Corinne Weber, a GOP county chairwoman in upstate New York, has resigned over a chain e-mail that she forwarded “to more than two dozen Republicans on Friday night that makes a veiled reference to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and suggests he is the Antichrist.” One county official pressing for Weber’s resignation said that the e-mail “didn’t reflect the views of the Republican Party.”
According to one GOP lawmaker, some House Republicans are saying privately that they'd rather "let the markets crash" than sign on to a massive bailout.
"For the sake of the altar of the free market system, do you accept a Great Depression?" the member asked.
Time's Carney claimed new McCain ad -- which contains falsehoods -- is "[l]egitimate" and "entirely within bounds"
In a September 23 post on Time.com's Swampland blog headlined "McCain's Legitimate Attack," Time Washington bureau chief Jay Carney wrote that "what's important" about Sen. John McCain's "new ad ... attacking [Sen. Barack] Obama 'and his liberal allies' for failing to lead in the midst of the current financial markets crisis" is that the ad is "entirely within bounds." Carney continued: "As I and others have said in criticizing some of the McCain campaign's false or distorted assaults on Obama, there are plenty of potential Obama weaknesses that McCain can fairly and legitimately try to exploit." In fact, contrary to Carney's suggestion that the new McCain ad does not contain distortions or falsehoods, it does, falsely claiming that Democrats have sat by silently in response to the current financial situation and falsely suggesting that Obama intends to raise taxes on American families in general.
Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.
Satellite images taken at night show heavily Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Baghdad began emptying before a U.S. troop surge in 2007, graphic evidence of ethnic cleansing that preceded a drop in violence, according to a report published on Friday.
The images support the view of international refugee organizations and Iraq experts that a major population shift was a key factor in the decline in sectarian violence, particularly in the Iraqi capital, the epicenter of the bloodletting in which hundreds of thousands were killed.
Minority Sunni Arabs were driven out of many neighborhoods by Shi'ite militants enraged by the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February 2006. The bombing, blamed on the Sunni militant group al Qaeda, sparked a wave of sectarian violence.
"By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left," geography professor John Agnew of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study, said in a statement.
"Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," said Agnew, who studies ethnic conflict.
Some 2 million Iraqis are displaced within Iraq, while 2 million more have sought refuge in neighboring Syria and Jordan. Previously religiously mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad became homogenized Sunni or Shi'ite Muslim enclaves.
Today's Army Times reports that McCain flip-flops on his support for the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS), and distorts what Obama has said about FCS in the past:
On Sept. 8, the Republican presidential candidate told a rally crowd in Lee’s Summit, Mo., about an Obama video message to a liberal advocacy group.
"He promised them he would, quote, ‘slow our development of Future Combat Systems,’" McCain said, according to wire reports. "This is not a time to slow our development of Future Combat Systems."
Here is a link to the Obama video message to Caucus for Priorities; McCain has quoted him correctly.
Now, here's the critical bit, pointed out by the Army Times:
Flashback to July, however, when [McCain's] campaign furnished McCain’s economic plan to The Washington Post, declaring that "there are lots of procurements — Airborne Laser, [C-17] Globemaster, Future Combat System [sic] — that should be ended and the entire Pentagon budget should be scrubbed."
In fact, McCain has long criticized the over-budget, behind-schedule FCS program. In 2005, he blasted the Army for allowing the program to balloon to $161 billion, and forced the service to rewrite the main FCS contract.
Ouch. Looks like McCain really shouldn't be pointing any fingers.
Defense analyst Loren Thompson responsed to McCain's dishonesty:
"McCain’s interpretation of Obama’s position is typical of the way in which the Republicans have twisted Democratic views in order to undercut their opponents and at the same time obscure the past positions of the Republicans," Thompson said. "Future Combat Systems is the centerpiece of Army modernization. However, McCain has been more critical of it than anyone else in the chamber. Obama has been much more detailed and thoughtful in his comments about future military investment than McCain’s very superficial statements."
When you watch the video, you'll hear Obama's full statement on new weapons systems:
I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of Future Combat Systems
Finally, the Army Times quotes F. Whitten Peters, who is one of Obama's defense advisers, and former secretary of the Air Force:
"Obama had said that he wanted to review FCS and he thought that he might want to slow the fielding," Peters said. "His feeling is there really needs to be an overall strategic review of larger weapon programs to decide which ones are sufficiently important to keep going and which ones may need to be scaled back."
Obama's policy is carefully thought out, and is based on reality
For a candidate who prides himself in "straight talk" -- and whose political image in part is based on that truth-telling reputation -- Saturday proved to be a brutal day for John McCain and his campaign.
First came a front-page New York Times piece noting that McCain "has drawn an avalanche of criticism this week from Democrats, independent groups and even some Republicans for regularly stretching the truth." There was also an accompanying fact-check of McCain's latest TV ad, which called it the "latest in a number that resort to a dubious disregard for the facts."
The Washington Post gave "four Pinnochios" to McCain's recent assertion on "The View" that Palin never took earmarks as Alaska governor. Then the Boston Globe reported that Palin didn't really travel inside Iraq as has been claimed. And Bloomberg News said that the McCain camp may not have been exactly truthful in estimating the size of its recent crowds. "Now officials say they can't substantiate the figures McCain's aides are claiming."
McCain has, incredibly, tried to hijack Obama's slogan - "change." This is an audacious McCain tactic that tries to separate him from President Bush, most of whose policies McCain has solidly supported for the past eight years.
At last week's Republican national convention, McCain departed from his previous practice of keeping silent about his excruciating POW experience during the Vietnam War in order to express his support for Bush's duplicitous policies in conducting the war against Iraq. At this point, McCain has flip-flopped on so many issues, one wonders if he has any steadfast principles.
I liked his impassioned statement that he hates war, but he is the militant hawk who said the Iraq war could last 100 years. And, of course, McCain has got to be kidding when he tries to portray himself as running against "Washington," whatever that means. He has spent 26 years in the nation's capital and has accrued a record that is hardly unblemished.
Now we come to McCain's stunning selection of Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin, a vastly unprepared politician, to be his running mate. Her political views are to the far right. She supports the National Rifle Association, the teaching of creationism side-by-side with evolution, rejects women's' rights to reproductive choice, and promotes abstinence above sex education in schools.
There is an official inquiry under way in Alaska looking into Palin's drive to fire a state safety commissioner after he refused to fire her former brother-in-law, a state trooper who was in a messy custody fight with her sister. She also put pressure on a librarian in Wassila - where she was mayor - to censor some books, but happily the librarian stood her ground and refused to do so.
The fact that 72-year-old McCain knew so little about Palin before selecting her for the Republican ticket calls into question his judgment. Palin would be a real amateur if she succeeded to the presidency, especially in foreign and domestic policies. McCain obviously thinks anyone can be president. So when McCain speaks of "change," it represents a giant step backwards. The Republican ticket offers no solutions to the Iraq war - the war without end. McCain, who once called Christian conservatives the "agents of intolerance," truly made a strange choice for his running mate in view of Palin's description of the unpopular war in Iraq as a "task that is from God."
The new occupant of the White House - Obama or McCain - will face problems of rising unemployment and more expensive fuel, food and health care. There is the disastrous increase in home foreclosures, a collapsing infrastructure and numerous educational challenges at all levels.
The Democrats do not have a quick and easy solution for all these national troubles, but they are framing sound policies, including higher taxes on wealthy individuals and moving toward universal health care.
American voters who choose the Republican ticket will be dooming the nation to more of the same failed Bush administration.
John McCain announced that he was running for president to confront the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century, "radical Islamic extremism," contrasting it with "stability, tolerance and democracy." But the values of his handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.
McCain pledged to work for peace based on "the transformative ideals on which we were founded." Tolerance and democracy require freedom of speech and the press, but while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin inquired of the local librarian how to go about banning books that some of her constituents thought contained inappropriate language. She tried to fire the librarian for defying her. Book banning is common to fundamentalisms around the world, and the mind-set Palin displayed did not differ from that of the Hamas minister of education in the Palestinian government who banned a book of Palestinian folk tales for its sexually explicit language. In contrast, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it."
Palin argued when running for governor that creationism should be taught in public schools, at taxpayers' expense, alongside real science.
In an online chat, Jonathan Weisman claimed of the finding that Sen. John McCain voted in line with President Bush 90 percent of the time, "The 90 percent figure is true, but I cover Congress. The vast majority of those votes are procedural, and virtually every member of Congress votes with his or her leadership on procedural motions." In fact, Congressional Quarterly's finding that McCain had voted with Bush 90 percent of the time was based on an analysis of "votes where the editors of Congressional Quarterly determined that President Bush had taken a clear position prior to the vote." CQ did not indicate the "vast majority" of the votes were procedural.
Ever since Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) announced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) as his running mate, conservatives have rushed to rebut criticism that Palin has no foreign policy experience by claiming that Alaska is near Russia. Fox News’s Steve Doocy appears to be one of the first to make this claim and even McCain and his wife Cindy have uttered the absurd talking point. But today on Fox News, a “Republican strategist” laid out the specifics of this Russia/Alaska rivalry — fishing:
GREGG JARRETT: In what capacity has she worked with Russia?
TYLER HARBER: She worked with permitting issues and with fishing issues dealing with the sea fishing industry there in Alaska.
Watch it:
Jarrett didn’t seem to take the bait. “Oh, come on. That’s a far cry from major international experience.”
Transcript:
GREGG JARRETT: She has no national security issue – experience. It’s pretty brave of that campaign to put her out there on that, isn’t it?
TYLER HARBER (GOP strategist): It is. You know, one of the things we – one of the most important things that we tell our clients in the political realm is, “Do not be reactive.” If you become reactive, you are going to lose.
JARRETT: But she has no foreign policy experience. She doesn’t know anything about —
HARBER: But she does. She does have foreign policy experience.
JARRETT: She does?
HARBER: Now let me point out, she’s worked with Russia – she’s worked with Russia on fishing issues.
PALIN: “Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.”
REALITY: UNDER PALIN, WASILLA GOVERNMENT SPENDING & DEBT SKYROCKETED.
Total Government Expenditures Increased 63 Percent Under Palin. In fiscal 2003—the last fiscal year Palin approved the budget—the total government expenditures of Wasilla, excluding capital outlays, were $7,046,325. In fiscal 1996—the year before Palin took control of the
budget—the expenditures were $4,317,947. The increase was 63 percent. [Wasilla Comprehensive Annual Financial Report 2003, Table 1]
Palin Supported Increasing Wasilla Sales Tax From 2 to 2.5 Percent to Build $14.7 Million Sports Center. “Wasilla residents have given the go ahead to building a new multiuse sports center in town and to raising the city sales tax to pay for it. With the final votes counted
Friday, residents voted 306 to 286 in favor of a measure to raise the city sales tax from 2 percent to 2.5 percent to pay the estimated $14.7 million cost of building the center…Mayor Sarah Palin, who supported the measure, said the tight vote will motivate city officials to keep a close eye on the budget for the center.” [Anchorage Daily News, 3/9/02]
Palin Left Behind Almost $19 Million In Long-Term Debt, Compared to None Before She Was Mayor. In fiscal 2003—the last fiscal year Palin approved the budget—the bonded long-term debt was $18,635,000. In fiscal 1996—the year before Palin took control of the budget—there was no general obligation debt. [Wasilla Comprehensive Annual Financial Report 2003, Table 10]
PALIN: “It was the spirit that brought me to the governor’s office, when I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau … when I stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, big oil companies, and the good-ol’ boys network.”
REALITY: PALIN HAS A LT. GOVERNOR WHO IS A FORMER OIL LOBBYIST, HIRED WASILLA’S FIRST FEDERAL LOBBYIST (A FORMER STEVENS STAFFER) & HAD THE SUPPORT OF ENTRENCHED ALASKA POLITICIANS DURING HER 2006 RACE.
David Brooks wrote that Gov. Sarah Palin "made mortal enemies of the two people [Sen. John] McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: [Rep. Don] Young [R-AK] and [Sen. Ted] Stevens [R-AK]." Brooks' characterization of Palin and Stevens as "mortal enemies" is undermined by substantial evidence, including a joint Stevens-Palin press conference in July in which Stevens said he has "never known of any animosity between" them and Palin said she had "great respect" for Stevens, as well as Palin's previous service as co-director of a 527 organization bearing Stevens' name.
On MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell falsely asserted that Sen. John McCain had not set a "threshold" that his vice presidential pick would be someone "ready to step in on a moment's notice." In fact, McCain has said that the "overwhelming priority" for his selection "is a person who shares my principles, my values, my priorities ... and could be -- immediately take my place."
