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IMPEACH BUSH & CHENEY

Kicking the lame duck out. Legally, do those agitating for impeachment have a case? Politically, would pursuing impeachment be wise at this point? Byron York and Jeff Lomonaco debate. BE SURE TO READ PAGE TWO http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-lomonaco-york21feb21,0,1950249.story

Impeachment on their minds. Activists blast Bush, Cheney at hearing. Nan Stearns of Amherst said she came with a group she founded, Women Making a Difference, or WMD. "The war is wrong. Torture is wrong," Stearns said. "I can't think of anything the Bush administration has done right except bring those of us who are here today together." http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080220/NEWS01/802200328/1037/NEWS04

Washington senate resolution calling for Bush's impeachment advances. http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2008/01/washington_senate_resolution_c.html

more and more Americans are deciding that the cost to our nation is too great if we fail to uphold the Constitution and the principles that it embodies. American citizens are united in the belief that the President is not above the law. But a majority in Congress has decided to acquiesce to Mr. Bush’s lawbreaking. http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=958

McGovern: Impeach Bush, Cheney Now. Former Democratic Candidate Says Crimes Of Current Administration Worse Than Nixon's http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/06/politics/main3679720.shtml http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/04/AR2008010404308.html

Rocky, liberals call for inquiry of Bush. House committee is asked to investigate White House for possible abuse of power. Joining a list of liberal luminaries, including Noam Chomsky and George McGovern, Salt Lake City's outgoing mayor submitted a letter Friday that calls on the House Judiciary Committee to investigate the Bush administration for abuses of power. Ralph Nader, Daniel Ellsberg, Harry Belafonte, Blase and Theresa Bonpane, Ramsey Clark, Mimi Kennedy, Andy Jacobs Jr., Paul Findley, Kevin Zeese, John Nichols, Tim Carpenter, James Abourezk, Marcus Raskin and Jonathan Kozol round out the list of signatories. http://www.sltrib.com//ci_7889005

The issue is not about removing Bush and Cheney as much as it is about preserving the Constitution and redeeming the office of the executive. The Constitution is the contract of governance between the people and the government. What happens when major portions of the contract are violated? http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/340904_focusimpeachment25.html

GOP turns impeachment resolution against Dems http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/gop-turns-impeachment-resolution-against-dems-2007-11-07.html

Impeach George Bush To Stop War Lies, Deaths http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/23/2698/

politics

http://www.patriotproject.com/

Politics1: CA Elections then use browser back button

California Secretary of State

ca district maps

The California Voter Foundation

http://www.rtumble.com/

http://electionpredictions.blogspot.com/

http://californianintexas.blogspot.com/

http://www.flashreport.org/

Campaign Finance

Anyway, as a general rule, the smart thing to do in Vegas is always to hand someone money to get what you want in person. That is money they don't have yet and they want that money no matter what hour you arrive at the club. http://vegasblog.latimes.com/vegas/2008/08/vip-another-wor.html

Environment

What are conservatives saying about the Gulf oil disaster? http://www.grist.org/article/2010-05-01-what-are-conservatives-saying-about-the-gulf-oil-disaster/

A legal battle is heating up faster than the planet for embattled climatologist Michael Mann. First word emerged that the inspector general for the National Science Foundation would look into the Penn State panel reviewing the climate scientist, who is currently director of the school's Earth System Science Center. Now the attorney general for his old employer the University of Virginia is planning an investigation, too. According to a report in Charlottesville weekly The Hook, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has asked the University of Virginia to produce "a sweeping swath of documents relating to Mann’s receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research" conducted while Mann was at UVA between 1999 and 2005. Should the AG uncover evidence of impropriety, the school could be commanded to return the funds, and pick up the cost of the AG's investigation. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/30/virginia-attorney-general-global-warming-michael-mann/

The manifesto is easy, too: “We, the Green Tea Party, believe that the most effective way to advance America’s national security and economic vitality would be to impose a $10 “Patriot Fee” on every barrel of imported oil, with all proceeds going to pay down our national debt.” America now imports about 11 million barrels a day, about 57 percent of our total oil needs — mostly from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. As T. Boone Pickens told Congress the other day: “In January 2010, our trade deficit for the month was $37.3 billion — $27.5 billion of that was money we sent overseas to import oil.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/opinion/25friedman.html?ref=opinion

Conservative media in deep over false fishing ban. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have spread the story that President Obama 'wants to ban sport fishing.' Though limits are possibly being considered, no such prohibition has been ordered. http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-ticket14-2010mar14,0,5592473.story?

Going green vs. going broke. Republicans say California can't afford its global warming law. But can we afford not to cut pollution? http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-climate11-2010mar11,0,1476411.story

Patriotism

Republicans aren't the solution, they are the problem.

Let's see the military for what it is: a blunt instrument of force. It's neither surgical nor precise nor predictable. What Shakespeare wrote 400 years ago remains true: when wars start, havoc is unleashed, and the dogs of war run wild -- in our case, not just the professional but the "mercenary" dogs of war, those private contractors to the Pentagon that thrive on the rich spoils of modern warfare in distant lands. It's time to recognize that we rely ever more massively to prosecute our wars on companies that profit ever more handsomely the longer they last. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/09/04/military/

Republicans are blinded by love. Lefties just don't have the same feeling about America as the hard right does. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-stein26-2008dec26,0,5178459.column

As we head into the Fourth of July weekend of patriotic bluster and beer swilling—but before we are too besotted with ourselves—might we also for once consider our imperfections? Why not take a moment to heed the cautions of our founding father, George Washington, whose true legacy will most likely be ignored during the flag-waving weekend? Washington’s “Farewell Address” to the new nation was a warning about the threat of American imperial ambitions and a declaration of his high expectations for a republic of free men: “In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. ...” We are drowning in the “impostures of pretended patriotism,” used to cover the lies that got us into Iraq, the defense of torture and the violation of our basic liberties. In the name of patriotism, we presume a God-given American right to reorder the world to our liking, masking the vice of unfettered greed as an obligation of national security. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080701_happy_oil_dependence_day/?ln

What's patriotism? Definitions differ http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/04/patriotism.opinions.irpt/index.html

Prosecutor Firings

One of the sharpest critics is a group called Keep America Safe, run in part by Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. It has derided the unidentified appointees as the "Al Qaeda 7," and in a video on its website Tuesday asked, "Whose values do they share?" http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-gitmo-justice3-2010mar03,0,5568433.story

Report Implicates White House. E-Mails Hint at Involvement in Prosecutor Firings, Officials Say. In 18 months of searching, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility chief H. Marshall Jarrett have uncovered new e-mail messages hinting at heightened involvement of White House lawyers and political aides in the firings of nine federal prosecutors two years ago. But they could not probe much deeper because key officials declined to be interviewed and a critical timeline drafted by the White House was so heavily redacted that it was "virtually worthless as an investigative tool," the authorities said. "We were unable to fully develop the facts regarding the removal of [David C.] Iglesias and several other U.S. Attorneys because of the refusal by certain key witnesses to be interviewed by us, as well as the White House's decision not to provide . . . internal documents to us," the investigators concluded in their report. The standoff is a central reason that Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on Monday named a veteran public-corruption prosecutor, Nora R. Dannehy, to continue the investigation, directing her to give him a preliminary report on the status of the case in 60 days. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/30/AR2008093002623.html

ACORN

ACORN 'Pimp' Pleads Guilty. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SENATORS_OFFICE_ARRESTS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2010-05-26-12-23-53

Sarah Palin and her ilk mock the term "community organizer" because they are blind to the vision of an inclusive democracy that lies behind it. The community organizers at ACORN were deeply committed to expanding our democracy to include people whose interests and needs otherwise get short shrift. They were highly effective in reaching out to people in poor and working-class neighborhoods, identifying their concerns and fashioning strategies to resolve them. Their small victories built community organizations, ultimately making the group a force not only in local politics but in state and national politics as well. ACORN held a profoundly optimistic view of democratic possibility in America, and those who ridicule that vision do our country a serious disservice. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-piven-20100422,0,1875085.story

The hidden-camera tapes of ACORN employees supposedly advising conservative activists disguised as a pimp and prostitute on the best ways to launder their money were, it turns out, heavily edited, as Rachel Maddow documented Tuesday night. As Maddow notes, conservatives James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles were not, in fact, in costume during their interviews with ACORN employees. They did, however, openly discuss crimes they claimed they were planning to commit, and ACORN employees promptly reported them to the police. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/07/acorn-sting-tape-edited-r_n_528556.html

California probe clears ACORN of criminal activity. Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown cites the advocacy group's objectionable behavior but says it does not warrant legal action by authorities. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-acorn2-2010apr02,0,497720.story

James O'Keefe, Co-Defendants Expected To Plead Guilty To Lesser Charges In Landrieu Break-In. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/26/james-okeefe-co-defendant_n_515223.html

s-OKEEFE-PLEAD-GUILTY-large.jpg

Running with a bad crowd. The video that unleashed a firestorm of criticism on the activist group ACORN was a "heavily edited" splice job that only made it appear as though the organization's workers were advising a pimp and prostitute on how to get a mortgage, sources said yesterday. The findings by the Brooklyn DA, following a 5½-month probe into the video, secretly recorded by conservative provocateurs James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, means that no charges will be filed. Many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister, sources said. http://mediamatters.org/columns/201003110054

The leadership and staff that were working with ACORN in California made the decision to break off from ACORN and launch a new organization here in California called Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). The organization will work to advance the mission of organizing and empowering low-income communities, and launch a statewide, multi-year campaign to win key policy changes that will break the cycle of continuous fiscal crisis in the state of California and cuts that hurt ordinary people and their communities. Unlike ACORN, ACCE was formed intentionally as a California nonprofit public benefit corporation, which means that by design, it will be subject to strict regulatory oversight by the California Department of Justice. Also unlike ACORN, ACCE will qualify as a “social welfare organization” for federal tax purposes, which means that by design, it will be subject to additional operational and reporting requirements imposed by federal tax law. http://www.calorganize.org/

Neo-Nazi Group Protests at ACORN's National City Office. http://www.sandiego6.com/news/local/story/Neo-nazi-protest-ACORN-National-City/jF__4ytZYU-oYm2w4sk5Aw.cspx

County election officials emphasize that they have no evidence of voter fraud, such as when people vote multiple times or when they are ineligible. ACORN officials defend their national drive, noting that any large-scale effort involving temporary employees will include some who cheat the system. “Over 13,000 people were employed as part of ACORN's voter registration program in 2008,” said David Lagstein, who began running San Diego's ACORN office after the voter drive. “I think you would be hard-pressed to find a company or organization that employs over 13,000 people without anyone violating company policy.” http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/oct/04/acorn-case-sent-das-office/?metro&zIndex=177004

Shrinking government

The most feared words: I'm a Republican and I'm here to help you.

Downsizing government to death. Thanks to 'E. coli conservatism,' weakened government watchdogs have put us all at risk. "Government is not the solution to our problem," President Reagan famously declared in his inaugural address in 1981. "Government is the problem." Many conservatives have gone far beyond that. Their traditional embrace of small government has been replaced with outright disdain for it. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, doesn't just want to shrink government. To use his words, he wants government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Once in power, E. coli conservatives shrink government by hamstringing it. They weaken rules that protect people, slash the budgets of consumer agencies and appoint industry friends to oversight commissions. The result: Some government regulatory agencies that we trust to protect us have shrunk to insignificance or serve private industry rather than consumers. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-lotke20-2008jul20,0,1958019.story

National Security

The New Rove-Cheney Assault on Reality: THE opening salvo, fired on Fox News during Thanksgiving week, aroused little notice: Dana Perino, the former White House press secretary, declared that “we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.” Rudy Giuliani upped the ante on ABC’s “Good Morning America” in January. “We had no domestic attacks under Bush,” he said. “We’ve had one under Obama.” (He apparently meant the Fort Hood shootings.) Now the revisionist floodgates have opened with the simultaneous arrival of Karl Rove’s memoir and Keep America Safe, a new right-wing noise machine invented by Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz and the inevitable William Kristol. This gang’s rewriting of history knows few bounds. To hear them tell it, 9/11 was so completely Bill Clinton’s fault that it retroactively happened while he was still in office. The Bush White House is equally blameless for the post-9/11 resurgence of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Iran. Instead it’s President Obama who is endangering America by coddling terrorists and stopping torture. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/opinion/14rich.html?ref=opinion

Blame for economic melt down

Bit by bit, bipartisan negotiations in the Senate over financial regulatory reform have broken down. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee split with the Democratic Chairman, Chris Dodd in February. Bob Corker filled the gap, stepping in to try to hammer out a compromise on an issue in which both parties see the potential for good policy and good politics. But wary of delays after a bitter health care fight, Democrats voted the bill out of committee in March with no Republican support, and now are looking to open up the legislation to amendments and debate on the Senate floor. As recently as last month, Republican leadership was open to a deal. In a floor speech this morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell threw cold water on the prospects of detente, establishing a hard line of attack against the Dodd bill, and indelibly marking the party line: "We must not pass the financial reform bill that's about to hit the floor." The crux of his criticism is that the bill "institutionalizes... taxpayer-funded bailouts of Wall Street banks." He knocked the expansion of power at the Fed and Treasury, while sounding the alarm on Wall Street accountability. If the outline of his speech sounds familiar, it's because it is the exact argument pollster Frank Luntz urged Republicans to make earlier this year in a widely publicized memo. Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/04/13/a-gop-financial-reform-bellwether/#ixzz0l2dEHaB0

Reagan on the $50? Not yet. Love him or hate him, it's much too soon to put the late president's likeness on a bill. Reagan's name already graces -- or disgraces, depending on your point of view -- the former Washington National Airport and an international trade center on Pennsylvania Avenue. It's premature to put his genial countenance on paper money. Reagan, whose "aw shucks" modesty was one of his more endearing qualities, would probably agree. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-reagan6-2010mar06,0,2789448.story

Reagan, more than any other person is responsible for the deficit and budget deficits, supply-side, voodoo economic theory, and the raise of hate media and hate politics.

Conservatives leapt to their feet when Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney declared Democrats the party of "No!" — no to balanced budgets, limits on lawsuits, tax cuts and tough interrogations of terror suspects. But their applause this week at the Conservative Political Action Conference was for an illusion. Romney's assertions lacked context at best and at worst were flat-out wrong. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100220/ap_on_an/us_consequences_of_untruths_analysis

Republicans cause 200,000 to lose unemployment benefits. Friday, President Obama signed legislation to extend unemployment benefits for up to 20 weeks. Republicans filibustered the bill three times over a period of five weeks, which prevented the bill from getting to President Obama to be signed. During those five weeks 200,000 people's unemployment insurance benefits lapsed. The bill finally passed with a 98-0 vote. It is interesting specifically because it is Republicans, as of late, that have sought to depict President Obama and Democrats as not being focused on the unemployment rate in this country. Perhaps Republicans should take note of the facts, which are: it was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) who filed the motion to pass the Senate version of the bill, it was President Obama who signed the legislation Friday, and it was Republicans who stalled the bill for five weeks so they could latch on to it completely unrelated legislation. http://www.examiner.com/x-24255-San-Diego-City-Buzz-Examiner~y2009m11d7-Republicans-cause-200000-to-lose-unemployment-benefits

The S&P 500, which is the value-weighted index of 500 most actively traded large cap common stocks in the United States, ended the day on Thursday higher than when Obama took office: 832.86 to its 805.22 closing on January 20, 2009. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/26/defying-doomsayers-sp-and_n_179251.html

CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/05/business/congress-passes-wide-ranging-bill-easing-bank-laws.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1&emc=eta1

It's Bush's Deficit, the Republicans Are Not Telling the Truth. http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=03&year=2009&base_name=its_bushs_deficit_the_republic#113740

Despite jumping on -- and in some cases advancing -- false Republican claims that congressional Democrats are responsible for AIG executive bonuses, major media outlets have yet to report that Neil Barofsky, a Bush-appointed special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), confirmed in March 19 congressional testimony that the Bush administration Treasury Department knew about the AIG bonus contracts and did not insist on their abrogation as a condition of AIG's receiving bailout money through a stock purchase agreement signed by AIG and the Bush Treasury Department. In prepared testimony for a March 19 House Ways and Means Committee hearing, Barofsky stated, "Preliminary information we have seen indicates that the TARP contract between AIG and Treasury that was entered into back in November specifically contemplated the payment of bonuses and retention payments to AIG employees, including AIG's Senior Partners." He also stated that his office "will be reviewing the process at Treasury with respect to Treasury's decision to authorize and approve such payments, both at the time it entered into the contract with AIG and since that time." During an exchange with Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) in the hearing, Barofsky explained that in AIG's November 2008 agreement with the Bush Treasury Department, "retention payments were explicitly contemplated" http://mediamatters.org/items/200903200029?f=h_top

111th Congress and general news

Guardians of the Free Republics' letters to governors spur inquiry. At least 30 governors have received the group's demand that they cede office in three days. Federal officials say they're investigating whether the message might be considered a threat. http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-governors-threats3-2010apr03,0,5992742.story

GOP leaders claim most Americans are outraged over the health-care bill. They're wrong. Michelle Goldberg on what the polls really show—and the right's fuzzy math. Among the mass of delusions that constitute the worldview of the Republican Party, one has recently come to the fore. They are convinced that they speak for a majority, that they are the voice of “the American people,” and that the government has been hijacked by a subversive fringe. Thus health-care reform, enacted by both houses of Congress, signed by a president who won a decisive victory in the last election, becomes a shocking affront to democracy. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-23/the-biggest-republican-lie-of-all/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsR6

Nancy Pelosi -- it's her House. Pelosi's role in passing healthcare reform puts her in the top rank of House speakers. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-meyerson26-2010mar26,0,6583690.story

Democrats no longer have a supermajority in the Senate, so they need at least some Republican support to pass legislation. That's been hard to come by. Republican Sen. John McCain, who was once known for his occasional willingness to cross party lines, warned Monday that Obama should expect no GOP cooperation for the rest of the year. McCain said Democrats had "poisoned the well" with their handling of health care legislation. "I want to make it very clear: The people I represent in the state of Arizona are not going to sit still for this," he said. "They're going to want this repealed. We will challenge this in the courts. We will challenge this in the towns. We will challenge this in the cities. We will challenge this in the farms. We will challenge this all over America, and the will of the people will be heard." Shut up, dumbo! http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125072339

Crybaby McCain: Don't expect GOP cooperation on legislation for the rest of this year. McCain and another sore looser Republican senator decried the effect health reform legislation has had on the Senate, a day after the House passed the upper chamber's bill. GOP senators emerged Monday to whine that the health debate had taken a toll on the institution, warning of little work between parties the rest of this year. "There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year," McCain said during an interview Monday on an Arizona radio affiliate. "They have poisoned the well in what they've done and how they've done it." Shut up you big baby! http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/88285-mccain-dont-expect-gop-cooperation-the-rest-of-this-year

The House is debating a resolution written by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), which would require the military to withdraw from Afghanistan within 30 days or longer if it couldn't be done safely that quickly. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/patrick-kennedy-press-cor_n_493848.html http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2010/roll098.xml

The Politics of Fear. An election is coming, so the Republicans are trying to scare Americans by making it appear as if the Democrats don’t care about catching or punishing terrorists. It’s nonsense, of course, but effective. The be-very-afraid approach helped former President George W. Bush ram laws through Congress that chipped away at Americans’ rights. He used it to get re-elected in 2004. Now the Republicans are playing the fear card for the fall elections. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/opinion/10wed1.html

Thanks to the 2006 and 2008 elections, conservatives no longer control the American government. They do, however, continue to essentially control the American media. As a case in point, you've probably heard that part of the Obama administration's plan to pass health reform is to use the budget reconciliation process. The reason you've probably heard is that the press has been obsessed with the topic, repeatedly labeling it a "controversial" move that would "ram" legislation via an end-run around the normal legislative process." In fact, though most bills do not go through the reconciliation process—typically because their subject matter makes them ineligible—the process has been invoked frequently since 1980. And the reason it's remained obscure until 2010 is that until the health-care debate, the press never saw fit to go into conniptions over congressional procedure. Indeed, as Jamison Foser has painstakingly documented the use of the budget reconciliation process to pass George W. Bush's 2003 tax cuts on a 51-50 vote (Dick Cheney broke the tie, three Senate Republicans joined Democrats in voting no) passed the press with no comment. Earlier this week, the Washington Post ran a hypocritical and dishonest op-ed from Senator Orrin Hatch denouncing the use of reconciliation, part of the paper's overall breathless coverage of this "controversial" move. But back in May 2003, as Bush's tax cuts were being passed, not a single Post article so much as mentioned the word. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-05/gop-liars/?cid=hp:mainpromo2

"I am in control here in the White House." -- Secretary of State Alexander Haig, 1981. Ah, the good old days when even a big shot like Gen. Al Haig, who died early Saturday, could get in trouble for such mavericky declarations that defy basic constitutional precedents. In the 21st century, that's ancient history. We've so idealized cowboy-style rebellion in matters of war and law enforcement that "going Haig" is today honored as "going rogue." Defiance, irreverence, contempt -- these are the moment's most venerated postures, no matter how destructive or lawless. The Bush administration's illegal wiretapping and torture sessions were the most obvious examples of the rogue sensibility on steroids. But then came McCain-Palin, a presidential ticket predicated almost singularly on the rogue brand. And now, even in the Obama era, that brand pervades. http://www.salon.com/news/us_military/index.html?story=/opinion/feature/2010/02/19/going_rogue_ext2010

Republican Party on Welfare & Poverty. Party Platform. Tax reform will enable more poor to own a home. Reward work with tax reform that takes 6 million families off the tax rolls, cuts rate for those on the rolls, and doubles the child tax credit to $1,000. Implement the “American Dream Down Payment” program, which will allow a half million families who currently draw federal rental assistance to become homeowners. Increase the supply of affordable housing by establishing the Renewing the Dream tax credit. Build savings and personal wealth through Individual Development Accounts. http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Republican_Party_Welfare_+_Poverty.htm

Why do people often vote against their own interests? The Republicans' shock victory in the election for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts meant the Democrats lost their supermajority in the Senate. This makes it even harder for the Obama administration to get healthcare reform passed in the US. Political scientist Dr David Runciman looks at why is there often such deep opposition to reforms that appear to be of obvious benefit to voters. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8474611.stm

Conservatives distance themselves from arrested activist. Commentators and fellow activists denounce the purported actions of James O'Keefe, who is among four accused of posing as phone repairmen to enter Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-acorn-okeefe28-2010jan28,0,1936326.story?

Unify the new American ‘tea party’? Good luck with that. An attempt to solidify the tea party movement with a convention next month in Nashville is now looking like it could backfire. So far, pragmatism, not party politics, has boosted the tea party’s profile. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0123/Unify-the-new-American-tea-party-Good-luck-with-that

Money Isn't Speech and Corporations Aren't PeopleThe misguided theories behind the Supreme Court's ruling on campaign finance reform. http://www.slate.com/id/2242210/

Nearly every staff member of Democrat-turned-Republican Rep. Parker Griffith's office quit Monday morning in response to his decision to switch parties. His chief of staff resigned, along with his entire legislative and communications team -- many of whom have worked for Griffith since before he arrived in Washington. "Alabama's Fifth District has deserved and has benefited from great Democratic conservative leadership since Reconstruction. And until now they had it," Chief of Staff Sharon Wheeler said. "I appreciate Congressman Griffith's being a very dedicated congressman. But we believe he made a mistake -- a well-intentioned but misguided mistake that is not in the interest of the great people of North Alabama who elected him a year ago as a Democrat. As his staff, we wish him only the best, and we all remain committed to the citizens of the Tennessee Valley. But we cannot, in good conscience, continue working for him. It is with deep sadness that we leave our work for the Fifth District. But because we are unwavering in our own principles, we have no choice but to move on. We do not know what the future holds, but we are taking a leap of faith with the belief we will soon find ourselves in the employment of principled public officials." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/04/parker-griffith-staff-res_n_410280.html

Beck guest Scheuer: "The only chance we have as a country right now is" for bin Laden to "detonate a major weapon" in U.S. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200906300039

The decade's top 10 quotations. Before our country can move forward, we need to know how we got here in the first place. Here are a few clues. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/01/01/a_new_year/index.html

Fighting Over the Squandered Decade http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/fighting_over_the_squandered_decade_20091230/?ln

Ought Lang Syne. It's out with the depressing 2000s and in with the . . . what? As a new decade dawns, we need a completely new chapter in our history. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-cooper30-2009dec30,0,3837868.story

Whoppers of 2009. We review the choicest falsehoods from a year that kept us busy. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/27/death-panels-lie-on-factc_n_404284.html

"There's no question that congresswoman Bachmann fires up the base," said LeRoy Coleman, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. "She's a powerful and galvanizing voice for this party." That is not how all Republicans see Bachmann, 53, who once said that she was "hot for Jesus" and is quick to call Obama's governing plans "socialism." Some want to keep her at arm's length. When Bachmann declared that she would ignore almost all questions on the census form, calling it an unconstitutional effort to collect personal data, three fellow House Republicans called her stance "illogical, illegal and not in the best interest of our country." When former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell last year crossed party lines and endorsed Obama, he cited Bachmann's suggestion that Obama held "anti-American views," calling it "nonsense." And in a survey this month by National Journal magazine, Republican members of Congress named Bachmann as being among the colleagues they would "most like to mute." But her over-the-top comments have also turned Bachmann into a favorite of a conservative movement that believes the GOP has wandered from its traditional values. She is one of just two elected officials scheduled to speak at a national tea party convention in February. (The other represents Tennessee, where the convention will be held.) http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-michele-bachmann27-2009dec27,0,658913.story?page=1

After quiet first months, Franken's sharp tongue emerges in Senate. http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/73417-franken-shows-glimpses-of-sharp-tongue-behind-the-scenes

A helpful guide to who's been naughty and nice. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-naugthynice25-2009dec25,0,5223516.story

Most outrageous comments of 2009. http://mediamatters.org/research/200912210033

After the last insult had been spat from the Senate floor, after final passage of a legislative attempt to do something significant in this messy democracy, a leading voice of the opposition made a public prediction: “People will be hunting Democrats with dogs,” said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas. This was 1993, in the fragile first year of Bill Clinton’s presidency, on a vote to raise taxes for the wealthiest 1.2 percent and cut them for the poor and small businesses. That budget bill passed without a single Republican vote. What followed was the greatest period of peacetime prosperity in modern times, a budget surplus of $559 billion and a president who left office with an approval rating of 66 percent — the highest of any since World War II. But first, some Democrats were indeed hunted, particularly in the South, which has been cleansing itself of the party since the Civil Rights era. Gramm went on to deregulate the banking industry, setting the stage for a binge of economic nihilism that nearly brought down the world economy. That fight in 1993 is worth recalling this Christmas Eve, as the voices of the apocalypse rain down on Democrats who dare try to expand health care for their fellow Americans. In many ways, the budget vote 16 years ago ushered in the modern era of hyper-partisanship. Right-wing talk radio hosts were just entering their steroid phase, threatening any Republican who voted for a bill that ultimately led to budget surpluses. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/profiles-in-cowardice/?em

2009: A year of Fox News political activism. http://mediamatters.org/research/200912220009

Franken's move instantly hit Senator John McCain's (R-AZ) concern trigger and, speaking right after Lieberman, he seemed outraged as he remarked, "I've been around here twenty-some years, first time I've seen a member denied a minute or two to finish his remarks. And I must say that I don't know what's happening here in this body, but I think it's wrong." Well, it seems Senator McCain may have had a bit of a memory lapse. As Faiz Shakir of Think Progress points out, in October of 2002, McCain refused to grant just 30 seconds of extra time during the Iraq war debate to former Senator Mark Dayton (D-MN). MSNBC's Rachel Maddow last night featured a segment with video, and the transcript from CSPAN's archives that doesn't show us John McCain denying another senator time to finish making a point during an important debate because mysteriously, the CSPAN video, Maddow explains "It, it...it just goes to black." The audio and the video just inexplicably go blank. Luckily, as Maddow points out, we still know exactly what happens thanks to the transcripts. http://rawstory.com/2009/12/cspan-footage-mccain-denying-dem-senator-extra-time-debate-blacked/

McCain: Obama Created More Partisan Environment Than Bill Clinton. If blame for the partisan environment was to go mutually to Republicans as well as the president, McCain wasn't offering it. The Arizona Republican never mentioned the role played by the GOP (nor was he asked by host Chris Wallace) in overtly trying to derail health care reform. He was, however, asked if he had grown more conservative and combative in the 11 months since the election. "I, unfortunately, have always been combative," he said, adding that's he's always been conservative as well. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/20/mccain-obama-created-more_n_398452.html

Franken shuts down Lieberman on Senate Floor. http://www.jacksonnjonline.com/2009/12/19/franken-shuts-down-lieberman-on-senate-floor/

Ezell Harris, a Florida conservative who launched his campaign for Orlando City Council at a Tea Party rally, has been arrested on drug trafficking charges. http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2009/11/orlando-council-candidate-busted-for-drug-trafficking.html

111th Congress and general news, archived November 15, 2009

Reporting from Washington - In a move that stoked optimism for global climate negotiations but raised tempers on Capitol Hill, Democrats on a key Senate committee swept aside a Republican boycott Thursday to pass a far-reaching plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The 11-1 vote came after the Democrats, led by Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), invoked a procedural rule to take a vote even though no Republicans were at the meeting. Republican senators have stayed away from the panel's hearings on the bill all week, saying a more detailed government analysis of the measure's costs was needed before any vote took place. The decision by Democrats to proceed with the vote anyway rippled through Washington and the international community, which is gearing up for climate treaty negotiations in Copenhagen next month. Environmental groups praised the move, saying it gave the United States a much-needed dose of credibility going in to the talks. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-climate6-2009nov06,0,7985243.story

Is The Tea Party Over? http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/11/tea-party-down

What Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., did on the House floor Tuesday night may not be directly comparable to what Wilson did -- he said that the Republican healthcare plan is "don't get sick," but if you do, "die quickly," but he didn't interrupt the president in front of Congress and a prime-time national audience. Still, the reactions the two men have gotten from their respective party's bases have been strikingly similar. Grayson, who's serving his first term, probably won't get the kind of campaign invitations from high-profile colleagues that Wilson has -- but he has taken in more than $115,000 from just one fundraising Web site, ActBlue.com. http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/feature/2009/10/02/grayson/

Keeping America Safe From the Ranters. As the Elders of the media die, who'll replace them? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574447621545728370.html

Politics as religion in America. Conservatism has been converted into a religious belief, and now compromise doesn't have a prayer. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gabler2-2009oct02,0,7817347.story

Topless club owner: Gingrich group rescinded award. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091002/D9B2K9VG0.html

One man's rumor is another man's reality. Dispelling conspiracy theories and untruths can be difficult when people only hear what they already believe. He cites a 2004 experiment in which liberals and conservatives were asked to examine their views on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. After reading a statement that declared that Iraq had WMD, the subjects were asked to reveal their views on a five-point scale, from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree." Then they were handed a mock news article in which President George W. Bush defended the war, in part by suggesting that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. After reading that article, participants were also asked to read about the CIA's Duelfer report, which showed that the Bush administration was wrong to think Iraq had such weapons. Finally, they were again asked their opinion of the original statement on the same five-point scale. What the researchers found is that the outcome depended on the participants' political point of view. The liberals shifted in the direction of greater disagreement, while the conservatives showed a significant shift in agreeing with the original statement. As the researchers put it, "The correction backfired -- conservatives who received the correction telling them that Iraq did not have WMD were more likely to believe that Iraq had WMD." http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rodriguez28-2009sep28,0,7227491.column

Working Class Zero. Where was the Tea Party movement when the tax burden was shifted from the high end to the middle? Where were the patriots when Wall Street, backed in Congress by Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, rewrote securities laws so that the wonder boys of Lehman and A.I.G. could reduce home mortgages to poker chips at a trillion-dollar table? Where were the angry “stiffs” when the banking industry rolled the last Congress — majority Democrat, by the way — into rewriting bankruptcy law, making it easier to keep people in permanent credit card hock? Where were they when President Bush started the bailouts, with $700 billion that had to be paid on a few days’ notice — with no debate — to save global capitalism? They were nowhere, because they were clueless, just as most journalists were. But now, at a time when a new president wants to reform health care to fix the largest single cause of middle-class economic collapse, he’s called a Nazi by these self-described friends of the working stiff. http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/working-class-zero/?ref=opinion

Republicans are not the solution, Republicans are the PROBLEM.

Ire over Obama speech action draws hundreds to meeting. Parents, teachers and students told the La Mesa-Spring Valley School Board at a raucous meeting last night that they were disappointed and in some cases ashamed of the board's decision to not show President Barack Obama's education speech to students live last week. Some angrily called for the resignation of the three board members — President Penny Halgren and trustees Bob Duff and Rick Winet — who voted to not show the speech Sept. 8, the day it aired, despite apologies and words of regret from the three. The board last night voted to formally accept their apologies. http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/sep/16/ire-over-obama-speech-action-draws-hundreds-meetin/

Crowd estimates vary wildly for Capitol march. How many angry conservatives showed up to protest Obama's policies? Was it 2 million? Or 60,000? It all depends on whom you ask. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-crowd15-2009sep15,0,1062512.story

Some fear GOP is being carried to the extreme. The Republican establishment hopes cooler heads will prevail over strongly anti-Obama parts of the conservative base. Some are pressuring the Republican National Committee and other mainstream GOP groups to cut ties with WorldNetDaily.com, which reports some of the allegations. Its articles are cited by websites and pundits on the right. More than any other group, critics say, WorldNetDaily sets the conservative fringe agenda. "There's a war going on, a pretty big one," said Dan Riehl, a Virginia conservative whose popular blog, Riehl World View, has criticized those challenging the base. "Many of us distrust the elite Republican establishment." "Do we look crackpot? Yes," Goldfarb said. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gop-fringe14-2009sep14,0,940651.story

Outburst in speech may be a 1st in U.S. http://www.freep.com/article/20090913/NEWS15/909130449/1322/Outburst-in-speech-may-be-a-1st-in-U.S.

Hate breeds hate. Two days ago, I boarded a plane heading for New York City. As we descended over the Manhattan skyline, I realized it was Sept. 11. I thought back to the emotions that followed that day eight years ago, a feeling of unity, a feeling a patriotism, a feeling that no enemy, no matter how evil or determined, could ever tear us apart. The enemy doesn't have to. The way we are going, we'll do it ourselves. http://www.freep.com/article/20090913/COL01/909130431/1318/-You-lie---a-new-low--but-not-the-last

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind. Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t. But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy! http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/opinion/13dowd.html?_r=2

'Spanky' Duvall's conduct is grounds for a good thrashing. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez13-2009sep13,0,5073769.column

Driving near the Mall today as Beck's 9/12 protesters milled about, I began to grasp this message when I saw one handwritten sign that said, "Obama: More Dangerous Than Al-Qaida." I finally understood when I saw another handwritten sign that said, "Diversity Is A Disease." Riddle solved. The 9/12-ers are white separatists. http://www.slate.com/id/2228208/

"You have redefined gridlock in Washington, D.C.," Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told the crowd gathered in front of the Capitol on Saturday for a rally that was part Tea Party and part Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project. The reference was to the highways around the nation's capital, which Blackburn said she'd heard had been closed due to the 1.5 million people who'd come out for the demonstration. Crowd size estimates like the one Blackburn gave were flying around all day on Saturday. Some said they heard 1.2 million, others 1.6 million; conservative blogger Michelle Malkin said in one post that ABC News had estimated the attendance at 2 million. Malkin was wrong -- ABC had never reported anything like that. In her own way, Blackburn was wrong, too. So were all the others. They weren't even in the ballpark, which most news outlets estimated in the tens of thousands and D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services said, unofficially, was somewhere between 60,000 and 75,000 people. Still, that size crowd is a pretty impressive accomplishment. It's certainly not as large as plenty of the protests Washington has seen over the years, including some of the more recent anti-war rallies, but considering how unfamiliar these kinds of demonstrations are to the right and the distance many of the attendees traveled to be here, it can't be dismissed out of hand. But the crowd numbers, and the confusion over them, were symptomatic of a larger phenomenon that was taking place on the Mall Saturday. Stepping in to the crowd there felt, at some times, like stepping into an alternate reality. It was a reality in which provisions establishing "death panels" really can be found in healthcare reform legislation, where President Obama is a Marxist and a Fascist, where the majority was represented by these protesters rather than the voters who elected a Democrat president and gave him an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress less than a year ago -- it was a reality where the D.C. Beltway had been shut down due to an influx of 1.5 million people, almost three times more than the entire population of Washington. http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/feature/2009/09/12/protest/

Spank me, then let's do lunch. How many hypocritical Republicans can dance on the head of a sex scandal? http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/09/11/notes091109.DTL

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/09/11/notes091109.DTL#ixzz0QxaT41OM

Thousands of downtown DC protesters blast Obama. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090912/D9AM29100.html

South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson yells 'You lie!' to the president. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/comments_blog/2009/09/south-carolina-joe-wilson-liar-president-barack-obama.html

10 Most Offensive Tea Party Signs (PHOTOS) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/16/10-most-offensive-tea-par_n_187554.html

The voices behind Joe Wilson. The South Carolina congressman is representative of the GOP's talk-radio-led wing. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten12-2009sep12,0,1567292.column

OC Assemblyman In Bed With Lobbyist . . . No, Literally In Bed. "She wears little eye-patch underwear," said Duvall, who is married with two children. "So, the other day she came here with her underwear, Thursday. And
 so, we had made love Wednesday--a lot! And so she'll, she's all, 'I am going 
up and down the stairs, and you're dripping out of me!' So messy!" "So, I am getting into spanking her. Yeah, I like it. I like spanking her. She goes, 'I know you like spanking me.' I said, 'Yeah! Because you're such a bad girl!'" "And so her birthday was Monday," he said at the Wednesday, July 8 committee hearing. "I was 54 on June 14, so for a month, she was 19 years younger than 
me. I said, 'Now, you're getting old. I am going to have to trade you in.' And she goes, '[I'm] 36.' She is 18 years younger than me. And so I keep
 teasing her, and she goes, 'I know you French men. You divide your age by 
two and add seven, and if you're older than that, you dump us.'" According to voter-registration records reviewed by the Weekly, veteran Sacramento-based lobbyist Heidi DeJong Barsuglia turned 36 years old on Monday, July 6. "Their relationship is the worst-kept secret in Sacramento," a capitol staffer recently told me. "He's old and fat. She's hot, blonde and about 20
 years younger. He could have never gotten a woman like that before he got
 this job.'" http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/breaking-news/oc-assemblyman-in-bed-with-lob/

Duvall incident spotlights politicians' perks in capital. Beyond lavish meals with fine wines, special interests offer overseas junkets, pro basketball games, weekends at spas and golf resorts and in some cases sex. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-duvall11-2009sep11,0,3087018.story?page=1

It Pays To Heckle (for the Other Guy). In the hours after South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson yelled "You lie" at President Obama during his health care speech, challenger Rob Miller enjoyed a newfound surge in popularity, raising more than $55,000 by the end of the night. "55K raised, let's double THAT in 12 hours," Miller tweeted. And he did. As of Thursday afternoon, Miller had raised approximately $474,134 from a variety of newly minted political groups, including "Iowans Against Idiocy," "No More Name Calling," and "Joe's Gotta Go!" Miller lost narrowly to Wilson in the 2008 elections, running the most competitive race for a Democrat in the state. He plans to challenge Wilson again in the 2010 election, although if Twitter stats are any indication—Wilson has 8,343 followers while Miller only has 1,487—he may have a way to go. Wilson has been roundly condemned for the outburst and has since apologized, calling his actions "inappropriate and regrettable." http://slatest.slate.com/id/2228023/entry/1

Inside the mind of Joe Wilson. America is changing, and that makes white people like Joe Wilson -- and Michele Bachmann -- very nervous. When he called the president a liar, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., apparently "forgot" he wasn't at one of those rowdy town halls. Besides the show of disrespect, and the fact that he was wrong, the legislator's comments expose a virulent racism and paranoia against undocumented workers. As we enter Hispanic Heritage Month, America would do well to examine the legislator's political paranoia instead of rehashing his churlish, attention-seeking outburst. The legislator's behavior is uncommon, but his attitude is not. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/09/11/joe_wilson/

s-JOE-WILSON-large.jpg
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/09/gop-rep-wilson-yells-out_n_281480.html

Wilson's wasn't the only disruption, though it was the most extreme. Throughout the speech, Republican members of Congress repeatedly held up stacks of papers that appeared to represent ideas they had for the bill. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) held signs that read "What Bill?" and "What Plan?" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/09/joe-wilson-apologizes-for_n_281541.html

Is the GOP a cult? Even some Republicans said their party had gone overboard in criticizing Obama for giving a speech to schoolkids. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/09/10/overreacting_to_obama/

DUVALL RESIGNS OVER SEX BLAB FLAP Michael Duvall has resigned from the California State Assembly after a local TV news station reported his remarks about sexual escapades with two lobbyists. Duvall was unaware that a live mic was picking up his hanky-spanky talk. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/08/lobbyblog_n_279244.html

Crimes Against the Soul of America. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-myss/crimes-against-the-soul-o_b_278188.html

The Republican Death Machine. Who's really pulling the plug on Grandma? http://www.slate.com/id/2226518/

Party host may sue over deputy's actions. Friend of Busby says incident was violation of her civil rights. http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/aug/27/party-host-may-sue-over-deputys-actions/?uniontrib

More GOP crazy: "Town hells!" http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/?last_story=/opinion/walsh/politics/2009/08/05/town_hells/

And That’s Not the Way It Is. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/opinion/26rich.html?pagewanted=1

You'll have to see it to believe it, and the video isn't up yet (Update: Now it is, and it's at the bottom of this post). But Tuesday night on CNN's "Larry King Live," rising GOP shill/star Liz Cheney refused to denounce the "Birthers" -- the right-wing fringe movement devoted to denying (for a changing array of reasons) that Obama is eligible to be president. Instead, Cheney defended the Birthers by blaming Obama for their rage. I wasn't planning to blog so I took notes in real-time, and I can't promise Cheney's quote is verbatim. But she said the same thing twice, so I'm confident I caught her drift. After King showed video of the crazy birther who disrupted a meeting with poor GOP Rep. Mike Castle, demanding he acknowledge Obama was born in Kenya (that's one birther claim); and after Carville denounced them as a "poor, pathetic" fringe group, King gave Cheney a chance to distance herself from them. But Cheney demurred, telling King the Birther movement exists because "People are uncomfortable with a president who is reluctant to defend the nation overseas." http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/?last_story=/opinion/walsh/politics/2009/07/22/liz_cheney_and_birthers/

Yet pragmatism devoid of principle will perpetuate the strategic void that Obama inherited. The urgent need is for the administration to articulate a concrete set of organizing precepts -- not simply cliches -- to frame basic U.S. policy going forward.

What should those principles be?

First, the Long War may be long, but it should not get any bigger. The regime-change approach -- invade and occupy to transform -- hasn't worked; simply trying harder in some other venue (Somalia? Sudan?) won't produce different results. In short, no more Iraqs.

Second, forget the Bush Doctrine of preventive war: no more wars of choice; henceforth only wars of necessity. The United States will use force only as a last resort and even then only when genuinely vital interests are at stake.

Third, no more crusades unless the American people buy in; expecting a relative handful of soldiers to carry the load while the rest of the country binges on consumption is unconscionable. At a minimum, the generation that opts for war should pay for it through higher taxes rather than foisting a burden of debt onto their grandchildren.

Fourth, the key to keeping America safe is to defend it, not to project American muscle to obscure places around the world. It may or may not be true that a "mighty fortress is our God"; had the United States been a mighty fortress on 9/11, however, the 19 hijackers would have gotten nowhere.

Fifth, by all means let the United States promote the spread of freedom and democracy. Yet we're more likely to enjoy success by modeling freedom rather than trying to impose it. To provide a suitable model, we've considerable work to do here at home. Meanwhile, let's not deny others the prerogative of defining for themselves exactly what it means to be free. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-bacevich6-2009jul06,0,5498325.story

Anti-tax rally offers good return. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-erskine5-2009jul05,1,2322524.column

Boehner Reaches Into Bag of Tricks to Disrupt Democrats. boner http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/us/politics/05hill-web.html?ref=us

Hostess at fundraiser for Busby is arrested. Candidate to confront deputies over raid. Host, guest arrested at Busby fundraiser. http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jun/29/1m29busby215750-candidate-confront-deputies-over-r/?northcounty&zIndex=124089 http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/06/san-diego-sheriff-calls-for-probe-into-pepper-spray-use-at-political-event.html

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had a few choice words about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) landmark climate-change bill after its passage Friday. When asked why he read portions of the cap-and-trade bill on the floor Friday night, Boehner told The Hill, "Hey, people deserve to know what's in this pile of s--t." http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/boehner-climate-bill-a-pile-of-s--t-2009-06-27.html

The Real Lesson Of Iran -- Beware America's Republican Mullahs. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/the-real-lesson-of-iran_b_218359.html

The Obama Haters’ Silent Enablers. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/14rich.html?_r=2

Brasscheck TV. Imagine...TV about what's really going on. http://www.brasschecktv.com/

Pelosi denies being informed about waterboarding. The House speaker says the Bush administration deliberately misled Congress. GOP says Democrats were told. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-pelosi-torture15-2009may15,0,2174313.story

The nation needs the same old GOP. Republicans have to put a leash on moderation and engage in a bitter battle to deal with problems of their own making. Republicans need to work harder to ensure that America fails, as Bush and Reagan planned. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-edwards10-2009may10,0,2427294.story

The American people have said clearly in the last two national elections that they don't like the GOP of Bush, Karl Rove, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, etc. All the rebranding efforts and pandering tours won't work as long as the party remains under the leadership of the team that was a party-wrecking disaster on the order of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Bush 41 and Bush 43. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-viguerie10-2009may10,0,6986091.story

When Frank Luntz intervenes in the debate over healthcare, as he did this week with a strongly worded memorandum addressed to Republicans on Capitol Hill, it is time to prepare for yet another verbal barrage from the right against "Washington," "government," "politicians" and "federal bureaucrats," as well as a few soft words designed to "personalize" and "humanize" the usual right-wing propaganda. In that memo, first reported by Politico, the wily pollster employed the same linguistic patterns, based on the same survey techniques, that he was using several years ago, when he was last seen advising GOP leaders on how to market their campaign for privatizing Social Security. That didn't work out too well, of course. But dismantling the most successful and popular federal program was far more challenging than blocking any reform of healthcare, a dubious achievement that Republicans and conservatives have maintained for well over half a century. Even so, the content and tone of the latest Luntz memo suggest that preserving the current system will not be nearly as easy as defeating the Clinton reform plan in 1994. http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/05/08/socialism/

Frank Luntz warns GOP: Health reform is popular. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22155.html

Conyers, Nadler Formally Request DOJ Appoint Torture Special Prosecutor http://www.pubrecord.org/torture/869.html?task=view

The Bigots’ Last Hurrah. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/opinion/19Rich.html?ref=opinion

There's no point in hiding it, no point in trying to explain it away. Yes, it's true: We progressives are angry. And we no longer care if the centrist, moderate guardians of the establishment scold us for it. Our anger is not just some vague feeling whose source we can't put our finger on. It isn't based on absurd conspiracy theories and it isn't illogical. We're angry because of what has happened to our country, because of how we've been treated, and because of the innumerable crimes the conservatives have committed. We're angry at the president, we're angry at the Congress, we're angry at the news media. And we have every right to be. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-daou/moral-outrage-and-the-har_b_183490.html

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs ridiculed the GOP proposal for being brief and containing a "picture of a windmill" instead of numbers. "It took me several minutes to read it," Gibbs joked. Gibbs said the president is "absolutely" disappointed that the Republicans' counterproposal doesn't contain more detail. "I think the 'Party of No' has become the party of no new ideas," Gibbs said. Gibbs added that "we just hope that next time it will contain actual numbers so somebody can evaluate what it means." "I don't think that's a whole lot to ask," he said. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/white-house-scoffs-at-house-gops-budget-2009-03-26.html

Palin's teenage daughter splits from fiance. http://www.freep.com/article/20090311/NEWS07/90311096/Palin+s+teenage+daughter+splits+from+fiance

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson's and who now says he wants an American president to fail?! With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party -- you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of our country. Instead, Republicans are today's fifth column sabotaging American renewal. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/open-letter-to-the-republ_b_172822.html

By any sane account, Rush Limbaugh is dead weight when it comes to finding a solution to anything. Like Sarah Palin, his spiritual bride, he lurks in the shadow of the human psyche, expressing the dark anger, resentment, jealousy, and vindictiveness that society can never escape. And yet, the next time you tune into Limbaugh's censorious circus of insensitive scurrility, give him a kind thought. As far back as Mark Twain, the American character has been ornery. We secretly love rascals, bank robbers, tricksters, swindlers, hell raisers, and outlaws. And when we feel so inclined, we laugh at them. Rush Limbaugh may represent a toxic form of entertainment -- and the bile he spews bears no resemblance to true morality -- but the fact that America makes room for him is something to be proud of. I don't pray that he goes away. I pray that we can keep laughing, even if our grin is crooked, at the pranks of the eternal shadow who is our companion for life, whether we want him or not. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/rush-limbaugh-icon-of-ant_b_172900.html

Limbaugh typically attracts about 14.25 million listeners weekly -- is based on Arbitron figures from about 30 cities and spot checks of a similar number of stations. Harrison stands by his guess even though Limbaugh's program is heard on more than 600 stations across the country. "Once you get below the big markets, [the audience] doesn't add up to critical mass," he said. http://mediamatters.org/items/200903080013?f=h_latest

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence—exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we're cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush's every rancorous word—we'll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time. Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined. But do the rest of us understand what we are doing to ourselves by accepting this leadership? Rush is to the Republicanism of the 2000s what Jesse Jackson was to the Democratic party in the 1980s. He plays an important role in our coalition, and of course he and his supporters have to be treated with respect. But he cannot be allowed to be the public face of the enterprise—and we have to find ways of assuring the public that he is just one Republican voice among many, and very far from the most important. http://www.newsweek.com/id/188279?from=rss

Limbaugh is now calling people "butt boys." This is on top of his adorable comments that Republicans are being asked to "bend over and grab their ankles" because Obama is black. I realize that the term "butt boy" is fairly common in junior high locker rooms as a synonym for sycophant, but when did it become ok to say this on radio? Does the FCC know that it literally means submissive, teenage anal sex (with a strong implication of coercion?) http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/130249/the_smoking_wreckage_of_limbaugh_nation/

Why I'm Not Now and Have Never Been the Democrats' "Rush Limbaugh" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/why-im-not-now-and-have-n_b_172410.html

Limbaugh: Kennedy Will Be Dead By The Time Health Care Bill Passes. look who's talking, druggie! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/06/limbaugh-kennedy-will-be_n_172595.html

President Obama has the ability -- he has the ability to inspire excellence in people's pursuits. He has the ability to do all this, yet he pursues a path, seeks a path that punishes achievement, that punishes earners and punishes -- and he speaks negatively of the country. Ronald Reagan used to speak of a shining city on a hill. Barack Obama portrays America as a soup kitchen in some dark night in a corner of America that's very obscure. rush limbaugh is an idiot. there is something stupid in every paragraph of this speech. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/03/obama-limbaugh.html

This is "a great leader for conservatives"? Media Matters looks back at some of the worst of Limbaugh. Summary: In light of Limbaugh's continued prominence as a major figure among conservatives, Media Matters for America looks back at Limbaugh's history of inflammatory, controversial, and "ugly" remarks. http://mediamatters.org/items/200903030034

Democrats push through new rules package. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/democrats-push-through-new-rules-package-2009-01-06.html

110th Congress and general news

Bailouts, scandals and clashes mark 110th Congress. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/bailouts-scandals-and-bush-clashes-mark-110th-congress-2008-12-25.html

GOP backs away from Pelosi blame. Republican leaders are backtracking on their criticism of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) one day after blaming her for the House’s stunning rejection of a compromise financial rescue bill. GOP leadership officials toned down their rhetoric significantly on Tuesday after rank-and-file-members publicly expressed outrage with the claim that Pelosi’s partisan floor speech triggered a dozen Republican members to change their minds and reject the bailout measure. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/gop-backs-away-from-pelosi-blame-2008-09-30.html

Crybaby Republicans point finger of blame at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for 'partisan' speech. House Republicans blamed a "partisan" speech by the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, during the debate. She had blamed George Bush's "reckless economic policies", "fiscal irresponsibility" and an "anything goes economic policy" for the crisis. After the vote, John Boehner, the Republican minority leader, said: "I do believe we could have got there today, had it not been for this partisan speech the Speaker gave. The Speaker had to give a partisan voice that poisoned our conference." http://news.scotsman.com/world/Republicans-point-finger-of-blame.4540098.jp

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 674 http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2008&rollnumber=674

Crushing failure for lobbyists. The House’s rejection of the Treasury’s Wall Street rescue plan was a defeat not only for the congressional leaders who backed it but also for the business groups that had urged Congress to act. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers warned lawmakers over the weekend that it would “score” the vote, meaning a “no” vote would affect the ratings these groups give to lawmakers at the end of each legislative session. Groups like the American Trucking Associations and the International Franchise Association said the bailout was necessary to avoid a severe economic downturn. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/crushing-failure-for-lobbyists-2008-09-29.html

Pelosi: Bush Impeachment `Off the Table’ House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi promised Wednesday that when her party takes over, the new majority will not attempt to remove President Bush from office, despite earlier pledges to the contrary from others in the caucus. “I have said it before and I will say it again: Impeachment is off the table,” Pelosi, D-Calif., said during a news conference. Pelosi also said Democrats, despite complaining about years of unfair treatment by the majority GOP, “are not about getting even” with Republicans. She said the GOP, which frequently excluded Democrats from conference committee hearings and often blocked attempts to introduce amendments, would not suffer similar treatment. http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2006/11/08/cq_1916.html

Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002. In Meetings, Spy Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say. In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk. Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664.html

“Democrats pledge civility and bipartisanship in the conduct of the work here and we pledge partnerships with Congress and the Republicans in Congress, and the president — not partisanship.”

Harry S. Truman http://www.snopes.com/quotes/truman/truman.asp

Speaker Pelosi: I am not a Washington insider. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is not a “Washington insider,” she insisted Saturday. Asked whether she classified herself as a “Washington insider” at a briefing sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, Pelosi answered, “Oh, absolutely not. No.” Pelosi is an 11-term lawmaker, the daughter of a prominent Maryland political family and third in the line of succession for the presidency but not, she claimed, an “insider.” Pressed for an explanation, Pelosi said that being an insider is about a person’s “state of mind,” not their tenure in politics. “Inside, outside – you have to know the territory so you can work it, but you never become a part of it”, she said. What do Bush and Cheney have on Pelosi? http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/speaker-pelosi-i-am-not-a-washington-insider-2008-08-23.html

Echoes of Cunningham heard in Stevens' case. Few San Diegans would know Sen. Ted Stevens if they saw him. But most San Diegans know all about the type of corruption the powerful Alaska Republican stands accused of. They've seen it all before: the persistent grasping for extra dollars; the unending demands for special treatment; the haughty indignation when challenged. And, most of all, they are familiar with the overweening sense of entitlement that lies behind most cases of congressional corruption. They've seen it in one of their neighbors, a man they sent to Washington with high hopes and deep pride – former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham. The Republican who once lived in a Rancho Santa Fe mansion today sits in a federal prison in Arizona, indelibly branded as the most corrupt member of Congress in U.S. history. Though what Stevens is accused of does not in any way approach the scope of that venality, there are clear echoes of the Cunningham case in the indictment handed down Tuesday with its seven felony counts. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080731/news_1n31corrupt.html

House Speaker Pelosi calls Bush 'a total failure'. President Bush has been a "total failure" in everything from the economy to the war to energy policy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. In an interview on CNN, the California Democrat was asked to respond to video of the president criticizing the Democratic-led Congress for heading into the final 26 days of the legislative session without having passed a single government spending bill. Pelosi shot back in unusually personal terms. "You know, God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States, a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject," Pelosi replied. She then tsk-tsked Bush for "challenging Congress when we are trying to sweep up after his mess over and over and over again." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_pelosi_bush.html?source=mypi

WHAT THEY'RE DOING: Rep. Bob Filner, the San Diego Democrat who is chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, in the past month alone arranged symposiums that examined the claims backlog at the Department of Veterans Affairs, post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, the latter considered the signature injury of the war in Iraq. Recently, Filner helped to shepherd through Congress bills that would pay full tuition at a four-year university for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, give money to the U.S. Olympics Committee to create activities for veterans with disabilities, help veterans readjust after deployments and provide mental health treatment for veterans' relatives. Rep. Duncan Hunter of Alpine – the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, not to mention a 28-year member of the panel and its former chairman and a military veteran himself – recently devoted his time to ensuring that a Vietnam veteran received a belated award for valor. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080714/news_1m14letter.html http://www.beachblogger.net/bwtm/index.php?title=Hunter%2C_Duncan_Lee#Trouble_brewing

Congress' new low. Plenty of reasons for tiny 9% approval rating. A stunning new poll from Rasmussen Reports underlines that Americans aren't just deeply disappointed in the performance of President George W. Bush but Congress as well. The Rasmussen survey, in fact, showed Bush – whose approval ratings have long hovered around 30 percent – to be downright popular compared with Congress. Just 9 percent of those polled gave federal lawmakers a thumbs up. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080711/news_lz1ed11bottom.html

Our can't-do federal government. We've seen the federal government at its worst over the past six months. Consider the controversies over contaminated tomatoes and meat, tainted toys, toxic trailers, counterfeit Heparin, aircraft groundings, veterans' care, missing warheads and unrelenting contract fraud. For every NASA success on the surface of Mars, there seems to be a failure back on Earth. The evidence starts at the top of government, where the next president will oversee at least 64 discrete titles, including associate deputy secretaries, deputy associate undersecretaries and assistant assistant secretaries. The layering not only increases the distance that information must travel before reaching the president, it also obscures true performance. In addition, the next president will appoint nearly 3,000 political executives. Not only will these appointees dilute transparency between the top and bottom of government, but each must go through a brutish approval process that will vitiate the chain of command. The 60 pages of clearance forms have never been more complex or difficult to complete – one set has to be filled out using a typewriter. Hillary Clinton might have promised to be ready on Day One, but she would have been lucky if her appointees were in place by March of Year Two. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080627/news_lz1e27light.html

"Bush threatens more freedom." America isn't over. The next president must free us from Bush's 'freedom agenda,' but that's not an excuse to disengage from the world. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-widmer15-2008jun15,0,6707698.story

No land yachts here. Duncan Hunter of Alpine wins the “Living Frugally” award: he drives a gray Chevy Suburban – “antiquated” is the word spokesman Joe Kasper likes to use – with 200,000 miles on it. Sounds like bull shit to me. He drives this same Suburban in DC and Alpine? http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20080519-9999-1m19letter.html

Democracy in America is a series of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck. The reigning presumption about the American experience, as the historian Lawrence Goodwyn has written, is grounded in the idea of progress, the conviction that the present is "better" than the past and the future will bring even more improvement. For all of its shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, "The system works." Now all bets are off. We have fallen under the spell of money, faction, and fear, and the great American experience in creating a different future together has been subjugated to individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power -and to the claims of empire, with its ravenous demands and stuporous distractions. A sense of political impotence pervades the country -- a mass resignation defined by Goodwyn as "believing the dogma of 'democracy' on a superficial public level but not believing it privately." We hold elections, knowing they are unlikely to bring the corporate state under popular control. There is considerable vigor at local levels, but it has not been translated into new vistas of social possibility or the political will to address our most intractable challenges. Hope no longer seems the operative dynamic of America, and without hope we lose the talent and drive to cooperate in the shaping of our destiny. http://www.alternet.org/democracy/85521/

Lobbyists find ways to skirt new gift-ban law. Political donation will get face time with lawmakers. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080420/news_1n20lobbyist.html

California Rep. Doolittle announces retirement from Congress http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/01/11/news/state/12_00_591_10_08.txt

Before Congress left last week, Democrats scheduled 11 pro forma sessions to fill the void until the Senate returns to regular session on Jan. 22. The purpose was to stop Bush from using the constitutional power presidents hold under the Constitution to bypass Senate confirmation and unilaterally install his nominees in office when Congress is adjourned. Democrats wanted to block one such recess appointment in particular: Steven Bradbury, acting chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legislative Counsel. Bush nominated Bradbury for the job and asked the Senate to remove the ``acting in his title. Democrats would have none of it, complaining Bradbury had signed two secret memos in 2005 saying it was OK for the CIA to use harsh interrogation techniques -- some call it torture -- on terrorism detainees. http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=38910&dcn=todaysnews

Senate stays in session over holiday to thwart Bush. Webb won't be the only senator tasked with presiding over the shortened sessions. Other Democrats -- including Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Cardin of Maryland and Chuck Schumer of New York -- will share the duty. http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/21/senate.pro.forma/index.html

Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-giraldi/the-violent-radicalizatio_b_74091.html

Senate stays technically in session to fend off Bush 'recess' appointments http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/11/22/news/politics/14_37_7811_21_07.txt

Why Congress won't reform: Changes in wake of Cunningham scandal don't dent corrupt 'earmarking' system http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/11/20/perspective/9_42_1711_17_07.txt

Issa's cash crutch for electoral college initiative a risky investment - for us http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/11/06/opinion/editorials/19_45_2711_5_07.txt

The Art of the Hissy Fit, By Digby , TomPaine.com. Posted October 25, 2007. http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/66062/

Unlike the Democrats, Republicans have mastered the art of throwing hissy fits as a political tool to control political dialogue.

Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) Outrageous Remarks on House Floor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsGaNR9dVPM

Survey indicates dissatisfaction with government management http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=38300&dcn=todaysnews

Levin has also emerged as Capitol Hill's leading advocate of "tax fairness" issues http://www.macombdaily.com/stories/101407/loc_levin001.shtml

Democratic leaders call Limbaugh comments ‘beyond the pale’ http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/democratic-leaders-call-limbaugh-comments-beyond-the-pale-2007-09-28.html

Dianne Feinstein -- Symbol of the Worthless Beltway Democrat http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/23/feinstein/index.html

e-mail your congressman: http://www.house.gov/writerep/

http://www.postcrescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070112/APC0101/70112150&GID=IIl5VtC490BS0/GFFfX+xoi6fO24Tir7UQoAgkzGQCQ%3D

http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/state/article/0,1375,VCS_122_5170823,00.html

Pelosi backs Murtha for majority leader http://hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/110906/pelosi2.html

2010 Elections

Senate

Last week, in a television interview, Lowden insisted that no, she hadn’t misspoken, she meant actual bartering. “Let’s change the system and talk about what the possibilities are,” she said. “I’m telling you that this works. You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor. They would say I’ll paint your house…. I’m not backing down from that system.” http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_good_ol_days_before_anesthesia_20100429/

John McCain, the maverick? Apparently not anymore. "I never considered myself a maverick," McCain told Newsweek's David Margolick in an interview in which he seems to distance himself from his trademark moniker. "I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities." But as recently as last month, McCain's 2008 running mate, Sarah Palin, touted the Arizona senator's "maverick" status, referring to "McCain the Maverick" four times in 15 minutes at a campaign rally in Tuscon. (The Newsweek piece, is ironically subtitled "A maverick fights for his political life--and his soul.") Until now, McCain was never reluctant to embrace the "maverick" label. Here's a look at some of his past ads and appearances that tout his maverickiness: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/05/john-mccain-im-not-a-mave_n_525600.html#s78723

McCain Senate Re-Election Race Already Getting Ugly. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dawn-teo/mccain-senate-re-election_b_389589.html

The maverick and the rogue teamed up one more time in Mesa on Saturday to rally support for Sen. John McCain's re-election campaign and slam President Barack Obama's landmark health-care overhaul. When not sparring with hecklers, Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and best-selling "Going Rogue" author, heaped praise on McCain's "maverick" Republican style. http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2010/03/27/20100327mcain-palin-mesa-arizona-ON.html

A spokesman for Boxer responded by saying Fiorina is focused on fiction, while the senator is focused on getting the economy back on track. "Not even another bizarre video can distract voters from Fiorina's record as a failed CEO who laid off 28,000 workers and shipped California jobs overseas," said Rose Kapolczynski, Boxer's campaign manager. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-us-calif-gop-convention-senate,0,4370429.story

More

A group of conservative attorneys say they are on a mission from God to unseat four California judges in a rare challenge that is turning a traditionally snooze-button election into what both sides call a battle for the integrity of U.S. courts. Vowing to be God’s ambassadors on the bench, the four San Diego Superior Court candidates are backed by pastors, gun enthusiasts, and opponents of abortion and same-sex marriages. Called “Better Courts Now,” the movement was the brainchild of Don Hamer, San Diego County’s late Zion Christian Fellowship pastor who campaigned locally for California’s ban on gay marriage, Proposition 8, and vetted the candidates before he died of a heart attack in March. His fellow Pastor Brian Hendry and other supporters have carried on his legacy, launching the mostly online campaign to replace the incumbent judges — all Democrats — with Christian conservatives. Backers include El Cajon Gun Exchange, a store that encourages customers to fight for California’s gun owners and visit the “Better Courts Now” website before voting. Pastors have vowed to spread the word. Hendry said the group had raised about $2,000 last month. Read more: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2010-05-30/local-county-news/christian-conservatives-target-seated-judges#ixzz0pW9z4Y00

Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann Photo Op Priced At $10,000. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/16/sarah-palin-michele-bachm_n_501640.html

Republican claims that they will win a hundred seats

For months, House Republicans have been busy touting their recruits and boasting their outrageous claims that they will win a hundred seats. But when you match up Republicans' bravado to their electoral records this cycle, it is clear that they are all hat and no cattle. In the past week alone, four of the NRCC's chosen candidates have lost big: http://dccc.org/blog/archives/what_good_is_the_nrccs_help_these_days/

2012 Elections

Palin Gingrich 2012

Spill, Sarah, Spill: http://news.scotsman.com/world/The--deadly-billiondollar-disaster.6328450.jp

One of the ways that sometime-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been maximizing her celebrity to stack the tall dollars is through all the various speaking engagements she's lined up, which keeps the peripatetic Palin on the road and appearing before a diverse array of audiences. It's been great business for Palin, who gets paid six figures to show up and spit her patented brand of snowbilly wisdom. It's not been great, however, for her occasional captive audiences at various expos, who typically have to endure a speech that has nothing to do with their industry. Palin's latest foray happened this past weekend at the ICSC RECon Conference in Las Vegas, where she was among an array of touted speakers that included Robert Reich and Virginia Postrel. Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal notes that it's pretty standard for figures to game out their remarks in advance and "tailor their speech a little bit to the crowd" -- in this case, a massive gathering of retail real estate industry professionals. But guess what? That didn't happen! And attendees didn't seem to be too happy about it. A few took to their blogs to register their complaints: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/25/palin-speech-in-vegas-pan_n_588699.html

We know that bureaucrats and, even more, Fedzilla, are not the solution; they are the problem. I'd be proud to share a moose-barbecue campfire with the Palin family anytime, so long as I can shoot the moose." That's Ted Nugent on Sarah Palin from the current "100 Most Influential People in the World" cover package of Time. I ask you, dear reader, has any other allegedly reputable magazine ever published a stupider article about a putatively serious subject? Nugent also provides a stirring character reference for the quitter of the Alaska governorship: "The tsunami of support proves that Sarah, 46, represents what many Americans know to be common and sensible. Her rugged individualism, self-reliance and a Herculean work ethic resonate now more than ever in a country spinning away from these basics that made the U.S.A. the last best place. We who are driven to be assets to our families, communities and our beloved country connect with the principles that Sarah Palin embodies." This coming from a man who terms Hillary Clinton "a worthless bitch," believes "Barack Hussein Obama should be put in jail," and whose credentials in the family values department include once attempting to become the legal guardian of a minor in order to have a romantic relationship with her. He also has been ordered by the courts to pay child support to the mother of his illegitimate son whom he has never met. http://mediamatters.org/blog/201005010005

Bristol Palin’s $30,000 Speech: A Transcript: Now, I know what you’re thinking. Or at least, someone told me what you’re thinking right before I came on. You’re wondering what qualifies me to speak to you here today. Well let me tell you what, y’all. I have had a lot of experiences. I’ve had a baby. Do you know how many people have done that? Not a lot, y’all. And even more, I did it by accident. So, good luck finding someone else to talk about that. I know what it’s like to live the hard life, and most of all, I know about abstinence. (do not wink! will be taken wrong!) http://trueslant.com/donovan/2010/05/21/bristol-palins-30000-speech-a-transcript/

Sarah Palin 2012 Opposed By Majority Of Alaskans. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_state_surveys/alaska/just_41_in_alaska_would_vote_for_palin_for_president

Sarah Palin joined Fox News's Bill O'Reilly recently to condemn the critics of the National Day of Prayer, saying that the Judeo-Christian belief was the basis for American law and should continue to be used as a guiding force for creating future legislation. According to Palin, the recent backlash against the National Day of Prayer is proof that some people are trying to enact a "fundamental transformation of America" and to "revisit and rewrite history" in order to shift the Christian nation away from its spiritual roots. Palins's advice: "Go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant -- they're quite clear -- that we would create law based on the God of the bible and the ten commandments. "What in hell scares people about talking about America's foundation of faith?" Palin continued. "It is that world view that involves some people being afraid of being able to discuss our foundation, being able to discuss God in the public square, that's the only thing I can attribute it to." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/10/sarah-palin-american-law_n_569922.html

Say what you will about half term governor Sarah Palin, at least she made the trains run on time.

Bristol Palin goes clubbing after celebrating the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2010/05/07/2010-05-07_bristol_palin_goes_clubbing_after_celebrating_the_national_day_to_prevent_teen_p.html#ixzz0nTMLG6lk

Bristol Palin At 1Oak: Sarah Palin's Underage Daughter Spotted At New York Club. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/07/bristol-palin-at-1oak-sar_n_568142.html

Actually, the one post wasn't "broken off". I merely lifted it out of the ground. The other post was a bit stuck, but nothing my trusty tree saw couldn't handle. Now go pick up your trash, litterbug. Oh, how I love pissing off hippies and destroying their obnoxious graffiti. Thanks for the bungies, loser! "Hours to make, seconds to take!"

Scott Hillier, 15411 El Capitan Real Ln, El Cajon, California 92021-2520 Vice Principal

68.6.178.32 165.24.245.1 165.24.254.40 68.6.178.221 68.6.184.226 68.6.181.238

Slick Sarah

Aha, we’ve been waiting for a comment from America’s most pandering oil-company cheerleader, and here we go. She knows how terrible these situations can be and is sorry for everyone down there, in the entire American coastal South, whoops. She knows. "Having worked/lived thru Exxon oil spill,my family&I understand Gulf residents' fears.Our prayers r w/u.All industry efforts must b employed" When that Exxon Valdez thing happened, in Alaska, she basically stopped it from being worse by covering the leak with her hand — the same hand on which she writes notes, now, for speeches. And then she cleaned it all up with a hockey stick and some cotton balls. So she knows. Maybe, since she knows exactly what is happening right now in the Gulf Coast, she should consider haulin’ ass down there to clean this shit up. Either that, or she could behave like an adult when advocating for dangerous practices, on Twitter. Just brainstorming! We don’t care for Sarah Palin, is the thing. Read more at Wonkette: http://wonkette.com/415167/sarah-palin-is-very-sad-about-entire-southern-coast-of-america-being-destroyed#ixzz0mnV14uv4

Sarah Palin resumed her role as the anti-Obama at an early morning gathering of conservative activists at Mt. Zion church, telling a crowd of around 1,500 that America is looking for a change from the "hopey changey stuff" of the 2008 election. Her formula -- common sense, conservative values and the Constitution. Along with repealing Obamacare and standing up for American exceptionalism and a robust military. It may be hard, but it's not complicated, Palin said at the Defending the American Dream Summit, sponsored by the Michigan chapter of Americans for Prosperity. "When you look at what's happening in Washington, D.C., it's easy to get discouraged," she said. "But I beg you not to do that. Don't allow anyone to tell you to sit down and shut up." Introduced as "the left's worst nightmare," Palin went after President Barack Obama, Democratic leaders in Congress and the media with gusto in her 40-minute address. http://www.freep.com/article/20100501/NEWS15/100501007/1318

The reaction I "expect" from you is to either A) stop putting up illegal signs, or B) put up more illegal signs. Either is fine by me. Option A) would cause me to move on [irony!], and B) gives me something to do. And to Scarlet: If you love this country, you'd respect its laws and not illegally post graffiti. If you love this planet you wouldn't go around creating more litter. http://beachblogger.net/pics/index.php?title=rush_hour_1&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1#c5414

Sarah Palin took a helicopter flight to observe the situation in the Gulf of Mexico. She shot a manatee and 5 brown pelicans. When asked for a comment she said: "Spill baby, spill!" http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/04/gulf-oil-spill-lawsuits-who-will-pay-the-bill.html

Republicans are not the solution, they are the problem.

First, let’s all stop paying attention to Sarah Palin for a little while. I understand why liberals want to talk about her. She allows them to feel intellectually superior to their opponents. And members of the conservative counterculture want to talk about her simply because she drives liberals insane. But she is a half-term former governor with a TV show. She is not going to be the leader of any party and doesn’t seem to be inclined in that direction. The Sarah Palin phenomenon is a media psychodrama and nothing more. It gives people on each side an excuse to vent about personality traits they despise, but it has nothing to do with government. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/who-will-lead-the-republican-party/?ref=opinion

Seditious Sarah. After her speech, an event organizer yelled out, "You hear that, my lefty friends? See that? Conservative women: they're smarter than you and they're hotter than you!" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/14/sarah-palins-boston-tea-p_n_537840.html

Poll: Low Favorability Ratings for Sarah Palin. Twenty-four percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Sarah Palin, while 38 percent view her unfavorably, according to the poll, conducted March 29 through April 1. Thirty-seven percent of the public is undecided or hasn't heard enough to offer an opinion. Her ratings have held fairly steady over the past year. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20001980-503544.html

Noted women's rights thinker Newt Gingrich appeared on CNN recently to announce that Sarah Palin is something of a feminist icon. Explaining her appeal, Gingrich seemed to suggest that women --aside from San Francisco liberals-- adore Palin and are drawn to her unique, can-do qualities. Except that, of course, they don't. According to the latest CBS News poll, Palin is weighed down by an astonishingly low favorable rating among women; just 21 percent. In fact, women give Palin the lowest marks of virtually any demographic group polled by CBS. http://mediamatters.org/blog/201004110006

Palin Huckabee 2012

Simple Sarah
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How anyone can think that Palin is capable of solving any of our problems is beyond me. If she could do it, surely some parts of her speechifying would reflect it. Palin hired a city manager to run Wasilla because she didn't know how to do it. She sent aides to meet with state lawmakers in AK because she was in over her head. Even the republicans in the state legislature slammed her for not taking care of the state's business and dodging important meetings with them. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201003270026

Sarah Palin does not speak for me. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/03/sarah_palin_does_not_speak_for.html

At one point during her address to the crowd, Ann Coulter called for eliminating government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the CIA, and shrinking the IRS, at which point several people in the crowd shouted out "and the Fed!" http://abcnews.go.com/WN/glenn-beck-ann-coulter-newt-gingrich-bash-president/story?id=9899213&page=2

Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll

  • Texas Rep. Ron Paul - 31 percent
  • Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney -- 22 percent
  • Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- 7 percent
  • Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty - 6 percent
  • Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich - 4 percent
  • Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee -- 4 percent
  • Indiana Rep. Mike Pence - 5 percent
  • South Dakota Sen. John Thune -- 2 percent
  • Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels -- 2 percent
  • Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum -- 2 percent
  • Mississippi Gov. Hailey Barbour - 1 percent
  • Other - 5 percent
  • Undecided - 6 percent

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/20/cpac-2010-straw-poll-resu_n_470319.html

Palin's Tea Party Crib Notes. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stefan-sirucek/did-palin-use-crib-notes_b_452458.html

Palin is trying to get in front of the same parade that Edwards wanted to lead. When she quit on her state, barely halfway through a single term as governor, her explanation was a classic of incoherence. She never mentioned the obvious reason for resigning: to get rich, quick. Nothing wrong with that; it’s as American as late-night ads for the Snuggie — the blanket with sleeves! But why not come out and say it, instead of cloaking it in some larger cause? If Palin truly believed in the Tea Partiers and their discontent, she would not be charging $100,000 to stoke their fears. She can do that for free, on Fox. And what policy solutions does she offer the troubled middle class? Tax cuts, like the ones that caused this massive deficit to begin with? Preventing new regulation of the banks that got us into this horrid economic collapse, under the guise of “less government”? She has nothing to offer but honeyed words, the syrup for suckers. Say what you will about Tea Partiers, but many of them can see through this scheme in Nashville. “Smells scammy,” wrote Red State Blogger Erick Erickson, no friend of the media elite. Others are boycotting it, citing the $549 price for the convention, or the single night tab of $349 to hear Palin. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/grifters-tale/?ref=opinion

Everybody loves a quitter

Sarah Palin says Obama policies to be short-lived. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dcnow/sarah-palin/

rogue: An unprincipled, deceitful, and unreliable person; a scoundrel or rascal.

Palin Work Emails Sent On Personal Yahoo Account, Obtained By Paper. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/06/palin-work-emails-sent-on_n_412900.html

Palin's Banned Blogger List (and Two-Page Event Rider) Revealed! http://gawker.com/5437616/palins-banned-blogger-list-and-two+page-event-rider-revealed

"If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore," she wrote. "If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?” But the former Republican vice presidential candidate did not stop there. “I love meat," she writes. "I eat pork chops, thick bacon burgers, and the seared fatty edges of a medium-well-done steak. But I especially love moose and caribou. I always remind people from outside our state that there's plenty of room for all Alaska's animals -- right next to the mashed potatoes.” http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/12/ticket-replay-sarah-palin.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+topoftheticket+%28Top+of+the+Ticket%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Palin cites a letter Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last week, referring to the bill's call for reducing Medicare spending by 2 percent. "It is unclear," Elmendorf noted, "whether such a reduction in the growth rate could be achieved, and if so, whether it would be accomplished through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or would reduce access to care or diminish the quality of care." Aha, Palin proclaims: This reduced " 'access to care' and 'diminish[ed] quality of care' - is precisely what I meant when I used that metaphor." (She's back to calling it a metaphor.) Not really. As Greg Sargent has pointed out, Palin is changing her definitions. When she first referred to "death panels," she was portraying them as medical tribunes that would decide the fate of specific individuals. ("You're IQ is too low, so no dialysis for you!") Now, she's essentially claiming that any cost-cutting that might influence access to care constitutes establishing a "death panel." Not only is she being shifty; Palin is poisoning one policy debate that the nation needs to have about health care. Does this ardent foe of socialism really believe that the U.S. government ought to pay for any medical procedure that a Medicare recipient might want? What if a treatment costs several million dollars and at best can extend the life of a dying patient by a week? If you question such a practice, then, in Palin's book, you're for rationing and can be a charter member of a "death panel." Tough policy matters aside, Palin is playing loose with the facts about her own pronouncements -- and calling even more attention to her dubious distinction of promoting the lie of year. The big question is, in this category, can she top herself in 2010? http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/12/24/palin-im-not-the-biggest-liar-of-the-year/

Schwarzenegger 'fundamentally' at odds with Palin on climate change policy. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/73111-schwarzenegger-fundamentally-at-odds-with-palin-on-climate-change-policy?page=1#comments http://www.conservatives4palin.com/2009/12/boom-taste-my-nightstick-arnie.html

Schwarzenegger Swipes Palin On Global Warming. Why is Governor Schwarzenegger pushing for the same sorts of policies in Copenhagen that have helped drive his state into record deficits and unemployment? Perhaps he will recall that I live in our nation's only Arctic state and that I was among the first governors to create a sub-cabinet to deal specifically with climate change. While I and all Alaskans witness the impacts of changes in weather patterns firsthand, I have repeatedly said that we can't primarily blame man's activities for those changes. And while I did look for practical responses to those changes, what I didn't do was hamstring Alaska's job creators with burdensome regulations so that I could act "greener than thou" when talking to reporters. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/15/schwarzenegger-swipes-pal_n_392333.html

Wednesday's edition of the Washington Post features an op-ed by Sarah Palin, who reprises her call -- first made in a Facebook post last week -- for President Obama to "boycott" the major climate talks in Copenhagen due to the "Climate-gate" controversy (actually a non-controversy). "Policy decisions require real science and real solutions," Palin argued on Facebook, "not junk science and doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood that capitalizes on the public's worry and makes them feel that owning an SUV is a 'sin' against the planet." The reaction to Palin's latest piece, however, is focused not on what she wrote, but on the fact that the Washington Post chose to run it in the first place. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/08/sarah-palin-wapo-faces-he_n_385070.html

Let me be very bold and fresh again, do you believe that you are smart enough, incisive enough, intellectual enough to handle the most powerful job in the world? Sarah Palin: I believe that I am because I have common sense and I have I believe the values that I think are reflective of so many other American values, and I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the uhm, the ah, a kind of spineless, spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite, Ivy league education and, and a fat resume that is based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles. Americans are could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership, I'm not saying that that has to be me. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/the-irrefutable-stupidity_b_382213.html

As Thanksgiving festivities wind down we contemplate all we have to be thankful for as free Americans! We head into the Christmas season wishing for leadership in Washington that reflects our commitment to the values and ideals that have built the freest and most prosperous and generous nation on earth. Heading into December and Tuesday’s announcement of our nation’s strategy in Afghanistan, I ask the President to reassure us that the administration is in this War on Terror to win. And I’ll pass along the following from Harold B. Estes, a 95-year-old member of the Greatest Generation: “I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life, but you’re the Commander-in-Chief now, son. Do your job. When your battle-hardened field General asks you for 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him. But if you’re not in this fight to win, then get out.” "I don't think you like America nor do I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do for the obvious gifts this country has given you. ... Shape up and start acting like an American. ... I sure as hell don't want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle." Thank you, Mr. President. Please tell us on Tuesday that America is in it to win. - Sarah Palin http://www.facebook.com/notes/sarah-palin/if-were-in-it-lets-win-it/185610123434 PS: You can read Mr. Estes' complete letter here. http://www.congress.org/congressorg/bio/userletter/?id=10892&letter_id=4287614061

Palin's Latest Rogue Gaffe. Our land is everything to us. It is the only place in the world where Cheyennes talk the Cheyenne language to each other. It is the only place where Cheyennes remember the same things together. I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it--with their life. My people and the Sioux defeated General Custer at the Little Big Horn. John Wooden Legs http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-dunn/palins-latest-emrogueem-g_b_373453.html

Sarah Palin: Thanksgiving together with Todd? No way, he's got better things to do! - UPDATE: Sarah's luxury plane for the "bus tour" identified! http://palingates.blogspot.com/2009/11/sarah-palin-thanksgiving-together-with.html

A reader writes: "Everybody in the family played Scrabble and took great pride in hoarding Ks and Qs and slapping them down in long, fancy words on triple-letter scores." -- Going Rogue, p. 12. Any good Scrabble player knows it's impossible to "hoard" Ks or Qs, as there is only one of each in a set of tiles. As a fellow Scrabble player said, "Perhaps she was thinking she was playing Poker, where hoarding Kings and Queens might be beneficial?" Or perhaps she made this up like everything else. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/11/a-small-detail-but-telling.html

Rogue Facts: Media Matters' ongoing list of falsehoods in Palin's memoir. http://mediamatters.org/research/200911150011

Before Rogue: Sarah Palin's Top 10 past falsehoods. http://mediamatters.org/research/200911150010

Sarah Palin, the GOP's blessing and curse. The self-described 'rogue' is anathema to the party establishment but manna from heaven to the grass roots. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-blumenthal15-2009nov15,0,2142138.story

PALIN: Says Ronald Reagan faced an even worse recession than the one that appears to be ending now, and "showed us how to get out of one. If you want real job growth, cut capital gains taxes and slay the death tax once and for all." THE FACTS: The estate tax, which some call the death tax, was not repealed under Reagan and capital gains taxes are lower now than when Reagan was president. Economists overwhelmingly say the current recession is far worse. The recession Reagan faced lasted for 16 months; this one is in its 23rd month. The recession of the early 1980s did not have a financial meltdown. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent, worse than the October 2009 high of 10.2 percent, but the jobless rate is still expected to climb. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/11/13/national/w141351S39.DTL

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/11/13/national/w141351S39.DTL#ixzz0WwZrZAMn

Lynn Vincent, Palin Co-Author, Has Anti-Gay History. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/13/lynn-vincent-palin-co-aut_n_357204.html

Goldwag: The Sarah Palin Conspiracies. http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/13/goldwag-the-sarah-pa.html#more http://arthurgoldwag.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/one-thing-sarah-palin-i-have-in-common/

Palin, Limbaugh, Beck … now it’s Republicans seeing the downside. Some moderate conservatives see danger in the vociferous right, especially among broadcast pot-stirrers. They want to advance the GOP by changing the tone. http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/10/03/palin-limbaugh-beck-%E2%80%A6-now-it%E2%80%99s-republicans-seeing-the-downside/

Palin Feuds With Bank, Gets Facts Wrong. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/20/palin-feuds-with-bank-get_n_263972.html

Sarah, Todd Palin to Divorce: Report. What about that missing ring (at many events)? It's been noted by CBS that Sarah Palin frequently campaigned last year without it. It is still strange, however. Most women would not remove their wedding ring for any reason, sans divorce. On the other hand, this wouldn't be the first "political marriage" in which the couple stayed together publicly, but not privately. After all, don't forget last year's story featuring pictures of Cindy McCain cheating on John McCain. Never publicly verified, but it would not be the first case in which such a pairing continued, so even if Sarah and Todd Palin aren't legally divorced, that may not tell the whole story. http://snafu-ed.blogspot.com/2009/08/attorney-sarah-palin-divorce-report.html

William Shatner Reads Palin's Tweets http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/30/william-shatner-reads-pal_n_247598.html

William Shatner Makes Palin's Speech Into Poetry http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/28/william-shatner-makes-pal_n_246034.html

American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy.

What Palin Got Wrong About Energy. Palin argues that "the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive!" The truth is, clean energy legislation doesn't make energy scarcer or more expensive; it works to find alternative solutions to our costly dependence on foreign oil and provides powerful incentives to pursue cutting-edge clean energy technologies. Palin asserts that job losses are "certain." Wrong. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and American Clean Energy and Security legislation will create significant employment opportunities across the country in a broad array of sectors linked to the clean energy economy. Studies at the federal level and by states have demonstrated clean energy job creation. A report by the Center for American Progress calculated that $150 billion in clean energy investments would create more than 1.7 million domestic and community-based jobs that can't be shipped overseas. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/23/AR2009072302633.html

Sarah Palin, The Anti-Poet. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lundberg/sarah-palin-the-anti-poet_b_237935.html

Palin Attended Church Event With Samurai Sword Ceremony. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/palin-attended-church-eve_b_237740.html

The 'Cap And Tax' Dead End. By Sarah Palin Tuesday, July 14, 2009. American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/13/AR2009071302852.html?sid=ST2009071302882

Have you ever read anything written BY sarah Palin?

"Screw Political Correctness" -- Sarah Palin in Her Own Words http://www.huffingtonpost.com/akmuckraker/screw-political-correctne_b_211635.html

What is it about Sarah Palin? The departing Alaska governor doesn't just line people up on different sides of an issue; she turns them against each other. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-daum9-2009jul09,0,1020938.story

The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin: A Round-Up. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/07/the-odd-lies-of-sarah-palin-a-roundup.html

1076974504.jpg
Alaskan Roulette
http://www.drawger.com/zinasaunders/index.php?article_id=8238

Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/opinion/05dowd.html?_r=1

Palin's Move Raises Big Questions. She says she wants to help Republicans win. That means she could raise money and earn favors for another campaign. She says she wants to travel. That means she could find her way into high-value political centers such as Manchester, N.H., and Des Moines, Iowa. She says the media are against her. That suggests she's casting herself as a victim again, a move right out of her campaign playbook. She says she wants to better serve Alaska by stepping down as its governor. That means she could buck the system and try to wrap herself in the cloak of change that helped Barack Obama win the White House. She says she wants to protect her family. That means she could run as a family values candidate. Not a bad platform amid a Republican Party without a clear leader. Fighting among factions inside the GOP have pitted radio personality Rush Limbaugh against Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele; potential 2012 candidates against Washington; and out-of-power lawmakers against each other. All are struggling to cobble together unified opposition to the White House and a Congress that Democrats gained solid command of last week when Minnesota certified the election of Al Franken as that state's next senator. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/05/palins-move-raises-big-qu_n_225808.html

We are waiting for Senator McCain to show up with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who is his vice presidential pick. We are going to join the ceremony announcing her choice when it begins. We will JIP it, join it in progress, and we'll stick with it as long as we can. It's an inspired choice. They kept this secret. They totaled befuddled the Obama campaign. The Obama campaign is now busy doing their opposition research, and the one thing that just blows me away that just makes me laugh, and I haven't been laughing much this week, is that they're talking about how this is a bad pick because she doesn't have any experience. She's got more experience than Obama does! She has more experience running things. She's got a bigger story to tell than Obama has, and she's got plenty of people who will tell that great story of hers. Obama has nobody he wants us to hear tell his story. He has to tell his story himself. I think they've been rope-a-doped here. I think McCain has made a brilliant move. Folks, look what we got here.

We do have a woman on the ticket, but she is a Republican woman! It's not Hillary, and Sarah Palin doesn't have to wear pantsuits, ladies and gentlemen, and her husband is not a crook. This woman's nickname is Barracuda, from her high school basketball days. She takes no prisoners. She's a government ethical reformer. She's been opposing Ted Stevens, who's got problems. Her husband works in the oil business. He helps to create the fuel that Obama uses to fly all over the country. The fuel that Obama says he wants to get rid of in ten years. This is tremendous, and everybody saying, "Well, how is she going to stack up against Biden?" It's not how she stacks up against Biden. It's how she stacks up against Obama. McCain has the experience-vs.-Obama thing wrapped up. "Well, what about foreign policy? She doesn't have any foreign policy." Neither does Obama! Our vice presidential choice is more qualified to be president of the United States than Barack Obama, the Democrat choice. Democrats today are not happy. The Drive-By Media is not happy. They're not crazy about the speech last night in the civil rights community. I can't tell you how much Drive-By Media criticism there is of this speech, from the AP and Reuters and so forth, and there's Tom Brokaw: Democrats, don't be fooled by this raucous crowd, these big crowds at these things don't mean anything, it's going to be forgotten. It already is forgotten, folks. We've got audio sound bites of this that we're going to get to in due course. http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_082908/content/01125106.guest.html

Truly, Sarah Palin has come a long way. When she ran for vice president, she frequently became disjointed and garbled when she departed from her prepared remarks. Now the prepared remarks are incoherent, too. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/opinion/04collins.html?em

Ms. Palin, 45, the Republican vice-presidential nominee last year, is the leading candidate for the 2012 Presidential nomination. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/us/politics/04palin.html?ref=us

Quitter http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-palin4-2009jul04,0,6231829.story

Will scandals inspire evangelicals to stray from Republican Party? Cases like Gov. Mark Sanford's have undercut GOP assertions of moral authority. They could also reinforce some Christian conservatives' doubts about politics in general. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gop-sanford28-2009jun28,0,443985.story

Top 10 Reasons Sarah Palin's "Outrage" is Misplaced and A Little Late... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shannyn-moore/top-10-reasons-sarah-pali_b_215468.html

"Screw Political Correctness" -- Sarah Palin in Her Own Words: I can see Russia! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/akmuckraker/screw-political-correctne_b_211635.html

Sarah blasts Levi Johnston for talking about relationship with her daughter Bristol. Levi Johnston -- Bristol Palin's former boyfriend and the father of her baby -- has made her lipstick-wearing pit bull mother biting mad. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedishrag/2009/04/levi-johnston----bristol-palins-former-fiance-and-father-of-her-baby----has-made-one-lipstick-wearing-pit-bull-real-biting-ma.html

That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=47&chapter=6&verse=4&end_verse=6&version=9&context=context

Some of Sarah Palin's former campaign aides are frustrated with the Alaska governor for remarking in a lengthy, freewheeling speech that she had refused to pray with them before last October's vice presidential debate. Palin told the story in a speech to a GOP dinner in Alaska last Friday. "So I'm looking around for somebody to pray with, I just need maybe a little help, maybe a little extra," she said of the moments before the debate. "And the McCain campaign, love 'em, you know, they're a lot of people around me, but nobody I could find that I wanted to hold hands with and pray." As the audience laughed, Palin noted that she meant no disrespect to the McCain campaign and that ended up saying a prayer with her daughter Piper. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/26/palins-prayer-remark-angers-former-staffers/

Palin's Evangelical Base Slaps Down Bristol. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-dunn/palins-evangelical-base-s_b_168851.html

Bristol Palin stammers the truth. In a Fox interview, the new teen mother makes an almost unwitting argument for reproductive choice before Mom barges in and twists her words. http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/02/18/bristol_palin/

Sorry, Michael Steele, but it's going to be a while before you're anything more than the figurehead frontman of a shipwrecked Republican National Committee. Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh remain the leaders of your party, and most Republicans are happy that way. A Rasmussen poll out today found that fully 55 percent of Republicans polled think their party should be "more like" Palin. http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/politics/2009/02/02/limbaugh_palin/

Palin stiffs the House Republicans. "She lied to us," said a Republican at the retreat. http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/01/palin-stiffs-th.html

Sarah Palin's ties to Alaskan Independence Party are played down. The McCain campaign denies his running mate supports the party's separatist bent. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-aip3-2008sep03,0,6399468.story

Members of 'Fringe' Alaskan Independence Party Incorrectly Say Palin Was a Member in 90s; McCain Camp and Alaska Division of Elections Deny Charge* http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/members-of-frin.html

Joe Vogler (1913-1993) was the founder of the Alaskan Independence Party and active in politics, regularly running for public office in Alaska for many years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Vogler

I’m Governor Sarah Palin and I am delighted to welcome you to the 2008 Alaskan Independence Party Convention in the golden heart city of Fairbanks. Your party plays an important role in our state’s politics. I’ve always said that competition is so good, and that applies to political parties as well. I share your party’s vision of upholding the constitution of our great state. My administration remains focused on reining in government growth so individual liberty and opportunity can expand. I know you agree with that. We have a great promise to be a self-sufficient state, made up of the hardest-working, most grateful Americans in our nation. So as your convention gets underway I hope that you all are inspired by remembering that all those years ago, it was in this same city that Alaska’s constitution was born. And it was founded on hope and trust and liberty and opportunity. I carry that message of opportunity forward in my administration, as we continue to move our state ahead and create positive change. So I say good luck on a successful and inspiring convention. Keep up the good work, and God bless you. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/1/4231/18477/878/581881

The mainstream media has finally noticed Sarah and Todd Palins' ties to the rabidly anti-American secessionist group, the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP). A new CNN video report by anchor Rick Sanchez digs into the Palins' relationship with the AIP, noting that Todd Palin has been a member of the group and that Sarah Palin sent official video greetings as Governor of Alaska to the 2008 AIP convention. In this video, as pictured here, Palin praises the "important role" played by the AIP in Alaska politics. The AIP has been described as an extreme-right, anti-government organization comparable to militia movements such as that which carried out the 1995 Oklahoma City attack. The group's aims are voiced no more forcefully than by its founder, Joe Vogler, as CNN observes in direct quotations: "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government...," Vogler states in one quotation, "...And I won't be buried under their damn flag." In another quotation, Vogler says: "My government is my worst enemy. I'm going to fight them with any means at hand." As though to leave no doubt in our minds regarding his willingness to use violence to achieve his secessionist aims, Vogler says in one final quote: "I hope we don't have to take human life, but if they go on trampling our property rights, look out, we're ready to die." Vogler was murdered during an illegal plastic explosives deal in 1993, just weeks before he was scheduled to give a speech to the United Nations on Alaskan independence sponsored by the government of Iran. Pending Alaskan independence, Vogler was buried in Canada according to his wish not to buried under the American flag. http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=10186

Vetting Sarah Palin. http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/20081006_vetting_sarah_palin/

Palin is odds-on favorite to win 2012 GOP nomination. Other top GOP contenders include former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whose odds are set at 4-1, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, at 5-1. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/palin-is-odds-on-favorite-to-win-2012-gop-nomination-2009-01-02.html

Palin/Huckabee: the dream team!!!!!

Spanky Panky

Nikki Haley, a candidate running for governor, is just the latest South Carolina Republican caught up in an epidemic of sexcapades. Lloyd Grove examines America’s friskiest state. What in the Sam Hill is going on in South Carolina anyhow? http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-05-25/south-carolinas-toga-party/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsC4

True Conservative Family Values abstinence-only education: The affair began after Jackson was hired in a part-time role in 2004, according to a source knowledgeable about the relationship. Jackson, who is married, was hired to play guest host with Souder for a daily radio spot he recorded for WFCV, a Christian radio station in Ft. Wayne. The spots were taped once a week and aired daily. Jackson played host, asking Souder questions about what he was working on in Washington for his constituents. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/18/tracy-jackson-mark-souder_n_580144.html

True Conservative Family Values: Rekers is in a class by himself even in the era of Larry Craig and Ted Haggard. A Baptist minister and clinical psychologist with a bent for “curing” homosexuality, the married, 61-year-old Rekers was caught by Miami New Times last month in the company of a 20-year-old male escort at Miami International Airport. The couple was returning from a 10-day trip to London and Madrid. New Times, which published its exposé in early May, got an explanation from Rekers: “I had surgery, and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.” Alas, a photo showed Rekers, rather than his companion, handling the baggage cart. The paper also reported that Rekers had recruited the young man from Rentboy.com, a Web site whose graphic sexual content requires visitors to vouch for their age. Rentboy.com — really, who could make this stuff up? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16rich.html?ref=opinion

A couple years ago, I got a tip about Eric Massa. It involved his aggrieved former campaign manager, Sanford Dickert, who was involved in an ugly dispute. Dickert claimed Massa had fired him and refused to pay him for work he'd done on Massa's unsuccessful 2006 run for Congress. Massa, he said, had retaliated by issuing a series of salacious charges against him, which Dickert denied, including that he had hired, and then given alcohol to, underage staffers, and also that he had made a pass at Massa's teenage son. This seemed like a personal dispute that didn't have much news value and was, furthermore, impossible for me to adjudicate. I didn't write about it. Dickert wound up filing a libel suit against Massa, and in the court documents, which you can read here, the strange and bizarre charges are all laid out. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/03/eric-massas-navy-files/37309/

A Republican state senator from Bakersfield came out of the closet in a radio interview Monday morning in the wake of a report that he had been at a gay club in Sacramento before he was arrested on drunk driving charges last week. Sen. Roy Ashburn has been on personal leave since his arrest early Wednesday morning in his state car not far from the Capitol. The arrest touched off rampant speculation about his sexuality after a Sacramento television station reported he had been at a gay nightclub in Sacramento just before he was pulled over by California Highway Patrol officers. But Ashburn had declined to comment. He broke his silence in an interview on Bakersfield radio station KERN (1180 AM) with talk-show host Inga Barks on Monday morning, saying the incident had led to "restless nights" and "soul searching." Ashburn said he had "brought this on myself." When he told Barks he owed his constituents an explanation, she responded, "Do you want me to ask you … the question, or do you want to just tell people?" "I am gay, Ashburn answered, "and so I … those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long. But I am gay. But it is something that is personal and …. I felt with my heart that being gay didn't affect -- wouldn't affect -- how I did my job." He did not express any resentment that his sexuality had come under scrutiny, saying, "Through my own actions, I made my personal life public." The episode, widely discussed on Internet blogs, in newspapers and on TV, spurred charges of hypocrisy against the senator from gay-rights activists who noted that Ashburn, a divorced father of four, had voted several times against legislation favoring gays and lesbians. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2010/03/a-republican-state-senator-from-bakersfield-came-out-of-the-closet-in-a-radio-interview-monday-morning-in-the-wake-of-a-repor.html

Republican state Sen. Roy Ashburn of Bakersfield has taken leave from his elected position until at least Monday after his arrest on suspicion of drunken driving started a firestorm over his sexual orientation. Ashburn, 55, has served in the Legislature since 1996 and consistently has voted against bills that would expand legal protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Californians. The single father of four is among lawmakers with the staunchest records against those issues. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/06/MNF01CBFRT.DTL#ixzz0hRyul11R

Early Wednesday morning, State Sen. Roy Ashburn (R-Calif.) was pulled over and arrested for drunk driving. Sources report that Ashburn -- a fierce opponent of gay rights -- was driving drunk after leaving a gay nightclub; when the officer stopped the state-issued vehicle, there was an unidentified man in the passenger seat of the car. Ashburn has issued an apology for the incident: "I am deeply sorry for my actions and offer no excuse for my poor judgment. I accept complete responsibility for my conduct and am prepared to accept the consequences for what I did. I am also truly sorry for the impact this incident will have on those who support and trust me - my family, my constituents, my friends, and my colleagues in the Senate." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/04/roy-ashburn-arrested-anti_n_485419.html

Tea Baggers

general news

As hundreds of "tea partyers" filtered into a gymnasium in El Dorado Hills last week for rare back-to-back appearances by Republican Senate candidates Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore, Barbara Brown sat alone on the wooden bleachers studying a flier contrasting the candidates. Brown, a member of the Motherlode Tea Party of Amador County, said she had been leaning toward DeVore, but was looking for someone "who can go for the jugular" against Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). She liked Fiorina's "fight" in interview snippets she'd seen. "Chuck strikes me as a gentleman, well-spoken, love his values, [I] absolutely adore his conservatism," Brown said. "I just don't know — it's become so vicious now in politics, and in order to beat somebody like Boxer you've got to be able to play her game." "It's playing chess," she said, adding that she believed that as a woman Fiorina could sway more voters than DeVore. "She's got 60 to 70% of my values, and if I can get 60 to 70% that's better than zero." Brown, the voter who was undecided at the El Dorado Hills event, said later that she and her friends discussed the same question of electability on their drive home from the event. It was clear, she said, that Fiorina could "sparkle people up and get them all excited," but "the meat wasn't there." "He's not very exciting, but I believe in everything he says," she said of DeVore. "I will be unhappy with myself if I don't go with the proven conservative. She has no track record."http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tea-party-20100531,0,6289020.story?

'Tea party' Contract From America: Real plan or bumper sticker? Dismantle health-care reform, stop pork, and protect the Constitution are three of 10 election priorities in the 'tea party' movement's Contract From America, to be unveiled Thursday.

  1. Protect the Constitution
  2. Reject cap and trade energy reforms
  3. Demand a balanced budget
  4. Enact fundamental tax reform
  5. Restore fiscal responsibility and constitutionally limited government in Washington
  6. End runaway government spending
  7. Defund, repeal, and replace government-run health care
  8. Pass an 'all-of-the-above' energy policy
  9. Stop the pork
 10. Stop the tax hikes

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0415/Tea-party-Contract-From-America-Real-plan-or-bumper-sticker

Ever since he resigned his speakership and House seat in disgrace nearly 12 years ago, Newt Gingrich has prowled the margins of electoral politics like a wolf, hungry and opportunistic. He's tried on a variety of ideas and ideological colorations in those intervening years, but this week, with the publication of his new book, "To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine," he explicitly linked his fate to the "tea party" movement. Given the fact that Gingrich has said he is weighing a presidential bid, it's a safe bet that others, similarly ambitious, will carefully watch how he fares. He argues: "In the 20th century, hundreds of millions of people were killed by the totalitarian ideologies of Marxism, Nazism and fascism" for whom "religion was enemy No. 1 and the first to go.... There are many parallels between the anti-religious governments of the 20th century and the anti-religious elite of the United States in the 21st." That is absurd, of course, as is the notion that the Obama administration has embraced a socialist economic program, but what's significant in this kind of talk-show discourse is the evocation of every theme sounded by the tea party movement. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten-20100522,0,4374909.column

This feels like a populist moment. Americans are Tea Partying. Greeks are rioting. Incumbents are being thrown out; the Federal Reserve is facing an audit; Goldman Sachs is facing prosecution. In Kentucky, Ron Paul’s son might be about to win a Republican Senate primary. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/opinion/17douthat.html?src=tptw

Tea Party And Other Populist Moments Mask Power Elite. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/17/nyts-douthat-tea-party-an_n_578894.html

in Maine. There, the state Republican Party chucked its platform -- a sensible New England mix of free-market economics and conservation -- and adopted a manifesto of insanity: abolishing the Federal Reserve, calling global warming a "myth," sealing the border, and, as a final plank, fighting "efforts to create a one world government." The Maine Republicans a week ago rejected a platform proclaiming that "we believe that the proper role of government is to help provide for those who can not help themselves"; that "we believe in ensuring that our children have access to the best educational opportunities"; and that "every person's dignity, freedom, liberty, ability and responsibility must be honored." In its place, they approved a document invoking the Tea Party movement and Ron Paul and insisting that "health care is not a right." The new platform demands: "Eliminate motor voter"; "Reject the UN Treaty on Rights of the Child"; "Eliminate the Department of Education"; "Arrest and detain . . . anyone here illegally, and then deport, period." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/14/AR2010051402450.html

We want Our country Back!

The Motto of Mad Men. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_motto_of_mad_men_20100506/

Seditious Sarah

Mark Williams has a problem. Williams is chairman of Tea Party Express, a leading organization in the Tea Party movement. The Express is operated by Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which is run out of the offices of Russo Marsh & Rogers, a Republican-affiliated strategy firm. Sal Russo, OCBD's chief strategist, has been a Republican strategist since Ronald Reagan's 1966 gubernatorial campaign. Even though other Tea Party groups consider the Express an Astroturf organzation, implying that it has corporate backers and lacks grass-roots support, it has organized three successful cross-country bus tours to oppose the policies of the Obama administration. These tours garnered heavy media attention from Fox News and, eventually, CNN, and its most recent tour featured two appearances by Sarah Palin, one of which was dubbed the Conservative Woodstock. Sounds good. So what's the problem? The problem, according to the rest of the Tea Party movement, is Mark Williams. Williams has referred to President Obama as a Nazi, a half-white racist, a half-black racist and an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare fraud. In turn, much of the Tea Party movement has referred to Williams as a racist, a bigot, amoral, lacking any semblance of a conscience, deceitful, selfish, conniving, the Michael Steele of the Tea Party and, perhaps worst of all, a liberal. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-brantzawadzki/mark-williams-tea-party-l_b_563133.html

Don't worry! I'm a Republican and I'm here to cut my taxes.

I see dumb people http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/i_see_dumb_people/

Is Tea Party principled or simply divisive? Where were all the Tea Party people when George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, et al., were lying through their teeth to get us into Iraq, losing billions of American dollars, lives, minds and limbs? Generations of future Americans will be paying for that hideous mistake for years to come. The money spent on that fiasco could have paid for a national health care program and fixed our infrastructure. The one constant of the Republicans, neocons, conservatives and nut cases like the Tea Partyers is their hypocrisy. All along, the people screaming opposition to health care reform have been those who have health care, including those on Medicare, a national health care system. http://www.freep.com/article/20100418/OPINION04/4180433/1322/Is-Tea-Party-principled-or-simply-divisive?

Who's getting the tax breaks? Corporate incentives cost money. The public should be told where they're going and if they work. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-taxday15-2010apr15,0,2919365.story

The fact is, in return for their taxes, Europeans are receiving a generous support system for families and individuals for which Americans must pay exorbitantly, out-of-pocket, if we are to receive it at all. That includes quality health care for every single person, the average cost of which is about half of what Americans pay, even as various studies show that Europeans achieve healthier results. But that’s not all. In return for their taxes, Europeans also are receiving affordable child care, a decent retirement pension, free or inexpensive university education, job retraining, paid sick leave, paid parental leave, ample vacations, affordable housing, senior care, efficient mass transportation and more. In order to receive the same level of benefits as Europeans, most Americans fork out a ton of money in out-of-pocket payments, in addition to our taxes. Read more: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2010-04-15/blog/a-more-perfect-union/hill-what-americans-get-in-return-for-their-taxes#ixzz0lQJQMlbM

Think the cost of taxes is too high? Imagine the cost without them. Read more: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2010-04-12/columns/arthur-salm-columns/salm-think-the-cost-of-taxes-is-too-high-imagine-the-cost-without-them#ixzz0lQIPpnGB

In Oklahoma City, a new anti-government wave. 'Tea party' protesters rally against what they view as excessive federal power, as the city prepares for the 15th anniversary of the bombing that killed 168. "I had an old shotgun," Gerhart said. "Now I've got a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol. Everybody did that. We had to have enough arms in private hands in America since it was obvious Obama was going to be elected." "We've got to get enough people to fight and stand up to the federal government," he said. http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-oklahoma-city18-2010apr18,0,1284.story

It was a farce. This Tea Party wanted to project a mainstream image of a group that is anything but. A New York Times/CBS News poll released on Wednesday found that only 1 percent of Tea Party supporters are black and only 1 percent are Hispanic. It’s almost all white. And even when compared to other whites, their views are extreme and marginal. For instance, white Tea Party supporters are twice as likely as white independents and eight times as likely as white Democrats to believe that Barack Obama was born in another country. Furthermore, they were more than eight times as likely as white independents and six times as likely as white Democrats to think that the Obama administration favors blacks over whites. Thursday night I saw a political minstrel show devised for the entertainment of those on the rim of obliviousness and for those engaged in the subterfuge of intolerance. I was not amused. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/opinion/17blow.html?ref=opinion

As it turns out, fewer than 1 in 5 Americans "supports" the tea party movement in any respect, and just 4% of all adult Americans have contributed to it or attended one of its events or both. (On any given day, you probably could drum up twice as many people who think the Pentagon is hiding dead aliens in Area 51.) Of the 18% of all adults who expressed support for the tea party, the overwhelming majority were white (89%), male (59%) Republicans over age 45 (75%) and significantly more affluent and better educated than the majority of Americans. One in five has an annual income greater than $100,000, and 37% have advanced degrees. More than 9 out of 10 think President Obama is pushing the country into "socialism." The survey also found that more than half of the tea party supporters say "the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25% think that the administration favors blacks over whites -- compared with 11% of the general public." If all this is beginning to have a familiar ring, it's because you've met these guys before: They're the "angry white males" we've been reading about since political strategist-turned-analyst Kevin Phillips first identified them as an electoral presence during Richard Nixon's successful presidential campaign in 1968. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten17-2010apr17,0,7797810.column

Carl Paladino's Emails: Tea Party-Backed Gov Candidate's Emails Feature Racism, Bestiality, Porn (PHOTOS, VIDEO) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/12/carl-paladinos-emails-tea_n_534691.html

Paladino tries to blame the Dems for his e-mails. One of the dittoheads at work says this: "The Dems are almost as corrupt as the Repugs so that excuses Repug corruption."

The parade of pundits and former politicians who have appeared before the Southern Republican Leadership Conference attacking all manner of Obama Administration initiatives clearly believe that civility has no place in politics. The memory of Congressman Wilson's shout of "LIAR" apparently informs and guides speakers like Palin, Gingrich and perhaps the most egregious, Ms. Cheney. This lack of decorum is exacerbated by routine and deliberate distortion of the facts. In her diatribe last night, Ms. Cheney accused the President of the United States of being an apologist for America, for abandoning our allies and for appeasing our enemies. Like too many of her compatriots, she wishes to blindly support our allies, regardless of their behaviors; and to resort to the most brutish forms of a militarized foreign policy. She truly accepts the notion that if all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks to be a nail. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/major-general-paul-d-eaton/two-party-system-at-risk_b_532303.html

Amid harsh criticisms, 'tea party' slips into the mainstream. The release of the top three 'tea party' issues this week gives a glimpse of a small-government movement growing, maturing, and looking increasingly more like middle America. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0403/Amid-harsh-criticisms-tea-party-slips-into-the-mainstream

The Rage Is Not About Health Care. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28rich.html

"You need to riot": Right-wing uses violent rhetoric. http://mediamatters.org/research/201003260037

Wind, dust and chilly weather didn’t appear to decrease the enthusiasm of the estimated 9,000 people who flocked to a normally empty desert location just north of Searchlight Saturday to hear former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin deliver a mostly inspirational speech.

It was the first stop of many for the Tea Party Express, on its way to a Washington, D.C., rally April 15.

The significance of Searchlight is that it’s U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hometown, where the Democrat still maintains a residence. Reid is up for re-election in November.

“Showdown in Searchlight” attracted candidates for governor, U.S. senator, U.S. representative and state offices.

Besides Palin, celebrity speakers included former Saturday Night Live cast member Victoria Jackson, “Joe the Plumber,” blogger Andrew Breitbart and several nationally syndicated radio talk hosts.

An airplane sky-wrote several messages, including “No new taxes,” and “No bailouts.”

Reasons for attending varied, but the common thread was a dissatisfaction with the status quo.

“I’ve had it with everything,” said Tiffany Proffitt of St. George, Utah.

“I just want to get government out of our lives, back to the basics,” said Evelyn Harrelson, also from St. George.

“I’m here to try to take our country back,” said Robert Arnes from Reno, Nev. “I believe our government has completely gone crazy. Both parties. And I’m going to support whatever candidate I feel is going to bring our country back to the Constitution.”

“We are definitely standing here to support the people that want to get rid of Harry Reid,” said Tony Dunn of Las Vegas. “That’s what we want to do. We want to send a message to Washington that we’re tired of this. That the working class people of this country are tired of the take-take-take that’s going on and we’re standing up for ourselves.”

“We want to see Sarah,” said Virginia Gonnason of Tacoma, Wash., and Jean Moore of Olympia, Wash. Both spend their winters in Bullhead City. http://www.mohavedailynews.com/articles/2010/03/28/news/local/doc4baef30a7fef0273488204.txt

An unscientific survey taken Tuesday in Bullhead City indicates strong support for the health care bill passed Sunday by the U.S. House of Representatives and signed Tuesday by President Barack Obama. The survey result contradicts most national polls, which showed a majority of Americans opposed to the plan. “It’s time we all had health care,” said Linda Quesada, 63, of Bullhead City. “Way overdue,” said Carl Adkison, 80, of Galva, Ill. “Historic,” said Glenda Flores, 75, of Bullhead City. “I am just so in favor of it. I just believe only good things take time to iron out, but it will save all these people who don’t have the insurance and I’m all for it.” http://www.mohavedailynews.com/articles/2010/03/24/news/local/doc4ba9b5af8a4f2987807828.txt

In a front-page article on Sunday, the New York Times blessed the tea party movement as having real political potential. The occasion for the article, "Tea Party Looks to Move From Fringe to Force," was Sarah Palin's talk to the first National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, on Saturday night. The reporter acknowledges that there was an element of cheesy political theater at the event with conventioneers dressed up as Revolutionary War figures, but the reporter relays the scoop straight from the leader of the Tea Party Nation, the organizer of the convention. "The movement is maturing," said Judson Phillips, the founder of the group.

From the beginning, the tea party people seemed to me to be a tiny, opportunistic band of people who hated President Obama and everything on his agenda. As mass vilifiers, they don't come close to the sentiment against Bush in the past decade. They seemed to be strictly public access television rather than prime time. Even when the ragged bands of people haunted the home state visits of members Congress in August to oppose health-care reform, they didn't seem to be a climate change, but rather but a strategic thundershower invoked by the lobbyists trying to block the legislation.

What happened? The reports in the big news media didn't mention a lot of things that are easy to find out.

For one thing, Palin was alone on the podium. She was supposed to be joined by Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, two conservative Republican superstars, but both of them backed out, apparently over the flakey structure of Phillips's organization. After all, these two politicians probably don't need the speaking fees because they already have jobs. They may have federal jobs, but jobs nonetheless, and they didn't want to get into ethics trouble with the government. Phillips is a struggling Tennessee lawyer who defends a lot of drunk drivers and a citizen who demonstrated his own sense of fiscal responsibility by declaring Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy in 1999. The ethics question involves the fact that he and his wife set up the convention under an organization chartered as a for-profit corporation. http://www.barryschiffman.com/thelastround/articles/teabags.html

Poll: Tea partiers could spell trouble for GOP. The movement is dominated by Republicans, a new survey shows, and they might jump ship for the right candidate. http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/03/24/tea_party_poll

Too much tea party racism. As protesters call Dem leaders "nigger" and "faggot," it's time for Republicans to denounce them. So far, none have. http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/opinion/walsh/politics/2010/03/20/tea_party_racism

9-12 Project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-12_Project#9_Principles_and_12_Values

Do you believe in at least 7 of The Nine Principles below?

1. America is good.

2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.

3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.

4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.

5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.

6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.

7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.

8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

12 Values: Honesty, Reverence, Hope, Thrift, Humility, Charity, Sincerity, Moderation, Hard Work, Courage, Personal Responsibility, and Gratitude. http://www.meetup.com/tampa912/

The mailman from "Cheers" hates Obama. What's up with that? Slide show: They fear Obama's the antichrist or a socialist. Meet the GOP's army of washed-up celebrities. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/03/05/washed_up_gop_celebs/slideshow.html#

Who died and made David Brooks king? The pundit heaps scorn on the Tea Party rubes he has to share a party with, and not even for the right reasons. http://www.salon.com/news/tea_parties/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/03/05/brooks_tea_party

Recently a piece in Salon astutely compared Glenn Beck to Abbie Hoffman. In it, Michael Lind pointed out that the conservatives in the 1960s and 1970s built a counter-establishment — a network of think tanks, activist groups, academic associations and political leaders who would form conservative cadres, promoting conservative ideas and policies. But the Tea Partiers are closer to the New Left. They don’t seek to form a counter-establishment because they don’t believe in establishments or in authority structures. They believe in the spontaneous uprising of participatory democracy. They believe in mass action and the politics of barricades, not in structure and organization. As one activist put it recently on a Tea Party blog: “We reject the idea that the Tea Party Movement is ‘led’ by anyone other than the millions of average citizens who make it up.” For this reason, both the New Left and the Tea Party movement are radically anticonservative. Conservatism is built on the idea of original sin — on the assumption of human fallibility and uncertainty. To remedy our fallen condition, conservatives believe in civilization — in social structures, permanent institutions and just authorities, which embody the accumulated wisdom of the ages and structure individual longings. That idea was rejected in the 1960s by people who put their faith in unrestrained passion and zealotry. The New Left then, like the Tea Partiers now, had a legitimate point about the failure of the ruling class. But they ruined it through their own imprudence, self-righteousness and naïve radicalism. The Tea Partiers will not take over the G.O.P., but it seems as though the ’60s political style will always be with us — first on the left, now the right. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/opinion/05brooks.html?em

Rage on the Right. The Year in Hate and Extremism. The radical right caught fire last year, as broad-based populist anger at political, demographic and economic changes in America ignited an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation. Hate groups stayed at record levels — almost 1,000 — despite the total collapse of the second largest neo-Nazi group in America. Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80%, adding some 136 new groups during 2009. And, most remarkably of all, so-called "Patriot" groups — militias and other organizations that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose “one-world government” on liberty-loving Americans — came roaring back after years out of the limelight. The anger seething across the American political landscape — over racial changes in the population, soaring public debt and the terrible economy, the bailouts of bankers and other elites, and an array of initiatives by the relatively liberal Obama Administration that are seen as "socialist" or even "fascist" — goes beyond the radical right. The "tea parties" and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism. http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/rage-on-the-right

The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28rich.html?src=tp

Most 'tea party' followers are baby boomers reliving the '60s. A poll debunks assumptions about the movement, showing that it's largely middle-class, college-educated, white and male. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ellis25-2010feb25,0,3374643.story

The Mount Vernon statement, as the Washington Post first reported, is the product of the Conservative Action Project, which is headed by Meese and emerged from the secretive conservative power-broker organization known as the Council for National Policy. The project's website explains that "just as FDR's soak-the-rich policies did not work in the 1930s to end the Great Depression, similar policies by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats will not work today in restoring to us a vibrant economy." It also features photos of Calvin Coolidge and his Treasury secretary, Andrew W. Mellon, who was an early exponent of supply-side economics, arguing that cutting taxes on the wealthy could directly lead to higher government revenues. The Mount Vernon statement thus aims to relegate the free-spending George W. Bush era and President Obama to the sidelines and to reinvent the conservative movement in its original small-government image. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-heilbrunn21-2010feb21,0,5005046.story

El Cajon Tea Party http://www.flickr.com/photos/photosbyearl/sets/72157623476762474/

The Big Money That Waters The Grassroots. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/19/the-big-money-that-waters_n_469519.html

A tea party gathering in Asotin County, Washington turned more than a bit ugly on Saturday when a featured speaker actually called for the hanging of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash), the fourth ranking Democrat in the Senate and a vulnerable re-election candidate. "How many of you have watched the movie Lonesome Dove?," asked an unidentified female speaker from the podium. "What happened to Jake when he ran with the wrong crowd? What happened to Jake when he ran with the wrong crowd. He got hung. And that's what I want to do with Patty Murray." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/17/idaho-tea-party-speaker-h_n_466261.html

Teabagging is a slang term for the act of a man placing his scrotum in the mouth or on or around the face (including the top of the head) of another person, often in a repeated in-and-out motion as in irrumatio. The practice resembles dipping a tea bag into a cup of tea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teabagging

Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html?em

'Tea party' convention a forum for woes, worries. Among conservative activists gathered in Nashville, education is a frequent source of outrage. Don't forget immigration, religious freedom and the bailout. http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-tea-party6-2010feb06,0,5061324.story

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill; (2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare; (3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation; (4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check; (5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants; (6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges; (7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat; (8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act; (9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and (10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership; and be further RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy position of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee; http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/11/23/2134917.aspx

Both Steele and Palin claim to be devotees of the tea party movement. “I’m a tea partier, I’m a town-haller, I’m a grass-roots-er” is how Steele put it in a recent radio interview, wet-kissing a market he hopes will buy his book. Palin has far more grandiose ambitions. She recently signed on as a speaker for the first Tea Party Convention, scheduled next month in Nashville — even though she had turned down a speaking invitation from the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, the traditional meet-and-greet for the right. The conservative conference doesn’t pay. The Tea Party Convention does. A blogger at Nashville Scene reported that Palin’s price for the event was $120,000. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/opinion/17rich.html?

2010 as 1994? Relax, Democrats. This year's midterm elections won't be a repeat of the GOP's surge to power in 1994. Why? Because almost everything we think we know about that election is wrong. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-cohen17-2010jan17,0,5650998.story

Polling shows little to please Republicans in 2010. California looks bluer than the nation as a whole, with Brown and Boxer in the lead. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-week11-2009oct11,0,6418921.story

Hostess at fundraiser for Busby is arrested. http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jun/28/1m28busby005526-hostess-fundraiser-busby-arrested/?northcounty&zIndex=123783

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele appealed to the political middle Friday to join his party but added that the party itself wouldn't moderate. "All you moderates out there, y'all come. I mean, that's the message," Steele said at a news conference. "The message of this party is this is a big table for everyone to have a seat. I have a place setting with your name on the front. "Understand that when you come into someone's house, you're not looking to change it. You come in because that's the place you want to be." "The problem isn't that Americans are less conservative," he said. "It's that our credibility with them is shot. It's that we left them along the side of the road on our way to drinking that Potomac River water, getting high on power and influence and forgetting how we got where we are." http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/44203877.html

Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/27/video-gop-leaders-taking_n_170553.html

Feinstein rises -- but faces a tough choice. With a Democrat returning to the White House, California's senior senator is in a top position (and characteristically butting heads with her party). But she might leave it all to run for governor. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-na-feinstein17-2009jan17,0,2332878.story

Rand Paul

Rand Paul and the limits of the 'tea party' revolution. Rand Paul, Republican candidate for US Senate from Kentucky, is perhaps the closest thing there is to a 'tea party' candidate. In that light, his recent controversial comments are telling. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0523/Rand-Paul-and-the-limits-of-the-tea-party-revolution

The Tea Party is not merely an inchoate expression of a political mood, or an amorphous ragtag band of diverse elements, or a bipartisan cry of dissatisfaction with the supposed “government takeover” of health care. The Tea Party is a right-wing populist movement with a specific ideology. It resides in the aging white base of the Republican Party and wants to purge that party of leaders who veer from its dogma. But divisive as the Tea Party may be within the G.O.P., it’s hardly good news for President Obama and the Democrats either. Paul is articulate and hard-line. When he says he is antigovernment, he means it. Unlike McConnell, he wants to end all earmarks, including agricultural subsidies for a state that thrives on them. (He does vow to preserve Medicare payments, however; they contribute to his income as an ophthalmologist.) He wants to shut down the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve. Though a social conservative who would outlaw all abortions, he believes the federal government should leave drug enforcement to the states. It’s also in keeping with this ideology that Paul wants the federal government to stop shoveling taxpayers’ money into wars. He was against the war in Iraq and finds the justification for our commitment in Afghanistan “murky.” He believes that America’s national security is “not threatened by Iran having one nuclear weapon.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/opinion/23rich.html?src=me&ref=general

Yes, he played cat-and-mouse with Rachel Maddow on the subject of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but, as he rightly points out (pun intended), that's primarily a backward-looking debate. What's escaping public notice so far, though, is his take on a far more contemporary issue: accountability. Here's Rand Paul on the BP oil spill: "I think it's part of this sort of blame game society in the sense that it's always got to be someone's fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen." The reason this quote isn't inflaming debate the way Paul's Libertarian dance around the Civil Rights Act has is simple: on this issue, Paul is not fringe-y or extremist or unusual; he's spouting a line we've heard incessantly, from defenders of BP, from apologists for the US Army Corps of Engineers (in the case of the flooding of New Orleans), from architects of the Iraq War. Paul is channeling Donald Rumsfeld: "Stuff happens." Nothing to see here, move on. The deeper meaning of the quote is the standard Republican assault against lawyers who have the temerity to challenge, in court, established power. Just this week, the Louisiana legislature defeated a bill that would have punished the Tulane Legal Clinic for its work taking government agencies to court. The bill had the support of the Louisiana Chemical Association. The political spin on Paul is that he's worrisome because he's not within the standard lines of the modern political debate. I'd suggest he's worrisome because he is. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/the-rand-paul-quote-every_b_584749.html

2008 Elections

post-election

Sarah Palin's speeches were ready but never seen -- until now. What the Republican vice presidential candidate would have said -- in victory or loss -- had she been allowed last year. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ticket8-2009nov08,0,5692631.story

"Sarah From Alaska" Book: McCain Turned Lights Out On Palin In "Civil War" (VIDEO) Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/03/sarah-from-alaska-book-mc_n_343660.html

The Daily Beast has obtained the speeches Sarah Palin planned to deliver on Election Night 2008—win or lose. Read the words the McCain camp didn’t want her to say. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-03/sarah-palins-lost-victory-speech/?cid=hp:blogunit1

"You have no idea the pressure I was under," he says. "I remember being on the phone with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the Treasury secretary and [Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke. They assure me the world financial system is going to collapse if I don't vote for the bill. So I do the impetuous and rash thing by saying, look, I have got to go back to Washington and see how I can help. And by the way, so did Obama -- but it was McCain that was the impetuous one. Obama came back to Washington." Mr. McCain grumbles, "He was at the White House with me. But he wasn't impetuous." This is the only time in our interview he shows any bitterness about the campaign. Scheiber calls this "ludicrous" and "downright delusional." He is too kind. The election was decided the week that McCain suspended his campaign, tried to duck a presidential debate, and returned to Washington -- where an anxious nation watch him achieve nothing besides injecting even more uncertainty into a highly confused situation. The electorate saw him crack under the pressure, while the other guy ended up looking, by comparison, calm and measured -- just the kind of guy you might want as president when total chaos is raging through the global economy. When McCain says "you have no idea the pressure I was under" -- he is demonstrating right there, in his own words, why he would have been a terrible choice as president. His lack of self-awareness is incredible. The jury is obviously out on how good a president Obama will be. But the mind boggles at what we would be facing under a McCain administration. http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/?last_story=/tech/htww/2009/08/03/john_mccain_cracks_under_pressure/

The other side of Rick Steves. He may seem like Mister Rogers. But in a revealing interview, the travel guru shares his daring views on Iran and terrorism, spoiled Americans and the best places to smoke pot in Europe. http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/03/20/rick_steves/

Rush Limbaugh, new leader of the Republican Party, lit a flame under thousands of conservatives Saturday night in an address at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. In an hour and fifteen minute speech, which came before he received CPAC’s “Defender of the Constitution Award,” Limbaugh called on Republicans not to stray from their core principles: racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/limbaugh-lights-up-cpac-2009-02-28.html

GOP governors take the (stimulus) money and run. For higher office, and away from their earlier statements about how much they hate the whole idea of the stimulus. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/02/20/gop_governors/

the Republican governors of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and S.C. hope that America fails. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110ap_stimulus_governors.html?source=mypi

"What do McCain voters have in common?" and she answers, "We all hate the same things." http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/int/2009/02/16/alexandra_pelosi/index1.html

Ron Paul Is Still Kicking-- And As Clueless As Ever. GOP kook, Ron Paul, a Texas congressman, opposes government spending. To Paul government spending is socialism anyway, but he can't seem to get his head around the concept of post-agrarian modern society. When President Obama explained that a stimulus package is a spending package, Paul wasn't getting it. Today he's beating the right-wing war drums against Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) for putting their country first and cooperating with the Democrats in trying to do something to clean up the mess Paul blames on Bush and on "both parties," even though Paul's own voting record shows that he has been complicit in the Bush Regime's catastrophic agenda. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/02/ron-paul-is-still-kicking-and-as.html

McCain, back in Senate, plays against hype. He built his reputation and ran for president as someone who would buck the GOP in favor of bipartisan cooperation. Now he's rallying opposition to the Democratic stimulus plan. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-mccain7-2009feb07,0,99076.story

he wants government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

Multi-Agency Investigation Into Canceled Inaugural Ball. The U.S. attorney's office, Secret Service and D.C. attorney general's office are looking into whether Hayes committed financial fraud, officials at the agencies said. Investigators are trying to determine whether Hayes used Obama's name and sympathy for veterans organizations to boost donations and ticket sales and whether Hayes actually planned on throwing such a ball. "We're investigating what the hell happened with the money," said D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles. Hayes is a longtime Republican who ran a successful inaugural ball for George W. Bush in 2001. This year, he advertised his veterans ball on area radio stations and on the Web site of the Congressional Education Foundation for Public Policy, which he runs. The ads characterized the ball as a fundraiser for wounded Iraq war veterans. Reached at his mother's home in Baltimore, Hayes, 52, said he was forced to cancel after all but two of the ball's 15 corporate sponsors pulled their support. Hayes said he had expected they would each contribute $10,000 to $15,000. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/07/AR2009020701741.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Rush Limbaugh has his grip on the GOP microphone. As Republicans grapple with their fall from power, not all are comfortable with the talk radio king's suggestion that he, by default, has become the politically wounded party's unofficial leader. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rush8-2009feb08,0,2881422.story

Limbaugh said forthrightly, “I hope he fails.” http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090129_let_the_limbaughs_whine/

We hope Obama fails. http://jonswift.blogspot.com/2009/01/rush-limbaugh-gives-republicans-hope.html

Five file for RNC chairman post. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/five-file-for-rnc-chairman-post-2009-01-29.html

"The comeback starts now!" Welcome to the Republican National Committee's winter meeting -- and the GOP's alternate reality, where happy days are nearly here again. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/01/30/rnc/

Senate GOP leader says party must change. After crushing defeats in back-to-back elections, the top Senate Republican warned Thursday that the GOP risks remaining out of power in the White House and Congress unless it better explains its core principles to woo one-time faithful and new loyalists. "Unless we do something to adapt, our status as a minority party may become too pronounced for an easy recovery," Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told the Republican National Committee on Thursday. "The situation is challenging, but it's far from irreversible." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1130ap_republicans.html?source=mypi

The swearing-in of Barack Obama will be a unique event whose import won't be lost on the San Diegans who will be in Washington to witness it. http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jan/18/1n18going211028-swearing-barack-obama-will-be-uniq/?uniontrib

Reporter feels a personal connection to historic moment. http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jan/18/1m18longtime223448-reporter-feels-personal-connect/?uniontrib

Palin says she's been exploited by Couric and Fey. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says CBS News anchor Katie Couric and comic actress Tina Fey have been "exploiting" her. Palin also is questioning whether Caroline Kennedy is getting better treatment from the news media in her quest for a Senate seat than Palin herself received as Republican John McCain's running mate. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h21ZbzgPbTVRftcJPT5vkHkonY5QD95JKKT04

Trooper, union say politics delayed Johnston drug case. DENIAL: Accusations are incorrect, says public safety chief and troopers director. http://www.adn.com/front/story/641997.html

Franken widens Senate lead to 225 votes over Coleman. Minnesota's Canvassing Board will declare Monday that Franken received the most votes in the election, barring court intervention. Coleman is likely to sue. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-minnesota-recount4-2009jan04,0,4552022.story

Six Vying To Become The Next RNC Chair. Party Has Much At Stake in Choice. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010202377.html?wprss=rss_print

Ann Coulter hates America. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/03/ann-coulter-slams-michell_n_154947.html

Sarah And Bristol Palin Release Statement: "Obviously Discourage" Teen Pregnancy, Situation "Isn't Ideal" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/02/sarah-and-bristol-release_n_154890.html

Bigger Than Bush. As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners. Some of the whining almost defies belief. Did Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general, really say, “I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror”? Did Rush Limbaugh really suggest that the financial crisis was the result of a conspiracy, masterminded by that evil genius Chuck Schumer? But most of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration’s failure was simply a matter of bad luck — either the bad luck of President Bush himself, who just happened to have disasters happen on his watch, or the bad luck of the G.O.P., which just happened to send the wrong man to the White House. The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision. If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to “make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02krugman.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

Republicans to flee D.C. for Inauguration. While millions descend on Washington for the historic Inauguration of Barack Obama on Jan. 20, some Republicans see it as an occasion to get out of town. Out of power on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and mostly out of favor on K Street, many emasculated elephants in the GOP herd will begin the Age of Obama with what amounts to an extended holiday vacation. Instead of fighting the quadrennial cold and what are expected to be record-setting crowds, they're heading out to greener pastures, with better temperatures, less hassle and more agreeable company. “What better way to mark the Obama Inauguration (and his millions of adoring fans that will be in D.C.) than to get out of town to fabulous Las Vegas!” Charlie Spies, a Republican lawyer and former CFO to Mitt Romney’s campaign wrote in a blast e-mail to GOP friends. “We hope you can join us for dinner and a fun evening on Monday, Jan. 19, to celebrate the last few hours of our Republican president in the White House.” Spies and his wife Lisa, a Republican fundraiser, have gotten about 15 takers so far for this last supper or, as they billed it in the e-mail, their own “Inaugural in Exile.” quitters http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/16987.html

Republican New Years Eve broadcast on Fox News. Republican Viewers were allowed to text in messages that scrolled across the bottom in lieu of the news. One message read: HAPPY NEW YEAR AND LET'S HOPE THE MAGIC NEGRO DOES A GOOD JOB. LOVE JEN AND JOHN C. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/02/fox-news-airs-magic-negro_n_154761.html

Analysis: Republicans struggle with race issue. As minority voters abandoned the GOP in droves this past cycle, those who will vote on the next chairman of the Republican Party are struggling with the difficult issue of race. The Democrats are seen as having advantages: Traditionally they have won more minority voters, and now the party will be led by the first African-American president. And, for Republicans, race proves to be a particularly thorny issue that can cause problems for even the most adept political operators. The most recent example came when former Tennessee GOP chairman Chip Saltsman, a candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee, sent a CD with a parody song called "Barack the Magic Negro" to RNC members. First reported by The Hill, the CD set off a wave of criticism and elicited sharp rebukes from several prominent voting members. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/analysis-republicans-struggle-with-race-issue-2009-01-02.html

Chip Saltsman's 'Magic Negro' mistake. A parody of Obama could make the ambitions of the would-be GOP national chair magically disappear. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten31-2008dec31,0,2751514.column

My Response to the Mean-Spirited "Barack the Magic Negro". The sending of a Christmas greeting by Chip Saltsman to the members of the Republican National Committee that includes a recording of the so-called parody, "Barack the Magic Negro" is not only offensive, it is shocking and saddening in the extreme. It flies in the face of America's deeply held hope for a new era in which common ground and mutual respect characterize the exchanges between our national leaders. I and my co-writer of "Puff," Lenny Lipton, have been eagerly awaiting an end to the mean-spiritedness, outright disrespect and bigotry that was commonplace prior to this last presidential election. What might have been wearily accepted as "the way it was" in the campaign, is now unacceptable. Obama is not a candidate. He is the President-Elect, and this song insults the office of the Presidency, the people who voted for him, as well as those who did not -- and taking a children's song and twisting it in such vulgar, mean-spirited way, is a slur to our entire country and our common agreement to move beyond racism. It is almost unimaginable to me that Chip Saltzman who sent the CD, would seriously be considered for the top post of the Republican National Committee. Puff, himself, if asked, would certainly agree. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-yarrow/my-response-to-the-mean-s_b_153808.html

Just say 'no' to 'war crimes' probes. Morton Kondracke, Roll Call. For the sake of national security and national unity, President-elect Barack Obama should put a stop to efforts to investigate or prosecute Bush administration officials for anti-terror “war crimes.” The motive behind such efforts is not – as claimed – “truth” or “justice,” but political vengeance. Republicans hated President Clinton, and a GOP House impeached him. Many Democrats hate George W. Bush with equal or even greater passion, but they demurred on the idea of impeachment – mainly because the action against Clinton hurt the GOP more than it hurt Clinton. But now Bush-haters are calling for the Obama administration to investigate Bush officials for alleged war crimes and other misdeeds connected with the war on terror. Obama should make it clear right now that he opposes such action – and also that he opposes the “compromise” idea of a “truth commission” to investigate alleged Bush-era wrongdoing. The main reason has less to do with “turning the page,” uniting the country and letting bygones be bygones – all good Obama impulses – than with preserving the morale of intelligence professionals in wartime. If a special prosecutor were to be appointed to investigate possible criminality involved in detainee interrogations, “extraordinary renditions” or terrorist surveillance, it's not only Bush-era top officials who'd have to hire lawyers to defend themselves, but lower-down intelligence operatives as well. The same would be true if Congress created a “truth commission” with subpoena power to report on Bush-era policies. The operatives wouldn't have to fear prosecution, but they'd still have to worry about their reputations. And, when President Obama calls on the CIA to undertake a dangerous mission – perhaps a terrorist “snatch” in the tribal areas of Pakistan or the assassination of Osama bin Laden – any agent directed to undertake it would justifiably demand a legal opinion first. And CIA lawyers, too, would err on the side of caution to avoid future second-guessing. http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2008/dec/26/mz1e26kondra194210-just-say-no-war-crimes-probes/?uniontrib

$165,000 shelled out on stylists for Palin. Governor 'appalled' by campaign outlay. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081206/news_1n6palin.html

Al Franken’s (D) campaign may ask the Democratic-led Senate to intervene on his behalf to allow some disqualified absentee ballots to be counted in his quest to unseat Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). Franken attorney Marc Elias made the case to reporters Monday that as many as 1,000 absentee ballots were improperly disqualified and that the Senate or the courts may need to step in to resolve the issue. http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/franken-may-seek-senates-help-to-win-race-2008-12-01.html

Gov. Sarah Palin is putting her conservative Republican fame to work in Georgia, stumping for Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who is in a tough runoff for re-election. I wonder if she knows the true measure of the man she is eagerly helping. Chambliss was elected to the Senate in 2002 by running one of the most reprehensible campaigns of modern times. He was up against incumbent Democrat Sen. Max Cleland, a Vietnam War veteran who lost both legs and his right arm to a grenade during that conflict. http://community.adn.com/adn/node/135064

The Paranoid Style in American Politics. By Richard Hofstadter. http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html

The GOP's McCarthy gene. Think Goldwater is the father of conservatism? Think again. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gabler30-2008nov30,0,1009632.story

Palin Offers Thankfulnesses. Alaska Governor Marks Thanksgiving. http://www.borowitzreport.com/article.aspx?ID=6963

Why Republicans suffered a wipeout. However, many will also blame soon-to-leave Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado and his fellow anti-immigrant colleagues including F. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, California’s Duncan Hunter (retired as of now), and Brian Bilbray who used to lobby for FAIR (Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform). He won a special election to replace another congressman Duke Cunningham, who currently resides in federal prison. A movement was started under people like Tancredo, Hunter and Bilbray that reacted to Mexican demonstrations and the Mexican flags some demonstrators carried. It, too, was wrought with emotion and those people walked away from John McCain. He, after all, was the McCain of McCain-Kennedy Comprehensive Reform proposal that was based, these critics asserted falsely, on amnesty. Amnesty the lie, then, tagged McCain so badly that he never truly recovered from those deep Conservative Republican wounds. Thanks to those critics and their leaders, which they covered all Republicans with, Republicans have just suffered the greatest across-the-board losses since Watergate. Will they recover? Yes, they will start in 2010 when an Obama and Democrat backlash will occur because there is no way they can deliver on tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans or deliver health insurance for all or cut the budget and the deficit. They can’t deliver tax increases in the depths of a recession, so that promise will disappear, also. Hispanics will wonder why their economic situation will not be improved by Obama’s magic wand. They will wonder what happened to their precious immigration reform. They will wonder why Latin America will suffer at the hands of Obama’s minions who look to Europe for wine, cars and lack of free enterprise philosophy. They will wonder what happened. http://www.nogalesinternational.com/articles/2008/11/11/opinion/guest_opinion/doc4919a20784989371766258.txt

Huckabee is wrong on a couple of counts. First, my passion and work on behalf of values issues have in no way diminished. Second, I have believed since 9-11 that the West’s battle against Islamofascism is a crucial component in the fight for our civilization. Thus it is a values issue. That Huckabee fails to understand all this gets to the heart of why I did not support him. Huckabee said that during a private meeting we had, “it was like playing whack-a-mole at the arcade -- whatever issue I addressed, another one surfaced as the ‘problem’ that made my candidacy unacceptable.” In fact, talking with Huckabee was like playing whack-a-mole, because he had a number of issues that posed problems. It wasn’t just that he didn’t get it on foreign policy. His record on taxes and spending, illegal immigration, his apparent backing of Al Gore's carbon cap and trade scheme, support for voting rights for Washington, D.C., and cozying up to unions like the NEA all worried me. Huckabee can call it whack-a-mole. But for me there were just too many items where he wasn’t sufficiently conservative coupled with a lack of attention and experience on foreign affairs. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=29581 http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gary-bauer-strikes-back

"I saw Frank Luntz," said McInturff, "who is a moron -- I want to make sure this is clearly on the record -- he was talking to Republican governors, making fun of John for not being able to use a BlackBerry. The man can't do it because he is much more disabled than people can imagine... I would like to take a hammer and start breaking bones in Frank's arms." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/20/mccain-pollster-explains_n_145139.html

Huckabee Finally Settles His Campaign Scores. http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1859539,00.html

Coleman vs. Franken: The Rematch http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/senate/34498659.html?elr=KArks8c7PaP3E77K_3c::D3aDhUoaEaD_ec7PaP3iUiacyKUnciaec8O7EyU Recount FAQ: What's next http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/34499109.html?elr=KArks8c7PaP3E77K_3c::D3aDhUoaEaD_ec7PaP3iUiacyKUnciaec8O7EyU

local

Cindy for Congress got almost twice as many votes as anyone who has ever run against Pelosi since she eked out a primary victory in 1987 over Harry Britt, who was also the most progressive candidate. We raised a decent amount of money and are honored by the support we have gotten from all over this nation. This is not the time to give up and give in to the politics of blinding amounts of money shrouded in "hope." On November 5th, we still have millions of people sleeping on our streets and without jobs and health care. We still have our troops mired in two unconscionable wars that Obama has not promised to end. Our economy is still on a very precarious footing and oil, the lifeblood of the elite, is running out. There are many people in this world, and yes, this country that are food insecure and the next resource wars may be over water. Despite all this, I slept like a baby last night for the first time in months. I feel like a new person today and am holding my head up high. Last year, I dedicated my campaign to my son, Casey, and his comrades who have tragically fallen and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan that our government have devastated. We need to continue to make their deaths count for something noble. I dedicate the next steps to them, also. There are still many "fights" and "races" ahead. Take a few days to celebrate, mourn, reflect and then jump back in with both feet into the struggle for peace and justice. http://www.cindyforcongress.org/

Pelosi defeats Cindy Sheehan to win 12th term. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/11/04/politics/p131414S82.DTL&tsp=1

It’s hard to imagine a campaign more despicable than John McCain’s presidential bid, what with its attempts to convince enough voters that Barack Obama is an Arab / Muslim / terrorist (as if two of those things are worthy of our fear and scorn). But, as they say, California often leads the nation, and here we’ve done the near-impossible—we’re home to one of the more malodorous dung heaps in recent history: the Yes on Prop. 8 campaign. You’ve probably seen the TV commercial with the sweet, impressionable little girl running excitedly into the kitchen to tell her mother what she learned in school: “A prince can marry a prince, and I can marry a princess!” Mom is horror-stricken at first, then dumbfounded, as law professor Richard Peterson of Pepperdine University (which, by the way, is almost puritanical in its religious orthodoxy) enters the picture to scare the blood right out of the faces of Californians who don’t realize or can’t accept that they have gay friends, relatives and colleagues. Peterson tells us, essentially, that unless we pass Prop. 8, those unmoored perverts from the California Teachers Association will be teaching Johnny how to fall in love with and marry Jimmy. The message from the Yes on 8 campaign couldn’t be more overt: Our innocent, sponge-like children must be protected from the depravity of homosexuality. Taken together with the Yes on Prop. 4 anti-abortion campaign, the religious right’s strategy is clear: When all else fails, rant hysterically about the slobbering sex fiends who are coming for the children. http://www.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/something_smells/7431/

Billionaires put their agendas to a vote. BILLIONAIRES: George Soros, left, is bankrolling Proposition 5. T. Boone Pickens is pushing for Proposition 10. Five measures on the state ballot are the pet projects of the very wealthy, which some see as an abuse of the initiative process. "It is an opportunity to make powerful and effective change in one fell swoop," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance Network, which used $1.4 million donated by Soros to put Proposition 5 on the ballot and promote it. The billionaires, none of whom would be interviewed, are using the initiative process for a host of reasons. For Soros, long a critic of America's war on drugs, it is ideology. Same for Sperling, who put $9 million into Proposition 7, which would require utilities to obtain substantially more of their energy from renewable resources. Broadcom co-founder Nicholas is pushing his agenda in memory of his murdered sister. A $1-million contribution from him jump-started Proposition 6, which would lengthen prison sentences for certain crimes and allow people who lie to police about gang crimes to be prosecuted as accessories. Proposition 9, in which Nicholas has invested $4.8 million, would require mandatory restitution when crime victims suffer a loss, increase the maximum allowable time between parole hearings for an inmate from five to 15 years, and allow an unlimited number of victim family members to testify at such hearings. A company Pickens founded, Clean Energy Fuels Corp., is well positioned to cash in on $5 billion in subsidies for drivers and companies using alternative-fuel vehicles if voters approve Proposition 10. The company spent $15.2 million to qualify and promote the initiative. Whatever the motives, said Robert Stern, president of the Center for Government Studies in Los Angeles, the billionaires are "trying to leave a legacy. And these are big legacies if the measures pass." http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-billionaires1-2008nov01,0,5761563.story

Hunter and Lumpkin square off, clash over experience. The Democratic and Republican candidates vying to replace Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter peppered each other over their backgrounds and positions in an at times raucous debate last night. The event at Cuyamaca College was disrupted at the start when write-in candidate Joe Ryan refused to step off stage and had to be escorted away in handcuffs by a campus police officer. A police supervisor said Ryan was cited and released. Ryan had argued that he should be allowed to participate in the debate because it was held in a public venue. During the debate, Democrat Mike Lumpkin, a retired Navy SEAL commander, emphasized what has become a familiar theme at the national level for the Nov. 4 election: change. He described his opponent, Republican Duncan D. Hunter, as a “congressman's kid” and told a crowd of about 355 that voters should elect somebody who “has the qualifications to deal with” issues facing the country, among them a “shrinking job base,” a “challenged economy” and an “unsecure border.” “As far as I'm concerned, we need to throw all the bums out,” Lumpkin said of members of Congress. “If this were a computer, I would hit control-alt-delete and reboot the system.” Hunter, a Marine Corps Reserve captain and son of retiring Rep. Hunter, R-Alpine, responded that Democrats have been in control of Congress since 2006. He said he thought it was “kinda strange” that Lumpkin and Libertarian candidate Michael Benoit both mentioned his father in explaining what inspired them to run for Congress. Hunter said maybe Lumpkin should have run against his father. “Mr. Lumpkin's a little bit late,” Hunter said. Hunter and Lumpkin also clashed over their experience and issues such as where they stand on the tax plans proposed by the presidential candidates. The heavily Republican 52nd congressional district covers much of East County, part of inland North County and some of the city of San Diego. Recent campaign finance reports show Hunter continues to raise and spend more than the two other candidates. As of the end of September, Hunter had collected $1,131,068 in donations, compared with Lumpkin's $399,544. No Federal Election Commission reports turned up for Benoit, who has said he does not plan to raise or spend enough money to require them. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20081023-9999-1m23congress.html

Residents fight back over pilfered political placards. Chris Atkins, 29, a planner for a manufacturing company, said he and his wife, Diona, took a different path when someone swiped an Obama sign from the front yard of their Normal Heights home. They grabbed some markers and poster board to make their own signs. Their makeshift Obama signs read, “You can steal our sign, but you can't steal our vote.” http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20081025-9999-1m25signs.html

Hunter Jr. answer shows lack of understanding. I was surprised that the Union-Tribune endorsed Duncan Hunter Jr. over Mike Lumpkin in the 52nd District because, in the newspaper's words, “Hunter displays a far better grasp of the issues.” Apparently the U-T editorial staff forgot to ask one very important question: Why did President Bush invade Iraq? We at the Ramona forum asked Duncan Hunter that question and his answer: “Because we knew they had weapons of mass destruction, and we knew that because Saddam Hussein told us.” An answer like that does not indicate a good grasp of the issue, but just the opposite. I'll be voting for Mike Lumpkin who at least has the courage to speak the truth on issues that matter. DAVE PATTERSON Ramona http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081025/news_lz1mi25lets.html

No on 8 lead is eroding in polls. Most voters reject a ban on gay marriage but the margin is closing. Experts say the tally is hard to predict. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gaymarriage23-2008oct23,0,4937128.story

Prayer in the service of politics. Young members of a communal home are praying and fasting at a San Diego megachurch, part of a statewide vigil in support of Prop. 8. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prayer20-2008oct20,0,4851897.story

Prop. 8 battle rages over whether gay marriage would be taught in schools. Proponents say defeat of the measure would lead to such lessons. Foes cry fear-mongering and say there's no mention of marriage in the ballot item. The reality is complicated. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gayschools19-2008oct19,0,6474352.story

Duncan Hunter's earmarks benefit his son. Recipients give to campaign. Defense contractors who received millions of dollars in government earmarks arranged by Rep. Duncan Hunter are now helping to fill the campaign coffers of his son, who is seeking the San Diego-area congressional seat being vacated by his father after 28 years, records show. Officials at several companies that benefited from the pet project spending requests that the veteran Republican lawmaker inserted into often-unrelated legislation have contributed more than $30,000 to the front-running campaign of his son, Duncan D. Hunter, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/13/hunters-earmarks-benefit-his-son/

GOP is losing ground in county. Democrats on pace to lead registration. The electoral edge that Republicans have held in San Diego County for 24 years is slipping away, and the county may have more registered Democrats than Republicans by Election Day. The shift is the result of a steady four-year decline in the percentage of registered Republicans and a recent surge in registered Democrats. The Democratic ranks have swelled by 65,000 this year, 2.5 times more than Republicans. If registration continues at that rate through the last day to register, Oct. 20, the county could turn blue for the first time since 1984. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081009/news_1n9vote.html

Populist label isn't for everyone in Congress. But there was one thing that did seem to concern Issa. One word he didn't want associated with his name. One word that would not mesh well with the fact that Issa may be the wealthiest member of the House, or just behind Rep. Jane Harman. Issa's net worth has been conservatively listed as $160 million, but financial disclosure reports indicate he could be worth as much as $677 million. So please, whatever you do, do not call him a populist, even though many bailout opponents proudly wear that label. “Yes, it was a popular thing to do,” he said of his “no” vote. “But I certainly am not a populist. I care about the businesslike activities. I care about getting the banking system running properly again.” Issa may be just about the only politician this year who doesn't want to be called a populist. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081005/news_1n5condon.html

Why Lumpkin's supported in Congress race. In response to “Democrat faces uphill battle in Republican district” (Sept. 29) http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20080930-9999-1m30congress.html : Actually, plenty of Republicans are planning to vote for moderate candidate Mike Lumpkin, a former Navy SEAL commander. As his campaign manager, Chris Young, points out, he's not a typical Democrat and many of the Republicans in our district don't see it as Duncan D. Hunter's birthright to fill his father's seat upon retirement. They see him as naive and ill-equipped to handle issues such as the economy, health care and even the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Lumpkin has first-hand experience on the battlefield. Republicans aren't dumb. They know that Hunter is all about religion, the border fence and the Iraq war, where he served as well. While these are important issues, there's so much more to being a representative. He is in favor of earmarks, while Lumpkin would use them judiciously. We need someone with budget experience, as well as military experience. We need someone who can think for himself and not have to go ask dad where to stand on an issue. We need Mike Lumpkin. He understands all of our issues. LORI KERN-GREENBERG La Mesa http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081004/news_lz1ez4letters.html

Republican wing to examine effort to recall governor. State prison guards union behind drive. Former Gov. Pete Wilson yesterday urged his fellow Republicans not to make light of a recall drive against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He told delegates at the California Republican Party's fall convention that they should take the threat from the state prison guards union seriously, even if it isn't likely to succeed. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080928/news_1n28calgop.html

Nearly a dozen vying for 3 seats on City Council. El Cajon is in the midst of a financial crisis that's become the centerpiece of this year's election. The city is asking voters on Nov. 4 to approve Proposition J, a half-cent sales tax measure that city officials say will help fix El Cajon's ongoing budget deficit of $6 million a year. If approved, the sales tax rate in East County's largest city would be 8.75 percent, among the highest in San Diego County. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080927/news_1ez27cajon.html http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080927/news_1ez27cajonbx.html

50th District win seen as uphill climb for Leibham. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080927/news_1m27fifty.html

2 incumbents, 3 challengers face off in Grossmont races. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080925/news_1ez25high.html

general

2 men arrested in alleged assassination plot aimed at Barack Obama. Authorities say two white supremacists planned to shoot 88 blacks and decapitate 14 others, with the presidential candidate as their final target. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-plot28-2008oct28,0,7490785.story

Effigy of Sarah Palin hanging by a noose creates uproar in West Hollywood. Los Angeles sheriff's officials say the Halloween display isn't a hate crime. Authorities are keeping an eye on the house to make sure the situation doesn't get out of hand. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-palineffigy28-2008oct28,0,541630.story

Thousands Face Mix-Ups In Voter Registrations. In New Databases, Many Are Wrongly Flagged as Ineligible. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/17/AR2008101703360.html?hpid=topnews

Possible ‘landslide’ building for Democrats. http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2008/oct/12/possible_landslide_building_democrats/

EXCLUSIVE: CLINT EASTWOOD LIKENS '08 ELECTION TO OPRAH CAR GIVEAWAY http://defamer.com/5060140/exclusive-clint-eastwood-likens-08-election-to-oprah-car-giveaway

Although the pace of new statewide polls slowed a bit yesterday, the latest releases indicate no change in the overall status of the race for President. Obama and Biden continue to hold a strong lead McCain and Palin nationally and within the states necessary to win an electoral college majority. http://www.pollster.com/

The shadow of Gitmo. The next president must act to help America reclaim its principles. Among the most ignoble legacies of the George W. Bush administration will be the detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Administration officials drunk on executive power, disdainful of due process and indifferent to international opinion established -- in a territory they wrongly thought was beyond the reach of law -- a prison camp whose inmates comprised both dangerous terrorists and bystanders caught up in the post-9/11 dragnet in Afghanistan and Pakistan. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-guantanamo12-2008oct12,0,451973.story

general, archived October 12, 2008

The real Americans. Forget red and blue, the real battle is over the allegedly authentic and the allegedly inauthentic. As Sarah Palin "aw-shucks-ed" her way through Thursday's debate, she repeatedly played the one card that has become her stock in trade: She is a real American. Her rural roots, her lack of sophistication and worldliness, her bare bones education, her plain-spokenness, her moose hunting -- all of these seemed to brand her as a typical American, one of us us. She has even taken to calling herself Jane Sixpack. This characterization, ludicrous as it may be in a country as diverse as ours, is more than a matter of political aesthetics. One of the most important components of our recent presidential elections is the redefinition -- actually the narrowing of the definition -- of what constitutes an American. Since 2000 at least, we've been asking ourselves which candidate is the one we'd rather belly up to the bar with for a beer. Never mind George W. Bush's Brahmin pedigree and Yale education; he reinvented himself as a cowboy. By comparison, Al Gore was ridiculed as a Harvard stiff and John Kerry as Frenchified. Now Barack Obama is being subjected to the same mockery. It is tempting to attribute this sort of demagoguery entirely to Republican calculation. By constantly promoting the notion that Republicans are just a bunch of NASCAR fans and that Democrats are effete, the GOP has successfully divided the country not between red and blue politics but between one version of America and another, between the allegedly authentic and the allegedly inauthentic. But in reality, Republicans have only been exploiting a vein deep within the American consciousness. And who can blame them? What Republicans realize is that most Americans always have been desperately afraid of being seen as phony, and they are actively hostile toward anyone with airs. In fact, liberty is only one foundation of America. The nation rests just as securely on fear and resentment. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gabler5-2008oct05,0,1783439.story

Barack Obama still holds slim lead, state polls show. Obama's support edges upward, with fewer voters remaining undecided. Some McCain backers voice concern about the Democrat's advantage. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-campaign4-2008oct04,0,5707479.story

Steven Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw, are the latest celebrity donors to the fight against California's November ballot initiative that would overturn the state Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. They donated $100,000 Monday to the fight against Prop. 8.

“This is not political to us. We see it as very spiritual,” said Garlow, a leader of an interfaith coalition that has held monthly teleconferences, shared sermons and solicited donations for the ballot measure. Alarmed by a California Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage, churches of many faiths have banded together in support of a measure that would amend the state constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. They have become the single largest force behind the measure, recruiting volunteers, raising money, registering voters, manning phone banks and distributing campaign literature. Under federal law, religious organizations cannot endorse political candidates but are free to campaign on social issues without endangering their tax-exempt status. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20080924-1324-gaymarriage-religion.html

Presenting science questions to John McCain and Barack Obama. A project called Science Debate 2008 asked the major party presidential nominees about the state of American science. Here are some of the candidates' answers. http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-debate20-2008sep20,0,5946529.story http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php?id=42

It’s not the issues that likely make up many minds. Experts say uninformed voters have power. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/sep/14/its-not-issues-likely-make-many-minds/

The Democratic And Republican National Convention Speeches, As Seen Through Wordle. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/michelle-obama.html

Why We Were Falsely Arrested. Government crackdowns on journalists are a true threat to democracy. As the Republican National Convention meets in St. Paul, Minn., this week, police are systematically targeting journalists. I was arrested with my two colleagues, “Democracy Now!” producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, while reporting on the first day of the RNC. I have been wrongly charged with a misdemeanor. My co-workers, who were simply reporting, may be charged with felony riot. The Democratic and Republican national conventions have become very expensive and protracted acts of political theater, essentially four-day-long advertisements for the major presidential candidates. Outside the fences, they have become major gatherings for grass-roots movements—for people to come, amidst the banners, bunting, flags and confetti, to express the rights enumerated in the Constitution’s First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Behind all the patriotic hyperbole that accompanies the conventions, and the thousands of journalists and media workers who arrive to cover the staged events, there are serious violations of the basic right of freedom of the press. Here on the streets of St. Paul, the press is free to report on the official proceedings of the RNC, but not to report on the police violence and mass arrests directed at those who have come to petition their government, to protest. It was Labor Day, and there was an anti-war march, with a huge turnout, with local families, students, veterans and people from around the country gathered to oppose the war. The protesters greatly outnumbered the Republican delegates. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080903_why_we_were_falsely_arrested/

Confessions of an RNC security guard. From sushi-scarfing Secret Servicemen to drunken Sarah-Palin lust, witness the underside of the Republican shindig. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/09/06/rnc_guard/

Presidential campaigns vie for vets’ vote. http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/08/ap_veterans_vote_083108/

Let Them Count Houses. CAN'T WE ESCAPE THIS TIRESOME DEMAGOGUERY ABOUT CANDIDATES' INCOME AND PROPERTY? http://www.slate.com/id/2198957/

Religious conservatives claim Katrina was God's omen, punishment for the United States. http://mediamatters.org/items/200509130004

Party Conventions Are Free-For-All for Influence Peddling. How much would you need to throw a great party for several thousand friends? Imagine what you could do with $1 miilion. The possibilities boggle the mind. I’m thinking little meatballs served with 14-carat gold toothpicks. Now, imagine if you had $112 million at your disposal. That’s how much money corporate sponsors and lobbyists are contributing to this year’s Democratic and Republican conventions, events that have become less about the American political process and more about seeing who can throw the most lavish soirees. http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7592

Police raid headquarters of RNC protesters. Police raided a rental hall used by a group organizing protests at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Friday. The RNC Welcoming Committee, which describes itself as "anarchist/anti-authoritarian," accused St. Paul police of trying to disrupt their protest planned for Monday, the day the GOP convention is set to begin. While no one was arrested, the group said police temporarily detained and photographed at least 50 people who were inside the building. St. Paul Police spokesman Tom Walsh said they were executing a search warrant. "The cause for the search warrant is not public at this time," Walsh said. As many as 30 police officers entered with guns drawn, according to witnesses in the building. "The convergence center is simply a gathering place and is not used for illegal actions -- it is a place for workshops and trainings," a statement from the protest group said. "Tonight, we were watching films and sharing food." "We are now accused of a simple fire code violation," the statement said. Oddie Miller, a 19-year-old from Fort Collins, Colorado, said it was "just a space to get food, free Internet, community organization." "There were no bombs or anything in there," Miller said. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/30/rnc.protest/index.html

The next president will disappoint you. Forget the promises; there's only so much a president can achieve. On inauguration day, a new U.S. president is a demigod, the embodiment of aspirations as vast as they are varied. Over the course of the years that follow, the president inevitably fails to fulfill those lofty hopes. So the cycle begins anew, and Americans look to the next occupant of the Oval Office to undo his predecessor's mistakes and usher in an era of lasting peace and sustained prosperity. This time around, expectations are, if anything, loftier than usual. The youthful and charismatic Sen. Barack Obama casts himself as the standard-bearer of those keenest to fix Washington, redeem America and save the world. "Yes, we can," Obama's anthem proclaims, inviting supporters to complete the thought by inserting their own fondest desire. Yes, we can: bring peace to the Middle East; reverse global warming; win the global war on terrorism. Yet Sen. John McCain's campaign has been hardly shy about fostering grandiose expectations. Speaking earlier this month, while most Americans were fretting about the cost of oil, McCain uncorked one of his patented straight-talking promises: "I'm going to lead our nation to energy independence." As far as McCain would have us believe, you can take that to the bank. Will the next president actually bring about Big Change? Don't get your hopes up. Regardless of who wins Nov. 4, we should temper our expectations of what George W. Bush's successor will accomplish, especially on foreign policy. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-bacevich24-2008aug24,0,6727257.story

Thomas Jefferson would have had a hard time at Warren’s forum. It’s an excellent point and one I’ve been discussing in speeches over the past year: Article VI of our Constitution forbids religious tests for public office, but the Religious Right has prodded Americans to impose a de facto one anyway. Why is this bad? For starters, it means we might be excluding some very talented people from public life. Consider the first four presidents of the United States: * George Washington: Washington rarely, if ever, spoke in explicitly Christian terms. He was famous for his use of phrases like “Divine Providence,” “Supreme Architect of the Universe” and other Deistic language. He attended Christian services but had a habit of leaving before communion. * John Adams: Raised a Congregationalist, Adams as an adult rejected the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus and embraced Unitarianism. Adams wrote personal letters (mostly to Jefferson) openly discussing his disbelief in orthodox Christian doctrines. * Thomas Jefferson: Where to begin? Jefferson rejected the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus and other core Christian beliefs. Of the virgin birth he once wrote, “And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.” Jefferson took the New Testament and actually cut out all the parts he did not accept – the stories of Jesus’ miracles and any hint of his divinity. (There go the Red States!) * James Madison: Notoriously reluctant to discuss his personal religious views, Madison would have felt highly uncomfortable on Warren’s stage. Nominally an Episcopalian, he is regarded by most biographers today as Deist. http://blog.au.org/2008/08/20/saddleback-sideshow-presidential-professions-of-faith-distract-voters-from-the-core-issues-of-the-day/

The Manchester Grand Hyatt has lost its second major conference in a week in large part because of owner Doug Manchester's stance against same-sex marriage. The county retirement board voted unanimously yesterday to move its October conference out of the downtown Hyatt after a board member raised concerns over Manchester's $125,000 contribution to a signature-gathering campaign to place Proposition 8 on the Nov. 4 ballot. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080822-9999-1m22pension.html

McCain Keating scandal McCain ties to lobbyists. For Stephen Hess, who has spent 50 years working for presidents and analyzing events for the Brookings Institution, there are the more important traits than experience. He recalled Oliver Wendell Holmes' description of Franklin D. Roosevelt as “a second-rate intellect with a first-rate temperament.” “That ability to know what is important, who to pick, who to listen to, what you put first in your priorities. All of that really doesn't come from the sort of experience you get from being in the United States Senate long term,” Hess said. That leaves big challenges for both presidential candidates in the final 90 days of this campaign. McCain, who has the experience, must allay concerns about his temperament. Obama, who has the temperament, must show that he has enough experience. Neither will do so, though, with a simplistic “experience vs. change” argument. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080817/news_1n17condon.html

Barack Obama, John McCain discuss faith, issues at Saddleback Church forum. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-saddleback17-2008aug17,0,140426.story

TV ad backing gay marriage doesn't mention Prop. 8. Producers say the commercial isn’t targeting the ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriage. Foes say it’s a way to avoid disclosing donors’ names. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gaymarriage16-2008aug16,0,3954083.story

Troops contribute more to Obama campaign. Military personnel are contributing more to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois than to his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, according to a nonpartisan group tracking donations to candidates. The Center for Responsible Politics says that in terms of total contributions during the 2008 election cycle, 859 service members have contributed a combined $335,536 to Obama as of June 30, an average of about $391 a person. In comparison, 558 service members have contributed a combined $280,513 to Sen. John McCain, an average of $503 a person. http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/08/military_campaigncontributions_obama_081408w/

swift boating. Oh dear, Oh dear, Oh dear. Jerome Corsi, author of the bestselling Unfit for Command in 2004, a book that turned the phrase “swift boat” into a verb and helped defeat John “Reporting for Duty” Kerry, has written a new book about Barack Hussein Obama (yes, I know I am not supposed to mention his middle name, but I am going to anyway) called The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. It’s officially published only today (you can order it from Amazon here), but already it is # 1 on The New York Times bestseller list with 475,000 copies in print so far. The Times, naturally, is in a swivet lest Corsi’s book undermine The Messiah’s planned advent in November and they have wheeled into print with a longish dismissal masquerading as a review today. “Significant parts of the book,” the authors write (the Times requires two reviewers when a serious demolition job is commissioned), “have already been challenged as misleading or false in the days since its debut on Aug. 1.” http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2008/08/13/ny-times-tries-to-torpedo-anti-obama-book-succeeds-in-spreading-its-message/

Swift Boater Jerome Corsi Goes After Obama. A note to Corsi: You shouldn't step in the same sewer twice. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/94963/swift_boater_jerome_corsi_goes_after_obama/#more

Anti-war Army mom qualifies for Congress run. http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/08/ap_sheehan_081208/

How McCain, Obama see each other. in February 2006. Obama had joined members from both parties in a group organized by McCain to draft bipartisan legislation on ethics and lobbying reform, after McCain's hearings on the Jack Abramoff scandal. But when other Senate Democrats decided to write their own bill, Obama aligned himself with them. McCain told me, “He went off and voted with [Minority Leader] Harry Reid on the Democratic substitute. And I wrote him the now famous letter.” The letter he sent Obama began with this stinging sentence: “I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere.” It continued, “I'm embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics, I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble.” Obama wrote back that he had “no idea what has prompted your response.” He told me the other day: “That was one incident where he thought I had undercut him. I had a completely different view of it.” http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080811/news_mz1e11broder.html

McCain and Obama Agree to Attend Megachurch Forum. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/us/politics/21church.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Embedded reporters or Republican activists? Members of Vets for Freedom have campaigned for John McCain and made anti-Obama ads, but while they're in Iraq, you're paying for their gas, food and lodging. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/08/embeds/

Troops see presidential race through own lens. Brandon Ziegler served two tours in Iraq and wears a bracelet inscribed with the name of an Army buddy who never made it home. Jim Morin saw action in both Iraq and Afghanistan and has lost several friends to the war in Iraq, the latest just a month ago. Both say their choice in the 2008 presidential election is clear: For Ziegler, it will be John McCain; for Morin, it will be Barack Obama. http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/07/ap_military_election_070108/

Politics on the Couch: Hating the Haters. But where does hate come from? I wrote that Bush's sadism -- whether it was his pleasure blowing up frogs or branding college fraternity pledges with red-hot wire coat hangers, originated in his childhood fear of humiliation. He expressed that fear, and continues to do so, by relentlessly trying to humiliate others. Emotional splitting between self and other facilitates hate; the hater feels that the hated are wholly different alien beings. Hatred sharpens our vision of the enemy, even when that enemy is a fellow Democrat who supports a different candidate. Hate arises from envy as well, from the need to spoil goodness in others. When Obama says he believes in negotiating with our enemies he was viciously attacked by Bush for being weak. Even Obama's patriotism was questioned. But when Bush negotiates a treaty with North Korea he does so out of his self-described skillful diplomacy, not out of weakness or naiveté. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-frank/politics-on-the-couch-hat_b_109670.html

Obama and McCain, the same? Not quite. But here are their surprising policy overlaps. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-obamacain8-2008jun08,0,543931.story

Indefensible spending. America's massive military budget is irrational, costly and dangerous. Why isn't it a campaign issue? By Robert Scheer http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-scheer1-2008jun01,0,7121603.story

The new American segregation. As we cloister ourselves in like-minded enclaves, we're less likely to reach national consensus. Once upon a time, politicians were expected to reconcile society's opposing interests. Today, our little groups expect them simply to carry our water. For all our vaunted belief in individualism and democratic ideals, we are no longer adhering to either. Instead, we have reorganized our country into a confederation of little reservations, and together we vote, arm in arm, with members of our little tribes. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rodriguez26-2008may26,0,3343704.column?track=mostviewed-storylevel

Military donations to anti-war candidates rise. Republicans receive the largest slice of presidential campaign contributions made by military members and their spouses, but leading anti-war candidates are getting a substantial cut, too, according to an independent analysis of political contributions. From January 2007 through March of this year, service members or civilian employees of the military donated at least $766,000 to presidential candidates, according to data made available April 20 and provided by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group in Washington. During the reporting period, Paul — a former Air Force surgeon who broke with his party to vote against the Iraq war — received the most military contributions, with $201,271. That’s significantly more than the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain from Arizona, who received $132,133 from military donors, according to CRP. “They signed up to defend our country, not police the world,” Benton said, “and I think they’re hungry for leaders who do that.” Obama, meanwhile, whose opposition to invading Iraq has been a centerpiece of his campaign, has received $178,456 in military contributions, compared to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s $85,000, the analysis shows. http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/05/army_militarydonors_050408w/

Bush asks Pelosi to reverse course on Colombia FTA. By obstructing this agreement, Congress is signaling to a watching hemisphere that America cannot be trusted to support its friends,” Bush said. In his party’s radio address, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean continued to hit Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over his economic record, referring to recent McCain comments that Dean suggested were out of touch with reality. “Since the Republicans have occupied the White House, seven million more Americans have lost their health insurance, wages have fallen, gas prices are at record highs, and even groceries cost more than they have in the past 17 years,” Dean said. “And America has the largest deficits in our history. ”Senator McCain believes we are better off.” http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/bush-asks-pelosi-to-reverse-course-on-fta-2008-04-19.html

Fighting Words: How to Humiliate -- and Convert -- a Right-Winger. I'd like to suggest a very simple strategy for American liberals: Get mean. Stop policing the language and start using it to hurt our enemies. American liberals are so busy purging their speech of any words that might offend anyone that they have no notion of using language to cause some salutary pain. Why, for example, not popularize slogans that mock the Bush loyalists as "suckers"? Something like, "There are two kinds of Republicans: millionaires and suckers." Put that on a few bumper stickers and I guarantee a lot of "South Park Republicans" will quit the GOP. They just smirk when you tsk-tsk at them for being disrespectful. They want to be disrespectful; every normal young male wants to be. http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/80507/?page=1

Blackwater Seeps Into the Campaign. By Jeremy Scahill . http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031908D.shtml

Modern conservatism is dying. There's still an election to be held, but conservatism as we've known it since Ronald Reagan is failing - ground down in the desert of Iraq, drowned in the floods of Hurricane Katrina, foreclosed by the housing crisis and poisoned by toys imported from China. The American people are figuring this out. While conservatives repeat their time-worn slogans - "small government, low taxes, high security" - the American people are living the consequences. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031508E.shtml

The Inconvenient Truths of 2008. Four things the party loyalists won't want to hear. Each party's base has two inconvenient truths it doesn't want to hear. For Republicans, those truths concern immigration and the culture war. Most of today's illegal immigrant population is here to stay (along with their descendants) and will pay no significant price for getting here outside the legal channels. No presidential candidate can change those facts. On the issue that matters most to conservative Christians--abortion--the political phase of the culture war is over. The right lost --a pro-life initiative failed in South Dakota in 2006: If it can't win there, it can't win anywhere. Well, maybe Utah. For Democrats, the relevant subjects are Iraq and federal spending. Discussions of the Iraq war in Democratic primaries have a bizarre quality: Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama speak as though the war is a lost cause. It isn't--unless one of them wins the election and pulls the plug, a scenario that Iran's proxies no doubt await eagerly. As for spending, the federal budget (and federal tax revenues) will leave no room for large, expensive, New Deal-style health and education programs. For the foreseeable future, domestic policymaking will have more to do with arranging incentives than with dispensing largesse: Think welfare reform, not Aid to Families with Dependent Children. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/723azckf.asp

Confusion, controversy at the polls. Voters say they were denied right to vote Republican; election officials deny disenfranchisement stories. A day after hundreds of irate voters said they were wrongly barred from voting for Republican candidates on Super Tuesday, San Diego County officials said they had not found any cases of people being robbed of their right to vote. State officials said they also fielded complaints Tuesday from voters being stopped from voting -- but mostly from people who wanted to vote in the Democratic race, not the Republican race. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/02/07/news/top_stories/1_03_162_6_08.txt

Exit polls reveal some hidden secrets of California's voters. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/02/exitpoll.html

Making a graceful exit. As ex-candidates have demonstrated, shutting down a campaign and bidding farewell to supporters can be handled in a number of ways. Campaign staffers, political strategists and the candidates themselves say the goodbye process can be as complicated as the actual run for the White House — and even harder to do well. A graceful goodbye message, they say, involves timing and delivery. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/making-a-graceful-exit-2008-01-29.html

For Democrats, however, Reagan was no hero. His cuts to social programs that did not serve the “truly needy” hurt Americans caught at the bottom of our economy. His “war on drugs” (and the laughable advice to “just say no!”) was an ineffective waste of resources, and led to laws and mandatory sentences that seemingly targeted African Americans. He ushered in the unfortunate influence of the Christian right. And under his watch, 241 Marines were killed in their barracks during a peacekeeping mission in Beirut, after which the Gipper immediately decided to “cut and run.” Still, and particularly since his death in 2004, even members of the loyal opposition have acknowledged the man’s ability to win votes and tell a bad joke. He has even been spoken of fondly as a “great communicator” by the Clintons. And Senator Barack Obama was doing much the same when he recently told the Reno Gazette Journal’s editorial board that “the Republican approach, I think, has played itself out … [But] it’s fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.” Obama later marveled at Reagan’s ability to convince Americans to “vote against their own interests.” http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/reagan_country/6626/

Democrats have many ways to vote in primaries overseas. Registered Democrats living abroad on U.S. military bases and in European towns will have multiple ways to vote for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards or the candidate of their choice as a far distant part of Super Tuesday. Voting in the overseas Democratic primary — from Feb. 5-21 — will be possible either online, by mail or fax and at local polling locations. It is the first time that Internet-based voting is expected to be used on such a large scale for a primary election, according to the Oxford Internet Institute. For times and places of polls in other military communities, go to www.democratsabroad.org. http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=51636

My favorite response from any candidate about the evolution/creationism debate was from former Sen. Mike Gravel (Alaska). When LiveScience asked the senator if he thought creationism should be taught in public schools, Gravel replied, ""Oh God, no. Oh, Jesus. We thought we had made a big advance with the Scopes monkey trial....My God, evolution is a fact, and if these people are disturbed by being the descendants of monkeys and fishes, they've got a mental problem. We can't afford the psychiatric bill for them. That ends the story as far as I'm concerned." http://www.reason.com/news/show/124271.html

Presidential candidates take a stand on military issues http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=51423

Romney has been faulted for not throwing at least one bone of acknowledgment to nonbelievers in his big religion speech last week. But he couldn't, because the theme of the speech was that there was something special about having your values drawn from religious faith. Indeed, faith is politically indispensable. “Freedom requires religion,” Romney declared, “just as religion requires freedom.” But this is nonsense – as Romney then proceeded to demonstrate in that very same speech. He spoke of the empty cathedrals in Europe. He's right about that: Postwar Europe has experienced the most precipitous decline in religious belief in the history of the West. Yet Europe is one of the freest precincts on the planet. It is an open, vibrant, tolerant community of more than two dozen disparate nations living in a pan-continental harmony and freedom unseen in all previous European history. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071214/news_lz1e14krauth.html

"Right now we have a confluence of issues facing candidates: embryonic stem cell research, global warming, science and technology education, biotechnology and energy policy -- it's just becoming an avalanche," says Lawrence Krauss, a physics professor at Case Western University, and author of the bestselling The Physics of Star Trek. "I think at some level, you have to get some insight into what the candidates know, or what they're willing to learn." http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/12/science_debate

Republicans form a new plot to rig the 2008 election. Today, that contempt for democracy is on display again. In California right now, there is a naked, out-in-the-open ploy to rig the 2008 presidential election -- and it may succeed. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/341868_rigged02.html

“You can be a hawk on national security but that does not mean you have to advocate torture,” http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/huckabee-dems.-to-meet-retired-officers-on-torture-2007-11-30.html

Reading Tea Leaves and Campaign Logos http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/11/18/opinion/20071118_OPART_index.html

http://www.issues2000.org/default.htm

http://www.pollster.com/

http://www.vajoe.com/candidate_calculator.html

http://www.selectsmart.com/president/2008.html

Heckle this http://www.slate.com/id/2174057#heckle

republicans

Jon Stewart Annihilates Sarah Palin's Media Surrogates. http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/cc_insider/2008/09/jon-stewart-ann.html

Sarah Palin: "shrill and sarcastic political attacks may fire up the Republican base, but they don't change the fact that a McCain-Palin administration would mean four more years of failed Bush-Cheney policies." http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/features/la-et-bestworst-rnc-2008-pg,0,5150066.photogallery?index=4

Paris Hilton http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-3813776887191158821&hl=en&fs=true

"I'm like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door," Palin said in an interview with Fox News on Monday. "And if there is an open door in '12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door." In a wide-ranging interview with Fox's Greta Van Susteren, Palin says she neither wanted nor asked for the $150,000-plus wardrobe the Republican Party bankrolled, and thought the issue was an odd one at the end of the campaign, considering "what is going on in the world today." "I did not order the clothes. Did not ask for the clothes," Palin said. "I would have been happy to have worn my own clothes from Day One. But that is kind of an odd issue, an odd campaign issue as things were wrapping up there as to who ordered what and who demanded what." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_palin.html

What's ahead for Gov. Palin? Seven challenges. http://www.adn.com/sarah-palin/story/583456.html

The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers. The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric. But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone intentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further. The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/sarahpalin/3405336/Sarah-Palin-blamed-by-the-US-Secret-Service-for-death-threats-against-Barack-Obama.html

Palin Did NOT Know Africa a Continent ? http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/palin-did-not-know-africa-continent

cry baby Palin "That's cruel, It's mean-spirited. It's immature. It's unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away with it, taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news. It's not fair, and it's not right." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_palin_clothing.html?source=mypi

Sarah Palin returns to a chillier Alaska. The governor's approval ratings have fallen since she joined the campaign trail. She'll have to mend fences over Troopergate, budget concerns and her national 'pit bull' image. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-palin7-2008nov07,0,1761599.story

Palin Once Greeted McCain Staff Wearing Only A Towel. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/05/palin-once-greeted-mccain_n_141394.html

President George Bush the "lamest of lame ducks". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7709978.stm

California GOP Files FEC Complaint Over Obama Visit to Grandmother. Perhaps the most ill-timed press release of the 2008 campaign arrived shortly after 1:30 p.m. today, sent by the Republican National Committee. The release forwarded word that the California Republican Party filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, in part because of a visit Sen. Barack Obama made to his dying grandmother. "Obama for America violated federal law by converting its campaign funds to Senator Obama's personal use," the release stated. "Senator Obama recently traveled to Hawaii to visit his sick grandmother. This was the right thing for any grandson to do -- at his own expense -- but it was not travel that his campaign may fund." At issue was whether the trip should have been paid for with campaign funds, based on the law that forbids candidates from using such funds to pay for personal travel. The Obama campaign said the trip had been vetted with lawyers beforehand and was allowable. The Republicans argued that, because Obama did not campaign during the quick journey to Hawaii, it should not have been a campaign expense. But filing the complaint today now seems to have been ill-advised, if not legally, then certainly politically. Obama and his sister released a statement this afternoon announcing that their grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died peacefully after a battle with cancer. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/11/03/california_gop_files_fec_compl.html

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and several other political operatives associated with the RNC, for improperly spending $150,000 on clothing for Palin and her family, in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). According to news reports, the clothing and accessories purchases for Palin and her family included a whopping $49,425 spent at Saks Fifth Avenue, and a $75,062 spending spree at Neiman Marcus. These shopping excursions violate campaign finance law. http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/34812

Mounting evidence suggests John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin is deeply involved with a global religious movement bent on imposing theocracies around the world and whose top leader, C. Peter Wagner, has decreed to his followers it is God's will that a forcible, massive transfer of wealth, from the 'godless' to members of his movement, take place. A recently released 36 page report (online / PDF / highlights) from an independent research team specializing Wagner's movement includes details on what appear to be virulently anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish statements from, and activities carried out by, top leaders of C. Peter Wagner's New Apostolic Reformation. Sarah Palin joined the Wasilla prayer group of C. Peter Wagner apostle Mary Glazier in 1989, Glazier told Wagner and his top New Apostolic Reformation leaders on July 13, 2008. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/katherine-harris-was-in-s_b_140164.html

Retail Sector Soars on News that Palin Seeks New Outfit. Guv's Shopping Gives Economy Much-needed Jolt. http://www.borowitzreport.com/article.aspx?ID=6953

Barack Obama has been saying for months now that the success of his campaign message of change, despite all the nasty and scurrilous attacks lobbed his way, has "vindicated his faith in the American people." Seems innocent enough, no? In fact, seems like an awfully positive thing to say about the country. But John McCain doesn't see it that way. Seeing the presidency slowly recede from his grasp, Senator McCain took his campaign to yet another new low and distorted Obama's remarks in an attempt to question his patriotism. "This has been a long campaign but recently we've learned more and more about Senator Obama. He said the other day that his primary victory 'vindicated' his faith in America. My country has never had to prove anything to me, my friends. I've always had faith in it and I've been humbled and honored to serve it." The McCainiacs out there can try to spin this whatever way they want but it's clear to anyone with the ability to read between the lines exactly what's going on here. So much for McCain's promise to run a "honorable campaign." Tuesday can't come soon enough. Here's the Obama campaign's stern response: "It's pathetic that John McCain would take a statement Barack Obama has been making for a year about his faith in the American people and distort it to attack his patriotism," spokesman Bill Burton said in response to McCain's attack Saturday. "Sadly, this is what we've come to expect from a desperate, dishonorable campaign that will say anything in a failed attempt to win this election." http://crooksandliars.com/silentpatriot/shameless-mccain-goes-after-obamas-p

the Ethics Committee's was not the only investigation into the scandal. There were two other probes at the time that got barely any public attention--both of which largely focused on McCain himself. These were probes into illicit leaks about the proceedings of the Ethics Committee--leaks that repeatedly benefited McCain and hurt his Keating Five colleagues. One of those senators described the leaks at the time as a "violation of ethical behavior at least as serious as anything of which we senators have been accused." The leaks, if they were coming from a senator, were also illegal. All five senators--including McCain--had testified under oath and under the U.S. penal code that the leaks did not come from their camps. The leaks were also prohibited by rules of the Senate Ethics Committee; according to the rules of the Senate, anyone caught leaking such information could face expulsion from the body. These, then, were not the usual Washington disclosures: Discovered, they could have stopped the career of any Washington politician in his tracks. The two investigations into the leaks suggested McCain's involvement but were officially inconclusive. New evidence, obtained in recent weeks, again points back to the McCain camp. The investigator of those leaks now says that he does not doubt that they came from McCain or his team. A reporter who possessed evidence in the Keating case now says he believes that McCain was the source and got away with it. Finally, a senator who has emerged as a key backer of McCain's presidential campaign turns out to have authored a letter stating flatly that McCain was the source of the damning leaks. Put together, a large record of evidence now points in the direction of Senator McCain. Far from McCain's reputation of putting "country first," these leaks depict a formidable politician willing to go through great lengths to maintain his standing. More than McCain's relationship with Keating, it is the story of the Keating investigation leaks that voters should know. http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a98690e8-d6b0-44fa-a3f0-c76414c3c9da

Palin Brutally Punk'd by Fake French President Sarkozy. http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/01/palin-brutally-punkd.html

Palin's Movement Urges 'Godly' To 'Plunder' Wealth of The 'Godless'. Endorser Bishop Thomas Muthee outlined NAR program to 'infiltrate' key sectors of society before anointing Palin, in 2005 religious ceremony. McCain's running mate Sarah Palin is closely associated, as noted in a recent New York Times story, with "spiritual warfare", an aggressive approach to evangelizing developed by the leaders of a worldwide religious movement which promotes a religiously based wealth transfer scheme as a means to implement theocracy. Sarah Palin endorser Bishop Thomas Muthee, in a speech he gave before blessing and anointing Sarah Palin as a political leader, on October 16, 2005 at the Wasilla Assembly of God, laid out the current agenda of the New Apostolic Reformation - how "God's kingdom" needed to "infiltrate" seven sectors of society. Muthee listed most of them: business and finance, schools and education, media and entertainment, politics and government. Muthee also stated "The Bible says the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. Sarah Palin was in the audience. Minutes later, she was anointed, and blessed, with the laying on of hands. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/105717/palin%27s_movement_urges_%27godly%27_to_%27plunder%27_wealth_of_the_%27godless%27/

mean to kids: Kids in this suburban Detroit neighborhood cried foul after a McCain supporter refused to give them candy because they were the children of Obama supporters. Whatever your politics, I think we can all agree it's beyond the pale to deny children candy on Halloween. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/01/mccain-supporter-denies-c_n_140075.html

Republicans are rude profane people. House minority leader John Boehner's spokesman confirms the accuracy of this quote, from an Ohio student newspaper: "Now, listen, I've voted 'present' two or three times in my entire 25-year political career, where there might have been a conflict of interest and I didn't feel like I should vote," Boehner said. "In Congress, we have a red button, a green button and a yellow button, alright. Green means 'yes,' red means 'no,' and yellow means you're a chicken shit. "And the last thing we need in the White House, in the oval office, behind that big desk, is some chicken who wants to push this yellow." http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081031/pl_politico/25167;_ylt=Ati4T9zjPdQNAkxgO6P2VnuyFz4D

The Stench Run: Republicans Ramp Up Negative Attacks As Election Day Nears. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/01/the-stench-run-republican_n_140056.html

Prank call. Sarah Palin has told a Canadian comedian posing as French president Nicolas Sarkozy during a prank call that "maybe in eight years" she will be president. The Republican vice-presidential nominee discusses politics, the perils of hunting with vice-president Dick Cheney and Sarkozy's "beautiful wife" in the phone call released yesterday and set to air tomorrow on a Quebec radio station. On being told of the prank, a spokeswoman for Palin said: "C'est la vie." http://news.scotsman.com/world/Prank-call.4652484.jp

“President Sarah Palin—think about it.” http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/20081028_sarah_palin_scares_danny_elfman_into_politics/

Hell to Pay
AP_mccain_looking_gruff3.jpg

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081030_hell_to_pay/

Supporting Obama? No treats for you at Grosse Pointe Farms house. A Grosse Pointe Farms woman refused Halloween treats to children whose parents support Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Shirley Nagel passed out candy Friday -- but only to those who shared her support for Republican presidential candidate John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin. A sign was posted Friday outside Nagel's house and it served notice to all trick-or-treaters, according to Channel 2/WJBK-TV. It read: "No handouts for Obama supporters, liars, tricksters or kids of supporters." On Saturday afternoon, the sign was no longer there. Nagel told WJBK-TV that "Obama's scary." When asked about children who'd been turned away empty-handed and crying, she said: "Oh well. Everybody has a choice." Her next door neighbor Gregory Bowens, who has an Obama sign propped in his front yard, said when he heard about his neighbor's actions he put up posters proclaiming "Obama 4 Peace" and "candy for all." He encouraged trick-or-treaters denied next door to scrawl positive messages about Obama or anything else on his driveway. "The truth is it was a very mean thing to do," Bowens said. "I thought I should do something positive." While the neighborhood is dotted by several McCain and Obama signs, Bowens said neighbors get along and politics is rarely an issue. A phone message and a visit to Nagel's home went unanswered Saturday evening. http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081101/POLITICS01/811010422

Growing Doubts on Palin Take a Toll, Poll Finds. A growing number of voters have concluded that Senator John McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, is not qualified to be vice president, weighing down the Republican ticket in the last days of the campaign, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. All told, 59 percent of voters surveyed said Ms. Palin was not prepared for the job, up nine percentage points since the beginning of the month. Nearly a third of voters polled said the vice-presidential selection would be a major factor influencing their vote for president, and those voters broadly favor Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/us/politics/31poll.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

That coveted Dick Cheney endorsement. The best thing that happened to Barack Obama Saturday, if you listened to him and his aides, was that John McCain picked up a key endorsement. From Dick Cheney. The vice president, who may still be a scary costume on future Halloweens even once he leaves office, told a Wyoming Republican event Saturday that he was "delighted" to support McCain and Sarah Palin. "I believe the right leader for this moment in history is Senator John McCain," Cheney said. That was music to the ears of Obama's press staff in Chicago, since Cheney is probably the one politician in America who's even less popular than George W. Bush. "Today, Dick Cheney offered his unequivocal support for John McCain and Sarah Palin," spokesman Hari Sevugan e-mailed reporters. ("We are the only ones who announced the endorsement," another aide, Nick Shapiro, joked to Salon.) http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/

"According to expense reports, Sarah Palin charged the state of Alaska over $21,000 for her children to travel with her on official business. In fairness to Gov. Palin, when she leaves them home alone, they get pregnant." http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-late-night-politics-103108-pg,0,5440738.photogallery?index=5

I had friends complain that Barack Obama's TV ad Wednesday night was "dull," but I thought it worked. Maybe that's because I spent the middle of the day getting ready for MSNBC's "Hardball," where I got to hear disgraced GOP congressman Tom DeLay smear Obama as "a radical, and at the very best, he is a socialist." They used to call DeLay "the exterminator," because that was his business before he became a politician. Watching him Wednesday, I started thinking, maybe it takes vermin to know vermin. The Republicans are running a low-road campaign, but this was real filth coming from DeLay. DeLay, of course, was one of the most corrupt, hypocritical and divisive pillars of the 1990s GOP revolution, and he's hugely to blame for his party's sad fortunes today. But he still gets around the cable shows, and to see him on "Hardball," just a half hour before I was on, spewing hate about Obama, was kind of unsettling. Obama's a radical and a Marxist, he insisted, more radical than Al Gore, John Kerry or Barney Frank. He threw out Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. Ultimately I lost track of the times he called Obama a "Marxist." But appearing right after DeLay, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schulz mopped the floor with him, to Matthews' apparent surprise and enjoyment. Obama should send her flowers. I should send her flowers. http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/?last_story=/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/10/30/obama_clinton/

Bob Kiddle is a moron. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081029/news_lz1ed29bottom.html

In the first presidential debate, and on the campaign stump, John McCain has cited a $3-million earmark allocated to study the DNA of bears in Montana. "I don't know if it was a paternity issue or criminal," he quipped, "but it was a waste of money." Wrong on both counts. The actual amount was more: $4.8 million, and the research was mandated by the Federal Endangered Species Act, on the recommendation of scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks service as essential to preserving a threatened species, the grizzly bear. The DNA study allowed researchers to pinpoint bear numbers and locations and to document how their population is changing, all essential data if the bears are to be protected from extinction. That may not be the highest item on a presidential agenda, but to claim that it is a waste of money is outrageous. Protecting grizzly bears may be expensive, but many would argue that preserving such a U.S. treasure is priceless. During the second and third debates, McCain railed against another supposed example of government waste: A request from Barack Obama for "$3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago." The "overhead projector" in question is in fact a 40-year-old Zeiss optical projector that needs to be replaced at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The one-ton, 10-feet-long instrument is the central component of the Adler, the first planetarium ever built in the Western Hemisphere. It projects the night sky on the dome of the Sky Theater at the planetarium, which has hosted more than 35 million people since it opened, including more than 400,000 schoolchildren every year. In fact, the request -- made by Obama along with others in the Illinois congressional delegation, including three Republicans -- wasn't granted. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-krauss28-2008oct28,0,326711.story

The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/11/03/081103taco_talk_hertzberg?printable=true

At his rally here Monday, the message was clear and pithy: Boo! In three acts, McCain presented the Obama Horror Show. If Obama is elected, your taxes will go up, you'll be unsafe from foreign threats, and, especially if Congress goes Democratic, you will be forced to endure an era of unchecked liberalism. Obama aides have long argued that their candidate offers hope while McCain offers fear. Judging by the balance of messages both candidates are giving voters before Election Day, it's hard to disagree. http://www.slate.com/id/2203139/

Obama looks more and more steadfast as the moment nears. The country longs for a president who can talk and think at the same time. We've been locked up with the Current Occupant for way too long and the thought of replacing him with the Angry Old Man of the Desert and Whoopee the Ice Queen is miserable in the extreme. http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/10/29/tulsa/

After years of badgering by Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., Johnson in 1967 promoted Vice Adm. John S. "Jack" McCain Jr. from a dead-end post to commander of the Atlantic fleet, according to archived letters, documents and tapes of phone conversations that have not been reported until now. Johnson did it even though Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said in a 1966 phone conversation with Johnson that he had been told McCain wasn't competent and that "he's not a good strong tough commander." http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/29/admiral_mccain/

Noxious analogy. Comparing GOP, Nazi rallies reflects on media. Decades from now, when The Lifetime Channel does a special on “Great Love Affairs of the 21st Century,” the first entry is sure to be the Barack Obama-national media coupling of 2008. What's going on now is simply stunning. Consider the readiness of journalists to liken McCain-Palin rallies to Nazi rallies in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. It's not just angry bloggers. In the Oct. 28 New Yorker, Steve Coll – the admired former managing editor of The Washington Post and a Pulitzer Prize winner for both reporting and a nonfiction book on terrorism – became the latest. These people have lost their minds. The history books are full of revolting accounts of what actually happened at Nazi rallies – the ritual denunciations and calls for the deaths of Jews, Gypsies, Czechs, Russians, etc.; the harassment of nearby onlookers and storekeepers who “looked” Jewish or who had “Jewish” hairstyles; the waving of the Nazis' quasi-sacred “blood banner”; Adolph Hitler's pronouncements that Nazism was nothing less than a holy order that would endure 1,000 years; the processions of Germans in traditional clothing declaring Hitler the embodiment of Germany's greatness and its renaissance from the humiliation of World War I. Oh, yeah, that sure sounds like a McCain-Palin rally. Steve Coll should be ashamed. But, then, so should many others in the national media. Now John McCain's fans finally realize why Hillary Clinton's backers were so upset. It really does sound like a McCain Palin rally! http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081028/news_lz1ed28bottom.html

In a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin told the crowd that an Obama presidency would present the specter of a socialist state in which fundamental American freedoms are undermined. Does Sarah mean a state:

  • That snatches its victims off the street, denies them all form of legal process and whisks them away to secret “blacksites” where they can be tortured using all the techniques described in Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon?
  • That arrests and prosecutes its political adversaries for imaginary crimes so as to eliminate them from the running in election cycles in which they could do some damage?
  • That destroys the careers of professional military men because they got promotions under a prior regime and therefore considers them disloyal?
  • That believes it can detain and hold its enemies forever without any charges or any evidence against them, denying them access to courts to prove their innocence?
  • That constantly manipulates the population’s fear whenever its public popularity slips and elections begin to approach?
  • That believes that it can make no errors, and that those who point to its errors are traitors?
  • That systematically spies on millions of its citizens in direct violation of a criminal statute which forbids such surveillance?
  • That signs new laws with its fingers crossed in the form of signing statements, so that no one knows whether the laws—or any part of them—will actually be enforced?
  • That lies to its people about threats from abroad in an effort to build popular support for a series of wars and then cites the existence of those wars as a reason to suppress dissent?
  • That nationalizes the debt of predatory capitalists so they suffer no punishment for their misconduct and then nationalizes major financial institutions, converting the nation’s free market system into a socialism in which crony capitalists are a privileged elite?

Sarah, you have no need to fear the future. http://harpers.org/archive/2008/10/hbc-90003761

Sarah Palin's War on Science. The GOP ticket's appalling contempt for knowledge and learning. http://www.slate.com/id/2203120/

republicans, archived October 27, 2008

There's another serious side to Palin's swat at fruit fly research. The French study that she says is doing no public good is no doubt a reference to money secured by Mike Thompson, a Democratic congressman in California's Napa Valley, which was highlighted by the Citizens Against Government Waste as one of its top "oinkers" of 2008. The money is being used to fund research into the olive fruit fly. In April, when Thompson won the dubious achievement, he responded: "The olive fruit fly has infested thousands of California olive groves and is the single largest threat to the U.S. olive and olive oil industries." He explained that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will employ a portion ($211,000) of the $750,000 award for research in France. "This USDA research facility is located in France because Mediterranean countries like France have dealt with the olive fruit fly for decades, while California has only been exposed since the late 1990s," he said. Citizens Against Government Waste, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., which singled out the olive fruit fly study for ridicule, has long been in the good graces of Palin's running mate, John McCain. Its political lobbying arm has twice supported McCain for president. As the Washington Post reported in May, the group ventured onto murky legal ground when it produced an ad that defended McCain for supporting a $40 billion defense contract to Northrop Grumman and its European counterparts. Democrats and labor unions charged that the contract moved tens of thousands of jobs abroad. In 2006, the St. Petersburg Times reported that Citizens Against Government Waste "has traded on its watchdog reputation by taking money from companies and trade associations and then conducted lobbying and public relations campaigns on their behalf." That includes the tobacco industry and clients of fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In its investigation of Abramoff, a Senate committee scolded CAGW for "producing public relations materials favorable to Mr. Abramoff's clients," in exchange for fees. Regardless, McCain continues to herald the group. Following the release of its annual Pig Book in April, he stated, "Once again, my friends at CAGW have done a great job of compiling a comprehensive list of unnecessary and wasteful pork barrel projects." To the U.S. olive industry, eradicating the fruit fly is certainly not an unnecessary project. Just now, California, the only state with a commercially significant olive crop, is home to 1,500 farms with a total of 40,000 acres devoted to olives. By comparison, Spain has more than 5.5 million oil acres, grown by 570,000 producers. http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2008/10/27/sarah_palin_fruit_flies/

The modern conservative movement is dying in front of our eyes, and its death throes aren't pretty. As John McCain heads for likely defeat, the GOP is eating itself. Right-wing politicians and pundits who never criticized Bush in eight years are suddenly jumping ship like rats, while bitter-end loyalists angrily accuse them of being "pathetically opportunistic." After months of veering from one tactic to the next, McCain has finally settled on one message for his campaign, but it's absurd: claiming that the party whose signature is tax cuts for the rich is really on the side of Joe the Plumber. Meanwhile, 3.1 million real Joe the Plumbers across America are sending Barack Obama hundreds of millions of dollars, a torrent of cash that is helping to flush the GOP down the national toilet. Right-wing hacks like Palin and Minn. Rep. Michele Bachman respond by doing the only thing they know how to do -- attack, demonize and divide. They wave the flag like a cutlass, dividing the country up into "pro-America areas" and "anti-America" ones. But this old pseudo-patriotic trick that has served the GOP so well for so long doesn't work anymore. In a development that showed just how much the political landscape has changed, the attack dogs have been forced to apologize -- something neither Bush nor his party nor conservative pundits ever did while they were trashing the country during the last eight years. http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/10/28/gop_shipwreck/

A former Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice apologized Monday for signing an e-mail to Jewish voters that likened a vote for Barack Obama to ignoring warning signals that led to the Holocaust. Sandra Schultz Newman said she regrets that she did not review the final draft more carefully before it was released. "Some of the language was inappropriate and intemperate," Newman wrote in an e-mail statement Monday. "I apologize to anyone who was offended by this misguided e-mail." The e-mail sent Thursday to 75,000 Jewish voters in Pennsylvania warns "Fellow Jewish Voters" of the danger of a second Holocaust due to the threats to Israel from its neighbors. It also praises Republican presidential candidate John McCain's qualifications over those of Obama, the Democratic nominee. In Monday's statement, Newman said the original e-mail was drafted by "a worker for the McCain campaign." Asked by a reporter later in the day to identify the worker, Newman said she was referring to Bryan Rudnick, the fired consultant. "I believe Bryan was let go before it was approved," she said in response to a query from The Associated Press. "I was not involved in hiring Bryan and so I am not sure for whom he worked." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/27/AR2008102701231.html

Since when is signing up 1.3 million new voters a bad thing? The answer, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune’s editorial board, is only when a left-leaning community-organizing group is at the helm. In an editorial published Saturday, the U-T predictably slammed the group ACORN for taking advantage of “a weakness in democracy” by turning in “likely… hundreds of thousands” of problematic voter-registration forms amid a nationwide voter-registration drive. C’mon U-T—where are you getting “hundreds of thousands” from? Even John McCain, who’s been hyper-focused on making ACORN a presidential-campaign bogeyman, puts the number of allegedly fraudulent forms only in the “thousands.” The editorial suggests that ACORN attempted to overwhelm understaffed elections offices with the hope that some fraudulent voters will manage to cast fraudulent votes, potentially swinging the election in Barack Obama’s favor (the U-T has endorsed McCain). Never mind that nearly half the states in the U.S. require voters to provide identification at the polls; the other half requires ID from newly registered voters whose registration card lacks a valid driver’s license or Social Security number. Never mind that, of the more than 196 million votes cast between 2002 and 2006, only 52 people were found guilty of actual election fraud. Never mind that ACORN flagged most of the problematic registration cards before turning them over to elections officials. What the editorial fails to mention is that most states require organizations holding voter-registration drives to turn in every single form that’s filled out—even if it’s obviously fraudulent—to prevent allegations of partisan tampering. http://www.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/the_i_u_t_i_and_acorn/7423/

In recent weeks, the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin has engaged in such incendiary mendacity that we must speak out. The purposeful dissemination of messages that a communicator knows to be false and inflammatory is unethical. It is that simple. Making decisions in a democracy requires an informed electorate. The health of our democracy and our ability to make a good decision about who should lead our nation require the very best in communication practices, not the worst. Media investigations have debunked the notion that Senator Obama “worked closely” or “palled around” with “terrorist” Bill Ayers. Governor Palin cited a New York Times article that actually contradicts her claim by noting “the two men do not appear to have been close.” Nonetheless, the McCain/Palin ticket continues to repeat the canard, most recently with so-called “robocalls” in battleground states. (i) The McCain/Palin ticket now describes the Obama/Biden tax plan with such terms as “socialist” and “welfare.” Such descriptions are false. Even if they were not, they would apply equally to the McCain/Palin tax proposals.(ii) The repeated use of “Joe the Plumber” as a symbol by the McCain/Palin ticket is more deceptive than truthful. Despite the fact that media reports have revealed that the person is not a licensed plumber, owes back taxes, and his current personal income tax would decrease under the Obama tax plan, the McCain/Palin ticket continues to take Obama’s words to Joe out of context to repeat the false claim that Obama would raise taxes on the middle class and thus hurt the American Dream.(iii) http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081023_communication_scholars_speak_out_about_negative_campaigning/

Democrats say in the complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that Sen. McCain's (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign received 6,653 donations that each were at least $1,000 greater than the $2,300 donation limit. McCain also took 23 anonymous contributions that were greater than the $50 limit on donations from unnamed supporters, the complaint says. The complaint is based on records provided by the McCain campaign on its own website. http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/obama-camp-to-file-fec-complaint-against-mccain-2008-10-25.html

Rove: McCain ‘got a very steep hill to climb’ Former White House adviser Karl Rove, credited with winning two elections for President Bush, on Sunday said GOP nominee John McCain has a “very steep hill to climb” in his quest for the presidency. Rove, who often puts a positive spin on things for the GOP, on “Fox News Sunday” offered a bleaker assessment of the state of the race from a Republican point of view. In his own electoral map, Rove has Democratic nominee Barack Obama ahead with 317 electoral votes after moving Ohio, Indiana, Colorado and Virginia to the Illinois senator’s column. “It’s a steep uphill climb,” he said. Rove added that McCain could turn the race if he is only down up to six points in national points. However, with the RealClearPolitics average of national polls putting Obama ahead by eight points, Rove said it would be “difficult” to make up that ground. “What he’s got to do is pound home on two big messages. One message is, ‘I’m right on the issues and he’s wrong when it comes to taxes and the war on terror, and I’m experienced and ready to be president, and whatever his strengths and skills are, he, Sen. Obama, is not ready to be president’,” Rove said. “And you’ve got to make that message in a handful of states and repeat it constantly and hope that your ground game on Election Day is able to give you a point or two more beyond what the polls show you having.” The GOP strategist also commented on signs that there is dissension within the ranks of the McCain campaign, including stress between vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and her handlers. “It is a sign of undisciplined people who do not have the loyalty that they ought to have to the candidate whom they’re serving,” he said. “And it’s a sad sight to see. Nobody makes themselves look good by this process.” Rove also acknowledged that this kind of infighting generally happens “in campaigns that are behind, and people want to make certain they escape with the best reputation they can.” http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/rove-mccain-got-a-very-steep-hill-to-climb-2008-10-26.html

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL. McCain for president. Obama's tax, redistributionist plans would undermine weak economy. More than at any other time in a generation, Americans want change in the White House. The global financial upheaval and lingering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left most families weary and fearful, solidly convinced that the country needs to strike out in a new direction. So, for voters on Nov. 4 the fundamental question is, which presidential candidate would provide the essential change that a strong and prosperous America demands in the turbulent years ahead? In our analysis, Republican candidate John McCain has a documented record of enlightened leadership in Washington – leadership that often has run counter to the status quo and challenged the folly of senior members of his own party. McCain never has been a conventional politician. He thinks for himself and acts on what he believes to be in the best interests of the nation, and not necessarily in the interests of his party or his own political fortunes. In an era of dismaying partisan paralysis in Washington, McCain has stood out as a bipartisan force, best illustrated by his collaboration with liberal Democratic lion Edward Kennedy on a comprehensive solution to America's immigration dilemma. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081019/news_lz1ed19top.html

Patriotism and the presidency. Patriotism isn't confined to one party or one candidate. To assert otherwise carries grave risks. As the presidential campaign wends through its final days, a disturbing, discordant note has entered the vernacular of the race. After months of a spirited but serious debate about the future of the country -- about whether our common lot is best safeguarded and advanced by a thoughtful young senator from Illinois or a tough veteran from Arizona -- we now are hearing one side question whether the other is genuinely American. Sarah Palin, in extolling the virtues of small towns, has mused about how they are "pro-America," presumably as distinct from the anti-American parts of the nation. Even more baldly, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota told MSNBC that she was "very concerned" that Barack Obama "may have anti-American views." Although Bachmann declined interviewer Chris Matthews' invitation to name other members of Congress who were anti-American, she ventured the opinion that the American people would welcome an expose on those members who fit the bill. She later tried to extricate herself from her own mudslinging, but her previous comments were neither forced nor misconstrued. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-american26-2008oct26,0,431213.story

McCain has taken to bounding on stage to the underdog theme from "Rocky" and mentions Wurzelbacher often. "Sen. Obama is more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than he is in growing the pie," McCain said last week outside Daytona, Fla., causing a supporter to shout "Socialist!" Obama responds by saying he can both grow the pie and slice it more equitably, prompting a crowd in Miami to chant, "We want pie! We want pie!" http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-homestretch26-2008oct26,0,6408924.story

Senator John McCain of Arizona has retreated farther and farther to the fringe of American politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism. His policies and worldview are mired in the past. His choice of a running mate so evidently unfit for the office was a final act of opportunism and bad judgment that eclipsed the accomplishments of 26 years in Congress. Given the particularly ugly nature of Mr. McCain’s campaign, the urge to choose on the basis of raw emotion is strong. But there is a greater value in looking closely at the facts of life in America today and at the prescriptions the candidates offer. The differences are profound. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/opinion/24fri1.html?em

Ms. Palin has had long associations with religious leaders who practice a particularly assertive and urgent brand of Pentecostalism known as “spiritual warfare.” Its adherents believe that demonic forces can colonize specific geographic areas and individuals, and that “spiritual warriors” must “battle” them to assert God’s control, using prayer and evangelism. The movement’s fixation on demons, its aggressiveness and its leaders’ claims to exalted spiritual authority have troubled even some Pentecostal Christians. Ms. Palin delivered an enthusiastic graduation speech for a class of young spiritual warriors in June at the Wasilla Assembly of God, the church in which she was raised. As governor, Ms. Palin appointed Patrick Donelson, a pastor and fishing guide who helped found a spiritual warfare ministry, to the only seat reserved for members of the clergy on the state’s Suicide Prevention Council. Bishop Thomas Muthee, the Kenyan preacher shown on the YouTube video anointing her as she ran for governor, is celebrated internationally as an effective spiritual warrior who led a prayer movement that drove a witch out of his town in Kenya. The removal of the witch, Bishop Muthee says, resulted in a drop in crime, alcoholism and traffic accidents. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/us/politics/25faith.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

Aides in conflict over 'Diva' Palin. BITTER infighting has broken out between aides to John McCain and Sarah Palin over management of the Alaska governor's role in the campaign, it was reported today. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24553897-601,00.html

Is John McCain stupid, or does he believe we are? That’s the question as he criticizes Barack Obama for allegedly trying to “redistribute the wealth” with a plan to lower taxes on the middle class and raise them on the super-rich. Of course, the Democrat’s proposal would merely slow down (not fully halt) the less-talked-about redistribution whereby Washington sends middle-class money up the income ladder. Either McCain doesn’t know about this kleptocracy and is the dumbest presidential candidate in history, or he thinks America is too ignorant to recognize theft. Which is it? I’m guessing the latter, since the evidence is so overwhelming. In the last eight years, we the little people have been forced to provide more and more of the taxes fueling America’s redistribution machine. As the Congressional Budget Office reports, the $715 billion in tax breaks that President Bush gave to those making more than $342,000 a year began dramatically shifting the overall tax burden from the rich onto the rest of us. Meanwhile, because of lobbyist-crafted loopholes, most corporations pay zero federal income taxes, according to the Government Accountability Office. The result is what Warren Buffett admits: When counting all taxes (income, payroll, property, etc.), billionaires and Big Business often pay lower effective tax rates than their employees. The output of the redistribution machine is becoming just as regressive. In the age of Halliburton fraud and ExxonMobil subsidies, our government spends $93 billion a year on corporate welfare. (For comparison, that’s roughly three times what it spends on a traditional welfare program like food stamps.) That doesn’t include the recent bailout giving $700 billion to the same banks currently doling out $70 billion in executive pay and bonuses—a scheme the Financial Times says “amounts to a large transfer of resources from lower to higher income earners.” Thanks to these redistributive policies—policies McCain championed in Congress—the richest 1 percent today owns a larger share of America’s wealth than at any time since before the Great Depression. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081023_mccain_banking_on_a_confederacy_of_dunces/

Caribou Barbie http://www.cariboubarbie.com/

Palin: 'I Don't Know' If Abortion Clinic Bombers Are Terrorists. Palin gives a wink and a nod to right-wing extremists, with whom she shares radical views about the reproductive rights of women. http://www.alternet.org/election08/104590/palin%3A_%27i_don%27t_know%27_if_abortion_clinic_bombers_are_terrorists/

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John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the "B" carved into the victim's cheek stood for "Barack," according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions. John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/24/ashley-todd-story-pushed_n_137710.html

First there was Joe the Plumber. Is Joe the Hothead next? Joe McCain said Friday he'll withdraw from campaign activities for his brother, GOP presidential nominee John McCain, after calling 911 to angrily complain about traffic. Joe McCain has apologized for making the call. The candidate's younger brother, who lives in Alexandria, Va., told Washington radio station WTOP he was returning from a campaign event in Philadelphia around 2 a.m. on Oct. 18 when he got stuck in traffic on Interstate 495 at the Wilson Bridge. Police say the call was made about 1:30 a.m. Oct. 21. Frustrated because of the traffic, Joe McCain called 911 to find out what was going on. The operator asked him to "state your emergency." "Well, it's not an emergency, but do you know why on one side at the damn drawbridge of 95 traffic is stopped for 15 minutes and yet traffic's coming the other way?" Joe McCain said. The operator asked him if he was calling 911 to complain about traffic. McCain then uttered an expletive and hung up the phone. McCain told WTOP that he thought his cell phone was on mute. After hanging up with 911, McCain said he called Alexandria police to ask them about the traffic on the bridge and got a similar reaction. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/25/ap-on-joe-mccain-after-jo_n_137775.html

Who is John McCain? He is: George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, James Danforth "Dan" Quayle, Karl Rove, Warren Tompkins, Jeff Larson, Dick Cheney, Irwin Libby, Randy 'Duke' Cunningham, G. Gordan Liddy and so many more http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-internet-and-the-deat_b_136400.html

Age has finally become an issue for John McCain. But the problem isn't the candidate's 72 years; it's the antediluvian approach of his campaign. 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. And it seems that the worse McCain is doing in the polls, the more his team is relying on the same gutter tactics. So over the next 15 days, look for the McCain campaign to become even uglier. That's what happens when following Rovian politics is your only strategy -- and Rovian politics isn't working. McCain has stockpiled his campaign with Rove henchmen, including not one but three of the people responsible for the political mugging inflicted on him in 2000. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-internet-and-the-deat_b_136400.html

Perceptions of Palin Grow Increasingly Negative, Poll Says. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/24/AR2008102402698.html

McCain Faces Internal "Palin Insurgency" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/25/mccain-faces-internal-pal_n_137786.html

A tale of two faces. I was attending the fascinating WebbyConnect conference for a few days, and the campaign got deeply weird while I was gone. Catching up on television Friday I found myself transfixed by wall-to-wall coverage of two female faces suddenly at the center of this presidential race --the expensively made-up visage of Sarah Palin and the sad self-mutilated face of Ashley Todd, the disturbed McCain volunteer in Pennsylvania who claimed she was sexually assaulted by an Obama supporter. In a two-day news environment that was supposed to be a big opportunity for John McCain -- Barack Obama was off the trail with his ailing grandmother --McCain instead faced critical coverage of the shocking sums Palin spent for clothes, hair and makeup, as well as his campaign's role in advancing what turned out to be the totally false tale of a white woman abused by a black male Obama backer. Should either of these stories be big news? Of course both are a distraction from the big issues of the campaign -- the economy, the environment, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I think the strange controversies over these two women matter because they reveal a corruption at the heart of the McCain campaign. The huge sum spent perfecting the already beautiful Palin for the cameras is the less disturbing of the two stories, but I would disagree with some of my Broadsheet colleagues: I think it's a valid topic for reporting, analysis and criticism. It shows the insanely screwy priorities of the McCain campaign. http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/10/25/palin_todd/

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Police Declare 'Mutilation' of McCain Campaign Worker a Hoax. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003877824

Top Salary in McCain Camp? Palin’s Makeup Stylist. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/pains-makeup-stylist-fetches-highest-salary-in-2-week-period/

Tweets Give Race-Baiting Hoaxster a 'B' for Effort. Thanks to an unattended Twitter widget, a website intended to promote the work of 50 young Republican volunteers became an unwitting showcase for the mockery of one group member Friday, when it emerged that the volunteer faked a macabre attack on herself and tried to pin it on a nonexistent Obama supporter and mugger. Ashley Todd, a 20-year-old college student and McCain volunteer, admitted on Friday that she made up a widely reported story about being mugged by a so-called big black guy at an ATM in Pittsburgh. She falsely told police this week that her assailant became enraged after seeing a John McCain bumper sticker on her car, and proceeded to scratch a backwards "B" — for "Barack" — on her face. It now appears the mark was self-inflicted, and police say it's expected to heal completely. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/college-republi.html

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The Making (and Remaking) of McCain. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/magazine/26mccain-t.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Terrorist strikes on four American cities. Russia rolling into Eastern Europe. Israel hit by a nuclear bomb. Gay marriage in every state. The end of the Boy Scouts. All are plausible scenarios if Democrat Barack Obama is elected president, according to a new addition to the campaign conversation called "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America," produced by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family Action. The imagined look into the future is part of an escalation in rhetoric from Christian right activists who are trying to paint Obama in the worst possible terms as the campaign heads into the final stretch and polls show the Democrat ahead. Although hard-edge attacks are common late in campaigns, the tenor of the strikes against Obama illustrate just how worried conservative Christian activists are about what should happen to their causes and influence if Democrats seize control of both Congress and the White House. "It looks like, walks like, talks like and smells like desperation to me," said the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Houston, an Obama supporter who backed President Bush in the past two elections. The Methodist pastor called the 2012 letter "false and ridiculous." He said it showed that some Christian conservative leaders fear that Obama's faith-based appeals to voters are working. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_christian_right_attacks.html?source=mypi

John McCain "If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insists upon a firefight, give them a firefight. Just remember, they're wearing flak jackets and you're better off shooting for the head." When the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms thugs come to kill your wife and children, to try to disarm you and they open fire on you. When they come at the point of a gun, force and violence, when you're going to defend yourself, use that Gerand [M-1 rifle]. That thing is 30-06, and it'll take 'em right out. And yes, aim for the head. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-mood19-2008oct19,0,6882411.story

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war. http://www.nationalreview.com/coulter/coulter.shtml


There are no real or fake parts of this country. We are not separated by the pro-America and anti-America parts of this nation -- we all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from. There are patriots who supported this war in Iraq and patriots who opposed it; patriots who believe in Democratic policies and those who believe in Republican policies. The men and women from Florida and all across America who serve on our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America -- they have served the United States of America. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/20/AR2008102001356.html


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. Ashley Todd, 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas, admitted Friday that the story was false, said Maurita Bryant, the assistant chief of the police department's investigations division. Todd was charged with making a false report to police, and Bryant said police doubted her story from the start. Todd initially told investigators she was attempting to use a bank branch ATM on Wednesday night when a 6-foot-4 black man approached her from behind, put a knife blade to her throat and demanded money. She told police she handed the assailant $60 and walked away. Todd, who is white, told investigators she suspected the man then noticed a John McCain sticker on her car. She said the man punched her in the back of the head, knocked her to the ground and scratched a backward letter "B" into her face with a dull knife. Police said Todd claimed the man told her that he was going to "teach her a lesson" for supporting the Republican presidential candidate, and that she was going to become a supporter of Democratic candidate Barack Obama. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110ap_attack_mccain_sticker.html?source=mypi

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin testified for two hours Friday in an abuse-of-power investigation that has been a distraction to her Republican vice presidential campaign. Palin's leadership was questioned this month in a stinging but largely toothless legislative report that found she violated state ethics laws by letting a family dispute influence her decision-making. Palin is hoping the Alaska Personnel Board, which is running a parallel investigation, will clear her of wrongdoing. It's unclear, however, whether any conclusion will be reached before Election Day. The board is investigating the firing of her public safety commissioner, Walter Monegan. Monegan claims he was dismissed because he refused to fire Palin's former brother-in-law, a state trooper involved in a messy divorce from Palin's sister. The controversy, known as "Troopergate," took on national significance after John McCain selected Palin as his running mate. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PALIN_TROOPERGATE?SITE=CADIU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Palin appointed friends and donors to key posts in Alaska, records show. 100-plus jobs went to campaign donors or their relatives, sometimes without apparent regard to qualifications. Several donors got state-subsidized loans for business ventures of dubious public value. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-palinrecords24-2008oct24,0,7306906.story

republicans, archived October 24, 2008

Sarah Palin’s wardrobe joined the ranks of symbolic political excess on Wednesday, alongside John McCain’s multiple houses and John Edwards’s $400 haircut, as Republicans expressed fear that weeks of tailoring Ms. Palin as an average “hockey mom” would fray amid revelations that the Republican Party outfitted her with expensive clothing from high-end stores. Cable television, talk radio and even shows like “Access Hollywood” seemed gripped with sartorial fever after campaign finance reports confirmed that the Republican National Committee spent $75,062 at Neiman Marcus and $49,425 at Saks Fifth Avenue in September for Ms. Palin and her family. Advisers to Ms. Palin said on Wednesday that the purchases — which totaled about $150,000 and were classified as “campaign accessories” — were made on the fly after Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska, was chosen as the Republican vice-presidential candidate on Aug. 29 and needed new clothes to match climates across the 50 states. They emphasized, too, that Ms. Palin did not spend time on the shopping, and that other people made the decision to buy such an array of clothes. Yet Republicans expressed consternation publicly and privately that the shopping sprees on her behalf, which were first reported by Politico, would compromise Ms. Palin’s standing as Senator McCain’s chief emissary to working-class voters whose salvos at the so-called cultural elite often delight audiences at Republican rallies. That possibility was brought to life, for instance, on “The View” on ABC, as Joy Behar, a co-host, noted the McCain campaign’s outreach to blue-collar workers — like an Ohio plumber who recently chided Senator Barack Obama over taxes — after another co-host, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, defended the expenditures. “I don’t think Joe the Plumber wears Manolo Blahniks,” Ms. Behar said. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/us/politics/23palin.html?em

I mean no disrespect for carrier pilots, especially those poised for combat. The job requires a special sort of skill, nerve, and bravery that few of us have ever faced. (Certainly I never have.) But it is not at all clear how this experience tested McCain—or any of the other pilots on the four aircraft carriers off the coast of Cuba—for the job of making strategic decisions in a crisis, any more than working an assembly line tests someone to be president of a major manufacturing corporation. As a 26-year-old Navy lieutenant in October 1962, John McCain was prepared to follow orders, fly his plane along a predetermined path to a preselected target, drop his preloaded bombs, and fly back. Again, this is not to be minimized. But neither does it constitute being "tested" to be—either then or 46 years later—the president of the United States. http://www.slate.com/id/2202953/

Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his Democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202-863-8500. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-robocall23-2008oct23,0,661268.story

The 'real' America, really. America today looks less and less like the one extolled by GOP mythmakers. According to Sarah Palin, she and John McCain "believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hardworking, very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation." Um, very, um. ... Yeah. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-brooks23-2008oct23,0,3219478.column

Why the Republicans Must Lose. Nothing short of defeat will put the GOP back on its limited government track. I grew up in a particularly conservative part of the already conservative state of Indiana. I voted for Bob Dole in 1996 and George Bush in 2000, generally because—though I'm not a conservative (I'm a libertarian)—I'd always thought the GOP was the party of limited government. By 2002, I was less sure of that. And by 2004, I was so fed up with the party that I did what I thought I'd never do—vote for an unabashed leftist for president. Since then, "fed up" has soured to "given up." The Republican Party has exiled its Goldwater-Reagan wing and given up all pretense of any allegiance to limited government. In the last eight years, the GOP has given us a monstrous new federal bureaucracy in the Department of Homeland Security. In the prescription drug benefit, it's given us the largest new federal entitlement since the Johnson administration. Federal spending—even on items not related to war or national security—has soared. And we now get to watch as the party that's supposed to be "free market" nationalizes huge chunks of the economy's financial sector. http://www.reason.com/news/show/129599.html

But something else is going to happen. My money is on Osama Bin Laden popping back up with a hate video, just as he did the weekend before the 2004 election. That tape reminded the public that the country was still at risk from this sickening terrorist and that President Bush had kept us safe for the three years since the 11 September 2001 attacks. In that close campaign, it was this video - not the Swift Boat tactics that got all the ink - that made the difference. John Kerry, who led in several polls that weekend, saw his margin melt away. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7684782.stm

As Hilzoy noted last night, 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. Frankly, I'm not even sure how one family can spend that much so quickly. We're talking about an average of more than $2,000 a day, every day, since late August. (Yglesias noted, "The total bill is well over double the median household income in the United States.") http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/104096/republicans_disgusted%3A_palin%27s_%24150%2C000_shopping_spree/

McCain targets liberals in sharpened stump speech. Republican John McCain and his supporters on Monday branded Democrat Barack Obama a liberal and criticized feminists and the media as they rallied their conservative base in Missouri, a hotly contested bellwether state, two weeks before the election. In a stump speech sharpened for the second week in a row, the GOP presidential candidate defended his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, against attacks from the "feminist left." And Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., introduced McCain by declaring him under siege by the "liberal elite media." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081020/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_50

ANALYSIS-McCain can't make attacks stick to Obama. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N22368042.htm

The supposed McCain endorsement appeared Monday on a private Islamic extremist forum, al-Hesbah. The author — a longtime contributor going by the name Muhammad Haafid — suggests that al-Qaida should launch a terror attack against the United States before the election, so that Americans would vote for McCain. Haafid argued that McCain would continue the policies of President Bush and keep the country embroiled in costly overseas wars, aggravating America's financial crisis. "Al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming election," wrote Haafid, adding that McCain would follow the "failing march of his predecessor." http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/mccain-advisers.html

Media survey: McCain gets more negative coverage than Obama. More than half the stories on the Republican candidate have been negative, compared to slightly less than a third for the Democrat, a media watchdog group finds. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-media23-2008oct23,0,2260528.story

Deputy Chief Michael Downing, head of the LAPD's anti-terrorism bureau, said the department had been "gearing up for some time" for the November elections. Surveillance teams have been concentrated in the city's financial district, he said. Communication with private security groups has also increased, and the department's area commanders were briefed last week on the need to keep their officers vigilant, Downing said. "We do not want them to be paranoid or anxious, but to orient our troops to potential threats," he said. Bratton and Eddy speculated that Bin Laden is looking to sway the election in favor of Republican Party candidate John McCain, since McCain "is more likely to engender Muslim anger and resentment than would his opponent." "Put simply: Bin Laden probably realizes it could become markedly more difficult to paint the United States as the 'Great Satan' with a new president who is admired internationally," they wrote. "The remaining 14 days before the elections should be seen as a time of high threat, and state and local police should be on high alert." http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bratton23-2008oct23,0,1938459.story

i see Russia from my house. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evafgvrMci8

As the economy worsens in the United States, markets around the world are crashing and people are losing their homes and pensions, it’s irresponsible not to question the economic positions and records of the candidates. In the case of Palin, her record has been extremely troubling and reflects part of the reason that she has lost credibility with so many Alaskans in recent weeks. http://www.wasillaproject.com/

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 since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_palin_family_travel.html?source=mypi

As the crowd of several thousand began to swell with cheers and applause, he added with dramatic effect: "America will not have a president who needs to be tested. I've been tested, my friends." And failed! http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_mccain.html?source=mypi

Compared with Obama, McCain drew a slightly larger percentage of his big-donor money from the financial industry, accounting for about a fifth of his total. The next biggest amount of money in large checks for McCain came from real estate and then donors who identified themselves as retired. With his emphasis on offshore drilling, McCain has also enjoyed heavy support from generous benefactors in the oil and gas industry, a group from which Obama drew relatively little. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081021/news_1n21money.html

McCain accused Obama of “class warfare.” But McCain is the perpetrator, argue Democrats, who contend he is trying to fuel middle-class resentment toward poorer people with inflammatory words like “socialism” and phrases reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's attacks on “welfare queens.” In fact, Obama supporters note, the gap between rich and poor Americans has grown markedly in recent years as middle-class wages remained largely stagnant while corporate profits and high-earners' salaries soared. The nation's income inequality now ranks among the world's largest, reports show. The richest 10 percent earn an average of $93,000 a year; the poorest 10 percent make $5,800 on average. Various economic and regulatory factors have fed that gap. But tax policies play a role, too, because some major revenue sources are far less favorable to low-income people than the income tax is. For most Americans, the biggest tax burden is the payroll tax that funds Social Security and Medicare. The tax rates are the same for everyone, and the Social Security levy does not apply to incomes above $102,000, a boon to the wealthy. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20081021-1422-spreadingthewealth.html

Sarah Palin's college years left no lasting impression. In the five years of her collegiate career, spanning four universities in three states, Palin left behind few traces. Not many professors or students even remember her. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-palincollege21-2008oct21,0,6369822.story

It is incumbent upon McCain to prove to the American people that the 5 1/2 years he spent at the mercy of communist interrogators did not leave him with mental health issues that could hinder him in making snap decisions "if the White House phone rang at 3 a.m." Is McCain taking any kind of pain or "nerve" medicines? If so, do the medicines cause emotional and physical reactions? McCain was once treated for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is said to get worse over time for former POWs, what is the status of his treatment? Does McCain still harbor stress triggered suicidal tendencies? Where was McCain and what was happening to him during the months he was missing from the POW camp? McCain implies that he made only one propaganda broadcast for the communists, but Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers say he made over 30. How many did he make and what did he get in return? Why does McCain still deny that the Soviets were involved in the interrogation of U.S. POWs in Vietnam? Does McCain's former interrogators, the communist Vietnamese, Russians, Chinese and Cubans have anything in their secret intelligence files about his behavior as a prisoner with which they could blackmail a President John McCain? http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/9/8/192330/8691

Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin says she supports a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a break with John McCain who has said he believes states should be left to define what marriage is. In an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network, the Alaska governor said she had voted in 1998 for a state amendment banning same sex marriage and hoped to see a federal ban on such unions. "I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that's where we would go. I don't support gay marriage," Palin said. She said she believed traditional marriage is the foundation for strong families. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_palin_gay_marriage.html?source=mypi

The world needs the US to get over its cultural civil war - and fast. Sarah Palin is the Katyusha rocket of the American right. But so far her attacks on Barack Obama aren't working. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/09/uselections2008.barackobama

McCain Palin Bush Cheney Rove Republicans don't work

McCain, Palin, Bush, Rove, Hunter rumsfield: they represented only their own self interests. They started a war for the benefit of themselves and Saudi Arabia, not American. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/20/AR2008102001356.html

“We've sent our young men and women over to a war zone to protect our rights and our freedoms," she said. "A part of that is our right to free and fair elections. How dare anyone try to take that away from the good Americans who are fighting for us to ensure all of that?” What war is she talking about? http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/19/palin-obama-experimenting-with-socialism/#more-25515

Polls now show that Palin has become a distinct liability for McCain, with a plurality of those polled saying Palin's presence makes them less likely to vote for the GOP ticket. "I don't believe she is ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president," Powell told NBC's " Meet the Press." "And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Sen. McCain made." http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-campaign20-2008oct20,0,3786218.story

how will he do this? Why didn't he do this the las 28 years he has been in power? "If I'm elected president, I won't raise taxes on small businesses, as Sen. (Barack) Obama proposes, and force them to cut jobs," McCain said of his Democratic opponent during a rally at the convention center. "I will keep small business taxes where they are, help them keep their costs low and let them spend their earnings to create more jobs, not send to Washington." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93429092

GOP voter registration fraud case leads to arrest. Mark Jacoby, who was arrested in Ontario and owns a firm hired by the California Republican Party, violated state registration laws, authorities say. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fraud20-2008oct20,0,3842357.story

Palin doesn't doubt Obama loves America -- but Michele Bachmann does. Also: The markets take stock of the debates. Initially, they were discussing Obama, with Matthews quizzing her about the Republican-backed "robocalls" -- viewed by many as over the top -- that play the Bill Ayers/terrorist card against the Democrat. Bachmann said of Obama: "I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views." Then she said: "I think the people that Barack Obama has been associating with are anti-American, by and large." Matthews wondered if that included Democratic leaders such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "I'm not going to say if they're anti-American or pro-American," Bachmann said. Pressed by Matthews about members of Congress in general and whether, in essence, their patriotism should be called into question, Bachmann called on the media to launch a "penetrating expose and take a look . . . at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-American or anti-American." She added: "I think people would love to see an expose like that." http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-ticket19-2008oct19,0,971590.story

John McCain "If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insists upon a firefight, give them a firefight. Just remember, they're wearing flak jackets and you're better off shooting for the head." When the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms thugs come to kill your wife and children, to try to disarm you and they open fire on you. When they come at the point of a gun, force and violence, when you're going to defend yourself, use that Gerand [M-1 rifle]. That thing is 30-06, and it'll take 'em right out. And yes, aim for the head. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-mood19-2008oct19,0,6882411.story

that horrible woman http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/gov-palin-cold-open/773761/

Caribou Barbie http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/update-palin-rap/773781/

SARAH PALIN: We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe, we believe that the best of America is in the small towns that we get to visit, and in the wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom. Every area across this great country where were stopping and also where the other ticket is stopping, and getting to speak at these rallies, and greeting Americans, its all pro-America. I was just reinforcing the fact, there, where I was, the patriotic people there in these rallies, so excited about positive change and reform of government that's coming, they are so appreciative of our message, hearing our plan. But not pinning one area of America as more pro-America or patriotic than another. http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977481613

Sarah Palin hates my America. I love America, hard work, honesty and respect.

I’m Governor Sarah Palin and I am delighted to welcome you to the 2008 Alaskan Independence Party Convention in the golden heart city of Fairbanks. Your party plays an important role in our state’s politics. I’ve always said that competition is so good, and that applies to political parties as well. I share your party’s vision of upholding the constitution of our great state. My administration remains focused on reining in government growth so individual liberty and opportunity can expand. I know you agree with that. We have a great promise to be a self-sufficient state, made up of the hardest-working, most grateful Americans in our nation. So as your convention gets underway I hope that you all are inspired by remembering that all those years ago, it was in this same city that Alaska’s constitution was born. And it was founded on hope and trust and liberty and opportunity. I carry that message of opportunity forward in my administration, as we continue to move our state ahead and create positive change. So I say good luck on a successful and inspiring convention. Keep up the good work, and God bless you. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/1/4231/18477/878/581881

The mainstream media has finally noticed Sarah and Todd Palins' ties to the rabidly anti-American secessionist group, the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP). A new CNN video report by anchor Rick Sanchez digs into the Palins' relationship with the AIP, noting that Todd Palin has been a member of the group and that Sarah Palin sent official video greetings as Governor of Alaska to the 2008 AIP convention. In this video, as pictured here, Palin praises the "important role" played by the AIP in Alaska politics. The AIP has been described as an extreme-right, anti-government organization comparable to militia movements such as that which carried out the 1995 Oklahoma City attack. The group's aims are voiced no more forcefully than by its founder, Joe Vogler, as CNN observes in direct quotations: "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government...," Vogler states in one quotation, "...And I won't be buried under their damn flag." In another quotation, Vogler says: "My government is my worst enemy. I'm going to fight them with any means at hand." As though to leave no doubt in our minds regarding his willingness to use violence to achieve his secessionist aims, Vogler says in one final quote: "I hope we don't have to take human life, but if they go on trampling our property rights, look out, we're ready to die." Vogler was murdered during an illegal plastic explosives deal in 1993, just weeks before he was scheduled to give a speech to the United Nations on Alaskan independence sponsored by the government of Iran. Pending Alaskan independence, Vogler was buried in Canada according to his wish not to buried under the American flag. http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=10186

Sen. Claire McCaskill. McCaskill responded to a comment McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin made recently the seemed to question the patriotism of Americans in certain places. “It doesn’t matter whether you live in a small town in “Missouri or whether you’re right here in St. Louis -- show America right now how we all are proud Americans!,” she said, prompting chants of U-S-A. “We have reached a new low in American politics when someone dares to say that one part of America is more pro America than another part of America!” She called McCain’s campaign “petty” and said it was worried about the new voters who would be participating this election year. “You have one campaign that is mean, angry, personal, petty, small bogus attacks,” she said. “They’re frozen into fear of the idea that we have millions of new people in America that want to participate. While one campaign is trying to distract America with small, petty, unfair personal attacks, the other campaign is focused like a laser on you.” http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/18/1565029.aspx

Topless Sarah Palin lookalike contest. http://vegasblog.latimes.com/vegas/2008/10/politics-vegas.html

Imagine for a moment that Barack Obama had said he was "proud" of an "old friend" who urged people to shoot law-enforcement agents in the head. Do you think maybe he would have been asked a question or three about it? Do you think maybe there would have been more than the occasional passing mention in the news of the relationship? Of course there would have been. Yet McCain hasn't been questioned about Liddy. The media have largely ignored the relationship, even while working themselves into a frenzy about Obama and Ayers. McCain's relationship with Liddy is obviously newsworthy in its own right, but coupled with his attacks on Obama over Ayers, it's a textbook case of hypocrisy -- exactly the sort of thing that political reporters supposedly drool over. But not when it's John McCain. When it's John McCain, the nation's leading news organizations band together in what is, in effect, a blackout of information that could be damaging to their longtime favorite. http://mediamatters.org/items/200810170018?f=h_top

SOME OF MCCAIN'S BLACK RELATIVES SUPPORT OBAMA. In the rural Teoc community of Carroll County, Miss., where the ancestors of Sen. John McCain owned enslaved Africans on a plantation, black, white and mixed-race family members unite every two years for their Coming Home Reunion, on the land where the plantation operated. Some of McCain’s black family members say they are not sure exactly where they fall on the family tree, but they do know this: They are either descendants of the McCain family slaves, or of children the McCains fathered with their slaves. White and black members of the McCain family have met on the plantation several times over the last 15 years, but one invited guest has been conspicuously absent: Sen. John Sidney McCain. “Why he hasn’t come is anybody’s guess,” said Charles McCain Jr., 60, a distant cousin of John McCain who is black. “I think the best I can come up with, is that he doesn’t have time, or he has just distanced himself, or it doesn’t mean that much to him.” Other relatives are not as generous. Lillie McCain, 56, another distant cousin of John McCain who is black, said the Republican presidential nominee is trying to hide his past, and refuses to accept the family’s history. “After hearing him in 2000 claim his family never owned slaves, I sent him an email,” she recalled. “I told him no matter how much he denies it, it will not make it untrue, and he should accept this and embrace it.” She said the senator never responded to her email. http://www.sfltimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2041&Itemid=42

McCain Sued Over Hate Speech. A Kansas City grandmother is suing Republican presidential candidate John McCain, his running mate Sarah Palin, and his campaign manager for promoting hate speech. The Mary Kay Green claims some statements made about Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama at an out-of-state rally terrify her as much as John F. Kennedy's assassination. "I know the Secret Service is on this case, but John McCain and Sarah Palin can stop some of this by a statement that they abhor these death threats and will not tolerate them," Green said. http://www.wgrz.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=61505&provider=gnews

the father of McCain's wife, James Hensley, was convicted by a federal jury in U.S. District Court of Arizona in March 1948 on seven counts of filing false liquor records. Hensley also was charged with conspiracy to hide from federal authorities the names of persons involved in a liquor industry racket with two companies he managed, United Sales Company in Phoenix and United Distributors in Tucson. The umbrella company, United Liquor, at that time held a monopoly in Arizona, organized and managed by Kemper Marley, who was accused of mob ties by a reporter who was murdered in 1977. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=57354

McCain fortune traced to organized crime. Mob figures later implicated in Arizona savings and loan scandal. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=57354

Marley, who was never charged himself and who bought his partners first-rate legal representation, eventually took control of the companies, which became United Liquors. Along the way, he became one of Arizona’s first mega-millionaires, with interests in ranching and racetracks in addition to liquor. By the mid-1970s, his name was also coming up in the stories of Don Bolles, an investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic who was writing about organized crime and its penetration of the racing and liquor industries. In June, 1976, Bolles was murdered when a remote-control bomb detonated beneath his car after he had gone to a downtown Phoenix hotel to meet a source who never showed. John Harvey Adamson confessed to police that he had been hired to set the bomb by a wealthy Arizona contractor named Max Dunlap, and that Dunlap had orchestrated the murder at the behest of Marley who wanted to stop the reporter from writing any more damaging articles. Adamson said that Dunlap had also hired him to kill two others, including then-Arizona Attorney General Bruce Babbitt because Babbitt had filed an antitrust lawsuit against the liquor industry. Marley was never charged in Bolles’ murder. http://news.muckety.com/2008/09/05/muckety-this-cindy-hensley-mccain-to-the-late-don-bolles/4851

Cindy McCain’s wealth comes from one of the nation’s largest beer distributorships, Hensley & Co., which was founded by her father James Willis Hensley and his brother Eugene, in the 1950s. But prior to setting up their own company, the Hensley brothers were partners in two earlier companies - United Liquor Company, and United Liquor Supply Company – with a onetime bookie named Kemper Marley. The companies, and the Hensleys, had repeated run-ins with the law. http://news.muckety.com/2008/09/05/muckety-this-cindy-hensley-mccain-to-the-late-don-bolles/4851

republicans, archived October 18, 2008

Behind McCain, Outsider in Capital Wanting Back In. Mrs. McCain, 54, describes herself as her husband’s best friend, though for the last two decades they have mostly lived apart, she in Arizona, he in Washington. She initially seemed like an ideal political partner, giving Mr. McCain a home state, money and contacts that jump-started his career. But as the years passed, she also became a liability at times. She played a role in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal, and just as her husband was rehabilitating his reputation, she was caught stealing drugs from her nonprofit organization to feed her addiction to painkillers. She has a fortune that sets the McCains apart from most other Americans, a problem in a presidential race that hinges on economic anxieties. She can be imprecise: she has repeatedly called herself an only child, for instance, even though she has two half-siblings, and has provided varying details about a 1994 mercy mission to Rwanda. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/18/us/politics/18cindy.html?em

That Sarah Palin is one unreal Alaskan. In the Arctic, where global warming is melting our world regardless of Palin's lone charge against reality, her alleged appeal leaves many of us cold. With our long winters and tough trails, we still value a beaver hat and common sense more than high heels and clip-on hairdos. We simply don't want another leader less intelligent than we are. Eight years with the cowboy and copilot Halliburton at the helm has been hard on our land. Too much polluting, an unnecessary war draining our economy and both men too cool for global warming. We can't afford to turn now to a beauty contestant and an old guy who's acting like he's run the Iditarod too many times without winning. (Beating his dogs, he's so desperate to win.) Come on, people. Our ice is melting. Your jobs are turning to dust. Everyone's bank statements are on the verge of being firestarter. Your heating oil is $4 a gallon, ours is $8. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/383843_alaska19.html?source=mypi

John McCain compares Barack Obama's policies to socialism. The Republican makes frequent use of the galvanizing term while campaigning in North Carolina. His Democratic opponent fires back in front of a 100,000-strong St. Louis crowd. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-campaign19-2008oct19,0,1946625.story

"Sen. McCain doesn't look like President Bush; he doesn't have that Texas accent like President Bush. And I don't blame Sen. McCain for all of President Bush's mistakes," Obama said, addressing more than 8,000 people at the Roanoke Civic Center. "After all, he's only voted with George Bush 90% of the time." "So what would Sen. McCain's cuts mean for Medicare at a time when more and more Americans are relying on it?" Obama said. "It would mean a cut of more than 20% in Medicare benefits next year. If you count on Medicare, it would mean fewer places to get care, and less freedom to choose your own doctors. You'll pay more for your drugs, you'll receive fewer services, and you'll get lower-quality care." http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-campaign18-2008oct18,0,1160191.story?page=2

Plumbers union rips McCain on ‘Joe the Plumber’. "Last night John McCain made Joe the Plumber a household name. His manufactured outrage on behalf of Joe would be a lot more believable if his economic plan had anything to do with helping working people deal with the economic crisis," UA Assistant General President Steve Kelly said in a statement released Thursday afternoon. The UA union claims to be the first organization of any kind to endorse Obama in the presidential race. It did so Jan. 9, 2008. Joe Wurzelbacher, the now-famous Toledo, Ohio plumber who sparred with Obama over taxes at a campaign event in his hometown, is not a UA member, a UA staffer told The Hill. The UA staffer claimed that Wurzelbacher is a member of the Associated Builders & Contractors (ABC), a non-union trade group that has endorsed McCain. Gail Raiman, vice president of public affairs at ABC, stated in an e-mail that Wurzelbacher reportedly works for Newell Construction in Toledo, Ohio, which is a residential contractor. ABC, Raiman stated, “represents commercial and industrial contractors, not residential contractors.” Neither Wurzelbacher nor Newell Construction is a member of ABC, Raiman stressed. The UA staffer noted that Wurzelbacher does not hold a plumber's license in the state of Ohio, though Wurzelbacher says he does not need a license as he works for someone else. http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/plumbers-union-rips-mccains-use-of-joe-the-plumber-2008-10-16.html

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told a fundraiser in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Thursday night: "We believe that the best of America is in the small towns that we get to visit, and in the wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation," she said. "This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans," Palin added. On Friday, Palin clarified her comments. "It's all pro-America. I was just reinforcing the fact that there, where I was, there's good patriotic people there in these rallies, so excited about positive change and reform of government that's coming that they are so appreciative of hearing our message, hearing our plan. Not any one area of America is more pro-America patriotically than others," she said. At a rally in Mesilla, New Mexico, on Friday, Biden responded to those comments in a vociferous tone. "I hope it was just a slip on her part and she doesn't really mean it. But she said, it was reported she said, that she likes to visit, 'pro-American' parts of the country," he said to loud boos. "It doesn't matter where you live, we all love this country, and I hope it gets through. We all love this country," he said. "We are one nation, under God, indivisible. We are all patriotic. We all love our country in every part of this nation! And I'm tired. I am tired, tired, tired, tired of the implications about patriotism." http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/17/campaign.wrap/index.html

G.O.P. Donor Is Accused of Overcharging Pentagon. The Democratic chairman of a House investigative committee presented documents to the Pentagon on Thursday charging that a top Republican fund-raiser, Harry Sargeant III, made tens of millions of dollars in profits over the last four years because his contracting company vastly overcharged for deliveries of fuel to American air bases in Iraq. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/world/middleeast/17fuel.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

Joe the Plumber's story sprang a few leaks Thursday. Turns out that the man who was held up by John McCain as the typical, hard-working American taxpayer isn't really a licensed plumber. And court documents show he owes nearly $1,200 in back taxes. "Joe," whose name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, was cited repeatedly in Wednesday night's final presidential debate by McCain for questioning Barack Obama's tax policy. The burly, bald man acknowledged he doesn't have a plumber's license, but said he didn't need one because he works for someone else at a company that does residential work. But Wurzelbacher would need to be a licensed apprentice or journeyman to work in Toledo, and he's not, said David Golis, manager and residential building official for the Toledo Division of Building Inspection. http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081017/POLITICS01/810170372/&imw=Y

The Republican US presidential candidate John McCain was not tortured during his captivity in North Vietnam, the chief prison guard of the jail in which he was held has claimed. In an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Nguyen Tien Tran acknowledged that conditions in the prison were "tough, though not inhuman". But, he added: "We never tortured McCain. On the contrary, we saved his life, curing him with extremely valuable medicines that at times were not available to our own wounded." Tran dismissed as "absolutely impossible" perhaps the most famous story from McCain's autobiography: that one Christmas, a guard traced a cross in the mud in front of him. "My men were all communists and atheists," he said. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/14/uselections2008-johnmccain

Embattled Republican Sen. Susan Collins is calling on Sen. John McCain to stop paying for automated phone calls which describe Sen. Barack Obama as having "worked closely" with "domestic terrorist Bill Ayers." "These kind of tactics have no place in Maine politics," said Collins spokesman Kevin Kelley. "Sen. Collins urges the McCain campaign to stop these calls immediately." http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/10/gop-senator-sla.html

Vote for Obama. MCCAIN LACKS THE CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT TO BE PRESIDENT. AND PALIN IS SIMPLY A DISGRACE. http://www.slate.com/id/2202163/

As far as "gotcha" stunts go, the right-wing feeding frenzy over the vile vote-fraud treachery of ACORN has yet to yield much fruit. Investigations are indeed under way. But then, they are always under way this time of the year—and as the indefatigable Brad Friedman points out, so what? Evidence of voter-registration wrongdoing is no more a sign of widespread, Obama-sanctioned vote fraud than evidence of minorities being misled and intimidated on Election Day is a sign of official, McCain-sanctioned vote suppression. What's the real point of turning voter-registration shenanigans into "one of the greatest frauds in voter history"? The object here is not criminal indictments. It's to undermine voter confidence in the elections system as a whole. John McCain wants to build a better bogeyman, and he needs your help to do it. http://www.slate.com/id/2202428/

Poll: Voters souring on McCain, Obama stays steady. When it comes to the public's image of John McCain, it's as if somebody dialed the electricity down in the past month. For Barack Obama, the juice is still flowing. People's regard for the Republican presidential nominee has deteriorated across the board since September, an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll showed Friday, with McCain losing ground in how favorably he's seen and in a long list of personal qualities voters seek in White House contenders. Perceptions of Obama have improved or remained steady. Beyond views of the two rivals' character traits, McCain faces another problem – Obama is more trusted on the economy, the contest's commanding issue, including a 15 percentage-point edge for better grasping how the raging financial crisis is affecting people. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20081017-0652-ap-yahoopoll-souringonmccain.html

"The question [Sarah Palin] keeps asking at all of the rallies is, 'Who is Barack Obama?' You know what, genius, maybe if you'd picked up a newspaper in the last year you'd know." http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/galleries/la-et-late-night-politics-review-oct17-pg,0,6580075.photogallery?index=4

Radley Balko on the Government Subsidies Behind Cindy McCain's Family Fortune. http://www.reason.com/news/show/129476.html

McCain's performance mixed in crucial debate. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081016/news_1n16assess.html

“Ronald Reagan was a cowboy, no experience in international affairs." http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20081016-1749-mccain-letterman.html

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Thinking conservatives: MIAs of the GOP. Paranoid, rage-driven, xenophobic nuts are taking over the Republican Party. One by one, the nation's more reputable conservatives have been edging away from the Republican presidential ticket. It started with John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Thinking conservatives -- as of a couple of months ago, there were still a few left -- were distinctly underwhelmed. In the New York Times, David Brooks chastised McCain for "throw[ing] away standards of experience and prudence" by picking Palin. In the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer said Palin was "not ready" for prime time. David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, complained that Palin had "thoroughly -- and probably irretrievably -- proven that she is not up to the job." In the National Review, conservative columnist Kathleen Parker said Palin was "clearly out of her league" and urged her to "bow out." http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks16-2008oct16,0,4287459.column

republicans have no shame. Obama photo in GOP club newsletter sparks outrage. Illustration shows the candidate's head on donkey's body on a bogus $10 bill that says 'Food Stamps.' Leader of the Upland women's group denies racism, but a state party official decries the image. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-foodstamps17-2008oct17,0,6531930.story

John McCain: too risky for America.

'Muslim' shouldn't be a slur. Both McCain and Obama should condemn implicit attacks on Muslims and Arabs. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rice15-2008oct15,0,5744288.story

Stifled by Copyright, McCain Asks YouTube to Consider Fair Use. The McCain campaign's web video ads have been repeatedly either knocked off YouTube or have had to be revamped for using excerpts of television debate footage, and pop songs as soundtracks, without negotiating for the rights first. One of its highest profile hits on the web, "Obama Love," for example, faced an embarrassing revamp in July when YouTube received a DMCA take-down notice from The Warner Music Group. The campaign had used Franki Valli's hit tune "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" as the video's sarcastic soundtrack. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/stifled-by-copy.html

Sen. Stevens and Palin’s Complicated Relationship. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s gubernatorial schedule shows that she had a one-on-one meeting on Oct. 12, 2007 with Sen. Ted Stevens “re: Political Situation in Alaska and Gas Pipeline,” immediately before she was due to meet with the state’s attorney general “re: VECO,” the Alaskan oil-services company now at the center of the Republican senator’s legal woes. http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/10/13/sen-stevens-and-palins-complicated-relationship/

Palin has checkered history on ethics issues. Sarah Palin, whose reformer image took a hit in a report concluding she abused her powers to settle a family score, has skirted state ethics rules before for personal benefit and used her office to help friends and supporters, according to an Associated Press review of records. Palin's first try at statewide office, after six years as mayor of Wasilla, was an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor in 2002. To raise money, she improperly used her City Hall office and equipment, city records show. A year later she would make headlines by blasting a fellow Republican for, among other things, improperly using his government position to boost his campaign. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20081014-1313-palin-stateethics.html

Low dishonesty and craven cynicism sometimes win the day but not inevitably. The attempt to link Barack Obama to an old radical in his neighborhood has desperation and deceit written all over it. Meanwhile, stunning acts of heroism stand out, such as the fidelity of military lawyers assigned to defend detainees at Guantanamo Bay -- uniformed officers faithful to their lawyerly duty to offer a vigorous defense even though it means exposing the injustice of military justice that is rigged for conviction and the mendacity of a commander in chief who commits war crimes. If your law school is looking for a name for its new library, instead of selling the honor to a fat cat alumnus, you should consider the names of Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, Lt. Col. Mark Bridges, Col. Steven David, Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel and Maj. Michael Mori. It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged. When she said, "One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars," people smelled gas. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/382133_keilloronline08.html?source=mypi

John McCain said Monday that it was unfair for Rep. John Lewis to compare the negative tone of the Republican presidential campaign to the atmosphere a segregationist fostered in the 1960s. In a statement Saturday, Lewis said McCain and Palin were "sowing the seeds of hatred and division" and "hostility in our political discourse," and noted the tone that segregationist Gov. George Wallace fostered in 1960s Alabama. "George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights," said Lewis, who is black. "Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama." Lewis' comments followed reported examples of anger at McCain-Palin rallies that has been aimed at Obama, the first black man to be a major party's nominee for president. GOP supporters have shouted "traitor," "terrorist," "treason," "liar" and "off with his head." Crybaby McCain defended his audiences, saying most who attend the rallies are "good and decent and patriotic Americans." "To somehow intimate that the overwhelming majority of those people, with rare exception, are somehow not good Americans or are motivated by anything but the most patriotic motives is insulting and I won't accept that insult," he said. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_mccain_lewis.html?source=mypi

As Barack Obama and John McCain sluggishly battled it out at Belmont University Tuesday night in the second presidential debate, a colleague and I hopped from bar to bar, eavesdropping on the crowds. We wanted to hear what people were saying about the debate in an open, informal kind of way. OK, I admit, access to beer was not a drawback for us. What we heard was somewhat of a shock to me. Try as I did to find people pulling for McCain, the task was hard. Most of the folks we ran into — even after lingering at Sam's in Hillsboro Village, which touted itself as the place for McCain supporters to watch the debates — seemed more impressed with his opponent. My friend and I were posting what we overheard to a Twitter account hosted by Tennessean.com, so we were careful to look for people on both sides of the aisle. The fact that that was not an easy task was distressing, but it's one I've gotten used to as a journalist living in Williamson County. For as long as I've lived here, everyone's been a Republican. The Democrats had been so few that you could name them, but you never did because you didn't want to "out" them. That's how red Williamson was. Was. http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081012/COUNTY09010504/810120370/1177/COUNTY0902

Palin Makes Troopergate Assertions that Are Flatly False. http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/10/palin-makes-tro.html

Don’t say we weren’t warned. Bush came into office believing fervently that what was good for Enron and its CEO, Kenneth “Kenny Boy” Lay, Bush’s top financial sponsor, was good for the country. So, too, McCain, who chose Phil Gramm as co-chair of his presidential campaign, ignoring the huge loophole in Gramm’s Commodity Futures Trading Act, which allowed Enron, where his wife, Wendy Gramm, was on the board of directors, to so shamelessly game the energy market. Trumpeting the benefits of the legislation he tacked onto an omnibus spending bill the day before the 2000 Christmas recess, then-Sen. Gramm stated: “It protects financial institutions from over-regulation. It provides legal certainty for the $60 billion market in swaps.” Those swaps created the toxic investments that U.S. taxpayers are now stuck with as the nation struggles to save those unregulated financial institutions from bankruptcy. McCain, who should have learned the cost of radical deregulation from his own involvement in the savings and loan scandal as one of the infamous “Keating Five,” totally bought Gramm’s line. McCain was the chair of Gramm’s 1996 presidential bid and up until major Wall Street firms collapsed continued to echo the insistence of the former-Texas-senator-turned-banker that there was no real crisis in the financial markets. McCain evidences the underlying motivator attributed to Bush in Stone’s movie: the distorted priorities of a son of privilege doing battle with the legacy of more gifted and responsible family ancestors. Both grew up as spoiled screw-ups repeatedly bailed out of trouble by their highly accomplished fathers, in McCain’s case an admiral, and both assume, as a matter of legacy, that they have a right to rule. What they ignored in their legacy was a Christian’s obligation to make the economic system that handsomely rewarded their kin at least minimally responsive to the needs of ordinary folk. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081007_a_plague_upon_the_white_house/

Alaska state Rep. Les Gara and Megan Stapleton—who is a former Sarah Palin staffer, now part of the McCain-Palin campaign’s publicity team and a member of the “Palin Truth Squad”—exchange heated words in these clips filmed in Anchorage after the “Troopergate” report was released Friday. http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20081011_palin_spokeswoman_alaska_lawmaker_face_off_about_troopergate/

McCain in 'hatred' war of words. Republican presidential candidate John McCain has become embroiled in a war of words with racial undertones after clashing with a civil rights icon. McCain hates Americans. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7665780.stm

McCain received his Navy appointment only because his father was an Admiral

Here we are nearing the Eleventh Hour in what many term the "most important election in generations." With the world crumbling by the nanosecond, the new Sarah is all about getting boos from the audience against Obama, The New York Times and the so-called "East Coast elite." What kind of fun is that? Not to mention, it's also clear she doesn't have a clue that the oceans are risin' and the skies are fallin', to use the Palinese dialect. Am I sick to wish she'd just call it a day and audition for a fictional Fox show called "The Hockey Mom?" That might be funny until you stop and consider what is at stake. We are in the throes of the biggest collapse in the world's economic system since the Great Depression. We now have the real possibility that the frozen credit markets will forever change the world. I guess those campaign slogans were right; this election is about change. hate filled warmonger http://www.alternet.org/election08/102369/why_it%27s_not_that_fun_to_laugh_at_sarah_palin_anymore/

Concern in G.O.P. After Rough Week for McCain. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/us/politics/12strategy.html?ref=us

Investigator Discounted Palins’ Fears as Motivation to Seek Removal of a Trooper. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/us/politics/12trooper.html?ref=us

McCain Palin corrupt immoral thugs full of hate

Sarah Palin: The view from Alaska. Amid “Troopergate” and other government scandals, including killing wolf pups, an Alaskan writer explains why the Palin phenomenon rings hollow in his home state. In the broadest sense, Palin is a poseur. Alaska is too large and culturally diverse (it’s only a bit smaller than the entire lower 48 east of the Mississippi, and once was divided into four time zones) to be summed up by some abstract, romanticized notion. And even if it could be, it sure wouldn’t be symbolized by Palin. “The typical Alaskan? She couldn’t be farther from it,” says Alaska House Minority Leader Beth Kertulla. Still, Palin is a genuine Alaskan — of a kind. The kind that flowed north in the wake of the ’70s oil boom, Bible Belt politics and attitudes under arm, and transformed this state from a free-thinking, independent bastion of genuine libertarianism and individuality into a reactionary fundamentalist enclave with dollar signs in its eyes and an all-for-me mentality. Palin’s Alaska is embodied in Wasilla, a blue-collar, sharp-elbowed town of burgeoning big box stores, suburban subdivisions, evangelical pocket churches and car dealerships morphing across the landscape, outward from Anchorage, the state’s urban epicenter. She has lived in Wasilla practically all her life, and even now resides there, the first Alaska executive to eschew the white-pillared mansion in Juneau, down on the Southeast Panhandle. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/10/11/sarah_palin_alaska/

83 Wall Street Lobbyists Work for McCain Palin Campaign. http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9753_mccain_campaign_lobbyists_wall_street_aig.html

Governor Palin believes that marriage should be a sacred union between two unwilling teenagers. http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose

John McCain and Sarah Palin try new tactics. He blasts Obama's spending proposals; she goes after the Democrat's stance on abortion. Connie Mackey, senior vice president of the Family Research Council -- an antiabortion group -- hailed the platform as "the most conservative" ever. She also dismissed the pregnancy of Palin's daughter as a "blip on the screen." http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-campaign12-2008oct12,0,4441580.story

For months, Mark Wagner stuck by John McCain, even as the economy stalled and other Americans came to blame Republican leadership. Then, about three weeks ago, the deepening economic downturn pushed him to reconsider. Now, the Florida salesman and staunch Republican has abandoned the GOP ticket. Sarah Palin, he thinks, looks under-equipped to be vice president. And McCain, he says, displayed an unsteady response to what may be a global economic depression. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-wave12-2008oct12,0,5375073.story

Sarah Palin's husband, Todd, was a fixture at governor's office. The 'first gentleman' also read official correspondence and went to closed Cabinet meetings, records and an investigation indicate. Barely two weeks after Sarah Palin had been sworn in as Alaska's governor, in December 2006, then-Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan's executive secretary got a confusing phone call from Palin's office: The first gentleman would like to schedule a meeting with her boss. "I was not familiar with the term 'first gentleman,' or didn't hear her correctly, so I kept asking her, 'Who?' " the secretary, Cassandra Byrne, testified recently. "And she eventually said, 'Todd Palin.' " http://www.latimes.com/business/careers/work/la-na-todd12-2008oct12,0,6898674.story

Rod Parsley, that is. The puffy evangelist anger box has been described by McCain as his "spiritual advisor." Some of that advice may have contributed two or three of the "bombs" in McCain's campaign motto, "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran," because, apparently, operating from illuminated manuscripts of his own imaginings, Parsley has decided that the ancient historical imperative of America is "destroying" Islam. I mean, you remember that whole Islamofascist plot where King George levied all those unfair taxes on the colonies, right? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/08/rod-parsley-mccains-spiri_n_100819.html

McCain Backer Hagee Said Hitler Was Fulfilling God's Will (AUDIO). John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a "hunter," sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God's will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/21/mccain-backer-hagee-said_n_102892.html

McCain "Proud" of Endorsement From John Hagee Who Calls Catholics "The Great Whore." Mr. McCain, who has been on a steady search for support among conservative and evangelical leaders who have long distrusted him, said he was "very honored by Mr. Hagee's endorsement. Asked about Mr. Hagee's extensive writings on Armageddon and about what one questioner said was Mr. Hagee's belief that the anti-Christ will be the head of the European Union, Mr. McCain responded that "all I can tell you is that I am very proud to have Pastor John Hagee's support. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-hamsher/mccain-proud-of-endorse_b_89227.html

Candidate Banners Can Leave Clients, Businesses Bruised. Signs for the Republican team of John McCain and Sarah Palin near the marquee at Colony South Hotel & Conference Center in Clinton -- right in Barack Obama territory -- have spurred calls for boycotts of the facility. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/11/AR2008101101465.html?hpid=topnews

"John McCain, Sarah Palin and Republican leaders are walking a very thin line in pretending not to hear the hateful invectives spewed at their rallies," Sweeney said. "McCain should end this line of attack in the strongest possible terms. Anything less puts McCain in the same camp as the racists and extremists who are bringing their angry rhetoric to his campaign events. " http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/labor-group-calls-on-mccain-to-denounce-supporters-2008-10-10.html

Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.” http://www.utne.com/2008-10-10/Media/McCain-Palin-Supporters-Hate-the-Media-Obama-Hugs.aspx?blogid=34

republicans, ARCHIVED OCTOBER 11, 2008

Rev. Arnold Conrad, in delivering an invocation at a rally today for John McCain in Davenport, Iowa, apparently didn't get the word from the candidate about elevating the tone at such gatherings. Conrad, who appeared before the crowd before McCain had arrived, offered a prayer that seemed to urge divine intervention to prevent Barack Obama from winning the presidential election -- and cast the outcome as a referendum on differing religions. The Times' Maeve Reston was at the event, and she passed along the key passage from Conrad's words: I would also pray Lord that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their God -- whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah -- that his [McCain’s] opponent wins for a variety of reasons. And Lord I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you would step forward and honor your own name in all that happens between now and Election Day. Oh Lord, we just commit this time to you, move among us, make your presence very well felt as we are gathered here today in Jesus's name I pray. Some in the crowd greeted the prayer with applause. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/10/john-mccain-ral.html

Ethics probe hits hardest at Todd, not Sarah Palin. A month after she became governor, Sarah Palin's staff ushered Alaska's public safety commissioner into her private office. But Palin wasn't there. Her husband, Todd, had called the meeting. He was frustrated that his former brother-in-law remained on the job as a state trooper, and he prevailed upon the commissioner to get rid of him. "I thought that was odd and made me a little uncomfortable," said Walter Monegan, the commissioner, who later was fired by Gov. Palin. "We're having it in the governor's office, and he's not the governor. I think he was trying to use state trappings to handle a personal issue." The January 2007 meeting was part of a long pattern of pressure that she and her husband applied on state officials to try to get the trooper fired, according to an Alaska legislative report released Friday. The report said those contacts amounted to an abuse of power and a violation of the state's ethics laws, which prohibit using public office for personal benefit. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-troopergate12-2008oct12,0,7649503.story


Profiles in Cowardice. The hypocrisy of the Republicans is so caustic and damaging in so many ways I hardly know where to begin. But the thing that gets me most is this idea that they put "Country First." What a crock. When they attack people who support their opponents, they're attacking half of the country they say they love and supposedly put first. I've had trouble putting my finger on this for years but there it is. Love isn't something you just talk about, it's something you do. Think of it this way, Al Gore got more than 50 percent of the votes in the 2000 election. John Kerry got pretty close to 50 percent. Win or lose, Barack Obama will get 50 percent, more or less. So if you love America, it seems you must love the people who voted for Gore, Kerry and Obama too. Otherwise, please explain specifically what it is that you love cause it ain't America. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-winer/profiles-in-cowardice_b_133160.html

Sigourney Weaver is not a fan of VP candidate Sarah Palin. Speaking to TV Guide about her upcoming guest spot on Eli Stone, on which she'll play a therapist, Weaver said, "I actually have a therapist. She's very smart and we try not to talk about politics because we're both incensed about Sarah Palin." Earlier this week at an event Sigourney Weaver told the press, "I don't feel she represents me in any way. She's in a skirt, that's about it." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/10/sigourney-weaver-incensed_n_133682.html

Body Politics: Sarah Palin's Body Language And Why It Should Worry You. 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. Attitude-Flag #1: The Aggressive Confidence Of The Con-Person. Voice-Flag #1: The Exaggerated Folksiness Of The Huckster. Voice-Flag #2: The Metallic Shriek Of The Fear-Monger. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathlyn-and-gay-hendricks/body-politics-sarah-palin_b_132785.html

The possibility that Democrats will build a muscular, 60-seat Senate majority is looking increasing plausible, with new polls showing a powerful surge for the party’s candidates in Minnesota, Kentucky and other states. A poll out Friday shows Sen. Norm Coleman could now easily lose his Minnesota seat to comedian-turned-candidate Al Franken. A Colorado race that initially looked like a nail-biter has now broken decisively for the Democrats. A top official in the McCain camp told us Sen. Elizabeth Dole is virtually certain to lose in conservative North Carolina. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14280.html

No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.” This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It’s astonishing there’s been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan — or William Ayers — in Denver. The operatives who would have Palin quote Pegler have been at it ever since. A key indicator came two weeks after the convention, when the McCain campaign ran its first ad tying Obama to the mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Rather than make its case by using a legitimate link between Fannie and Obama (or other Democratic leaders), the McCain forces chose a former Fannie executive who had no real tie to Obama or his campaign but did have a black face that could dominate the ad’s visuals. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/opinion/12rich.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

the Branchflower report still makes for good reading, if only because it convincingly answers a question nobody had even thought to ask: Is the Palin administration shockingly amateurish? Yes, it is. Disturbingly so. The 263 pages of the report show a co-ordinated application of pressure on Monegan so transparent and ham-handed that it was almost certain to end in public embarrassment for the governor. The only surprise is that Troopergate is national news, not just a sorry piece of political gristle to be chewed on by Alaska politicos over steaks at Anchorage's Club Paris. A harsh verdict? Consider the report's findings. Not only did people at almost every level of the Palin administration engage in repeated inappropriate contact with Walt Monegan and other high-ranking officials at the Department of Public Safety, but Monegan and his peers constantly warned these Palin disciples that the contact was inappropriate and probably unlawful. Still, the emails and calls continued — in at least one instance on recorded state trooper phone lines. The state's head of personnel, Annette Kreitzer, called Monegan and had to be warned that personnel issues were confidential. The state's attorney general, Talis Colberg, called Monegan and had to be reminded that the call was putting both men in legal jeopardy, should Wooten decide to sue. The governor's chief of staff met with Monegan and had to be reminded by Monegan that, "This conversation is discoverable ... You don't want Wooten to own your house, do you?" Monegan consistently emerges as the adult in these conversations, while the Palin camp displays a childish impetuousness and sense of entitlement. http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1849399,00.html

Palin Blurs Line Between Church And State As Governor. The camera closes in on Sarah Palin speaking to young missionaries, vowing from the pulpit to do her part to implement God's will from the governor's office. What she didn't tell worshippers gathered at the Wasilla Assembly of God church in her hometown was that her appearance that day came courtesy of Alaskan taxpayers, who picked up the $639.50 tab for her airplane tickets and per diem fees. An Associated Press review of the Republican vice presidential candidate's record as mayor and governor reveals her use of elected office to promote religious causes, sometimes at taxpayer expense and in ways that blur the line between church and state. Since she took state office in late 2006, the governor and her family have spent more than $13,000 in taxpayer funds to attend at least 10 religious events and meetings with Christian pastors, including Franklin Graham, the son of evangelical preacher Billy Graham, records show. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/11/palin-blurs-line-between_n_133863.html

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war. http://www.nationalreview.com/coulter/coulter.shtml

"What McCain didn't mention is that he has his own Bill Ayers -- in the form of G. Gordon Liddy. Now a conservative radio talk-show host, Liddy spent more than 4 years in prison for his role in the 1972 Watergate burglary. That was just one element of what Liddy did, and proposed to do, in a secret White House effort to subvert the Constitution. Far from repudiating him, McCain has embraced him. How close are McCain and Liddy? At least as close as Obama and Ayers appear to be. In 1998, Liddy's home was the site of a McCain fundraiser. Over the years, he has made at least four contributions totaling $5,000 to the senator's campaigns -- including $1,000 this year. Last November, McCain went on his radio show. Liddy greeted him as "an old friend," and McCain sounded like one. "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family," he gushed. "It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great." http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0504chapmanmay04,0,6238795.column

McCain's Chilling Dance With the Dark Side. it wouldn't be inappropriate to raise questions about McCain's association with G. Gordon Liddy, the convicted Watergate burglar whose colorful history includes telling listeners to his radio show in 1994 to shoot federal agents in the head. When McCain went on Liddy's radio show in November 2007, he told Liddy, "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family... It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great." http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2008/10/mccains_chilling_dance_with_th.html

"Keep The N*gger Out Of Office" Cops: Man threatened voter officials over tardy registration card. Angered by a delay in the receipt of his voter registration card, a Louisiana man today threatened election officials, claiming that he urgently needed to cast a ballot to "keep the nigger out of office," according to police. Wade Williams, 75, was arrested this morning on a felony terrorizing charge after allegedly calling the Registrar of Voters and warning that he would come to the state office and empty his shotgun unless he got his registration card. Using profanity and racial slurs, Williams told a state official "about needing to vote to 'keep the nigger out of office," according to an Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office affidavit, a copy of which you'll find here. Though the document does not name the candidate to which Williams is so violently opposed, it seems likely he was referring to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. After being arrested at his Monroe home, Williams was booked into the Ouachita Correctional Center, where the below mug shot was snapped. En route to the jail, he "continued his 'tirade' about niggers and also stated that he had a shotgun, but had it hidden at his residence," reported Lt. Michael Judd. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/1008082voter1.html

Palin 'unlawfully' abused power. John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as Alaska's governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, US officials said. Stephen Branchflower, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel, found Mrs Palin in violation of a state ethics law that prohibits public officials from using their office for personal gain. http://news.scotsman.com/world/Palin-39unlawfully39-abused-power.4582766.jp

McCain advises followers in case of Obama's election: "Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. ... Kill the sons of bitches." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Gordon_Liddy#Advice_to_listeners

Alaska Inquiry Concludes Palin Abused Powers. Gov. Sarah Palin abused the powers of her office by pressuring subordinates to try to get her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired, an investigation by the Alaska Legislature has concluded. The inquiry found, however, that she was within her right to dismiss her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who was the trooper’s boss. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/us/politics/11trooper.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

McCain “terrorist,” “traitor,” “fascist” “Kill him.” McCain

John McCain’s dishonorable campaign. It kept getting worse all week. Again on Friday a McCain-Palin supporter called Barack Obama a “traitor,” and John McCain said nothing. He used to challenge racist hecklers on the trail; he used to say he wanted to run an honorable campaign. But lately he and pit bull Sarah Palin are attacking Obama personally and politically in every city, from every platform. And they seem to be savoring the disgusting hate they’re fomenting — Obama being called “terrorist,” “traitor,” “socialist.” Haters screaming “Kill him.” Finally McCain kinda sorta stood up to a supporter in Minnesota who denounced Obama as an “Arab.” McCain replied, “No, ma’am, he’s a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with.” At another point, he said, ”I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States,” to boos and groans from the crowd. http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/10/11/current_mccainsdishonest/

John Lewis: McCain, Palin “sowing seeds of hatred and division” Earlier this year, John McCain said that John Lewis, the former civil rights leader who’s now a congressman, was one of “three wise men” he’d consult as president. But he’s decidely unhappy with some of Lewis’ recent wisdom, and not surprisingly. On Saturday, Lewis came out with harsh criticism of the McCain campaign’s recent tactics and rallies, bringing up the memory of George Wallace, the pro-segregation governor of Alabama. “As one who was a victim of violence and hate during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign. What I am seeing today reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history,” Lewis said in a statement, continuing: Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse. During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed one Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama. As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Governor Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better. http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/10/11/lewis_wallace/index.html

McCain scares me. He claims to believe in the supernatural and lives according to superstition. I would welcome the destruction of the Earth. He would start another war. He got his start with the support of gangsters and organized crime. He participated in a war that killed three million civilians and has no regrets. McCain scares the hell out of me. He would use the military to kill American civilians.

During a stop in Grand Rapids on Thursday, Lincoln Chafee, a former Republican U.S. senator from Rhode Island, said he's voting for Obama and urging others to do likewise. McCain campaigned for Chafee's unsuccessful re-election bid in 2006, but Chafee said he is concerned McCain has swung to the right, a divisive strategy that could make it difficult for him to govern. "That's not my kind of Republicanism," said Chafee, who now calls himself an independent. "I saw what Bush and Cheney did. They came in with a (budget) surplus and a stable world, and look what's happened now. In eight short years they've taken one peaceful and prosperous world, and they've torn it into tatters." As for McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for his running mate, "there's no question she's totally unqualified," Chafee said. http://www.mlive.com/grpress/news/index.ssf/2008/10/former_governor_milliken_backs.html

Former governor Milliken backs away from McCain. 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. "I'm disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign, when he ought to be talking about the issues." Milliken, a lifelong Republican, is among some past leaders from the party's moderate wing voicing reservations and, in some cases, opposition to McCain's candidacy. http://www.mlive.com/grpress/news/index.ssf/2008/10/former_governor_milliken_backs.html

My Holiday with McCain. It was just before John McCain’s last run at the presidential nomination in 2000 that my husband and I vacationed in Turtle Island in Fiji with John McCain, Cindy, and their children, including Bridget (their adopted Bangladeshi child). It was not our intention, but it was our misfortune to be in close quarters with John McCain for almost a week since Turtle Island has a small number of bungalows and their focus on communal meals force all vacationers who are there at the same time to get to know each other intimately. He arrived at our first group meal and started reading quotes from a pile of William Faulkner books with a forest of Post-Its sticking out of them. As an English Literature major myself, my first thought was “if he likes this so much, why hasn’t he memorized any of this yet?” I soon realized that McCain actually thought we had come on vacation to be a volunteer audience for his “readings” which then became a regular part of each meal. Out of politeness, none of the vacationers initially protested at this intrusion into their blissful holiday, but people’s buttons definitely got pushed as the readings continued day after day. Unfortunately this was not his only contribution to our mealtime entertainment. He waxed on during one meal about how Indo-Chine women had the best figures and that our American corn-fed women just couldn’t meet up to this standard. He also made it a point that all of us should stop Cindy from having dessert as her weight was too high and made a few comments to Amy, the 25 year old wife of the honeymooning couple from Nebraska that she should eat less as she needed to lose weight. McCain’s appreciation of the beauty of Asian women was so great that David the American economist had to move his Thai wife to the other side of the table from McCain as McCain kept aggressively flirting with and touching her. http://www.tellingthoughts.com/us-politics/my-holiday-with-mccain

Underground Whisper Campaign Could Undermine McCain. John McCain is no longer immune to the kind of sleazy viral e-mails that have long plagued his presidential election opponent, thanks to a rapidly spreading message that describes McCain as an egotistical, sexist man who oppresses people taking vacations with him by reading aloud from William Faulkner novels. Bearing the subject line "My Holiday With John McCain," the e-mail is gaining renewed traction after first surfacing in September on the DailyKos and other blogs. It's infiltrated listservs, and some people are taking it seriously enough to post it to their Facebook profiles. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/underground-whi.html

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said more than one person has whispered in her ear in Ohio that John McCain needs "to take the gloves off" in his campaign against Democrat Barack Obama. Before a friendly crowd of Republican fundraisers Friday, the Alaska governor did that herself. Palin said Obama was exploiting the economic crisis for political gain, "instead of trying to find solutions and work together to deal with it." She also accused Obama of proposing a trillion dollars in new government spending without explaining where that money will come from. "Media, don't know why they're not asking him: 'Where is that money gonna come from?'" she said. "He's got to raise taxes." Obama has said his new spending will be paid for by ending President Bush's tax cuts for the 5 percent of Americans who make more than $250,000 a year, savings from withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq and greater government efficiency. He pledges tax cuts for those making less than $200,000 a year. Speaking to about 200 supporters in a ballroom at The Ritz-Carlton in downtown Cleveland - her second fundraiser of the day in hard-fought Ohio - Palin defended the Republican campaign's effort this week to ask the public and media to take a closer look at Obama and his associations. "With only 25 days to go, it's not negative and it's not mean-spirited," she said. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_palin.html

And songbirds - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRvXEsW4Fgg&feature=related

McCain booed after trying to calm anti-Obama crowd. The anger is getting raw at Republican rallies and John McCain is acting to tamp it down. McCain was booed by his own supporters Friday when, in an abrupt switch from raising questions about Barack Obama's character, he described the Democrat as a "decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States." A sense of grievance spilling into rage has gripped some GOP events this week as McCain supporters see his presidential campaign lag against Obama. Some in the audience are making it personal, against the Democrat. Shouts of "traitor," "terrorist," "treason," "liar," and even "off with his head" have rung from the crowd at McCain and Sarah Palin rallies, and gone unchallenged by them. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_mccain_angry_crowds.html?source=mypi

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JOHN McCAIN. THE MOST FLAWED PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IN HISTORY . It is now clear that what is left of the Republicon Party, after being fatally poisoned by the Bush administration, intents to commit suicide by nominating Senator John McCain (R-Hanoi) for the presidency. Where do I start? http://www.wclt.com//news/special/articledetail.cfm?articleid=23261

Palin abused her power, legislative inquiry finds. The governor's unhappiness over a trooper not being fired probably contributed to the public safety commissioner's dismissal, the report says. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-troopergate11-2008oct11,0,6863069.story

There are some seriously ignorant people on display in these videos (and no, not just the governor of Alaska). These people are clearly SO DUMB that they'd believe any darn thing you told them! Be afraid, be very afraid... McCain-Palin Mob in Ohio. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjxzmaXAg9E

Palins Repeatedly Pressed Case Against Trooper. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/us/10trooper.html?ref=us

A Republican Mob Scene. JOHN MCCAIN'S SUPPORTERS ARE MADDER (AND SCARIER!) THAN HE IS. http://www.slate.com/id/2201951/ Thank you. I think it’s so important in today’s country what we’re really missing in what’s going on. When you have an Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there going to run this country, we’ve got to have our head examined. It’s time that you two are representing us, and we are mad. So go get them. Audience: USA, USA, USA. McCain: Well, I — I think I got the message. Could I — could I just say the gentleman is right. The Democrats have been in the majority for the last two years. Have you seen any improvement? The point is — but Americans are angry, sir. They’re angry and frustrated. And that’s why we’ve got to act, and we’ve got to act together because all of us are Americans first. http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/?last_story=/politics/war_room/2008/10/09/qotd/

Meet Sarah Palin’s radical right-wing pals. Extremists Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll helped launch Palin’s political career in Alaska, and in return had influence over policy. “Her door was open,” says Chryson — and still is. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/10/palin_chryson/

Palin wrongly suggests Congress bans oil exports. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, touted by GOP presidential candidate John McCain as his expert on energy, seemed to have problems Thursday explaining whether the government bans oil exports - especially from her state's North Slope fields. A questioner at a town hall-style meeting in Wisconsin said he had heard that at least 75 percent of the oil drilled in Alaska was being sold to China and said, if true, he would like to know why. "No. It's not 75 percent of our oil being exported," Palin said, suggesting some of Alaska's oil, in fact, may be going abroad but not that much. "In fact," she added, "Congress is pretty strict on, um, export bans of oil and gas especially." No Alaska oil has been exported since 2004, and little if any since 2000, according to the Energy Information Administration and the Congressional Research Service. And Congress has never imposed outright bans on oil exports. Congress prohibited exports of Alaska oil in 1973 when the Alaska oil pipeline was built. But that ban was lifted in 1996 when there were large volumes of Alaska oil coming down from the North Slope and U.S. demand was soft. The Alaska ban has never been reinstated. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_palin_oil_exports.html?source=mypi

A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party’s evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain. The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to Mr. McCain’s campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world’s second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just Mr. McCain’s affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/us/politics/28gambling-web.html?fta=y

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants. In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand. Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats. This Maverick’s son, Maury Jr., was a firebrand civil libertarian and lawyer who defended draft resisters, atheists and others scorned by society. He served in the Texas Legislature during the McCarthy era and wrote fiery columns for The San Antonio Express-News. His final column, published on Feb. 2, 2003, just after he died at 82, was an attack on the coming war in Iraq. Terrellita Maverick, sister of Maury Jr., is a member emeritus of the board of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. Considering the family’s long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, “is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.” “It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ ” “He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/weekinreview/05schwartz.html?em

republicans, archived October 08, 2008

she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.” What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic. I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first. Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.” And please also don’t tell me she is an “energy expert.” She is an energy expert exactly the same way the king of Saudi Arabia is an energy expert — by accident of residence. Palin happens to be governor of the Saudi Arabia of America — Alaska — and the only energy expertise she has is the same as the king of Saudi Arabia’s. It’s about how the windfall profits from the oil in their respective kingdoms should be divided between the oil companies and the people. At least the king of Saudi Arabia, in advocating “drill baby drill,” is serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. My problem with Palin is that she is also serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. That’s not patriotic. Patriotic is offering a plan to build our economy — not by tax cuts or punching more holes in the ground, but by empowering more Americans to work in productive and innovative jobs. If Palin has that kind of a plan, I haven’t heard it. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/opinion/08friedman.html?em

McCain campaign's reference to Obama. After a speaker at a rally in Pennsylvania twice uses Barack Obama's middle name -- Hussein -- McCain's campaign says it condones 'inappropriate rhetoric.' Obama criticizes McCain's housing plan. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-campaign9-2008oct09,0,1639656.story

McCain sold arms to terrorists

McCain link to private group in Iran-Contra case. John McCain's campaign is criticizing Barack Obama for his ties to a former radical who engaged in violent acts four decades ago, but McCain himself was closely connected to a private group that supplied aid to rebels trying to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua during the Iran-Contra affair. The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe. The council's founder, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona. Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member in the group. "McCain was a new guy on the block learning the ropes," Singlaub told The Associated Press in an interview. "I think I met him in the Washington area when he was just a new congressman. We had McCain on the board to make him feel like he wasn't left out. It looks good to have names on a letterhead who are well-known and appreciated. In the Iran-Contra affair, the Reagan White House arranged covert arms shipments to the Contra rebels financed in part by secret arms sales to Iran. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jzQtw1kATj1xCqPcAmwgCKDtNpDQD93LE8UG1

Obama Camp's 'Keating Five' Slam Against McCain Gaining Traction Online By Sarah Lai Stirland October 06, 2008 | 1:51:48 PMCategories: Election '08 The terms "Keating Five," "Keating Economics," "Charles Keating," and "McCain Keating," hovered among several of the top search terms on Google Monday, as Barack Obama's campaign launched a new 13-minute online video that portrays McCain as someone who hasn't learned from his past bad judgments during critical financial crises. The term "Keating Five" was the seventh-most searched for term on Google Monday afternoon, right after searches for voter registration information in Texas and Florida, and right before the term "Vote For Change." "Keating Economics" was the 17th most searched for term, and keatingeconomics.com was the 18th most popular term during that same window of time. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/obama-camps-kea.html

Bear facts about John McCain. Despite his lip service to science, the GOP candidate continues to ridicule a major study of America's grizzly bears. http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2008/10/07/john_mccain_bears/

"My government is my worst enemy. I'm going to fight them with any means at hand." This was former revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers back in his old Weather Underground days, right? Imagine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incendiary quote as she tears into Barack Obama this week. Only one problem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that's the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year. ("Keep up the good work," Palin told AIP members. "And God bless you.") So who are these America-haters that the Palins are pallin' around with? Before his strange murder in 1993, party founder Vogler preached armed insurrection against the United States of America. Vogler, who always carried a Magnum with him, was fond of saying, "When the [federal] bureaucrats come after me, I suggest they wear red coats. They make better targets. In the federal government are the biggest liars in the United States, and I hate them with a passion. They think they own [Alaska]. There comes a time when people will choose to die with honor rather than live with dishonor. That time may be coming here. Our goal is ultimate independence by peaceful means under a minimal government fully responsive to the people. I hope we don't have to take human life, but if they go on tramping on our property rights, look out, we're ready to die." http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/10/07/palins_unamerican/

She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity, and she was Mr. McCain's first major decision as nominee. This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy. She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career making personal appearances for 40 grand a pop, and she'll become a trivia question, "What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise based on being able to see Russia from her house?" And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics. Your broker kept saying, "Stay with the portfolio, don't jump ship," and you felt a strong urge to dump the stocks and get into the money market where at least you're not going to lose your shirt, but you didn't do it and didn't do it, and now you're holding a big bag of brown bananas. Me, too. But at least I know enough not to believe desperate people who are talking trash. Anybody who got whacked last week and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead us out of the swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They'll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they connect the dots. http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/10/08/palin/

Juicing up the ticket. Dishonest, cynical men put forward Sarah Palin for national office, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged. When she said, "One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars," people smelled gas. http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/10/08/palin/

And their 2008 platform: To seek the complete repatriation of the public lands, held by the federal government, to the state and people of Alaska in conformance with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, of the federal constitution. Governor Palin’s connections with the AIP are also furthered by her connection to Wally Hickel, a former Alaskan governor. Hickel was elected on the AIP ticket. He served as the co-chairman of Governor Palin’s campaign in 2006. Here is a quote from an interview Hickel did with the Alaska Dispatch: When Palin was running for governor in 2006, Hickel appeared in advertisements supporting her and the Alaska pipeline. "I made her governor," Hickel told me. When asked earlier this year on CNBC about whether she’d be picked for McCain’s VP, Palin said, "We wanna make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans, and for the things we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the US, before I can even start addressing that question." "But in terms of judgment, in terms of being able to answer a question forthrightly, it has two different parts to it, that judgment and that truthfulness," http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_palin_media.html?source=mypi

Jonah Goldberg, a speechwriter for Sarah Palin, smears Biden: "Biden, the master gasbag." Jonah Goldberg: "The vice presidential candidate isn't really an expert, he just plays one on TV." http://www.beachblogger.net/bwtm/index.php?title=Fascist_Watch#Jonah_Goldberg

Sarah Palin and her husband Todd have had a long and, as of March 2008, ongoing association with the Alaska Independence Party. Tod Palin was a registered member of the AIP from 1995 to 2002. Sarah Palin attended several of their conventions and in March 2008 she delivered a welcoming address to the AIP convention. The Alaska Independence Party has advocated secession from the United States. Joe Vogler, the founder of the AIP, was murdered in 1993 while attempting to buy plastic explosives on the black market. Wonder what he was planning to blow up? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmYqRfp6-x8

I’m Governor Sarah Palin and I am delighted to welcome you to the 2008 Alaskan Independence Party Convention in the golden heart city of Fairbanks. Your party plays an important role in our state’s politics. I’ve always said that competition is so good, and that applies to political parties as well. I share your party’s vision of upholding the constitution of our great state. My administration remains focused on reining in government growth so individual liberty and opportunity can expand. I know you agree with that. We have a great promise to be a self-sufficient state, made up of the hardest-working, most grateful Americans in our nation. So as your convention gets underway I hope that you all are inspired by remembering that all those years ago, it was in this same city that Alaska’s constitution was born. And it was founded on hope and trust and liberty and opportunity. I carry that message of opportunity forward in my administration, as we continue to move our state ahead and create positive change. So I say good luck on a successful and inspiring convention. Keep up the good work, and God bless you. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/1/4231/18477/878/581881

Sarah Palin "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. And I won't be buried under their damn flag. I'll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home." Sarah Palin "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Vogler

In Ordeal as Captive, Character Was Shaped. McCain's last mission over Vietnam could serve as an almost perfect illustration of the futility of President Lyndon B. Johnson's bombing campaign known as Operation Rolling Thunder. The target on Oct. 26, 1967, was a thermal power plant in the center of Hanoi. The net result of the raid was three U.S. Navy planes down, minimal disruption of electricity supplies in the North Vietnamese capital and a propaganda windfall for the Vietnamese. The American bombs all fell wide of their target. "He probably killed a few fish," said retired Maj. Nguyen Lan, the commander of the surface-to-air missile battery that brought down McCain, telling his story in public for the first time. "The Americans never did destroy that power plant," he said laughing. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/04/AR2008100402351.html?hpid=topnews

Sarah Palin's candidacy is insultin,' dontcha know? http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/columnists/story.html?id=a54510a2-f4c6-42cb-b72e-b49e3fcd80cd

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. The Alaska governor’s larger point – made in her Oct. 2 debate and on the campaign stump since then – is that Obama is a person who dares to find fault with U.S. policies overseas and thus deserves to have his patriotism questioned. http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/100608.html

So How Many Poor Vietnamese Did McCain's Bombs Kill in 23 Runs? http://www.opednews.com/articles/So-How-Many-Poor-Vietnames-by-Jay-Janson-080905-920.html

Mishaps mark John McCain's record as naval aviator. Three crashes early in his career led Navy officials to question or fault his judgment. The 23-year-old junior lieutenant wasn't paying attention and erred in using "a power setting too low to maintain level flight in a turn," investigators concluded. The crash was one of three early in McCain's aviation career in which his flying skills and judgment were faulted or questioned by Navy officials. In his most serious lapse, McCain was "clowning" around in a Skyraider over southern Spain about December 1961 and flew into electrical wires, causing a blackout, according to McCain's own account as well as those of naval officers and enlistees aboard the carrier Intrepid. In another incident, in 1965, McCain crashed a T-2 trainer jet in Virginia. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-aviator6-2008oct06,0,7633315.story

It's getting McNasty again. A day after Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists," Obama struck back Sunday with a tough ad painting John McCain as "erratic." "Our financial system is in turmoil. And John McCain? Erratic in a crisis, out of touch on the economy," http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/10/05/2008-10-05_insults_fly_as_barack_obama__john_mccain.html

Military Times poll: Troops backing McCain. Sen. John McCain enjoys overwhelming support from the military’s professional core, though race appears to be a decisive factor for career-oriented black service members, a Military Times survey of nearly 4,300 readers indicates. McCain, R-Ariz., handily defeated Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., 68 percent to 23 percent in a voluntary survey of 4,293 active-duty, National Guard and reserve subscribers and former subscribers to Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Corps Times and Air Force Times. The results of the Military Times 2008 Election Poll are not representative of the opinions of the military as a whole. The group surveyed is older, more senior in rank and less ethnically diverse than the overall armed services. This shows corrupt the government is. United we stand, with Republican leadership we will fail. http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/10/military_poll_100508w/

McCain role in banking scandal. THE Charles Keating affair is an uneasy reminder to Americans of the scandal and chaos that plagued the country the last time the government had to bail out wayward banks. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration deregulated banks, allowing them to make far riskier loans with depositors' cash. At first, this freed up the economy and the United States boomed. But by the late 1980s, growing numbers of finance houses were in trouble after risky loans went sour. One such was the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, whose chairman, Charles Keating, was a friend of Senator John McCain, of Arizona. Keating, who lived in the state, had given Mr McCain $112,000 (£65,000) for his Senate campaign, while Mr McCain's wife, Cindy, a brewing heiress, had sunk more than $300,000 into a shopping mall project with Keating. When federal authorities began investigating Lincoln in 1987, Mr McCain, newly arrived in the Senate, joined four other senators, three Democrats and one Republican, in lobbying them to stop. For a time, it worked: the authorities established the bank had unreported losses of $136 million in 1986, but did not order its takeover in 1989, at a cost to the taxpayer of $2 billion in paying guarantees to depositors who had lost their money. http://news.scotsman.com/world/McCain-role-in-banking-scandal.4564027.jp

Today, McCain is the Republican nominee for president, but in 1991, he was a first-term senator facing the Senate Ethics Committee on Capitol Hill. He was in a scandal that could have ended his political career. McCain was a member of the Keating Five, a group of senators who had pressured federal regulators on behalf of well-connected savings and loan financier Charles Keating. The Obama campaign video is narrated by William Black, one of the regulators who investigated the case, and it retraces the history of McCain's involvement in the savings and loan scandal. "Senator McCain knew the facts, because we had briefed him. He knew this was a criminal enterprise," Black said in the documentary. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95442905

McCain smears Obama. On Monday afternoon, William Dowd, McCain's attorney, endorsed the attack. "It's sort of a classic political Karl Rove type smear job by John," Dowd said. "Republicans depend on these underhanded tactics. We really don't have anything else to offer."

Palin drama puts McCain's judgment in doubt. Palin's problems overshadow Republican convention. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080903.wconventionmain03/BNStory/usElection2008

Employees will testify in Palin probe. Inquiry examining whether VP candidate abused her office by firing state official. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081005.wtroopergate0410/BNStory/usElection2008/home

Palin pals around with witch doctors.

McCain pals around with crooks and terrorists.

At issue is Mr. Obama's association with Mr. Ayers. Both have served on the same Chicago charity and live near each other in Chicago. Mr. Ayers also held a meet-the-candidate event at his home for Mr. Obama when Mr. Obama first ran for office in the mid-1990s, the event cited by Ms. Palin. In February, Obama strategist David Axelrod told the Politico website: “Bill Ayers lives in his neighbourhood. Their kids attend the same school. They're certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together.” But while Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama are acquainted, the charge that they “pal around” is a stretch of any reading of the public record. And it's simply wrong to suggest that they were associated while Mr. Ayers was committing terrorist acts. Mr. Obama was eight years old at the time the Weather Underground claimed credit for numerous bombings and was blamed for a pipe bomb that killed a San Francisco policeman. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081005.wpalin0410/BNStory/usElection2008/home

Ms Palin's comments are offensive and false. The Illinois senator told his supporters at a rally in North Carolina that John McCain was "gambling that he can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance". "They'd rather tear our campaign down than lift this country up," he said. "That's what you do when you're out of touch, out of ideas, and running out of time." The party has accused the Republicans of gutter politics. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown said that the last few weeks had seen Mr McCain "morph into a desperate angry candidate" and that it made him sad that the McCain campaign was "resorting to these tactics". Commentators say Mrs Palin's attack forms part of a broader Republican strategy to attack Mr Obama's character. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7653849.stm

republicans are like leeches on our country.

With friends like these ... McCain finds his own radical friend. "What McCain didn't mention is that he has his own Bill Ayers -- in the form of G. Gordon Liddy. Now a conservative radio talk-show host, Liddy spent more than 4 years in prison for his role in the 1972 Watergate burglary. That was just one element of what Liddy did, and proposed to do, in a secret White House effort to subvert the Constitution. Far from repudiating him, McCain has embraced him. How close are McCain and Liddy? At least as close as Obama and Ayers appear to be. In 1998, Liddy's home was the site of a McCain fundraiser. Over the years, he has made at least four contributions totaling $5,000 to the senator's campaigns -- including $1,000 this year. Last November, McCain went on his radio show. Liddy greeted him as "an old friend," and McCain sounded like one. "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family," he gushed. "It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great." Which principles would those be? The ones that told Liddy it was fine to break into the office of the Democratic National Committee to plant bugs and photograph documents? The ones that made him propose to kidnap anti-war activists so they couldn't disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention? The ones that inspired him to plan the murder (never carried out) of an unfriendly newspaper columnist? Liddy was in the thick of the biggest political scandal in American history -- and one of the greatest threats to the rule of law. He has said he has no regrets about what he did, insisting that he went to jail as "a prisoner of war." All this may sound like ancient history. But it's from the same era as the bombings Ayers helped carry out as a member of the Weather Underground. And Liddy's penchant for extreme solutions has not abated. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0504chapmanmay04,0,6061828.column

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: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/05/ifill-palin-blew-me-off_n_132028.html

take a look at John McCain's questionable ties. http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=8817

Group tied to al-Qaida backs McCain for prez. 'They will do all they can to turn Kosovo into a jihadist camp in the heart of Europe'. http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=57678

Phil Gramm May Be Gone, But His Porn Lives On. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/phil-gramm-may-be-gone-bu_b_112781.html

The McCain-Follieri Love Boat. The Maverick and the Celebrity Con Man. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080929/berman_ames

McCain Gets a Little Help from Outside Group. When the political group Vets for Freedom bought TV ads in Virginia, right after Sen. John McCain's campaign canceled its own ad buy there, Democrats complained that the group must be coordinating its efforts with the McCain camp. A spokesman for the group called it a coincidence. "In no way has our buy in any way been collaborated with anyone," Vets for Freedom chairman Pete Hegseth told The Politico's Mike Allen, who broke the story yesterday. "All we did was decide where the buys are going, based on our timeline, and our buyers are doing it." Today, though, there appears to be another, similar coincidence in the way Vets for Freedom's ads are going up, just as McCain's ads are going down. According to a Democratic media firm, Vets for Freedom purchased advertising time in three Michigan television markets, Flint, Grand Rapids and Traverse City, covering July 10 to July 16. At the same time, the McCain campaign decreased its advertising in those three markets for the period from July 8 to July 14. Coordination between the group and the campaign would be illegal. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/07/09/mccain_gets_a_little_help_from.html

Analysis: Palin's words carry racial tinge. By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and doesn't see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign. And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081005/ap_on_el_pr/palin_s_words_analysis_2

In her character attack, Palin questions Obama's association with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground. Her reference was exaggerated at best if not outright false. No evidence shows they were "pals" or even close when they worked on community boards years ago and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his career. Obama, who was a child when the Weathermen were planting bombs, has denounced Ayers' radical views and actions. http://www.timesoftheinternet.com/8757.html

John McCain attacks Barack Obama's character in bid to rescue campaign. John McCain will try to revive his flagging presidential prospects by launching an all-out character assassination on Barack Obama, branding his Democratic rival an untrustworthy political extremist who is "too risky for Americans". http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/johnmccain/3134631/John-McCain-attacks-Barack-Obamas-character-in-bid-to-rescue-campaign.html

Palin shows total lack of character. Smears Obama. Palin is the terrorist. Palin is Un-American. Analysis: Palin's words may backfire on McCain. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95410620

John McCain: Economic Disaster http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4egXbhSOhk

Sarah Palin lying machine disgrace

ndeed, here's how Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan handled the reaction to Palin's Colorado comments: Gov. Palin’s comments, while offensive, are not surprising, given the McCain campaign’s statement this morning that they would be launching Swift Boat-like attacks in hopes of deflecting attention from the nation’s economic ills. In fact, the very newspaper story Gov. Palin cited in hurling her shameless attack made clear that Sen. Obama is not close to Bill Ayers, much less "pals," and that he has strongly condemned the despicable acts Ayers committed 40 years ago, when Obama was 8. What’s clear is that John McCain and Sarah Palin would rather spend their time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/10/sarah-palinbill.html#more

Savagery: Sarah Palin's Support for Aerial Wolf Killing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX5wSxgbGuM

John McCain campaigns in Iowa -- but why? The Republican recently spent time in the state, where polls show rival Barack Obama holds a commanding lead. We can only assume that he and his political advisors know something that the polls of that state's voters aren't detecting. They'd better, because with one exception, several recent surveys in Iowa have shown Barack Obama solidly ahead in the fight for its seven electoral votes. If McCain and his camp don't have good reason to dispute these findings, it's hard not to view the roughly 24 hours he spent in Des Moines and vicinity last week as a waste of time at this point in the White House race. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-ticket5-2008oct05,0,1839660.story

Palin isn't like a decent American. She hates Americans like you and I.

Palin uses Rove smear tactics. Sarah Palin accuses Obama of associating with 'a domestic terrorist'. Meanwhile, Mr McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin accused Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists". Speaking in Colorado, she was referring to Mr Obama's association with a former 1960s radical. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7652567.stm

McCain Hires GOP Operative Who Helped Smear Him in South Carolina in 2000. Former officials of Sen. John McCain's 2000 campaign expressed shock and disbelief Monday to learn than the GOP presidential nominee had hired South Carolina political consultant Tucker Eskew. Eskew, along with Warren Tompkins and Neal Rhodes, were key members of then-Gov. George W. Bush's South Carolina team during the 2000 primaries. McCain and his team long held Bush, Tompkins, Rhodes and Eskew responsible for the various smears against McCain and his family in the Palmetto state during that contentious contest. http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/mccain-hires-go.html

republicans, archived October 4, 2008

How Dems Can Alienate McCain From the GOP Base in Four Easy Steps. Shameless tricks that date back to the Nixon days of "ratfucking." When Sarah Palin accepted the Republican nomination for vice president, one of her first actions was enticing a crowd of hyper-partisan conservatives to give a rousing cheer for ... Hillary Clinton. On the face of it, this seems absurd. After all, the Right has spent the past two decades accusing Clinton of everything from lesbianism to murder -- why ever would they applaud someone whom they deeply loathe? Had they suddenly become awash with affection for the woman they once dubbed "Hitlery?" Seasoned political observers, however, understood exactly what was going on, as Palin's shameless Clinton fluffing was perhaps the grandest ratfuck campaign yet attempted on a national stage. For the uninitiated, "ratfucks" are dirty tricks that are not only designed to humiliate and embarrass your opponents, but to create mistrust and turn them against each other. As Rick Perlstein documents in his grand tome Nixonland, right-wing operatives Donald Segretti and Jeb Stuart Magruder used a wide assortment of pranks to sabotage the 1972 Democratic primaries. Notorious examples included slipping bogus flight schedules to Democratic front-runner Ed Muskie's pilot to make him land in the wrong city; letters written to Democrats under a "Citizens for Muskie" letterhead that accused rival candidates of homosexuality and drunken driving; and circulating false stories about Muskie ridiculing Canadians to a right-wing newspaper in New Hampshire. http://www.alternet.org/election08/100680/how_dems_can_alienate_mccain_from_the_gop_base_in_four_easy_steps/

Palin’s Alternate Universe. 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. In her closing remarks at the vice-presidential debate Thursday night, Ms. Palin referred earnestly, if loosely, to a quote from Ronald Reagan. He had warned that if Americans weren’t vigilant in protecting their freedom, they would find themselves spending their “sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.” What Ms. Palin didn’t say was that the menace to freedom that Reagan was talking about was Medicare. As the historian Robert Dallek has pointed out, Reagan “saw Medicare as the advance wave of socialism, which would ‘invade every area of freedom in this country.’ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/opinion/04herbert.html?em

McCain insecure sensationalists Palin out of touch self-serving radical

story.jpg

The dumbing down of the GOP. Why aren't more conservatives disgusted that their party nominated a person devoid of qualifications for the vice presidency (again)? http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/10/04/dumb/

Obama Makes McCain Very Uncomfortable. Let the record reflect that Barack Obama made the approach to John McCain tonight. As the two shared the Senate floor tonight for the first time since they won their party nominations, Obama stood chatting with Democrats on his side of the aisle, and McCain stood on the Republican side of the aisle. So Obama crossed over into enemy territory. He walked over to where McCain was chatting with Republican Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida and Independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut. And he stretched out his arm and offered his hand to McCain. McCain shook it, but with a “go away” look that no one could miss. He tried his best not to even look at Obama. Finally, with a tight smile, McCain managed a greeting: “Good to see you.” Obama got the message. He shook hands with Martinez and Lieberman — both of whom greeted him more warmly — and quickly beat a retreat back to the Democratic side. http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/beyond/2008/10/obama-makes-mccain-very-uncomf.html

Make-Believe Maverick. A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain

Palin faces plummeting polls ahead of debate. Sarah Palin is heading into her debate with Joe Biden tonight, the most anticipated vice-presidential faceoff ever, weighed down by fresh evidence that voters are developing serious doubts about her readiness for the job. A new AP-Gfk poll released yesterday found that 25 percent of likely voters believe Palin has the right experience to be president. That's down from 41 percent just after the Republican National Convention, when the Alaska governor made her debut on the national stage. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081002/news_1n2debate.html

A less-popular Sarah Palin heads to debate. John McCain's running mate still appeals to many on a personal level, but other voters have grown wary of her experience. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-palinappeal2-2008oct02,0,7842658.story

The Truth About Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin's credentials as a "reformer" are nothing but spin. She has sided with Big Oil, lobbied to increase pork spending and abused her public power to carry out personal vendettas. Here's a guide to separating myth from fact. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23140513/the_truth_about_sarah_pa

Estimates show Palin assets top $1 million. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_palins_finances.html?source=mypi

John McCain in Iowa: "Irritable," "sarcastic" Republican presidential candidate John McCain, once renowned for his jocular sessions with journalists, appeared irritable and at times sarcastic in an interview in which he defended running mate Sarah Palin's experience and campaign ads critical of rival Barack Obama. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/10/john-mccain-in.html

Katie Couric's Supreme Court questions stump Sarah Palin COURIC: What other Supreme Court decisions do you disagree with? PALIN: Well, let's see. There's -- of course -- in the great history of America rulings there have been rulings, that's never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are -- those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know -- going through the history of America, there would be others but -- COURIC: Can you think of any? PALIN: Well, I could think of -- of any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a vice president, if I'm so privileged to serve, wouldn't be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/10/palin-couric.html

To some evangelicals, Palin's career violates biblical teachings. The Alaska governor has lifted John McCain's support among conservative Christians, but some believe her work outside the home has turned 'husbands lead, wives submit' on its head. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-evangelical1-2008oct01,0,3525229.story

McCain's attack on vets. His respectful rhetoric isn't matched by his votes. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-humes30-2008may30,0,2906723.story

McCain or Obama: Who's best for the economy? J.D. Foster says Barack Obama wants too much government control, whereas John McCain focuses on economic growth. Robert Kuttner says the financial crisis ought to be the nail in the coffin for deregulation. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-kuttner-foster30-2008sep30,0,2252523.story

Palin's former aides say under the lipstick is a real pit bull. Going into Thursday's vice presidential debate, Sarah Palin's former aides and Alaskan political rivals recall the candidate's jab-with-a-smile skillfulness and warn not to underestimate her. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-palindebate1-2008oct01,0,113995.story

Remember Iraq? The drop in violence has made the war an afterthought -- and allowed McCain to claim we're "winning." Here's why we're not -- and we can't. http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/09/30/surge/

Anti-Palin rally calls for Colberg removal. TROOPERGATE: More than 1,000 protesters gather in downtown Anchorage park. A protest slamming Gov. Sarah Palin's handling of the state's so-called Troopergate investigation -- and calling for the attorney general to lose his job -- drew more than 1,000 people to the Delaney Park Strip in Anchorage on Saturday. Protesters chanted "recall Palin!" as organizers told the crowd to push state legislators to keep after their investigation into the governor's firing of her top cop. http://www.adn.com/front/story/539483.html

Sarah Palin and the assault on merit. The nomination of Sarah Palin represents an unprecedented assault on the American ideal of merit. No matter what her handlers might tell you, Palin was nominated because of who she is: a hockey mom, a hunter, and so on rather than what she has done. Consider Palin's visit last week to New York, during the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly. Trying her best to look vice presidential, Palin met with several world leaders and issued a few bland statements about America's financial crisis. But the most important moment came during her audience with Asif Ali Zardari, the new president of Pakistan, who pronounced her “gorgeous.” “Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you,” Zardari gushed. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080929/news_mz1e29zimmer.html

The GOP's real go-to guy. What Rush Limbaugh wants, he gets, when it comes to McCain's campaign. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-chafets29-2008sep29,0,4135839.story

Several bombings across Baghdad killed 34 people Sunday — the bloodiest day in the capital during this holy month of Ramadan, an Interior Ministry official said. The attacks came in Ramadan’s final days, as Iraqis prepared for Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan with feasts and celebrations. The holiday in Iraq begins Tuesday. In the city’s central Karrada district, a suicide bomber wearing an explosives vest detonated minutes after a bomb in a parked car exploded, the Interior Ministry’s head of Explosives and Ordnance Disposal unit said, speaking on state-run al-Iraqia television. Twenty people were killed and 72 were wounded in those attacks, which occurred in a busy commercial area in Karrada, the Interior Ministry said. Initially, the Interior Ministry reported that a roadside bomb had followed the car bomb. http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/28/34-dead-in-bombings-across-baghdad/

McCain Has a Meltdown of His Own. John McCain is rapidly making his temperament an inescapable issue in the presidential campaign. Does the nation really want so much drama in the White House? McCain’s performance in recent days has been, to put it charitably, erratic. In an attempt to show leadership on the financial crisis, he has called Americans into ranks—long after hostilities already began. Meanwhile, back in much-reviled Washington, the generals with cooler heads and a clearer picture of the battlefield are doing their jobs, minus all the histrionics. Thus far, an objective observer would have to say that Congress has behaved well in the days since Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson delivered a three-page ransom note that said, and I paraphrase, “Give me $700 billion, or I’d hate to see anything bad happen to that nice economy of yours.” http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080925_mccain_has_a_meltdown_of_his_own/

PALIN REVELATIONS RAISING OPPOSITION ON THE RIGHT So much for Sarah Palin the reformer: The Alaska governor took home more than $25,000 in gifts during her less than two years in office, including “honorific tributes, expensive artwork and free travel for a family member.” Bombshells like that are rocking the right wing, along with Palin’s embarrassing interviews, which have prompted conservative columnist Kathleen Parker to declare, “My cringe reflex is exhausted.” http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20080926_palin_revelations_raising_opposition_on_the_right/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/25/AR2008092503988.html?referrer=emailarticle

Wasilla Watch: Sarah Palin and the Rape Kits. Even in tough budget times, there are lines that cannot be crossed. So I was startled by this tidbit reported recently by The Associated Press: When Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, the small town began billing sexual-assault victims for the cost of rape kits and forensic exams. Ms. Palin owes voters an explanation. What was the thinking behind cutting the measly few thousand dollars needed to cover the yearly cost of swabs, specimen containers and medical tests? Whose dumb idea was it to make assault victims and their insurance companies pay instead? Unfortunately, her campaign is shielding the candidate from the press, so Americans may still be waiting for answers on Election Day. The rape-kit controversy is a troubling matter. The insult to rape victims is obvious. So is the sexism inherent in singling them out to foot the bill for investigating their own case. And the main result of billing rape victims is to protect their attackers by discouraging women from reporting sexual assaults. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/opinion/26fri4.html?em

McCain and Team Have Many Ties to Gambling Industry. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/us/politics/28gambling-web.html?ref=us

what's the difference between Sarah Palin and a dinosaur? lipstick

Tina Fey is more qualified to be vice president than Sarah Palin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvBgZW2sgUY

Palin's fundamentalist beliefs are bad for public policy. Her faith views are strong and controversial. Her aides say she seeks to impose her faith; her critics say she has pushed too far. '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," recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska. The idea of a "young Earth" -- that God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago, and dinosaurs and humans coexisted early on -- is a popular strain of creationism. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-palinreligion28-2008sep28,0,3643718.story

Some on the right are joining a chorus of criticism over Sarah Palin. John McCain's running mate and his sharp reactions to the nation's economic crisis have led several prominent conservative columnists to slam the senator as reckless and strident. The spirited debate may have reached its apogee last week, with George F. Will issuing McCain a harsh dressing-down. "Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high," Will began his syndicated column, which is carried in more than 450 newspapers. Palin, Brooks argued, "has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness." Brooks, a former senior editor of the Weekly Standard, wrote that eight years of "inept" governance by Bush has helped persuade him of the ineffectiveness of a president who makes decisions on gut and instinct. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-palin28-2008sep28,0,3440078.story

Writing in the National Review on Friday, Kathleen Parker expressed a similar view but with much less restraint. She said Palin's recent television interviews amounted to content-light "filibusters." The syndicated columnist suggested that the governor -- "Who Is Clearly Out of Her League" -- should quit the Republican ticket to "save McCain, her party, and the country she loves."

Last March, a consultant to Freddie Mac (FRE) arranged a meeting between the top economist in John McCain's campaign and Hollis S. McLoughlin, a prominent Republican and top executive at the failing housing giant that is central to the nation's credit crisis. The scheduled meeting with McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin never took place because a number of Freddie Mac executives objected that it would have been inappropriate, according to three people familiar with the episode. The executives pointed out to McLoughlin that there was no such outreach to the campaigns of Democratic candidates, said the three people, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The consultant who arranged the meeting, Harry Clark, is the founder of a Washington lobbying firm. Out of a special account that McLoughlin controls, the Freddie Mac executive has been paying Clark more than $10,000 a month. McLoughlin has been using the same account to pay $15,000 a month to the lobbying firm of Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, according to the three people. The payments have been made despite a scaling back of Freddie Mac's government relations budget. The budget cutting began several years ago following serious accounting problems at Freddie Mac that tarnished its public image. "Hollis protected Harry Clark and Rick Davis by intentionally moving their contracts into an account that Hollis controlled and had to review and approve," said one of the three people familiar with the financial arrangements. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080927/D93F6BO00.html

sickly John McCain releasing his health care records. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6QYsw6DcJA

corrupt Pete Wilson tears into Obama at state GOP convention. destructive McCain is the only candidate who can take on foreign leaders like Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the former governor says. He also defends Palin's qualifications to be vice president. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-gop28-2008sep28,0,288537.story

McCain Leaps Into a Thicket. At the bipartisan White House meeting that Mr. McCain had called for a day earlier, he sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood, said people in the meeting. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/us/politics/26campaign.html?_r=1&em=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1222491941-gxqioOfqZQbF7nPi91K+pA

is McCain insane? pathetic pessimistic shallow childish sensationalists

swimsuit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YYplAoEdDs

McCain proves he's unfit to serve. His threat to skip Friday night's debate and his economic grandstanding are signs of desperation. Does he even know what he believes anymore? http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/09/26/bailout/

"I can’t believe McCain wants to suspend the debate. You can’t suspend the democratic process because we’re facing problems. At what point do you think, then, well, 'maybe we should suspend the elections? We’ll have the elections later?' Some people have done that before: Castro did it, Napoleon did it, Julius Caesar did it. You can't do that. If you like it or not, the campaign is part of the democratic process ...You wanna take your time off, that's fine, but you don't say we're suspending the campaign. You can't say that. It's the democratic process. We didn't suspend it for 9/11, we didn't suspend it for Pearl Harbor, we didn't suspend it for the Nazis, we didn't suspend it for the damn British. We don't do that in America!…Democracy first. First first first first. Democracy first." http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-late-night-politics-pg,0,1153674.photogallery?index=3

McCain resurrects an old stunt. The candidate has used his 'country-first' rhetoric before. But will the Great Man act turn into a self-parody? http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-welch26-2008sep26,0,3697752.story

" . . . where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh -- it's got to be all about job creation too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, um, scary thing, but 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that." http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-onthemedia26-2008sep26,0,7467803.story

betray bizarre sarah palin

Dems, some in GOP question McCain's intervention. Sen. John McCain's self-portrait as a bold leader willing to set politics aside to save an endangered financial bailout plan took a pounding Thursday from top Democrats and even some fellow Republicans. His efforts to re-energize his presidential campaign will partly turn on who wins the public relations battle, destined to play out for days. Top Democrats in Congress ridiculed his role after a chaotic end to a White House summit meeting that McCain had requested, and which included Democratic nominee Barack Obama. McCain's campaign said the session "devolved into a contentious shouting match." The campaign statement suggested Obama was at fault, but Democrats differed. "John McCain did nothing to help," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who attended the meeting. "He only hurt the process." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_mccains_gambit.html?source=mypi

bureaucracy, cheat, McCain Republican Conservative

Keating 5 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. While he was courting McCain and other senators and urging them to oppose tougher regulation of S&Ls, Keating was also investing his depositors' federally insured savings in risky ventures. When those lost money, Keating tried to hide the losses from regulators by inducing his customers to switch from insured accounts to uninsured (and worthless) bonds issued by Lincoln's near-bankrupt parent company. In 1989, it went belly up -- and more than 20,000 Lincoln customers saw their savings vanish. http://www.latimes.com/business/investing/la-oe-brooks25-2008sep25,0,7022889.column

McCain screws up economic bailout negotiations. "This is the presidential campaign of John McCain undermining what Hank Paulson tells us is essential for the country," said Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. "This is McCain at the last minute getting House Republicans to undermine the Paulson approach." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95054379

Palin's Big Oil infatuation. She is as much a product of the oil industry as the current president and his vice president. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kennedy24-2008sep24,0,3930035.story

Sarah Palin vs. Hollywood. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-palinhollywood-pg,0,3277358.photogallery?1

Is Sarah Palin insane? We can judge knowledge by both breadth and depth. Palin lacks both. She said in the ABC interview with Charlie Gibson: Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy. FactCheck.org notes that this is "simply untrue." Instead of "nearly 20 percent," try "under 3 percent." On Sept. 14, Palin corrected that to: "My job has been to oversee nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of oil and gas." In fact, as the Washington Post notes, "according to authoritative EIA [Energy Information Administration] data, Alaska accounted for just 7.4 percent of total U.S. oil and gas production in 2005." The Post gives her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of "Four Pinocchios" for "continuing to peddle bogus statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers." http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2008/09/24/sarah_palin_energy/

“The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said without even looking around.” –“Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama. Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, 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 any better than Barack Obama does.” To read the Journal's details about the depths of McCain's shallowness on the subject of Cox's chairmanship, see “McCain's Scapegoat” (Sept. 19, Page A22). Then consider McCain's characteristic accusation that Cox “has betrayed the public's trust.” http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080923/news_lz1e23will.html

Sarah Palin's U.N. meetings begin with media flap. Reporters are kept from visits meant to put the GOP vice presidential candidate on the world stage. The John McCain camp blames the problem on a 'mix-up.' http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-palin24-2008sep24,0,294342.story

State party boss chides McCain for 'lying' about foreign cars. Standing in front of 13 American-made cars in the Michigan AFL-CIO parking lot Monday afternoon, state Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer chided Republican John McCain for "lying and pandering" to Michigan voters about his personal auto fleet. Brewer noted that McCain recently said in a Detroit TV interview that he has "bought American literally all my life" but it came to light in recent news reports that he owns three foreign-made cars as well as 10 domestic models. It also has been reported that Barack Obama owns only a Ford Escape hybrid. Brewer said McCain's choice of automobiles is not so much the issue, but rather the fact that he misled state voters during a campaign stop here. "We need a president committed to rebuilding the domestic auto industry, not a president who will lie and pander for political gain," Brewer said. The McCain camp has said that the candidate's statement to the Detroit television reporter was in reference to the Cadillac that he drives. Some of the other cars are used by the family's four children and some are used on their vacation property in Sedona, Ariz., a McCain spokesman said. Michigan political leaders, including UAW President Ron Gettelfinger, have been pushing the McCain foreign-car-purchase story for the past several days. Asked why it doesn't seem to be resonating with voters, Brewer said: "I think it is resonating." http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080922/POLITICS01/809220403

His iron grip on what is generally regarded as reality slipped like the manual transmission on a Model T Ford with a faulty handbrake parked on a San Francisco hill facing up. He’s reverted to his pre-convention state of fumbling and foundering and flummoxing and falling into a fevered form of flabbergast. And it’s that nasty old economy that’s the piranha in his pants biting his big white furry butt. Again. In the past he said he didn’t know much about it. And it’s not that hard to believe him. If he could point out three distinct differences between Lehman Brothers and the Jonas Brothers, I’d be as shocked as a giraffe on a glass escalator after too many fermented BlackBerries that the Arizona senator either did or didn’t invent. You might say he takes an arm’s-length approach to the economy. You might also say that arm length is extended enough to qualify for frequent flier miles. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080921_old_piranha_pants/

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. http://www.newsweek.com/id/160080/page/1

republicans, archived September 21, 2008

Republicans Allege McCain Covered Up His Collaboration with the North Vietnamese While a POW. Allegations resurface that McCain made propaganda statements and tried to keep Viet Cong records about him classified. 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. http://www.alternet.org/election08/99663/republicans_allege_mccain_covered_up_his_collaboration_with_the_north_vietnamese_while_a_pow/

Rove claimed that McCain had fathered a black child. Karl Rove and George W. Bush used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/03/21/the_anatomy_of_a_smear_campaign/

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. Franklin Graham has been the keynote speaker for the Alaska Governor's Prayer Breakfast the past two years. According to their Web site, the organizers believe, "God directs the affairs of Man and is the ultimate authority over human events." The Alaska Governor's Prayer Breakfast is connected to the National Prayer Breakfast sponsored by The Fellowship Foundation, also known as "The Family," which espouses similar beliefs. The Family is headed by Doug Coe, one of the most influential evangelicals in Washington, D.C. Coe's group tends to operate behind the scenes organizing small cells attended by the power elite, mostly Republicans. George Bush was saved in such a cell while in Texas. 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. Whether or not Sarah Palin pandered to the Christian fundamentalist right on the back of a good man's career and believes she was chosen by God only she can say. Likewise, only John McCain can say whether he sold his political soul and selected the least prepared vice presidential candidate in United States history for the sake of political gain. The electorate deserves some answers. http://www.alternet.org/election08/99661/sarah_palin%27s_troopergate_scandal_reveals_her_fundamentalist_street_cred/

Mr. McCain, on Monday you repeated your delusional notion that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. Now, the federal government is working on a deal to save that economy from collapsing. You have admitted that the economy is not your forte, so you could have used a running mate with some financial chops. (Remember Mitt Romney?) But no. Who did you pick? SnowJob SquareGlasses whose financial credentials include running Wasilla into debt, listing (but not selling) a plane on EBay and flip-flopping on a bridge to wherever. In fact, when it comes to real issues in general, she may prove to be a liability. In what respect, you may ask? It turns out that the Republican enthusiasm for Sarah Palin is just as superficial as she is. They were so eager for someone to cheer for (because they really don’t like you) that they dove face first into the Palin mirage. But, on the issues, even they worry about her. In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted this week 77 percent of Republicans said that they had a favorable opinion of Palin. But when asked what specifically they liked about her, their top five reasons were that she was honest, tough, caring, outspoken and fresh-faced. Sounds like a talk-show host, not a vice president. (By the way, her intelligence was in a three-way tie for eighth place, right behind “I just like her.”) When those Republicans were asked what they liked least about her, they started to sound more like everyone else. Aside from those who said that there was nothing they didn’t like, next on the list were: her lack of experience, her record as governor and her lack of foreign-policy experience. Also, most Republicans think you only picked her to help with the election, not because she is qualified, and a third said that they would be “concerned” if for some reason she actually had to serve as president. And Palin is proving to be just as vacant as people suspected. In her interview with Charles Gibson last week, she didn’t know what the Bush doctrine was. At your first joint town hall meeting with her in Michigan on Wednesday, in front of an invitation-only crowd of Republicans no less, she dodged substantive questions about the issues as if they were sniper fire, while issuing a faux challenge to the audience to play a game of “stump the candidate”. Seriously? Many of your supporters will no doubt cry sexism. Fine with me. But that defense rings hollow. I find many of them to be sexist. Fresh-faced? Delegates on the floor of the Republican National Convention wearing buttons like “Hoosiers for the hot chick”? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/opinion/20blow.html?em

“John is so out of touch, he just has no idea,” charged Mr. Biden, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, who called his “old, dear friend” someone who “just doesn’t think,” who is behaving in a repugnant manner and who is peddling “Republican garbage,” and malarkey. The older woman who introduced him at a rally here called Mr. Biden’s Republican counterpart, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, a “bucket of fluff,” and he rewarded the woman as he took the microphone with an “I love you” and a gentle kiss on the head. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/us/politics/20biden.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

John McCain's hot air. He may claim to be green, but McCain's environmental record is every bit as dirty as that of Sen. James "global warming is a hoax" Inhofe. http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2008/09/20/john_mccain_environment/

Sarah's Surprise: Palin to meet world leaders at U.N. next week. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will meet in New York next week with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, among other world leaders scheduled to visit the United Nations annual autumn General Assembly Session. She'll also meet with the president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger. Still, an Obama spokesman dismissed the Palin sessions as "a few meetings" and repeated the familiar campaign line that a McCain-Palin presidency would be a continuation of President Bush's "cowboy diplomacy." http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/09/palin-mccain-un.html

Obama wields a Wall Street cudgel against McCain. Barack Obama made the calamity on Wall Street the central theme of his case against John McCain on Saturday, invoking the crisis to pound his rival on Social Security, healthcare and government reform. The scope of Obama's argument demonstrated how the biggest financial bailout since the Great Depression has shifted the terms of debate in the White House contest. In two days of campaigning across Florida, the Democratic presidential nominee made it the foundation of a wide-ranging assault on his Republican opponent. McCain, in turn, has used it to sharpen his criticism of Obama. But Obama's focus Saturday was upheaval in financial markets. Citing a breakdown in government oversight, he recalled McCain's description of himself as "fundamentally a deregulator." Obama read -- with an exaggerated tone of sarcasm -- a quote from an article on healthcare that McCain wrote in Contingencies, a trade publication for actuaries. " 'Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation,' " Obama read. "So let me get this straight," he said. "He wants to run healthcare like they've been running Wall Street. Well, senator, I know some folks on Main Street who aren't going to think that's such a good idea." And Obama questioned McCain's credibility in pledging to crack down on corporate greed and curb the influence of lobbyists. He described a senior McCain advisor, former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, as someone "who got a $40-million golden parachute when she was fired." http://www.latimes.com/business/investing/la-na-campaign21-2008sep21,0,5455693.story

Alaskans angered that Palin is off-limits. Queries are directed through the McCain campaign machine. Her political capital at home is eroding. Jerry McCutcheon went to Sarah Palin's office here last week to request information about the firing of former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, the scandal that for weeks has threatened to overshadow the governor's role as Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate. McCutcheon was given a phone number in Virginia to call: the national headquarters of the McCain-Palin campaign. Why, he wanted to know, did he have to call a campaign office 4,300 miles away to find out what was going on in Alaska government? The longtime civic activist phoned his local state representative, Les Gara, who quickly filed a protest. These days, many such queries about Monegan -- or anything else involving Palin's record as governor -- get diverted to McCain staffers. A former Justice Department prosecutor from New York flew in recently to advise the governor's lawyer and field reporters' calls about Monegan. Soon after, Palin's willingness to cooperate in the Legislature's probe of the affair ended. A recent call to John Cramer, the head of the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs -- who clashed with Palin during her years as mayor of Wasilla -- was returned by a McCain campaign operative who had just arrived from Washington, D.C. "John who?" she asked. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-troopergate21-2008sep21,0,829160.story

Oh, the odiferous presidential campaign. Is there anything more in need of a Dr. Scholl’s Odor Destroyer than a crotchety, finger-pulling geezer smugly gazing out of a twitching slit of an eye at his new Beauty Queen of Convenience as she gratingly gets all worldly knowing two weeks out of the Alaskan tundra? And by gratingly I mean 40-grit sandpaper, extra coarse, strip-the-paint-off-a-tank, skin-off-the-bone jarring. Don’t get me wrong, ladies. You have a crucial place in my World of Politics, but the entry fee to my globe is some real-world knowledge and experience—you know, a real-world representative for the frickin’ mucked-up real-world stage. Now, I’m no big fan of Deepak Chopra, guru to whomever will buy his overpriced feel-good / get-rich books, but he’s hit on something about what Sarah Palin is selling to the American people, and it seems more appropriate for 1808 than 2008. Here’s what Chopra wrote recently: “Look at what she stands for:

  • Small town values—a nostalgic return to simpler times disguises a denial of America’s global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
  • Ignorance of world affairs—a repudiation of the need to repair America’s image abroad.
  • Family values—a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don’t need to be heeded.
  • Rigid stands on guns and abortion—a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.

Patriotism—the usual fallback in a failed war.

In true Wallace fashion, "McCain's Promise" is about many things -- the social hierarchy of the press corps, the dehumanizing effects of chain hotels -- but it's also (to put the kind of implausibly fine point on it that Wallace would have found irritatingly reductive) about the philosophical conundrum that arises from negative campaigning. As it happened, Wallace's stint on McCain's campaign bus, the Straight Talk Express, coincided with the week that George W. Bush began a series of brutal attacks against McCain. This was the height of McCain's "maverick" phase, and Wallace, who disclosed that he ultimately did not vote for McCain in the primary, seemed taken by his subject's apparent guilelessness. "One of the things that makes John McCain's 'causes greater than self-interest' line harder to dismiss," Wallace wrote, "is that this guy also sometimes says things that are manifestly true but which no other mainstream candidate will say." But then, courtesy of the Bush campaign, misleading ads and anti-McCain "push polls" (surveys that purport to gather information but whose real goal is to disseminate false or misleading information about an opposing candidate) imperil the Straight Talk Express like black ice on the interstate. Wallace explained McCain's options thusly: "If he does not retaliate, some South Carolina voters will credit McCain for keeping to the high road. But it could also come off as wimpy, and so compromise McCain's image as a tough, take-no-[expletive] guy with the courage to face down the Washington kleptocracy. ... [But] by retaliating ... McCain runs the risk of looking like just another ambitious, win-at-any-cost politician, when of course so much time and effort and money have already gone into casting him as the exact opposite of that." http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-daum20-2008sep20,0,826604.column

McCain does have people who have registered to lobby Congress as both staff members and unpaid advisers. As CNN's Ed Henry reported September 9, the seven Obama refers to include campaign manager Rick Davis, a high-profile lobbyist whose clients have included telecommunications companies, and senior adviser Charlie Black, whose lobbying has included working with dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire (now Congo) and rebel leader Jonas Savimbi in Angola. McCain's senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann recently faced scrutiny over his foreign lobbying on behalf of the Republic of Georgia. While the claim that the staffers with lobbying connections are "in charge of his campaign" would be impossible to prove from the outside, members of the seven have appeared publicly on behalf of the campaign and have titles that would suggest they are part of McCain's inner circle. The public watchdog group Public Citizen has praised McCain's record for trying to curb lobbyist influence in the Senate. And Obama's campaign isn't without its own members with a history as lobbyists. Daniel Shapiro, an Obama foreign policy adviser, has registered to lobby for the American Petroleum Institute. Another unpaid adviser, Broderick Johnson, has represented clients including Verizon and Shell Oil. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/18/fact-check-mccains-leading-lobbyists/

McCain is controlled by lobbyists. Readers can find out more information about McCain's controversial campaign manager, Rick Davis, for instance. Davis has lobbied on behalf of several multinational corporations and foreign governments, federal documents show. He has a long relationship with McCain, having run McCain's failed 2000 presidential bid. http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/7413/ http://mclobbyist.com/

But prior to that and in the intervening period, Davis managed the Washington lobbyist firm, Davis, Manafort, and Freedman and served as a paid officer of McCain's non-profit "Reform Institute," which provided well-paid non-profit cover for many of McCain's lobbyist friends in Washington. His friends could both receive salaries while asking their clients to donate to the reform Institute to help influence McCain's vote indirectly.

McCain is fundamentally tied to elite lobbyists, Wall street greed and deregulation. McCain is to blame. Republicans fret as John McCain tries to show he is ‘prolier than thou’. The right fears its man is dumbing down too far in his battle with Barack Obama for working-class votes. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article4794845.ece

The Big Whisper: What's Up With John McCain? he's a nut! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/18/the-big-whisper-whats-up_n_127435.html

McCain Equates Embryos and Fetuses in Stem Cell Statement. John McCain's recent statement on embryonic stem cell research was ambiguous in some ways, but clearly misleading in another: He equated human embryos with fetuses, and used language implying that farming fetuses for their tissues is a realistic possibility. "I voted to ban the practice of 'fetal farming,' making it a federal crime for researchers to use cells or fetal tissue from an embryo created for research purposes," McCain said in a statement Monday in response to questions posed by ScienceDebate2008, a nonpartisan science advocacy group. That McCain would oppose experimentation on embryos fits with his political record. Outside of tolerating Roe v. Wade as a means to avoid unsafe abortions during his 2000 run for president, he's been staunchly opposed to abortion, though conservatives worried during earlier stages of McCain's campaign that he would adopt a pro-choice platform. The vote mentioned in his statement came on the Fetal Farming Act of 2006, signed into law by President Bush. But though the bill was unanimously approved in the House and Senate, its sponsors were criticized for failing to make clear that "fetal farming" doesn't exist. Embryos used to produce embryonic stem cells are harvested after five days, when the embryo is still an undifferentiated blob of about 70 cells. While there is no sharp line for when an embryo becomes a fetus, nine weeks is a good rule of thumb; the industry standard for halting development on research embryos is two weeks. No reputable scientist has supported fetus experimentation. For McCain to revive the language of "fetal farming," say bioethicists, was misleading. "It brings to mind some sort of science fiction, human ectogenesis factory," said Jesse Reynolds, biotechnology accountability project director at the Center for Genetics and Society. He called the phrase "a misleading rhetorical element designed to fire up the [conservative] base." rove http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/mccain-skews-sc.html

McCain is one of the "Keating Five". The core allegation of the Keating Five affair is that Keating had made contributions of about $1.3 million to various U.S. Senators, and he called on those Senators to help him resist regulators. The regulators backed off, to later disastrous consequences. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five#Corruption_allegations

Your daily Palin, dammit. Yesterday, I decided that we would not cover Sarah Palin in Broadsheet today. I made this decision with conviction and confidence, the way one swears off booze on the morning of a particularly gnarly hangover (not that I would know anything about that, wink-wink). But then. Then, well, things happened. Here is the sequence. http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2008/09/19/daily_palin/index.html

Is John McCain's campaign taking political directives on how to handle the current economic crisis from Karl Rove? A day before the Arizona Republican began criticizing Barack Obama for taking economic advice from former Fannie Mae executive Frank Raines - a dubious claim that was challenged even by the source who first reported it - the former Bush strategist urged McCain to do just that. During an appearance on Hannity and Colmes on Wednesday, Rove outlined what he thought would be the best counterattack for McCain to launch the opposition's way: mainly, tie the current financial and housing market crisis to the Democrats and play guilt by association with Obama. "I do think that McCain and Palin ought to identify that the source of this contagion, the thing that started these dominos going down was the misbehavior of Fannie and Freddie, who I would remind you are the biggest part of the bailouts," he said. Earlier in the program, he had specifically brought up Raines' name in this context. "Remember in 2003 and 2004, Raines was one of the people at Fannie and Freddie. He was the head who said our financial statements are untrustworthy. These people have not been able to put out trustworthy financial statements for the better part of the decade. These are out of control, greedy enterprises masquerading as mortgage companies. But they are really just political lobbying firms trying to get special treatment from Congress in order to enrich their leadership." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/19/new-mccain-attacks-echo-r_n_127767.html

After Karl Rove announced last week that he had donated $2300 to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, McCain embraced Rove (the man who smeared him in the 2000 South Carolina race), saying, "I've always respected Karl Rove as one of the smart great political minds I think in American politics. I've always respected him." The feeling hasn't always been mutual. Time's Ana Marie Cox has posted video from 2000 showing Rove blasting McCain as a divisive figure who couldn't "unite the party." "If you're not with him, he belittles you, he makes fun of you, he disparages you," Rove says. Watch the video: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/12/rove-trashed-mccain-if-_n_86193.html

REPUBLICAN presidential candidate John McCain, facing falling popularity, has demanded the sacking of the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after this week's banking meltdown. Accusing Christopher Cox of having betrayed the public trust, he said: "If I were president today I would fire him." But the Wall Street Journal yesterday blasted his attack on the SEC chairman as "unpresidential", saying the assault on Mr Cox was both false and deeply unfair. The broadside came as polls show his Democrat rival, Barack Obama, edging ahead in key swing states amid public anxiety over the banking crisis. These polls show Mr McCain has been only partly successful in distancing himself from the Republican Bush administration and from his own former support for the deregulation of Wall Street that many blame for the crisis. http://news.scotsman.com/world/McCain-calls-for-heads-to.4511689.jp

At a town hall on Wednesday night, Palin was asked how she would keep domestically produced oil and coal in the U.S. Here's her answer: Of course, it's a fungible commodity and they don't flag, you know, the molecules, where it's going and where it's not. But in the sense of the Congress today, they know that there are very, very hungry domestic markets that need that oil first. So, I believe that what Congress is going to do, also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it's Americans who get stuck holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here. It's got to flow into our domestic markets first. One courageous blogger, Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings, attempted to decipher Palin's response. Hilzoy thinks, with good reason, that Palin might have been suggesting a ban on oil exports. That seems like a bad idea. While Canada and Mexico are the two largest importers of U.S. crude oil and petroleum products, they're also our two largest suppliers. It's probably not smart to risk a trade war with them. So perhaps John McCain overstated the case just a bit when he said that his running mate "knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America." http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/?last_story=/politics/war_room/2008/09/19/palin_economics/

republican vote fraud maccain http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94818483

Sarah Palin said yes, thanks, to a road to nowhere in Alaska. While seeking votes, she told Ketchikan residents she backed the 'bridge to nowhere.' As governor, she spent the money elsewhere and moved ahead with a $26-million road to the nonexistent bridge. Sarah Palin sucks. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bridge19-2008sep19,0,4408299.story

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes. But here is even better news: It won't work. 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. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-steinem4-2008sep04,0,7915118.story

For anyone not aware of the Keating Five, here’s a very simple summary: Charles Keating owned a savings and loan in California. He was illegally using the money of his bank’s customers to give loans to himself and friends that they didn’t have to repay, and to speculate on risky real estate investments, which was strictly forbidden by U.S. law (the latter was one cause of the Great Depression). When the feds found out what was going on and launched an investigation into Keating and his company, Keating called five U.S. Senators whom he had wined, dined, and lavished with hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations and personal gifts for years. Keating asked the five Senators to tell the feds to bug off, and the five Senators, later known as the Keating Five, obliged, meeting with federal investigators twice and pressuring them to stop investigating Keating’s crimes. They bought Keating some time, but the feds didn’t give up and eventually Keating was nailed. The reason the feds were so persistent was because Keating wasn’t playing with mere chump change. Keating blew $3.4 billion through illegal personal loans and bad investments, and the FDIC eventually had to reimburse Keating’s customers who had been ripped off. (The FDIC is a part of the federal government funded by taxpayers dollars, so when Keating stole from his customers you and I were the ones who paid for it.) http://mccainkeatingfive.com/?page_id=19

Sarah Palin's dead lake. By promoting runaway development in her hometown, say locals, Palin has "fouled her own nest" -- and that goes for the lake where she lives. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/19/palin/

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. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs." http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-steinem4-2008sep04,0,7915118.story

"The Fundamentals of Our Economy Are Strong" IS THERE ANY EXCUSE FOR MCCAIN'S GAFFE? http://www.slate.com/id/2200291/

The lying game. Like George W. Bush, McCain and Palin have to lie. Because if they told the truth about their policies, they'd lose the election. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/09/18/lies/

McCain gaining on Obama, but gap remains in Calif. Republican presidential nominee John McCain has significantly reduced Democrat Barack Obama's lead in California but still trails by 16 percentage points, a new Field Poll shows. That is more than President Bush ever trailed by in 2000 and 2004, and he lost the state by double digits both times. The poll of California voters considered likely to cast ballots in the Nov. 4 election shows Obama, a senator from Illinois, leading McCain, a senator from Arizona, 52 percent to 36 percent. Three percent favor one of the four minor-party candidates on the California ballot, and the remaining 9 percent are undecided. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080917/news_1n17field.html

The GOP plays the victim card. Conservatives claim to hate victimhood, but the Republican Party encourages its base to feel aggrieved at the hands of the 'elites.' Do you remember that old joke about conservatives being liberals who'd been mugged by reality? Well, it was funny largely because it was true. Conservatives fancy themselves as hard-nosed realists. Unlike fluffy-headed liberals, who spend their days dreaming of a perfect world, conservatives are suspicious of utopian schemes. They know quite well that life is hard, and they disdain few things more than whiners and complainers. That's why more than a handful of conservative critics -- from Michael Medved to Rush Limbaugh -- have condemned what they call America's destructive culture of victimhood. But if conservatives hate victimhood so much, why then does the Republican Party encourage its base to feel so aggrieved, especially at the hands of those snotty "elites"? Whether it's complaining about lipstick on a pig or bashing Washington insiders, the media and those oh-so-condescending Hollywood celebrities, Republicans have turned their own kind of victimhood into a political art form. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rodriguez15-2008sep15,0,3557466.column

republicans, archived September 17, 2008

the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on. “It means your employer is going to have to make an estimate on how much the employer is paying for health insurance on your behalf, and you are going to have to pay taxes on that money,” said Sherry Glied, an economist who chairs the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Ms. Glied is one of the four scholars who have just completed an independent joint study of the plan. Their findings are being published on the Web site of the policy journal, Health Affairs. According to the study: “The McCain plan will force millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the private insurance system — the nongroup market — where cost-sharing is high, covered services are limited and people will lose access to benefits they have now.” The net effect of the plan, the study said, “almost certainly will be to increase family costs for medical care.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/opinion/16herbert.html?em

Campaign: John McCain Invented the BlackBerry. Al Gore may have invented the internet, but it's Republican presidential candidate John McCain we have to thank for the "miracle" of the BlackBerry, his top economic adviser said Tuesday. Asked by campaign trail reporters what McCain's experience as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee does to help him to understand the economy and lead the country through its current turmoil, Douglas Holtz-Eakin waved his BlackBerry in the air, according to The Politico. "Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce committe," Holtz-Eakin said. "So you're looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did." The BlackBerry was developed by Research In Motion, a Canadian company. The comment met with immediate derision across the internet. "McCain economic adviser claims McCain invented the Blackberry. I'd vote for him if it was the iPhone," joked "mnoreen," on Twitter. And someone else has started a running joke with the word "#invent" on the micro-blogging service. Hundreds of sarcastic comments are pouring through the service. Another senior aide, Matt McDonald, said that the senator "laughed" when he heard the comment, reports the AP, which quotes McDonald calling the comment a "boneheaded joke." In the 2000 presidential race, Democrat Al Gore drew derision when he claimed, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Research in Motion declined to comment. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/mccain-helped-t.html#comments

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband. Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest. Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women. And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children. This could be huge. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-steinem4-2008sep04,0,7915118.story

GOP ticket wrong on the big issues. Sarah Palin reminds me of baked Alaska (hot, cold and flaming). Lest we not forget that the McCain-Palin ticket stands for unwise wars of aggression, tax cuts for the rich and an end to a woman’s right to choose. Whereas the Obama-Biden ticket stands for intelligence backed up by experience, an end in sight for an unpopular and unwise war, tax increases on the rich and the continuation of a woman’s right to choose. I am disheartened by the recent polls that show the McCain ticket leading or in a dead heat with the Obama ticket. Are the American people really in favor of four more years just like the past eight? Aren’t our economy, our deficits and our declining status in the world community enough to try something different? http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/sep/13/gop-ticket-wrong-big-issues/

There’s no excuse for Palin’s repeated lies. Sarah Palin has repeatedly used the same line concerning the “Bridge to Nowhere,” that is, “I told Washington thanks, but no thanks ...” We learned earlier that such was not the case, that she originally was all for the bridge until Congress turned against it as did public opinion, at which time she withdrew her approval. One would think that once the true chain of events was known, she would stop using the line, but according to a news program she used it even Wednesday. Now, saying something not true the first time might be a mistake. The second time might also be excused, but repeating it over and over is a lie, lie, lie. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/sep/13/theres-no-excuse-palins-repeated-lies/

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism 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. Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. 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. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. 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." Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not. She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/drill-drill-drill_b_124829.html

snl http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20080914_live_from_new_york_its_sarah_palin/

‘Alaska Women Reject Palin’ Rally is HUGE! http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/alaska-women-reject-palin-rally-is-huge/

sarah palin is Jack Abramoff with lipstick. Sarah Palin: 10 things we've learnt. It has been a week since Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was catapulted from relative obscurity to centre stage as US Republican John McCain's choice for running mate. Here are 10 things we now know about her. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7607039.stm

what's the difference between sarah palin and irwin scooter libby? lipstick. Todd Palin, husband of Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, has been ordered to testify to an inquiry into her alleged abuse of power. The Alaska legislative probe began after Mrs Palin was accused of pressuring staff to fire her sister's ex-husband as a state trooper. Mrs Palin, the governor of Alaska, denies any improper behaviour. Twelve other witnesses will also be required to give evidence, although Mrs Palin will not receive a subpoena. Officials say she will be interviewed as part of the investigation, however. 'Personal feud' The probe into the affair - referred to by some as "Troopergate" - began before Republican presidential nominee John McCain picked Mrs Palin as his running-mate. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7613582.stm

what's the difference between sarah palin and duke cunninham? lipstick While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/opinion/13herbert.html?em If he seriously thought this first-term governor — with less than two years in office — was qualified to be president, if necessary, at such a dangerous time, it raises profound questions about his judgment. If the choice was, as we suspect, a tactical move, then it was shockingly irresponsible. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/opinion/13sat1.html?em These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/opinion/12krugman.html?em Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?em

The question of whether Sarah Palin has ever been to Iraq pushed Obama aides Saturday to accuse the McCain campaign of outright lies, distortions and distractions to the American people. Since Republican presidential nominee John McCain tapped the Alaska governor to be his running mate on Aug. 29, questions about her experience have been fueled by her relatively brief tenure in office, as well as a dearth of foreign travel. Palin made a well-documented trip to Kuwait and Germany last year to visit U.S. troops, and over time, the governor and her staff have revealed she also visited Canada and Mexico. Meanwhile, her aides clarified that a purported visit to Ireland was little more than a refueling stop during her trip to the Middle East. On Saturday, a Palin aide told The Associated Press the governor also traveled one-quarter mile into Iraq during her July 2007 trip to participate in a re-enlistment ceremony for a member of the Alaska National Guard. Palin did not mention the excursion when asked about her foreign travels last week during a two-part ABC News interview because the bulk of her trip was elsewhere, said spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt. That answer appears to contradict one provided to The Boston Globe, which reported Saturday that McCain-Palin aides had twice revised their description of Palin's visit to Iraq. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_palin_iraq.html?source=mypi

Palin: wrong woman, wrong message. Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger. I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child. So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband. Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest. Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-steinem4-2008sep04,0,7915118.story

Shading -- or ignoring -- truth on the campaign trail. Political innocents may wonder why a candidate such as McCain, whose campaign is premised on 'straight talk' -- and to a lesser extent Obama -- have veered from the truth. Because it works. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-truth14-2008sep14,0,1376410.story

Dirty Tricks, South Carolina and John McCain. Eight years ago this month, John McCain took the New Hampshire primary and was favored to win in South Carolina. Had he succeeded, he would likely have thwarted the presidential aspirations of George W. Bush and become the Republican nominee. But Bush strategist Karl Rove came to the rescue with a vicious smear tactic. Rove invented a uniquely injurious fiction for his operatives to circulate via a phony poll. Voters were asked, "Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain...if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" This was no random slur. McCain was at the time campaigning with his dark-skinned daughter, Bridget, adopted from Bangladesh. It worked. Owing largely to the Rove-orchestrated whispering campaign, Bush prevailed in South Carolina and secured the Republican nomination. The rest is history--specifically the tragic and blighted history of our young century. It worked in another way as well. Too shaken to defend himself, McCain emerged from the bruising episode less maverick reformer and more Manchurian candidate. The former crusader against the Republican establishment has since turned into a Bush-hugging, business-as-usual politician who has backed down from many positions that set him apart from conventional conservatives. Before, McCain supported the separation of church and state; now he wants a Christian in the White House. The confederate flag, which he once considered an offensive symbol, no longer troubles him. And he has come to believe that tax cuts are a good idea. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080128/banks

Country First? Hardly. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080912_country_first_hardly/

I received an e-mail this morning with a list of the books VP candidate Sarah Palin wanted banned from the Alaskan town where she was mayor before she became governor. The list shows the kind of disturbing fascist Palin is, she wanted everything from Harry Potter to Gabriel Garcia Marquez banned! The list even included "The Grapes Of Wrath" and "Twelfth Night" by Shakespeare! The following is a list of books that Sarah Palin tried to get banned when she was mayor of Wasilla. This information is taken from the official minutes of the Wasilla Library Board. When the librarian refused to ban the books, Palin tried to get her fired.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, Blubber by Judy Blume, BraveNew World by Aldous Huxley, Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, Carrie by Stephen King, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, Christine by Stephen King, Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Cujo by Stephen King, Curse Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen, Daddys Roommate by Michael Willhoite, Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck, Deathof a Salesman by Arthur Miller, Decameron by Boccaccio, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, Fallen Angels by Walter Myers, Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland, Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes, Forever by Judy Blume, Grendel by John Champlin Gardner, Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling, Have to Go by Robert Munsch, Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman, How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell, Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Impressions edited by Jack Booth, In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein, James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl, Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein, Lysistrata by Aristophanes, More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz, My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier, My House by Nikki Giovanni, My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara, Night Chills by Dean Koontz, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer, One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ordinary People by Judith Guest, Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective, Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy, Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl, Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz, Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz, Separate Peace by John Knowles, Silas Marner by George Eliot, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, The Bastard by John Jakes, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth, The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder, The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks, The Living Bible by William C. Bower, The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman, The Pigman by Paul Zindel, The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders, The Shining by Stephen King, The Witches by Roald Dahl, The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder, Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff, Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth, http://www.snopes.com/politics/palin/bannedbooks.asp

The wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html

Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive And Mean.” “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, who is part Aboriginal, 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 “Artic Arabs” – how efficient, lumping two apparently undesirable groups into one ugly description – as well as the more colourful “mukluks” along with the totally unimaginative “fucking 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. http://thepoliticalcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2008/09/alaskans-speak-in-frightened-whisper.html

"I fear for my country" Former Gov. Tony Knowles and other Alaska Democrats warn not to underestimate Sarah Palin's political skills -- or how unsuited she is for the vice presidency. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/12/palin/

Roll your eyes all you want, but I for one will never again underestimate the women of ABC's "The View," who today opened a can of whupass on John McCain, administering an interview that should turn the faces of legitimate press red with shame. (A video of the second segment is embedded below. All clips can be viewed here.) http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/?last_story=/mwt/broadsheet/2008/09/12/mccain_view/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/12/mccain-grilled-on-the-vie_n_125972.html

Alan Greenspan says the country can't afford tax cuts of the magnitude proposed by Republican presidential contender John McCain - at least not without a corresponding reduction in government spending. "Unless we cut spending, no," the former Federal Reserve chairman said Friday when asked about McCain's proposed tax cuts, pegged in some estimates at $3.3 trillion. "I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money," Greenspan said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. "I always have tied tax cuts to spending." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_mccain.html?source=mypi

McCain's ads widely flagged for distorting Obama stances. While harsh advertisements and negative attacks are a staple of presidential campaigns, Sen. John McCain has drawn an avalanche of criticism this week from Democrats, independent groups and even some Republicans for stretching the truth in attacking Sen. Barack Obama's record and positions. McCain has found himself under fire for a pair of headline-grabbing attacks. First the McCain campaign twisted Obama's words to suggest that he had compared Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, to a pig after Obama said, in questioning McCain's claim to be the change agent in the race, “You can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig.” (McCain once used the same expression to describe Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's health plan.) Then he claimed that Obama supported “comprehensive sex ed” for kindergartners. (Obama supported teaching them to be alert for inappropriate advances from adults). Those attacks followed weeks in which McCain repeatedly asserted that Obama would raise taxes on the middle class, even though analysts say Obama would cut taxes on the middle class more than McCain would, and misrepresented Obama's positions on energy and health care. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080913/news_1n13claims.html

McCain and Palin support pedophiles.

Mark Foley http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/01/foley200701

In September 2006, during her campaign for Governor, Sarah Palin visited Ketchikan to express her support for the Gravina Island Bridge project. At a public forum, Palin held up a pro-bridge t-shirt designed by a Ketchikan artist, Mary Ida Henrikson. The legend on the shirt was "Nowhere Alaska 99901", referencing the buzzword of "Bridge to Nowhere" and the primary zip code of Ketchikan. In her public comments, referring to her own residence in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, she said: "OK, you’ve got Valley trash standing here in the middle of nowhere. I think we’re going to make a good team as we progress that bridge project." In October, when asked, "Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?", she answered: "Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now - while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist." Later that month, at a Chamber of Commerce meeting in Wasilla, Alaska, Democratic candidate Tony Knowles criticized Palin for supporting the Knik Arm Bridge, the Gravina Island Bridge, and a road north out of Juneau instead of rebuilding the Parks Highway. The Ketchikan Daily News noted that, of the gubernatorial candidates, "Only Palin is consistent in support all of the projects..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge

Palin_nowhere.jpg
Palin supports earmarks 100%. While running for governor in September 2006, Palin assured the Ketchikan Chamber of Commerce she was all for the bridge. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/680/

Palin: wrong woman, wrong message. Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger. So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act. 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, 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. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-steinem4-2008sep04,0,7915118.story

Palin vs. Gibson, Round 1. THE ABC NEWS ANCHOR FLUMMOXES THE GOP AMATEUR. http://www.slate.com/id/2199999/

In Iowa on Oct. 11, 2007, McCain panned Sen. Hillary Clinton’s health care plan, calling it “eerily reminiscent” of the plan that failed during Bill Clinton’s administration, according to a report in the Chicago Tribune. “I think they put some lipstick on a pig,” McCain said, “but it’s still a pig.” mccain liar On Feb. 1, 2007, McCain blasted a Senate resolution that would have criticized President Bush’s strategy in Iraq. Some had praised the resolution as a compromise measure, but McCain disagreed. “It gets down to whether you support what is being done in this new strategy or you don’t,” McCain said. “You can put lipstick on a pig, [but] it’s still a pig, in my view.” palian lies It is simply impossible to view the complete remarks by Obama and conclude that he’s making a veiled and unsavory reference to Palin. Her name never is used in the preceding sentence. In fact, it’s hard to see how one could interpret Obama’s lipstick-on-a-pig remark as referring directly to McCain, either. bush lies We think it’s very clear that Obama was saying McCain’s effort to call himself the “candidate of change” is like putting lipstick on a pig, trying to dress up a bad idea to look better. Agree or disagree with Obama’s point, but his remark wasn’t the smear that McCain’s people have tried to make it. republican corruption and lies If anyone’s doing any smearing, it’s the McCain campaign and its outrageous attempt to distort the facts. Did Obama call Palin a pig? No, and saying so is Pants on Fire wrong. http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/sep/10/lipstick-pigs-and-pit-bulls/

New election low: distorting the fact-checking. News outlets and independent truth squads seem to agree that the McCain camp's distortions on Barack Obama have gone too far. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-onthemedia12-2008sep12,0,3404561.story

Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. 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." She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps 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. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-steinem4-2008sep04,0,7915118.story

republicans archived September 10, 2008

A Palin double standard. The McCain campaign is insisting on deference in the questioning of the vice presidential candidate. Connoisseurs of campaign tactics tend to be a pretty cynical bunch, so they'll doubtless find much to admire in the adroit way Sen. John McCain's camp has handled Sarah Palin since she came aboard the ticket. Voters, who tend to nourish an inconvenient hunger for information, may be less impressed. One suspects that sooner rather than later, some will begin to wonder why the GOP is insisting that Palin is entitled to be treated according to a double standard. McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, deserved full marks for chutzpah, for example, when he told Fox News' Chris Wallace that Palin would not answer reporters' questions "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference." Deference? Respect and courtesy, maybe. Everybody is entitled to those -- including candidates for office -- and journalists seldom look worse than when they forget that. But deference? The president does not require deference from his media interlocutors, but the ambitious governor of Alaska does? http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten10-2008sep10,0,7601200.column

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama told an audience Tuesday that GOP presidential nominee John McCain says he'll change Washington, but he's just like President Bush. "You can put lipstick on a pig," he said to an outbreak of laughter, shouts and raucous applause from his audience, clearly drawing a connection to Palin's joke. "It's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years." McCain's campaign immediately organized a telephone conference call in response and called on Obama to apologize for calling Palin a pig. Obama's campaign said he wasn't referring to Palin; he had been talking about McCain immediately before the lipstick comment. Obama followed up by saying Palin is an interesting story, drawing boos at the mention of her name that he tried to cut off. "Look, she's new, she hasn't been on the scene, she's got five kids. And my hat goes off to anybody whose looking after five. I've got two and they tire Michelle and me out," he said. McCain has used the lipstick phrase, too. Last year while criticizing health proposals from the Democratic presidential candidates, he said Hillary Rodham Clinton's resembled the failed plan she offered as first lady during the 1990s. "I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," McCain of her proposal. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBAMA_LIPSTICK?SITE=CADIU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Palin Disclosures Raise Questions on Vetting. A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain’s choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/us/politics/02vetting.html

Handlers hide Palin from scrutiny. John McCain's campaign acknowledged this weekend that Sarah Palin is unprepared to be vice president or president of the United States. Of course, McCain's people said no such thing. But their actions told you all you needed to know. McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all subjected themselves to tough questioning on the regular Sunday news programs. Palin was the only no-show. And it's not just the Sunday interviews. She has not opened herself to any serious questioning since McCain picked her to be next in line for the presidency. McCain's advisers clearly don't trust Palin to answer questions about policy, and don't want her to answer many of the questions that have been raised about her tenure as governor of Alaska. Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, gave the game away when he said on “Fox News Sunday” that she would not meet with reporters until they showed a willingness to treat her “with some level of respect and deference.” Deference? That's a word used in monarchies or aristocracies. Democracies don't give “deference” to politicians. When have McCain, Obama, Biden or, for that matter, Hillary Clinton asked for deference? http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080909/news_lz1e9dionne.html

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. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs." http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-steinem4-2008sep04,0,7915118.story

Barack Obama broadly accused his Republican rivals of dishonesty Monday, citing former lobbyists working for John McCain, Sarah Palin's shifting stance on the "Bridge to Nowhere" and their promise to change Washington. With national polls finding the Democratic presidential nominee trailing or in a dead heat with McCain, Obama began the campaign's final eight-week push by criticizing McCain's popular running mate as much as the Arizona senator himself. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_obama.html?source=mypi

John McCain Reformed Maverick. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZvehP7vV9s

Sarah Palin believes the U.S. Army is on a mission from God. http://www.alternet.org/story/97907/sarah_palin%27s_9_most_disturbing_beliefs/

McCain's history of hot temper raises concerns. John McCain made a quick stop at the Capitol one day last spring to sit in on Senate negotiations on the big immigration bill, and John Cornyn was not pleased. Cornyn, a mild-mannered Texas Republican, saw a loophole in the bill that he thought would allow felons to pursue a path to citizenship. McCain called Cornyn's claim "chicken-shit," according to people familiar with the meeting, and charged that the Texan was looking for an excuse to scuttle the bill. Cornyn grimly told McCain he had a lot of nerve to suddenly show up and inject himself into the sensitive negotiations. "Fuck you," McCain told Cornyn, in front of about 40 witnesses. http://www.kansascity.com/445/story/785831.html

It was another instance of the Republican presidential candidate losing his temper, another instance in which, as POW-MIA activist Carol Hrdlicka put it, "It's his way or no way."

Antiwar march ends in tense standoff, 396 arrests. http://www.startribune.com/politics/27869459.html

Has anyone just stopped for a second to reflect on the fact that Sarah didn't just diss Barack Obama, Rosa Parks and the thousands of other community organizers when she derided the Democratic presidential nominee's experience? Hello! How about the founding fathers. I watched those guys portrayed in the recent and excellent HBO series, John Adams. It sure looked to me like the American Revolution began with a whole lot of grassroots community organizing done by dedicated private individuals focused on trying to build a better political system to benefit their fellow members of the Thirteen Colonies. It's amazing what a group of highly motivated community organizers did over 230 years ago. So what's so bad about a presidential nominee today starting his activist career this way? And hey Sarah, isn't the PTA one of the most effective community organizations in the country? Isn't that where you got your start?Oh and speaking of science Sarah and John , apparently Sarah's a creationist, but how's that going to help America's ability to compete globally in the fields of science and technology if America's students aren't taught about evolution. Isn't evolution a backbone of biology? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-fuller/sarah-palin-dissed-john-a_b_124473.html

McCain Camp Battles National Enquirer Over Alleged Palin Affair. John McCain's presidential campaign is threatening a lawsuit against the National Enquirer over a print edition story the tabloid ran today alleging that Gov. Sarah Palin has had an extramarital affair with her husband's business partner. The allegation would normally be dismissed by political observers as the random musings of a supermarket tabloid -- indeed, the McCain campaign said as much in its statements on Wednesday -- except that the paper has built up a reservoir of legitimacy following its earlier reporting on the John Edwards affair. In a statement to the Huffington Post, a spokesman for the paper, who promised a larger report next week, tapped into that pool of quasi-respect. "The National Enquirer's coverage of a vicious war within Sarah Palin's extended family includes several newsworthy revelations, including the resulting incredible charge of an affair plus details of family strife when the Governor's daughter revealed her pregnancy. Following our John Edwards' exclusives, our political reporting has obviously proven to be more detail-oriented than the McCain campaign's vetting process. Despite the McCain camp's attempts to control press coverage they find unfavorable, The Enquirer will continue to pursue news on both sides of the political spectrum." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/03/mccain-camp-battles-natio_n_123696.html

Alaska legislature to subpoena Palin aides in 'troopergate'. Alaska state legislators are preparing to issue subpoenas as part of an investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's handling of the "troopergate" affair, but Palin herself won't be hit with one. State Sen. Hollis French, the Anchorage Democrat who is managing the probe into Palin's firing of her former public safety commissioner, said legislators decided not to subpoena Palin as a gesture to calm what has become a tense standoff between the Legislature and the newly minted Republican vice presidential nominee. "We're trying to de-escalate the situation. We just want the truth, clear the air," French said. However, legislators still want their investigator to interview Palin. Legislators also have decided to move up the date for completing their investigation into whether Palin abused her powers as governor by leaning on former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire a state trooper involved in a messy divorce with Palin's sister. The Legislature's independent investigator, retired state prosecutor Steve Branchflower, will complete his investigative report on Oct. 10 rather than at the end of October, which would be right on top of the Nov. 4 election. http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tih/story/306610.html

McCain, Palin must address economy to win state, some say. GOP does little to fill in blanks. http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080907/NEWS15/809070401

Attack ad targets McCain’s POW status. A 70-year-old man who was imprisoned with John McCain during the Vietnam War says the Arizona senator lacks the temperament to be president. Phillip Butler says in a new attack ad that McCain’s prisoner-of-war status is not a qualification for the presidency and McCain is not somebody he wants to see “with his finger near the red button.” “He was well known as a very volatile guy and he would blow up and go off like a roman candle,” Butler says in the ad, which was produced by Brave New PAC, a political action committee associated with the liberal film company Brave New Films. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/attack-ad-targets-mccains-pow-status-2008-09-03.html

The Alaska National Guard, which Republicans are pointing to as an important national-security credential for vice presidential choice Sarah Palin, has personnel shortages that make its aviation units the most poorly staffed in the nation. Just six months ago, Air Force Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell, the Alaska Guard's top officer, warned in an internal memo that "missions are at risk." The lack of qualified airmen, Campbell said, "has reached a crisis level." http://news.yahoo.com/story/ap/20080904/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_palin_national_guard;_ylt=As._W8kVoXpOU8H4rDc_IU6s0NUE

GOP recognition of SEALs broke deal with Navy. A Republican speaker broke a deal between the GOP and the Navy when he publicly recognized a pair of Navy special operators at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, a Navy spokesman said, causing the sailors to violate regulations against active-duty service members participating in politics. The speaker, Orson Swindle, pointed out two Navy SEALs in the audience wearing civilian clothes at the convention in St. Paul, Minn., as part of a salute to the fallen SEAL Master at Arms 2nd Class Michael Monsoor, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in April. The two SEALs, Lt. Leif Babin and Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Tom Deshazo, rose when Swindle pointed them out and asked them to stand. But the Republicans had agreed not to identify the special operators as a condition for their being able to attend the convention, said Navy spokesman Cmdr. Jeff Davis. Babin and Deshazo had asked for permission to accompany Monsoor’s sister, Sara, who was at the GOP convention to see her brother’s recognition. The Navy agreed, but imposed several conditions, including that they only attend the convention that one night, not speak to the news media, wear civilian clothes and not appear on stage. Swindle, a former Marine prisoner of war, deviated from the script on his TelePrompTer when he pointed out the two SEALs, Davis said, in an apparent ad-lib. Election-year rules forbid active-duty service members from appearing to support or oppose political candidates, and the Navy wanted an “abundance of caution” to ensure it didn’t appear the SEALs were backing the Republicans, Davis said. There will probably be no repercussions for the SEALs or the GOP, he said. http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/09/navy_gop_seals_090408w/

Sarah Palin's appeal to working-class women may be limited. For many of these critical swing voters, economic interests trump any admiration of the Alaska governor's maternal grit, and some are repelled by her sarcastic jabs at Obama .Palin only reinforced her concern that McCain would mean four more years of divisiveness and gridlock. she found Palin's sarcasm offensive and her priorities out of touch. Palin is a fake. She will run the economy into the ground. Palin, who opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-women7-2008sep07,0,2211156.story?page=1

Exposing Five Dangerous Lies in McCain's Big Speech. McCain's falsehoods on health care, oil companies, trade, taxes and worker training were egregious and covered up his pro-corporate positions. http://www.alternet.org/election08/97813/exposing_five_dangerous_lies_in_mccain%27s_big_speech/?page=1

Van Halen, Heart, Others to GOP: Stop Using Our Songs! GOP ignores copyrights, raises ire of multiple recording artists. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/97765/van_halen%2C_heart%2C_others_to_gop%3A_stop_using_our_songs%21/

We talked the other day about a surprising Washington Post editorial, which criticized John McCain's demonstrably false claims about Barack Obama's tax policies. Hiatt & Co., hardly a reliably liberal bunch, didn't pull any punches, concluding that "McCain's ads on taxes are just plain false," and noting his campaign's message is peddling a "phony, misleading and at times outright dishonest" line. The Post indirectly noted that candidates shouldn't "outright lie" about each other's policy positions. How transparent are McCain's bogus claims? Even Fox News has noticed. Consider this report from Major Garrett: Based on the crowd reaction to recent attacks from Barack Obama and Joe Biden about John McCain's tax policy, the Republican nominee may have something to worry about. [...] The crowds roar with approval when Obama and Biden describe their plans for a middle class tax cut and boo loudly at statistics showing how McCain's continuation of the Bush tax cuts favor the wealthy. Of course, these are partisan Obama crowds. But it would be unwise for anyone seriously backing McCain to dismiss their full-throated roars for Obama-Biden on an issue that historically has favored the GOP nominee. [...] Add to this the mounting evidence that McCain's TV commercials assailing Obama's tax policy contain serious distortions, if not out-right lies. Wait, is that a Fox News report accusing John McCain of blatant dishonesty? Yep, I think it is. When Fox News is slamming the Republican nominee for lying, you know McCain has gone too far. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/97778/fox_news%3A_%27mccain%27s_tv_commercials_contain_..._out-right_lies%27/

Palintology: A Sarah Palin online video archive. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/09/palintololgy-a.html

Palin’s address here got boffo reviews from many of the very “reporters and commentators” whose good opinion the Alaska governor dismissed, but her speech was as cynical as the decision to put her on the ticket. She joined in the campaign’s fake populism by deriding legitimate concerns about her record, her knowledge and her governing style as the carping of the “political establishment” and the “Washington elite.” She ran as the tribune of “small-town” Americans by way of suggesting that worries about her readiness to be president amounted to an assault on all who hail from localities of modest size. She dared to compare herself to Harry Truman. She then proceeded to distort Obama’s views on taxes, mock his eloquence and accuse him of wanting “to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world.” And she demonstrated how little she respects constitutional rights with this chilling declaration: “Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America; he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.” http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080904_mccain_the_divider/

MUCH REPEATED, SOME POW DETAIL NEW. Much of McCain's speech is old material. The newest part of the speech and the only part that didn't appear to be lifted from McCain's stump speech was the last part about his experience as a POW. Here's some of the new detail: "On an October morning, in the Gulf of Tonkin, I prepared for my 23rd mission over North Vietnam. I hadn't any worry I wouldn't come back safe and sound. I thought I was tougher than anyone. I was pretty independent then, too. I liked to bend a few rules, and pick a few fights for the fun of it. But I did it for my own pleasure; my own pride. I didn't think there was a cause more important than me. "Then I found myself falling toward the middle of a small lake in the city of Hanoi, with two broken arms, a broken leg, and an angry crowd waiting to greet me. I was dumped in a dark cell, and left to die. I didn't feel so tough anymore. When they discovered my father was an admiral, they took me to a hospital. They couldn't set my bones properly, so they just slapped a cast on me. When I didn't get better, and was down to about a hundred pounds, they put me in a cell with two other Americans. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even feed myself. They did it for me. I was beginning to learn the limits of my selfish independence. Those men saved my life. ... "When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn't know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country and for the men I had the honor to serve with. Because every day they fought for me. "I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's." http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/09/04/1352164.aspx

McCain, Palin light up Macomb. 'She brings some fresh air,' supporter says of Palin. http://www.macombdaily.com/stories/090608/loc_local01.shtml

Whatever Happened to Family Values? HOW THE GOP GAVE IN TO ANTI-ABORTION ABSOLUTISM. http://www.slate.com/id/2199495/

Republicans, stop calling Obama elitist. Because the real reason you don't like him is that he's smarter than you. Karl Rove described Obama as "the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini, and making snide comments about everyone who passes by." Unlike George Bush, who's the guy at the country club who makes snide comments, and then passes out. Now this characterization, of course, was something Mr. Rove just completely pulled out of his bulbous, gelatinous ass, but remember this is America, a land where people believe anything they hear. One of McCain's ads casts Obama as "the one," implying he thinks he's the Messiah. Good, maybe he can raise McCain from the dead. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/09/05/maher_obama/

John McCain's empty speech. Simply saying the word "change" a lot isn't enough. What did McCain offer people that was really new? He denounces both parties for making government bigger, while simultaneously suggesting that he will expand or create new programs for displaced industrial workers, families with autistic children and students in struggling public schools. He scourges Barack Obama for supporting the Bush administration's energy bill, replete with "corporate welfare for oil companies," yet promises to subsidize the same "clean" coal, nuclear and oil development programs that are the foundation of the Bush energy policy. The question that McCain's speech failed to answer is exactly what, besides the nameplates, will change if he and Sarah Palin win this election. He will slash away at congressional earmarks and expose the self-serving pols who misuse them, but that represents a tiny portion of the federal budget. Earmarks may be important as a symbol of integrity but eliminating all of them would not appreciably change the lives of the people that McCain swore to stand up for in his speech. Shorn of the boilerplate conservative clichés like charter schools, the real subjects of McCain's speech were attitude and character rather than programs. http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/09/05/mccain_speech/

Will the GOP's negativity produce a backlash? After a long week in Denver and another week in Minneapolis, I'm traveling home today and thus won't have much time to post, but I wanted to follow up on the discussion that ensued yesterday in response to my post arguing that, particularly in light of the brutal personal attacks on Obama at the Convention, Democrats ought to be far more aggressively critical of McCain and the GOP generally. Many people in comments and by e-mail argued that Americans dislike negativity and that Sarah Palin's speech, in particular, would backfire on the Republicans. The first polling data is now available on this question and it's rather conclusive. A week ago, most Americans had never heard of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Now, following a Vice Presidential acceptance speech viewed live by more than 40 million people, Palin is viewed favorably by 58% of American voters. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 37% hold an unfavorable view of the self-described hockey mom. http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/05/palin/

McCain's reach. His acceptance speech was designed to appeal beyond the GOP base. But where was the maverick? http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-mccain5-2008sep05,0,6358142.story

Palin appears to disagree with McCain on sex education. The Republican vice presidential candidate says students should be taught about condoms. Her running mate -- and the party platform -- disagree. http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-na-sexed6-2008sep06,0,1923582.story

McCain makes bipartisan pitch as leader for all. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gn5ymKkgQtok-sqkUMoWb3h8YwQAD930BDVO0

The Democrats' worst nightmare http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080905/news_lz1e5johnson.html

letter from Anne Kilkenny. Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative”. During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents. The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later--to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing. http://www.washingtonindependent.com/3671/the-reform-candidate

Rethuglican's church http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1536744

Palin: wrong woman, wrong message. Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger. By Gloria Steinem. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-steinem4-2008sep04,0,7915118.story

8 More Shocking Revelations About Sarah Palin. http://www.alternet.org/election08/97350/8_more_shocking_revelations_about_sarah_palin/?page=1

McCain, a warrior, but ... Fellow politician and Vietnam vet Bob Kerrey, who supports Barack Obama, says John McCain's military experience is not enough by itself to qualify him to be president. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kerrey1-2008sep01,0,3075786.story

Asked what it meant to be a Christian, Mr McCain said: "It means I'm saved and forgiven." http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/0818/1218868019365.html

Palin's teenage daughter pregnant. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, newly picked as Republican John McCain's running mate, has revealed that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, asked for his response to the news while campaigning in Michigan, said people should "back off" from such stories. "I think people's families are off-limits, and people's children are especially off-limits," he told reporters. "This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Governor Palin's performance as a governor, or her potential performance as a vice-president." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7592636.stm

"Palin can get through this, but what you don't want is a level of uncertainty about her, about whether she should be on the [Republican] ticket. That's not a good thing for any candidate." The news of Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy is gut-wrenching for Republicans. After a gulp or two, and the evangelical equivalent of a stiff drink, it certainly will not affect their affections for this vice-presidential candidate among social conservatives (she is, after all, doing the right thing in socially conservative circles by not having an abortion). http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/01/politics/politico/thecrypt/main4405099.shtml

Corporate America First

Oil Before Country

Palin says daughter is pregnant. John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin said today that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is pregnant. A statement released by the campaign said that Bristol Palin will keep her baby and marry the child's father. "Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents," Sarah and Todd Palin said in the brief statement. "Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family," they added. Senior McCain advisers said the Arizona senator and his top aides had known about Bristol's pregnancy before offering Palin the No. 2 spot on the GOP ticket. McCain's campaign and the Palins asked that the media respect the couple's privacy. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-palin2-2008sep02,0,1157813.story

Questions Raised: Does Sarah Palin Really Have a 5th Child? [Photos + Video] UPDATED DailyKos blogger suggests that Trig Paxson Van Palin is the Alaska Gov.'s grandson. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/97068/questions_raised%3A_does_sarah_palin_really_have_a_5th_child_%5Bphotos_%2B_video%5D_updated/#more

RNC will stir deep emotions in some. Delegate Diana Bratlie of Lakeville, who traces her emergence into Republican Party from perceived lies to the face from a former Democratic congressman, originally supported California Congressman Duncan Hunter. “I’m a conservative,” she said. http://unioneagle.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1528&Itemid=1

MF'er. WHY MCCAIN CAN'T STOP SAYING "MY FRIENDS." http://www.slate.com/id/2198660/

An Open Letter to God, from Michael Moore. http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php

Bush cancels, GOP weighs shorter convention. McCain, the Republicans' nominee-in-waiting, tore up his campaign schedule to visit Jackson, Miss., with his running mate, Sarah Palin, to get briefings on the approaching storm. He was invited by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. Bush and Cheney, both of whom were to have spoken Monday night, weren't coming, the White House said Sunday, citing the hurricane. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backed out in an unrelated budget dispute with California legislators. All three were to address the convention on Monday, its opening day.. The Bush White House and Republicans in general are still shadowed by criticism of their handling of relief efforts in after Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and parts of the Mississippi Gulf Coast three years ago. Party leaders fear that televised scenes of celebrations and partying at the convention could subject them to similar criticism now. http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080831/POLITICS01/808310315

6 things Palin pick says about McCain. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12997.html

McCain's VP Wants Creationism Taught in School. http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/08/mccains-vp-want.html

republicans, archived August 30, 2008

Vietnam vets stirring up a McCain mutiny. The organizer of Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain claims the Purple Heart-winning former POW has "never admitted the full extent to which he cooperated with his captors." Sampley also charges that, in the 1990s, the "unstable" McCain, whom he calls "the Manchurian Candidate," ignored "credible evidence" that American POWs were still alive in Southeast Asia. "He wanted to normalize relations with Vietnam," Sampley tells us. "He took away the only leverage we had for getting those soldiers back. Why? He was paying back the Vietnamese for keeping quiet about him." Though he's no fan of Barack Obama, Sampley says Fox News producers haven't invited him on to bash McCain the way he bashed Kerry. But Sampley is finding other comrades. Former POW Phillip Butler asserts that McCain "allows the media to make him out to be the hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true." Former GOP Congressmen Bill Hendon and John LeBoutillier, who both served on the House Task Force on POW/MIA Affairs, write on Sampley's U.S. Veteran Dispatch that McCain "abandoned American POWs." "He's totally dishonest," says LeBoutillier, who contends that, to win over the religious right, McCain "cribbed" his recent memory of a kindly guard leaving "a cross in the dirt" from Jeremiah Denton, another POW-turned-senator who told a similar story. http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2008/08/25/2008-08-25_vietnam_vets_stirring_up_a_mccain_mutiny.html

McCain's broken marriage and fractured Reagan friendship. The nature and timing of his divorce from Carol Shepp alienated key friends -- and his version doesn't always match that in court documents. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-divorce11-2008jul11,0,2177702.story

Jerome Corsi: How a Racist, Conspiratorial Crank Became a Top GOP Anti-Obama Point Man. Corsi's success represents the apotheosis of a long, strange trip from the furthest shores of the right into the national spotlight. http://www.alternet.org/election08/95820/jerome_corsi%3A_how_a_racist%2C_conspiratorial_crank_became_a_top_gop_anti-obama_point_man/

Republicans lugged money, fame and promise into their race for the presidential nomination. One of them carried his own bags, tooled around New Hampshire with a few volunteers, flew commercial and won. John McCain's diet of humble pie in the summer of 2007 might have been the best thing that happened to his campaign. And Mike Huckabee? The Baptist preacher with the engaging homespun wit scored a surprising victory in Iowa and followed up with more strong showings thanks to evangelical support. "I didn't major in math, I majored in miracles," he liked to say, when asked about the delegate count mounting in McCain's favor. Finally the numbers crunched his hopes. http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/2008/08/24/D92OMAE83_road_to_st_paul/index.html

Michael Moore Dares to Ask: What's So Heroic About Being Shot Down While Bombing Innocent Civilians? Like Iraq, Vietnam was not a noble cause. It's time we stopped letting politicians and the press perpetuate the McCain War Hero myth. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/95906/michael_moore_dares_to_ask%3A_what%27s_so_heroic_about_being_shot_down_while_bombing_innocent_civilians/

The Anatomy of a Deception: How The McCains Changed Their Baby Adoption Story Just Before 2008 Campaign Began. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-nickolas/the-anatomy-of-a-deceptio_b_120381.html

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. http://www.alternet.org/election08/95825/i_spent_years_as_a_pow_with_john_mccain%2C_and_his_finger_should_not_be_near_the_red_button/

Response to 9/11 Offers Outline of McCain Doctrine. Senator John McCain arrived late at his Senate office on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just after the first plane hit the World Trade Center. “This is war,” he murmured to his aides. The sound of scrambling fighter planes rattled the windows, sending a tremor of panic through the room. It wasn't war, it was crime. McCain made the wrong judgement. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/us/politics/17mccain.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

"Well, I don't know a lot about John McCain's family history, I do know, however, that as recently as last week I think it was, the Senator made a comment in South Dakota regarding his wife entering some Buffalo Chips contest which is this topless deal and if she were to enter she would probably win it and my personal opinion and based on my understanding of the Christian faith, that's not not, N-O-T, not the type of expression that a presidential candidate, or anyone for that matter who is a follower of the Christian faith, ought to make," said the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell. "I don't know if that is a perfect case in point, but it surely does help to juxtapose the DNA of Senator Obama, if you would, versus the DNA of Senator McCain." Caldwell, a close personal friend of President Bush, is the senior pastor at Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas. Caldwell made his comments on a conference call with reporters sponsored by the Matthew 25 Network, a liberal Christian Group. Matthew 25 is planning to air a pro-Obama ad on Saturday during the Rick Warren forum with Obama and McCain. The ad will air on CNN and possibly MSNBC, according to the group's spokesperson. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/15/pastor-from-jenna-bushs-w_n_119187.html

Bush Family Pastor Attacks McCain and Endorses Obama. Seems the Republicans are losing on the "character" and "values" issues. Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell just publicly denounced John McCain's morals and has endorsed Barack Obama. This seems to have been precipitated by the furor about John Edwards' affair, leading Caldwell to point out John McCain's own infidelities. It was also precipitated by John McCain's offering up of his wife to a topless and rather obscene (keyword: banana) pageant at the Sturgis bike rally last week. I guess John McCain's behavior is not pleasing Christians interested in true values rather than mere words. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/95246/bush_family_pastor_attacks_mccain_and_endorses_obama/#more

McCain catches heat over apparent comment on Corsi's 'Obama Nation'. Democrats say McCain is endorsing the much-criticized book after he responds to a question about it by saying, 'Gotta keep your sense of humor.' But aides say he misheard and was speaking of a campaig. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obamabook16-2008aug16,0,5599468.story

However, do you not consider it a negative message, though, when a campaign ad goes on TV that blames your opponent, Barack Obama, for high gas prices or –- I believe strongly that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. And he voted for the energy bill that had all kind of tax breaks and giveaways for the oil companies. I believe if you're not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. And it's a big problem in America today. And are you comfortable with ads where your opponent is being compared to Paris Hilton? I'm very comfortable with my campaign. And I strongly recommend that people who don't find humor in that relax, turn off the computer and go on it and get some fresh air and try to regain some — http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93548659

Veterans group will campaign against McCain. One base of Sen. John McCain's staunchest supporters might be eroding. A group of 15 military veterans on Tuesday held the first meeting of the Pittsburgh unit of the AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council at the Sheraton Hotel Station Square. The first meeting of the council's Pennsylvania chapter took place on Monday in Bethlehem. "We need to educate our fellow veterans that McCain has turned his back on us," said John Vento, 85, who manned anti-aircraft guns in the Pacific during World War II. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_582543.html

John McCain's chief foreign policy adviser and his business partner lobbied the senator or his staff on 49 occasions in a 3 1/2-year span while being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the government of the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The payments raise ethical questions about the intersection of Randy Scheunemann's personal financial interests and his advice to the Republican presidential candidate who is seizing on Russian aggression in Georgia as a campaign issue. McCain warned Russian leaders Tuesday that their assault in Georgia risks "the benefits they enjoy from being part of the civilized world." On April 17, a month and a half after Scheunemann stopped working for Georgia, his partner signed a $200,000 agreement with the Georgian government. The deal added to an arrangement that brought in more than $800,000 to the two-man firm from 2004 to mid-2007. For the duration of the campaign, Scheunemann is taking a leave of absence from the firm. "Scheunemann's work as a lobbyist poses valid questions about McCain's judgment in choosing someone who — and whose firm — are paid to promote the interests of other nations," said New York University law professor Stephen Gillers. "So one must ask whether McCain is getting disinterested advice, at least when the issues concern those nations." http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iG-8I87S5w4QP8CPIrx2wh8irqmgD92HH3M00

A political strategist tied to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal is helping raise money for John McCain, urging his fellow Georgia Republicans to attend a fundraiser for the presidential candidate in Atlanta. Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition, said he had agreed to be on McCain's "Victory 2008 Team" in an e-mail that solicited donations on McCain's behalf. The Republican National Committee is hosting the fundraiser set for an Atlanta hotel on Aug. 18. A House investigative committee in 2006 did not call Reed as a witness, but concluded that he interceded with the Bush White House to help some of Abramoff's clients. Reed's public relations firm also received $4.2 million from Abramoff to mobilize Christian voters to fight the opening of casinos that could compete with Abramoff's Indian tribe clients. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hn3yv73cyhSr6UB-AwFOwfOAOoNAD92HKRSG2

Stars and Stripes' interview with Sen. John McCain. http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=56693

POW mate calls McCain 'liar' over 'turncoat' charge. Retired Marine colonel angered by candidate's statements that he helped enemy while 2 were in Vietnamese prison camp. http://www.ocregister.com/articles/miller-mccain-war-2121488-pow-says

Stem cell backers doubt McCain’s support. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/stem-cell-backers-doubt-mccains-support-2008-08-12.html

Evangelicals seek to put their stamp on '08 campaign. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) and top evangelical leaders will join forces next week to amplify issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and stem-cell research in the race for the White House. Huckabee, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, and Lou Engle, the leader of The Call, a young adult movement, plan to hold a news conference Friday calling on Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to spend more time talking about issues that matter to evangelical voters. Engle admits that the press conference and rally on the mall are designed to counter the Warren candidate interviews, which he predicted would be more politically correct and focus more on “what the church is for rather than what it is against.” Engle, a vehement opponent of abortion rights, said the goal of the rally on the mall is to “drive the issue of abortion like a wedge into the soul of the nation.” http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/evangelicals-seek-to-put-their-stamp-on-08-campaign-2008-08-09.html

McCain’s attacks on rival fall flat with vets group. Republican offers plan to let some get care outside VA. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/aug/10/mccains-attacks-rival-fall-flat-vets-group/

John McCain makes historic appearance at biker rally (video) http://www.236.com/feed/2008/08/05/john_mccain_makes_historic_app_8138.php

Mr. McCain is known to sign off on big campaign decisions and then to march off his own reservation. Two weeks ago, he publicly disagreed with his own spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, after she used a line of attack against Senator Barack Obama that he had approved after careful strategizing within his campaign. Ms. Hazelbaker raced out of the Virginia campaign headquarters and refused to take Mr. McCain’s calls of apology, aides said, and a plan to have Republican members of Congress use the same critical line about Mr. Obama’s foreign trip fell apart. Out of his hearing, Mr. McCain is called the White Tornado by some people who have worked for him over the years. Throughout his presidential campaign, he has been the overseer of a kingdom of dissenting camps, unclear lines of command and an unsettled atmosphere that keeps aides constantly on edge. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/us/politics/10mccain.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

Not-so-bright ideas. McCain's energy plan misleads the public and ignores the risks of nuclear energy. http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-blogsplashpage-sg,0,843001.special

Vice President Dick Cheney will not make an appearance at the Republican convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul next month, according to sources in his office. Cheney has not sought a speaking slot at the convention, nor has his staff sought a role for him at the convention. The McCain campaign has not gone out of its way to reach out to Cheney, though a segment of conservative Republicans had been pressing the campaign to include Cheney in the convention agenda. "Conservatives still think highly of him and are enthusiastic supporters whenever he speaks," says a leading conservative who has spoken to the campaign about Cheney. "For a campaign that has largely failed in reaching out to conservatives, reaching out to Cheney wouldn't be a bad idea." McCain and Cheney famously do not get along, and with McCain's focus being almost exclusively on attracting independents and women to the polls, it's not a surprise that engaging Cheney isn't on the top of his list. http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13636

McCain security ousts reporter. Tallahassee Democrat senior writer Stephen Price on Friday was singled out and asked to leave a media area at the Panama City rally of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain. Price was among at least three other reporters, and the only black reporter, surrounding McCain's campaign bus — Gov. Charlie Crist and his fiancee, Carole Rome, were already aboard — when a member of the Arizona senator's security detail asked the reporter to identify himself. Price had shown his media credentials to enter the area. http://floridacapitalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080802/CAPITOLNEWS/808020312

GOP convention attracting array of demonstrators "There are some groups that are going to be here just because this is a big stage," said Chuck Samuelson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota. "But I think the majority of groups are here because they really want to demonstrate to the delegates that they want to see some sort of changes in the party platform." Protesters and police expect the opening day of the four-day convention, Sept. 1-4, to be the biggest — with a huge anti-war march from the state Capitol to the Xcel Center and back. Groups representing labor, immigrants, gays and lesbians, solidarity with Palestine, and many other causes have signed on. "The Bush agenda has really angered all different groups," said Meredith Aby, a member of the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War. "These groups have said, 'We can't survive four more years of this.'" President Bush, whose approval rating was just 28 percent in a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll, is scheduled to speak that night. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gZpDEzlbNZLLYNFL-EfQDVezY1iwD92ATOIG0

Cindy Lou Hensley McCain (born Cindy Lou Hensley on May 20, 1954) is the wife of U.S. Senator, ill-fated presidential candidate, elderly curmudgeon, and dick John McCain. She, herself, is a multi-millionaire, pill-popper—a combination sometimes referred to as a “pillionaire”—and an excellent example of why people should stop after one facelift, two max. She is also a dick. http://www.dickipedia.org/dick.php?title=Cindy_McCain#Drugs

Did McCain's foreign-policy advisor profit from the Iraq war? In a confidential memo, a company tells investors consultant Randy Scheunemann can help it win Iraqi oil contracts -- because he was a "key player" in getting the U.S. to invade. http://www.salon.com/news/primary_sources/2008/08/01/scheunemann/

McCain endorses bid in Ariz. to ban affirmative action. Obama 'disappointed' by rival's position. resumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain endorsed a proposal to ban affirmative action programs in his home state yesterday, a policy that Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama called a disappointing embrace of divisive tactics. In the past, McCain has criticized such ballot initiatives. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080728/news_1n28campaign.html

McCain gaffes pile up; critics pile on. McCain is an old man. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11939.html

New York Times Spares McCain Embarrassment By Rejecting Op-Ed. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/92274/#more

McCain's military record http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-klein/mccains-secret-questionab_b_107409.html

For better or worse, McCain wedded to town halls. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_mccain_town_halls.html?source=mypi

Hearing-Gate Exposed! McCain Has Worse Afghanistan Hearing Record Than Obama. http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/07/hearing-gate-ex.html

10 McCain Gaffes from This Week That Should Have Damaged His Chances. Another terror attack would help the McCain campaign. McCain's top economic policy adviser calls Americans a bunch of "whiners" for being worried about the slumping economy. http://www.alternet.org/election08/91245/?ses=5f31a2ce6568936dafef4b89f2572582

Every presidential campaign has its hitches. For John McCain, they felt more like full-blown lurches this week, with nearly every step forward quickly offset by a misstatement or wisecrack that seemed to blow his message off course. It was the week McCain hoped to show off his newly focused, smoother-running operation after he rearranged his campaign hierarchy and acknowledged errors in the staging of events and other matters. But a joke about U.S. cigarettes killing Iranians, criticism of the Social Security program and word that one of his top economic advisers had called the country "a nation of whiners" suffering a "mental recession" undermined the Arizona senator's effort. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_mccain_week_in_review.html?source=mypi

McCain hoped for a better week. Instead, a series of fumbles handed opportunities to Barack Obama. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-campaign12-2008jul12,0,5948913.story

Evangelical Leaders Meet and Decide to Back Sen. John McCain. More than 90 evangelical leaders decided to support Sen. John McCain at a meeting in Denver on Tuesday. “The alternative is so bad we must support John McCain,” said Phyllis Schlafly, founder and president of Eagle Forum, adding that the leaders should have held a strategy meeting in 2001 when it was clear Vice President Dick Cheney wouldn’t run for president instead of waiting until four months before the 2008 election. Mostly white and middle-aged, the group was called together by Mathew Staver, president of Liberty Counsel and dean of the law school at Liberty University. http://www.charismamag.com/cms/news/archives/0702081.php

McCain's broken marriage and fractured Reagan friendship. The nature and timing of his divorce from Carol Shepp alienated key friends -- and his version doesn't always match that in court documents. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-divorce11-2008jul11,0,2177702.story

Joby Weeks, an alternate delegate to the Republican convention, told McCain he was disappointed that he refused to support impeachment for Bush. McCain said it isn't warranted. Weeks, a Ron Paul supporter said McCain ignored a petition listing 10 potential articles of impeachment for Bush. "It's not about being a good Democrat or a good Republican, it's about being a good American, and sticking with the principles that made America great," Weeks said as McCain shook hands with audience members after the meeting. http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=11838

For the sake of the girl with the beautiful swing. For 10-year-olds everywhere -- Little Leaguers or not -- I hope we get a better president than the incompetent we've wasted eight years of our national life on. I'm 65 and have a good life and can't claim that the Current Occupant has done me much harm at all. It's when I think about 10-year-old girls I start to get hot under the collar. This clueless man has dug a deep hole for them and doesn't seem vaguely aware of it. He has spent us deep in a hole, gotten us into a disastrous war, blithely ignored the long-term best interests of the country, and when you think of the 4,000 kids who now lie in cemeteries, and for what? -- you start to grind your teeth. For the sake of the girl with the beautiful swing, I hope we get a better president than the disgusting incompetent we've wasted eight years of our national life on. Think twice about who you put your arm around, Sen. McCain. http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/07/02/little_league/

McCain mulls run as one-termer. How bad is it for John McCain? Some supporters keep suggesting he would have a better shot at the White House if he promised to serve only one term. Cue the old joke about the contest in which the first prize is a week in Philadelphia, and the second prize is two weeks. But this is no joke. McCain has flirted with the idea of being a voluntary, one-term wonder. In January, a woman at a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire asked if he had the stamina for eight years in the White House. McCain, who at 72 would be the oldest president at the start of a first term, replied, according to The Boston Globe, "If I said I was running for eight years, I'm not sure that would be a vote-getter." When reporters asked him later, he dismissed the one-term idea. But it turns out he had weighed making the pledge when he launched his White House bid last year. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/368992_mccain01.html?source=mypi

USS Forrestal fire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire

Ret. Gen. Clark: McCain lacks command experience. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a former Democratic presidential candidate now supporting Barack Obama, said Sunday John McCain's military service does not automatically qualify him to be commander in chief. Underscoring during a national television appearance a position he has been expressing for several weeks, Clark said performing heroic military service is not a substitute for gaining command experience. "In the matters of national security policy making, it's a matter of understanding risk," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "It's a matter of gauging your opponents and it's a matter of being held accountable. John McCain's never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war. "He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee and he has traveled all over the world, but he hasn't held executive responsibility," Clark said. "That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded - that wasn't a wartime squadron." http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CLARK_MCCAIN?SITE=CADIU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

In 2000 McCain was selling signed copies of his book for 20 bucks. I sent in the money but never got the book. I've always felt like I got ripped off.

McCain: Obama's word cannot be trusted. Hours after sparring with Barack Obama over immigration, John McCain told crowd at fundraiser Saturday night that "Sen. Obama's word cannot be trusted." "You know, this election is about trust, and trusting people's word, and unfortunately apparently on several items, Sen. Obama's word cannot be trusted," McCain said in Louisville, Kentucky. The comment came as McCain criticized Obama for reversing positions on public financing and other issues. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/29/mccain.obama/index.html

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Saturday used the Democrats’ weekly radio address to assail GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) over his plans to allow offshore drilling to reduce the U.S. dependency on foreign oil. “President Bush and Sen. McCain want to open our pristine wilderness lands and shorelines to unrestricted drilling. That is beyond irresponsible -- it is dangerous and unnecessary,” Richardson, who served as energy secretary under Bill Clinton, said. “We’re not against responsible drilling. We believe the oil companies should drill on some of the millions of acres of land they already have but aren’t using.” http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/richardson-rips-mccain-on-offshore-drilling-2008-06-28.html

Fox News contributor and total nut job Mike Huckabee (Fuckabee) falsely claimed "not one drop of oil was spilled" during Hurricane Katrina. Summary: On Fox & Friends, Mike Huckabee falsely asserted, "When Katrina, a Cat-5 hurricane, hit the Gulf Coast, not one drop of oil was spilled off of those rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico." In fact, according to a report prepared for the federal government by an international consulting firm, damages related to Hurricane Katrina resulted in 70 spills from outer continental shelf structures with a total volume of approximately 11,104 barrels of oil and petroleum products. http://mediamatters.org/items/200806270005?f=h_top

John McCain directed his trademark straight talk toward a former president, flatly calling Jimmy Carter a "lousy" commander in chief. The Arizona senator has long attempted to portray Barack Obama's policies as in the mold of Carter's, though the Republican has previously held back criticizing Carter so directly. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/06/27/mccain-calls-carter-a-lousy-president/

A top adviser to John McCain said another terrorist attack on U.S. soil would be a "big advantage" for the Republican presidential candidate, drawing a sharp rebuke Monday from both the presumed GOP nominee and Democrat Barack Obama. Charlie Black, already in the spotlight for his past lobbying work, is quoted in the upcoming July 7 edition of Fortune magazine as saying such an attack "certainly would be a big advantage to him." Black said Monday he regretted the comment. Black is also quoted as saying the "unfortunate event" of the assassination of former Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto in December 2007 "helped us." The remarks caught McCain flat-footed. Moments later, he was befuddled when reporters asked about Black's comments. Black was similarly surprised when reporters happened upon him outside a later McCain fundraiser. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080623/D91G30V00.html

As Long As We're Talking About Michelle Obama, Did You Know That Cindy McCain Was a Drug Addict? http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/88889/

Analysis: McCain hampered by campaign missteps. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080621/D91EJ2MG1.html

McCain could have a conflict brewing. His wife, Cindy McCain, owns a beer distribution company that has engaged in lobbying. As senator he's recused himself from alcohol issues, but as president he wouldn't be able to. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-hensley22-2008jun22,0,965991.story

Rumsfeld repays McCain; declines to back candidate. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently declined to answer whether he will support Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for president. McCain, the GOP presidential standard-bearer, has been one of Rumsfeld’s harshest critics. McCain has said that Rumsfeld will “go down as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history.” http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/rumsfeld-repays-mccain-declines-to-back-candidate-2008-06-18.html

Granholm: McCain not good for women. Seeking to block an effort by John McCain to draw support from Hillary Clinton supporters, Gov. Jennifer Granholm on Saturday called for women to unify behind Barack Obama and attacked McCain's record on women's issues and the economy. McCain's outreach to Clinton-backing women "is an effort to mask his effort on the issues important to the women who supported (Clinton)", said Granholm, who supported Clinton during her primary campaign against Obama. Granholm spoke to reporters on a conference call organized by the Obama campaign. McCain on Saturday was holding a "virtual town hall" teleconference with former Clinton supporters, other Democrats and independents, seeking to capitalize on divisions created by Democrats' long and at times bitter primary campaign. The McCain campaign released a list of more than two dozen Democrats and independents it said were supporting McCain. http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080614/METRO/806140413/&imw=Y

In ’74 Thesis, the Seeds of McCain’s War Views. About a year after his release from a North Vietnamese prison camp, Cmdr. John S. McCain III sat down to address one of the most vexing questions confronting his fellow prisoners: Why did some choose to collaborate with the North Vietnamese? Mr. McCain blamed American politics. “The biggest factor in a man’s ability to perform credibly as a prisoner of war is a strong belief in the correctness of his nation’s foreign policy,” Mr. McCain wrote in a 1974 essay submitted to the National War College and never released to the public. Prisoners who questioned “the legality of the war” were “extremely easy marks for Communist propaganda,” he wrote. Americans captured after 1968 had proven to be more susceptible to North Vietnamese pressure, he argued, because they “had been exposed to the divisive forces which had come into focus as a result of the antiwar movement in the United States.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/us/politics/15pows.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

To insulate against such doubts, he recommended that the military should teach its recruits not only how to fight but also the reasons for American foreign policies like the containment of Southeast Asian communism — even though, Mr. McCain acknowledged, “a program of this nature could be construed as ‘brainwashing’ or ‘thought control’ and could come in for a great deal of criticism.”

GodVoter.org Says that Jesus Has no Presidential Candidate Left to Vote For. Of Course, No One Asked Jesus. http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/307

Is John McCain like George W. Bush, someone who has learned that the media is hesitant to call a Republican politician a liar? John McCain is a liar. http://www.alternet.org/election08/88101/?ses=98f29ad0927956bfdee0471d04318219

If John McCain is elected he will be referred to as president 43.2

Huckabee Chucklebee gets job with Fox. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080614/news_lz1n14pubeye.html

McCain’s remark sparks an uproar. Democrats pounce after he says it is 'not too important' to set a timeline for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-na-campaign12-2008jun12,0,1111965.story

Pastor John Hagee on Christian Zionism. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6097362

republicans, archived June 04, 2008

Arriving back in the United States in 1973, McCain faced not only his own lingering injuries but also those that his wife had sustained in an automobile accident in 1969. After nine months of intensive physical therapy, he was reinstated to flight status. While stationed in Jacksonville, Florida, he was instrumental in turning around the performance of a Corsair squadron. His marriage did not recover so well. McCain has admitted to “selfishness and immaturity” and has attributed the breakup of his marriage to his own misdeeds. He has even gone out of his way to exempt Vietnam from any blame. “The blame was entirely mine,” he said. McCain had already met and romanced, while still married to Shepp, the woman who would be his second wife — Cindy Lou Hensley, seventeen years his junior, the only child of a wealthy Anheuser-Busch distributor from Phoenix.10 Cindy’s father, Jim Hensley, had been a World War II pilot, shot down over the English Channel. In 1955 he formed his company, Hensley & Co., now the country’s sixth-largest beer distributorship. Cindy had gone from cheerleader to rodeo queen to graduate student at University of South Carolina by the time she met McCain in 1979. A year later, McCain and his first wife were granted a divorce; six weeks later, McCain married Cindy. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/87040/

Father's embrace of earmarks beneficial to candidate Hunter. Among Duncan D. Hunter's most generous campaign contributors as he runs to succeed his retiring father are the elder Hunter's congressional colleagues and defense contractors. An analysis by The San Diego Union-Tribune shows at least three defense contractors have benefited from special provisions, or earmarks, inserted into bills by the Alpine Republican, who was chairman of the House Armed Services Committee until the Democrats won control of the House in 2006. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080529/news_1n29hunter.html

Sanders' campaign manager resigns after debate flap. Long shot coached to discredit Francis. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080524/news_1m24mayor.html

Poll shows Hunter's son far ahead. good comments re Mike Lumpkin. http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/news/breaking/2008/05/poll_shows_hunters_son_far_ahe.html

Hunter, Ose, McClintock first out of the gate to slam Court decision. http://www.politickerca.com/alexisenstadt/923/hunter-and-ose-first-out-gate-slam-court-decision

Another contested primary is in San Diego, where Duncan D. Hunter is running to succeed his father, Duncan Hunter, who is retiring after 14 terms in Congress and a presidential bid that never gained traction. Hunter raised $640,442 as of May 14, far outpacing his GOP opponents. Bob Watkins, president of the San Diego County Board of Education, raised $230,000, including $105,000 he loaned himself, while Santee City Councilman Brian Jones raised $191,000. http://www.modbee.com/2081/story/306824.html

Sen. John McCain argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a "hunter," sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God's will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/21/mccain-backer-hagee-said_n_102892.html

John McCain corporate whore campaign seeks supportive blog comments. All of a sudden, I have even more reason not to trust anything readers say in the comments section here. (I'm kidding. Calm down.) John McCain's campaign, it turns out, is asking McCain's supporters to go to certain blogs and leave comments that pass on the campaign's talking points for the day. They've also created a points system to provide some incentive, the Politico's Jonathan Martin reports. According to McCain spokesman Brian Rogers, points can also be accumulated for campaign activities and writing letters to the editor, among other things -- it's not clear what they can be redeemed for. The campaign also provides a list of blogs it suggests supporters visit; currently included in "featured blogs" is liberal blogging giant Daily Kos, but there are no other blogs under the site's "liberal" category. The campaign might want to take a closer look at the blogs it recommends: Some don't allow comments. ― Alex Koppelman http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/05/21/mccain_blogs/index.html

Will Bob Barr and Ron Paul Out-Flank McCain on the Right? http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/85893/

What's Wrong With Talking? An Adviser Speaks. Kagan says he and others are frustrated by Sen. Barack Obama's repeated indications he would meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — a move Kagan says would represent a unilateral departure from European allies. "The United States and its European allies have made it very clear that we're perfectly willing to talk to Iran if it will suspend its nuclear enrichment," Kagan says. "Iran's refusal to meet it indicates a lack of good will." But there's a wrinkle: Kagan has been part of a chorus calling for the Bush administration to ignore just such logic and to schedule meetings with Iranian leaders in the final year of power. "Negotiating will at first appear to be a sign of weakness," Kagan says. But because Bush has just months left and as Iran gets closer to having a nuclear weapon, Kagan says he and his staff can afford to take the hit for the sake of the next administration. "My biggest concern is that if we wait too long, Iran may be so advanced along the path that we may miss the opportunity." Psychobabble http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90583294

An Embarrassment for McCain. Alex Chadwick talks with Senior Washington Editor Ron Elving about the coming week in politics. He says there have been bumps in the road for the McCain campaign. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90590302

Biden skewered Bush over that in a conference call with reporters, calling the comments “pure politics,” “blatant,” “beneath the presidency,” “truly disgraceful,” “outrageous,” “disturbing,” “ridiculous hypocrisy” and “long-distance Swiftboating.” He even said Bush “oughta get a life.” “For this president to go on the attack against Barack Obama,” Biden said. “It cannot go unanswered.” Bush is an anti-American idiot. http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/05/15/1027733.aspx

Chuckabee Huckabee made an off-color joke during his speech in Louisville, Kentucky, when a loud bang was heard off-stage. "That was Barack Obama," Huckabee quipped, "He Just tripped off a chair. He was getting ready to speak. Somebody aimed a gun at him and he...he dove for the floor." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/16/huckabee-talks-about-some_n_102178.html http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/05/huckabee-jokes.html

Speech by Bush in Israel seen as rebuking Obama. President warns of appeasing enemy. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080516/news_1n16bush.html

Barack Obama and John McCain escalated their war of words over foreign policy Friday -- with Obama using an attack on his rival's "irresponsible" views to send a second message to Republicans as well: Don't try to swift-boat me. Obama has vowed not to get painted as weak on defense, the way John Kerry did in 2004 in ads by swift-boat veterans. He wasted no time this week lashing back at McCain and President George W. Bush over comments Bush made about "appeasement" of the Nazis, remarks Obama said were a slap at his belief in diplomacy. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/politics/ny-usobam517,0,4131205.story

Candidate asks rival to return contributions. http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/news/breaking/2008/05/52nd_cong_candidate_makes_earm.html

Cindy McCain http://www.snopes.com/politics/mccain/cindy.asp

Dunkie DUKE Hunter Now here we are 28 years later. The congressional district has a new number, new boundaries, and the 2-to-1 Democratic majority has morphed into a strong Republican voter registration. Hunter was assigned to the Armed Forces Committee and eventually became its chair, and became an avid supporter of the war in Iraq. Last year, he decided to run for president, and shortly thereafter announced that he would not seek re-election to the House of Representatives, but that his son will run to replace him. And that brings us to today and the "Elect Duncan Hunter" signs that have sprouted in the 52nd District. For folks who haven't kept up with the comings and goings of their congressman and who may not know that the original Duncan Hunter is not running, those signs may signal business as usual. Clearly, name recognition is a big plus in a political campaign and Duncan Hunter's name is as familiar as the next door neighbor's. But it is Duncan D. Hunter, 30-year-old Iraq veteran who is the candidate, the son and not the father. http://www.kpbs.org/blogs2/index.php/politicalfix/comments/duncan_hunter_redux/

Republicans Crossing Over to Vote in Democratic Contests. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/us/politics/03crossover.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said yesterday he would strongly oppose an inititiative to outlaw same-sex marriage if it qualifies for the November ballot. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080412/news_1m12gov.html

McCain Coasts on Illusion We Want to Believe: Margaret Carlson. As I was watching General David Petraeus being questioned in congressional hearings, I finally got why Senator John McCain has an even chance of being president in spite of supporting a war that most Americans are against. As he'd done so many times before, McCain said we can win if we just pull up our socks and banish our defeatism. ``We can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success, he said, ensuring ``that the terrible price we have paid in the war, a price that has made all of us sick at heart, has not been paid in vain. Don't I wish? Don't we all? I don't buy his take on the war but, like half of America, I want to. Deep down, we can't accept limitations on our good intentions. We hate to hear that a military surge didn't produce a political surge that created a Jeffersonian democracy or some reasonable facsimile thereof. http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_carlson&sid=arwII9vothC4

McCain Compiles List of Possible Veeps. In his speech on a wind-swept outdoor pavilion overlooking the naval academy football stadium, the Vietnam prisoner of war issued a challenge. "If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you are disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them," he said. He said he hopes more Americans will enlist in the military or run for office. "But there are many public causes where your service can make our country a stronger, better one than we inherited. Wherever there is a hungry child, a great cause exists. ... Wherever there is suffering, a great cause exists." http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080402/D8VPOSIG0.html

They just figured it was a lingerie supplier. Well, you don't have to be able to define pornography to know that what Elegant Angel is -- is. Turns out one of the attendees realized the party chairman was a walking billboard for smut at about 11 a.m. - two hours after the meeting convened. After the invocation and after the rousing rendition of "Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Democrats." When informed, Zadrowski quietly removed his lanyard and told several others to do the same. The message never got to the press box. I didn't discover Elegant Angel until late last week while cleaning up my desk and considering whether to keep the lanyard for another purpose. It crossed my mind: What is this company? The next thing I knew, I was perusing porn at the office. Elegant Angel is a Canoga Park, Calif., firm owned by Patrick Collins, a porn director. If you want to check out the site yourself, be forewarned. It's not for the squeamish or those under 18, or pretty much anyone who wrote the family platform planks at the convention. http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/16724886.html

The title of Oswald Spengler’s book, which he intended to publish in 1913, but published only after WW1, has been translated into English as The Decline of the West. The German title is Der Untergang des Abendlandes, and the word Untergang means in English “sinking,” “self-destruction,” “ruin,” “fall” of the Abendlandes, the West. According to Spengler, a civilization, such as the post-Roman West, or its one country, such as Germany, is viable as long as genius comes forth and thrives therein. Otherwise its overall mediocrity, and hence der Untergang, ensues. Der Untergang is full on. Today in the United States there is not a single internationally or even nationally recognized thinker of genius. Hence the human intelligence of a group of people is in inverse ratio to the number of people in the group. In the US debates of 2008 presidential candidates, every candidate (with exceptions like Duncan Hunter) has been trying to appeal to the largest group of voters possible, that is, to the lowest level of intelligence. Suffice it was for him to say publicly that China is a dictatorship, and the destiny of Duncan Hunter awaited him. http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/lev3_21.asp

GOP FACES LONG ODDS IN BID TO RETAKE HOUSE IN NOVEMBER. http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/03/24/exodus-minimizes-chances-of-house-gop-majority-in-2008/

What does the failed presidential run of Mike Huckabee teach us about the standing of Evangelicals in politics today? A great deal, I think. And as I embark on two posts devoted to this issue permit me to conjure up a handy slogan. Repeat it to yourself like a mantra, meditate upon it while you're on the elliptical machine, set it to the melody of the song “Maria” from The Sound of Music if you so desire. But remember: Evangelicals are not necessarily in crisis, they are in flux. http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/georgetown/2008/03/the_huckabee_perplex.html

Working Families Vote 2008 > John McCain Revealed. http://www.aflcio.org/issues/politics/mccain.cfm

The Money Behind the Anti-McCain Ad. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080306_the_money_behind_the_anti_mccain_ad/

DNC to file FEC complaint against McCain. http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/dnc-to-file-fec-complaint-against-mccain-2008-02-24.html

Huckabee Hopes to Mess With McCain in Texas. http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/02/20/politics/fromtheroad/entry3855426.shtml

Can John McCain reinvent Republicanism? http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/25/080225fa_fact_lizza

Huckabee: Washington State vote like the Soviet Union http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/02/11/huckabee-washington-state-vote-like-the-soviet-union/

Mitt Romney suspended his faltering campaign. "I must now stand aside, for our party and our country," Romney told conservatives. "If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror," Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jWbI2rULUHnQwe-83Fd1Pb2lT8-wD8ULMSNO1

McCain gets his party's cold shoulder. Despite being the Republican front-runner for president, he has not swayed conservatives. They simply don't like him. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-right7feb07,0,3931058.story

Denial of GOP ballots tops poll problems. Hundreds complain to election officials; party promises probe. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080207/news_1m7vote.html

Republican John McCain, buoyed by Super Tuesday wins that pushed him closer to the nomination, told his conservative critics Wednesday to dial back the animosity and focus on issues where they agree. "I do hope that at some point we would just calm down a little bit and see if there's areas we can agree on," McCain said at a news conference in a Phoenix airport hangar. http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/McCain_to_critics_on_right_Calm_dow_02062008.html

Huckabee says there is ‘no way’ he will drop out. http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/huckabee-says-there-is-no-way-he-will-drop-out-2008-01-31.html

Schwarzenegger endorses John McCain. But Schwarzenegger has a strained relationship with some conservatives in his own party and McCain, himself, is fighting to convince GOP rank-and-file that he's committed to conservative values. Schwarzenegger's nod could exacerbate concerns about McCain among the party establishment. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_mccain_schwarzenegger.html?source=mypi

Schwarzenegger likely to back McCain. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-arnold31jan31,0,5682168.story

Beyond the Fringe. You can carry this to an extreme, however. I know Representative Duncan Hunter used to be the chairman of an important committee, but really that only impresses the chairmen of the other important committees. And unlike Dodd and Biden, Hunter didn’t really seem to be trying. I swear I went to more states during the early campaigning period than he did. I know there’s a question of money, but really, if you think you deserve to be president you ought to have at least a couple of supporters willing to drive you around. http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/beyond-the-fringe/

Who Stole McCain’s White Flag? when we had a Democrat in the White House McCain repeatedly argued for bringing the troops home regardless of the consequences. http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/26/who-stole-mccains-white-flag/

Huckabee's Jonesboro book still rankles. After two middle-school boys in full camouflage gear shot and killed four of their classmates and a teacher here, leaving 10 others wounded and a community shattered, it seemed inevitable that someone would see opportunity in the tragedy for a book deal. Indeed, within days a publisher agreed to pay $25,000 to an Arkansas writer to produce a book on youth violence. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-huckabee26jan26,0,34828.story

NYT EDITORIAL Primary Choices: John McCain http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25fri2.html?ref=opinion

kiss of death: Duncan Hunter, who ended his presidential bid last weekend, just issued this statement: “I got to know Governor Huckabee well on the campaign trail. Of the remaining candidates, I feel that he is strongly committed to strengthening national defense, constructing the border fence and meeting the challenge of China’s emergence as a military superpower that is taking large portions of America’s industrial base. Hunter continued, "Mike Huckabee is a man of outstanding character and integrity. I saw that character over the last year of campaigning and was greatly impressed. The other Republican candidates have many strengths and I wish them all well. My personal choice is Mike Huckabee." http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/23/602490.aspx

Romney: Who Let the Dogs Out? http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/01/21/romney-who-let-the-dogs-out/

Fred Thompson quits presidential race. "Today, I have withdrawn my candidacy for president of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort," the former Tennessee senator said in a brief statement. Thompson's fate was sealed last Saturday in the South Carolina primary, when he finished third in a state that he had said he needed to win. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_thompson_2008.html

11th hour, Ron Paul holds to his maverick strategy. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jan/16/11th-hour-ron-paul-holds-his-maverick-strategy/

More Than 17 Minutemen Agree. Ron Paul asked to meet with a few of us local leaders while he was in Las Vegas yesterday so we drove out and met him at a restaurant where he was receiving the endorsement of March for America, a nationwide anti-illegal immigration group based in Seattle. He gave a great 40 minute speech and Q&A about how we are going to save our nation and end illegal immigration. Very inspiring. The man is brilliant and only cares about the country and the people! http://reason.com/blog/show/124490.html

Huckabee's radical religious friends. A list of religious extremists linked to the GOP candidate. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/18/huckabee_connections/

McCain Telephones Michigan Heckler http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/McCain_Telephones_Heckler/2008/01/15/64464.html

Duncan Hunter -- Yes, He's Still Running http://www.usnews.com/blogs/news-desk/2008/01/14/duncan-hunter----yes-hes-still-running.html

HUNTER: Staying in the hunt. Some of congressman's backers wonder why he's still running. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080113/news_1m13hunter.html

The Real Mike Huckabee. "As soon as Jesus sits on his throne he's gonna rule the world with a rod of iron," Hagee told his congregation in a sermon this December. "That means he's gonna make the ACLU do what he wants them to. That means you're not gonna have to ask if you can pray in public school.... We will live by the law of God and no other law." Huckabee made a pilgrimage to Hagee's Cornerstone Church just one week after the pastor's anti-ACLU jeremiad. During the first of two sermons Huckabee delivered there, he was greeted with a thunderous standing ovation. The candidate returned the sentiment, hailing his gracious host, Hagee, as "one of the great Christian leaders of our nation." http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080128/blumenthal

The Newsletters: Since at least 1978, Ron Paul has attached his name to a series of newsletters--Ron Paul's Freedom Report, Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Survival Report, and The Ron Paul Investment Letter--that frequently made outrageous statements: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=74978161-f730-43a2-91c3-de262573a129

Duncan Hunter wanders onto the set of Morning Joe, January 7, 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg5qZUTPTKk

Hunter Vows To Stay In Presidential Race http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/14996881/detail.html

Preacher prevails. Huckabee win portends fight for GOP's soul http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080105/news_lz1ed5middle.html

Wisdom From The Founding Rationalists. What Jefferson and Adams Might Tell Mitt Romney http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/26/AR2007122601486.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

The most striking image from his campaign - the slogan "Revolution" with the letters "EVOL" reversed to spell "love" backward - is, to use a 1960s metaphor, more Beatles than Barry Goldwater. (The creator of this slogan, Arizona libertarian Ernie Hancock, explains in an online article that the "love" refers to love of liberty, but concedes that the visual was chosen mainly for its emotional impact.) http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/09/01/a_love_revolution_goldwater_style/ http://www.rescue-us.org/new/RPR http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5nzYehwPHM

Paul: Country is moving toward fascism http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/paul-country-is-moving-toward-fascism-2007-12-23.html

Tancredo Surprises Hunter by Backing Romney. However, Hunter may have been surprised about the Romney endorsement. Just two hours earlier at an IowaPolitics.com-Drake University forum in Des Moines, Hunter's Iowa campaign director Greg Grant said Tancredo had a gentleman's agreement with the fellow congressman. "I believe his departure will benefit Duncan Hunter the most," Grant said a couple hours before the Tancredo announcement. "Duncan and Congressman Tancredo had a gentlemen's agreement if one of them backed out they would support the one that is still in the race. When you look at Tancredo's objective as far as immigration, Duncan is right in line with Tom Tancredo's issue." http://www.iowapolitics.com/index.iml?Article=113783

Huckabee and Son, Creeping The Shit Out Of People For 26 Years http://suicidegirls.com/news/politics/22835/

Lieberman Endorses McCain http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071217/D8TJ8TUO0.html

Insurgent White House hopeful Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is on pace to shatter his own one-day GOP online fundraising record, taking in an eye-popping $3 million through the first 14 hours of Sunday, his campaign said. http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/pauls-money-train-steamrolls-on-2007-12-16.html

Romney swings at Huckabee over Bush comments http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/romney-swings-at-huckabee-over-bush-comments-2007-12-15.html

I saw Mrs. Davidson on CBS News last week talking about how Wayne Dumond murdered her daughter Carol Sue Shields. Shields was murdered because Mike Huckabee began pushing for Dumond's freedom when he became governor. Dumond was eventually released. There is no doubt Mrs. Davidson has a powerful story to tell, but I wasn't sure she had an outlet to share it. I agreed with her that Mike Huckabee has no business being president. http://www.huckabeefacts.com/

"There are families who are truly, understandably and reasonably, grief-stricken," he told CNN, referring to the relatives of DuMond's victims, including the mother of a Missouri woman he raped and murdered who has vowed to campaign against Huckabee. "And for people to now politicize these deaths and to try to make a political case out of it rather than to simply understand that a system failed and that we ought to extend our grief and heartfelt sorrow to these families, I just regret politics is reduced to that." http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/12/14/huckabee/

Ron Paul gave a dose of reality on Iraq and terrorism, and Hunter and Tancredo carried the nativist, xenophobic flag. http://www.progressive.org/node/5720

Romney: Attacks on Religion Go Too Far http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071212/D8TFV7D80.html

epublican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher who has surged in Iowa with evangelical Christian support, bristled Tuesday when asked if creationism should be taught in public schools. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071205/D8TB4JV00.html

They don’t call it “The Stupid Party” for nothin’. http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071204/OPINION04/71203060/1194

Highlights from a Republican debate http://www.bupipedream.com/pipeline_web/display_article.php?id=6668

"Is compassion beneath us? Is mercy below us? Should our party be led by someone who boasts of a hard heart?" Judging from this week's debate, at least some of the men who aspire to follow Bush believe the answer to those questions is "yes." http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-debate30nov30,0,3522046.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

McCain's homework. A recently obtained National War College essay shows that the former POW is not as thoughtful as advertised about the lessons of Vietnam. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-welch25nov25,0,3022740.story?coll=la-opinion-center

Thompson charges Fox News is biased against his campaign http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/thompson-charges-fox-news-is-biased-against-his-campaign-2007-11-25.html

This blue state's GOP awash in red ink. Fundraising is off on eve of presidential election year http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071124/news_1n24gopdebt.html

Regan's lawsuit says, "defendants knew they would be protecting Giuliani if they could preemptively discredit her." http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g2_LJ2FKnuwgWkxddoyOAuvtiV_gD8ST6A180

“I think the intentions are good, but I seem to remember Reagan being dead,” http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/gop-netroots-find-faults-with-reagan-group-2007-11-14.html

The dark side of Mike Huckabee, The national media seems to have a crush on our ex-governor, but here in Arkansas, we know better. By Max Brantley http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/11/13/huckabee/

Kerik indictment could wreak havoc for Giuliani http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-kerik10nov10,1,7309273.story

McCain disavows S.C. ads on his behalf http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/mccain-disavows-s.c.-ads-on-his-behalf-2007-11-09.html

"Today we are at war, a war unlike ... any we've ever faced," he said. "It's not a war that we fight with a nation-state. It's not a war that's planned out. It's a war with Islamo-fascism. This is a war of whether or not our grandchildren will ever even live because there's a determination on those who seek to destroy us that is incredibly fierce. ... [They] don't care if this war lasts 1,000 years." http://media.www.trumanindex.com/media/storage/paper607/news/2007/11/01/News/Candidates.Charm.Crowd.At.Party.Dinner-3071050.shtml

McCain: Rivals lack military experience http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071102/ap_po/mccain_military_9;_ylt=Aib77AM4qPdhMou85_1tk2cE1vAI

The Hunter for President banner that initially seemed to loom so large vanished to the mind as Keyes’ oratory captivated http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/278

Giuliani's Conservative Support Tenuous http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071018/D8SBN2MG0.html

evangelical zealots tearing down GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani http://spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12149

Hunter suges to - 1.23% http://news.aol.com/elections-blog/2007/09/24/michigan-polls-the-presidential-candidates/

gun owners are not extremists, you are the core of modern America. http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/at-nra-mccain-puts-romney-in-crosshairs-2007-09-21.html

Dobson questioned Thompson’s Christian bona fides http://blog.au.org/2007/09/20/focus-on-fred-religious-right-leader-dobson-blasts-thompson-again/

Grading the Repubs - Part Four http://lonestartimes.com/2007/09/06/grading-the-repubs-part-four/

Ron Paul supporters claim they were shut out of straw poll http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_6809230

America -- Almost Certainly Doomed http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22252#continueA

McCain Is Only Veteran Among Leading Presidential Hopefuls http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/23/AR2007082302092.html?hpid=topnews

Duncan Hunter is an asterisk. http://www.thestar.com/News/article/247534

Thompson touts conservative credentials in Iowa http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/thompson-touts-conservative-credentials-in-iowa-2007-08-17.html

republican party ratings http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=348

Ames Straw Poll http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_Straw_Poll#August_14.2C_1999

Official results from Iowa straw poll http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/08/12/official-results-from-iowa-straw-poll/

Romney almost seemed to acknowledge Bush was being slighted when he said, "Let's not forget at least one thing ... he has kept us safe these last six years." http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070812/OPINION01/708120348/1035/OPINION

Hunter finished ninth, garnering only 1.2 percent, or 174 votes http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/romney-campaign-claims-overwhelming-straw-poll-victory-2007-08-11.html

CA electoral votes http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/us/politics/11vote.html?ex=1344484800&en=6ffde17c9e2e9835&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

GOP Hopefuls Generally Agree on Iraq http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070805/D8QQTI200.html

State Department rips presidential candidates' statements http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=37669&dcn=todaysnews

space aliens ate Tom Tancredo's brain http://www.slate.com/id/2171667/nav/tap3/

Paul’s active service member donations get noticed http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/pauls-active-service-member-donations-get-noticed-2007-08-03.html

dems

Wow! America is cool. We are being admired by Swedes! We don't have to pretend we're Canadians. We elected Barack Obama! http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/11/12/obama_victory/

Barack Obama: The 50 facts you might not know. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/barackobama/3401168/Barack-Obama-The-50-facts-you-might-not-know.html

Endorsements: Anchorage paper picks Obama. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PRESIDENTIAL_ENDORSEMENTS?SITE=CAGRA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

There are no real or fake parts of this country. We are not separated by the pro-America and anti-America parts of this nation -- we all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from. There are patriots who supported this war in Iraq and patriots who opposed it; patriots who believe in Democratic policies and those who believe in Republican policies. The men and women from Florida and all across America who serve on our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America -- they have served the United States of America. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/20/AR2008102001356.html

Barack Obama for President. Mr. Obama has met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change. He has shown a cool head and sound judgment. We believe he has the will and the ability to forge the broad political consensus that is essential to finding solutions to this nation’s problems. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/opinion/24fri1.html?em

Both presidential candidates offer their own brand of hope for the future. I chose to believe in Barack Obama's promise of change. That's why I put an Obama '08 bumper sticker on my car. I saw it as a symbol of hope -- my hope -- that the political process is worth my time and energy. A sticky strip of plastic was my statement that yes, I'm young, but I give a damn. So when someone smeared an "N" on my sticker and slashed through the "O" -- making it NØBAMA '08 -- it felt like a slap in the face. All it took was a purple marker to transform my message of hope into something ugly. Yes, it's just a marker. But as I bent over my bumper, trying in vain to rub off the permanent ink, I got angrier and angrier. I had spent 30 minutes scratching off the remnants of former stickers to make way for my newly crystallized political conscience. When I finally decide to raise my voice, is this how it's silenced? By some anonymous assailant with a marker? http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-barton25-2008oct25,0,1323529.story

Whether you support Barack Obama or John McCain, this Obama video by Ron Howard, Henry Winkler and Andy Griffith is worth viewing because it is one of the most interesting of the cycle, and a must see for nostalgia buffs. Howard, a famed Hollywood director and Griffith recreate their roles as Opie and Andy in the "Andy Griffith Show" to chat about Obama in the voice of their old characters in the black and white grainy look of the day. Howard, donning another toupe, transforms himself into Richie Cunningham from "Happy Days" to talk about Obama with Winkler, once again in a leather jacket as "The Fonz." Stepping back out of character, Howard says he, Griffith and Winkler returned to their television roots to urge support for Obama and "really think through this important election." http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/cc65ed650d

Black voters feeling a mix of 'anticipation, hope, pride -- and fear'. Skepticism, born of centuries of experience, is shaping the mood of the black electorate. Some Barack Obama supporters worry that the candidate will be hurt, defeated by racism, or fraud. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-mood19-2008oct19,0,6882411.story

obamaoldcourthouse625oct19.jpg

“John McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you’re facing that he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people “welfare,” he said. “Well, let me tell you, the only “welfare” in this campaign is John McCain’s plan to give another $200 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest corporations in America -- including $4 billion in tax breaks to big oil companies that ran up record profits under George Bush. That’s who John McCain’s fighting for. I’m fighting for you.” http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/18/1565029.aspx

We’ve been watching Barack Obama for two years now, and in all that time there hasn’t been a moment in which he has publicly lost his self-control. This has been a period of tumult, combat, exhaustion and crisis. And yet there hasn’t been a moment when he has displayed rage, resentment, fear, anxiety, bitterness, tears, ecstasy, self-pity or impulsiveness. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/opinion/17brooks.html?em

For Obama but against abortion. Can a Catholic vote for the pro-choice Obama? Yes. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kmiec17-2008oct17,0,163397.story

ENDORSEMENT. Barack Obama for president. He is the competent, confident leader who represents the aspirations of the United States. We need a leader who demonstrates thoughtful calm and grace under pressure, one not prone to volatile gesture or capricious pronouncement. We need a leader well-grounded in the intellectual and legal foundations of American freedom. Yet we ask that the same person also possess the spark and passion to inspire the best within us: creativity, generosity and a fierce defense of justice and liberty. The Times without hesitation endorses Barack Obama for president. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-endorse19-2008oct19,0,5966124.story

Poll: Obama now leads McCain 50% to 41%. Worry about the economy has helped Obama widen the gap, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll shows. Just 10% of likely voters feel the U.S. is on the right track. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-poll15-2008oct15,0,2945650.story

If your annual salary is less than $112,000, you’d pay less in taxes under Obama’s plan. http://www.parade.com/news/intelligence-report/archive/how-much-would-you-pay-taxes.html

Blue-collar vote could give Ohio to Obama. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081012/news_1n12ohio.html

Riding high, Obama nods to McCain, rallies fans. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20081011-1244-obama.html

Obama rides a wave of bad economic news. Surveys indicate the financial crisis has drowned out other concerns, pulling even longtime Republican voters away from John McCain. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-wave12-2008oct12,0,5375073.story

Younger Military Families Closing Ranks Around Obama. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-tucker/younger-military-families_b_133183.html

A Conservative for Obama. My party has slipped its moorings. It’s time for a true pragmatist to lead the country. http://www.dmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?nm=Core+Pages&type=gen&mod=Core+Pages&tier=3&gid=B33A5C6E2CF04C9596A3EF81822D9F8E

"I can take four more weeks of John McCain's attacks, but the American people can't take four more years of John McCain's Bush policies," Obama said. "Indiana can't afford four more years of the economic theory that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everybody else." Promising a rescue plan for the middle class to go along with the $700-billion bailout for the financial sector, Obama repeated his pledge to scour the federal budget to eliminate unneeded and wasteful projects and to end the war in Iraq "that's costing $10 billion a month while the Iraqi government sits on a $79 billion surplus." Promising to create five million "green jobs over the next decade" by investing in renewable sources of energy, Obama said, "It is time to turn the page on eight years of economic policies that put Wall Street before Main Street but ended up hurting both." http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-campaign9-2008oct09,0,1639656.story

In his memoir, Fugitive Days, Ayers doesn't directly say which Weather Underground bombings he may have had a role in planning or executing, coyly writing, "some details cannot be told." But in a New York Times article on the book, Ayers is quoted as saying, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Coincidently, that article was published on Sept. 11, 2001. Days later, Ayers complained on his Web site that the quote was taken out of context, saying, "My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy." Regardless of his background, it was never a problem for anyone — including Republicans and Chicago's most powerful business leaders — to work with Ayers on Chicago's public schools. In fact, Ayers is widely respected in the field of urban education. "It was never a concern by any of us in the Chicago school reform movement that he had led a fugitive life years earlier," said former Illinois state Republican Rep. Diana Nelson, who worked with both Obama and Ayers over the years. "It's ridiculous. There is no reason at all to smear Barack Obama with this association. It's nonsensical, and it just makes me crazy. It's so silly." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95442902

Obama rejects terror link 'smear'. Barack Obama says his opponents are trying to "distract with smears" US Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has hit back at claims by his Republican rival that he associated with "terrorists". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7653849.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7653843.stm

it is patriotic to pay taxes. it is patriotic to support our government.

Economists view Obama's and McCain's plans. 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, Obama's lead is much more commanding. A survey of academic economists by The Economist finds the majority – at times by overwhelming margins – believe Obama has the superior economic plan, a firmer grasp of economics and will appoint better economic advisers. http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12342127

Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths. conservative critics who accuse Mr. Obama of a stealth radical agenda have asserted that he has misleadingly minimized his relationship with Mr. Ayers, whom the candidate has dismissed as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and “somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know.” A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But 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.” Obama campaign aides said the Ayers relationship had been greatly exaggerated by opponents to smear the candidate. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/us/politics/04ayers.html?ref=us

Barack Obama moral peace pioneer

2 quick polls give Obama edge in debate. A pair of one-night polls gave Barack Obama a clear edge over John McCain in their first presidential debate. Fifty-one percent said Obama, the Democrat, did a better job in Friday night's faceoff while 38 percent preferred the Republican McCain, according to a CNN-Opinion Research Corp. survey of adults. Obama was widely considered more intelligent, likable and in touch with peoples' problems, and by modest margins was seen as the stronger leader and more sincere. Most said it was McCain who spent more time attacking his opponent. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20080927-1020-presidentialdebate-polls.html

dems, archived September 27, 2008

Reagan's playbook could help Obama out. From the very start of the 2008 presidential campaign, it has been the Republican candidates who have tried to emulate the example of their political hero, Ronald Reagan. But this week it is a Democrat who stands to gain the most by taking a page from Reagan's playbook. On Friday, Sen. Barack Obama confronts possibly the biggest test of the campaign when he faces off against the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, at a debate in Oxford, Miss. If he does what he needs to do, Obama could emerge from that clash in a commanding position for the remaining days of the campaign. That is what Reagan did in his only debate with President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 campaign. It was in that debate that the former California governor won the election and made possible the landslide he would enjoy only a week later. Before that showdown in Cleveland, Reagan was very much in the same position as Obama is today. Like Obama, he was running as the change agent at a time of widespread national discontent with the status quo. Like Obama, he was running against a party in control of the White House, a party presiding over an economy in crisis while seemingly bogged down in an intractable situation overseas. And most critically, he, like Obama, had been unable to close the sale. Despite everything in his favor, Reagan had been unable to pull away from Carter in the polls. Too many voters thought Reagan was a risky choice; too many believed he did not have enough experience to be president; too many feared his judgment in coping with America's enemies in a dangerous world. All this raised the stakes for the Cleveland debate on Oct. 28. Both candidates signaled their strategies in the first answers. In the opening moment, Reagan stressed his commitment to “peace,” repeating the word five times in his first answer. As expected, he promised to be firm with the Soviet Union. But now he was stressing that he also would be reasonable with the Soviets. Carter, under fire for being soft, promised “strength” three times in his first answer and seven times overall, tossing in “strong” five times and “firm” once. But this was to be Reagan's night. Even before he got to his closing statement, Reagan had accomplished what he needed to do. But in that closing statement, he effectively framed the election in a way fatal to Carter, imploring voters to “ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? . . . Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that . . . we're as strong as we were four years ago?” Carter's fate was sealed. A slight Reagan lead in the polls ballooned to an almost 10-point win. Twenty-eight years later, the analogy is not perfect. Obama's opponent, McCain, is not the incumbent. And unlike Carter, he is also trying to run as a change agent. But the most important comparison is valid. The country wants change. Just as much as they wanted to toss out Carter's Democrats in 1980, voters today want to punish McCain's Republicans. They will not do so until the largely untested Obama eases concerns about his readiness for the Oval Office. Obama must use this first debate – and the two others to come – to cross that threshold so that voters can accept him as of presidential timber. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080921/news_1n21condon.html

Obama Campaign Reveals Science Advisors. http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/obama-campaign.html

Record donations month for Obama. US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama raised $66m (£37m) in August, making it his best month in terms of election fundraising. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7615449.stm

Barack Obama sits down with Bill O'Reilly. In a much-anticipated interview with conservative nemesis Bill O'Reilly, Sen. Barack Obama said Thursday that the troop surge in Iraq had "succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated" and "beyond our wildest dreams." Obama emphasized that he recognized the threat of Islamic terrorists -- a view his opponents have questioned -- and would not hesitate to use military force when needed. "Al Qaeda, the Taliban, a whole host of networks that are bent on attacking America who have a distorted ideology, who have perverted the faith of Islam. And so we have to go after them," he said. When one of his guests said Obama was not a "terror warrior," O'Reilly didn't disagree. But he added: "I looked at him eye to eye. And he is not a wimp. He is not a wimpy guy." "I think history will show [Iraq] is the wrong battlefield, and I think that you were perspicacious in your original assessment of the battlefield," the host complimented Obama. "I think you were desperately wrong on the surge, and I think you should admit it to the nation." http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-oreilly5-2008sep05,0,3233211.story

Obama's Acceptance, Annotated. SLATE WRITERS TAKE A HIGHLIGHTER TO OBAMA'S SPEECH AND TELL YOU WHAT IT REALLY MEANS. http://www.slate.com/id/2198855/

Bringing Hope and Change to NASA. "Make this space program a vehicle for your hopes and your dreams and if you are willing to work for it and fight for it if you are willing to go into the trenches and to invite your colleagues to join us, then I believe that this time will finally be different from all of the rest and we can finally create a NASA beyond the petty politics of the past, we can finally create the NASA of our dreams." http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/08/bringing-hope-a.html

Dems' Godly God-Fest Ends with Prayer by Former Christian Coalition Leader. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/96966/dems%27_godly_god-fest_ends_with_prayer_by_former_christian_coalition_leader/#more

Kucinich gets standing ovation at convention. Especially popular was a continuing theme in Kucinich's speech -- a call, actually: "Wake up, America." "Wake up, America. The insurance companies took over health care... Wake up, America. The speculators took over Wall Street." Kucinich said, the applause growing with each repetition. "Wake up, America. They want to take your Social Security. Wake up, America. Multinational corporations took over our trade policies, factories are closing, good paying jobs lost. Wake up, America. We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more... Wake up, America. Weapons contractors want more." http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/26/kucinich/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv0smG7ptcM

Biden's jokes about wife Jill? OK with Pelosi. Also, late-night comics duck Obama jokes to bash McCain, Clinton, radical Ayres-Obama papers unsealed and don't follow David Gergen's advice. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ticket24-2008aug24,0,4661245.story

Barack Obama's campaign is linking John McCain to the infamous Jack Abramoff scandal that ended several Republicans' political careers three years ago in a new campaign ad hitting Georgia airwaves Wednesday. The 30-second spot is the Obama campaign’s second negative ad in the past 24 hours. It attacks the Arizona senator for his association with former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed, one of the Republicans implicated in the scandal. The ad also seems to suggest McCain didn't call Reed to testify before a Senate panel he chaired in return for political favors. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/20/obama-camp-links-mccain-to-abramoff-scandal/

Are we now officially a Christian nation? I marvel at Barack Obama's courage going into the lion's den of evangelical Saddleback Church, where the membership skews Republican. I truly believe his kind of leadership will be crucial in moving the country forward after the polarizing Bush administration. McCain occasionally does semi-courageous political jaunts – he went on an American poverty tour this spring, but when nobody was looking, at the height of the Obama-Clinton race, and (more to his credit) he visited the NAACP last month. But Obama's move was much bolder: Nationally televised, prime time (OK, on a Saturday), and set up as the town hall he won't have with McCain. I think he did reasonably well, though not overwhelmingly so. I loved his saying he wouldn't have appointed Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court, and his firm support of choice and gay civil unions. He seemed very comfortable talking about his Christian faith. On the other hand, that bothered me a little bit too. I'm not sure why Obama voluntarily sat down for a nationally televised conversation about his private religious faith with a relatively conservative Christian leader, as though that's a reasonable station of the cross, so to speak, for a major American presidential candidate. There's no doubt Rick Warren's congregation has done good things on social justice issues, especially AIDS, but Warren has made no secret of his extreme views on abortion and gay rights (as well as his support for the Iraq war.) Obama visiting the church, speaking there? Smart politics. Attending a nationally televised forum, almost as big deal as a debate, at such a church? I think that was wrong. http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/08/17/saddleback/

How the Democrats Can Blow It ... in Six Easy Steps. A blueprint for losing the most winnable presidential election in American history. http://www.alternet.org/election08/94843/how_the_democrats_can_blow_it_..._in_six_easy_steps/?page=1

The Matthew 25 Network is a community of Christians – Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, and Evangelical – inspired by the Gospel mandate to put our faith into action to care for our neighbor, especially the most vulnerable. The election of our public officials, and the politics they stand for, are a reflection of our core values. We believe that those elected to public office carry an important trust, as their decisions have a profound impact on our nation and our world. We believe that people of faith should actively participate in the political process as an important avenue for social change. We are called by our faith to engage in the world as it is, while we seek after and hope for God’s Kingdom. Therefore, while no elected official will be without flaw, we come together as individuals to support candidates for public office who share the values of the Matthew 25 Network: promoting life with dignity, caring for the least of these, strengthening and supporting families, stewardship of God’s Creation, working for peace and justice at home and abroad, and promoting the common good. http://matthew25.org/index.htm

John Edwards fundraiser Baron in deep in Rielle Hunter affair. Finance chief Fred Baron had long ties to lawyers for Rielle Hunter and Andrew Young, the man who says he fathered her child. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-edwards16-2008aug16,0,1172903.story

Just as she met McInerney, Hunter, in 2006, met Edwards in a New York bar. While he may have been smitten with her in the obvious ways, she was on a messianic mission. Jonathan Darman, a Newsweek reporter, who befriended Hunter while he was covering Edwards, wrote that Edwards was Hunter's latest enlightenment project. "Edwards, she said, was an old soul who had barely tapped into any of his potential." He had the power to "change the world." If Edwards could only tap into his heart more, Hunter believed he could be a leader on par with Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. Hunter set up a video production company and received $100,000 from Edwards' campaign to film a series of short Web films about him. The candid movies were supposed to present John Edwards uncut -- a loose, spontaneous version of the candidate. In the first "Webisode," Edwards jokes and lounges on a plane as he prepares a speech. "I've come to the personal conclusion that I actually want the country to see who I am, who I really am," Edwards said. "But I don't know what the result of that will be." Hunter, who once sought the media spotlight like a moth does a flame, has fluttered into the shadows since the scandal broke. Her phone number is unlisted and e-mail sent to her personal address bounces back. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/16/rielle_hunter/

McCain charged that Obama “would lose a war to win an election.” Obama's policies would have lost the Iraq war, but McCain can't prove they were politically motivated. McCain charged that during Obama's trip to Europe, he chose to play basketball rather than visit wounded troops, whereas the circumstances of Obama's choice are actually complicated and murky. Meantime, Obama falsely charged that McCain wanted to conduct a “100 years war” in Iraq and that Republicans would use race as an issue against him, which McCain has never done. The fact is that Obama's fitness to be chief executive and commander in chief is probably the major question in the minds of swing voters – and McCain has every right to reinforce their doubts. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080815/news_lz1e15kondrac.html

Lawyers' ties to Edwards suggest more extensive cover-up of affair. The lawyers are linked through Fred Baron, a wealthy Dallas lawyer and former finance chairman for the Edwards campaign who was a key player in the campaign's response to the scandal. Gordon has worked with Baron on class-action personal injury cases, and Marple helped defend a lawsuit brought against both men and their law firms by an asbestos manufacturer. After initially saying that he did not know how the lawyers were chosen to represent Hunter and Young, Baron acknowledged that he might have played a role. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080815/news_1n15edwards.html

Pelosi's appearance Tuesday night was interrupted just once by a protester who stood silently in the aisle holding a large sign that read: Impeachment. He was immediately ushered out of the auditorium, which was filled to capacity with about 850 of Pelosi's fans, most of whom had purchased a copy of her book. As the protester was being taken away, Pelosi said, "Thank you for your passion and your intellect on this question." Pelosi made no effort, however, to address the protesters' questions or explain why a recent Rasmussen Reports poll found only nine percent of voters believe Congress is doing a good job, a lower approval rating than Bush's. The presentation, which featured a conversation between Pelosi and Book Passage President Elaine Petrocelli, allowed for no direct questions from the audience. http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=12078

A trio of Republicans back Obama. McCain Response Stresses History Of Bipartisanship. A trio of Republicans have defected from their party's likely presidential nominee and kicked off an effort to garner support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. The group, called Republicans for Obama, is led by two moderate Republicans -- James Leach, a former U.S. representative from Iowa, and Lincoln Chafee, a former U.S. senator from Rhode Island -- along with Rita Hauser, a prominent fund-raiser for President George W. Bush. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121859149525535519.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Stars and Stripes' interview with Sen. Barack Obama. http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=56694

New Study Shows Media Bias Against Obama. http://www.utne.com/2008-07-29/Media/New-Study-Shows-Media-Bias-Against-Obama.aspx?blogid=34

The campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama is building an organizational juggernaut here. With fewer than 90 days before the election, the upstarts are building on the impressive grass-roots operation they built for Nevada’s early presidential caucus, and it is paying dividends. “His on-the-ground organization looks real good. McCain’s is very quiet up here. If I’m a Republican strategist, it would scare me,” said Eric Herzik, a University of Nevada, Reno, political scientist and a registered Republican. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/aug/10/obama-builds-booming-nevada-force/

Gauging the furor over Obama's tire pressure remark. Sen. John McCain's campaign mocked Sen. Barack Obama's suggestion by producing pocket tire pressure gauges labeled “Obama’s Energy Plan." http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-neil8-2008aug08,0,7301895.story

Michelle Obama's military strategy. Talking to Norfolk servicemen's wives, the potential first lady hopes to prove her empathy -- and the corrosiveness of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- in a battleground state's most contested area. http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/08/08/michelle_obama/

I'm back on it like I just signed my record deal Yeah the best is here, the Bentley Coup paint is dripping wet, it got sex appeal Never should have hated You never should've doubted him With a slot in the president's iPod Obama shattered 'em

Said I handled his biz and I'm one of his favorite rappers Well give Luda a special pardon if I'm ever in the slammer Better yet put him in office, make me your vice president Hillary hated on you, so that bitch is irrelevant

Jesse talking slick and apologizing for what? If you said it then you meant it how you want it have a gut! And all you other politicians trying to hate on my man, Watch us win a majority vote in every state on my man

You can't stop what's bout to happen, we bout to make history The first black president is destined and it's meant to be The threats ain't fazing us, the nooses or the jokes So get off your ass, black people, it's time to get out and vote!

Paint the White House black and I'm sure that's got 'em terrified McCain don't belong in any chair unless he's paralyzed Yeah I said it cause Bush is mentally handicapped

Ball up all of his speeches and I throw 'em like candy wrap 'cause what you talking I hear nothing even relevant And you the worst of all 43 presidents

Get out and vote or the end will be near The world is ready for change because Obama is here! 'cause Obama is here The world is ready for change because Obama is here! http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/04/race.usa

Would Obama prosecute the Bush administration for torture? Obama's brain trust wants to form a commission on torture and call Bush officials as witnesses, but put off prosecutions -- if any -- till a second term. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/04/obama/

Democrats say they'll make a run at Bilbray. Republicans lost 30 House seats two years ago, and political handicappers say they could easily lose 10 to 20 more as economic anxieties rise in inverse proportion to President Bush's plunging popularity. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has more than seven times as much money in the bank as its Republican counterpart, and Democrats have less than half as many vulnerable seats to defend. Democrats appear to have such an upper hand that they are talking about targeting districts they normally wouldn't look twice at, including Republican Brian Bilbray's 50th District in San Diego County. “The only question is how many seats the Republicans are going to lose,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College. “If they're really, really lucky, it will be single digits or low double digits in the House and maybe three or four in the Senate.” http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080803/news_1n3congress.html

Obama's popularity as anti-Bush is telling. His reception overseas indicates that world leaders are already looking beyond the current administration and positioning themselves for a new U.S. president. Bolton says Obama is from another planet; yeah, can we all got there? http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush26-2008jul26,0,3038926.story

McCain camp: Obama shortchanged injured troops. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080726/D925R9J01.html

And, as millions of Americans who watched the primary campaign learned, Obama is invariably articulate and well-spoken. There would be no verbal gaffes. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080724/news_lz1e24broder.html

A plan to end America's role in Iraq. By Barack Obama. As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq. In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Sen. McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender. It's not going to work this time. It's time to end this war. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080715/news_lz1e15obama.html

Poll: Some Clinton supporters still not embracing Obama. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/04/clinton.poll/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Rove, critics try to pin 'arrogant' label on Obama. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/26/obama.rove/index.html?iref=werecommend

Focus On Fruitcake: Dr. Dobson’s Half-Baked Recipe For Theocracy. Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson is at it again. Dobson grabbed newspaper headlines this morning with an attack on U.S. Sen. Barack Obama. According to Dobson, Obama holds a “fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution.” Dobson’s salvo on Obama is based on a 2006 speech the Illinois senator gave to a group of moderate evangelicals. During the speech, Obama pointed out that in the United States, laws must have a secular basis. People can oppose abortion, he noted, but they should not expect the government to ban the procedure just because some people say the Bible calls for that. http://blog.au.org/2008/06/24/focus-on-fruitcake-dr-dobsons-halfbaked-recipe-for-theocracy/

Davis' downplays suggested Obama terrorism link. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/rep.-daviss-office-downplays-suggested-obama-link-to-terrorism-2008-06-13.html

Is Barack Obama Too Naive To Be President? NOT IN THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD. And so it's worth taking a look at what Obama actually said during that July 23 debate. Here is his full reply: I would [be willing to meet with those leaders], and the reason is this: The notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them—which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration—is ridiculous. … [Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy talked with Soviet leaders because] they understood that we may not trust them, and they may pose an extraordinary threat to us, but we have the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward. Obama added, referring to the countries that the questioner listed, "It is a disgrace that we have not spoken with them." For instance, he said, we need to talk with Iran and Syria, if only about Iraq, "because if Iraq collapses, they're going to have responsibilities." I would submit there is nothing wrong with any of this. Obama might have done well to focus more intently, at the time, on the phrase "without preconditions"—to parse its meaning and to distinguish the lack of preconditions from the lack of preparations—but, taken in full, and in the context of the question, his reply was the acme of common sense. http://www.slate.com/id/2192940

John Edwards endorses Barack Obama. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-campaign15-2008may15,0,6604275.story

The Worst Thing I've Heard Obama Say. Here's how a high-school teacher in Fairfield, Ill., put it: "I used to be a Democrat, and I'm still very much independent. I voted for Clinton [in '92 and '96]. I'm religious but not a fanatic; I see a lot of gray. My mother has Alzheimer's, so I'm for stem-cell research, and I'm not against people's right to an abortion. But Kerry "just struck me as arrogant, while Bush inspired "the feeling that this was a more open person who would not be "I'm important and you're not.' And yes, Fox News exists to whip up such sentiments, but it only works when Democrats foolishly hand them fresh material. I don't for a second doubt that Obama genuinely cares about the people he just put down -- or question whether it's his party's policies that would help low-income Americans more. Which makes this Democratic penchant for cultural condescension all the more baffling and inexcusable. Sure, many Americans in places like my hometown are angry and they do "cling to guns and God, though not in that order. It's connecting the two that's belittling in the extreme to the "average white person—to cite a phrase I chose to overlook at the time. Now, if Obama is sticking by the essence of what he said out of stubbornness or arrogance, that's one kind of problem. But if he really doesn't see why this could be a game-changer, that's worse. And though I've been pretty unrelievedly positive about the guy, it's the first thing he's said that's made me question his ability to win. http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/archive/2008/04/13/the-worst-thing-i-ve-heard-obama-say.aspx

It's Obama, stupid: Carter and Gore to end Clinton bid. DEMOCRAT grandees Jimmy Carter and Al Gore are being lined-up to deliver the coup de grâce to Hillary Clinton and end her campaign to become president. Falling poll numbers and a string of high-profile blunders have convinced party elders that she must now bow out of the primary race. Former president Carter and former vice-president Gore have already held high-level discussions about delivering the message that she must stand down for the good of the Democrats. "They're in discussions," a source close to Carter told Scotland on Sunday. "Carter has been talking to Gore. They will act, possibly together, or in sequence." An appeal by both men for Democrats to unite behind Clinton's rival, Barack Obama, would have a powerful effect, and insiders say it is a question of when, rather than if, they act. http://news.scotsman.com/world/It39s-Obama-stupid-Carter-and.3976738.jp

John Cleese: I'll write for Barack Obama. COMEDIAN John Cleese has revealed plans for a late career change – writing speeches for "brilliant" presidential hopeful Barack Obama. The Monty Python star, who lives in California, said his comic touches could be a crucial factor in getting the Democratic presidential candidate to the White House. http://news.scotsman.com/world/John-Cleese-I39ll-write-for.3958928.jp

Anti-war campaigners have to change electoral tactics. Neither Clinton nor Obama has a real plan to end the occupation of Iraq, but they could be forced to change position. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/26/antiwar.iraq

Ten years on, and husband's sex scandal returns to haunt Hillary. Release of White House papers shows first lady was at home on seven occasions when the president had sex with Monica Lewinsky. http://news.scotsman.com/world/Ten-years-on-and-husband39s.3902720.jp

State Department fires two contract employees for looking at Obama's passport fileFrom the Associated PressMarch 21, 2008A spokesman for Senator Barack Obama's campaign says a breach of Obama's passport files is "an outrageous breach of security and privacy."A State Department spokesman says two contract employees have been fired and a third disciplined for inappropriately looking at the passport file. http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=39579&dcn=todaysnews

A Reagan Revolution in reverse? The increasing vitriol of the Democratic presidential WrestleMania shouldn't distract from the opportunity before progressives. The election this year has the potential to be not simply a change election but a sea-change election, one that marks the end of the conservative era that has dominated our politics for nearly three decades. It could be the progressive equivalent of the conservative triumph of 1980. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080316/news_mz1e16borosa.html

Morning in America: A Letter From Feminists on the Election. It was a casual gathering, but one that settled down to business quickly. We were all progressives but diverse nonetheless. We differed in our opinions of whether to vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama - our goal was not an endorsement. Rather, the concern that united us all was the "race-gender split" playing out nationally, in which the one is relentlessly pitted against the other. We did not want to see a repeat of the ugly history of the nineteenth century, when the failure of the women's movement to bring about universal adult suffrage metastasized into racial resentment and rift that weakened feminism throughout much of the twentieth century. How, we wondered, did a historic breakthrough moment for which we have all longed and worked hard, suddenly risk becoming marred by having to choose between "race cards" and "gender cards"? By petty competitiveness about who endures more slings and arrows? By media depictions of white women as the sole inheritors of the feminist movement and black men as the sole beneficiaries of the civil rights movement? By renderings of black women as having to split themselves right down the center with Solomon's sword in order to vote for either candidate? What happened, we wondered, to the last four decades of discussion about tokenism and multiple identities and the complex intersections of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class? http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030108G.shtml

McCain mocks Obama's Iraq comments. "So I have some news for John McCain," he added, saying there was no al-Qaida presence in Iraq until President Bush invaded the country. Noting that McCain likes to tell audiences that he'd follow Osama bin Laden to the "gates of hell" to catch him, Obama taunted: "All he (McCain) has done is to follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080227/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_iraq_8

What patriotism means. Considering the concept of love of country. http://www.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/what_patriotism_means/6690/

Obama fights back on questions about his patriotism. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/24/obama.patriotism/index.html

Clinton, Obama steal Bush’s final show. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/clinton-obama-steal-bushs-final-show-2008-01-29.html

The full effect of Barack Obama’s transcendent victory speech in South Carolina has yet to be felt, but his historically stirring and inspirational words have already generated praise from around the country and even across the political aisle. Whether this speech proves to be the turning point in this election, we don’t know. What we do know is that Obama has made Hillary Clinton’s contention that words don’t matter seem so very small and suspect. http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20080126_yes_we_can/

Grassroots Reseeded: Suites vs. Streets In the end, trust and motivation matter. No amount of sweet "we" talk and Internet tools can patch up a party that's trampling on its partners or cowering when it has promised to stand tall. "We saw what happened in 2006. Electing a Democratic majority wasn't enough," says Tim Carpenter of Progressive Democrats of America. If Democrats want to get their approval ratings up enough to inspire people to sweat for them in 2008, they've got to be willing to fight the battles their voters want fought, Carpenter believes. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080211/flanders

NYT EDITORIAL Primary Choices: Hillary Clinton http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25fri1.html

This year, the attacks are already starting. Some of you may have heard about the disgusting lies about Barack Obama that are being circulated by email. These attacks smear Barack's Christian faith and deep patriotism, and they distort his record of more than two decades of public service. They are nothing short of "Swiftboat" style anonymous attacks. http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/factcheckactioncenter/

Democratic Donor Strike Against DSCC and DCCC http://www.democrats.com/donor-strike-2007

Biggest contractors support Clinton, other Democrats, in 2008 race http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=38875&dcn=todaysnews

SMART union endorses Clinton http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/smart-union-endorses-clinton-2007-11-17.html

Elizabeth Kucinich Still Speaking With Health Hucksters in Sedona http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2007/10/13/raw-spirit-kucinich-just-before/

Group wants Gore on Michigan ballot http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070924/UPDATE/709240453/1020

A DIVISION of the Democratic Party is a MUST for the 70% MAJORITY Population To Be Represented in U.S. Government http://www.blogforamerica.com/view/22300

Slowly, Clinton Shifts on War, Quieting Foes http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/04/us/politics/04clinton.html?hp

independents

Ralph Nader's announcement that he is running for president again in 2008 has provided us with perhaps the least surprising surprise of the campaign so far. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7261879.stm

http://www.votenader.org/index.html

Nader announces new run for president. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_nader.html?source=mypi

Dal LaMagna http://www.lamagnaforpresident.com/

2006 November Elections

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1206/120506op.htm

http://www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id=5086

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061204/lipsyte

js.jpg

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061122/ap_on_el_ho/unresolved_races

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/11/21/cheat_sheet/index.html

Fascist calls Dems Weimar Republic http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/11/from_champs_to_chumps.html

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/11/09/news/top_stories/1_02_5411_8_06.txt

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/08/AR2006110802477.html

"Of course, the goal is to make the adjustments that are necessary, but to keep very firmly in mind the goal, which is to get the oil." Rice http://www.ajc.com/search/content/opinion/stories/2006/11/05/edsuwoot1105.html

Grossmont and Cuyamaca Board of Trustees Election http://www.citizens4educationalresponsibility.org/index.html

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/288961_good17.html

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061014/news_lz1ed14top.html

Activists

pro peace

Cracking Code Pink. Why does the peace movement have to dress and act like an irritating children's birthday party? "That's right," said Benjamin. "Without the tiaras, you wouldn't be here. You know: 'If it bleeds it leads.' Code Pink is a manifestation of crisis, of a lack of democratic vehicles through which we can express ourselves. We're a manifestation of a broken system. You might not like the way we manifest it, but we'd like people to reflect on how broken the system is." I was beginning to feel a bit like a big-mouth bass: Lured by a bright pink artificial fly, doing the hula on the surface. It struck me how necessary pink tiaras were in the informational black hole that enables the inscrutable machinations of Washington to move forward without public scrutiny. A successful movement depends on a media that will grant it public legitimacy. Without it, the peace movement is left to masochistic zealots like Benjamin and Murphy: They crash Congress every day and destroy their own dignity for just the tiniest effect -- a nearly inaudible yelp from the dust speck of peaceful Whoville. I came away from the Code Pink house believing that guerrilla theater is more critical than ever. For activists, Benjamin and Murphy represent the thin pink line separating the American peace movement from muteness, invisibility and depression unto disbandment. "We are committed to being a direct action movement," said Benjamin. "We shed light through theater, through disruptions. We're going to keep doing that as long as it serves." Code Pink may have lost a little heart, temporarily, but the ladies haven't lost their way, or their flair: I was touched that Benjamin went out of her way to compliment my fishnet stockings. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/17/code_pink/index.html

Aging hippie still dislikes BUSH http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/feature/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003820107

At a Roadside Vigil, an Iconic Voice of Protest. Pete Seeger pulled his black Toyota Highlander into the Staples parking lot here and plucked some signs from the back seat, including one with “Peace” spray-painted in large orange letters. With that, he slung his banjo over his shoulder like an old musket and marched toward the intersection of Route 9, a bustling six-lane thoroughfare, and 9D, the “Hudson Valley P.O.W.-M.I.A. Memorial Highway.” for the last four years, most Saturdays he has been keeping his vigil in Wappingers Falls, usually not recognized by the hundreds of drivers who whiz by. It is a long road from 1969, when to protest the Vietnam War he sang John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” at the foot of the Washington Monument. “After two minutes, thousands were singing,” he recalled. “After three minutes, four minutes, a hundred thousand were singing. At the end of eight minutes, all five hundred thousand were singing.” These days, fewer than a dozen protesters usually participate, while nearly as many who support the war in Iraq hold a counterdemonstration across Route 9. Mr. Seeger, a political activist who has traveled the world, rarely ventures farther than the few miles from here to his home in Beacon, N.Y. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/nyregion/22seeger.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=pete+seeger&st=nyt&oref=slogin

Anti-war veterans group banned from Bremerton parade. http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_051308WAB_vets_parade_KS.f9c71fa6.html

REGION: Anti-war activist speaks at Cal State San Marcos. Cindy Sheehan recalls her journey as peace activist. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/04/18/news/sandiego/8ef701f0b569b30c8825742f0019c884.txt

Cheney visit: Two demonstrators make show of arrests. Two people arrested Friday spoke proudly of their “civil disobedience” and their group’s demonstration against the Grand Junction visit of Vice President Dick Cheney. After Cheney’s limousine passed, Rice, Richards and others marched toward Beaver Lodge Lane. Rice and Richards sat down in the middle of the street with a peace sign. After being moved aside by police, they attempted to resume their spot in the middle of the road, still shouting when police blocked their path. “They told us to get back on the sidewalk and they actually tried to talk us out of arrest and we said, ‘No, this is civil disobedience and we are not going to go anywhere,’ ” Rice said. “We were tossed and put into a squad car.” They were taken to police headquarters and each given a ticket for $18.60. “I think it was definitely worth it, because we need to get our voices out there. We need to let them know that we are not OK with Dick Cheney in our town,” Rice said. Rice said she would probably frame her citation after sending in the $18.60 fine. “It was pretty fun,” Richards said. http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/04/11/041208_1B_veep_protesters.html?imw=Y

Time to Break the Silence. on April 4th, King delivered his famous antiwar sermon at Riverside Church in New York City.

Today we are again mired in an intractable and monstrous war overseas. It is a moment to listen to Dr. King's words about the broader casualties of another war--casualties that go beyond the carnage of battle to the devastating costs of war at home--the damage to social justice and racial equality, and the unbearable cost to free speech and dissent.

In these few excerpts from his remarkable speech, Dr. King painted a picture of a society that looks remarkably, starkly, like the one we live in today.

"....This confused war has played havoc with our domestic destinies, despite feeble protestations to the contrary. And promises of Great Society have been shut down on the battlefields of Vietnam in pursuit of this widened war which has narrowed domestic welfare programs, making the poor white and Negro bear the heaviest burdens at the front and at home. While the anti-poverty program is cautiously initiated, zealously supervised and evaluated for immediate results, billions are liberally expended for this ill-considered war. Recently revealed mis-estimates of the war budget amount to $10 billion for the single year. This error alone is more than five times the amount committed to antipoverty programs. The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures we will lose in our decaying cities. The bombs in Vietnam explode at home. They destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America. If we reversed investments and gave the armed forces the anti-poverty budget, the generals could be forgiven if they walked off the battlefield in disgust."

"....At this moment in history, it is irrefutable that our world prestige is pathetically frail. Our war policy excites pronounced contempt and aversion virtually everywhere. Even when some national governments, for reasons of economic and diplomatic interest do not condemn us, their people in surprising measure have made clear they do not share the official policy. We are isolated in our false values. In a world demanding social and economic justice, we must undergo a vigorous reordering of our national priorities.."

" All of this reveals that our nation has not yet used its vast resources of power to end the long night of poverty, racism, and man's inhumanity to man. Enlarged power means enlarged peril. That is not concomitant growth of the soul. Genuine power is the right use of strength. If our nation's strength is not used responsibly and with restraint, it will be following Lord Acton's dictum, power that tends to corrupt and power that corrupts, an absolute power that corrupts absolutely. Our arrogance can be our doom. It can bring the curtains down on our national drama. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. We are challenged in these turbulent days to use our power to speed up the day when every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."

"I do not wish to minimize the complexity of the problems that need to be faced in achieving disarmament and peace. But I think it is a fact that we shall not have the will, the courage, and the insight to deal with such matters unless in this field we are prepared to undergo a spiritual and mental reevaluation, a change of focus which will enable us to see that the things which seem most real and powerful are, indeed, now unreal and have come under the sentence of death. We need to make a supreme effort to generate the readiness, indeed, the eagerness, to enter into the new world which is now possible. We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say 'We must not wage war.' It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but on the positive affirmation of peace....In short, we must shift the arms race into a peace race"

"...Let me say, finally, that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America, and there can be no great disappointment when there is no great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, extreme materialism and militarism..."

"Those of us who love peace must organize as effectively as the war hawks. As they spread the propaganda of war, we must spread the propaganda of peace. We must combine the fervor of the civil rights movement with the peace movement. We must demonstrate, teach and preach until the very foundations of our nation are shaken. We must work unceasingly to lift this nation that we love to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness."

"...There is an element of urgency in our re-directing American power. We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now....." http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=305672

L.A. man criticizes media on NYC blast. Officials said the lengthy anti-war letters were sent to as many as 100 members of Congress. Karnes said he included the photo in the hope that it might grab their attention and get more people to actually read the 64-page pamphlet and 20-page “memo” he had included. “The only ones to get it right were the law enforcement personnel who read what I actually wrote,” Karnes said of his intentions. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080316/news_1n16cleared.html

Iraq war critic who was U.S. colonel to speak at UT. Contrarian media pundits, take heed: Controversial peace activist Mary Ann Wright has a fire-tested resume that can withstand an on-air attack. http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080310/NEWS21/803100327/0/NEWS01 http://media.www.independentcollegian.com/media/storage/paper678/news/2008/03/13/News/Retired.Colonel.Speaks.Out.Against.Iraq.War-3267678.shtml

Thoughts of an Ex-Marine Officer Turned Peace Activist. By Camillo "Mac" Bica http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031408K.shtml

"Someone Has To Start Wondering What the F Is Going On." The Wire co-creator Ed Burns talks about failure in the drug war, public education, the war in Iraq, and police strategies. Burns: Just knowing the military was a big asset for me in helping to shape the series. The thing about Iraq is that it is the same scenario as Vietnam. There’s an insurgency that’s taken hold in the population, and once that happens, you might as well leave. There’s nothing you can do. And Iraq is getting ready to explode on us. Actually, it’s already exploded on us, but it’s going to continue to explode on us and we’re going to eventually be forced out. Or we’ll retire to these super bases and just try to drain the country of its oil. But we will never win the hearts and minds of those people. Fundamentally that was what we set out to do, to bring democracy to that country. The same thing happened in Vietnam. These insurgencies are national movements. These people don’t want us in their country. And once that happens, once that mindset’s there, you know you’re in trouble. What we’re doing now is paying the Sunnis not to kill us. That only lasts for so long. reason: How would you describe your personal politics? Burns: Liberal. Liberal to radical. I’m pretty fed up with what’s going on. http://www.reason.com/news/show/125309.html

Why I Called Fox News "Propaganda" While Live on Fox News. I'd love to keep in touch with all of you. My sites are www.leecamp.net and www.YouTube.com/LeeCamp and my email is http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/78148/#more

Daniel Ellsberg: In some ways, 'I'm as pessimistic as I've ever been' http://www.minnpost.com/stories/2008/02/21/952/qa_with_whistle-blower_daniel_ellsberg_in_some_ways_im_as_pessimistic_as_ive_ever_been

Berkeley City Council moderates anti-Marine position. http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/13/berkeley.marines/index.html

Pioneering Blackwater Protesters Given Secret Trial and Criminal Conviction. http://www.alternet.org/rights/75244/

"Puppies for Peace" was my favorite hand-scrawled sign among those held by the 100-150 antiwar protesters who marched through downtown Nashville Saturday. It was carried by a man with a dog on a leash. The dog's true feelings about the Iraq war are unknown - the dog wasn't carrying a sign. http://billhobbs.com/2007/03/no_more_noble_missions.html

Concepcion Picciotto (1945? - ), also known as Conchita or Connie, has lived in Lafayette Square on the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington, D.C., across from the White House since August 1, 1981 in protest of nuclear arms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepcion_Picciotto

Norman David Mayer (March 31, 1916 – December 9, 1982) was an American anti-nuclear weapons activist who was shot and killed by the United States Park Police after threatening to blow up the Washington Monument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mayer

imagine peace - war is over http://www.imaginepeace.com/news.html

Protesters could disrupt Rose Parade http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071229/ap_on_re_us/rose_parade_2;_ylt=AtpK7MRwODIogEXXUWFRvWwE1vAI

An "Enduring" Relationship for Security and Enduring an Occupation for Oil. By Ann Wright http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120507K.shtml

Raging Grannies honk off Ferndale. Peace activists fight city over right to urge sympathetic drivers to toot horns http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071203/METRO02/712030396

Whatever Happened to 'We the People'? http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112407F.shtml

Bereaved mom soldiers on. Sheehan at Cobo: Don't become inured to war http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007711190409

High school students march against Iraq war, Several hundred participate http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/340003_peace17.html

War protesters make last stand. Final truckloads of equipment leave Port of Olympia http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/339949_protest16.html

After a week of unrest, the scene in and around the Port of Olympia was quiet Wednesday as police and demonstrators criticized the other side's conduct during the previous night's protest, which led to 43 arrests. http://www.theolympian.com/news/story/272102.html

At the port: What happened and what did not happen http://www.theolympian.com/news/story/272105.html

Seattle lawyers protest jailing of counterparts in Pakistan. Military ruler arrested dissenting court officers http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/339756_lawyers15.html

The "War on Terror" brought to you by Corporate America http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_timothy__071105_the__22war_on_terror_22_.htm

Chicago H.S. Students Face Expulsion Following Peace Sit-in http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_rob_kall_071105_chicago_h_s__student.htm

A ‘Paper Coup,’ and Blackwater Eyes Midtown Manhattan, by Naomi Wolf http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/05/5018/

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html

America, Land of Fear? By John Cory http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101707R.shtml

LANCASTER, Pa. - It was almost the smell of revolution in the air Tuesday night. http://local.lancasteronline.com/4/210286

Vandals smash hillside crosses http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_6986655

NYC 070925 http://www.flickr.com/photos/45638810@N00/sets/72157602162849009/

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=protest%20grandparents&w=90702310%40N00&m=tags

Anti-Bush protesters arrested near UN http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070926/ap_on_re_us/bush_protest_4

Young people against the war http://youtube.com/watch?v=I56WPeSBAx0

NY Times says discounting MoveOn ad was 'mistake' http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070924/UPDATE/709240420/1020

Democrats Throw Their Base Under the Bus; Cave to Wing-Nuts on MoveOn Resolution http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/63160/

Does it matter if we protest? http://www.socialistworker.org/2007-2/645/645_05_Protest.shtml

“It’s not a red, blue or pink issue. It’s an all-of-us issue.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/washington/16protest.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

More Than 190 Arrested at Iraq Protest http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ivrAdGWlfmAyQ2-JkvlhPQGP6uFA

Antiwar Protest Held in Washington http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/15/AR2007091500953.html

About 200 arrested during anti-war protest http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/about-200-arrested-during-anti-war-protest-2007-09-15.html

pro-war James Choate said. "Every morning, I wake up and just hope another 9/11 hasn't happened overnight." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/15/AR2007091501433.html

september 15, 2007

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shradar/tags/answercoalition/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vxsarin/sets/72157602023895968/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fauxmarc/sets/72157602034380965/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/74104660@N00/sets/72157602026400832/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/angieschoon/tags/protest/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thefacelesskid/sets/72157600160044414/

Behind an Antiwar Ad, a Powerful Liberal Group http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/washington/15moveon.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

September 15, 2007 http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/09/counterdemonstrators_at_the_ma.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/09/live_from_the_mall_the_long_sh.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/09/anger_vegans_and_diabetes_at_t.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/09/live_from_the_mall_dueling_dem.html

Bill McDannell walked from Arlington National Cemetery to the U.S. Capitol on Saturday. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070821/news_1m21walk.html

front_page_pic2.jpg
http://www.sdranchcoastnews.com/CMV%20Pages/CMV_TP1.html

West LA Progressives’ Weekend Joined by Tom Hayden and Wesley Clark http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/25672

The Few, The Proud, The Shattered, Tina Richards http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2007-08-08/news/the-few-the-proud-the-shattered/full

Recall effort vs. Walberg apparently in vain, expert says http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/recall-effort-vs.-rep.-walberg-apparently-in-vain-expert-says-2007-08-09.html

Woman gets 6 months for RAF Fairford damage http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=47913

calling all wingnuts http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4005359924897645686&hl=en

San Diego for Democracy http://sdfd.org/

San Diego for Democracy http://www.dfalink.com/group.php?id=514

Take a Stand Campaign http://www.noiraqescalation.org/

Inside the antiwar movement's effort to embarrass the GOP http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20111201/site/newsweek

In case I get picked up and taken away http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/325688_threat31.html?source=mypi

Del Mar, July 17, 2007 http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/07/18//news/top_stories/1_02_257_17_07.txt

http://www.bloodforoil.org/

Divided We Stand http://momfromhlwdflorida.blogspot.com/

http://foxattacks.com/

http://www.marchforpeace.info/Home_Page.html

http://www.notinourname.net/index.php

Removal of banner, activist protested http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news/community/richmond.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-07-18-0165.html

vfp http://www.antiwar.com/orig/solson.php?articleid=10742

christians arrested http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070317/D8NTV5VO0.html

davis sit in http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20070314-9999-1m14sit.html

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070313/news_1m13picket.html

http://cbs11tv.com/topstories/topstories_story_056230805.html

http://cbs5.com/local/local_story_054223026.html

http://www.eagletribune.com/nhnews/local_story_051120311?page=0

http://www.kpbs.org/news/local?id=7410

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/02/19/news/top_stories/21807190822.txt

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070217/NEWS05/70217015

http://www.wearenotbuyingit.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_in_Our_Name

070205protest.jpg

protests http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20070205-9999-1m5protest.html

january 27, 2007 http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/27/iraq.protest.ap/index.html

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070125/NEWS/701250373/-1/NEWS01

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070124/UPDATE/701240458

http://peacejournalism.com/ReadArticle.asp?ArticleID=14192

http://www.ips-dc.org/index.htm

http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/making/warprayer.html

http://unitedforpeace.org/

http://www.grannypeacebrigade.org/

http://www.comdsd.org/index.htm

http://www.sdcd.org/jbush/jailbush/sld001.htm

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/17462

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0119/p01s03-ussc.html

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Bush_chain_gang_attacked_in_Memphis_0117.html

http://www.nbc4.com/news/10764422/detail.html

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/politics/16474731.htm

http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2007/01/ntRally070115/

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007701010383

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070101/NEWS01/701010383/1003

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/16276

its time to be a captian

War protesters found guilty in jury trial over ordinance prohibiting tents on county roads http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/12/01/12012006waccourtfolo.html

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003438519

http://www.michiganliberal.com/frontPage.do

tiger

Far too much Progressive political giving goes to funding 30-second commercials. http://www.bluetigerdems.com/aboutus.php

Dems Want to See Citizen-Monitoring Database http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112406E.shtml

Peace a passion, not a passing fad http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061119/news_1n19rubin.html

http://www.iwagepeace.org/I%20Wage%20Peace%20.%20Org/Welcome.html

http://www.sddemocrats.org/2006_local_endorsements.pdf

http://www.sddemocrats.org/2006_state_fed_endorsements.pdf

http://blog.citizensforethics.org/%7ecrewblog/

Fourth Anniversary of BUSH's Iraq War

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFqWLPyCt_0&mode=related&search=

2:43 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKiJYUV-7Ss

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070318/METRO/703180315/1003

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070318/NATION/703180319/1003

journals and web sites

The imminent demise or collapse of our country into tyranny has been standard extreme right rhetoric for decades. Right-wing extremists occupy a pervasive doom-shaped environment which they claim their unique analytical skills equips only them to properly understand. I provide some examples below for historical context: http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/doom

http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/

Are We Politicians or Citizens? Howard Zinn http://www.progressive.org/mag_zinn0507

http://onemillionpeacesigns.blogspot.com/

Michael Moore's pledge

The liberal filmmaker extends an olive branch to disheartened conservatives.

November 17, 2006 I WOULD LIKE TO extend an olive branch. Those of you who consider yourselves conservative and usually vote Republican have not had a very good couple of weeks. Trust me, I know how this feels.

In fact, those of us on the other side of the fence don't really know what it's like to win, so if we seem a bit awkward right now (were we supposed to vote for the majority leader the speaker said to vote for, or stick to our promise to the other guy?), forgive us.

I know you are dismayed at the results of last week's election. You've got to be freaking out about what this bunch of tree-hugging, latte-sipping, men-kissing-men advocates will do now that the country is in our hands. I don't blame you. We'd never admit it, but we secretly admire you because you know how to chop down a tree, take your coffee black and enjoy watching women kissing women. Good on you!

What I don't want is for you to drop into the deep funk we liberals have been in for two-plus decades. Yes, your Republican revolution is over, but hang in there. And do not despair. I, and the millions who voted for Democrats, have no interest in revenge for the last 12 years. In fact, let me make 12 promises as to how we will treat you, the minority, in the coming years.

Thus, here is "A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives":

  1. We will always respect you. We will never, ever, call you "unpatriotic" simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.
  2. We will let you marry whomever you want (even though some among us consider your Republican behavior to be "different" or "immoral"). Who you marry is none of our business. Love, and be in love — it's a wonderful gift.
  3. We will not spend your grandchildren's money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It's your checkbook too, and we will balance it for you.
  4. When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home too. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on some amateur Power Point presentation cooked up by men who have never been to war.
  5. When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you too will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that afflict you and your loved ones, we'll make sure those advances are available to you and your family too.
  6. When we clean up our air and water, you too will be able to breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water. When we put an end to global warming, you will no longer have to think about buying oceanfront property in Yuma.
  7. Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you.
  8. We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.
  9. We will not take away your hunting guns. If you need an automatic weapon or a handgun to kill a bird or a deer, then you really aren't much of a hunter and you should, perhaps, take up another sport. In the meantime, we will arm the deer to make it a fairer fight.
  10. When we raise the minimum wage, we will raise it for your employees too. They will use that money to buy more things, which means you will get the money back! And when women are finally paid what men make, we will pay conservative women that wage too.
  11. We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don't practice those beliefs. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs ("Blessed are the peacemakers," "Love your enemies," "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" and "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me"). We will let people in other countries know that God doesn't just bless America, he blesses everyone. We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism — starting here at home.
  12. We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and break the law. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side first. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.

I promise all of the above to you because this is your country too. You are every bit as American as we are. We are all in this together. We sink or swim as one. Thank you for your years of service to this country and for giving us the opportunity to see if we can make things a bit better for our 300 million fellow Americans — and for the rest of the world.

Now pull yourself together and let's go have a Frappuccino.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-moore17nov17,0,3842827.story?track=mostviewed-homepage

stores

http://2impeachbush.com/index.html

Garrison Keillor

If anyone cared about the war dead, they could go read David Halberstam's "The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War" or Stephen Ambrose's "Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army From the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944, to May 7, 1945" or any of a hundred other books, and they would get a vision of what it was like to face death for your country, but the bikers riding in formation are more interested in being seen than in learning anything. They are grown men playing soldier, making a great hullaballoo without exposing themselves to danger, other than getting drunk and falling off a bike. No wonder the Current Occupant welcomed them with open arms at the White House, put on a black leather vest, and gave a manly speech about how he'd just "choppered in" and saw the horde "cranking up their machines" and he thanked them for being so patriotic. They are his kind of guys, full of bluster, giving off noxious fumes, and when they leave town, nobody misses them. http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/05/28/patriotism/

What is mysterious to us civilians about the military is the Semper Fidelis part, the discipline to march into extreme danger to carry out wholeheartedly a mission about which you yourself are deeply skeptical. "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die," as Tennyson wrote of the Light Brigade that rode into the valley of death on the orders of an arrogant idiot, and men have been riding off to death on behalf of many arrogant idiots ever since, including the ones who are in the White House at the moment. This is a heroism that is not expected of you or me and it's the expectation of heroism that gives the two in the kitchen the gravity that was so appealing to me. Many men have been carried to the cemetery with honor guards and rifle salutes who, if the truth be known, knew their missions were not worth the price but went anyway. Many, many of our honored dead were dissenters. What makes no sense at all is when the arrogant idiot expects us civilians to support his unprincipled policy as a way of "supporting our troops." The troops are not mercenaries, they are American soldiers in a long proud tradition going back to Gen. Washington's Continental Army at Valley Forge, and what gives their mission dignity and meaning is that it comes from a constitutional government in which war is not a point of personal privilege but a matter to be openly debated, opposed, protested, reported. For the troops to fall into line is a noble thing; for civilians to fall into line is shameful. http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/04/02/military/

The Current Occupant, who is two years and three months away from retirement, was quoted last week as saying, "They can say what they want about me, but at least I know who I am, and I know who my friends are." A pathetic admission of defeat for one who has owned all three branches of government for the past six years -- did he seek power so that he could attain self-knowledge? If so, the price is too high. The beloved country endures a government that merges blithering corruption with murderous incompetence. Congress, which once spent an entire year investigating a married man's attempt to cover up an illicit act of oral sex, has shown no curiosity whatsoever about a war that the administration elected to wage that has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands and led our own people to commit war crimes and squandered hundreds of billions of dollars and degenerated into civil war. The contrast is deafening. Republicans haven't tolerated much dissent in their ranks, the voice of conscience has not been welcome, and now the herd finds itself on the wrong side of the river. It's discouraging seeing so many people go so wrong all at once. It makes you question the idea that each of us has unlimited potential for good. Washington is a city where a bill to relax air-pollution standards would be called the Clean Air Act and a bill to protect government officials from war-crimes prosecution would be called the Military Commissions Act, and so a man's statement that he knows who he is and who his friends are needs to be taken as meaning the opposite, a cry for help. You come to office as a uniter and you wind up doing the opposite. You stand for American values and you wind up defending torture and the waste of resources. Knowing who you are is a minimal adult requirement, and you don't get there by being an object of attention. Retirement is recommended. The sooner the better. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/11/01/keillor/

War

Operation Iraqi Liberation

A push for new Iraq strategy — now. http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/08/army_iraqpolicy_080408w/

Iraq's oil-fueled surplus could hit $80 billion, report says. Iraq is raking in more money from oil exports than it is spending, amassing a projected four-year budget surplus of up to $80 billion, U.S. auditors reported Tuesday. Leading members of Congress, noting that Washington is paying for reconstruction in Iraq, expressed outrage at the assessment. One called the findings "inexcusable." "We should not be paying for Iraqi projects while Iraqi oil revenues continue to pile up in the bank, including outrageous profits from $4-a-gallon gas prices in the U.S.," said Sen. Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We should require that U.S. taxpayers be reimbursed for the cost of large projects." http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/05/iraq.oil/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Pentagon documents sought in Pat Tillman probe. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080717/ap_on_go_co/tillman_friendly_fire

What Is the Mission? http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=9082

The war in Iraq has never been exclusively or even predominantly about fighting terrorism, stopping Saddam Hussein from acquiring WMDs, spreading democracy or even “victory” in a part of the world where none is to be had. These have been little more than convenient talking points and cheap rhetoric at various intervals, to help sell a nonsensical war to the American people and the world. The mission has always been U.S. dominance in the Middle East, for both political gain and profit, including the establishment and maintenance of permanent military bases. That the Iraqis explicitly reject any permanent U.S. bases on their homeland is particularly interesting as it relates to the protection of ours, as it was U.S. military presence on the Arabian peninsula that Osama Bin Laden cited as his primary reason for orchestrating 9/11. With Iraq, we have increased the chances of another terrorist attack occurring tenfold, the longer we stay the longer those chances further increase, and the Iraqis themselves want us to begin making plans to be on our way. It’s time we start making them. And it’s high time we stop listening to neoconservatives who never had a serious war plan, other than to fool the rest of us as to what it was really all about. http://southernavenger.ccpblogs.com/2008/07/11/sa-radio-a-timetable-for-the-neocons/

The Ever Changing Definition of “Mission” In Iraq, http://thinkprogress.org/2005/06/21/the-changing-definition-of-mission-in-iraq/

Operation Iraqi Liberation, archived July 12, 2008

Iraq Mission Accomplished: They're Not Fighting Us Anymore, They're Fighting Each Other. As chaos reaches all time high coalition prepares to scale back occupation and march onwards to Syria and Iran. http://www.infowars.net/articles/november2006/231106Accomplished.htm

Ousted Air Force chief cites dissension in Pentagon. http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=40295&dcn=todaysnews

Question Three: Can I be a patriot, while still questioning involvement in Iraq?

Capt. Rawlings,

Do you believe that someone in America can love their country and support our troops, but still feel it necessary to put a stop to this interference in another land? As a veteran of Vietnam, I see us repeating the mistakes of the past. Only this time, on an even less reasonable basis. I support you and the rest of our troops, but I feel you are but a pawn in a very nasty game. I wish you well and a safe return home! Rick Dawe, Hastings, Mich.

Dear Mr. Dawe, Thank you very much for your question and for your service during Vietnam. From conversations with my uncle, who served in the 7th Cavalry Regiment in 1966, and with many other Vietnam veterans, the return home was especially difficult as those who opposed the war often targeted their opposition on those of you returning from Southeast Asia. My fellow veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and I have been very fortunate because most of those who oppose this war seem to have learned from that mistake and have been very careful to be supportive of us as people while voicing their opposition to our government's policies and practices. I have many great friends who are vocal critics of the administration and the war, and they have asked me if it makes me angry when they speak out against the war. I tell them that it can be frustrating at times, but that in the end, the right to speak out against anything one feels necessary is one of the things we fight for. I'm sure you remember the oath of enlistment that we "will support and defend the Constitution of the United States." To me, as a once and future writer, this is especially true of the First Amendment, and I believe that it is one's duty to voice his or her opinion, even if that opinion is in the minority. To me, patriotism is upholding the ideals and principles on which the nation was founded, and the right to speak and assemble is an incredibly important freedom. If you believe that the current conflicts are wrong, then I think it is important to speak out in a passionate way. While the troops may initially feel a bit slighted, if you support them as people in the long run, especially those with mental and physical scars, then that is patriotic. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91448018&ps=bb3

Gates names non-fighter pilot to head Air Force. Gen. Norton Schwartz has a background in transportation and cargo flights. His nomination is seen as a message that the Air Force must concentrate on ground-war needs. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-schwartz10-2008jun10,0,4739484.story

Mary Tillman has a message for the National Football League: Help me find out what happened to my son. Inspired to serve his country after 9/11, Pat Tillman gave up a lucrative career with the Arizona Cardinals to join the Army in May 2002. As a Ranger, he participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom, then fought in Afghanistan, where he was killed in April 2004. Tillman's death was mourned coast to coast, and the public and his family were told by the Pentagon that he died a "warrior's death" charging up a hill, urging on his fellow Rangers. His funeral was nationally televised, and Arizona Sen. John McCain, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was among those delivering eulogies. President Bush took time from his 2004 reelection campaign to address Cardinal fans on a Jumbotron during an emotional halftime ceremony in which the Arizona franchise retired Tillman's jersey number. Yet the circumstances of his death turned out to be an obscene hoax. Tillman was, in fact, killed by friendly fire. Now, after six investigations and two congressional hearings, there remain many unanswered questions about Tillman's death and the Army's initial investigation of it. His family has challenged the Bush administration, the Pentagon and the media to uncover the truth. To keep the public pressure on, Mary Tillman has written a book, "Boots on the Ground at Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman." In a recent interview with me, she was highly critical of the actions of the NFL because she believes it continues to bathe in the glory of her son's patriotic sacrifice while doing little to help the Tillman family find out how Pat died. "I think the [NFL] has not gone out of its way to help," she told me. The league has "exploited Pat, just like the military. ... [It has] a beautiful statue to him at the Cardinals' stadium. I don't know if that's more for us or the [NFL]. I feel like it's more for the league." http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-zirin8-2008jun08,0,4642730.story

In the wake of Scott McClellan's scathing indictment of the Bush regime's sprint to war, some administration pundits argue that to continue to debate why and how our country went to war some five years ago is a distraction from the more crucial issues at hand. The details and minutia of the complex decision to invade Iraq is better left to the historians to untangle. Rather, we should concentrate our efforts and attention on how best to capitalize upon the more recent "successes" of the "new" military strategy in Iraq. Even were such optimism regarding the surge warranted, however, what these pundits fail to realize, is that military success and improved strategy does not of itself afford a moral and legal basis for continuing the occupation. Understanding how and why we invaded Iraq is relevant not only to ensure the accuracy of the historical record but, more importantly, to decide whether to continue the occupation in the hope or achieving a yet to be defined "victory," or in the words of John McCain, to "surrender," accept defeat and withdraw. Civilized nations and individuals accept, at least theoretically, that human beings have inalienable human rights - among them the right to life and to live in a nation that enjoys political sovereignty and territorial integrity (sometimes referred to as national rights). Such rights are the basis of "noncombatancy," and provide a natural immunity from, among other things, being injured and killed unjustifiably and having one's nation invaded and occupied without warrant. To kill an innocent person, a noncombatant, is murder, and "the (unprovoked and unjustified) invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack" is aggression. We believe as well that aggressed individuals and nations have a right of self- and national defense, i.e., to use violence, even deadly force/war, all things being equal, to assert these rights. Morally and legally, we justify such a response with an understanding that the aggressors, by virtue of their violation of the rights of their victims, have forfeited their own immunity and have become liable to be resisted - warred against - in justified self- and national defense. http://www.truthout.org/article/victory-iraq-or-surrender

Report: Love Letters From U.S. Troops Increasingly Gruesome. http://www.theonion.com/content/news/report_love_letters_from_u_s

Deplaned. Behind Defense Secretary Gates's Air Force shake-up. http://www.newsweek.com/id/140276

2 Inquiries Set on Pentagon Publicity Effort. In debating the amendment, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri, said he was “sorely distressed” about the Pentagon campaign, and Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, argued that it amounted to nothing more than illegal “domestic propaganda.” “It is a military-industrial-media complex,” Ms. DeLauro said. Representative Paul W. Hodes, Democrat of New Hampshire, added: “The American people were spun by Bush administration message multipliers. They were fed administration talking points believing they were getting independent military analysis.” Representative Duncan Hunter of California, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, objected to the amendment, arguing that retired officers working as military analysts were a “great asset” for the country. “The idea that somehow Don Rumsfeld got these people in a room and told them what to say, if you believe that you don’t believe in the independence of these general officers,” Mr. Hunter said. “None of them are used to having people tell them what to say.” And Representative Paul C. Broun, Republican of Georgia, said: “Of course Americans engage in propaganda. It’s a vital part of the mission of the United States to promote democracy and protect our country from harm.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/washington/24generals.html

Military Chief Warns Troops About Politics. “The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times and in all ways,” wrote the chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, the nation’s highest-ranking officer. “It is and must always be a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/us/politics/26military.html?ref=us

Iraq War: Haphazard fight. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/364216_snipered.html http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/soundoff/comment.asp?articleID=364216

Wars Hard on State Dept., Defense Chief Says. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expressing concern that the State Department has become stretched too thin by the diplomatic demands of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gates is arguing for more resources for Foggy Bottom. "We've been out communicated by a man in a cave." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90603028

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Six Ways to Win The Iraq War Debate Against Your Really Dumb Friends. Recently I was arguing with one of my dumber friends about the Iraq war. He loves Bush, and thinks bigger bombs is the answer in Iraq. I wasn't gaining any ground in the argument until I used a simple analogy. I said, "Your solution is like shattering an expensive vase and then saying, 'We need to keep smashing it until it's fixed.'" I stumped him. He was silent. So here's a brief list of other analogies you can use on your dumb friends. And the truth is, I've seen similar ones work on some of the smartest political pundits. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/82051/#more

More Skepticism Voiced at House Hearing on Iraq. General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker acknowledged the problems — “The situation in certain areas is still unsatisfactory, and innumerable challenges remain,” the general told the House panel, as he had the Senate committees on Tuesday — but the two men said that the current course was producing important results and that it was the only way forward. “I do remain convinced that a major departure from our current engagement would bring failure,” Mr. Crocker said. Representative Duncan Hunter of California, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services committee, agreed with their assessment. While some had declared the surge a failure from the start, he said at the morning hearing, “I think, by all metrics, it’s been a success.” He cited Anbar Province, where some formerly hostile Sunni tribesmen are now aligned with American forces, saying the situation there had changed from violent to “extremely benign.” Despite lingering problems in the Iraqi Army, Mr. Hunter said, “I think they’ve made enormous advances and improvements since the last hearing we held.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/washington/09cnd-petraeus.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

The Smart Way Out of a Foolish War . By Zbigniew Brzezinski http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/033008Z.shtml

How do we bring American military engagement in Iraq to a responsible end? http://www.responsibleplan.com/plan

Bonior defends Iraq trip. Feds say Saddam agency secretly funded prewar visit. Bonior, when asked if he felt duped by participating in a trip in which he didn't know what was happening behind the scenes, nearly scoffed. "To the contrary, we were among the few people who knew what was going on over there. And history has shown that," he said. "I wish more people had gone and seen and talked with the Iraqis. If they had, we wouldn't have the disaster we have now, we wouldn't have 4,000 of our soldiers dead." http://www.macombdaily.com/stories/032808/loc_local03.shtml

America Defeated: How Terrorists Turned a Superpower's Strengths Against Itself. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/80547/

The despicable duo. We wish George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would just shut the hell up and go away. http://www.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/the_despicable_duo/6766/

The Iraq War Ledger. by Rep. Ron Paul: Five years ago last week, the U.S. military's "shock and awe" campaign lit up the Baghdad sky. Five years later, with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,000 Americans dead, we should pause and reflect on just what has been gained and what has been lost. http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=12577

"Moost unusual." That was how CNN chose to headline its coverage of anti-war coverage last week--a slightly more subtle variant of the newscast's ultimate message: "Wow, get a load of these freaks." http://www.thenation.com/blogs/jstreet?bid=917&pid=302285

From the beginning, the march to war was paved with false assumptions and lies. Senior administration officials claimed repeatedly that Iraq was somehow responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. They claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They manipulated the fear of the American people after 9/11 to further a war agenda that they had been planning years before that attack. The mainstream media was complicit in this war propaganda.

Casualties won't let us forget Iraq. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080325/news_lz1e25robinso.html

Why We Said No: Three Diplomats' Duty. Five years ago this month, the three of us left the US Foreign Service in opposition to the war on Iraq. We were not pacifists. We were professional, non-partisan diplomats bound by our oath of loyalty to the US Constitution. Our job was to build effective relationships with key figures outside the United States. We used our language skills, respectful curiosity, and understanding of local politics to promote US national interests as our president and secretary of state directed. We did not know each other. Ann, who was also a reserve colonel in the US Army, had helped reopen US Embassy Kabul after the fall of the Taliban. Brady was a 20-year political officer who had learned something about tribal politics and the limits of US power. John was a practitioner of public diplomacy with over twenty years' experience, mostly in Eastern Europe. We shared one key professional judgment, that this war we were ordered to promote would be a disastrous mistake. Love of country and professional self-respect compelled each of us to speak out, in the only honorable way open to us, by resigning. In our letters to Secretary of State Colin Powell, we opposed invading a country that posed no genuine threat to the United States. We underscored that our invasion would not be understood by our allies, that our occupation would be resisted, and that the consequences of the war would be dire for both Americans and Iraqis. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032408D.shtml

As the war in Iraq begins its sixth year, “it is tragic to think what might have been,” Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.) said in the Democratic radio address Saturday. “In 2003, President Bush took us into war on the wings of a lie. With each passing year, we’ve heard the same false promises of victory, the same excuses for failure from the Iraqi government, and the same refusal from President Bush to admit his mistakes,” Menendez said. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/democrats-hit-bush-on-iraq-2008-03-22.html

Scott Ritter: Reflections. http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=12565

How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? I SERIOUSLY MISJUDGED BUSH'S SENSE OF MORALITY. I know our enemy is much worse. I have never doubted that. I still have no qualms whatever in waging war to defeat it. But I never believed that America would do what America has done. Never. My misjudgment at the deepest moral level of what Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld were capable of—a misjudgment that violated the moral core of the enterprise—was my worst mistake. What the war has done to what is left of Iraq—the lives lost, the families destroyed, the bodies tortured, the civilization trashed—was bad enough. But what was done to America—and the meaning of America—was unforgivable. And for that I will not and should not forgive myself. http://www.slate.com/id/2187098

They said it wouldn't last ... Sure, the war had its moments. But after five years, the thrill is gone. Oh, I know, War, I know. In five years, every relationship is going to have its ups and downs! And you're right, you've been trying hard lately to turn things around. I do give you credit for that. Your surge brought violence down, even though it seems to be rising again. And you've tried so hard to listen, finally, and understand that an enduring relationship has to be about more than just brute force. But, War, it's just not enough. It's too little, too late. "Political progress," "reconciliation" -- pretty words, but I just can't see it happening. Anyway, War, I don't like to be a stick in the mud, but it kind of bothers me that these days we're jumping into bed with absolutely everyone: Sunni insurgents, Shiite insurgents, Kurds, God knows who else. It's like being inside Eliot Spitzer's marriage and James McGreevey's marriage and David Paterson's marriage, all at once. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks20mar20,0,1503938.column

Look, War, I don't quite know how to say this, on our anniversary and everything, but ... I want a divorce. Why? http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031908R.shtml

Anti-war movement hits Washington D.C. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG8---oiDEE

Five Years After Invasion of Iraq: Why Did We Do It? http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/80167/

Army Holds Annual 'Bring Your Daughter To War' Day. http://www.theonion.com/content/video/army_holds_annual_bring_your

More signs of progress in Baghdad. Since I arrived here last August, I have been struck by four things: the financial commitment we have made to reconstruction; the precipitous decline in violence; the inklings of representative government; and the small yet significant progress in communal relations between the mostly Shiite Iraqi army and the predominantly Sunni residents of this area. One often reads of the chaos plaguing Iraq. Yet the media accounts only infrequently seem to grasp the successes being achieved. My combat outpost sits along the Tigris River in a section of Baghdad known as Adhamiyah. It is enclosed by a wall that separates it from the predominantly Shiite eastern section of the city, similar to the wall that separates Catholics and Protestants in Belfast. Though a few Shiites remain within the enclosure, most have moved out, leaving a Sunni enclave surrounded by Shiite neighborhoods. American taxpayers well know that millions of dollars were squandered on poorly scrutinized projects. Our government dumped money into quick fixes with, for too long, little regard for the culture of dependency it was breeding. But much of this has changed. Yes, sustainable job creation was not initially a priority, and working-age residents of Adhamiyah remain dangerously underemployed. But in this area we have begun to create more permanent jobs. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080318/news_lz1e18diaz.html

Of war and cancer. Five years after Bush invaded Iraq, anti-Americanism has metastasized. But we can still beat it. Bush's fatally flawed approach to "terror," treating it as a military problem that has nothing to do with U.S. policies, has led to more instability and violence, not less. As a new report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace notes, Bush's attempt to create a "new Middle East" by using force or the threat of force has backfired everywhere. Jihadist groups have multiplied. America's standing in the Arab/Muslim world is at an all-time low. Terror attacks are up everywhere -- in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Europe, in Pakistan, in Indonesia. The Middle East is more volatile, divided and dangerous than ever. The crucial Israeli-Palestinian conflict, still the greatest cause of anti-Americanism in the region and one that Bush's neoconservative brain trust thought it could resolve in Israel's favor by smashing Iraq and putting a gun to the head of Iran and Syria, is at one of its most intractable points. Iran is in a vastly stronger strategic position. American allies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt remain stifled by corrupt and repressive regimes that are torn between their desire to placate Washington and their increasingly angry people. Lebanon is a powder keg. In Afghanistan, a resurgent Taliban threatens the Karzai regime's tenuous grasp on power, and America's NATO allies, scared off by the Iraq quagmire, refuse to commit troops. Pakistan's people have turned against Musharraf, the heavy-handed leader whom Bush has uncritically supported, leaving the U.S. no good options there. Everywhere in the Arab/Muslim world, the truly good values America has to impart -- democracy, freedom, secularism, tolerance -- have been tainted by their association with Bush. It has become glaringly clear to people in the region that Bush's commitment to democracy depends on whether it results in the outcome he wants. For example, Bush and his supporters cheered loudly for Lebanon's "Cedar Revolution," when hundreds of thousands of Lebanese took to the streets to demand that Syria get out of Lebanon. But when the militant Shiite group Hezbollah turned out just as many Lebanese to denounce U.S. and Israeli meddling, the Bush administration's admiration for "people power" suddenly dried up. When the militant group Hamas won free and fair elections in the occupied territories, Bush's response was to connive with Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority to try to destroy it. When Bush realized that opening up Egypt's corrupt electoral system would empower the Muslim Brotherhood, he decided that the autocratic Hosni Mubarak wasn't so bad after all. Unfortunately, this hypocrisy has weakened the most progressive players in the region, the Arab secularists and democrats who could lead the way to the internal reform their countries so desperately need. A despairing refrain among these embattled figures is, "Bush has given democracy a bad name." http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/03/18/iraq_anniversary/

War's price tag. The Iraq conflict will raid our wallets for years to come, with California taking a huge hit. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-bilmes16mar16,0,389827.story

Five years of war. Let the country divide, and get out. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080316/news_mz1e16eland.html

Five years of war in pictures. An investment in blood and treasure http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080316/news_mz1e16pictur.html

Events pro and con mark 5th anniversary of Iraq invasion. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080316/news_1m16war.html

Iraq war off most Americans' radar, those who served say. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20080316-9999-1n16iraq.html

A Crude Case for War? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/14/AR2008031403376.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Veterans groups offer different views of conflict. A pair of veterans groups on opposite sides of the country this week are offering drastically different views of the war in Iraq and the future of U.S. troops there. In Washington on Thursday, Iraq Veterans Against the War launched its four-day Winter Soldier event, which organizers promise will show evidence of systemic war crimes, war profiteering and mismanaged strategy that has cost troops’ lives. In San Diego on Friday, Vets for Freedom launched a month- long, 22-city tour to highlight stories of heroism from Iraq, and to encourage communities to continue their support of the mission overseas. http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=53321

The influx of thousands of U.S. forces has driven down insurgent attacks in Baghdad, but violence elsewhere in Iraq raises questions about whether killings will continue to drop as American forces begin to leave, the United Nations said Saturday. As security improved in Baghdad, violent attacks spread last year to other parts of the country, including Diyala Province and Mosul, al-Qaida's last urban stronghold, according to the report from the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq. "The government of Iraq continued to face enormous challenges in its efforts to bring sectarian violence and other criminal activity under control against a backdrop of political instability," the report, which examined the last six months of 2007, said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080315/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_112

Winter Soldier: America Must Hear These Iraq Vets' Stories. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/79789/

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans Speak Out [Photo Essay] http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/79802/

Reps. question ‘Above All’ campaign. Lawmakers took aim at the Air Force’s new “Above All” ad campaign, questioning whether the TV, print and online ads are an illegal attempt to lobby Congress. Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla., a member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, said the ads “appeared to be the kinds of ads that an advocacy groups would run.” The $81 million campaign, which debuted Feb. 24, seeks to inform the public about the Air Force’s contributions to national defense rather than explicitly calling for recruits to enlist. http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/03/airforce_above_all_031508w/

The Cost in Dollars, Democracy, and Memory (by Peter Price) http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2008/03/the-cost-in-dollars-democracy.html

Soldiers join war protest. Northwest Indiana natives Vincent Emanuele and Derek Giffin grapple with their pasts. Both served in the war in Iraq and say they are scarred by what they witnessed. They say they are resentful because they feel the U.S. government lied to them about the battle's purpose. On Thursday, Emanuele of Burns Harbor and Giffin of Schererville will be in Washington, D.C., to send a message to the country's leaders. They will join hundreds of other protesters from Iraqi Veterans Against the War and other organizations. The protest coincides with the five-year anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq. The "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan" is a four-day event, from Thursday to Sunday featuring testimonies from veterans of both occupations. http://www.post-trib.com/news/835586,wprotest.article

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network. The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam's regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime. The new study of the Iraqi regime's archives found no documents indicating a "direct operational link" between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/29959.html

Parties call political truce to mark war anniversary. Congressional leaders are planning to hold an unusual bipartisan ceremony this week on the Iraq war, an event intended to be devoid of politics on one of the most sensitive and divisive issues looming over the November elections. Thursday’s congressional “remembrance” ceremony will recognize the “five years of service” and sacrifices made by troops and families affected by the war, according to a letter to lawmakers signed last week by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/parties-call-political-truce-to-mark-war-anniversary-2008-03-10.html

How the press failed on Iraq. A hard look back at the past five years -- with all its death and destruction and missteps -- reveals that the American media has been sleepwalking through the war. http://www.salon.com/books/excerpt/2008/03/11/greg_mitchell/

Ex-Defense Official Assails Colleagues Over Run-Up to War. In the first insider account of Pentagon decision-making on Iraq, one of the key architects of the war blasts former secretary of state Colin Powell, the CIA, retired Gen. Tommy R. Franks and former Iraq occupation chief L. Paul Bremer for mishandling the run-up to the invasion and the subsequent occupation of the country. Douglas J. Feith, in a massive score-settling work, portrays an intelligence community and a State Department that repeatedly undermined plans he developed as undersecretary of defense for policy and conspired to undercut President Bush's policies. Despite its bulk, the book does not address some of the basic facts of the war, such as the widespread skepticism inside the top of the U.S. military about invading Iraq, with some generals arguing that doing so would distract attention from the war against global terrorists. Nor does Feith touch on the assertion of his fellow war architect, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, that Iraq would be able to pay for its reconstruction with oil revenue. Feith says surprisingly little new about the conduct of the war on the ground, instead focusing on the policy battles in Washington and asserting that most accounts thus far have been written from the point of view of the State Department and the CIA. He attacks those criticisms as "fear-mongering" that serves the interests of certain officials and journalists. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802724.html?hpid=topnews

Operation Iraqi Liberation, archive March 2008

Bush officials: Congress irrelevant on Iraq. The Bush administration says the 2002 congressional authorization to go to war in Iraq gives it the authority to conduct combat operations in Iraq and negotiate far-reaching agreements with the current Iraqi government without consulting Congress. The assertion, jointly made Tuesday by U.S. Ambassador David Satterfield and Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Mary Beth Long, drew an incredulous reaction from Democrats on a Joint House committee during a hearing on future U.S. commitments to Iraq. “It's the view of the administration that as long as there’s trouble in Iraq that you have authorization of this Congress to continue there in perpetuity and define trouble as you desire?” asked Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y. “We have authorization to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq,” Satterfield replied. “The situation in Iraq continues to present a threat to the United States.” http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/03/military_iraqpact_030408w/

Patriot missiles: Iraq Veterans Against the War. After Vietnam, American veterans testified to the atrocities they witnessed. Now soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are about to do the same. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3444835.ece

Time has a way of moving on, and history is full of surprises, both good and bad. The news from Iraq has been good since Bush supported a “surge” in U.S. troops last year. As the race for president narrows and the country prepares to make a final choice, it is time for one of the two remaining Democratic candidates to start making sense about Iraq. It remains an article of faith in that party that the American invasion and removal of Saddam Hussein was a tragic blunder, that the ensuing years of struggle and loss have been senseless and that since the whole mess is certain to end badly, it ought to end sooner rather than later. So rigid is this dogma that the only Democratic debate over Iraq, certainly one of the most important issues facing the nation, has been over who more strongly opposes the invasion – Sen. Barack Obama wins here – and who would more rapidly withdraw U.S. forces. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080302/news_lz1e2bowden.html

Angelina Jolie to talk Iraq on Capitol Hill? By Rick Maze - Staff writer Posted : Saturday Mar 1, 2008 7:52:26 EST The House Armed Services Committee is being asked to invite actress Angelina Jolie to testify — not to gain more media attention, which certainly would happen, but to talk about how Operation Iraqi Freedom is going. Jolie, a United Nations goodwill ambassador, wrote in an opinion column for the Feb. 28 issue of The Washington Post that she has seen improvements in Iraq as the U.S., U.N. and Iraqi government “have begun to work together in new and important ways.” Jolie said the buildup of U.S. forces appears to be working and that troops she spoke with on a recent visit wanted to see the mission through. “When I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq,” she wrote. That column prompted Rep. Thelma Drake, R-Va., to ask the armed services committee chairman to invite Jolie to testify. “Sadly, Ms. Jolie’s positive perspective on the current security situation in Iraq has gone largely unnoticed by the mainstream press,” Drake said in a letter to Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., the committee chairman. A spokeswoman for Skelton said the chairman had not yet seen the letter. http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/03/military_angelinajolie_022908w/

What we cannot afford, in my view, is to squander the progress that has been made. In fact, we should step up our financial and material assistance. UNHCR has appealed for $261 million this year to provide for refugees and internally displaced persons. That is not a small amount of money -- but it is less than the U.S. spends each day to fight the war in Iraq. I would like to call on each of the presidential candidates and congressional leaders to announce a comprehensive refugee plan with a specific timeline and budget as part of their Iraq strategy. As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible. It seems to me that now is the moment to address the humanitarian side of this situation. Without the right support, we could miss an opportunity to do some of the good we always stated we intended to do. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022702217.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

How a three-word mantra has undermined America. The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us. The damage these three words have done - a classic self-inflicted wound - is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare - political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022908I.shtml

Tomgram: Iraq, 2003-2008, Two Recipes for Disaster. The Commander-in-Chef Cooks Up a Storm. Recipes for Disaster in Iraq. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022908N.shtml

Why the war in Iraq must end. Despite the Democratic presidential candidates' expressed commitment to ending the war in Iraq, there is unease among the party's base. Some ardent activists have suggested that upon election, a new Democratic president will come under inordinate pressure to sustain the U.S. military commitment to Iraq, albeit with some modifications. This concern demonstrates both the difficulty of ending a controversial war and the necessity of doing so. Even a cursory examination of American history reveals the complexity of concluding a war that has taken on such a stark partisan tint. The shadow of Vietnam looms, as it has become standard Republican narrative that back then it was the Democrats in Congress who stabbed America in the back by cutting off funding for a winning cause. The fact that the war was lost in Southeast Asia, as opposed to the halls of Congress, is no matter. The Republican machine will press this same theme should it lose the White House in November. A Democratic administration would be accused of surrendering to evildoers, as once more the dovish successors of George McGovern are wrongly said to have pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080227/news_lz1e27podesta.html

Senate advances bill to cut Iraq funding. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080226/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq_37

McCain: 'The war will be over soon' "My friends, the war will be over soon ... for all intents and purposes, although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years," the Arizona senator said. "But it will be handled by the Iraqis, not by us." http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/25/iraq.mccain/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Commerce Dept docs: Cheney and oil execs decided to take Iraq's oil in spring 2001. The Commerce Department has been forced by Judicial Watch to turn over records of spring, 2001 meetings held between Dick Cheney and execs from global oil giants, records that suggest that the group decided months before September 11th that the US energy policy would center on taking control of Iraq's oil: In the late spring of 2001, Vice President Cheney held a series of top secret meetings with the representatives of Exxon-Mobil, Conoco, Shell and BP America for what was later called the Energy Task-force. Their job, ostensibly, was to map out America’s Energy future. Since late 2001 several public interest groups, including the very conservative Judicial Watch, sued to have the proceedings of those meetings opened to public scrutiny. In March 2002, the Commerce Department turned over a few documents from the Task-force meetings to Judicial Watch, among which was the map of Iraq’s Oil Fields, dated March 2001 (above) and a list of the existing “Foreign Suitors” for Iraq Oil. Since that time, Cheney’s office has fought fiercely (and so far, successfully), right up to the Supreme Court, to keep the proceeding secret and to keep any of the private industry officials from disclosing any information about the meetings. Since we all now know the Bush administration’s energy policy, there can be only one explanation for the extraordinary efforts Cheney has taken to keep this secret–he was discussing the potential for a takeover of Iraq’s oil with the companies that might manage the resource, even before 9/11 gave him the excuse to do it. http://jtaplin.wordpress.com/2008/02/14/its-all-about-oil-alan-greenspan/

Support the troops. Two-year delay of armored vehicles inexcusable. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080220/news_lz1ed20bottom.html

Counting Iraqi Casualties -- and a Media Controversy http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003711142

Army asked to release RAND report on war. http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52423

Working afar to secure San Diego. Secretly providing suitcases full of money for warlords. Helping to overthrow a popular government. Endorsing the results of a deeply flawed election and then recanting. Making deals with officials of a genocidal government. All these and much more have been the lowlights of American policy over the last few years in the strategically important but perennially war-torn neighborhood of northeast Africa, across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia. These blunders result from a U.S. counterterrorism policy focused on eradicating small al-Qaeda cells that – rather than making us safer – is actually undermining our long-term security interests. Why does this matter? It's simple. Iraq is just the tip of the iceberg. If we aren't able to help secure places like Somalia halfway around the world, then places like San Diego are less secure in the long run, vulnerable to the growth of terrorist networks. Also, longer and more costly overseas deployments will be required of the men and women serving in uniform in already stretched places like Camp Pendleton. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080212/news_lz1e12prender.html

Army Buried Study Faulting Iraq Planning. RAND submitted a report in the summer of 2005 called “Rebuilding Iraq.” RAND researchers provided an unclassified version of the report along with a secret one, hoping that its publication would contribute to the public debate on how to prepare for future conflicts. But the study’s wide-ranging critique of the White House, the Defense Department and other government agencies was a concern for Army generals, and the Army has sought to keep the report under lock and key. A review of the lengthy report — a draft of which was obtained by The New York Times — shows that it identified problems with nearly every organization that had a role in planning the war. That assessment parallels the verdicts of numerous former officials and independent analysts. The study chided President Bush — and by implication Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who served as national security adviser when the war was planned — as having failed to resolve differences among rival agencies. “Throughout the planning process, tensions between the Defense Department and the State Department were never mediated by the president or his staff,” it said. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/washington/11army.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

In the military we trust. Progressives who want to disarm U.S. militarism must first understand the nation's faith in the military -- one of our least elitist, most diverse institutions. Recent polls suggest that Americans trust the military roughly three times as much as they trust the president and five times as much as their elected representatives in Congress. The tenacity of this trust is both striking and disturbing. It's striking because it comes despite widespread media coverage of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the friendly-fire coverup in the case of Pat Tillman's death, and alleged retribution killings by Marines at Haditha. It's disturbing because our country is founded on civilian control of the military. It's debatable whether our less-than-resolute civilian leaders can now exercise the necessary level of oversight of the military and the Pentagon when they are distrusted by so many Americans. What explains the military's enduring appeal in our society? Certainly, some of this appeal is obvious. Americans have generally been a patriotic bunch. "Supporting our troops" seems an obvious place to go. After all, many of them volunteered to put themselves in harm's way to protect our liberties and to avenge the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. For this, they receive pay and benefits that might best be described as modest. Trusting them -- granting them a measure of confidence -- seems the least that could be offered. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/02/11/american_military/

Soldiers in Iraq tend to avoid political debates. “She’s the evil opposite of everything I hold dear,” the soldier, who declined to give his name, said. “She’s like my first sergeant. Everything that comes out of his mouth is evil, but at least you know where he stands.” http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52201

Iraq is dying; soon Iraq will be dead. True, there will be a plot of land in the Middle East which people will refer to as Iraq. But any hope of a resurrected homogeneous Iraqi nation populated by a diverse people capable of coexisting in peace and harmony is soon to be swept away forever. Any hope of a way out for the people of Iraq and their neighbors is about to become a victim of the “successes” of the “surge” and the denial of reality. The destruction of Iraq has already begun. The myth of Kurdish stability—born artificially out of the U.S.-enforced “no-fly zones” of the 1990s, sustained through the largess of the Oil-for-Food program (and U.S.-approved sanctions sidestepped by the various Kurdish groups in Iraq) and given a Frankenstein-like lease on life in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion and occupation—is rapidly unraveling. Like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, present-day Iraqi Kurdistan has been exposed as an amalgam of parts incompatible not only with each other but the region as a whole. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080205_iraqs_tragic_future/

CSAF's Vector: 2007 CSAF Reading List http://www.af.mil/library/viewpoints/csaf.asp?id=277

Officials defend National Guard readiness. Defense officials responded angrily Friday at a new report concluding the U.S. military isn’t ready for a catastrophic attack on the country and that National Guard forces don’t have the equipment or training they need for the job. http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52149

Report: Military Not Ready for US Attack http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GUARDING_AMERICA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-01-31-11-25-38

Report: Military not ready for US attack. US Military Not Adequately Prepared for Homeland Attack, Report Says. http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=27539

Hong Kong port re-opens to U.S. ships after snub http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52016

First U.S. ship returns to Hong Kong since Kitty Hawk snub. The USS Blue Ridge and its 700 sailors would stay in Hong Kong for a couple of days, Capt. David Lausman told reporters onboard the ship. http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/01/ap_blueridge_080128/

Military ethicists debate their role. Military ethicists were AWOL in the run up to the Iraq war, according to a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and professor who advocates their presence on policy-making groups such as the president's National Security Council. Charles Myers, professor emeritus at the U.S. Air Force Academy, contended during a keynote address to a gathering of military ethicists that they share some responsibility for the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/01/27/military/10_08_901_25_08.txt

Saddam 'kept world guessing to deter Iran' Saddam expected only a limited aerial attack by the US and thought he could remain in control, the FBI special agent, George Piro, told CBS's 60 Minutes programme in an interview to be broadcast today. "He told me he initially miscalculated…President Bush's intentions," said Piro. http://news.scotsman.com/world/Saddam-39kept-world-guessing-to.3715460.jp

Perino Dismisses CPI Study: Truth On How We Sold The Iraq War Is Not ‘Worth Spending Time On’ QUESTION: Any reaction to the study out from the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, when they did what they called a count of hundreds of false statements made by the president and top administration officials regarding the threat posed by Iraq. And they counted during the two years after 9/11. PERINO: I hardly think that the study is worth spending time on. It is so flawed, in terms of taking anything into context or including — they only looked at members of the administration, rather than looking at members of Congress or people around the world. Because, as you’ll remember, we were part of a broad coalition of countries that deposed the dictator based on a collective understanding of the intelligence. And the other thing that that study fails to do is to say that after realizing that there was no WMD, as we thought as a collective body that there was, that this White House, the president set about to make reforms in the intelligence community to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. http://thinkprogress.org/2008/01/23/perino-cpi/

Partisan Retreat. We can assume that if the Iraq War ends badly, some Republican hard- liners, amplified by conservative talk radio, will accuse the Democrats of perfidy. The question is: Will the betrayal narrative find traction with the broader American public? In particular, will mainstream Republicans buy into it? Or will cooler heads prevail, so the country can heal and move on? The answer, of course, is that it depends. By 2009, Republicans might be just as fed up with Iraq as Democrats are, in which case a rapid exit would be as uncontroversial as the Korean conflict’s abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion was. Or the engagement might turn into a shining success and end on its own. Or Republicans might win the White House while Democrats hold Congress, ensuring that both parties share credit and blame for the denouement. (The fact that Republican presidents and a Democratic Congress took the United States out of Vietnam did much to draw the sting from that defeat. It still stung, of course.) http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801/partisan-retreat

Study: Bush, other officials issued hundreds of false statements before Iraq invasion. A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/348420_false23.html

Now Defense Contractors Are Lecturing Us On Morality? Anyway, let's leave the colonel's fantasy land for a moment, and take a look at the views of most Iraqis, courtesy of The Global Policy Forum: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/74374/#more

No standoff between carrier, China, DoD says http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/01/navy_kittyhawk_denial_080117w/

Report: Chinese ships confronted Kitty Hawk. A Chinese attack submarine and destroyer shadowed U.S. warships in November in the Taiwan Strait, sparking a 28-hour standoff that brought the group to a battle-ready halt in the tense waters, a report in a Taiwan daily said Tuesday. The confrontation occurred as the Navy aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and other ships in its battle group were heading back to Japan following China’s sudden cancellation of a long-scheduled holiday port call in Hong Kong, the China Times said, citing U.S. military sources. http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/01/kyo_china_080115/

The five-dimensional problem embodied in post-Saddam Iraq cannot be bundled up into a neat package. America, and its leaders, must do the right thing in Iraq, not for Iraq, but for America, even when doing so requires making some tough decisions. Narrow the problem set from five dimensions to two, and the problem becomes more manageable. For my money, I choose working with the Sunnis and al-Sadr to create a viable coalition, and then cutting a deal with Iran that trades off better relations in exchange for encouraging the current failed Iraqi government to step aside in favor of new elections. And the Kurds? Autonomy or nothing. My loyalty is first and foremost to the United States, and when we look at the situation in Iraq from a genuine national security perspective, there is no threat worthy of the continued sacrifice being asked of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. As such, the only policy option worthy of consideration is that which brings our troops home as expeditiously as possible. Politicians who embrace a different policy are simply using the sacrifice of our service members as a shield behind which to hide their ignorance of Iraqi issues, and their personal cowardice, which manifests itself any time brave young men and women are allowed to die in order to preserve someone's political viability. http://www.alternet.org/election08/72214/?page=1

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, in a joint statement said the needs of U.S. troops outweighed the concerns of Iraqi lawmakers. “The Defense bill passed both houses of Congress by overwhelming bipartisan margins and addresses urgent national security priorities …” the statement said. “Instead, we understand that the President is bowing to the demands of the Iraqi government, which is threatening to withdraw billions of dollars invested in U.S. banks if this bill is signed.” http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=51306

Army chief says troops strained, calls pace 'unsustainable' http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=38743&dcn=todaysnews

The stage is set for our armed services to relive the worst days of the 1970s when discipline broke down, crime ran rampant, race relations soured, many of the best and brightest in the junior officer corps left the military in disgust, planes couldn't fly and ships couldn't sail for want of spare parts and technical specialists. http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=38720&dcn=todaysnews

Rebuffed Navy ships sail near Taiwan. China's port denials baffle Americans http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071202/news_1n2uschina.html

China rejected third Navy ship visit to Hong Kong http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/12/01/news/nation/5_35_5711_30_07.txt

China: Snub was not a misunderstanding. Pentagon launches formal protest http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/11/ap_pentagonprotest_071128/

China snubs perplex Roughead, Keating http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/11/ap_kittyhawk_071127/

General who led U.S. forces in Iraq during detainee scandal hails Democrats withdrawal plan http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/general-who-led-u.s.-forces-in-iraq-during-detainee-scandal-hails-democrats-withdrawal-plan-2007-11-24.html

China snubs Kitty Hawk. Sailors mark Thanksgiving aboard ship http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/11/ap_kittyhawk_071123/

Kitty Hawk sailors wait out Hong Kong delay http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/11/ap_kittyhawk_071121/

'Troops Leave, Violence Drops': How Four Words from Basra Could Shift Iraq Debate http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/68302/?page=1

Lasting peace or temporary lull? Our view: Latest reports from Iraq are positive, but will the trend last? http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/11/18/opinion/editorials/9_52_5011_17_07.txt

Terrorists are ‘running out of people to kill,’ says Obey http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/terrorists-are-running-out-of-people-to-kill-says-obey-2007-11-06.html

Cashing In on Terror http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071030_scheer_column_cashing_in/

Bush said corruption remains a problem and unemployment remains high, but that Iraqi forces have now assumed responsibility in security in eight of Iraq's 18 provinces. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/11/03/military/11_29_5811_2_07.txt

From the Desk of Donald Rumsfeld . . . In Sometimes-Brusque 'Snowflakes,' He Shared Worldview, Shaped Policy http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/31/AR2007103103095.html?hpid=topnews

(Un)Fair Game: Targeting Iraqis as "Big Game" http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102607H.shtml

Hampton skipper fired amid investigation http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/10/navy_hampton_071025/

The Turks sabotaged our pre-invasion plans in Iraq. They have been the most useless, costly and problematic NATO partner in the alliance, repeatedly in disputes with a more stalwart NATO partner, Greece. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/10/20/opinion/commentarycal/21_09_3110_19_07.txt

Submarine Hampton under investigation http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/10/navy_hampton_sub_071012/

“If this saves one life, I'm happy,” Shriver said. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071016/news_1n16string.html

There is no reliable postal system. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/15/AR2007101500841.html

AF acquisitions official apparently kills self http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2007/10/airforce_riechers_071015/

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday that Congress is useless http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/pelosi-says-bush-has-to-end-the-war-2007-10-07.html

Yet Pace became, in essence, a suck-up. http://www.slate.com/id/2175310/nav/tap3/

Gays should still be able to serve, Pace says http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/09/military_pacegays_070926w/

Mullen takes helm with his focus on Iraq http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/09/ap_mullen_070930/

Blackwater executive to testify before House panel http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=38157&dcn=todaysnews

Critics not satisfied by designation of Pentagon management chief http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=38156&dcn=todaysnews

Why the Jewish Silence on the Iraq War? http://www.pjvoice.com/v28/28006iraq.aspx

House lawmakers release bipartisan agreement on Iraq, seek end to rhetoric http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/house-lawmakers-release-bipartisan-agreement-on-iraq-seek-end-to-rhetoric-2007-09-26.html

Generals opposing Iraq war break with military tradition http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070923/news_1n23generals.html

Hillary's refusal to condemn attacks on Gen. Petraeus is unpresidential http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/09/23/2007-09-23_now_playing_left_field.html

Rice, Al-Maliki Keep Distance at Meeting http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070923/D8RR79Q00.html

the Iraq war is largely about oil http://www.blogforamerica.com/view/22234

a highly respected general so weighed down with medals and expectation that he resembled a Christmas tree http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6990365.stm

Congress and the forgotten lessons of Vietnam http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070913/news_mz1e13vandee.html

Gang activity on the rise in the ranks http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/08/army_gangs_reports_070828w/

The Real Iraq Progress Report http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082207B.shtml

The American people deserve straight talk and real answers on Iraq, not double-speak, triangulation, or political positioning http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/21/AR2007082102025.html

Democrats blast Bush’s Vietnam comparison http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/democrats-blast-bushs-vietnam-comparison-2007-08-22.html

Pro-war group spends millions on ad campaign http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/pro-war-group-spends-millions-on-ad-campaign-2007-08-22.html

Karl is too partisan http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/070816nj1.htm

Getting Iraq Wrong MICHAEL IGNATIEFF http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/magazine/05iraq-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin

I have seen the horror MICHAEL YON http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/08/05/2007-08-05_i_have_seen_the_horror-2.html

Congress wants answers now on Iraqi forces http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2007/05/military_iraqforces_070522w/

GOP fears defeat http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9d14ba3c-ffed-11db-8c98-000b5df10621.html

WMD conspiracy http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/21/wmd_conspiracy/

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/opinion/15thur1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Iran bombs http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2007/02/PaceVOA070212/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/07/AR2007020702550_pf.html

The Totalitarian template

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2451587.php

Editor's Notebook: A Persian Gulf Journey http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=35642&dcn=e_gvet

H.J.R. 114 http://mediamatters.org/items/200612040006

H.J.R. 114

Insurgents in Iraq finance themselves http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/26/news/insurge.php

Local GOP leader to return from Iraq trip http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/11/28/news/top_stories/1_02_5211_27_06.txt

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2130053.php

Republicans (neo-cons) lash out

Post 2008 Election attacks

Exclusive: RNC document mocks donors, plays on 'fear' Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/33866.html#ixzz0hB2qrrVQ

Neo-Nazis, Militants Eye Tea Party for Recruitment (VIDEO) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-brantzawadzki/tea-party-militants-nazis_b_437605.html

Bauer said giving food to needy people means encouraging dependence. It also gives the recipients a license to have children who will also be dependent on public aid, he said. "My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals," Bauer told a Greenville-area crowd. "You know why? Because they breed. "You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better." Those comments caused Democratic candidates running for governor and some lawmakers to question Bauer's faith, compassion and timing. http://www.thestate.com/local/story/1125111.html

The imminent demise or collapse of our country into tyranny has been standard extreme right rhetoric for decades. Right-wing extremists occupy a pervasive doom-shaped environment which they claim their unique analytical skills equips only them to properly understand. I provide some examples below for historical context: http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/doom

Councilman Steven Choi is taking heat from county political watchers for wearing a rendering of Nancy Pelosi as Stalin on his back at a keynote address the House Speaker gave at a recent Democratic Party of Orange County dinner. Choi, who is also in the midst of an Assembly run, says he was not invited to Pelosi's speech at the Irvine Hilton, but chose to join several hundred protesters at the Harry S Truman Awards Dinner, a fundraiser that reportedly raised more than $125,000 for the local Democratic Party. http://www.ocregister.com/news/choi-222848-irvine-council.html#article-photos

Rachel Maddow about hateful anti-Obama "Psalm 109:8" stickers, interviewing Frank Schaeffer and discussing "Going Rogue" - UPDATE: SUCCESS! The psalm reads, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” http://palingates.blogspot.com/2009/11/rachel-maddow-about-hateful-anti-obama.html

As a Jewish organization, the ADL's first preoccupation naturally is anti-Semitism, but in the last few decades it has extended its scrutiny to the whole range of bigoted malevolence -- white supremacy, the militia movement, neo-nativism and conspiratorial fantasies in all of their improbable permutations. These days, the organization's research is characterized by the sense of proportion and sobriety that long experience brings. That makes its recent report on the extremist groups and propagandists that have emerged since President Obama's election -- "Rage Grows In America: Anti-Government Conspiracies" -- particularly notable. For the first time in living memory, the ADL is sounding the alarm about a mainstream media personality: Fox News' Glenn Beck, who also hosts a popular radio show. The report notes that while "other conservative media hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, routinely attack Obama and his administration, typically on partisan grounds, they have usually dismissed or refused to give a platform to the conspiracy theorists and anti-government extremists." By contrast, "Beck and his guests have made a habit of demonizing President Obama and promoting conspiracy theories about his administration. ... Beck has even gone so far as to make comparisons between Hitler and Obama." http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rutten25-2009nov25,0,6632984.column

Rush-ing to judgment: National commentators don't understand Detroit's plight. Republicans hate America. If Limbaugh came to Metro Detroit, he could visit virtually any street in any suburb and find unemployed engineers and teachers and executives who would happily walk to city hall for legally available grant money. He could find hard-working, well-educated white people who have lost their jobs and whose seemingly guaranteed futures -- the reward for all those years of enterprise -- just ran out of warranty. Why not sneer at them? Because most of them might become "us" at any moment? Because "we" need a "them" to keep the yawning abyss at bay? http://www.detnews.com/article/20091011/OPINION03/910110312/1409/METRO/Rush-ing-to-judgment--National-commentators-don-t-understand-Detroit-s-plight

Military coup fantasy is latest in trend of extremist right-wing rhetoric. http://mediamatters.org/research/200909300003

Obama Coup Fantasized About By Right-Wing Fringe. Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/30/obama-coup-fantasized-abo_n_304231.html

Conservatives express outrage about charges that their attacks on Obama are racist. http://mediamatters.org/research/200909160040

ANOTHER Falsehood in ACORN Attacks: Fox News, Andrew Breitbart face more questions about videos. http://mediamatters.org/press/releases/200909180008

South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson shouts 'you lie' at Obama. http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/09/joe.wilson/

Meet Joe Wilson, the GOP Rep Who Heckled Obama. How nasty has the political discourse in Washington gotten? During his speech to Congress tonight, President Obama defended his health care plan, saying that he had never proposed providing coverage to illegal immigrants. “You lie!” shouted Rep. Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, prompting Obama to briefly pause in the delivery of his speech and eye his heckler. No doubt emotions are often heated during these joint sessions with the president and members of Congress, but decorum typically rules—except for tonight, apparently. In an interview with CNN afterwards, Sen. John McCain trashed Wilson’s heckling and urged him to apologize. “Totally disrespectful,” McCain said. So far, no comment from Wilson or his congressional office. http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/09/09/joe-wilson-obama-heckler-health-care.aspx

Dumanis straddles net in hostess-deputy row. The ball is in the air, and it's possible, if not likely, that Shari Barman, the hostess of the Francine Busby fundraiser from hell, will serve up a civil rights lawsuit against the Sheriff's Department. If it's game on, the former professional tennis player's civil complaint will argue that Deputy Marshall Abbott violated Barman's right to privacy when, while answering a noise complaint, he walked uninvited through an open door into her spacious Cardiff home and forcibly arrested her after she questioned why he needed to know her birth date. Many readers have wondered why Barman, who's 60, didn't just offer her age after she had identified herself. In an interview at her home, Barman said: “It didn't make any sense to me. If he had asked me for my driver's license to verify that I was the person who lived at this address, that would have made sense to me. He would have had his date of birth.” As the violent events unfolded, Barman remembers wondering if she lived in a police state like Iran. http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/sep/07/dumanis-straddles-net-hostess-deputy-row/

Summer of our discontent: Why is America so angry? http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/74553.html?storylink=omni_popular

Knoxville churches mark shooting anniversary. Unitarian Universalist congregations reflect on first year after a deadly shooting rampage. http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/145107.shtml

The barely veiled threat of violence sometimes not veiled at all. “THIS TIME WE DID NOT BRING OUR GUNS” http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2009/08/17/the-barely-veiled-threat-of-violence-sometimes-not-veiled-at-all/

SPLC Report: Return of the Militias. http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=392

Terror from the Right: 75 Plots, Conspiracies and Racist Rampages Since Oklahoma City. http://www.alternet.org/rights/142123/terror_from_the_right:_75_plots,_conspiracies_and_racist_rampages_since_oklahoma_city/?page=11

George Tiller killing: FBI interested in who visits suspect Scott Roeder in abortion doctor's death. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-tc-nw-abortion-fbi-0812-0813aug14,0,4224192.story

Anti-choice groups across the nation are busy insisting that since they didn't personally pull the trigger, their protests, harassment, and hate speech are not to blame for the murder of Kansas abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. Yet some anti-choice activists -- even now -- seem only too happy to aid and abet the crazy ones who will resort to violence. Or else why, three days after the assassination of a medical doctor who provides late-term abortions, did Jill Stanek post on her blog photographs of the clinic of Dr. LeRoy Carhart, another physician who provides late-term abortions and who has said he is willing to take over providing services at Dr. Tiller's clinic? http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/06/03/operation-rescue-jill-stanek-only-too-happy-aid-and-abet

Officials see rise in militia groups across US. Militia groups with gripes against the government are regrouping across the country and could grow rapidly, according to an organization that tracks such trends. The stress of a poor economy and a liberal administration led by a black president are among the causes for the recent rise, the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center says. Conspiracy theories about a secret Mexican plan to reclaim the Southwest are also growing amid the public debate about illegal immigration. Bart McEntire, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told SPLC researchers that this is the most growth he's seen in more than a decade. "All it's lacking is a spark," McEntire said in the report. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iyMfoxDzPi3tRgwrutPFpd154C7QD9A13T3O0

In the two clips below Rush Limbaugh attacks Ted Kennedy's patriotism and drinking problems at a time when his family mourns his death. First Limbaugh's attack wreaks of hypocrisy since he has an infamous history with substance abuse himself. Secondly, even if Limbaugh were not being a hypocrite he surely should recognize the poor timing of his attacks. There is a time for brutal attacks and a time for pause and restraint. Limbaugh's personal attacks at this time truly show a lack of civility. At the very least Limbaugh could have restricted to criticism to Kennedy's actual policy decisions rather than attacking the man's character after he has died. http://www.examiner.com/x-5738-Political-Buzz-Examiner~y2009m8d28-Video--Rush-Limbaugh-can-not-resist-personal-attacks-on-Ted-Kennedy-even-after-the-Senators-death

Foes in abortion wars to face off in Nebraska at late-term provider's clinic. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/08/foes-in-the-abortion-wars-face-off-in-nebraska-this-weekend-at-lateterm-providers-clinic.html

No Attempt By "Mainstream" Media to Cover Tea Party Visibility. If you are a Conservative like the tens of thousands we're hearing about on the few sources that actually truthfully support telling the whole story, you're automatically stamped, stereotyped and cruelly ridiculed as a closed minded, stupid angry old white person acting not of your own accord but at the behest of Karl Rove or something. http://newsblaze.com/story/20090816135644zzzz.nb/topstory.html

Conservative talk radio on the wane in California. Leading the charge against Proposition 1A are John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, whose afternoon drive-time show on Los Angeles' KFI-AM (640) draws 670,000 listeners a week, according to the Arbitron ratings agency. That makes them the most popular conservative talk radio hosts in the state. Day after day, they pound Schwarzenegger and the Republican lawmakers who joined Democrats in approving the tax increases. They are encouraging recall drives against the legislators. Their website features pictures of the governor and the lawmakers -- with their severed heads on sticks. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-talkradio15-2009mar15,0,39114.story

Election spurs 'hundreds' of race threats, crimes. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110ap_obama_racial.html?source=mypi

Right-wing media feeds its post-election anger. “The game has begun,” Rush Limbaugh told his radio audience of 15 million to 20 million last week. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity dive shamelessly in, talking about the 'Obama recession' and other partisan lines. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-onthemedia9-2008nov09,0,4216330.story

It's not just Limbaugh and Hannity Summary: Beyond the echelon of widely known conservative radio hosts with national audiences lies a vast network of lesser-known syndicated and regional radio hosts who have become key components of an echo chamber for conservative talking points and falsehoods. Like their better-known counterparts, these syndicated and regional radio hosts have played active roles this election season in promoting falsehoods and smears in an all-out effort to foment hate and distrust among their listeners for President-elect Barack Obama. While the hosts vary in the degree of vitriol they spew and in their ratio of rebuttable falsehoods to unbridled smears, Media Matters for America and Colorado Media Matters have identified common themes that many, if not all, have promoted over the past year. http://mediamatters.org/items/200811060005?f=h_top

at hippies and boomers

The millstone of boomer milestones. Enough with the 1968 nostalgia. It's time for boomers to stifle themselves. So privileged is this group, they've been allowed to change generational labels the way they changed their (always "groundbreaking") clothing styles. They've been known, in whole or in part, as the Dr. Spock Generation, the Free Love Generation, the Generation That Changed America, the Me Generation, Hippies, Yuppies, Bobos and, to certain members of Gen X, "moronic aging hippie posers." Despite having grown out of the category years ago, they remain, thanks to a certain iconic TV show, etched in the popular imagination as forever "thirtysomething." http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-daum25-2008may25,0,489742.story

at Gays

REGION: Locals bankroll initiative to ban gay marriage. November ballot issue would amend state constitution. Fallbrook resident Daniel McCalla gave $100 to back the initiative and said he was not necessarily against same-sex civil unions but objected to gay and lesbian marriage. State law allows civil unions to protect legal rights among same-sex couples who must register those unions with the secretary of state's office. "We have relatives that are gay and we love them to death," he said. "But we don't have to agree with what they do." Marriage, he said, should forever be restricted to a man and a woman. "Until the gays prove to me that they can have children, which is why God created marriage, I just think this is an abomination." In Poway, Daniel McNeill said he supports domestic partner rights so that gay and lesbian couples can access benefits and take care of legal matters, but is against same-sex marriage. "I see the necessity to maintain the distinction between civil unions and marriage," said McNeill, who also has contributed to the National Organization for Marriage-California. "If the amendment doesn't pass, I expect that within a year or so, gay couples will sue to demand that churches marry them." http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/06/13/news/sandiego/za1619f7fa2f201438825746700605722.txt

at Dems and Libs

The Service Employers International Union was, as one aide put it, "deluged" with calls on Friday after several conservative media outlets accused the organization of trying to assault demonstrators who had showed up to protest Obama's health care agenda. Making it even scarier for union employees, the address of the union's St. Louis headquarters was mentioned on air by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Callers who reached both the front desk and the communications department compared the union officials to Nazis, union aides say. On Twitter, organizers of the town hall protest urged people to take pictures and write down the license plate numbers of attending SEIU officials. More alarming than anything else, angry callers and protesters pledged to take up arms against the union. "If ACORN/SEIU attends these meetings for disruptive purposes, and you have a license to carry....carry," read one tweet. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/07/obama-allied-unions-threa_n_254204.html

"I suggest you tell your people to calm down, act like American citizens, and stop trying to repress people's First Amendment rights," one caller warned. "That, or you all are gonna come up against the Second Amendment."

Fox News' faux documentary sets new low. Sean Hannity's Sunday report, 'Obama and Friends: The History of Radicalism,' relied on innuendo and guilt by association to label the Illinois senator a dupe of the shadowy forces of the left. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-onthemedia10-2008oct10,0,783115.story

POLICE CHIEF STERLING OWEN: It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred for the liberal movement. RICK KARR: Why did Adkisson hate "the liberal movement"? Police said that he told them "that all liberals should be killed ... because they were ... ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and ... ruined every institution in America...." Police said that Adkisson had targeted the Unitarian Universalist Church "because of its liberal teachings." The church advocates social justice and tolerance, and it openly welcomes gay, lesbian, and transgendered members. According to police, Adkisson said that, "Because he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would target those that had voted them in to office."In the weeks following the tragedy, the congregation and its pastor, Reverend Chris Buice struggled with what they were learning about Adkisson. REVEREND CHRIS BUICE: Some have suggested that his spiritual attitudes, his hatred of liberals and gays, was reinforced by the right wing media figures. And it is beyond dispute that there are a plethora of books which have labeled liberals as evil, unpatriotic, godless and treasonous. RICK KARR: During that recent sermon Buice told his congregation, some of who had risked their own lives to stop the shooting, that he has been reading some of those books. REVEREND CHRIS BUICE: One of the books has the title "Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism". If that author was here in this room right now I would introduce him to some good liberals who acted decisively on that Sunday, acted quickly and courageously to stop the terror that came into our church building. I would introduce him to some good liberals who know how to fight terror with more than just their mouths. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09122008/watch.html

Michael Reagan, son of the former president, suggested that people who claim that "nine-eleven was an inside job," a U.S. government conspiracy, deserve to die. MICHAEL REAGAN: "Take them out and shoot them. They are traitors to this country, and shoot them. But anybody who would do that doesn't deserve to live. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that's what they are, and you shoot them dead. I'll pay for the bullet." http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09122008/watch.html

O'Reilly Attacks Woman Who Connects Dots Between Hate Speech and Violence. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/95810/o%27reilly_attacks_woman_who_connects_dots_between_hate_speech_and_violence/

"I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus -- living fossils -- so we will never forget what these people stood for." -- Rush Limbaugh "I would have no problem with [New York Times editor Bill Keller] being sent to the gas chamber." -- Melanie Morgan ""[T]he day will come when unpleasant things are going to happen to a bunch of stupid liberals and it's going to be very amusing to watch." -- Lee Rogers "And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead." -- Bill O'Reilly "Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war!"-- Michael Reagan "Some liberals have become even too crazy for Texas to execute, which is a damn shame. They're always saying -- we're oppressed, we're oppressed so let's do it. Let's oppress them." -- Ann Coulter "We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee. ... That's just a joke, for you in the media." -- Ann Coulter http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/95112/the_tragic_arkansas_shooting_and_conservative_hate-speech/

Coulter explains why she is "trying to associate [Obama] with Saddam Hussein?": "Because I think it's funny" Summary: On Hannity & Colmes, Alan Colmes asked Ann Coulter, "Why do you keep emphasizing his [Sen. Barack Obama's] middle name as if you're trying to associate him with Saddam Hussein?" Coulter replied, "Because I think it's funny." During the interview, Coulter referred to Obama as "B. Hussein Obama" twice and injected: "Get ready for President Hussein, and let's start planning for the next president." http://mediamatters.org/items/200802150002

Justice Department officials illegally used “political or ideological” factors in elite recruiting programs in recent years, tapping law school graduates with Federalist Society membership or other conservative credentials over more qualified candidates with liberal-sounding résumés, an internal report found Tuesday. The report, prepared by the Justice Department’s own inspector general and its ethics office, portrays a clumsy effort by senior Justice Department screeners to weed out candidates for career positions whom they considered “leftists,” using Internet search engines to look for incriminating information or evidence of possible liberal bias. One rejected candidate from Harvard Law School worked for Planned Parenthood. Another wrote opinion pieces critical of the USA Patriot Act and the nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. A third applicant worked for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and posted an unflattering cartoon of President Bush on his MySpace page. Another applicant, a student at the top of his class at Harvard who was fluent in Arabic, was relegated to the “questionable” pile because he was a member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group that advocates civil liberties. And another rejected candidate said in his essay that he was “personally conflicted” about the National Security Agency’s program of wiretapping without warrants. The department has used its honors program for many years to attract top entry-level lawyers, luring them away from better-paying jobs in the private sector with the promise of influential careers in public service. For most of that time, career lawyers in Justice Department divisions, like civil rights or antitrust, chose their own lawyers for the honors program. But in 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft gave his political aides final say over hundreds of applications in response to what some officials believed was a liberal tilt favoring Ivy League schools. The effect was clear, the report found, with applicants with a Democratic affiliation rejected “at a significantly higher rate” than those with Republican, conservative or neutral credentials. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/washington/25justice.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

Laura Ingraham: Right-Wing Radio's High Priestess of Hate. http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/87236/

The Violent Language of Right-Wing Pundits Poisons Our Democracy. On TV and the radio, conservative pundits infuse violence into their arguments, destroying our precious culture of civil debate. http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/84490/

Jonah Goldberg falsely claimed Obama "dodg[es] the word and concept of patriotism". There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. http://mediamatters.org/items/200803110010?f=h_top

The left's patriotism gap. If you can't even say the word, how can you claim to love your country? http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg11mar11,0,750904.column

watch 60 Minutes on Sunday for an extremely important piece. They will learn how at the instigation of Karl Rove, the Justice Department was turned into a political hit machine to destroy the reputation and ultimately imprison AL governor Don Siegelman on accusations which do not constitute, no matter how you parse it, a crime. http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/24/various_items/

Am I a Fascist? JONAH GOLDBERG'S TENDENTIOUS HISTORY OF LIBERALISM. Ever since I joined the public conversation as a conservative writer, I've been called a fascist and a Nazi by smug, liberal know-nothings, sublimely confident of the truth of their ill-informed prejudices. Responding to this slander is, as a point of personal privilege alone, a worthwhile endeavor. Liberal Fascism, then, is a howl of rage disguised as intellectual history. Some mean liberals called Goldberg hurtful names, so he's responding with 400 pages that boil down to: I know you are, but what am I? http://www.slate.com/id/2182871/nav/tap3/

SAVAGE: It fell in my hands. I didn't choose this fight. I never liked CAIR, but I never figured they were going to be my enemy, but, like everyone else, it's not my problem. Well, then, they made themselves my problem. They attacked me. They went after all my advertisers. They learned good from their friends at Media Matters, that rat-bum -- it's a homosexual, fascist website. Let me explain who Media Matters is. It was founded by Hillary Clinton. It's run by a bunch of fascist homosexuals. They're the brownshirts of our time. When are you gonna wake up to the fact that liberals are not liberal? When are you gonna wake up to the fact that the liberals are the new fascists. They are the brownshirts! And they're gonna take this country over the cliff if you don't stand up to them and stop them. That's why I'm putting myself on the line. And if you think it's a joke, it's not a joke. I walk with my head swiveling. I look over my shoulder. I live as though I am the hunted one. And that's because you are not the hunted one. That's because you are a coward. And that's because your government doesn't protect its citizens. http://mediamatters.org/items/200801140005?f=h_side

Bill O'Reilly Wants Criticizing Fox News to Be Deemed a Hate Crime. Anyway, I saw the anti-Fox hatred firsthand when I traveled to New Hampshire last week. Fox News vehicles have been vandalized, FNC correspondents cursed, and all Fox News personnel are cautious. Although the far-left nuts are generally the problem, some supporters of Congressman Ron Paul are also out of control. At a campaign rally for Barack Obama, one of his staffers attempted to block a Fox News camera from photographing the Senator. This was a blatant assault on press freedom, and I had to remove the man from in front of the camera. You may have seen the pictures on TV. In the subsequent coverage of the story, not one media outlet criticized the Obama staffer--not one. Had he interfered with a CBS News crew, I believe the story would have been reported quite differently. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/73674/#more

"We're all fascists now" An interview with conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg, who argues that fascism is left-wing, not right-wing, and that contemporary liberals are fascism's intellectual offspring. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/11/goldberg/

The gentry liberals. They're more concerned with global warming and gay rights than with lunch-pail joes. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-kotkin2dec02,0,3533253.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

Putting dissent in its place. UCSD clamps down on free speech and political activities http://ww2.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/?id=6380

Ask Rockridge: Responding to Conservative Name-Calling http://www.rockridgenation.org/blog/archive/2007/11/12/ask-rockridge-responding-to-conservative-name-calling

A leader who would unify the nation http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071122/news_lz1e22broder.html

"Whoever the next president is, the new administration will be extremely disappointed if it believes that our relationships will mend because its leader has a different name. . . . Personal diplomacy and relationship-building, although important, are rarely the paramount drivers of global affairs. These are shaped importantly by the long-term national interest." Thus spake Henry Kissinger http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010875

Reviled and Isolated Abroad? What's changed in the last year? Bush's dress and diction remain the same. But he did change generals -- and counterinsurgency strategy -- in Iraq. As a result, Iraq has gone from an apparently lost cause to a winnable one. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/11/alliances_strengthened_countri.html

The Insanity of Bush Hatred. Our politics suffer when passions overcome reason and vitriol becomes virtue. http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010861

Door is left open for N.Y. ‘Hippie museum’ cash http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/door-is-left-open-for-n.y.-hippie-museum-cash-2007-11-07.html

The Impeachment of Vice President Cheney http://pundits.thehill.com/2007/11/06/the-impeachment-of-vice-president-cheney/

‘Dixie Chicking’: Post-9/11 Blacklisting in the Entertainment Industry http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/20071025_dixie_chicking_post_9_11_blacklisting_in_the_entertainment_industr/

Sandy Berger and the Real Hillary Clinton http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/10/sandy_berger_and_the_real_hill.html

at themselves

Conservatives Turn Against Liz Cheney - As Bad As McCarthy. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/05/conservatives-turn-agains_n_487410.html

A long-simmering controversy about the private life of California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring has erupted into a divisive public conflict within the political organization. Last week, the San Diego Republican Party executive committee, led by Tony Krvaric, chairman of that county's party, called a meeting to discuss removing Michael Crimmins, an ex-officio member of its central committee. http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcounty/article_c82f7b38-2fff-5dae-a9de-f05c8d597e93.html

Of course, Klayman's main criticism is that the House impeachment managers refused to widen the proceedings into Chinagate and other scandals and focused solely on Lewinsky: "While the House managers were patting themselves on the back for what they had done, or rather, for what their gutless Senate colleagues had not done, Osama bin Laden was hard at work and the nation was too preoccupied with a sex scandal to know who was really being screwed." Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/14/larry-klayman-conservativ_n_321080.html

No permanent Republican minority. The Lincoln Club of Orange County is telling GOP leaders of both the House and Senate that it is too late to repent. They must go – or else lose big money. The message: “Come Nov. 5, should the current GOP leadership in either house survive to lead in a new Congress, the Lincoln Club of Orange County will review the financial backing of all congressional Republicans, and we urge others to do likewise. A GOP caucus that would re-elect such leaders is not one we would likely continue to support. Because, simply put, we refuse to support a permanent minority.” The Lincoln Club estimates that its nearly 300 members will individually contribute $1.5 million to federal causes and candidates in the 2008 election cycle. The club is spreading its message to angry Republicans throughout California and around the nation. The ultimatum finds responsive members of the House (if not the Senate), who even now are preparing a housecleaning after the additional loss of seats in this year's election. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080708/news_lz1e8novak.html

Helms no hero. What the odes to the racist senator leave out. Given a media culture that seems more trivial and ahistorical by the day, the death last week of former Sen. Jesse Helms triggered a surprisingly broad amount of coverage and commentary – and revealed a depressing double standard in the partisan media. The North Carolina Republican was alternately reviled and revered for his ardent anti-communism, fierce social conservatism and opposition to public funding for the arts. But far too many conservative and pro-GOP pundits chose to either whitewash or ignore what was most salient about Helms: The fact that, as Washington Post columnist David Broder wrote in 2001, he was “the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country,” someone who was “unique [in] his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African-Americans.” But to hear National Review and other organs of the right tell it, Helms was just another veteran Southern politician – a la Alabama's George Wallace or South Carolina's Strom Thurmond – who overcame his “misguided” defense of segregation. In fact, Helms never apologized for the unabashed racism that fueled his political rise in the 1950s and 1960s, and used blatantly racial appeals in all his election campaigns. Even in the 1990s, he liked to taunt his sole African-American colleague in the Senate by whistling “Dixie.” There is no redemption narrative here, only the story of a small-town bigot who somehow parlayed his hate into a long political career. If today's conservatives think Jesse Helms is a hero, 'they are sick in the head'. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080708/news_lz1ed8bottom.html

Holes in the fence. Barbed wire, brick, motar won't fix immigration http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071210/news_mz1ed10top.html

Meet the Huckster. GOP candidate makes Núñez look saintly http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071203/news_mz1ed3bottom.html

By comparison, the other sound-bite candidates are children, subservient to peer pressure, just going along to get along. By focusing on them, CNN is doing a severe disservice to all Americans. http://www.jbs.org/node/6461

Conservatism is a political philosophy concerned with collective aspirations and actions. But conservatism teaches that benevolent government is not always a benefactor. Conservatism's task is to distinguish between what government can and cannot do, and between what it can do but should not. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071125/news_mz1e25will.html

Conservapedia http://www.conservapedia.com/Special:Popularpages

Local visit by Dobbs leaves an impression http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/11/23/opinion/commentary/18_31_3611_22_07.txt

The Elephant in the Room | How Republicans can show that they care http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20071122_How_Republicans_can_show_that_they_care.html

Reagan library can't account for thousands of artifacts http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-na-reagan8nov08,0,3027347.story?coll=la-home-center

Conservative Authors Sue Publisher http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/books/07cons.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

John Bolton is urging GOP lawmakers to oppose the Bush administration http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/bolton-lobbies-on-n.k.-deal-2007-10-23.html

Is the US just tired of Bush, or have conservatives had it? http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2196491,00.html

McCain lambastes DoD for force sizes, LCS http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/10/navy_mccain_lcs_071015w/

Fox News' attack on the honor and integrity of our war generals http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/29/hunt/

"When Republicans act like Democrats, America loses," http://www.macombdaily.com/stories/091907/loc_20070919026.shtml

The strange launch of Fred Thompson http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070916/news_lz1e16will.html

Liberal Interpretation Rigging a study to make conservatives look stupid. http://www.slate.com/id/2173965/nav/tap1/

"The corruption. The spending out of control. The lack of ability to handle Katrina. Our failures in Iraq. We've lost the trust and confidence of the American people." http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gop9sep09,1,5301494.story?coll=la-headlines-california

Melancholy in the Republican Party http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070904/news_mz1e4novak.html

Why Newt Gingrich Calls the War on Terror a ‘Phony War’ http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/terrorism.php?id=1215971

Murphy resigns political posts; cooperating with police in apparent criminal investigation http://www.news-tribune.net/breakingnews/local_story_219210228.html

Tancredo tells Bush to take a hike http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/tancredo-tells-bush-to-take-a-hike-2007-06-05.html

at 12 year old kids

'ZERO' FOR HEROES, SAYS NY-BASH POL "I have to ask why . . . the firefighters who went there and everyone in the City of New York needs to come to the federal government," Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican, said during a House subcommittee hearing. "How much money has the federal government put out post-9/11, including the buckets of $10 and $20 billion we just threw at the State and the City of New York versus how much has been paid out by the City and the State of New York?" Issa asked. "It's very simple: I can't vote for additional money for New York if I can't see why it would be appropriate to do this every single time a similar situation happens, which quite frankly includes any urban terrorist. It doesn't have to be somebody from al Qaeda. It can be someone who decides that they don't like animal testing at one of our pharmaceutical facilities." Issa spokesman Frederick Hill said his boss opposes any federal effort to continue funding the now-expired victims' fund, because the case has not been made for "which unique factors make this different" from wildfires in California or the Oklahoma City bombing in 1996, which killed 167 people. http://www.nypost.com/seven/04022008/news/nationalnews/zero_for_heroes__says_ny_bash_pol_104639.htm

The Swift-Boating of Graeme Frost http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1670210,00.html

The Frost family fiasco: a right-wing smear gone awry http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13192.html

at the peace movement

Protesters claim man nearly ran them over. Driver says anti-war group un-American. Davis said Thursday that he never intended to hurt the protesters and told deputies he was traveling 3 to 5 mph. “I was just trying to let them know America doesn't feel the way they do,” he said. “I'm tired of sticking my head in the sand and ignoring them. “Apparently they've decided to blow this up and try to make something out of it. Maybe that's the way they operate. “If those people really hate America as much as their signs indicate, they should probably just pack and go. I might even help them pack and go – that is, if they're not too afraid and go run away. I can't believe they said that. That is completely inaccurate.” Davis added that he thinks it's ironic that the protesters talk about their First Amendment rights but don't want him to express his beliefs. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080705/news_1mc5protest.html

http://www.vetsforfreedom.org/

Bolton Brigade March on Carson City: MAF will hold a Pro-War Rally http://desertbeacon.blogspot.com/2007/08/bolton-brigade-march-on-carson-city-maf.html

Kill the Die-in Surely most critics of the war still have a sense of decency. by William Kristol http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/051mhnto.asp

Senate Republicans block access to left-leaning Web site http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MI_BLOCKED_WEB_SITE_MIOL-?SITE=MIDTN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Cindy Sheehan's sad form of ADD http://www.philly.com/dailynews/columnists/stu_bykofsky/8803492.html

colledge pugs http://www.flashreport.org/commentary0b.php?postID=2007042610330098&authID=2005081622025042&post_offsetP=0

sheehan http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55086

tearing down the rule of law

Investigating the Gonzales era. A report on the firings of nine U.S. attorneys is scathing in its portrayal of ex-Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-report30-2008sep30,0,93150.story

FBI probing figure linked to 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth; Accused of forging campaign audit. the NRCC, which raises funds for the political campaigns of House Republicans, is auditing its own books due to what may be an FBI fraud investigation of Christopher J. Ward, who served as NRCC treasurer until Aug. 2007. http://rawstory.com/news/2008/FBI_probing_figure_linked_to_2004_0206.html

UHP (Utah Highway Patrol) tasers man in front of pregnant wife and baby over an alleged speeding ticket. Outraged? Call the Vernal, Utah UHP Office and let them know! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMaMYL_shxc

lawlessness, secrecy, and scorn for public accountability http://www.slate.com/id/2168757/nav/tap3/

you can't trust the executive http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151AP_Domestic_Spying.html

“Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/11177.html

gone crazy http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070508/UPDATE/705080429

Sanchez subpoenas Lam! http://hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/030107/subpoenas.html

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/02/28/attorneys/

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070211/news_1m11lam.html

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070207/news_7m7lam.html

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070121/news_1n21lam.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-hunter19jan19,1,5145462.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

nincompoops (Gingrich)

Language: A Key Mechanism of Control. GOPAC memo http://web.utk.edu/~glenn/GopacMemo.html

Coulter's anti-Semitic comment too dangerous to ignore http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-rutten13oct13,0,1859447.column?coll=la-home-center

the U.S. command is aggressively disseminating grisly images of al-Qaeda “torture chambers,” http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071009/news_lz1e9kondrack.html

Gingrich will consider running if ‘enough people are worried about stopping Clinton’ http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/gingrich-will-consider-running-if-enough-people-are-worried-about-stopping-clinton-2007-09-21.html

The International Atomic Energy Agency "is not in the business of diplomacy," Rice told reporters http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/09/19/rice.iran/index.html

THE ARCHITECTS OF WAR: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? http://thinkprogress.org/the-architects-where-are-they-now/

"noted pollster" Luntz http://mediamatters.org/items/200706210015?f=h_side

General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=37181&dcn=todaysnews

The government is not functioning http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/gingrich-hints-again-of-white-house-run-2007-06-03.html

neutralizing liberal media bias http://newsbusters.org/

perles of ignorance http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/10/AR2007051001808.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?pid=171489

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/2007/02/23/ahmadinejad/

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/19/wh.congress.iraq/index.html

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012707F.shtml

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/22/AR2007012201103.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6915541

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6817201

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/299966_rice17.html

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/01/13/news/politics/9_01_491_12_07.txt

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/9541.html

http://www.flashreport.org/commentary0b.php?postID=2007010323290123&authID=2005081622025042&post_offsetP=0

http://www.ronnehring.com/

frank luntz http://www.c-span.org/videoarchives.asp?CatCodePairs=,&ArchiveDays=100

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/4345926.html

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/061013/13bush.htm

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-negads26sep26,0,107252.story?coll=la-home-headlines

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060926/news_lz1ed26bottom.html

http://hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/092606/lott.html

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/terror/20060926-0508-rice-clinton.html

what a moron (Rice)

BBC Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman interviews neocon former US ambassador to the UN and Bush-buddy John Bolton, and crushes Bolton's false notions about Iraq (watch Bolton turn red). If only American TV news was this good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuqNWG9sbuE

Making the homeland more secure. By Frances Fragos Townsend. As President Bush has stated, the only way to defeat terrorism in the long run is to advance freedom and democracy as the alternative to radicalism and repression. The war on terror is not just a battle of arms, it is also a battle of ideas – a fight against the terrorists, their dark world vision and their murderous ideology. More effective outreach to Muslim communities and nations must be part of an ongoing strategic communications campaign that focuses on fostering common values while also making clear the true nature of our common enemy. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080110/news_lz1e10townsen.html

Why Her Dreams Crashed, Rice's Worldview Flipped, And Her Policies Flopped http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201650.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

LIZ CHENEY spreading democracy with bombs http://www.nypost.com/seven/11032007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/no_time_to_give_up_on_democracy_893580.htm

Blackwater fallout costs U.S. security chief his job "I just want to thank him for his exemplary service to the country," Rice told reporters http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/336765_blackwater25.html

Jews need to be "perfected" comment brings on denouncements. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-coulter13oct13,0,5298383.story?coll=la-home-center

John Bolton; former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071007/news_lz1e7qanda.html

a "diabolically brilliant" war tactician, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, likening the terror commander to Civil War generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070925/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/rice_zarqawi

We have borne the bloody costs of coulda-woulda-shoulda. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070913/news_mz1e13malkin.html

Leigh Robbins fascist ignorant stupid anti-American hate fear filled republican

Mom defends reaction to Iraqi passengers http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20070901-9999-1m1airline.html

outpouring of Democrat jubilation upon hearing the news http://www.tomdelay.com/home/2007/8/14/the-measure-of-a-republican.html

four minutes after I was told, I went to the Daily Kos http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_080307/content/01125106.guest.html

space aliens ate Tom Tancredo's brain http://www.slate.com/id/2171667/nav/tap3/

Gingrich rips on Detroit Public Schools http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070730/UPDATE/707300382/1003

I am a legal resident http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/06/24/MNGIUQKUID1.DTL&type=politics

Republican support for war eroding http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070617/news_lz1e17will.html

Crescent of crisis Robert J. Caldwell http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070617/news_lz1e17caldwel.html

SCHWARZENEGGER http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_032107/content/01125106.guest.html

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003546508

Bush and Cheney

Israel, America’s staunchest ally in the Middle East, just became the latest example of a country that has decided it is better to deal with its foes than to ignore them. The announcement that Israel has entered into comprehensive peace talks with Syria is at odds with the course counseled by the Bush administration, which initially opposed such talks in private conversations with Israelis, according to Israeli and American officials. A week ago, President Bush delivered a speech to the Israeli Parliament likening attempts to “negotiate with the terrorists and radicals” to appeasement before World War II. “We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Mr. Bush said. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared, ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.” But in many ways, the Bush administration’s own policies appear to be at odds with his thesis. While Mr. Bush and his advisers have repeatedly scorned the idea of talking to enemies without first getting preconditions met, administration policy over the last seven years has been far more nuanced. In fact, the United States under the Bush administration has shown a sliding definition of just when it is beneficial to talk to whom. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/washington/22assess.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

Blurred Vision. BUSH'S BLUNDERING BRAND OF "DIPLOMACY." Israel will be celebrating the 120th anniversary as one of the world's great democracies, a secure and flourishing homeland for the Jewish people. The Palestinian people will have the homeland they have long dreamed of and deserved—a democratic state that is governed by law, and respects human rights, and rejects terror. From Cairo to Riyadh to Baghdad and Beirut, people will live in free and independent societies. … Iran and Syria will be peaceful nations. … Al-Qaida and Hezbollah and Hamas will be defeated, as Muslims across the region recognize the emptiness of the terrorists' vision and the injustice of their cause. "This is a bold vision," Bush continued, somewhat immodestly. And indeed it is. One can imagine the president or his speechwriters admiring their handiwork as a Holy Land adaptation of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. But King was also a man of action; he had a plan for how to get to his mountaintop. What is Bush's plan? What needs to happen as a precondition for progress? What action is he taking now, what steps does he pledge or propose for the next few months or years to get the caravan rolling in the right direction? http://www.slate.com/id/2191505/

Bush and Cheney, archived May 18, 2008

Iraq Prompts President Bush to Give Up Golf. President Bush doesn't play as much golf as he used to. In an interview with Politico this week, Mr. Bush said he gave up the game because of the war in Iraq. The president said he didn't want families of dead soldiers to see him enjoying himself on the links. Noah Adams talks with Don Van Natta of The New York Times, author of First Off the Tee, a book about the history of golf and the presidency. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90534281 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3p9y_OEAdc

Government in secret. The Yoo memo is just one example of Bush's hidden laws. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-feingold8-2008may08,0,7384959.story

Jenna Bush's wedding will be a low-key event. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-wedding4-2008may04,0,6987134.story

White House challenges release of visitor logs. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_white_house_secrecy.html?source=mypi

When a Republican president is in power, people at the top of the income distribution experience much larger real income gains than those at the bottom--a difference of 1.5 percent per year going from the bottom to the top quintile in the income distribution. The situation is reversed when a Democrat is in power: those who benefit the most are the lower income groups. If you are in the bottom quintile, the difference between having a Democratic or a Republican president in office is an income gain (or loss) of more than 2 percent per year! Strikingly, compared to Republicans, Democratic presidents generate higher income gains for all income groups http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2008/03/american-politi.html http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2008/04/larry-bartels-r.html

Seven Years of Scandal. The latest plot twists are stunners, even as they unfold against the scandalous backdrop of the Bush administration’s sorry regulatory record. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080408_seven_years_of_scandal/

[P]ublic opinion about George Bush has touched not one but two outer edges of the known galaxy of presidential popularity. First … he scored the highest approval ratings of any president since World War II. Then … he plunged to the lowest level of public esteem ever measured, in the same postwar era…. If you go by approval ratings, father and son are practically the same person. The only significant differences are that the 43rd president's belly-flop was spread over two presidential terms rather than one and that it was a slightly exaggerated version of the 41st president's trajectory. http://www.slate.com/id/2188146/

Cheney's on the road: Pack the Diet Sprite, keep the TV tuned to Fox News. On overseas trips, including this one in the Middle East, Cheney spends a lot of time on a noisy C-17, a gray military airplane that is not as conspicuous as the blue-and-white Air Force Two, a much smaller Air Force One look-alike. Inside the C-17, Cheney spends hour after hour in his trailer in the middle of the cavernous plane. Known as the “silver bullet,” it has a bathroom and a couple of sleeping and sitting areas where Cheney likes to read books, briefing papers and newspapers, listen to music and spend time with his wife. comment: Is there a specific name for the mental disorder that causes people to spew vitriolic venomous remarks about an intelligent, caring, successful and patriotic man who has given up millions to serve his country? Could it be some form of liberal psychosis? http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20080330-0745-cheney-ontheroad.html

Iraq decisionmaking as courageous as pardoning Richard Nixon, Cheney says. "The president had to go up -- chose to go up before the Judiciary Committee of the House and testify in order to put down the rumors that somehow there had been a deal between he and President Nixon, that if he would pardon Nixon, then he would get to be president himself," Cheney continued. "I rode up there with him that day and sat in the hearing room while he answered all those questions. I know how much grief he took for that decision, and it may well have cost him the presidency in '76." "Thirty years later, nearly everybody would say it is exactly the right thing to do, that if he'd paid attention at the time to the polls he never would have done that," he added. "But he demonstrated, I think, great courage and great foresight, and the country was better off for what Jerry Ford did that day. And 30 years later, everybody recognized it. "And I have the same strong conviction the issues we're dealing with today -- the global war on terror, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq -- that all of the tough calls the president has had to make, that 30 years from now it will be clear that he made the right decisions, and that the effort we mounted was the right one, and that if we had listened to the polls, we would have gotten it wrong." http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Cheney_compares_Iraq_decisions_with_Richard_0325.html

Bush’s Legacy of Failure. That idiotic “what, me worry?” look just never leaves the man’s visage. Once again, there was our president, presiding over disasters in part of his making and totally on his watch, grinning with an aplomb that suggested a serious disconnect between his worldview and existing reality. Be it in his announcement that Iraq was being secured on a day when bombs ripped through that sad land or posed between his Treasury secretary and the Federal Reserve chairman to applaud the government’s bailout of a failed bank, George Bush was the only one inexplicably smiling. Failure suits him. It is a stance he learned well while presiding over one failed Texas business deal after another, and it served him splendidly as he claimed the title of president of the United States after losing the popular, and maybe even the electoral, vote. It carried him through the most ignominious chapter of U.S. foreign policy, from the lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to an unprecedented presidential defense of torture. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080318_bushs_legacy_of_failure/

nterview of the Vice President by Martha Raddatz, ABC News. Shangri-La's Barr Al Jissah Resort & Spa. Muscat, Oman. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/03/20080319-5.html

He began by laughingly calling the latest news on the economic meltdown "a interesting moment" and ended by saying that "our energy policy has not been very wise" and that there was "no quick fix" on gasp-inducing gas prices. "You know, I guess the best way to describe government policy is like a person trying to drive a car in a rough patch," he said. "If you ever get stuck in a situation like that, you know full well it's important not to overcorrect, because when you overcorrect you end up in the ditch." Dude, you're already in the ditch. http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/79876/

The Bush Tragedy. http://www.slate.com/id/2186343/

A seemingly ho-hum rules dispute between Philadelphia's public housing agency and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has led to accusations of favoritism and corruption against a member of President Bush's Cabinet. According to the city housing authority director, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson has threatened the agency's funding since it refused to award a vacant lot worth $2 million to Kenny Gamble, a soul-music producer-turned-community developer. Jackson, forgoing protocol, toured the site with Gamble in September 2006 without inviting local officials to join them, and later personally called Philadelphia's mayor at the time for help, according to an amended federal lawsuit filed against HUD last month by the Philadelphia Housing Authority. "This is extraordinary. He's the president's representative, and he's personally coming out, on his own, to take a firsthand look into a contract dispute?" housing authority Director Carl Greene said Thursday. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080301/D8V4SVRO1.html

Cheney fights release of videos. The VP's office worries depositions of two aides in a Golden man's civil lawsuit may show up on YouTube. "As courts have recognized, using digital technology, a video recording can easily be 'cut and spliced,' so as to embarrass and even humiliate a witness," Cheney's lawyers wrote in a U.S. District Court filing. "That much can readily be seen from a visit to YouTube. . . . A simple query using the search term 'deposition' yields over 400 video clips, in which many of the deponents are made to look boorish, mendacious, or unintelligent." http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_8220304

Critics: Bush's budget harms Great Lakes. President Bush's proposed budget would shortchange efforts to clean up the Great Lakes and prevent the worsening of problems such as sewage overflows and exotic species invasions, critics said Wednesday. Federal spending for Great Lakes water quality programs would be slashed 16 percent from this year's total under the president's fiscal 2009 spending plan released this week, advocacy groups said. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1501ap_budget_great_lakes.html

Lawmakers complain Bush budget cuts fire prevention money. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/02/05/news/nation/15_07_382_4_08.txt

US should have taken British advice on war, says Andrew. PRINCE Andrew has criticised the US for not learning from Britain's experiences on how to avoid problems following the Iraq war. In an unusual move for a member of the Royal Family, the Duke of York said the conflict had led to a "healthy scepticism" towards the George Bush administration. http://news.scotsman.com/world/US-should-have-taken-British.3742935.jp

the failures in Bush's foreign and military policy stem from two great misconceptions: that the world changed after Sept. 11, when it didn't, and that the United States emerged from the Cold War stronger than before, when in fact it was weaker. Those in charge of his policies cared little about the details of warfare, knew little about the realities of the Middle East, and had not thought through what made freedom work in their own country, much less what might make it work elsewhere. http://www.slate.com/id/2183426/entry/2183424/nav/tap3/

Was encounter with Cheney a touch, a slap or a shove? A Colorado man had an encounter with the vice president, but no one, including Secret Service agents, agrees on what happened. Could Cheney be forced to testify? http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cheney4feb04,0,2222844.story

Support is slow for Bush's Mars plan. Some scientists question goals. Four years after President Bush called for Americans to return to the moon and then voyage on to Mars, NASA is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to design, build and test the spacecraft that would make it possible. But the effort has yet to capture the public's imagination as the Apollo project did in the 1960s, something tacitly acknowledged recently when NASA hired a New York advertising firm to help “brand” the program, now dubbed Constellation. Moreover, some top space-exploration advocates, policy experts and scientists, including some who initially supported the program, are questioning whether it can ever achieve its goals at a price taxpayers will accept. The doubters are so worried that they have organized a conference for Feb. 12-13 at Stanford University to debate the issue. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080203/news_1n3mars.html

Bush Legacy: Setting a Standard in Fear-Mongering. When I left the Bush administration in 2003, it was clear to me that its strategy for defeating terrorism was leaving our nation more vulnerable and our people in a perilous place. Not only did its policies misappropriate resources, weaken the moral standing of America, and threaten long-standing legal and constitutional provisions, but the president also employed misleading and reckless rhetoric to perpetuate his agenda. This week's State of the Union proved nothing has changed. Besides overstating successes in Afghanistan, painting a rosy future for Iraq, and touting unfinished domestic objectives, he again used his favorite tactic - fear - as a tool to scare Congress and the American people. On one issue in particular - FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) - the president misconstrued the truth and manipulated the facts. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020308Z.shtml

But the end of the current administration will also mark the moment we get a full answer to what has thus far been a little-examined question: What happens to the folks who crafted and carried out Bush's most radical and inept policies? Will they be shunned as the failures they are? Or welcomed into the bosom of the permanent Beltway establishment and a comfortable eminence grise post-White House existence? http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=244edcc8-28e6-4756-a57f-63ebcef5b60d

Bush pushes for three trade pacts. At a luncheon at the Bel-Air home of venture capitalist Elliott Broidy and an early dinner in Hillsborough on the San Francisco peninsula, Bush expected to raise more than $3.2 million for the Republican National Committee, a party official said. Bush also planned fundraising stops Thursday and Friday in Nevada, Colorado and Missouri. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush31jan31,0,2219336.story

Bush says faith helped him beat drinking. "First is to recognize that there is a higher power," Bush said. "It helped me in my life. It helped me quit drinking." "That's right, there is a higher power," Mosely said. "Step One, right?" Bush said, referring to the Alcholics Anonymous twelve-steps program. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080129/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_alcohol_addiction_2

Smirk of the Union. A small and beaten man spoke to Congress and the nation last night, convinced in his own mind he's a hero. http://www.alternet.org/story/75340/?page=1

Fact-Checking Key Assertions in the State of the Union Address. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/28/AR2008012803175.html?hpid=topnews

Fox News fetes legacy-conscious Bush in one hour program. http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Fox_News_fetes_President_Bush_in_0128.html

PRESIDENT BUSH – Overall Job Rating in recent national polls http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm

George W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting which he acquired after becoming a “born again Christian.” It’s by W.H.D. Koerner and is entitled “A Charge to Keep.” Bush was so taken by it, that he took the painting’s name for his own official autobiography. So Bush’s inspiring, prosyletizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob. It seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency. Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him. This is the hallmark of a tragically bad executive. But in this case, it couldn’t be more precious. The president of the United States has identified closely with a man he sees as a mythic, heroic figure. But in fact he’s a wily criminal one step out in front of justice. It perfectly reflects Bush the man. . . and Bush the president. http://harpers.org/archive/2008/01/hbc-90002237

From Norman Rockwell to Abu Ghraib. To understand how Bush justifies a torture policy that is the bane of our nation, consider the sentimental cowboy art that decks his Oval Office walls. http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/04/26/torture_policy/print.html

Why the Saudis Hate Bush. http://www.alternet.org/audits/73999/

Bush Era's Last Legs: Will Anything Change When He Goes? A year from now, given the pathetic state of American politics and the U.S. news media, one can almost envision the start of a George W. Bush nostalgia as his presidency comes to an end. Neocon columnists and think-tank experts are sure to hail his courage and wisdom. It’s also unlikely that either a President McCain or a President Clinton would do much to set the record straight. Whether the pattern is like 1988 (when George H.W. Bush succeeded fellow Republican Ronald Reagan) or like 1992 (when Democrat Bill Clinton followed George H.W. Bush), the focus will be on the future, not the past. Rose-colored glasses will be put firmly in place about George W. Bush, just as they were regarding Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, in order to avoid bitter partisan disputes about their legacies. As the Clinton team told me back in 1993, “we don’t want to refight the old battles of the 1980s.” Many of the same players show no indication that they would take a different position regarding the battles of the Bush II presidency. http://www.alternet.org/election08/74491/?page=1

The sad reality about America’s historical amnesia – if not outright hostility toward the hard truths of history – will mean that few, if any, lessons will be learned from the eight years of George W. Bush. That, in turn, will leave open the likelihood that the same mistakes will be repeated again.

President Bush Says Usama Bin Laden May Not Be Captured During His Time in Office http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,325234,00.html

Attorneys probe deepens. The federal investigation into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys could jolt the political landscape ahead of the November elections, according to several people close to the inquiry. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/attorneys-probe-deepens-2008-01-22.html

Robert Fisk: Bloody reality bears no relation to the delusions of this President. As a bomb explodes in Beirut and Israel kills 19 in Gaza raids, Bush takes his Middle East peace mission to Saudi Arabia (and signs off $20bn weapons deal with repressive regime) http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3342174.ece

Exclusive: President Bush in Saudi Arabia. The President on Middle East Trip, High Oil Prices and Why an Israeli-Palestinian Peace Deal Is Possible. "Look, I know I've been accused of being a hopeless idealist. On the other hand, I don't see any alternative, if you believe it's an ideological struggle." http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Politics/Story?id=4136209&page=1

Bush: U.S. should have used bombing to help Jews in Auschwitz http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/01/12/news/nation/3_41_451_11_08.txt

Legal FictionsThe Bush administration's dumbest legal arguments of the year. http://www.slate.com/id/2179934

U.S. attorney firings open doors for the 9. A year ago, a Justice Department scandal forced them into new careers. Despite some bitterness, they've landed on their feet. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-usattys9dec09,0,2732264.story?page=1&coll=la-home-center

Open Letters to George W. Bush. Letters to the president from his ardent admirer Belacqua Jones http://blogs.salon.com/0004024/

If you ever suspected Karl Rove was nuts, now you know he is. Ever since escaping the asylum, he’s been running around like a madman, blaming the Iraq war on Democrats. http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5

Emergency responders face deep aid cuts http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071130/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/security_grants

Un-Cheney Heart Isn't it time for the vice president to get a heart transplant? http://www.slate.com/id/2178644/nav/ais/

More than 30 years of U.S. peacemaking have produced few successes http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/11/24/military/13_09_3511_23_07.txt

Giving Thanks Inside the Bubble. By Dan Froomkin http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/11/20/BL2007112000871_pf.html

"The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America’s Future” http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/16/1419245

Help! I Hate Myself for Hating Bush http://blog.washingtonpost.com/stumped/?hpid=opinionsbox1

Pakistan censors poetic salute to Bush http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/05/wpoem05.xml

criminologists have long recognized that premeditated, sadistic treatment of animals is a strong predictor of criminal and homicidal violence. http://www.alternet.org/story/67663/

Matthew Dowd helped win the White House. Now he views the administration with a mixture of anguish and contempt. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-dowd14nov14,0,6304127.story?coll=la-home-center

Part 2 of an excerpt from "The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future." http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/11/08/house_of_bush/index.html

Part 1 of an excerpt from "The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future." http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/11/07/house_of_bush/

Picking up after failed war on terror, Bush's campaign to wipe out terrorism is a costly mess. Here are five steps to move on. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-bacevich6nov06,0,7058482.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

Add Blackwater to Bush misadventures hidden by a veil of secrecy http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/11/03/opinion/commentarycal/21_58_4811_2_07.txt

Attempting to demonstrate fiscal toughness now, in the seventh year of his presidency, carried the risk being criticized for doing too little, too late or as waging a transparently partisan attack against the Democrats who now run Capitol Hill. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151AP_Bush_Veto.html?source=mypi

Bush to Democrats: 'We are at war' http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151AP_Bush.html?source=mypi

Laura Bush accuses Dems of demagoguery on SCHIP http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/laura-bush-accuses-democrats-of-demagoguery-on-schip-2007-10-28.html

Dean Lashes Out at GOP Over Health Plan http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071027/D8SHLC880.html

Why Those Who Love America Are Feeling Brokenhearted http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102507E.shtml

Which of the attacks I have just described would they prefer we had not stopped? http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071023-3.html

Straitjacket Bush, The president's warmongering remarks on the Iranian threat suggest he is psychotic. Really. http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-brooks24oct25,0,1949551.column?coll=la-home-commentary

How Bush wrecked conservatism http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/10/23/conservatism/index.html

Who Will Rule Us After the Next 9/11?The reality of NSPD-51 is almost as bad as the paranoia. http://www.slate.com/id/2176185/nav/tap3/

``Of course I feel hostile. My only son was killed and I can't get an answer, Jones, 44, says she replied. http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20071010/pl_bloomberg/awwpmilea_ag_1

Chris DeMuth, Hack Extraordinaire http://www.slate.com/id/2175768/nav/tap3/

Your duty is to defend America's reputation in the world. To do so, you must persuade the Bush administration to renounce its abhorrent and hypocritical policy on torture. http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/10/11/torture_letter_to_hughes/

As Bush Staffers Leave, Questions About Legacy Abound http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/06/AR2007100601521.html?hpid=topnews

You're equally American if you believe in an Almighty or don't believe in an Almighty. That's a sacred freedom. http://timesonline.typepad.com/faith/2007/08/top-50-bushisms.html

Ex-Bush lawyer: Eavesdropping illegal http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/334028_spy03.html

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/63632/

Bush's 2003 conversation with the Spanish prime minister shows his smug determination to invade Iraq at all costs. http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/09/28/aznar_iraq/

Protests at President Bush at UN http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/86136

Is our Prezzidint learning? http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/perino-blasts-offensive-question-after-bush-speech-snafu-2007-09-25.html

On Iraq, Bush thinks his way is best http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070925/news_lz1e25kondrac.html

Bush urges U.N. to spread freedom http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151AP_Bush.html?source=mypi

Rummy: “We view the appointment as fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, disinterested enquiry, respect for national and international laws and care for the opinions, property and lives of others to which Stanford is inalienably committed,” the petition reads. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/education/21stanford.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

Ms Rice made it clear that the Bush administration was not interested in the views of the Pope on the immorality of launching military offensive. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7002988.stm

Bush hammers Dems on MoveOn.org ad http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/bush-blasts-dems-on-moveon.org-ad-2007-09-20.html

Annotate This… President Bush's Sept. 13 Speech to the Nation http://www.antiwar.com/orig/zunesleaver.php?articleid=11629

Why Is Bush's Kid Brother Neil Getting Federal Funding? http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091407H.shtml

Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/06/bush_wmd/

How Bush betrays Reagan http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/09/04/bush_and_reagan/

“The Terror Presidency,” he weakened the presidency he was so determined to strengthen. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/magazine/09rosen.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin

Draper offers little additional insight http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/02/AR2007090201422.html?hpid=topnews

CheneyBush's "Mercenary" Legions http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082907K.shtml

To invoke Vietnam was a blunder too far for Bush http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2156380,00.html

one of the worst foreign policy blunders in our history http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=35782

Bush Falters http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/19/AR2007081901720.html?hpid=topnews

Ranch fashion http://www.statesman.com/search/content/life/stories/style/08/09/0809ranchfashion.html

Bush's Optimism Persists http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=35336

What to Do With Cheney? The politics of impeachment http://www.antiwar.com/utley/?articleid=11440

26 percent of California voters approve of the job Bush is doing http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070815/news_1n15field.html

rove bbc http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6944781.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4679979.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6944040.stm

it pleases the mob ROVE resigns http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010465

Michael J. Gerson is accused of taking credit for words he did not write http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/10/AR2007081002403.html?hpid=topnews

George W. Bush's missing year http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/09/02/allison/index.html

Columnist says Bush administration fears Powell will emerge as anti-war critic http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Columnist_says_Bush_administration_fears_Powell_0809.html

Carl Bernstein: Bush More "Disastrous" Than Nixon http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=221074

Bush Defaces Flag (Again) http://dcdl.org/2006/06/22/bush-defaces-flag-again

bush-signing-flag.jpg

George Bush, Hegelian http://www.slate.com/id/2171670

this voice has never acknowledged its previous errors. polls http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1649312,00.html

"if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151AP_CIA_Leak_Trial.html?source=mypi

Bush's approval rating plunges to new low http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Bush_s_approval_rating_plunges_to_n_06212007.html

don't sell it on ebay http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/2007/05/bush_to_mother_.html

Some Q's, no A's from Rice http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/05/28/opinion/editorialscal/52707180901.txt

where have all the leaders gone http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=wherehavealltheleadersgone

remember the rug http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070419/bush-musings

409 days of vacation http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070407/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_s_escape_1

rove: bush legacy of lies http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802184.html

Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear stronger in the region than at any time since the U.S. invasion. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/washington/28security.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

cheney bombed http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=43907

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/25/153120/172

punk http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151AP_Asia_Cheney.html

http://nymag.com/news/politics/Bush/26993/index10.html

http://hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/022107/surge.html

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=43770

bush is a moron http://www.slate.com/id/2160225/pagenum/all/#page_start

osama http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=10547

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Stages_of_Cruelty

"It Can Happen Here" http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/02/19/conason/

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-ellsberg3jul03,1,6463178.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10498

little criminal bush http://www.alternet.org/story/46794/

today's presidential boy blunder http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/01/14/opinion/jacobs/17_21_271_13_07.txt

shit for brains http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070113/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush

evil, stupid idiot: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/297162_bush25.html

Eric Keroack http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061204/news_1m4letter.html

The Bush administration's latest, and most appalling, assault on habeas corpus. http://www.slate.com/id/2154675

Embittered Insiders Turn Against Bush http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/18/AR2006111801076.html

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/291697_bushanalysis09.html

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/22/bush-stay-the-course/

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/24/bush-dismisses-bloodshed-in-iraq-as-just-a-comma/

Randal LEE Cunningham

Money launderer for Cunningham gets eight years. The contrition, tears and poor health of Thomas Kontogiannis were not enough to spare him a prison sentence of eight years and one month for his role in laundering bribe money for former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham. U.S. District Judge Larry Burns also fined the wealthy Long Island financier $1,050,000 – twice the value of the bribe that Kontogiannis laundered through fraudulent mortgages that allowed Cunningham to buy a $2.4 million mansion in Rancho Santa Fe. Cunningham, a Republican, is serving an eight-year, four-month sentence in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion. Brent Wilkes, a former defense contractor from Poway, was convicted of 13 charges of bribing Cunningham and was sentenced to 12 years; he is appealing his convictions. Kontogiannis, 59, pleaded guilty 15 months ago to a single charge of money laundering. The deal included a cap on his prison sentence of 10 years – a move that the prosecutor on the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Forge, acknowledged in court yesterday was a mistake. That is because after pleading guilty, Kontogiannis continued issuing millions of dollars in fraudulent mortgages and has continued to profit from them, Forge said. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/cunningham/20080517-9999-1m17tommyk.html

A federal appeals court denied the bid of former defense contractor Brent Wilkes to get out of prison immediately, but left the door open for the him to try again. The order by a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal is the latest turn in Wilkes' now monthlong effort to pull together enough bond money to be free. The court had ruled March 27 Wilkes was entitled to bail pending his appeal of his bribery, fraud and conspiracy convictions stemming from the Randy “Duke” Cunningham scandal. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Larry Burns. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/cunningham/20080502-1252-bn2wilkes.html

Wilkes ordered released on bail during appeal. Ex-defense contractor may be out next week. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080329/news_1m29wilkes.html

Feds may seek tougher sentence for Cunningham figure. Calling a 12-year prison sentence "unreasonable," federal prosecutors in San Diego have positioned themselves to ask an appellate court to toughen the term that a judge handed Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes. In court documents filed before Wilkes' sentencing, prosecutors described the defense contractor as the spider and Cunningham the fly in the massive corruption case, characterizing Wilkes as "the poster boy for war profiteering." The 53-year-old Wilkes is in the process of being transferred from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego to an unidentified federal prison. "Due to security concerns, that's not something we can talk about until he arrives at his designated facility," jail spokeswoman Karen Banks said Thursday. Wilkes had been at the 12-story downtown jail since his sentencing. http://nctimes.com/articles/2008/03/28/news/sandiego/8885db4c9c2d47e3882574190056b9e2.txt

A little more than two years after former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham was sentenced to 100 months in prison in the largest congressional bribery case ever prosecuted, the scandal saga inches along with much to be resolved. While their once high-flying and wheeling and dealing days are long behind Cunningham and former Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes, three other co-conspirators still await sentencing. And the trial for a fourth man linked to the case, the former No. 3 man at the Central Intelligence Agency, has yet to take place. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/03/17/news/top_stories/10_31_243_16_08.txt

At his sentencing Tuesday, Wilkes stuck to his denials. "I've always maintained my innocence, and I continue to do so," Wilkes said in brief statement to Burns. Burns blasted Wilkes, saying that he lied on the stand, and pointed specifically to Wilkes' denials regarding the services of prostitutes. Two women testified that they were hired for sex with Wilkes and Cunningham in Hawaii. "In my view, and in the view of the jury, he didn't testify truthfully," Burns said of Wilkes. The judge also said Wilkes was a "shrewd" man who recognized that Cunningham had an "overblown ego" and could be easily exploited. During the trial, witnesses often described Cunningham as a man of lesser intelligence. Cunningham was "ripe for manipulation, and you took advantage of that," Burns said. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/02/20/news/top_stories/1_01_112_19_08.txt

Wilkes gets 12 years in prison for bribery. Case shed light on relationships between lobbyists, lawmakers. The judge also said he did not think Wilkes could be considered a leader or organizer of the scheme – a factor that can also be used to enhance a sentence. Prosecutors had implied Cunningham was the leader when he was sentenced, Burns noted. But that did not absolve Wilkes, whom Burns said cunningly zeroed in on Cunningham and exploited the congressman's weaknesses for his own ends. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20080220-9999-1n20wilkes.html http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-duke20feb20,1,7065131.story

Prosecutors are asking for a life sentence for a former Poway defense contractor convicted of slipping more than $700,000 in cash and gifts to former U.S. Rep Randy "Duke" Cunningham, according to new court documents. In court documents filed Thursday, prosecutors said Wilkes was greedy and lied "over and over again." "He is revealed, the United States contends, as a traitor, who deliberately and repeatedly pillaged his own country and subverted its system of governance, out of greed," the prosecutors wrote, acknowledging what they are seeking is "extraordinarily severe." http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/02/16/news/top_stories/22_08_282_15_08.txt

Prosecutors blast Wilkes, seek 25-year prison term. In the court papers, prosecutors said Wilkes was “a frequent and enthusiastic patron of prostitutes” and said he kept in his office safe a tape of him having sex with two prostitutes. In exchange for the gifts and money, the veteran congressman – who had a seat on a powerful defense committee – used his influence to earmark money in budgets and steer projects that benefited ADCS Inc., the Poway defense contracting firm that Wilkes owned. The government said that the contracts were not only corruptly gained but that Wilkes gouged taxpayers and delivered shoddy work, all to increase his profits. In one instance – an example of what prosecutors called “war profiteering” – Wilkes got Cunningham to divert $4 million originally budgeted in an anti-terrorism bill after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and channel it to a program for ADCS. In total, an investigator said in court papers that the federal government lost at least $30 million and as much as $60 million on the contracts that ADCS was involved in. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080216/news_1n16sentence.html

Judge wonders if Wilkes needs public defenders. Prosecutors will review finances. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080212/news_1m12wilkes.html

New York broker in Cunningham scandal pleads guilty. John Michael pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit an unlawful monetary transaction and to making a false statement to a federal grand jury. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/cunningham/20080204-1237-bn04michael.html http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080205/news_1m5michael.html http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/02/05/news/top_stories/1_01_052_4_08.txt

60-year sentence urged for Wilkes. In a related matter, the judge set a Feb. 4 hearing for a change of plea for John Michael. He is a New York mortgage broker who was indicted with Wilkes on obstruction of justice and other charges. The order did not say what Michael will be pleading guilty to, and his lawyer declined to comment. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080122/news_1m22wilkes.html

Final alleged Cunningham conspirator to change plea http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/01/11/news/sandiego/8_40_141_10_08.txt

Federal prosecutors said in court papers last week that Kontogiannis has “continued to orchestrate the writing and sale of fraudulent mortgages – several million dollars worth since his guilty plea.” http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20071204-9999-1m4tommyk.html

Thomas Kontogiannis, an international businessman who admitting laundering bribe money for Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, continued to run a $100 million mortgage fraud scheme for months after he pleaded guilty in the political corruption case, prosecutors said in new court documents. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/12/03/news/top_stories/20_57_2712_2_07.txt

Cunningham bribery figure too sick for prison, his attorneys say http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/11/29/news/sandiego/5_01_1711_28_07.txt

Geragos, Wilkes' attorney, said he plans to fight the conviction on the grounds that grand jury indictments were illegally leaked to the press, which Geragos said robbed Wilkes of a fair trial. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/11/06/news/top_stories/12_06_0111_5_07.txt

Wilkes convicted on all 13 counts http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/cunningham/20071105-1344-bn05wilkes2.html

Jurors resume deliberations in Wilkes case http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/cunningham/20071105-0158-wilkestrial.html

Defense contractor denies bribing Cunningham, Brent Wilkes takes the stand at his trial in San Diego on 14 counts related to transactions with the disgraced congressman. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bribe27oct27,1,4825478.story?coll=la-headlines-california

"I had sex with No. 2," Rozetta said. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/10/18/news/top_stories/1_02_4910_17_07.txt

The second prostitute, Tammy MacFadden, described Cunningham as “the boisterous one” who was “overbearing.” http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20071018-9999-1m18wilkes.html

that money was a second bribe Cunningham had demanded from Wilkes, to pay off a mortgage on a Rancho Santa Fe mansion he had purchased. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/cunningham/20071016-1342-bn16wilkes.html

“We would dread having dinner with (Cunningham) and having to listen to him repeat the same jokes,” Wade said. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071013/news_1n13wilkes.html

Witness: Wilkes a priority for 'Duke' http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071012/news_1m12wilkes.html

ably assisted by corrupt Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20071004-9999-1m4wilkes.html

he supplied Cunningham with prostitutes. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/10/02/news/top_stories/1_03_5910_1_07.txt

Trial set to begin for defense contractor accused of showering congressman with cash, gifts http://www.courttv.com/news/2007/1001/corruption_ap.html

Wilkes trial to begin Wednesday http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/wilkes-trial-to-begin-wednesday-2007-09-29.html

13 congressmen resist subpoenas in Wilkes case http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20070919-9999-1n19subpoena.html

Wilkes arranged to have Prostitute ‘A’ and Prostitute ‘C’ available for himself and coconspirator Cunningham http://thehill.com/under-the-dome/heres-looking-at-you-howard-2007-02-15.html

Lawmakers to seek to quash subpoenas in bribery trial http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/332202_subpoena19.html

Cunningham is currently being held at the federal jail in San Diego http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070918/news_1m18tommyk.html

Key probe figure may have violated terms of jail bond http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070915/news_1m15tommyk.html

Indictment stands for financier, judge rules http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/cunningham/20070906-9999-1m6wilkes.html

Judge asked to reject bid to drop case vs. broker http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20070830-9999-1m30michael.html

Wilkes gets use of attorney for the indigent at trial http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/cunningham/20070821-9999-1m21wilkes.html

Attorney for broker: Dismiss all charges http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070818/news_1n18tommyk.html

Guilty-plea files may be unsealed http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070809/news_2m9nosecret.html

I was sickened, appalled, disappointed http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20070723-9999-1n23duke.html

Another Cunningham conspirator pleads guilty http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/06/16/news/top_stories/23_23_576_15_07.txt

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/03/30/news/top_stories/2_85_123_28_07.txt

Duncan DUKE Hunter

Red Ribbon Week is the nation’s oldest and largest drug prevention program in the nation reaching millions of Americans during the last week of October every year. By wearing red ribbons and participating in community anti-drug events, young people pledge to live a drug-free life and pay tribute to DEA Special Agent Enriqué “Kiki” Camarena. http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/ongoing/redribbon_factsheet.html

San Diego loses clout in House. Hunter's was national. As chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Hunter's influence on federal defense spending and policy was unmatched. Despite this clout and long tenure, Hunter never really became part of Washington. While he ferociously championed controversial earmarks for programs he believed in, he never drank or dined with lobbyists and shunned most aspects of Washington social life. He was also remarkably clueless on politics. If you think you can beat a Van Deerlin in 1980, you probably don't think twice about running for president in 2008. So that's what he did. No one has ever come up with a good rationale for that run. My belief is that it was tied to the death of his father, friend and chief strategist, Robert O. Hunter, in 2006 only 85 days before he entered the presidential race. In deep grief, he took one last huge step to fulfill the dreams this bigger-than-life father had for his son. But what do I know? When it comes to Hunter, the only thing I'm sure of is that San Diego has lost most of its clout in Washington. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081109/news_1n9condon.html

Army major launches assault on backroom contracting deals in wartime. Determined to put a halt to the No. 1 killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, Congress directed a multimillion- dollar, classified sole-source earmark to the little known firm MZM Inc. Through the Counter-IED Targeting program, MZM was given the task of delivering intelligence to troops on the ground about the location of roadside bombs, so American forces could root them out.But the program didn't work. The number of deaths and injuries from IEDs continued to rise. The Pentagon ordered Egland to find out what went wrong. He says he found that MZM had hired only a third of the employees it had been paid for, and the money it spent under the contract was misdirected. Egland embarked on what would become a scavenger hunt to discover the root of the earmark. His findings would change the trajectory of his career and make him one of the more unlikely faces of a growing anti-earmark movement.He traced the legislative provision back to disgraced former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. A federal court later revealed that Mitchell Wade, the owner of MZM, had bribed the California Republican with a yacht, jewelry, antique furniture and thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. Wade pleaded guilty to bribery charges and is scheduled to be sentenced in December. Cunningham was sentenced in 2006 to more than eight years in prison, although his attorney recently asked President Bush for a pardon."Had this [IED] program done what it was supposed to and what it was paid to do, I think we could have had a really different number of casualties," Egland says. "A lot more guys could have come home. The abuse of earmarks has cost us lives on the battlefield." http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?filepath=/features/1008-01/1008-01na2.htm

Rep. Hunter Defends Torture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofaA9i3R__Y

most corrupt list. http://www.crewsmostcorrupt.org/report

We had a chance, I thought, a small chance, of winning this thing. I thought we had great issues to appeal to the conservative core of the Republican Party, and so we went out there and gave it everything we had, and we needed to strike a flame in this campaign, and we didn't. We didn't get the traction that we needed. Obviously, we were very short of money, but I have absolutely no complaints. I won the Arizona straw poll. I won the Texas straw poll. And we weren't able to leverage that into anywhere near the news coverage that we needed. You know, that came a month after the Iowa straw poll, and I learned one thing in Iowa: I took a position early on that I wasn't going to pay the $35 a vote for the delegates to the Iowa straw poll. That's a major mistake because the Iowa delegates expect to have their ways paid to the Iowa straw poll. I got 174 delegates from somebody else's band to come vote for me. But you do have to go to that straw poll with your own delegates. And you gotta pay for them, or they're not going to be there. And so that was a nice statement of principle that ended up resulting in 174 votes at a time when I needed in excess of a thousand votes there. We tied McCain and Giuliani at the top in the first big straw poll held in South Carolina. But we didn't have enough funds to leverage that showing. It was a good showing, but that meant just a brief glimmer on the major networks, and then it was gone. You've got to have a structure in place to raise money. In the end, raising money's a lot of hard work, and I simply did not have the contacts. It's very difficult to develop contacts when you're also being a member of Congress, and you got a day job. http://www.nationaljournal.com/conventions/co_20080901_5551.php

Observers say, however, politics plays a role in how agents are allocated. "In many cases, they're very political," said T.J. Bonner, president of the agents union. "Congress giveth and taketh away, so you can't just thumb your nose at Congress and say, `We're going to make these decisions based only on our enforcement needs.'" San Diego is represented by Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican who has been among the most outspoken proponents of increased border security and fences. But a spokesman said the congressman has not pushed for more agents for San Diego. "It's nothing we've done personally in this office," said Hunter spokesman Joe Kasper. Texas leaders, under pressure from border communities with close ties to Mexico, have pushed Customs and Border Protection to collaborate more with communities affected by the fence planned along the border and to make sure systems for those entering legally run smoothly — the kind of cajoling that has sometimes put them at odds with the agency. Cornyn said he has asked the agency how it assigns agents. "They say they have a formula, but I'm not convinced or persuaded that this is altogether a rational distribution of resources. There's a certain amount of whoever screams and yells gets taken care of first," the senator said. Cornelius, the university researcher, said politics probably do play a part in staffing. The entire GOP congressional delegation from San Diego "would have screamed bloody murder if the Border Patrol had reduced San Diego sector staffing levels appreciably," he said. http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/17122807/detail.html

Air tanker drops in wildfires are often just for show. The bulky aircraft are reassuring sights to those in harm's way, but their use can be a needless and expensive exercise to appease politicians. Fire officials call them 'CNN drops.' When Quintanar resisted, Hunter called Washington and pleaded his case directly with Myers. Over the next two days, six C-130 Hercules transports were dispatched to Southern California from bases in Wyoming, North Carolina and Colorado. The planes saw action once the weather improved, but in Quintanar's view they contributed little to controlling the fire. Hunter says he has no regrets about his end run around the chain of command. "California was on fire, I got 'em the planes," he said in a recent interview. "That's my job." Hunter also failed to provide body armor and armored vehicles for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is estimated that 666 Americans died as a direct result of Hunters failures. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la-me-wildfires29-2008jul29,0,3486219.story

The Hunter is a lonely heart. Former GOP prez candidate left up the creek without a wildebeest. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/25/104047/764

And a Wildebeest in Every Pot. ometimes even the most altruistic notions come to naught. Take California GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter's nifty idea to help the neediest of the needy: the 230,000 refugees in Chad who have fled the slaughter in Darfur and are desperately in need of food. Hunter's staff contacted the embassy in N'Djamena, Chad, last week to see whether Hunter could distribute food at a camp. Hunter also wanted to put together an outing to hunt wildebeest and distribute the meat to refugees. The embassy was decidedly lukewarm. It worried about logistics and the need to divert scarce staff to coordinate Hunter's schedule. There also were concerns about coordinating with the World Food Program's distribution schedule. The embassy sought advice from Foggy Bottom as to what to tell Hunter, a former presidential candidate, who will Congress at the end of this term. Here's State's response last week: "Talking Points Regarding CODEL Hunter": · The embassy "welcomes Congressman Hunter's interest in food assistance to Darfur refugees in Chad. Given the significant" U.S. aid in the world program, the embassy "would encourage the congressman to time his visit to coincide with an already scheduled food distribution." · The embassy will "make the necessary arrangements for" Hunter to watch a food distribution in a camp. · "Regarding the Congressman's desire to hunt wildebeest and distribute the cured meat to refugees, wildebeest are not present in Chad." (We're told some have been there, mostly in a no-hunting wildlife refuge.) And, in case Hunter was looking for other game: · "The Government of Chad does not permit the hunting of large mammals." Actually, there's not a whole lot of wild game roaming these days near the refugee camps in Chad. It's a desert, and it has been at war for the last few decades. (The wildebeest's annual migration between Kenya and Tanzania is under serious threat from poachers, CNN reported last week.) Hunter's office called State on Thursday and said he had decided not to go and that he was looking instead at commercial hunting expeditions in Kenya, Tanzania and Southern Africa. But Hunter's office said yesterday that his trip -- the idea was two separate trips, we were told -- was not intended to be an official CODEL. Hunter, his office said, had always intended them to be private trips. "At this point, neither trip has been settled," a spokesman said. Well, happy hunting. Is wildebeest best cooked medium-rare? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202641.html

Hunter explains reasons for earmarks. In the late 1980s, the U.S.-Mexico border along San Diego was out of control. On average, 3,000 drug trucks per year crossed between Tijuana and San Diego making it the nation's No. 1 smuggling corridor. To control the situation, I added money to the federal budget to construct a double fence on the border. The fence worked, reducing border arrests in the San Diego sector from 532,000 in 1993 to 111,000 in 2002, and stopping the drive-through drug traffic. The border fence was an earmark. Yet today, no one suggests that it be taken down. It's an illustration that Congress often has better ideas than an administration on the needs of our nation. In 2005, as roadside bombs took an increasing toll in Iraq, I added $10 million to develop and deploy small portable jammers that could be carried by troops on the ground. The reason for this earmark: the Pentagon had “forgotten” to build portable jammers that could be hand-carried on foot patrols. Another earmark, but one that saved lives. As the war progressed, I added more earmarks for body armor, armored vehicles, mortar defenses and new surveillance capability, all designed to do one thing: bring our soldiers and Marines back home alive. The critics of earmarks, who say that initiatives not included in the president's budget shouldn't be added, have no understanding of the need for Congress to act when the Pentagon fails to do so. These critics talk about “slipping” earmarks into bills. I place mine on my Web site, available for all to view and criticize if they so desire. Some people may call body armor, jammers, armored vehicles and the border fence earmarks. I call it doing my job as the former chairman and now ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee. Rep. DUNCAN HUNTER, Alpine http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080531/news_lz1e31letters.html

IS CONGRESS AND WHITE HOUSE FOR SALE? We already know the global elites want control. For years now we have seen the manipulative and almost secretive meetings of the SPP moving forward on the North American union and the super highway plans. Naturally, the whole time talk radio and any conservative media has been slammed and insulted as pushing urban legends and make believe when this even comes up. Rest assured it has majorly been in the works for years. I remember on my show asking Rep. Duncan Hunter about it and he confirmed that indeed this push was going on with a super highway and North American Union. He should know. http://www.newswithviews.com/Roth/laurie113.htm

Hot seat: Dunky DUKE hunter. Former Army Vice Chief of Staff Richard Cody recently said “the current demand for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the sustainable supply” and that “soldiers, families, support systems and equipment are stretched and stressed.” Do you share his concerns? Yes. That's why, as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, I directed the Committee Defense Review, which recommended that we increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps. The administration initially fought us, but now it agrees and we are growing both service branches. These additional people will give our troops more time to spend at home with their families. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080420/news_mz1e20hotsea.html

Memories and not much money. It can't be much fun, once someone has conceded defeat in a political contest, to be forced to dredge up all those memories – of stumping along the campaign trail, meeting admiring voters, raising hopes among supporters, speaking to throngs of well-wishers. It may be even worse to rehash the details of a poorly funded campaign. First, the no-brainers: Right up until he dropped out, Hunter, a Republican from Alpine, trailed most of the dozen or so GOP competitors in the money-raising department. He raised $2.5 million last year, according to the mid-February reports required from all candidates, whether still running or not. While that amount is more than double the $1 million or so Hunter typically pulled in for his congressional re-election campaigns, it couldn't touch the more-than-$60 million mark reached by the GOP field's top candidates. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20080407-9999-1m7letter.html

Off-road enthusiasts air concerns to Rep. Hunter . http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080322-1916-bn22offroad.html

“He Can’t Win”—How Immigration Reform Patriots Betrayed Duncan Hunter (And Tom Tancredo) http://vdare.com/guzzardi/080229_hunter.htm

We Can Make It: DURING this campaign season, one issue has often been left out of the national discussion: the deterioration of our industrial base. More than three million manufacturing jobs have been lost over the last eight years alone and, for the first time since 1950, fewer than 14 million Americans are employed by domestic manufacturers. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/opinion/02hunter.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Local lawmakers rake in millions in earmarks. Money benefits law enforcement, road construction and defense industry. While GOP leaders in Congress criticized Democrats last week for failing to rein in "earmarks," local Republican congressmen secured tens of millions of dollars for projects in this year's federal budget, according to a watchdog group's analysis. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, led local representatives bringing in more than $25 million, according to the analysis by the Washington-based Taxpayers for Common Sense. Hunter ranked 20th among all House members in individual earmarks, or pet projects that lawmakers insert into spending bills without a vote, and which critics call "pork barrel spending." http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/02/24/news/top_stories/23_10_612_23_08.txt

An Analysis of the Ideas of Duncan Hunter. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/274204/an_analysis_of_the_ideas_of_duncan.html

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Wing Nut. California's Duncan Hunter blames the media - the right-wing media. http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/the_loneliness_of_the_long_distance_wing_nut/6617/

Rep. Duncan Hunter drops out of race for GOP bid http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20080119-1843-bn19hunter2.html

Bill Bennett, on Hunter: "He called everybody by the wrong name." http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2008/01/cnn_hunters_out.html

Duncan Hunter Leaves GOP Field. "The failure of our campaign to gain traction is mine and mine alone," he said. "But we have driven the issues of national security, the border fence, the emergence of China and the need to reverse bad trade policy. Because of that, this campaign has been very worthwhile, and for the Hunter family, a lot of fun." “The Nevada caucuses reflecting only 2 percent of the vote for me,” he said. “I ran the campaign exactly the way I wanted to, and at this point not being able to gain traction in conservative states of Nevada and South Carolina, it's time to allow our volunteers and supporters to focus on the campaigns that remain viable.” http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/01/19/duncan_hunter_leaves_gop_field_1.html

Hunter faces small Pahrump audience. good stump speech. http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2008/Jan-18-Fri-2008/news/19162723.html

“The reason I think there’s a chance for me to win, even though I have no money, is the fact that nobody has dominated this race,” Hunter, a U.S. congressman from San Diego, said during a stop at the Reno Gazette-Journal Thursday. “This thing is still wide open. I don’t have the $100 million or so that Governor (Mitt) Romney has spent so far. On the other hand, I think I’ve got the experience and I think the best credentials to be the president of the United States.” At this juncture, Hunter is an unneeded distraction to the campaign. His influence has ended and the campaign moved past him. He looks silly hanging in there. http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200880117040

Duncan Hunter tackles the nanny state. by Jackson Citizen Patriot. Thursday January 10, 2008, 2:41 PM http://www.mlive.com/elections/index.ssf/2008/01/duncan_hunter.html

Duncan Hunter made a stop in Caro during the annual Lincoln Day Dinner at the Brentwood in Caro. stump speech http://www.michigansthumb.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19189838&BRD=2292&PAG=461&dept_id=571474&rfi=6

Hunter, a GOP congressman from California, was leaving a radio interview at a downtown Manchester hotel when he was stopped by a little blonde girl. "Who are you? she asked. http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/01/life_on_the_tra.html

California Republicans, already looking ahead from the first 2008 presidential election votes, are starting to float a new name for the 2010 gubernatorial race -- Rep. Duncan Hunter. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=14&entry_id=23302

Duncan DUKE Hunter archive

Duncan Hunter Now "Hunting" for a New Job. Political science student and analyst, Wayne Roland states he did not really ever stand a chance. "Hunter was the under-under-underdog for the nomination. He has those core Republican values, but he never really rose up to the challenge. He has always been struggling in the polls and in the primaries and caucuses. It was not a shock that he dropped out. He had good ideas, but he was not appealing to many voters because of the amount of good candidates in the Republican race." http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/553145/duncan_hunter_now_hunting_for_a_new.html

Duncan Hunter's campaign spokesman said on Wednesday that the Alpine Republican may soldier on until the Republican convention late this summer despite having received only about 1.3 percent of the GOP vote in the first four contests for the presidential nomination. "I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't go right down to the convention. He is not a quitter," said Roy Tyler in a telephone interview one day after former Massachusetts Gov Mitt Romney breathed new life into his once-faltering presidential campaign with a victory in the Michigan GOP primary. http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/news/breaking/2008/01/hunter_may_fight_to_bitter_end.html

"With Romney coming out, you basically have three candidates," added Tyler, apparently referring to Romney, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor. "You may have a brokered convention. I don't think anybody really can predict what's going to happen. There are some likelihoods, but it's a wild year."

Soldiering on in the electoral battlefields of Michigan, Duncan Hunter proclaimed his determination to fight the good fight. "I'm going to continue regardless of the vote in Michigan," he said. "I haven't put together a Plan B. There's plenty of time to figure out how you're going to lose. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to win." Last time we looked, Hunter had captured 0% of last night's Michigan vote. Just what we need: another wartime Commander-in-Chief who can't figure out how to win. http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080115/NEWS01/801150316

Duncan Hunter gets some Joe-mentum http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/?last_story=/politics/war_room/2008/01/07/hunter/

"Iowa ignoring Hunter." http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/01/03/news/top_stories/1_01_511_2_08.txt

“My motto in politics is constantly complain,” Hunter said. “My trademark for 26 years has been, 'Whine, whine, whine. And blame it on the liberals.” http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20080103-9999-1n3hunter.html

Military families have little use for Bush, Iraq policy — redux. A few weeks ago, at a debate for Republican presidential candidates, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) made the ridiculous claim that U.S. troops and their families are, by their very nature, conservative. “[M]ost Americans, most kids who leave that — that breakfast table and go and serve in the military and make that corporate decision with their family — most of them are conservatives.” Even on its face, it was an absurd argument, but the evidence to disprove Hunter’s claim keeps piling up. http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14044.html

Duncan Hunter on grass http://dhgrassrevolt.wordpress.com/

In a letter to Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., NASA said it had informed duPont Aerospace President Tony duPont that the space agency was asserting the government's right to the engines, valued at $1.5 million. Congress cut off funding this year to duPont's 19-year, $63 million government-funded research project to develop an aircraft that could hover like a helicopter through the use of a targeted stream of jet exhaust. The project was a favorite of Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, who kept it afloat by inserting tens of millions of dollars in special funds for the aircraft in Congressional spending bills. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20071221-9999-1b21dupont.html

At BAE visit, Hunter blasts GOP rival on link to China http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071218/NEWS08/866662371

As Republican Neanderthals go, Rep. Duncan Hunter of California is a particularly primitive political hack, a back-to-the-stone-age knuckle dragger who thinks men should be men, women should be seen and not heard and gays don’t belong in the military. Hunter proved just how out of step he and the rest of his gay-bashing lot at in the GOP can be on 60 Minutes Sunday when he claimed gays don’t belong in the military because we need a fighting force of rough, tough men. Hunter says gays can’t be “hardened warriors.” http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/4024

"I think American troops are very brave and I think British troops are very brave, but we do it in a little bit of probably a quieter way generally," he said. "We don't know have to...shave our heads off and shake hands very hard. You can still kill someone without having to do that...you read about the Spartans, they were all homosexuals, the whole lot of them -- and I don't think anyone would suggest for a second that the 500 Spartans fighting against the Persian army were not pretty macho." http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Duncan_Hunter_No_time_to_experiment_1217.html

And then there's Duncan Hunter…okay, we can ditch Duncan Hunter. "Duncan Hunter" sounds like the name of a character Steven Seagal would play: "They killed Duncan Hunter's family – but they couldn't kill HIS HATE." http://www.411mania.com/politics/columns/64755/411-Politics-Fact-or-Fiction-12.10.07:-Week-71.htm

Military families have little use for Bush, Iraq policy. Last week, at the debate for Republican presidential candidates, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) made the ridiculous claim that U.S. troops and their families are, by their very nature, conservative. “[M]ost Americans, most kids who leave that — that breakfast table and go and serve in the military and make that corporate decision with their family — most of them are conservatives.” Even on its face, it was an absurd argument, but the evidence to disprove Hunter’s claim keeps piling up. http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13839.html

Hunter claimed during one GOP debate that undocumented immigrants are skewing the entire democratic process, voting illegally en masse for Democrats. "We have right now a real danger of people that are illegally in the country being rounded up, herded into the polls," he said. "We've seen that in California, voting illegally. That disenfranchises everybody in the community." Of course, we have not seen anything of the sort in California. There has never been even one incident where any responsible party even claimed that any large group of immigrants was "rounded up, herded into the polls." http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2007/dec/07/candidates-claim-on-illegal-immigrants-false/

Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego, had inserted language into the House defense authorization bill requiring the Foothill/South Toll Road project to adhere to state environmental laws. It would effectively undo a move in 2000 by three Republican Congressmen – Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa and Ken Calvert – who used the same mechanism to specifically exempt the toll road project from state and federal environmental laws. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20071207-1005-bn07trestles.html

Congressman Duncan Hunter, R-California, said Hyde was the senior statesman that young congressmen looked to for leadership. “Since ancient times whenever travelers needed guidance they always had that great northern star. No matter how difficult the journey they could look up to that great white light,” Hunter said. “Henry Hyde was the northern star of the U.S. Congress.” http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2007/12/hydes-humor-bip.html

An Officially Unofficial Blog of All Things Duncan Hunter http://theduncanhunterblog.com/

Among male respondents who intend to vote in a GOP primary or caucus (a group that includes independents and a few stray Democrats), 4% were for him; among females, zip, nada, zero. Among actual party members, the chasm is even greater: He can claim 6% support from Republican men, 0% from women. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2007/12/duncan-hunter-h.html

It seemed each candidate was trying to outgun his foes. Duncan Hunter of California bragged about getting his first hunting license at ten-years-old and described in detail a gun he had just recently purchased. It is frightening to see such educated men so thoroughly defend the right to bear arms. http://media.www.dailycollegian.com/media/storage/paper874/news/2007/12/06/EditorialOpinion/The-Gop.Gun.Frenzy-3135359.shtml

Little by little, the cancer of democracy, interpreted as the Secular Progressive utopian state disguised as liberalism, is encroaching on the freedoms fought for and won at such high cost by 'the Greatest Generation’, freedoms inherited by an ungrateful generation, squandered by a greedy adolescent population of giddy instantly-gratifying demands on society, each insisting on particular rights to the point of utter ludicrousness. http://www.veteransjournal.net/cgi-bin/news/current_issue.cgi?page=2

"He was a big champion of defense on a philosophical level," says a former Republican aide on the Senate committee. "But we just got tired of dealing with the Hunter Specials." The congressman took a particular interest in fighting IEDs and even promoted a Kevlar poncho to protect infantrymen. In response, a staff officer created a picture of Hunter wearing the poncho and labeled it "SpongeBob HunterPants." These are Hunter's ideas, but taken to the point of lunacy. http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a5b081d3-1a14-4137-a889-bcb8aae170ca&p=1

Hunter has one fight left before retirement http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7181.html

Duncan Hunter had the aforementioned clever answer to the gun video. While it may have scored some minor points among the base, it scored major points in demonstrating the silliness of the whole debacle. Given his adeptness with that question, perhaps we could have used more Duncan Hunter. But other than that, Hunter didn't exist. http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=5056

“But what we all ought to do right now in this Christmas season, with about a month to go before Christmas, is buy American,” Hunter said. “That might hire the young person. That just might keep your neighbor from losing his job, and it might help that young person coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan in uniform to have a job when they get back. Let’s buy American this Christmas season.” http://www.indexjournal.com/articles/2007/11/30/our_view/30something/30something.txt

What’s going to give us freedom is faith. The same policy that costs $70 a month in California costs $300 a month in New Jersey. http://www.indexjournal.com/articles/2007/11/30/news/news04.txt

"There shouldn't be any concern," he told a small group of reporters. "In my personal opinion, China's effort to modernize its military is very transparent." He added that China's military strategy is defensive and its growth is in step with the growth of China's economy and international role. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/12/01/news/nation/5_42_1411_30_07.txt

When Duncan Hunter suggested during the Republican debate Wednesday night that we should "buy American," I laughed out loud. to "You gotta be kidding Duncan!". No wonder he's barely registering as a candidate. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-franken/the-hard-work-recovery-pr_b_74800.html

Hunter, the top-ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee and the panel's chairman until the Democratic takeover of Congress in January, is far behind the top GOP contenders in polls of Michigan and nationally. The most recent EPIC-MRA survey of likely Republican voters in Michigan, released last week, showed he had 1 percent support. http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071120/POLITICS/711200404/1408/LOCAL

Hunter runs to shake up governing elite http://www.kansascity.com/445/story/360948.html

Musharraf “clearly seeks to retain control of Pakistan during a state of emergency,” Hunter said in a statement Monday. “He apparently sees this control, which requires the use of military and police forces, as the only remedy for an increasingly lethal al Qaeda and Taliban presence.” http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/some-lawmakers-support-musharraf-2007-11-07.html

D-Traders are making their mark http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/337749_lizmair02.html

Hunter lashes at Pentagon bureaucracy http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/459222.html

Short on money and in the polls, Duncan Hunter has no plans to quit http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/10/28/news/sandiego/30_19_4610_27_07.txt

ties to men convicted or charged in the scandal of his friend and former U.S. Rep. Randy Cunningham http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/10/23/news/politics/18_10_9010_22_07.txt

“The idea that we see so little fence built a year later, and when it’s built, it’s utilizing Chinese steel, is totally unacceptable,” http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dhs-criticized-for-chinese-steel-in-u.s.-mexico-fence-2007-10-19.html

Seat won't be handed to young Hunter http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20071014-9999-1m14house.html

But it's the hypocrisy of it all that really perturbs. http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/asheesh_siddique/2007/10/hunters_call.html

What, I wondered, is that old fool talking about? http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11743

Backs flat tax with tax breaks for U.S. manufacturers that keep factories in the United States. http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071009/NEWS06/710090340/1009

hawkish California congressman's style is fairly bland http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071009/LIFESTYLE/710090400/1409

With Rights Come Responsibilities http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=519896

Duncan Hunter wants the US to be the Christian Iran. http://www.columbiaspectator.com/?q=node/27250

October 1st attack on presidential hopeful Duncan Hunter's website http://www.send2press.com/newswire/2007-10-1005-002.shtml

pusillanimous pinkoes http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=519834

the DP-2 has been blasted as a government boondoggle, receiving millions of dollars in congressional earmarks with little to show. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20071004-9999-1b4dupont.html

"They're cheating on trade," http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2007/10/01/election-candidates-politics-oped-cz_jjr_1002hunter.html

H.R. 3675: To prohibit Federal grants to or contracts with Columbia University http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-3675

Duncan Hunter (R-CA), a textbook authoritarian and uncritical sycophant for the Bush administration http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_frank_j__071002_congressman_duncan_h.htm

If you only have a primary fence it never works as well as having two fences http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/5179926.html

Duncan Hunter are trailing in polls in Iowa and New Hampshire http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070930/D8RVIQ380.html

Columbia University openly insulted the thousands of servicemen and women serving in Iraq http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/28/hunter

The earmark practice has been abused to secure payoffs to special interests http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20070928-9999-1m28earmarks.html

"No, you'll just make enemies on the way up." http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec07/hunter_09-26.html

This is not a complicated thing. We’re following the same basic pattern we’ve used for 60 years to expand freedom around the world. http://www.pjvoice.com/v28/28300words.aspx

Hunter's threat is repellent. http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/weblogs/afb/archives/014852.html

Duncan Hunter clearly has an incentive to appear unhinged. He’s a faltering presidential candidate http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/12994.html

if elected president he would build 854 miles of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border within six months. http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Group+pays+homage+to+Constitution&articleId=5724ea26-837c-4f30-9d46-02dd7457fb82

Hunter spits on Vets http://campaignsandelections.com/nh/releases/index.cfm?ID=4288

Hunter Calls MoveOn.org Ad a Slap in the Face of Every Member of the Armed Forces http://republicans.armedservices.house.gov/news/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=327

Hunter Prepared Remarks for Iraq Hearing with General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker http://republicans.armedservices.house.gov/news/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=328

“Based on other priorities and overwhelming time constraints, Mr. Hunter has no time in September to pursue his assessment appeal,” http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20070907-9999-1m7hunter.html

almost as if he had studied and prepared this time http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1659364_1659363_1659360,00.html

Hunter outdoes himself by saying something even more crazy http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/09/06/gop/

Hunter wins GOP straw poll in Texas http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-strawpoll2sep02,1,729234.story?coll=la-politics-campaign

The real story of New Orleans and Katrina is the millions of Americans who responded from their hearts for their fellow citizens http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/28/new-orleans-bush-gonzales-lead-cx_sm_0828katrina.html

Heavily criticized plane is defunded http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20070823-9999-1n23dupont.html

He supports preventing illegal immigrants from running for president http://www.registerbee.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=DRB/MGArticle/DRB_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173352448860&path=

another strong sixth (down 1%) http://www.news10.net/display_story.aspx?storyid=31666

Next Republican to quit the race: Rep. Duncan Hunter http://www.411mania.com/politics/columns/58549/The-Political-Universe-08.17.07.htm

1.2% “We look at this as a good start." http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/08/12/first-to-fall/

Hunter got 174 votes http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/08/12/ap/headlines/d8qv6vf00.txt

raffle to give away a Ruger shotgun http://blogs.iowapolitics.com/strawpoll/2007/08/politically-speaking.html

Hunter criticized government http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070811/NEWS09/708110335/-1/LIFE04

that commie stench http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1873814/posts

do damage to the U.S. economy http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-08/03/content_5447997.htm

“false promise of predictability to service members and their families” http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/08/military_dwelltime_070802w/

"put a straitjacket on our ability to deploy troops." http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-warvote3aug03,0,2181241.story?coll=la-home-center

Rep Hunter is not the author of the vivid and very good science fiction novel A Martian Poet in Siberia, which was written by an entirely different Duncan Hunter. http://www.nndb.com/people/090/000038973/

A Martian Poet in Siberia http://www.sassoonfellowship.org/tregolwyn/id73.html

I wouldn’t cast my vote with Hunter http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/reflections/2007/07/28/presidential-candidate-duncan-hunter-claims-to-be-the-next-ronald-reagan/

he wrote the bill to define person-hood at conception http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_110780.asp

“zero” percent support among American voters http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20070730-9999-1m30letter.html

serious environmental, safety or economic consequences http://www.contracostatimes.com/bayandstate/ci_6498633?nclick_check=1

Hey Duncan Hunter! I’m Your New Consultant http://www.bloggernews.net/18995

The Pardon Pander http://www.slate.com/id/2171209/nav/tap3/

The ground combat capability of the U.S. Army forces is shot http://thinkprogress.org/2007/07/27/escalation-architect-korb/

a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070727/OPINION01/707270351/-1/SPORTS01

his principles aren't as firm as he claims them to be http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/289227.html

Telling the truth under oath is the cornerstone of our democracy http://www.house.gov/hunter/news_prior_2006/impeach.htm

tax cheat http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070723/news_1m23hunter.html

a modicum of representative government http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/challenges.php?id=1152453

Profiles in Corruption: Duncan Hunter http://www.calitics.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=617

postured to deter and defeat any aggression against U.S. interests http://www.upi.com/Security_Terrorism/Briefing/2007/07/11/hunter_us_must_guard_against_iran/9627/

voters barely mask their indifference. http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-hunter13jul13,0,820734.story?coll=la-tot-topstories&track=ntottext

paltry $1 million and being near the bottom http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/07/02/news/top_stories/7107185049.txt

A Tale Of Two Countries http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=18533450&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=6

Hunter attends Latino forum http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/news/breaking/2007/06/hunter_attends_latino_forum.html

U.S. Military Experience Rare Among 08 Candidates http://www.javno.com/en/world/clanak.php?id=56620

places that have been disseminated by the democratic leadership http://www.fox6.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=6050f912-17db-41bf-90c7-9515e14dc83c

Lawmakers push efforts to remove deer and elk from Santa Rosa Island http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/washington/news.aspx?id=38353

He is not securing the border. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0706/17/le.01.html scroll way down

“modicum of representative government” http://www.thetimesnews.com/articles/hunter_3189___article.html/military_president.html

“As president of the United States I will never apologize for the United States of America. Our country is a great country.”

Bush immigration plan terrible http://alaskareport.com/z46221_duncan_hunter.htm http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/06/17/immigration.bill/index.html

$22 Million For Campaign Donor's Ship http://www.kpbs.org/news/local;id=8671

Cunningham helped Hunter http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20070616-9999-1n16dupont.html

Reagan-Era Roots for Flightless Plane http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/06/theres_way_way_.html

Hunter-sponsored jet cries out for earmark reform http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070614/news_lz1ed14top.html

Hunter’s office did not respond to requests for comment. http://www.washingtontechnology.com/print/22_10/30823-1.html

Hunter “failed to understand the basic physics of this situation,” http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070613/news_1n13airmark.html

they don’t have much of a chance http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=21009

we've lost 1.8 million jobs fact check http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=politics&id=5365239

Hunter's Legacy http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2007/05/31/cq_2817.html

WOW! great story http://uruknet.info/?p=m33045&s1=h1

Hunter struggles http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070517/news_1n17hunter.html

not even a map http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070510/NEWS/705100407/-1/NEWS

I built that border fence http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070505/NEWS01/70505003

Hunter = Crazed http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/05/03/181417.aspx

uninformed and misleading http://www.washtimes.com/national/20070427-114313-4538r.htm

endless war within a war http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=18270022&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=6

santa rosa island http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20070426-1320-ca-congress-island.html

$538,524 http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/04/18/news/politics/2_55_524_17_07.txt

"The Bush administration continues to show a reckless disregard for the will of Congress and the American people who oppose this illegal pilot project." http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55155

war http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/04/10/news/top_stories/7_04_904_9_07.txt

dishonest about his service in Vietnam http://www.onenewsnow.com/2007/04/swift_boat_vet_supports_duncan.php

just 4 percent http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/04/05/news/politics/11_94_544_4_07.txt

blackwater http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Massive_security_contractor_faces_growing_protest_0403.html

brother borders http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2007/03/on_the_fence_with_john_and_duncan_hunter.html

hunter failure to ensure our troops had the protection the armor affords them http://www.chillicothegazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070401/OPINION/704010311/1014

hunter wrong http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/03/31/news/top_stories/16_77_773_30_07.txt

hunter blames clinton http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070330/OPINION/70329025/1049

hunter failed to support troops http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/washington/29hospital.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

son sitting in http://www.idahobusiness.net/archive.htm/2007/03/27/Duncan-Hunter-meet-Duncan-Hunter

Hunter admits Bush was wrong http://www.newshounds.us/2007/03/25/rep_robert_andrews_and_iraq_veteran_jon_soltz_outfox_sean_hannity.php

National Guard Not Prepared after 6 years of hunter http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/21798/

dumb markets http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11188

hunter shorts guard unequipped for disaster http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/03/military_nationalguard_equipment_070323w/

son http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20070322-0612-hunter_junior.html

hunter corruption http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=18097402&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=6

hunter slams troops http://bbsnews.net/article.php/20070314025613437

Hunter illegally using money http://www.kfmb.com/stories/story.84034.html

Doom-and-gloom about trade deficits is ridiculous http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/weblogs/afb/archives/008172.html

the ability to have morals http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_amy_frie_070315_pace_s_defender_more.htm

hunter is bs http://bbsnews.net/article.php/20070314025613437

dunkie junior http://www.flashreport.org/special-reports0b.php?faID=2007031323082501

Hunter Wilkes, Foggo Indictments http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070313/news_1m13wilkes.html

Hunter peo Death Penalty http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=21947

Duncan Hunter is no Ronald Reagan http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/weblogs/afb/archives/008058.html

lesser-known rivals as Tancredo, Huckabee, Hunter http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/elections/article/0,2808,DRMN_24736_5391507,00.html

Duncan Hunter considered real long-shot http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070304/D8NLE9VG2.html

Duncan Hunter: Questionable Candidate, Worse Advisors http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_james_tr_070226_duncan_hunter_3a_quest.htm

hunter screw Buddhists http://atheism.about.com/b/a/258817.htm

grilling hunter http://www.independent.com/news/2007/03/stately_affairs_1.html

china is hunter enemy http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20070301-1504-cnshunter.html

Hunter violating campaign finance laws http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/weblogs/afb/archives/007828.html

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/02/23/news/sandiego/16_01_345_22_07.txt

68% don't know him http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2007/02/19/hunter_blasts_dems_iraq_debate_pushes_better_trade_deals/?rss_id=Boston.com+%2F+News

corrupt http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/02/18/opinion/will/17_40_122_17_07.txt

duncan-hunter-large.jpg

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-02-01-duncan-hunter_x.htm

tphunter.jpg

26hunter.jpg

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/26/us/politics/26hunter.html?ex=1170478800&en=6ebeaa85f6db3bd8&ei=5070

http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/special/012907special4.htm

http://wonkette.com/politics/2008/duncan-hunters-brave-crusade-against-mexicans-history-232274.php

why would anyone vote for this moron? http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=17769078&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=6

supports torture http://mediamatters.org/items/200701250004

hey WAR PIMP, you take a lie detector: http://wpherald.com/articles/3165/1/Republican-lawmakers-urge-Berger-polygraph-test/Berger-agreed-to-take-test-as-part-of-guilty-plea.html

hey DUKE, you represent US http://www.kpbs.org/news/local?id=7159

http://www.topix.net/content/ap/3543457321007135367903148746473687359388?threadid=HSAJP8D8CLT6BGJ1

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-22-iraq-congress_x.htm

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53893

http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/012307/subpoenas.html

20060521_MARSH_GRAPHIC.jpg

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070122/news_1m22letter.html

http://www.kold.com/Global/story.asp?S=5967574

http://www.azcongresswatch.com/?p=2719

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/01/16/news/top_stories/1_03_321_15_07.txt

Duncan Hunter Out of Touch on Iraq

his scolding is misdirected. The idea that a smooth road lay ahead in Iraq was the administration's original sin, not the skeptics'.

send hunter to fight!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/25/AR2006122500458.html

“Our (political action committee) would cross him off the list,” said David Keating, executive director of the fiscally conservative Club for Growth. “We wouldn't even consider endorsing him because his record on fiscal issues has been so bad.” http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061226/news_1n26hunter.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-calcongress24dec24,1,3041472.story?coll=la-news-a_section

http://www.kpbs.org/news/local?id=6899

http://www.topix.net/content/ap/0272394315104434036638613379571947511753

Hunter noted for voting record

WASHINGTON, D.C. ---- U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, whose district includes Poway and Ramona, has been awarded the National Association of Manufacturers Award for Manufacturing Legislative Excellence in recognition of his continued support of American manufacturers and a pro-growth, pro-job agenda. Hunter's record was 92 percent.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1203-02.htm

http://www.madcowprod.com/11072006B.html

http://www.orlandoweekly.com/columns/story.asp?id=8060

photo

http://blogs.venturacountystar.com/vcs/greenberg/archives/2005/12/channel_islands.html

http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=24192

duncan_hunter_web.jpg

http://newsinitiative.org/story/2006/07/27/big_payoff_for_big_business

Wilks memo http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/2006_05.html search for hunter

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060303-122020-2647r.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/06/AR2006120600985_3.html

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18344

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0612060077dec06,1,479377.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/12/06/perspective/vandoorn/20_37_0412_5_06.txt

http://www.kpbs.org/news/local?id=6736

2006-12-05_Hunter_Jones_2.jpg http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2006/dec/05/hunter_argues_with_dem_students_then_smiles_for_photo_op

Hunter to meet with Bush today on Iraq strategy http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/12/05/news/top_stories/1_01_2112_4_06.txt

interviewed Hunter in his Capitol Hill office on November 15. Here is an edited version of that conversation. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18286

http://www.dailynews.com/theiropinion/ci_4762738

http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_4764133

December 2, 2006 A headline with a story yesterday about Rep. Duncan Hunter's Alpine home incorrectly said the government seized the property in 1989. In fact, the Resolution Trust Corp. seized the property in 1993 from the savings and loan that held the original owner's mortgage.

The Union-Tribune regrets the error. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20061202-9999-1n2correct.html

Hunter said he did it on principle. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20061201-9999-1n1hunter.html

incompetent duncan hunter recommends redeployment in iraq http://www.kfmb.com/stories/story.71555.html#

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/26/AR2006112600980.html?nav=rss_world/mideast/iraq

Yet Rep. Duncan Hunter, the outgoing chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said the United States will win the conflict in the long run by supporting a free government in Iraq. Before any decisions are made on reducing U.S. troop levels, he said, more U.S.-trained Iraqi battalions should be moved into the heavy-fighting areas of Baghdad.

"Saddle those guys up," Hunter said. "Move them into the fight." http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4360617.html

ethically challenged

http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2006/11/20/top/18262313.txt

http://www.bentoneveningnews.com/articles/2006/11/21/news/05.txt

Socal's Duncan Hunter Tries To Raise His National Profile http://www.ktvu.com/politics/10346383/detail.html

Bush OKs Lucent-Alcatel deal http://money.cnn.com/2006/11/17/news/international/bc.bush.lucent.reut/index.htm?postversion=2006111719

Lucent-Alcatel Hearing http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2357114&C=americas

Local Congressmen Swap Influence http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2006/11/13/government/863hunter.txt

President Hunter: The Road to the White House http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20061112-9999-lz1c12hunter.html

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/11/09//news/sandiego/16_18_1111_8_06.txt

http://whittierdailynews.com/opinions/ci_4608067

http://www.kpbs.org/news/local?id=6474

in politics, it is the illusion of effective action that counts. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061106/news_1m6jenkins.html

DUKE http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,15424.shtml

"He has about as much chance of being president as I do of becoming Miss America," Rinaldi said.

2_01_0910_30_06.jpg

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/10/31/news/top_stories/2_01_0910_30_06.txt

breen31.gif

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2320915.php

http://www.drummajorinstitute.com/congress/drum-major-voting-summary.php?name=Hunter&state=CA&database=house

http://search.myway.com/search/GGmain.jhtml?st=site&ptnrS=false&searchfor=duncan+hunter

http://www.flashreport.org/commentary0b.php?postID=2006102211411316&authID=2005110112071864&post_offsetP=0

http://www.flashreport.org/files/2006102212495636.pdf

http://www.topix.net/content/ap/3977172177036802166731228244080740273211

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20061023-9999-1m23letter.html

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20061021-9999-7m21hunter.html

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060828/news_1m28letter.html

what planet is this from? http://www.wiscnews.com/bnr/opinion/index.php?ntid=100765&ntpid=0

http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/view/columns/3168351.shtml

http://www.topix.net/pics/ntd-2657552909112156290310096311562780406984

duncan_hunter_repub_195325c.jpg

410w.jpg

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2006/09/19/columnists/james_goldsborough/93goldhunter.txt

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110008962

support_the_troops_3.jpg

links

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