, is the cresting wave of rage, betrayal and fury that is, finally, roaring across the shores of our collective American heart. After more than six years of lies, theft, graft, corruption, manipulation and misconduct, just about every living person within these borders finds themselves today gripped...
McCain Has a Dangerous Anger Management Problem
McCain's Playbook: Hate, Fear and Caveman Politics
Here in the Big Easy, John McCain has chosen this moment to mount his first general-election attack against the Great Satanic Liberal Enemy -- who, as luck would have it, turns out to be a Negro intellectual from Harvard who's never served in the military. And this is supposed to be a bad year for Republicans? You'd never know it from listening to McCain, whose kickoff speech is the same election-year diatribe that Republicans have been giving for decades, one long broadside against those goddamned overgrown Sixties weenie liberals who hate the flag, love the bomb-tossing enemies of America and are bent on the twin goals of ending the system of free enterprise and placing every aspect of our lives under government control. McCain pegs Obama as a man who wants to take America "backward," to the failed ideas of the Sixties. "I'm surprised that a young man has bought into so many failed ideas!" he says, to furious applause. Then, spitting out a forced, ugly laugh that he must have practiced many (but not enough) times in the bathroom mirror of the Straight Talk Express, he adds, "That's not change we can believe in!"
John McCain's Inescapable Bubble
Fundamentally it is the Iraq war that that will beat McCain. Which is to say, it's the only issue he's got -- and it's not one the electorate is in a mood to hear about, not when it can't find work, can't buy food and can't afford to fill its tank to once again realize either of these. And all the while McCain is shackled to George W. Bush, who, as the Washington Post tells us, is pretty much off in presidential Lalaland these days, dreaming of a polished legacy that for now lies in ruins, comparing himself to the policy-troubled likes of Harry Truman and Abraham Lincoln, and "arguing] that history will vindicate him on Iraq, terrorism, trade and other controversial issues." Good luck with that, George, since many historians have already reached a conclusion. In an informal survey of scholars this spring, 107 out of 109 historians deemed George Bush Jr. the 'worst president ever.
The Week That Should Have Ended McCain's Presidential Hopes
During this past week: McCain called the most important entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made -- TWICE. All this and it is not even Friday! Yet watching and reading the mainstream press you would think McCain was having a pretty decent political week, I mean at least Jesse Jackson didn't say anything about him. But let's unpack McCain's week in a little more detail.
Sarah Palin Likes to Shop ... Power Shop!
Sarah Palin has a new and unexpected problem -- the Republican National Committee has spent more than $150,000 on clothes and accessories for Palin and her family in just seven weeks. The figure includes more than $75,000 at Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, and nearly $5,000 on hair and makeup. The funds were not just directed at the governor -- about $5,000 was also spent at Atelier, a high-class shopping destination for men. The political implications are more than a little humiliating. Consider all the McCain campaign messages a story like this steps on -- "elitist," "small-town values," "big spender," "relating to 'real' America," etc. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, American households spend an average of $1,874 a year on clothing. The RNC spent $150,000 on one family in seven weeks. Republicans cannot understand how their party would do something this stupid ... particularly (and, it must be said, viewed retroactively) during the collapse of the financial system and the probable beginning of a recession. Imagine being an RNC small donor this morning, and learning that your $20 went towards a whole new wardrobe for the Palin family, as compared to, say, helping a Republican candidate win an election. Indeed, what might "Joe the Plumber" think?
Ted Stevens (Guilty On All Counts) was Palin's Mentor
Since picking Palin, McCain & Co. have staked out Alaska as the living, beating heart of American authenticity. And so, today, Ted Steven’s felonious betrayal of the public trust is going to allow Democrats to campaign like it’s 2006 — against the Republican “culture of corruption” that proved so electorally toxic to the GOP two years ago. Let’s remember that the McCain camp knew in late July that Stevens was under indictment and demanding a speedy trial that would put Alaska’s frontier ethics front-and-center in the days before the election. The intrepid Anchorage Daily News offers the go-to coverage of the Stevens/Palin entanglements. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) -- most senior Senate Republican in history -- has been found guilty of all seven felony charges related to accepting $250,000 in gifts and services from Veco, an Alaska oil services and construction company at the center of the now multi-year corruption probe.
On a Misson From God
Many in the Christian Right now view electing Palin as a task ordained by God. The unanswered question for the rest of us is: How does Palin see herself? Is she someone who merely asks God for guidance — a fairly common practice for religious people in public office? Or does she see herself as carrying out God’s will on the political stage? The latter would suggest a theocratic worldview that runs counter to the separation of church and state. But because she has so far declined most interviews, we’re left to sift through Palin’s political and religious history for clues.
Republican Party Spends Twice as Much on Makeup for McCain than Palin
The Republican National Committee spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup for Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) in September -- in addition to the more than $150,000 the RNC has spent on clothing and accessories for Palin. Tifanie White, who reportedly has done makeup for the shows "So You Think You Can Dance" and "American Idol," was paid a total of $8,672.55 in September by the McCain-Palin campaign, according to the campaign's latest monthly financial report filed this week with the Federal Election Commission. She was paid $5,583.43 the previous month, records show.
Alaskan Independence Party: The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel
If Palin's McCarthy-era guilt-by-association is once again a valid political consideration, Palin, it would seem, has more to lose than Obama. Palin, it could be argued, following her own logic, thinks so little of America's perfection that she continues to "pal around" with a man--her husband, actually--who only recently terminated his seven-year membership in the Alaskan Independence Party. Putting plunder above patriotism, the members of this treasonous cabal aim to break our country into pieces and walk away with Alaska's rich federal oil fields and one-fifth of America's land base--an area three-fourths the size of the Civil War Confederacy. AIP's charter commits the party "to the ultimate independence of Alaska," from the United States which it refers to as "the colonial bureaucracy in Washington." It proclaims Alaska's 1959 induction as a state "as illegal and in violation of the United Nations charter and international law." AIP's creation was inspired by the rabidly violent anti-Americanism of its founding father Joe Vogler, "I'm an Alaskan, not an American," reads a favorite Vogler quote on AIP's current website, "I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." MORE ELECTION COVERAGE, CLICK HERE
Sarah Palin on Domestic Terrorists
The buffoonish nature of Sarah Palin's vice presidential candidacy has mostly been a disaster for the McCain-Palin campaign, but it is has delivered at least one benefit: her foibles have helped obscure the true nature of her right-wing extremism. But now, Sarah Palin's self-destructive behavior is threatening to expose even that. In an interview broadcast yesterday on NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams asked Palin whether she felt abortion clinic bombers were terrorists. Amazingly, she said that she didn't know. Palin's answer is perhaps the single most incredible thing I've heard from any candidate during this entire general election campaign, and I don't make that statement lightly. What makes it so incredible is that Sarah Palin was responding to one of the easiest questions that has been posed during this entire campaign. Her answer should have been simple: of course they are terrorists.
Sarah Ignoramus
This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? — and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts. Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. This is where the Republican party has ended up: supporting an ignorant buffoon who believes in the End Times and speaking in tongues while deriding some of the best and most successful strategies for scientific research. In this next election, we've got to choose between the 21st century rationalism and Dark Age inanity. It ought to be an easy choice.
FactCheck: Is the Anne Kilkenny e-mail Accurate? Q: What about that Anne Kilkenny e-mail? I stumbled across a letter from a woman by the name of Anne Kilkenny (I think). It's all over the Internet and the woman claims to be from Palin's home town and gives personal information about the VP nominee. Is there any way to look into the legitimacy of this letter? It seems to be legitimate, but I usually only trust the articles you write. Read the full Letter from Anne Kilkenny A: The facts in the e-mail message about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin are largely correct. Read this article for a line by line assessment.
Sarah Palin Says
When Palin finally made her teleprompter-free debut in an interview with Charlie Gibson, it became clear why McCain had effectively kept his running mate in quarantine: Palin was uninformed and inarticulate; she said embarrassingly stupid things; and she looked at Gibson as though he were pointing a loaded crossbow at her. Since then, the Alaska governor has done little to dispel concerns that she can't articulate thoughts that aren't preprogrammed talking points. More than once, Palin has slipped into George W. Bush territory with statements so absurdly inane they seem closer to Dada art than standard political speech.
Would Someone Please Give Sarah a Copy of the Constitution
Earlier this week, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) sat down for an interview with KUSA, an NBC affiliate in Colorado. As ThinkProgress first reported, in response to a question about "[w]hat does the Vice President do," Palin replied, "[T]hey're in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes." (She's wrong.) Today on MSNBC, Chris Matthews challenged McCain campaign spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer to defend Palin's comments, saying that in all his time in Washington, he has "never heard anybody" give an answer like Palin did. "Where does she get her civics?" asked Matthews. Pfotenhauer became visibly angry by the questioning and tried to change the subject. Matthews, however, refused to let her get away
Sarah Shoots Herself in the Foot
Sarah Palin joined SNL tonight and proved once again that McCain was unwise to have her on the ticket and even more unwise not to veto this appearance. In isolation, Palin's very brief moments were, in themselves the problem.
Palin's Plunge: Voters Sour on McCain's VP Pick
The more voters learn about Sarah Palin, the more wary they become. Her favorability numbers are dropping like a rock. Palin is, additionally, costing McCain newspaper endorsements. Editor and Publisher calculated that as of Oct 18, Barack Obama led McCain 58-16 in the competition for the backing of newspapers. More than any single factor, McCain's bad judgment in choosing the inarticulate, insular and ethically challenged Palin disqualifies him for the presidency." The Kansas City Star, in turn, described Palin as "unqualified." Palin is a clear indicator of McCain's impulsiveness and recklessness in picking someone who is patently unqualified to serve as president and commander-in-chief.
More Palin Power Abuse; Alaska funded Palin kids' travel
Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business. The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel. In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters' 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights
Alaska Inquiry Concludes Palin Abused Powers
A legislative investigation has unanimously concluded that Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power in pushing for the firing of an Alaska state trooper who was once married to her sister, or by failing to prevent her husband Todd from doing so. Story tools Comments (502) Recommend (99) E-mail a friend Print Digg this Seed Newsvine Send link via AIM Add to My Yahoo! Yahoo! Buzz Font size : A | A | A The report by investigator Steve Branchflower was made public late this afternoon by a bipartisan 12-0 vote of the Legislative Council, which authorized the investigation. The report contains four findings. The first concludes that Palin violated the state's executive branch ethics act, which says that "each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust."
Palin Sours Voters
The more voters learn about Sarah Palin, the more wary they become. Palin is, additionally, costing McCain newspaper endorsements. Editor and Publisher calculated that as of Oct 18, Barack Obama led McCain 58-16 in the competition for the backing of newspapers. Many of the endorsements cited Palin as a factor in their rejection of McCain. More than any single factor, McCain's bad judgment in choosing the inarticulate, insular and ethically challenged Palin disqualifies him for the presidency." The Kansas City Star, in turn, described Palin as "unqualified." "Within weeks, she became a liability, primarily as a highly visible indicator of McCain's impulsiveness and recklessness in picking someone who is patently unqualified to serve as president and commander-in-chief. McCain's only chance of making this election competitive was to contrast his readiness to serve with Obama's inexperience and naivet. The Palin choice was the first clear sign (others followed) that McCain could not win that comparison."
Revelations About Sarah Palin
Palin has taken to smearing Obama. But it's her own record that continues to yield alarming information, undermining her skills and credibility. Sarah Palin has had a lot of ups and downs in her time in the national spotlight. When she was first nominated, the Alaska governor exceeded expectations by successfully reading from a teleprompter at the Republican National Convention. Then, she sat down with CBS's Katie Couric to disastrous results -- disastrous, hilarious or downright frightening, given your point of view. Any way you look at it, Palin's awful interview with Couric set the bar so low that her embarrassing performance at the vice presidential debate, where she refused to answer the questions and flirtatiously winked at the camera, was deemed a success by many commentators in the corporate media. At least she didn't vomit on stage, seemed to be the general consensus. Since the debate, though, Sarah Palin has dropped to new lows. She has maliciously gone after Barack Obama, using hate speech, dog whistles and every inexcusable attack in the book. But no matter how ridiculous or sensational Palin's attacks on Obama are, her venomous words cannot hide all the skeletons that keep pouring out of her unvetted closet. And these are the things that should give the American public cause for concern.
If You Thought Cheney Was Bad, Watch out for the Todd Palin
Todd Palin seated behind a White House desk and shaping national policy could be one of the most dangerous aspects of a potential Sarah Palin presidency. An overlooked part of the Alaska state trooper investigation is its finding on the influence of Gov. Palin's husband, Todd -- the "First Dude." A fascinating picture of Todd Palin's influence in Alaska's capital is provided in the report of a legislative investigation that concluded that Gov. Palin unlawfully abused her power in seeking the firing of a state trooper once married to her sister. The report, released Friday, also criticized Palin for allowing Todd Palin to push hard for the dismissal of Trooper Mike Wooten. The report, by investigator Stephen Branchflower, a retired state prosecutor, shows how Todd Palin operates. This is a man who was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, a radical group advocating Alaskan secession from the United States. Gail Fenumiai, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, told TPM Muckraker that Palin registered as an AIP member in October 1995 and continued in that status until 2000, when he registered as undeclared for a few months. He registered as an AIP member again and remained with the party until 2002, when he registered as undeclared. What other radical ideas are percolating in the mind of a man who is now portrayed in the media as sort of a lovable guys' guy?
Palin: Out of Touch
Over the last several weeks, it has become apparent that Sarah Palin is out of touch on a whole host of issues, ranging from the bailout and the economy to foreign policy to the Supreme Court. After this week's interview with Katie Couric, we can now add women's health to the list
Court removes last hurdle for Palin ethics inquiry
Alaska's Supreme Court has refused to shut down an ethics investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee. The decision Thursday sets the stage for state lawmakers to release a report on their investigation Friday. The report could prove to be an embarrassment for Palin and a distraction for John McCain's presidential campaign in the final weeks of the race. Lawmakers are investigating whether Palin abused her power to settle a family dispute. Her former public safety commissioner says he was dismissed after resisting pressure to fire a state trooper who had gone through nasty divorce from Palin's sister
Lots of pressure from Palins
The 2007 state fair was days away when Alaska's public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, took another call about one of his troopers, Michael Wooten (Palin's ex-brother-in-law). This time, the director of Gov. Sarah Palin's Anchorage office was on the line. As Monegan recalls it, the aide said the governor had heard that Wooten was assigned to work the kickoff to the fair in late August. If so, Monegan should do something about it, because Palin was also planning to attend and did not want the trooper nearby. Somewhat bewildered, Monegan soon determined that Wooten had indeed volunteered for duty at the fairgrounds - in full costume as "Safety Bear," the troopers' child-friendly mascot. To Monegan and several top aides, the state fair episode was yet another example of a fixation that the governor and her husband, Todd, had with Wooten and the most granular details of his life.
How Low Will Palin Go in Her Mudslinging
Sarah Palin's charge that Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" may mark the descent of Campaign 2008 into the sewer that has marked so many other recent U.S. elections. But her comments operate on another level, too, continuing to brand anyone who criticizes George W. Bush’s neoconservative foreign policy as un-American. Though McCain has in the past decried this sort of personal smear tactic -- especially when he was the victim in 2000 -- his campaign has announced, rather openly, its intent to go negative on Obama in a guilt-by-association barrage in the weeks before Nov. 4.
Body Politics: Sarah Palin's Body Language And Why It Should Worry You
In our work we call body language the Five Flags, because there are five major ways human beings react when they're not speaking the authentic truth. Twitches and jaw-clenches are examples of Flag #1, Body-Flags. To understand Sarah Palin, though, you need to understand Flags #2 and #3, Voice-Flags and Attitude-Flags. The English word 'personality' comes from two Latin words, per and sona, "through sound." The Romans knew that the personality comes through in the tone of voice and other vocal aspects. From thirty-five years of clinical experience, we can tell you a lot about Sarah Palin's real personality and why it makes many people even more nervous that John McCain's.
Palin’s Alternate Universe
Sarah Palin is the perfect exclamation point to the Bush years. Skip to next paragraph Bob Herbert Go to Columnist Page » Readers' Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. * Read All Comments (280) » We’ve lived through nearly two terms of an administration that believed it could create its own reality: “Deficits don’t matter.” “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.” “Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere.” Now comes Ms. Palin, a smiling, bubbly vice-presidential candidate who travels in an alternate language universe. For Ms. Palin, such things as context, syntax and the proximity of answers to questions have no meaning.
Palin Sued for Private E-Mails About State Business
In a lawsuit filed in Alaska Superior Court, Republican (ethics activist) Andrée McLeod filed the suit Wednesday and publicized it in a news release today. "Rather than using her state e-mail account, throughout her two-year tenure as Governor of Alaska, defendant Sarah Palin, as a matter of routine, has used, and, on information and belief, continues to use, (at least) two private e-mail accounts... to conduct official business of the State of Alaska," the suit alleges. The suit is the latest front in a battle McLeod is waging over Palin's e-mail. In June, she filed an open-records request and received four boxes of redacted e-mails. But more than 1,100 others were withheld, an action Palin justified by claiming executive privilege. McLeod appealed that claim last month before going to court last week. McLeod said she believes the Palin administration fostered a "culture of corruption" in Alaska where neither she nor her top aides were accountable to rules of transparency in government. "The extent of the use of these private e-mail accounts demonstrates the extent of deception that the governor is operating under," McLeod said in an interview today. "The process is corrupt. The overall question now becomes, how did it become so broken that nobody could tell her, 'Don't do that.' That's why I'm going to the courts." McLeod, who once was close to Palin, has also filed an ethics complaint against the governor and others, citing e-mail traffic that appeared to show that her office improperly helped a Palin fundraiser obtain a civil service position.
Palin says Obama friendly with terrorists (Truth: Obama was eight years old at the time)
Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin accused Democratic candidate Barack Obama on Saturday of "palling around with terrorists," marking a shift to a nastier tone in the White House race. The remark was dismissed by Obama as "gutter politics" but appeared to reflect an effort by Sen. John McCain's campaign to target Obama's judgment as the Illinois senator solidifies his national lead and gains an edge in vital battleground states a month before the November 4 election [EDITOR: What Sarah Palin neglects to meantion is the fact the Obama was a mere eight (8) years old at the time of the bombings she refers to. How low will McCain and Palin Go? Bending the truth so far by Sarah Palin is shameful, but an example of how much McCain / Palin are willing to lie and deceive the American public. She cited an article in Saturday's New York Times about Obama's relationship with Ayers, now 63. But that article concluded that "the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.' " Several other publications, including the Washington Post, Time magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The New Republic, have debunked the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship. Riot and bomb conspiracy charges against Ayers were dropped in 1974, and he is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago.]
Gwen Ifill: Palin "Blew Me Off"
On "Meet the Press" Sunday morning, vice presidential debate moderator Gwen Ifill said Palin "more than ignored" some of her questions -- she "blew me off." She added that Palin decided to "give a stump speech" instead of a debate, and that there's "little a moderator can do" to stop that. Watch:
At Debate Sarah Palin was reading off note cards
Nice. No wonder I was confused about Sarah Palin's body language. She didn't just sound like she was heavily scripted. She sounded like she was reading cue cards or even a tele-prompter. Because the cable and network television stations did not show a split screen of the debate, most viewers could not see that, during Joe Biden’s answers, Palin spent almost all her time looking down and studiously reading her notes. But viewers did see that when Palin delivered her answers, she would repeatedly glance down to check her talking points. ThinkProgress has compiled a video documenting some of the instances where it was clear to the audience that Palin was propped up by written responses. I couldn't fathom her reading off cue cards she'd have hidden in her jacket. Wow.
At the VP Debate, Palin Doesn't Let the Truth Get in the Way of a Good Story
The Times’s Peter Baker, Kitty Bennett, Julie Bosman, John Broder, Michael Luo, Larry Rohter and William Yardley are examining the policies and statements of Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Gov. Sarah Palin in real time tonight. For more on the candidates and the issues, see The Times’s Election Guide. Biden was a little loose in the fact department a couple of times as well. ALSO SEE FACT CHECK WEBSITE
Take Away the Cue Cards and Teleprompter
In the hours since Thursday's vice-presidential debate, the punditry class has filled the airwaves and web, parsing Sarah Palin's failure to fail. But what is perhaps most striking is what Palin failed to actually say. Amid all the "doggone"s and "there ya go"s and "Oh, yeah, it's so obvious I'm a Washington outsider"s, Palin neglected to articulate any difference between the McCain-Palin ticket and the current team in the White house. All the while Sarah Palin was checkin' her cue cards as she kept reciting her rehearsed talking points resolutely. She was so programmed, so fixated on keeping her chirpy smile and demeanour and her "can I call you Joe" pep going, that she missed an opening during which she might have actually come across as genuinely empathetic, as opposed to smugly anti-intellectual. Her entire discourse was a laundry list of memorised bullet points. She was completely unable to even have a "lipstick on a pitbull" moment. Her lines about how, oh gee who has time to know all this, the people want change, they want outsiders, fell terribly flat. Her failure to be the real person she's championed for being made even more egregious her general failings as a leader. Palin completely avoided the conversation on bankruptcy, clearly not having a clue as to McCain's bankruptcy policy. She similarly didn't respond to questions on healthcare, on her own failings, on Afghanistan. As Biden pointed out, Palin made no effort to articulate how McCain differs from Bush. And, to use his mother's phrase, "God love him," for finally popping a hole in that scurrilous word "maverick" the two of them throw around like a magic cloak.
Sarah Palin's Creationism Will Rape the Environment
It's possible that the public has been fooled into thinking of McCain as a "maverick" when it comes to his party's abysmal record on the environment, but his selection of Palin as his running mate sends quite a different message. In fact, he's potentially put future generations on a "bridge to nowhere" (or perhaps to the fourteenth century). Whether we know it or not, we should now be duly warned: The Palin nomination is the equivalent of launching a "surge strategy" in the Republican war on the environment.
Drill, Drill, Drill ... and huh, Glow too?
The McCain/Palin push for endless oil drilling is being used as a smokescreen to gouge a half-trillion or more taxpayer dollars in subsidies and loan guarantees to build new atomic reactors. The mega-theft could be approved by the US Senate this week. Green activists throughout the nation are calling their Senators, as should you. The atomic power industry can’t get private financing to build new reactors. So while Wall Street plummets into catastrophe, it is using the “drill drill drill” mantra to hide this latest raid on the depleted federal treasury. The new Senate bill authorizes the oil industry to drill for oil virtually anywhere it wants, without meaningful environmental restraint. The enormous profits would stay in the hands of the petro-barons. Hidden in the bill is a limitless blank check for loan guarantees to build new reactors. A year ago the industry tried to slip $50 billion in guarantees. The centerpiece is a loan guarantee plan to stick taxpayers with 100% of the liability for failed reactor construction projects. The GOP McCain/Palin ticket wants at least 45 new reactors for the US, with a price tag that could easily exceed $500 billion, all of which would be guaranteed by this bill. [Editor: For this money we could be free from old unsafe technologies and be powered by the wind and sun.]
Hiding Out in the Senate and Alaska
One of the more astonishing features of the presidential race is that McCain supporters keep making the case for the Senator's foreign-policy expertise. Equally disconcerting are the efforts to inflate Governor Palin's credentials to a point where she becomes a credible vice presidential candidate. Both gambits involve a series of misleading or at the very least non-evidentiary proclamations. What the rhetoric actually proves is that long-serving politicians and newcomers alike often coast on dubious accomplishments and false premises. That McCain has served in Congress for twenty-six years traveling hither and yon doesn't prove he is capable of governing or comprehends what he has seen. Name dropping during the debate about having been to Wiziristan probably didn't impress most listeners. And he wasn't likely to have lingered there for long since that is an area of Pakistan quite beyond either its military or political control. And calling Georgia's president by his nickname, Misha, wasn't so much an indication of a McCain connection as it was confirmation of the fact that Randy Scheunemann, one of McCain's top advisors, is a paid lobbyist for that country. Scheunemann is also a member of "The Project for The New American Century", an organization that promoted the invasion of Iraq for years and supported the return of shadowy Iraqi ex pat, Chalaby. Some may find such relationships helpful in the decision-making process; others may regard them as problematic if not downright dangerous.
Sarah Palin, 21st Century Theocrat
Wasilla, Alaska -- Pat O'Hara, a journalist who served on the Wasilla school board for twelve years, remembers how the religious right made her feel like a stranger in her own community. It wasn't until the 1990s that local churches like the Wasilla Assembly of God, which Palin grew up attending, became aggressively political. A few years before Palin became mayor, a group of preachers confronted the school board with questions about social issues that had never before surfaced in local politics. "The whole community changed," she said. "It became extremely rigid and intolerant, and you can see that in every election since." Palin, said O'Hara, "represents the worst of those values. She feels that because she's a member of the right church, she's chosen by God to inflict her values on everyone." To understand Sarah Palin, you have to realize that she is a religious fundamentalist. The structure of her understanding of life is no different from a Muslim fundamentalist.
The Initial Excitement Over Palin is Fading, Democrats Resume Lead in Polls
Palin appears to be losing some of her initial appeal as Democrats make gains in the polls. Palin's favorable rating is at 40 percent, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll. Her unfavorable rating is at 30 percent, rising eight points in a week. POLLSTER
The Sexy Puritan
Palin isn't quite as novel as she seems. Caribou hunting aside, Sarah Palin represents the state-of-the-art version of a particular type of woman—let's call her the Sexy Puritan—that's become a familiar and potent figure in the culture war in recent years. Sexy Puritans have been around for a while. Anita Bryant, the Miss America runner-up turned anti-gay crusader in the 1970s, was an early exemplar of the trend. The young Britney Spears, provocatively dressed and loudly proclaiming her virginity, is a more modern version, though that didn't turn out so well. Sexy Puritans engage in the culture war on two levels—not simply by advocating conservative positions on hot-button social issues but by embodying nonthreatening mainstream standards of female beauty and behavior at the same time. The net result is a paradox, a bit of cognitive dissonance very useful to the cultural right: You get a little thrill along with your traditional values, a wink along with the wagging finger. Somehow, you don't feel quite as much like a prig as you expected to.
Conservative Columnist Turns on Palin
Ever since John McCain named Sarah Palin to the ticket, it has been a given that she has energized conservatives, particularly conservative women. So nationally syndicated conservative columnist Kathleen Parker's blistering assessment in the National Review Online today is sure to sting -- especially coming on the heels of growing discontent among other conservative intellectuals who had been "wildly stoked" about her selection just weeks ago. Parker, after a scalding critique of Palin's readiness for high office, begs the Alaska governor to step down from the Republican ticket. "If Bullshit were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself."
Journalists Privately Admit to Censoring Palin Coverage
Journalists say privately they are censoring their comments about Palin to avoid looking like they're piling on, pundits on the right are jumping ship. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough says Palin "just seems out of her league." National Review Editor Rich Lowry called her performance "dreadful." Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher described the interview as a "train wreck." Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker urged Palin to quit the race, saying: "If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself." The interview is drawing extraordinary attention because of the McCain campaign's calculated decision to shield Palin from reporters. No vice-presidential nominee in modern history has been this inaccessible to the media, reinforcing the perception that she can't hit major-league pitching.
Police State Barbie
I realized early on with horror what I was seeing in Governor Palin: the continuation of the Rove-Cheney cabal, but this time without restraints. I heard her echo Bush 2000 soundbites ("the heart of America is on display") and realized Bush's speechwriters were writing her -- not McCain's -- speeches. I heard her tell George Bush's lies -- not McCain's -- to the American people, linking 9/11 to Iraq. I heard her make fun of Barack Obama for wanting to prevent the torture of prisoners -- this is Rove-Cheney's enthusiastic S and M, not McCain's, who, though he shamefully colluded in the 2006 Military Tribunals Act, is also a former prisoner of war and wrote an eloquent Newsweek piece in 2005 opposing torture. I saw that she was even styled by the same skillful stylist (neutral lipstick, matte makeup, dark colors) who turned Katharine Harris from a mall rat into a stateswoman and who styles all the women in the Bush orbit -- but who does not bother to style Cindy McCain. Then I saw and heard more. Palin is embracing lawlessness in defying Alaskan Legislature subpoenas -- this is what Rove-Cheney, and not McCain, believe in doing. She uses mafia tactics against critics, like the police commissioner who was railroaded for opposing handguns in Alaskan battered women's shelters -- Rove's style, not McCain's. I realized what I was seeing. Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal.
Palin's Pastor Problem
In the fine, new American tradition of presidential campaign "pastor disasters," Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin might have one she can call her very own, complete with its own sensational YouTube video and stunned cable TV commentary. This past June, in a speech at Wasilla AOG, Palin gave credit to Muthee for her 2006 election victory. In another now-famous YouTube video, Palin says, "As I was mayor and Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me . . . He said 'Lord make a way and let her do this next step.' And that's exactly what happened." Here is additional commentary by Keith Olberman.
Palin: People and Dinosaurs Coexisted, I saw the footprints
Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago -- about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct -- the teacher said. After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a commencement address to a small group of home-schooled students in June 1997, Wasilla resident Philip Munger said, he asked the young mayor about her religious beliefs. Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time," Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks."
Hundred's Turn Out Rally in Anchorage
Alaska — Hundreds of people turned out for an anti-Sarah Palin rally in Anchorage. People waved signs at honking cars headed downtown and listened to speakers in Saturday's rally organized by a group called Alaskans for Truth. They were protesting that Sen. John McCain's GOP running mate has stopped participating in the state Legislature's investigation into her firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. The McCain campaign has said the lawmakers' inquiry is biased and driven by the election. One demonstrator, Anchorage resident Vonda Roark-Martinez, carried a sign that said "Hey Sarah Can you see reality from Alaska?" Roark-Martinez says Palin should go back to her hometown of Wasilla because she doesn't have the experience to be vice president.
Palin sends the cringe meter off the dial
Alaska's one-term governor is a liability for the Republican ticket, as her painful-to-watch interview last week with Katie Couric of CBS News showed. Her woeful inexperience and the yawning gaps in her knowledge of basic issues reminded voters of McCain's advanced age at 72, and sparked questions about what sort of president she would make. Her performance prompted one right-wing commentator, Kathleen Parker of the 'National Review', to call on her to quit.
When Atheists Attack
The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary. > > We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security … the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them. > > Palin's most conspicuous gaffe in her interview with Gibson has been widely discussed. The truth is, I didn't much care that she did not know the meaning of the phrase "Bush doctrine." And I am quite sure that her supporters didn't care, either. Most people view such an ambush as a journalistic gimmick. What I do care about are all the other things Palin is guaranteed not to know—or will be glossing only under the frenzied tutelage of John McCain's advisers. What doesn't she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin's ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth.
McCain and Palin Want Women's Votes But Do Women Want Them?
The GOP leadership and social conservative movement have thrust Sarah Palin, Republican Vice Presidential candidate, front and center into the spotlight. But, of course, this election -- as any election -- should not be about the candidates as much as it is about us -- Americans on the receiving end of these candidates' policy stances. With that in mind, there are a host of critical reproductive and sexual health and rights and family policies in play about which Americans deserve to know where each set of candidates stand; issues like access to health care, teen pregnancy prevention programs, federal funding of contraception, comprehensive sexuality education, equal pay for women, child care subsidies, ensuring access to pre-K for all and more. But instead of clear policy stances on these issues at the GOP convention or in the surrounding media attention what we have been privy to are endless distractions about Sarah Palin's family, the personal matters and private choices Ms. Palin and her family have made over the last few months and a religious right bloc that has firmly cemented their support for said choices -- support that falls in direct conflict with the rhetoric, agenda and policies they promote for the rest of American families. According to a recent poll, six in ten female voters in the U.S. see McCain's pick of Sarah Palin for Vice Presidential running mate as driven by politics "rather than any sense of conviction on John McCain's part that she has the experience and qualities to make a good vice-president." In addition, 56% of the women polled said they were "put off" by Palin's legislative record as well as her stances on a range of moral issues. [EDITOR: Nearly all of the women I know, refer to Palin as the "anti-woman," as she stands against nearly all that women have struggled for over the course of generations and strongly oppose her.]
Sarah Palin's Troopergate Scandal Reveals Her Fundamentalist Connections
Events suggest that the price of support for McCain by the fundamentalist Christian leadership would be a vice presidential candidate of their liking. Gov. Palin was a logical choice for Franklin Graham, whose ties to Alaska include a palatial, by Bush Alaska standards, second home in Port Alsworth: a community that has often served as a retreat for Christian fundamentalist leaders. In firing Monegan and hiring Kopp, Palin established her standing as a Christian conservative politician. Kenai City Police Chief Chuck Kopp was a rising star in Alaska's Christian conservative movement. Kopp's nomination quickly ran into trouble because of sexual harassment reprimands while Kenai police chief, but Palin's willingness to appoint him to a high state position along with her anti-abortion, pro-creationist beliefs seems to have solidified her position as the one to ignite the base for McCain. Palin's connection to what Jeff Sharlett has called "elite fundamentalism" is of interest now that she is an election and a heartbeat away from the presidency. Elite fundamentalists believe, according to Sharlett, not only in religious determinism but that they are personally chosen by God to be in positions of power. By claiming divine legitimacy of their political power, elite fundamentalists relegate the opposition to being the devil's tool. They are making a frighteningly close return to the pre-enlightenment concept of rule by divine right, which our founding fathers rejected as anathema to democracy and established, instead, the separation of church and state lest decisions be made on the basis of good versus evil rather than wise versus unwise.
Todd Palin refuses to testify in ‘Troopergate’ investigation.»
As part of the abuse of power investigation — known as “Troopergate” — against Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), Alaska state lawmakers voted last week to subpoena her husband Todd because, as investigator Stephen Branchflower said, he is “such a central figure.” But today, the AP reports that Todd Palin is refusing to testify:
Palin Keeps Lying, and Lying, and …
What kind of person tells a self-aggrandizing lie, gets called on it, admits publicly that the truth is not at all what she originally claimed—and then goes out and starts telling the original lie again without changing a word? I’m not shocked to learn that politicians sometimes lie. To cite an example that comes immediately to mind, John McCain’s campaign ads attacking Barack Obama have taken such liberties that even Karl Rove says he wonders if they’ve gone too far. But it’s weird for a politician—or anyone else, really—to maintain that an assertion is true after admitting that it isn’t true. The McCain campaign would like us to see a straight-talking, gun-toting, moose-eviscerating, lipstick-wearing frontierswoman. Instead, we’re beginning to discern an ambitious, opportunistic politician who makes no bones about rewarding friends and punishing those who stand in her way—and who believes that truth is nothing more, and nothing less, than what she says it is.
The Media Call McCain and Palin on Their Trail of Lies
The McCain campaign has spent the last couple weeks making claims and accusations of dubious accuracy, mocking independent fact checkers, and telling everyone who will listen that the "media filter" doesn't matter. They better hope they're right, because they're getting a lot of pushback. The reviews are in on McCain's strategy of distorting, distracting and outright lying to the American people and what that says about his character, but the St. Petersburg Times put it best when they said his "campaign of lies disgraces McCain" and "McCain's straight talk has become a toxic mix of lies and double-speak. It is leaving a permanent stain on his reputation for integrity." The American people, especially viewers of a popular right-wing news network, need to know the truth.
Palin Calling for an End to Investigation She Requested (apparently the investigation is more effective than she had hoped)
GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin shifted her tactics for the second time in three weeks on the "Troopergate" investigation, this time calling to end the very investigation that she herself called for and the one the McCain campaign had said was the only proper venue for a probe. investigation Both Governor Sarah Palin and her attorney general have raised new objections to 'Troopergate' investigations. (ABC News) Palin's Attorney General, who initially launched an internal probe into Palin, even before the legislature began theirs, is now asking the legislators to withdraw their subpoenas of Palin aides and Palin's husband. When the Alaska Legislature's Legislative Council, a Republican-dominated panel of 14 legislators which conducts business when the Legislature is out session, voted to investigate the firing of former Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan in July, Palin pledged her full support. But almost immediately after joining the GOP ticket, Palin's Troopergate strategy veered sharply. Despite her earlier vows of full cooperation with the probe, she declared it unlawful. The legislature lacked the authority to investigate the matter, she said. Instead, it should be handled by the state personnel board, Palin asserted -- a panel which is under her authority. Now, Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg has sent a letter asking legislators to withdraw the subpoenas they had approved for 10 state employees. Colberg owes his position to Palin, who handpicked him to the position. Before his nomination as state attorney general, Colberg was unknown on the state level, having no experience in criminal or oil and gas law. He was a former member of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly who was considering a job as director of the Alaska State Fair Board at the time of his appointment, according to press reports at the time.
Warning to Women: McCain-Palin are Dangerous to Your Well-Being
Women -- Stop, Look and Listen! Especially now that women and women's votes are front and center in this Presidential election, you need to have some facts at your fingertips. John McCain and Sarah Palin want to convince you that they offer something new. But on the issues that really matter in our lives, they offer more of the same old Bush policies, and in some cases, worse than the same. For instance when Palin was Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, her police department charged victims of rape for the rape kits that are needed for investigating this devastating crime. These kits cost between $300 and $1200. It took a state law passed in 2000 to stop the practice in Wasilla. Alaska Governor Tony Knowles said at the time, "We would never bill the victim of a burglary for fingerprinting and photographing the crime scene, or for the cost of gathering other evidence. Nor should we bill rape victims just because the crime scene happens to be their bodies." Both McCain and Palin oppose equal pay for women who do the same work as men. McCain voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that would have reversed a bad Supreme Court ruling that made it harder for women like Lilly to challenge pay discrimination. As an excuse, he even suggested that women get paid less because they need more education and training.
Conservatives Turn On McCain-Palin
In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation's founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn't just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice. And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence. ... But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.
McCain and Palin Take Political Lying to the Next Dimension
Until two weeks ago, it would have been hard to believe that any political figure would have had the audacity to step into the national spotlight by telling the bald-faced lies that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has. Yet, many Americans have embraced her enthusiastically and don't want to hear anything negative about her.
‘Alaska Women Reject Palin’ Rally is HUGE!
Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. There were well over 1,400 people. This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of Alaska. I was absolutely stunned. This just doesn’t happen here. So, if you’ve been doing the math … Yes. The Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was significantly bigger than Palin’s rally that got all the national media coverage! So take heart, sit back, and enjoy the photo gallery. Feel free to spread the pictures around (links are appreciated) to anyone who needs to know that Sarah Palin most definitely does not speak for all Alaskans.
Palin administration is shrouded in secrecy
Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal. So when there was a vacancy at the top of Alaska's Division of Agriculture, Palin appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as one of her qualifications for running the roughly $2 million agency. Throughout her career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.
Country First? Not for Republicans
Let's say that you enjoyed watching last week's Republican National Convention on television. Let's say you drank in the almost uniformly white faces and the regimented revivalism, you clapped when speakers belittled Barack Obama's work organizing impoverished communities, indeed, you cheered with Rudy Giuliani's zinger, "Drill, baby, drill!" Let's further stipulate that you were not at all discomfited by the convention's incessant "Country First" mantra that defines loyalty to America as lockstep fealty to the Republican Party. Let's say -- for sheer argument's sake, of course -- all of this is true. What, then, of the substance? Stripping away the partisanship, passion and propaganda, what about the veracity of the claim that the GOP puts this country first? Well, let's just say it's a little dicey.
McCain/Palin : Playing Gutter Politics
The Washington Post has an article today on the repeated lies and lack of accountability in the presidential race: From the moment Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin declared that she had opposed the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," critics, the news media and nonpartisan fact checkers have called it a fabrication or, at best, a half-truth. But yesterday in Lebanon, Ohio, and again in Lancaster, Pa., she crossed that bridge again.
McCain and Palin's Top 20 Lies and Myths
The corporate media won't say it and the Obama campaign isn't saying it enough, so we're saying it loud and clear: John McCain is a liar. And so is the woman he now shares the Republican ticket with. Yes, Sarah Palin is a liar, too. Together they are responsible for one of the most inaccurate and misleading presidential campaigns, in a business known for inaccuracy and misdirection. But even by the standards of American politics, the McCain-Palin ticket seems to be in a race with itself to set new standards of low. This isn't opinion, this is fact. Time and time again, on the campaign trail, in press briefings and in interviews, McCain and Palin flip-flop on the issues, propagate myths they know to be false, and flat-out lie to the American people. Unlike the McCain campaign, we have to back up our assertions, so here is a quick, short and cited list of the top 20 lies, myths and flip-flops that have come from the McCain/ Palin ticket so far.
Hockey Moms for Truth
Remember the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" ads from the 2004 campaign? Well, okay, it's time to put the skates on the ice. This is for all the real hockey moms out there ... or the older brothers who had to drag their ass out of bed at 6:00 a.m. on cold winter Saturday mornings to take his little brother to hockey practice in a scary part of town ...
Palin's Dangerous Saber Rattling on Russia
From joking about bombing Iran, to talking about invading Iraq, Iran and Syria weeks after 9/11 to the misguided "we are all Georgians now," the McCain campaign is sending all kinds of horrifying signals to the world about the types of wars it would fight. Leaders in other capitals are paying attention and words matter. When Palin, a first term Governor with no national security experience or expertise, talks about hypothetical nuclear war, it matters. It reflects badly on her and her readiness. It reflects even worse on McCain.
Don't call me a misogynist for calling liberal female Palin supporters insane
Selling out America, for Church, Corporation, Beating Taxes, Ovaries... I need to say it here. There are plenty of Americans who sell out America, the constitution and democracy for their megachurch, their minister, to save money on taxes and now, we have women who are selling out America, the constitution and women's rights, just to get a female in the whitehouse. It doesn't matter that she represents everything liberal women have voted against for decades. She has the proper chromosomal and anatomical configuration, so they're going to vote for her. Disgusting. Is this the next stage of hillarymaniac psychosis? Don't like my thoughts on this? Get over it. There will be a lot more if McCain Palin are elected. It will be liberal women who went insane and voted to put female anatomy in the whitehouse. IT certainly can't be because of any policy Palin's been associated with. Go ahead, call me a misogynist. I call you one back. Voting for Palin is horrible for women,m for America, for the planet, for the future. She is a liar, a martinet who has abused her power with despicable partisan hiring and firing practices. She wants to reverse Roe v. Wade. She's charged rape victims for rape kits. She put her city into big debt when she was mayor. She rode her campaign to become governor by claiming to be a reformer by outing the leader of the Alaskan Republican party for making phone calls and doing email on state time. Funny thing is, she did the same thing.
Sarah Palin: A Worthless Bag of Hair
Not only does Sarah Palin show total ignorance of even what US intelligence services now confirm and admit, that Georgia was the aggressor in a campaign of genocide which Russia stopped, but she was totally clueless when questioned about the Bush Doctrine. Instead, Palin tried make believe she didn’t realize that the interviewer knew she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. The corporate media is trying to promote Sarah Palin as their star, as the newest sensation. However, all the non-verbal cues given out during the interview indicated that Palin realized she was entirely out of her league in discussing foreign affairs, having been shown for her total and complete ignorance and incompetence. Obviously this is the reason the Republicans didn’t want Palin giving any interviews as this one interview clearly demonstrated that Palin fails miserably in all areas, in other words, she is a worthless bag of hair.
Palin : Devil in Disguise (Pravda)
The candidate for the Vice Presidency of the United States of America, whose experience in small town politics, mothers´day dos and the local hockey club is her claim to fame, threatened to open the gates of Hell by attacking Russia in the event of another invasion of Georgia in a televised interview on ABC (shown today). One question for this self-opinionated upstart: Do you know what a nuclear holocaust is? Sarah Palin, Mrs. Nobody know-it-all shreiking cow from Alaska, the joke of American politics, plied with a couple of vodkas before letting rip in front of incredulous audiences while McCain coos in the background, cuts a ridiculous figure as she strives to be taken seriously. How can anyone whose husband is a member of the Alaska Independence Party and who is running for the Vice Presidency of the Union be taken seriously? How indeed can the Republican Party be taken seriously for not vetting this female, or have they not yet discovered the skeletons in her closet? We have. So Sarah Palin, Mrs. Hockey Mom housewife-cum-small-town gossip merchant and cheap little guttersnipe, suppose you shut up and allowed real politicians and diplomats to do their work? Threatening Russia with a war is perhaps the most irresponsible thing anyone could do at this moment in time. Have you any idea what a nuclear holocaust is? Have you any notion of the power of Russia’s armed forces? Did you know that Russia has enough missiles to destroy any target anywhere on Earth in seconds? And have you not forgotten, you pith-headed little bimbo from the back of beyond, that small detail about the slaughter of Russian citizens by Georgians, which started the whole debacle? So next time suppose you keep your mouth shut and while you’re at it, make sure the members of your family keep their legs shut too. Your country has enough failed mothers as it is.
Sarah Palin's Shocking Animal Cruelty
GOP conventioneers were officially introduced to their vice presidential candidate who is, as Fred Thompson said, "the only nominee in the history of either party who knows how to properly field dress a moose." But it's not Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's personal love of hunting or appetite for moose venison that should strike fear in the heart of every animal advocate in the nation--it's her retrograde policies on animal welfare and conservation that have led to an all-out war on the state's wolves and other creatures. Her record is so extreme that she has perhaps done more harm to animals than any other current governor in the United States -- and that's a difficult distinction to achieve among our 22 Republican and 28 Democratic chief executives. Voters of both political parties who care about the humane treatment of animals must unite to make sure that the nation's worst governor doesn't end up just a heartbeat away from the nation's most important job.
Only in America Could a Two-Faced Creature Like McCain Attain Such Media Status
Only in America could a man who has been in office for decades run as an "outsider" against the entrenched interests in Washington. Only in America could a man who is a longtime Republican stalwart run against his own party, which has governed while controlling most of the institutional levers of power -- the presidency, the Supreme Court and the Congress -- for much of the past eight years. And only in America could a man who has called the corporatized, in-the-tank, mainstream media his "base" -- the media that made him its darling and hailed him for his supposed "straight talk" -- run against that very same media, bashing it figuratively while "peace officers" were doing so quite literally to journalists in the streets of St. Paul, in a manner unseen since the '60s and the Chicago days of Richard Daley and the subsequent Nixonian "nattering nabobs of negativity" era. Yes, welcome to America, land of opportunity, where every politician is a self-styled "change agent" -- yet little ever seems to change. Since the days of Tricky Dick and his attack dog Spiro Agnew few have taken the obligatory attacks on the media to such heights -- or depths, really -- as the McCain-Palin campaign, now effectively run by the bullet-headed attack dog Steve Schmidt and other acolytes of Karl Rove and the band of merry miscreants most responsible for the debacle formerly known as the Bush administration.
GOP Convention Spin
Joe Lieberman and his former Senate colleague Fred Thompson both made misleading claims about Obama in their prime time GOP convention speeches on Tuesday. We've heard two of them before – many times.
GOP Convention Spin, Part II
Palin trips up on her facts, and Giuliani and Huckabee have their own stumbles on Night 3 of the Republican confab. Sarah Palin’s much-awaited speech at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night may have shown she could play the role of attack dog, but it also showed her to be short on facts when it came to touting her own record and going after Obama’s. We found Rudy Giuliani, who introduced her, to be as factually challenged as he sometimes was back when he was in the race. But Mike Huckabee may have laid the biggest egg of all
Paying for War at the Pump
What’s it got to do with the price of gas? Would some reporter with access to the Republican presidential candidate please ask John McCain why he wants to continue President Bush’s Mideast policy when it has proved so ruinous for American taxpayers? Because McCain is determined to ignore our economic meltdown and shift the debate to foreign policy, shouldn’t he have to explain why an open-ended military presence in the Mideast will make us economically and militarily more secure when the opposite is clearly the case? Let’s not waste too much time on the military side of the equation. The argument that troops on the ground have made us militarily more secure is absurd on its face. American resources and lives have been squandered in an inane effort that McCain aptly criticized before becoming a presidential candidate.
Sarah's Grand Plan for the World
I confess to being a little nervous about tonight’s interview of Sarah Palin by Charlie Gibson of ABC News. I wasn’t too worried that she’d hit it out of the park. Why? Because she really doesn’t know anything. There are only so many talking points you can memorize. And even if you memorize one and parrot it back perfectly, there are still those damned follow-up questions, and that annoying ‘nuance’ you have to deal with. I was worried that Charlie Gibson would ask her to talk about her lapel pin, or ask her about her favorite recipe for moose stew. Compared to her usual Alaska Governor persona, she seemed tense, and scripted. And someone must have told her to use people’s names when talking to them, because she must have said “Charrlee” a dozen times in the first 10 minutes. All in all, I give her low marks. Why? Because basically, she sounded like she had no idea what she was talking about. It was all pep talk, and no substance. All memorized sound bytes that sometimes were repeated verbatim like a broken record, and no sincerity.
Palin and the Trojan Moose
Palin, and the circus she's brought to town, are simply a bountiful collection of small lies deliberately designed to distract the country from one big truth: the havoc that George Bush and the Republican Party have wrought, and that John McCain is committed to continuing. Every second of this campaign not spent talking about the Republican Party's record, and John McCain's role in that record, is a victory for John McCain. Her critics like to say that Palin hasn't accomplished anything. I disagree: in the space of ten days she's succeeded in distracting the entire country from the horrific Bush record -- and McCain's complicity in it. My friends, that's accomplishment we can believe in. Just look at what's being discussed just 57 days before the election. Is it the highest unemployment rate in five years? The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? The suicide bombing yesterday in Iraq that killed six people and wounded 54 -- in the same market where last month a bomb killed 28 people and wounded 72? That the political reconciliation that was supposedly the point of "the surge" is nowhere near happening? That Iraq's Shiite government is now rounding up the American-backed Sunni leaders of the Awakening? That the reason 8,000 soldiers may be leaving Iraq soon is so more can be deployed to Afghanistan where the Taliban is steadily retaking the country? No. We're talking about whether Sarah Palin was or was not a good mayor, whether she was or was not a good mother, whether her skirts are too short and her zingers too sarcastic.
Huge Anti-Palin rally in Alaska
Hundreds of people protesting the policies of Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lined a busy street on Saturday, waving signs and chanting "Obama!" The protesters, including supporters of presidential candidate Barack Obama and those who don't agree with Palin's positions on abortion, polar bears, Iraq and other issues, lined one side of the street near Anchorage's main library building. "We're not alone. A lot of people are worried about the nomination of Sarah Palin," Doroff said, as cars drove by honking their horns in support. "I think America does not understand how absolutely extreme her positions are — even to the right of George Bush and John McCain," Norton said. "She is frightening."
Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes
So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency. Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages. When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects. Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance. Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.
Sarah Palin's Myth of America
Sarah Palin has arrived in our midst with the force of a rocket-propelled grenade. She has boosted John McCain's candidacy and overwhelmed the presidential process. She quoted Westbrook Pegler, the F.D.R.-era conservative columnist, in her acceptance speech: "We grow good people in our small towns..." And then added, "I grew up with those people. They're the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars. They love their country in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America." Except that's not really true. We haven't been a nation of small towns for nearly a century. It is the suburbanites and city dwellers who do the fighting and hourly-wage work now, and the corporations who grow our food. But Palin's embrace of small-town values is where her hold on the national imagination begins. She embodies the most basic American myth. The McCain campaign has provided only the sketchiest policy proposals; it has spent most of its time trying to divert the national conversation away from matters of substance. But Americans like stories more than issues.
About Anonymous
As a mass noun and internet meme, Anonymous's origin began as a "running gag" when internet users proposed that the default tag, "Anonymous", used for unsigned posts on imageboards, could be a real person. Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they're a group? Because they're travelling in the same direction. At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another direction entirely.
About the "Anonomous" hack of Sarah Palin's Email
First, a little background on who “anonymous” is. They’re often referred to as a “group,” but they’re more like an Internet counter-culture. There is NO organization, agenda, or leadership. It’s just a bunch of individuals acting on their own that wear the label. Their main playground is the 4chan.org website, though there are dozens of other spin-off sites. At any rate, when you hear labels like “extreme left wing activist group” attributed to anonymous in the media, it’s time to change the channel. That’s simply not true, and is way off base. It’s been interesting to see both sides spin it with their theories. We have republicans angered, claiming it’s nothing but liberals or “Obama operatives” relentlessly digging for dirt. We have democrats claiming this was done intentionally as a publicity stunt. We have others yet with really twisted conspiracies that say Palin faked the hacking of her e-mail in order to have cover to delete the accounts. (News for that theory, Yahoo has probably just “disabled” the account, leaving its contents in tact. Even if it was “deleted,” a company such as Yahoo surely has back-ups.) So again, all of these ideas are stretching it. It was basically a prank. Even despite the language above about “derailing the campaign,” the goal was probably an attention grab.
Hacking Palin's Email Account Was Not Our Idea
Just last week, we posted a brief open letter to Anonymous, the Internet-based rabble-rousers who have made a name for themselves taking on Scientology, in which we said that they'd succeeded in ruining the Church's reputation, and that it was time for them to find a new target. We even threw out a suggestion: Sarah Palin! And then yesterday, this happened. Far be it from us to take credit for it, but as a commenter in our original jokingly post noted, "Careful what you wish for, buddy. You may find yourself labeled an accessory." For the record, an (anonymous) representative of Anonymous denies that the group is responsible for the Palin e-mail hack, instead blaming it on "/b/ from 4chan, a group that posts anonymously and creates Internet mayhem and mischief."
Weird Theology in Wasilla
Sarah Palin's churches are actively involved in a resurgent movement that was declared heretical by the Assemblies of God in 1949. This is the same 'Spiritual Warfare' movement that was featured in the award winning movie, "Jesus Camp," which showed young children being trained to do battle for the Lord. At least three of four of Palin's churches are involved with major organizations and leaders of this movement, which is referred to as The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit or the New Apostolic Reformation. The movement is training a young "Joel's Army" to take dominion over the United States and the world. Along with her entire family, Sarah Palin was re-baptized at twelve at the Wasilla Assembly of God in Wasilla, Alaska and she attended the church from the time she was ten until 2002: over two and 1/2 decades. Sarah Palin's extensive pattern of association with the Wasilla Assembly of God has continued nearly up to the day she was picked by Senator John McCain as a vice-presidential running mate.
Eight More Palin Stories
It takes most politicians years to rack up the kinds of scandals, hypocrisies, and inconsistencies that have plagued Sarah Palin's candidacy in the week and a half since she catapulted to national attention. But the disturbing revelations about Palin's record as mayor and governor, and her positions on the issues, inexplicably just keep coming.
Palin's Faux Populism
Sarah Palin's Faux Populism By Jim Hightower, AlterNet. Posted September 11, 2008. Living in a small town and being able to field dress a moose does not make Palin a populist, no matter how much pundits want to pretend it does. Karl, Jeff and other pundits who are rushing to place the gleaming crown of populism atop the head of this shameless corporate servant -- they are the ones who have driven me to write about Palin. Someone has to nail the media establishment for its willing perversion of language, American history and the substance of today's genuine populism. Palin might be popular, she might be able to field dress a moose, she might live in a small town, she might enjoy delivering "news flashes" to media elites, she might even become vice president -- but none of this makes her a populist. To the contrary, she is to populism what bear is to beer, only not as close.
Sarah Palin's war against information
John McCain's running mate might be avoiding the press, but Sarah Palin is everywhere - on the covers of Time and Newsweek, not to mention People and Us Weekly. You'd be forgiven if you thought that the woman was running for president herself. A good fraction of the coverage has been harsh, yes. But it has also been frustratingly distracted. The idiotic rumours that her (now pregnant) daughter is the true mother of child No 5 were unworthy of a telenovela, but that didn't stop the New York Times from putting four different reporters on the case. Her string of alleged abuses of power, her rejection of the realities of climate change, her apparent ignorance of the basics of the mortgage market: these are stories worth covering, and they've got a bit of play. But they've been drowned out by the dumber stories about her hair or her family, and by the Republican chorus that the media have it in for her. It's a war against information. The McCain team knows that if the media do their job and give Palin the same scrutiny that any candidate for high office must endure, she will collapse.
A Trojan Moose Concealing Four More Years of George Bush
The point is that Palin, and the circus she's brought to town, are simply a bountiful collection of small lies deliberately designed to distract the country from one big truth: the havoc that George Bush and the Republican Party have wrought, and that John McCain is committed to continuing. Every second of this campaign not spent talking about the Republican Party's record, and John McCain's role in that record, is a victory for John McCain. Her critics like to say that Palin hasn't accomplished anything. I disagree: in the space of ten days she's succeeded in distracting the entire country from the horrific Bush record -- and McCain's complicity in it. My friends, that's accomplishment we can believe in.
Lies, Personal Attacks, and Evasions: the Palin/McCain Ticket
Without popular issue positions to run on, McCain-Palin have committed themselves to a strategy of lies, personal attacks, and evading direct answers to questions about policies. But do we want our candidates, or our own campaign activities to sink to this level? Are we willing to concede the Rovian message that issues don’t matter to the voters? I think not. I think U.S. voters care enough about this great nation that they will consider the issues and use those issues to decide about candidates. And so I want to cut through some of the complaints about lies and meritless attacks on the press, and through the rhetoric of speeches, to see if we can actually discern where the candidates stand on some of the issues.
The Mirrored Ceiling
It turns out there was something more nauseating than the nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate this past week. It was the tone of the acclaim that followed her acceptance speech. “Drill, baby, drill,” clapped John Dickerson, marveling at Palin’s ability to speak and smile at the same time as an indication of her unexpected depths and unsuspected strengths. Palin sounded, at times, like she was speaking a foreign language as she gave voice to the beautifully crafted words that had been prepared for her on Wednesday night. Why does this woman – who to some of us seems as fake as they can come, with her delicate infant son hauled out night after night under the klieg lights and her pregnant teenage daughter shamelessly instrumentalized for political purposes — deserve, to a unique extent among political women, to rank as so “real”? Because the Republicans, very clearly, believe that real people are idiots. This disdain for their smarts shows up in the whole way they’ve cast this race now, turning a contest over economic and foreign policy into a culture war of the Real vs. the Elites. It’s a smoke and mirrors game aimed at diverting attention from the fact that the party’s tax policies have helped create an elite that’s more distant from “the people” than ever before.
I am having Sarah Palin nightmares MUST READ
I don't like raging at women. I have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of women. But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to women which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war. I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God." I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.
“So Sambo beat the bitch!” Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin
Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean”MUST READ
“So Sambo beat the bitch!” This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination. According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively. “It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole. Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.” Racial and ethnic slurs may be “just Alaska” and, clearly, they are common, everyday chatter for Palin. Besides insulting Obama with a Step-N’-Fetch-It, “darkie musical” swipe, people who know her say she refers regularly to Alaska’s Aboriginal people as “Arctic Arabs” – how efficient, lumping two apparently undesirable groups into one ugly description – as well as the more colourful “mukluks” along with the totally unimaginative “f**king Eskimo’s,” according to a number of Alaskans and Wasillians interviewed for this article. But being openly racist is only the tip of the Palin iceberg. According to Alaskans interviewed for this article, she is also vindictive and mean. We’re talking Rove mean and Nixon vindictive.
Palin Scandal: Her Environmental Record
She wants to start drilling. She wants to block US moves to list the polar bear as an endangered species. And she has allowed big game hunters to shoot Alaska's bears and wolves from low-flying planes. The 44-year-old governor says a federal government decision to protect the polar bear will cripple energy development offshore. As a result, she is suing the Bush administration, which ruled the polar bear is endangered and needs protection. The US Geological Survey says climate change has shrunk Arctic summer sea ice to about 1.65 million sq miles, nearly 40 per cent less than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000. In such a situation it was unconscionable for Governor Palin to ignore overwhelming evidence of global warming's threat to sea ice, says Kassie Siegel of the Centre for Biological Diversity. Governor Palin would also like to bring open-cast coal mining to Alaska's Brooks Range Mountains, an act of environmental vandalism in the eyes of many. The Palin administration has allowed Chevron to triple the amount of toxic waste it pours into the waters of Cook Inlet. This, even though the number of beluga whales in the bay has collapsed from 1,300 to 350 -- the point of extinction -- because of pollution and increased ship traffic.
A Look Inside Sarah Palin's Pentecostal Church
Sarah Palin's churches are actively involved in a resurgent movement that was declared heretical by the Assemblies of God in 1949. This is the same 'Spiritual Warfare' movement that was featured in the award winning movie, "Jesus Camp," which showed young children being trained to do battle for the Lord. At least three of four of Palin's churches are involved with major organizations and leaders of this movement, which is referred to as The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit or the New Apostolic Reformation. The movement is training a young "Joel's Army" to take dominion over the United States and the world. Along with her entire family, Sarah Palin was re-baptized at twelve at the Wasilla Assembly of God in Wasilla, Alaska and she attended the church from the time she was ten until 2002: over two and 1/2 decades. Sarah Palin's extensive pattern of association with the Wasilla Assembly of God has continued nearly up to the day she was picked by Senator John McCain as a vice-presidential running mate.
Sarah Palin's Disturbing Beliefs
We need to shift the discussion to what really matters about her in the context of the White House: her dangerous views. AlterNet has compiled a list of Palin's most shocking beliefs, ranging from her positions on the economy to her views on reproductive rights. This list has nothing to do with her personal life, her looks or her gender. It's the stuff that voters need to know: what Sarah Palin really believes.
Heart Condemns the Use of the Song Barracuda at the Republican Convention
[ 9/5/2008 ] Rock Group Heart Condemn The Use of The Song Barracuda at The Republican Convention Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart have informed the McCain/Palin Campaign that Universal Music Publishing and Sony BMG have sent a cease-and-desist notice to not use one of Heart's classic songs "Barracuda," as the congratulatory theme for Sarah Palin. The Republican campaign did not ask for permission to use the song, nor would they have been granted that permission. "We have asked the Republican campaign not to use our music. [NOTE: The Republican National Convention continued to use the Wilson sisters music, even after being told to cease and desist. The song Barracuda was originally written as a "scathing rant against the soulless, corporate nature of the music business, particularly for women… There's irony in Republican strategists' choice to make use of it there," according to Nancy's statement to Entertainment Weekly: "I think it's completely unfair to be so misrepresented. I feel completely fucked over."]
Heart's Nancy Wilson responds to McCain campaign's use of 'Barracuda' at Republican convention
Sep 5, 2008—Thursday afternoon, Heart e-mailed out a statement regarding vice-presidential candidate Sarah "Barracuda" Palin's use of their similarly monikered song at the Republican National Convention: "The Republican campaign did not ask for permission to use the song, nor would they have been granted that permission," it read. "We have asked the Republican campaign publicly not to use our music. But after McCain finished his speech accepting the GOP's presidential nomination tonight, Palin joined him on stage, and the song was used again: Heart's "Barracuda" played as balloons fell. With that elephant in the room, Heart's Nancy Wilson felt compelled to personally respond. "I think it's completely unfair to be so misrepresented," she said in a phone call to EW.com after the speech. "I feel completely f---ed over." She and sister Ann Wilson then e-mailed the following exclusive statement: "Sarah Palin's views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women. We ask that our song 'Barracuda' no longer be used to promote her image. The song 'Barracuda' was written in the late 70s as a scathing rant against the soulless, corporate nature of the music business, particularly for women. (The 'barracuda' represented the business.) While Heart did not and would not authorize the use of their song at the RNC, there's irony in Republican strategists' choice to make use of it there."
Palin: wrong woman, wrong message
This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie. * Sarah Palin, north star Photos: Sarah Palin, north star * Join the reader discussion on Gloria Steinem's Op-Ed article * Sarah Palin as Alaska National Guard commander * Palin appears to disagree with McCain on sex education Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq." McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency. Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births (note her daughter's pregnancy at 16 years old), sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger. [Editor: Sarah is a Dick Cheny style pit bull bully, only with lipstick.]
Sarah Palin Naked
I realized three things tonight. For one, if you are a McCain/Palin/Bush voter, you and I do not have a difference of opinion. We have a difference in brain power. Two, she really is as ignorant as I feared. And, three, she really is kinda hot. Basically, I want to have sex with her on my Barack Obama sheets while my wife reads aloud from the Constitution. (My wife is cool with this if I promise to "first wipe off Palin's tranny makeup." I married well.) Now, I want to be clear and speak directly to those of you who LOVED that Palin interview. You're an idiot. I mean that. If you watched those interview excerpts and weren't scared out of your freakin' mind, then you're mentally ill, mentally disabled, or mentally disturbed. What you are NOT is responsible, informed, curious, thoughtful, mature, educated, empathetic, or remotely serious. I mean it. But I like to think that anyone can change. Stop voting for people you want to have a beer with. Stop voting for folksy. Stop voting for people who remind you of your neighbor. Stop voting for the ideologically intransigent, the staggeringly ignorant, and the blazingly incompetent. Vote for someone smarter than you. Vote for someone who inspires you. Vote for someone who has not only traveled the world but who has also shown a deep understanding and compassion for it. The stakes are real and they're terrifyingly high. This election matters. It matters. It really matters. Let me say that one more time. This. Really. Matters.
Sarah Palin: 10 Disturbing and Shocking Facts
It's not hard to stir up negative publicity when you advocate gunning down wolves from airplanes and deny the human causes of climate change. The pages and Web sites of the two leading papers in Alaska have raised all sorts of issues surrounding Palin, from her ethics problems to general lack of readiness for this big step up. Right now the top story on the Anchorage Daily News Web site looks at new info in what it calls "troopergate" and opens: "Alaska's former commissioner of public safety says Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain's pick to be vice president, personally talked to him on two occasions about a state trooper who was locked in a bitter custody battle with the governor's sister."
Sarah Palin: 8 More Disturbing and Shocking Facts
Since the McCain campaign apparently didn't even bother Googling Sarah Palin before picking her to join the Republican ticket, we've taken it upon ourselves to compile some important -- and terrifying -- revelations about Palin. Yesterday AlterNet ran a piece called "Top Ten Most Disturbing Facts and Impressions of Sarah Palin." And in only 24 hours, almost as many exaggerations, misrepresentations, and outright lies have reared their ugly heads. If you already read yesterday's piece, here's the next installment:
The Mirrored Ceiling
It turns out there was something more nauseating than the nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate this past week. It was the tone of the acclaim that followed her acceptance speech. “Drill, baby, drill,” clapped John Dickerson, marveling at Palin’s ability to speak and smile at the same time as an indication of her unexpected depths and unsuspected strengths. Palin sounded, at times, like she was speaking a foreign language as she gave voice to the beautifully crafted words that had been prepared for her on Wednesday night. Why does this woman – who to some of us seems as fake as they can come, with her delicate infant son hauled out night after night under the klieg lights and her pregnant teenage daughter shamelessly instrumentalized for political purposes — deserve, to a unique extent among political women, to rank as so “real”? Because the Republicans, very clearly, believe that real people are idiots. This disdain for their smarts shows up in the whole way they’ve cast this race now, turning a contest over economic and foreign policy into a culture war of the Real vs. the Elites. It’s a smoke and mirrors game aimed at diverting attention from the fact that the party’s tax policies have helped create an elite that’s more distant from “the people” than ever before.
Palin's Teen Is Pregnant
Republican officials in St. Paul, Minn., devoted the first day of their national convention to fundraising ... But overshadowing activities on the floor was a surprise statement from the McCain campaign that running mate Sarah Palin's unmarried, 17-year-old daughter is pregnant. The Associated Press reported, meanwhile, that Palin has hired an attorney to represent her in the so-called "troopergate" investigation. The Alaska legislature is investigating whether Palin improperly fired the state public safety commissioner after he refused to fire a state trooper who had divorced Palin's sister.
Top Ten Reasons Why John McCain Named Sarah Palin His Running Mate
When I heard from a student today that McCain had named his running mate, and that it was Alaska’s Governor Sarah Palin, my first thought, my first question was “Why her?” Will the right wing nasties, even their women, want to vote for a woman who will be “a heartbeat away?” Misogyny, I think, was invented by the Republican Party. Has McCain just given away the election? I think not. I have thought about this some for the better part of half a day and I have come up with ten very good reasons why John McCain should have named Sarah Palin as his running mate. It’s so obvious to me now. So without further ado, I give you the Top Ten Reasons Why John McCain Named His Running Mate Sarah Palin
The Worst Vice-Presidential Nominee in U.S. History
It's not that Sarah Palin is inexperienced. It's that this is gross political misconduct. Sarah Palin has been governor of Alaska for just a bit over 18 months. Alaska has a population of 683,000. (Though that doesn't include moose.) This would only make it the 17th most populous city in the United States. Just ahead of Fort Worth. Before that, she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Population 9,000. I know Republicans like to promote "small town values," but this is taking things to ridiculous extremes, don't you think? I'm from Glencoe, Illinois, population 8,762. It's so small it doesn't even have a mayor, it has an appointed village manager. I'm sure that Paul Harlow is doing wonderfully at his job in the village - but I don't expect that he sees himself as even wanting to be a heartbeat from the U.S. President in 18 months. You know what the top news story is on the Glencoe website? "Fire Hydrant Painting Underway." (To be fair, it's the #2 story. The top news is a clarification about displaying political signage.) Do you know what the first two "powers and duties" are for the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska? Check their municipal code:
Top Alaska Newspapers Question Palin's Fitness
For the past 24 hours, the pages and web sites of the two leading papers up there have raised all sorts of issues surrounding Palin, from her ethics problems to general lack of readiness for this big step up. Right now the top story on the Anchorage Daily News web site looks at new info in what it calls "troopergate" and opens: "Alaska's former commissioner of public safety says Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain's pick to be vice president, personally talked him on two occasions about a state trooper who was locked in a bitter custody battle with the governor's sister. A reporter for the Anchorage daily revealed that Palin's approval rating in the state was not the much-touted 80%, but 65% and sinking -- and that among journalists who followed her it might be in the "teens." "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" said Lyda Green, the president of the State Senate, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"
McCain VP Choice: Political Risk or Political Genius?
With no foreign policy experience and a political resume that could fit on my pinky fingernail, Sarah Palin is an absurd choice for vice president. Yet it should come as no surprise to the public -- especially to Democrats -- that John McCain chose her anyway. That's because the very issues that Democrats say make her a political risk -- her newness to the political world stage, her anti-choice stance, her opposition to gay marriage, her support of capital punishment, her disregard for the environment -- matter very little in determining the outcome of elections. Voters -- some of whom dissect policy issues daily, but most of whom don't -- ultimately cast their ballots based on emotion. Not logic. Not knowledge of "the issues." Simply put, people don't always vote for the candidate or the policy that serves their own best interests. That concept should be no more surprising in politics than in other parts of people's lives. If individuals always did what was best for them, they would consistently choose broccoli over cake; they would enter into relationships with the good guy (or gal) instead of the charming jerk who never calls; they would stick to purchasing necessities and use credit cards as a last resort -- only when there's not enough money at the end of the month to pay for groceries or utility bills. But we all know people who eat more sweets than they should, date charismatic yet inconsiderate cretins, and shop on impulse. Those behaviors might be unhealthy, but they sure can feel good at the time. That's the campaign strategy Republicans have perfected: manipulating our senses and emotions to make us act in ways that we'll later regret. It's been barely a day since the media introduced us to Palin, and those are the details that are easily overshadowing -- or at least obscuring -- the more serious news about her regressive politics or the ethics investigation she's under. [Editor: So now we have it, an octogenarian Republican candidate clearly exhibiting dementia, and a corporate crime poodle running-mate propping up what George Carlin called the "Owners" of a crooked old ruling class. All that remains for the Republican party now is to bring out the dancing bears, dwarfs, fire-eaters, and lion tamers. What a spectacular show! Will the idiocracy continue for another four years, or will a leader who is actually intelligent enough to manage the Republic of the United States of America be elected? Stay tuned.]
Election Idiocies
What seems long forgotten is the original rationale for the surge, which was not simply to quell violence but to establish Iraq's ability to govern itself, setting the stage for American withdrawal. That would constitute true "success," although leaving has already been designated "surrender" by both Bush and McCain. But the real reason for the surge has always been to indefinitely prolong the conversation about withdrawal that was made inevitable by the 2006 elections. And in that sense, the surge has been an unparalleled success.
Bush Uses Holy Land Pulpit to Launch Smear Campaign
George W. Bush is unworthy of the presidency. He is a disgrace to himself, our Nation, and the high office he holds. In a speech to the Israeli Knesset on Thursday, Mr. Bush forfeited the last scraps of his moral authority, dishonoring himself by using one of the world's most important pulpits to launch a false and vicious political attack against Barack Obama.
Smearing Obama
Each election cycle, we're exposed to editorial-page tooth-gnashing about the media's relentless focus on political personalities over issues. While everyone is meant to make frowny-faces over this, for the GOP, it's the natural state of affairs. After all, its positions on the issues aren't going to win any elections: Help the rich get richer, ignore anyone who's hurt by economic downturns, deny people medical care, promote cultural division, and keep supporting a highly unpopular war. That's a whole lot of hard sells, right there; why go to the public with that when you can just accuse your opponent of being the Antichrist? Such has been the approach of the GOP for the last 25 years or so, and it worked so well with Bill Clinton (well, except for the little detail of him winning two elections), Republicans see no reason to change the script for Barack Obama. Is he a radical Islamist terrorist, or a reverse-racist Christian fanatic? Is he a fist-bumping ghetto gangsta, or an arugula-munching metrosexual elitist? Is he too black, or not black enough? In this guide to the perplexed, we'll help our right-wing brethren get their stories straight by laying out the case (however bogus) against Obama...
A Time to Reap
My friend Dan was on his way home the other day, and found an American flag crumpled in a gutter outside his apartment building. The flag, perhaps as big as the cover of a book, had been used as a decoration for some pre-Fourth of July party, but afterwards was merely thrown aside like litter for the street-sweepers to collect. Dan gathered it up, smoothed the creases, and hung it from a nearby railing. The motivation for his actions was hard for him to explain, but it came down to this: Everything else in America is so screwed up, but this American thing before him would not be defiled within reach of his arm. My friend, surrounded by the chaos of a flailing nation and filled with the need to act, found some solace in the rescue of that flag. He is not alone in his sentiments, not alone in his desire to make things right again within reach of his arm. There is something happening today in America. With the right kind of ears, you can hear it in the sound of millions of brows slowly furrowing in anger and disgust. It feels like those tense moments just before the eruption of a summer thunderstorm, those moments when the air is electric, the ozone reek of spent lightning fills the world, and you know something very loud is about to happen. What is happening, what can be heard and smelled and sensed all across the land, is the cresting wave of rage, betrayal and fury that is, finally, roaring across the shores of our collective American heart. After more than six years of lies, theft, graft, corruption, manipulation and misconduct, just about every living person within these borders finds themselves today gripped...
Hillary Clinton
Earth to Hillary, it's over
It was supposed to be over last night with Barack Obama having won enough pledged delegates and super-delegates to make him the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee. But then Hillary Clinton took to the floor In NYC to address supporters in what many assumed would be a concession speech. But Senator Clinton did not concede, or even ‘suspend' her presidential aspirations; she delivered a campaign speech about education and health care and bringing the troops home and ‘reached out' to the eighteen million people who voted for her in the primaries and said some perfunctory nice things about Barack Obama. She closed by reminding everyone of her dot com site, in case, anyone might want to donate to what she regards either as a victory fund or a help-me-pay-off-my-debts fund. It was a strange kind of event that left anyone inclined to scratch their head in perplexity, doing just that. Around the same time Senator McCain was delivering his remarks to a smallish crowd of well-wishers, praising Hillary - - someone he calls a friend...
Tidying up for the Revolution
Thanks to us and to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, great progress is being made in healing two old wounds that have festered for centuries on the American landscape. The two wounds are racism and sexism, and healing them means that America can reclaim its destiny as the world's leader of enlightened behavior. There is much to celebrate. The historic nomination battle between Obama and Clinton heralded the coming social revolution that will elevate feminine values and bring more balance to national life. Like Clinton, Obama represents these values -- peace, family, health, unity, compassion, and power.
What Game Is Hillary Playing?
Nothing reveals more clearly how utterly unprincipled the Clintons are than their assertion that rules set by the Democratic Party's Rules Committee, and endorsed by all Clinton representatives on this Committee, now should be abandoned. Nothing reveals more clearly that the only rules the Clintons follow are rules which favor them. Nothing reveals how exaggerated their claims are than Hillary's recent comparison of the votes in Michigan and Florida to the civil rights movement, the suffragette movement, the fraudulent election in Zimbabwe and the 2000 election in Florida. Democratic parties in 48 states followed the rule, but Michigan and Florida chose not to. Subsequently, no Democratic candidate campaigned in either state and no Democratic candidate, except Hillary Clinton [who fudged the rules] was even on the ballot in Michigan. Harold Ickes, one of Hillary's representatives on the Rules Committee who voted for the rule barring counting the Michigan and Florida votes, and Hillary's chief negotiator of this issue, was asked recently on one of the Sunday morning political talk shows, "You voted for the Rules Committee decision, but now you are complaining about it. What has changed?" Ickes replied, "What has changed is that now we are behind." So, there it is -- there is not an ounce of principle in the Clinton position.
Hillary Clinton (conveniently) hearts Michigan, Florida
We all have that great-uncle who breaks into racist tirades or passes gas at the holiday dinner table. Usually, most of us are too polite to say anything. That seems to be what's going on with Hillary Clinton's quixotic claims that she can still vanquish Barack Obama with Florida and Michigan, even though those of us who passed first-grade math know otherwise. Since she's lost a race hand-carved by the Democratic Party for her to have won in a blowout, it seems most of us have minded our manners. We're not wont to remind her that she never gave a damn about Michigan's Jan. 15 primary that violated party rules. "Well, you know, It's clear, this election they're having is not going to count for anything," Clinton told New Hampshire Public Radio last fall. She proceeded to blow off the Mitten State for N.H. and Iowa, just like candidates have for decades, making Democratic National Committeewoman Debbie Dingell and U.S. Sen. Carl Levin bitterly cry themselves to sleep. Now she's comparing her Machiavellian attempt to lasso as many delegates there to Al Gore's Florida fleecing in 2000. Gawd. Showing she truly has no shame, she even broke out the "It's just like the struggle against slavery" nonsense on Wednesday. It's also like the suffrage movement and Zimbabwe, which makes me wonder if her delusions of grandeur are sheer ego or a plea for a straightjacket. Now her Highness has deigned to campaign in the Sunshine State, but evidently Michigan doesn't rate. Somewhere, she has to know her nuclear option of railroading the Rules and Bylaws Committee on May 31 is a dud.
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