John Sidney McCain lll

[sidecross]

The 72 year old Republican Presidential candidate chooses for his Vice President Sarah Palin the two year Governor of Alaska.

Alaska has a total population of 670,053 or a population smaller than San Francisco and Oakland California.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Maybe he knows something we haven't thought of-like Bush starting another war-or is perhaps obviously suffering from Organic Brain Syndrome secondary to cancer therapies or PTSD from his Nixon years..:errf:

[bopes]

McCain, far-thinking maverick that he is, knows that if we have to invade Alaska to protect US oil interests in the region it will be good to have someone around with inside knowledge of that remote foreign land.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Seriously Lord Bopes.I agree with you.
Barring another castrophe Bush could fall into,I can see no way that Sen Obama can lose this election.

Unless of course the Republicans nigger-rig it again.

God forgive me and my tongue.:o

[sidecross]

This may be the time to reexamine Chris Hedges book American Fascists. The choice of McCain’s Vice President makes this book relevant.

http://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/B0012F9WEW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220140350&sr=1-1

[sidecross]

Sarah Palin and Feminists for Life

By Ruth Rosen, AlterNet


Many people are unfamiliar with Feminists for Life and wonder what the choice of Sarah Palin, who is against abortion rights, signals to the electorate.

Well, let me tell you something about Feminists for Life. In 2003, I decided to investigate this group and its energetic leader, Serrin Foster. What did it mean, I wondered, to be a feminist and actively fight against the right to choose when or whether to have a child?

So I went to a church in sprawling, suburban, wealthy Danville, California to hear Serrin Foster, president of Feminists for Life, speak on "The Feminist Case Against Abortion" to a huge crowd of mainly high-school students.

Founded in 1972, one year before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the historic Roe vs. Wade decision that made abortion legal in the United States, Feminists for Life now focuses exclusively on practical alternatives to abortion for college-age women.

No woman, argues Foster, should ever have to choose between having a child and a career. "Abortion is a reflection that society has failed women," she tells high school and college students as she tours the country.

"Women deserve better choices," she says and points to practical alternatives and resources available to a young woman who has an unwanted pregnancy. She can choose single parenthood and use food stamps or temporary assistance to needy families. She can choose adoption. Or, college-age women can pressure school campuses to offer child care and family housing so that they never, ever, have to choose between a pregnancy and an education.

Feminism is all about having choices, Foster told me, after her talk. I couldn't agree more. Young women, she says, should have the right to bear a child and have access to high-quality, affordable child care. Again, I heartily agreed.

But Foster is cleverly disingenuous. When I asked what she does to promote child care, her answers were vague and evasive. When I read the organization's brochures aimed at campus physicians and psychologists, I found nothing about campaigning for child care. The real goal is to convince professionals to persuade young women to "choose" to bear a baby.

Despite its protestations, Feminists for Life is not really about choice. You can see this on its Web site, where the slogan "refuse to choose" appeared repeatedly. Nor does the organization challenge the real difficulties working mothers face. Instead, it cleverly appropriates the words "feminist" and "choice" to convince young women that abortion is always an unacceptable choice.

Part of the problem is that Foster either does not know her history or purposefully distorts the past. She spoke that night as though she had invented the idea of child care and describes pioneer feminists of the 1960s and 1970s as selfish, diabolical creatures who never wanted women to have the choice to bear a child.

But she's wrong. The three demands made at the first national march in New York City in 1970 included child care, equal pay for equal work and the legal right to "choose" an abortion. Many feminists, moreover, spent years trying to persuade the institutions where they worked that real equality for women required family-friendly policies, including child care.

Foster also accused Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America of supporting abortion in order to stay in business. But I had to wonder about her own financial goals when I saw, in the organization's magazine, that I could buy a "stunning new logo pin" in either sterling silver or 24-carat gold for $75.

In the end, I decided that Feminists for Life is neither about feminism nor about choice. It is a cunning attempt to convince young women that choice means giving up the right to "choose."

Sarah Palin is the inexperienced woman Sen. John McCain has chosen as his running mate, hoping that she will attract the vital female vote.. It's the worst kind of affirmative action, choosing a person he barely knows, who is completely unprepared to assume any national office. It's like nominating Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. It's all about ideology and not about competence.

To put it bluntly, Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton. Nor does she have the vision and brilliance of Barack Obama. This is an incredible insult to most American women. Just how stupid does he think we are?

Ruth Rosen is a historian and journalist who teaches public policy at UC Berkeley. She is a senior fellow at the Longview Institute.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/96991

[sidecross]

There's No Reason to Be Afraid of Taking on Sarah Palin

By Jane Smiley, Huffington Post

Already the Democratic pundits are worrying about whether to attack Sarah Palin -- will it look like bullying? Will it make voters sympathize with her? Will it make voters identify with her and vote for her? Women are supposed to lay off her because -- she is a woman! The thinking goes that we can't question her choices because women's choices are sacrosanct. Nor can we investigate her life (beauty queen, Christian Dominionist, links to Ted Stevens, childbearing history) because those are private issues. But what Sarah Palin shows is that once again, the right wing is adept at turning the women's movement upside down and offering us a woman who reinforces patriarchal power rather than challenges it. Palin is another Margaret Thatcher or Ann Coulter, a woman who attaches herself to men in power and then does them one better. She uses the freedom that the women's movement has brought her quash the liberation of women with other views than hers. The bitch is in there, as it is with Coulter and Thatcher and Katherine Harris. The Democrats have to bring that bitch out and she has given us the right to do it.

Did she really accuse Hillary Clinton of "whining?" Then she's already told us that she won't mind any challenge -- that she can rise to any question. I want to see her do it. The personal is political, after all. Here are some issues she has to explain: What is her religion and who is her pastor? Is she a Christian Dominionist and how does she feel about the separation of church and state? How does she square her roles as mother and politican? Who is taking care of the kids while she is away, including the baby? If it's the husband, I'm glad. If it's a nanny and always has been, then I want to know how a wealthy woman with a nanny helps women in general -- wealthy women with nannies are nothing new. If she's into "family values," I want to know what they are, and how the nanny views Palin's "family values." If she produced a child at 44, I want to know if she believes in birth control, because birth control is a political issue. I also want to know her views on the government's obligations to the disabled. Do the disabled children of rich people get special treatments that their parents can afford, while the disabled children of poor people get nothing? Who is the boss in her family? If it's her, then I want to know how that squares with Christian notions of patriarchy. If it's the husband, then I want to know his values and beliefs about all the issues that face the nation, and I want to know who will actually be the vice president. I want to see her tax returns. I want to see his tax returns.

About the breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is a political issue because the baby formula companies have promoted baby formula all over the world, much to the detriment of babies. If she's a family values right winger, I would expect her to back those values up by breastfeeding for six months to a year, at least. If she's not breastfeeding, frankly, and she doesn't believe in birth control, then she's a hypocrite. She has to run as a right wing family values soccer mom or she has to run as a woman who has gained freedoms through the efforts of other women. She can't do both.

Is she really a gun-toting moose-killer, or is this a pose? What are her ties to the oil and gas industries -- and I don't mean her beliefs. I want to know who paid her and when and how much. She says she doesn't know what the vice president does, so I want to know what she thinks about Dick Cheney and the unitary executive. I want to know if she understands the Constitution and what the limits of the executive branch are. I want to know if she's ever been abroad, if she has ever written anything about the Iraq war, or if she's just a follower with a pretty smile, who goes along with the big boys in order to get a little something for herself. I want to know how she treats her children, what kind of mom she is, because I want to know about her personal morality. This is a valid issue, because in the last eight years we discovered with George Bush that once a bully, always a bully. I want those kids from her high school to come forward and tell me what she was like back then.

We had years to relate to HIllary Clinton. We saw her through good times and bad. We saw her do things we didn't agree with, and we saw her do things we did agree with. She was an open book in many ways. Sarah Palin accused her of "whining." I didn't agree with Clinton, and I didn't support her, but I never accused her of whining. That "whining" remark is the hallmark of a bitchy and and arrogant point of view -- a characteristic of all conservative women politicians. So, Sarah thinks she can take it. I say we give it to her good.

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.

Jane Smiley is a novelist and essayist. Her novel A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/97112

[craazyman]

Uh oh, I think the fur's gonna fly on this one.


Booowahahahahaha:p:p:p


P.S. I think she looks kind of hot. Well, McCain always liked the booty. Ha Ha.

[sidecross]

Palin’s Teen Daughter Is Pregnant; New G.O.P. Tumult

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/us/politics/02PALINDAY.html?hp

[suebee]

wrong thread for this question, but: what is the detrimental effect if any (to the usa) of korea development bank buying lehman brothers holdings, inc.?

i hope someone on the attack agenda on obama's side is reading jane smiley.

[suebee]

oil industry executives donated $1,100,000 to mccain in June 08 just before he changed his mind re offshore drilling - 5 times as much as he received in May 08 from the same people; his running mate, who 'governs' a giant state with the population of oakland calif (!), supports Anwar drilling, offshore drilling, backyard drilling, public domain condemnation of any land with resources (to be sold privately of course), but does not support any kind of birth control measures. obviously.

[willoweyes]

in my opinion, anyone choosing to wear such ridiculous shoes doesn't have what it takes to be president.

not to mention sending their son to I-fucking raq


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/09/03/us/03caucus_mccain_533.jpg

[bopes]

yes, McCain's shoes are ridiculous! ;)

oh wait . . . you meant Palin's shoes. Never mind.

[sidecross]

Published on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 by TruthDig.com

Palin’s Alaska Reaps the Windfall Profits McCain Decries

by Robert Scheer

Welcome to the People's Republic of Alaska, where every resident this year will get a $3,200 payout, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of Sarah Palin, the state's Republican governor. That's $22,400 for a family of seven, like Palin's. Since 1982, the Alaska Permanent Fund, which invests oil revenues from state lands, has paid out a dividend on invested oil loot to everyone who has been in the state for a year. But Palin upped the ante by joining with Democrats and some recalcitrant Republican state legislators to share in oil company windfall profits, further fattening state tax revenue and permitting an additional payout in tax funds to residents.

No wonder she is popular with voters in a state whose residents pay no income or sales taxes but are blessed with state coffers rolling in cash at a time when all other states are suffering. Indeed, when the oil companies pay more taxes to the state of Alaska, they get to write that off against their federal tax obligation, leaving the rest of us to make up the shortfall.

The state of Alaska owns most of the oil-producing land and was getting upward of 85 percent of its budget from the oil companies that lease the fields, even before Palin helped increase the state's cut. While other states fire schoolteachers because of the economic downturn, Alaska has, as Palin indicated in accepting John McCain's offer to join him on the GOP ticket, more money than it knows what to do with. In a display of plucky arrogance at her coming-out press conference, Palin boasted deceptively that if Alaskans wanted that infamous bridge to nowhere, "we'd build it ourselves."

She originally had supported having U.S. taxpayers finance that boondoggle, before McCain and others in Congress blasted it.

Not that I blame Palin for wrangling for her state a bigger cut of oil company windfall profits; it's just not an option that will work wonders for states without oil. Of course we can remedy that by having a federal windfall profits tax of the sort that Barack Obama dared propose, and which McCain and his fellow congressional Republicans have managed to quash. Their argument, rejected quite pointedly by Palin for Alaska, is that it would discourage oil companies from investing in boosting oil field yields.

McCain derided Obama's call for the windfall profits tax, saying it would "increase our dependence on foreign oil and hinder exactly the same kind of domestic exploration and production we need." I am far more interested in how McCain handles the contradiction between his and Palin's position on windfall oil profits than whether he properly vetted her on her family-values commitment to the abstinence-only teenage sex education program.

Why is it a good thing for the folks up in Alaska to get a cut of exorbitant oil company profits, but not the rest of us, if we are all part of one nation? Didn't taxpayers from across the U.S. buy the place from the Russians? Isn't it our federally collected tax dollars that have been subsidizing Alaska more lavishly than any other state, both before and after the bonanza of oil?

Just witness the success of Palin, who, as mayor of the hamlet of Wasilla, hired a big-time lobbying firm intimately connected with the state's now-indicted Republican Sen. Ted Stevens and thus obtained $27 million in federal earmarks during her tenure. As The Washington Post calculated in a devastating report on Mayor Palin's assault on the federal treasury, her home town of Wasilla (with about 6,000 inhabitants in 2002 when she was mayor) received $6.1 million, or $1,000 per resident in earmarks, almost as much as Boise, Idaho, got this year with a population that is 30 times larger.

It obviously helped to have Alaska's now-indicted senator as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. And despite McCain's claims that Palin distinguished herself by breaking with Alaska's discredited Republican establishment in February, the governor sent Stevens a request for $200 million to support various state projects. With representatives like that, it's no wonder that Alaska, despite its oil boom, is still at the top of states subsidized by federal dollars, receiving $1.84 back from Washington for every $1 that Alaskans pay in federal taxes. (California receives 78 cents for every $1.)

Unfortunately, looking to Palin for advice on helping the rest of us during the oil crunch, as McCain has promised, is a bit like asking a Saudi oil minister or Russia's Vladimir Putin to provide a model for our nation's economic woes. They hardly feel our pain at the pump.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/03-0

[sidecross]

A quote from Sarah Palin:

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending (U.S. soldiers) out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

http://www.alternet.org/election08/97350/8_more_shocking_revelations_about_sarah_palin/?page=entire

[suebee]

from the AP

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told ministry students at her former church that the United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war on a "task that is from God."

In an address last June, the Republican vice presidential candidate also urged ministry students to pray for a plan to build a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in the state, calling it "God's will."

Palin asked the students to pray for the troops in Iraq, and noted that her eldest son, Track, was expected to be deployed there.

"Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," she said. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."

A video of the speech was posted at the Wasilla Assembly of God's Web site before finding its way on to other sites on the Internet.

Palin told graduating students of the church's School of Ministry, "What I need to do is strike a deal with you guys." As they preached the love of Jesus throughout Alaska, she said, she'd work to implement God's will from the governor's office, including creating jobs by building a pipeline to bring North Slope natural gas to North American markets.

"God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said.

"I can do my job there in developing our natural resources and doing things like getting the roads paved and making sure our troopers have their cop cars and their uniforms and their guns, and making sure our public schools are funded," she added. "But really all of that stuff doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God."

Palin attended the evangelical church from the time she was a teenager until 2002, the church said in a statement posted on its Web site. She has continued to attend special conferences and meetings there. Religious conservatives have welcomed her selection as John McCain's running mate.

The Assemblies of God, which claims nearly 3 million members, is one of the biggest Pentecostal groups in the U.S. Unlike most other Christians — including most evangelicals — Pentecostals believe in "baptism in the Holy Spirit." That can manifest itself through speaking in tongues, modern-day prophesy and faith healing. The Assemblies of God teaches that spirit baptism must be accompanied by speaking in tongues. Still, some churchgoers never have the experience.

Rob Boston, a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, lamented Palin's comments.

"I miss the days when pastors delivered sermons and politicians delivered political speeches," he said. "The United States is increasingly diverse religiously. The job of a president is to unify all those different people and bring them together around policy goals, not to act as a kind of national pastor and bring people to God."

The section of the church's Web site where videos of past sermons were posted was shut down Wednesday, and a message was posted saying that the site "was never intended to handle the traffic it has received in the last few days."

[Isaiah Mpski]

SueBee.You better get your sweet ass out of the Bay area.
Somethings fixing to give way.
Santa Fe is always real nice this time of the year.
Snow on the mountaintops,fall in the air.

Me?
I'm headin to Mexico.:D

[sidecross]

"Mrs. Palin needs to be reminded that Jesus Christ was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor."

Copied from a baseball web site.

[suebee]

i hope obama's attack dogs are reading this thread. mccain met her once-for three minutes-before calling her at the alaska state fair last week to ask her.

[Isaiah Mpski]

One of the things you learn in prison and various types of mental mental hospitals,is to trust your first instincts.Whether they come with lip stick or not.
You also become exposed and infected by terrible scenes of just how animalistic this world is.

Can you get me a good deal on some good wine and have it shipped this way?

And Willow.Now that you are back in the land of milk and honey I hope you jump on the mechabical horse and start digging me a bunch of amonites.
I hear tell they are going to re-drill my old well in Ardmore.

[suebee]

the winerys i've worked at are 20 a bottle at half off. way overpriced in my opinion...shipping for a case is about 40 bucks. if you have a 'costco' or 'cost plus world market' handy, there have been some great argentine malbecs lately. franciscan cabs are consistently delicious.

i cannot understand my parents. they are good, solid americans. they have done everything 'right' and have good values. they have good hearts. my mom is somewhat racist (it never comes up) but thats her heritage and she doesnt contemplate too much. my dad actually thinks the healthcare situation in the country is criminal. blah blah. what i cant understand is how they keep voting f---ing republican year after year. like lemmings. like robots. i know its not just republican politicians who have gone over to the dark side. i know it comes with the territory of power. but it is the republicans who are so blatant about it, so in your face 'fuck off poor people, we dont share'.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Yes,yesterday was the third anniversary of Mom's murder.
Time is passing so quickly.

No.I've pretty much given up on parents except to realize they are ultimately right.

Appreciate and help them cause they won't always be around.
Just the memories and Spirit.

Ha.Cosco?The nearest one is several hundred miles.
Maybe you could price me a case of bueno vino.Bill me at

Dr John D. Son BS,BUS,MD,ND,NMD.
Professor emerti,dept of Psychiatry,Southern College of Naturopathic Medicine,near Chihuatlin,Manzanillo,Colima,Mexico,Checotah Oklahoma,Creek Nation IT, USA.

POB 243
Checotah(Jesustakethewheelsville) Ok.
74426

It's a crazy world out there folks.
And SB.You know I don't believe in marriage.Dear.:D,unless they are multiple.

Ah.100 virgins.It'll be hard to contol myself.But with faith and foundations laid by my forebears.We can get there.:p:rolleyes:

[sidecross]

Oops ...

From the WSJ ...

The biggest project that Sarah Palin undertook as mayor of this small town was an indoor sports complex, where locals played hockey, soccer, and basketball, especially during the long, dark Alaskan winters.

The only catch was that the city began building roads and installing utilities for the project before it had unchallenged title to the land. The misstep led to years of litigation and at least $1.3 million in extra costs for a small municipality with a small budget. What was to be Ms. Palin's legacy has turned into a financial mess that continues to plague Wasilla.


--Josh Marshall


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/

[craazyman]

put her in charge of Fannie Mae!

Bowahahahahahaha:p:p:p

[sidecross]

Published on Monday, September 8, 2008 by TruthDig.com

Tyranny on Display at the Republican Convention

by Chris Hedges

St. Paul is a window into our future. It is a future where, as one protester told me by phone, "people have been pepper-gassed, thrown on the ground by police who had drawn their weapons, had their documents seized and their tattoos photographed before being taken away to jail." It is a future where illegal house raids are carried out. It is a future where vans containing heavily armed paramilitary units circle and film protesters. It is a future where, as the protester said, "people have been pulled from cars because their license plates were on a database and handcuffed, thrown in the back of a squad car and then watched as their vehicles were ransacked and their personal possessions from computers to literature seized." It is a future where constitutional rights mean nothing and where lawful dissent is branded a form of terrorism.

The rise of the corporate state means the rise of the surveillance state. The Janus-like face of America swings from packaged and canned spectacles, from nationalist slogans, from seas of flags and Christian crosses, from professions of faith and patriotism, to widespread surveillance, illegal mass detentions, informants, provocateurs and crude acts of repression and violence. We barrel toward a world filled with stupendous lies and blood.

What difference is there between the crowds of flag-waving Republicans and the apparatchiks I covered as a reporter in the old East German Communist Party? These Republican delegates, like the fat and compromised party functionaries in East Berlin, all fawned on cue over an inept and corrupt party hierarchy. They all purported to champion workers' rights and freedom while they systematically fleeced, disempowered and impoverished the workers they lauded. They all celebrated the virtue of a state that was morally bankrupt. And while they played this con game, one that gave them special privileges, power and wealth, they unleashed their goons and thugs on all who dared to challenge them. We are not East Germany, but we are well on our way. An economic meltdown, another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, a war with Iran, and we could easily swing into an authoritarian model that would look very familiar to anyone who lived in the former communist East bloc.

A few of those arrested in St. Paul, including eight leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee -- one of the groups organizing protests at the GOP convention in St. Paul -- now face terrorism-related charges. Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald and Max Spector could get up to seven and a half years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge, which allows for a 50 percent increase in the maximum penalty. This is the first time criminal charges have been filed under the 2002 Minnesota version of the federal Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act, which was put in place as much to silence domestic opposition as to ferret out real terrorists, has largely lain dormant. It has authorized the government to monitor our phone conversations, e-mails, meetings and political opinions. It has authorized the government to shut down anti-war groups and lock up innocents as terrorists. It has abolished habeas corpus. But until now we have not grasped its full implications for our open society. We catch glimpses, as in St. Paul or in our offshore penal colonies where we torture detainees, of its awful destructive power.

The commercial media told us that what was important in St. Paul was happening inside the convention hall. The vapid interviews, the ridiculous soap opera sagas about Sarah Palin's daughter and the debate about whether John McCain or Barack Obama has proprietary rights to "Change" divert us from the truth of who we have become. You had to search out "Democracy Now!," TheUptake.org, Twin Cities Indymedia, I-Witness, along with a few other independent outlets, to see, hear or read real journalism from St. Paul.

It does not matter that the RNC Welcoming Committee describes itself as an "anarchist/anti-authoritarian" organization. We don't have to embrace a political agenda to protect the right to be heard. Shut down free speech and radicals only burrow deeper underground, splitting ossified political systems into fractured extremes. We may well end up with the Christian right on one side, with politicians like Sarah Palin providing an ideological veneer to a Christian fascism, and embittered leftist radicals who turn to violence on the other.

St. Paul was not ultimately about selecting a presidential candidate. It was about the power of the corporate state to carry out pre-emptive searches, seizures and arrests. It was about squads of police in high-tech riot gear, many with drawn semiautomatic weapons, bursting into houses. It was about seized computers, journals and political literature. It was about shutting down independent journalism, even at gunpoint. It was about charging protesters with "conspiracy to commit riot," a rarely used statute that criminalizes legal dissent. It was about 500 people held in open-air detention centers. It was about the rising Orwellian state that has hollowed out the insides of America, cast away all that was good and vital, and donned its skin to shackle us all.

Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/08-0

[willoweyes]

While watching the Republican convention, I noticed Gwen Ifill of PBS looking ruffled after Palin's speech--I commented on it to Doublecross. In any event, she revealed on "Washington Week" that she had been threatened during Palin's speech, on the convention floor by good Christian Republicans, with waved fists and curses.

As Lewis Lapham said in the latest issue of "Harper's": "If more than two people attend the funeral of a journalist, he hasn't been doing his job."

I saw the footage of (Democracy Now's) Amy Goodman's arrest--scandalous. And the Republicans inch up in the polls.

Good luck and Godspeed, America. Or as some say, It's all good.

hahaha.

[sidecross]

What's the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick

A theocrat is a theocrat, whether Muslim or Christian.

By Juan Cole

Sep. 09, 2008 | 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. Antipathy to Darwin for providing an alternative to the creation stories of the Bible and the Quran has also become a feature of Muslim fundamentalism. Saudi Arabia prohibits the study, even in universities, of evolution, Freud and Marx. Malaysia has banned a translation of "The Origin of the Species." Likewise, fundamentalists in Turkey have pressured the government to teach creationism in the public schools. McCain has praised Turkey as an anchor of democracy in the region, but Turkey's secular traditions are under severe pressure from fundamentalists in that country. McCain does them no favors by choosing a running mate who wishes to destroy the First Amendment's establishment clause, which forbids the state to give official support to any particular theology. Turkish religious activists would thereby be enabled to cite an American precedent for their own quest to put religion back at the center of Ankara's public and foreign policies.

The GOP vice-presidential pick holds that abortion should be illegal, even in cases of rape, incest or severe birth defects, making an exception only if the life of the mother is in danger. She calls abortion an "atrocity" and pledges to reshape the judiciary to fight it. Ironically, Palin's views on the matter are to the right of those in the Muslim country of Tunisia, which allows abortion in the first trimester for a wide range of reasons. Classical Muslim jurisprudents differed among one another on the issue of abortion, but many permitted it before the "quickening" of the fetus, i.e. until the end of the fourth month. Contemporary Muslim fundamentalists, however, generally oppose abortion.

Palin's stance is even stricter than that of the Parliament of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2005, the legislature in Tehran attempted to amend the country's antiabortion statute to permit an abortion up to four months in case of a birth defect. The conservative clerical Guardianship Council, which functions as a sort of theocratic senate, however, rejected the change. Iran's law on abortion is therefore virtually identical to the one that Palin would like to see imposed on American women, and the rationale in both cases is the same, a literalist religious impulse that resists any compromise with the realities of biology and of women's lives. Saudi Arabia's restrictive law on abortion likewise disallows it in the case or rape or incest, or of fetal impairment, which is also Gov. Palin's position.

Theocrats confuse God's will with their own mortal policies. Just as Muslim fundamentalists believe that God has given them the vast oil and gas resources in their regions, so Palin asks church workers in Alaska to pray for a $30 billion pipeline in the state because "God's will has to get done." Likewise, Palin maintained that her task as governor would be impeded "if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God." Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei of Iran expresses much the same sentiment when he says "the only way to attain prosperity and progress is to rely on Islam."

Not only does Palin not believe global warming is "man-made," she favors massive new drilling to spew more carbon into the atmosphere. Both as a fatalist who has surrendered to God's inscrutable will and as a politician from an oil-rich region, she thereby echoes Saudi Arabia. Riyadh has been found to have exercised inappropriate influence in watering down a report in 2007 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Neither Christians nor Muslims necessarily share the beliefs detailed above. Many believers in both traditions uphold freedom of speech and the press. Indeed, in a recent poll, over 90 percent of Egyptians and Iranians said that they would build freedom of expression into any constitution they designed. Many believers find ways of reconciling the scientific theory of evolution with faith in God, not finding it necessary to believe that the world was created suddenly only 6,000 ago. Some medieval Muslim thinkers asserted that the world had existed from eternity, and others spoke of cycles of hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Mystical Muslim poets spoke of humankind traversing the stages of mineral, plant and animal. Modern Islamic fundamentalists have attempted to narrow this great, diverse tradition.

The classical Islamic legal tradition generally permitted, while frowning on, contraception and abortion, and complete opposition to them is mostly a feature of modern fundamentalist thinking. Many believers in both Islam and Christianity would see it as hubris to tie God to specific government policies or to a particular political party. As for global warming, green theology, in which Christians and Muslims appeal to Scripture in fighting global warming, is an increasing tendency in both traditions.

Palin has a right to her religious beliefs, as do fundamentalist Muslims who agree with her on so many issues of social policy. None of them has a right, however, to impose their beliefs on others by capturing and deploying the executive power of the state. The most noxious belief that Palin shares with Muslim fundamentalists is her conviction that faith is not a private affair of individuals but rather a moral imperative that believers should import into statecraft wherever they have the opportunity to do so. That is the point of her pledge to shape the judiciary. Such a theocratic impulse is incompatible with the Founding Fathers' commitment to tolerance and democracy, which is why they forbade the government to "establish" or officially support any particular religion or denomination.

McCain once excoriated the Rev. Jerry Falwell and his ilk as "agents of intolerance." That he took such a position gave his opposition to similar intolerance in Islam credibility. In light of his more recent disgraceful kowtowing to the Christian right, McCain's animus against fundamentalist Muslims no longer looks consistent. It looks bigoted and invidious. You can't say you are waging a war on religious extremism if you are trying to put a religious extremist a heartbeat away from the presidency.


-- By Juan Cole

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/09/09/palin_fundamentalist/print.html

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I Spent Years as a POW with John McCain, and His Finger Should Not Be Near the Red Button

By Phillip Butler, Military.com

John McCain is a long-time acquaintance of mine that goes way back to our time together at the U.S. Naval Academy and as Prisoners of War in Vietnam. He is a man I respect and admire in some ways. But there are a number of reasons why I will not vote for him for President of the United States.

When I was a Plebe (4th classman, or freshman) at the Naval Academy in 1957-58, I was assigned to the 17th Company for my four years there. In those days we had about 3,600 midshipmen spread among 24 companies, thus about 150 midshipmen to a company. As fortune would have it, John, a First Classman (senior) and his room mate lived directly across the hall from me and my two room mates. Believe me when I say that back then I would never in a million or more years have dreamed that the crazy guy across the hall would someday be a Senator and candidate for President!

John was a wild man. He was funny, with a quick wit and he was intelligent. But he was intent on breaking every USNA regulation in our 4 inch thick USNA Regulations book. And I believe he must have come as close to his goal as any midshipman who ever attended the Academy. John had me "coming around" to his room frequently during my plebe year. And on one occasion he took me with him to escape "over the wall" in the dead of night. He had a taxi cab waiting for us that took us to a bar some 7 miles away. John had a few beers, but forbid me to drink (watching out for me I guess) and made me drink cokes. I could tell many other midshipman stories about John that year and he unbelievably managed to graduate though he spent the majority of his first class year on restriction for the stuff he did get caught doing. In fact he barely managed to graduate, standing 5th from the bottom of his 800 man graduating class. I and many others have speculated that the main reason he did graduate was because his father was an Admiral, and also his grandfather, both U.S. Naval Academy graduates.

People often ask if I was a Prisoner of War with John McCain. My answer is always "No - John McCain was a POW with me." The reason is I was there for 8 years and John got there 2 1/2 years later, so he was a POW for 5 1/2 years. And we have our own seniority system, based on time as a POW.

John's treatment as a POW:

1) Was he tortured for 5 years? No. He was subjected to torture and maltreatment during his first 2 years, from September of 1967 to September of 1969. After September of 1969 the Vietnamese stopped the torture and gave us increased food and rudimentary health care. Several hundred of us were captured much earlier. I got there April 20, 1965 so my bad treatment period lasted 4 1/2 years. President Ho Chi Minh died on September 9, 1969, and the new regime that replaced him and his policies was more pragmatic. They realized we were worth a lot as bargaining chips if we were alive. And they were right because eventually Americans gave up on the war and agreed to trade our POW's for their country. A damn good trade in my opinion! But my point here is that John allows the media to make him out to be THE hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals.

2) John was badly injured when he was shot down. Both arms were broken and he had other wounds from his ejection. Unfortunately this was often the case -- new POW's arriving with broken bones and serious combat injuries. Many died from their wounds. Medical care was non-existent to rudimentary. Relief from pain was almost never given and often the wounds were used as an available way to torture the POW. Because John's father was the Naval Commander in the Pacific theater, he was exploited with TV interviews while wounded. These film clips have now been widely seen. But it must be known that many POW's suffered similarly, not just John. And many were similarly exploited for political propaganda.

3) John was offered, and refused, "early release." Many of us were given this offer. It meant speaking out against your country and lying about your treatment to the press. You had to "admit" that the U.S. was criminal and that our treatment was "lenient and humane." So I, like numerous others, refused the offer. This was obviously something none of us could accept. Besides, we were bound by our service regulations, Geneva Conventions and loyalties to refuse early release until all the POW's were released, with the sick and wounded going first.

4) John was awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart for heroism and wounds in combat. This heroism has been played up in the press and in his various political campaigns. But it should be known that there were approximately 600 military POW's in Vietnam. Among all of us, decorations awarded have recently been totaled to the following: Medals of Honor -- 8, Service Crosses -- 42, Silver Stars -- 590, Bronze Stars -- 958 and Purple Hearts -- 1,249. John certainly performed courageously and well. But it must be remembered that he was one hero among many -- not uniquely so as his campaigns would have people believe.

John McCain served his time as a POW with great courage, loyalty and tenacity. More than 600 of us did the same. After our repatriation a census showed that 95% of us had been tortured at least once. The Vietnamese were quite democratic about it. There were many heroes in North Vietnam. I saw heroism every day there. And we motivated each other to endure and succeed far beyond what any of us thought we had in ourselves. Succeeding as a POW is a group sport, not an individual one. We all supported and encouraged each other to survive and succeed. John knows that. He was not an individual POW hero. He was a POW who surmounted the odds with the help of many comrades, as all of us did.

I furthermore believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate.

Most of us who survived that experience are now in our late 60's and 70's. Sadly, we have died and are dying off at a greater rate than our non-POW contemporaries. We experienced injuries and malnutrition that are coming home to roost. So I believe John's age (73) and survival expectation are not good for being elected to serve as our President for 4 or more years.

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

It is also disappointing to see him take on and support Bush's war in Iraq, even stating we might be there for another 100 years. For me John represents the entrenched and bankrupt policies of Washington-as-usual. The past 7 years have proven to be disastrous for our country. And I believe John's views on war, foreign policy, economics, environment, health care, education, national infrastructure and other important areas are much the same as those of the Bush administration.

I'm disappointed to see John represent himself politically in ways that are not accurate. He is not a moderate Republican. On some issues he is a maverick. But his voting record is far to the right. I fear for his nominations to our Supreme Court, and the consequent continuing loss of individual freedoms, especially regarding moral and religious issues. John is not a religious person, but he has taken every opportunity to ally himself with some really obnoxious and crazy fundamentalist ministers lately. I was also disappointed to see him cozy up to Bush because I know he hates that man. He disingenuously and famously put his arm around the guy, even after Bush had intensely disrespected him with lies and slander. So on these and many other instances, I don't see that John is the "straight talk express" he markets himself to be.

Senator John Sidney McCain, III is a remarkable man who has made enormous personal achievements. And he is a man that I am proud to call a fellow POW who "Returned With Honor." That's our POW motto. But since many of you keep asking what I think of him, I've decided to write it out. In short, I think John Sidney McCain, III is a good man, but not someone I will vote for in the upcoming election to be our President of the United States.

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.

Doctor Phillip Butler is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war. He is a highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legion of Merits, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals. After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is now a peace and justice activist with Veterans for Peace.

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/

[Isaiah Mpski]

Great post SC,As usual.

Have any of you been watching that survival show where they dump that guy out in remote part of the world with little more than and camera and then he has to make his way back to civilization.I saw him survive the artic,the amazon but the last two weeks have been classics.
Two weeks ago they dumped in Ethopia with a hamburger.
Pretty gory episode.
This week they plan to dump him in Harlem with a twenty dollar bill and a watermelon.
He doesn't have a chance.

Just kidding CM and Bopes.I'm really not a racist but appreciate a good laugh.
I am sympathetic to the poor and hungry no matter what race.Seriously.

Hey and for all you BOTHERS out there looking for something to do.
I'm throwing a party for my favorite wife MM.
It is to be on the 23rd of this month.Free room and board for anybody looking to get away to the country and lakeside for a few days,eat some fish and drink some wine and maybe the beginning of a collective book or movie.
The weather here in eastern Oklahoma looks to be gorgious and I would like as many of you as possible to attend.You will enjoy our place here on Lake Eufaula.
We are an hour away from Tulsa so if any want to fly I can pick you up at the Tulsa airport
I am very serious about this so all you guys and girls try to get here.

[sidecross]

September 5, 2008

by Charley James

Friends: This article has been inundated with comments. We are no longer accepting comments. Please see the followup article by reporter Charley James, “Me and Sarah Palin.” –Eds.

Charley James is an American journalist, author and essayist who lives in Toronto.


“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 “Arctic Arabs” – how efficient, lumping two apparently undesirable groups into one ugly description – as well as the more colourful “mukluks” along with the totally unimaginative “f**king Eskimo’s,” according to a number of Alaskans and Wasillians interviewed for this article.

But being openly racist is only the tip of the Palin iceberg. According to Alaskans interviewed for this article, she is also vindictive and mean. We’re talking Rove mean and Nixon vindictive.

No wonder the vast sea of white, cheering faces at the Republican Convention went wild for Sarah: They adore the type, it’s in their genetic code. So much for McCain’s pledge of a “high road” campaign; Palin is incapable of being part of one.

Tough Getting People Who Know Her to Talk
It’s not easy getting people in the 49th state to speak critically about Palin – especially people in Wasilla, where she was mayor. For one thing, with every journalist in the world calling, phone lines into Alaska have been mostly jammed since Friday; as often as not, a recording told me that “all circuits are busy” or numbers just wouldn’t ring. I should think a state that’s been made richer than God by oil could afford telephone lines and cell towers for everyone.

On a more practical level, many people in Alaska, and particularly Wasilla, are reluctant to speak or be quoted by name because they’re afraid of her as well as the state Republican Party machine. Apparently, the power elite are as mean as the winters.

“The GOP is kind of like organized crime up here,” an insurance agent in Anchorage who knows the Palin family, explained. “It’s corrupt and arrogant. They’re all rich because they do private sweetheart deals with the oil companies, and they can destroy anyone. And they will, if they have to.”

“Once Palin became mayor,” he continued, “She became part of that inner circle.”

Like most other people interviewed, he didn’t want his name used out of fear of retribution. Maybe it’s the long winter nights where you don’t see the sun for months that makes people feel as if they’re under constant danger from “the authorities.” As I interviewed residents it began sounding as if living in Alaska controlled by the state Republican Party is like living in the old Soviet Union: See nothing that’s happening, say nothing offensive, and the political commissars leave you alone. But speak out and you get disappeared into a gulag north of the Arctic Circle for who-knows-how-long.

Alright, that’s an exaggeration brought on by my getting too little sleep and building too much anger as I worked this article. But there’s ample evidence of Palin’s vindictive willingness to destroy people she sees as opponents. Just ask the Wasilla town administrator she hired before firing him because he rebelled against the way Palin demanded he do his job, or the town librarian who refused to hold the book burning Walpurgisnach Mayor Palin demanded.

Ironically, Palin was pushed into hiring the administrator by the party poobahs who helped get her elected after she got herself into trouble over a number of precipitous firings which gave rise to a recall campaign.

“People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day,” states Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla resident and one of the few Alaskans willing to speak on-the-record, for attribution, about Palin. In fact, Kilkenny actually circulated an e-mail letter about Palin that was verified and printed by The Nation.

For good measure, Palin booted the Wasilla police chief from office because, she told a local newspaper, he “intimidated” her.

Running on Extreme Fringe Evangelical Views
Sarah Palin drew early attention from state GOP apparatchiks when, during her first mayoral campaign, she ran on an anti-abortion platform. Normally, political parties do not get involved in Alaskan municipal elections because they are nonpartisan. But once word of her extreme fringe evangelical views made its way to Juneau, the state capitol, state Republicans tossed some money behind her campaign.

Once in office, Palin set out to build a machine that chewed up anyone who got in her way. The good, Godly Christian turns out to be anything but.

“She’s doesn’t like different opinions and she refuses to compromise,” Kilkenny notes. “When she was mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t hers. Worse, ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits but on the basis of who proposed them.”

Sound familiar? Palin may well be Dick Cheney’s reincarnate.

Something else has a familiar Republican ring to it: Her tax policies, and a “refund surpluses but borrow for the future” attitude.

According to Kilkenny and others in Wasilla as well as Juneau, Palin reduced progressive property taxes for businesses while mayor and increased a regressive sales tax which even hits necessities such as food. The tax cuts she promoted in her St. Paul speech actually benefited large corporate property owners far more than they benefited residents. Indeed, Kilkenny insists that many Wasilla home owners actually saw their tax bill skyrocket to make up for the shortfall. Two other Wasillian’s with whom I spoke said property taxes on their modest, three bedroom homes rose during the Palin regime.

To an outsider, it would seem hard to do, but an oil-rich town with zero debt on the day she was inaugurated mayor was left saddled with $22 million of debt by the time she moved away to become governor – especially since nothing was spent on things such as improving the city’s infrastructure or building a much-needed sewage treatment plant. So what did Mayor Palin spend the taxpayer’s money on, if not fixing streets and scrubbing sewage?

For starters, she remodelled her office. Several times over, as a matter of fact.

Then Palin spent $1 million on an unnecessary, new park that no one other than the contractors and Palin seemed to want. Next, Sarah doled out more than $15 million of taxpayer money for a sports complex that she shoved through even though the city did not own clear title to the land; now, seven years later, the matter is still in litigation and lawyer fees are said to be close to at least half of the original estimated price of the facility.

She also worked hard to get voters approval of a $5.5 million bond proposal for roads that could have been built without borrowing. Anchorage may not be the center of the financial universe but, like good Republicans everywhere, Sarah Palin knows how to please Alaskan bankers and bond dealers.

For good measure, she turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.

Sarah Barracuda
En route to the governor’s igloo, Palin managed to land what Anne Kilkenny says is the plumb political appointment in the state: Chair of Alaska’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (OGCC), a $122,400 per year patronage slot with no real authority to do anything other than hold meetings. She took the job despite having no background in energy issues and, as it turned out, not liking the work.

“She hated the job,” an OGCC staff member who is not authorized to speak with the news media told me. “She hated the hours and she hated what little work there was to do. But she couldn’t figure out a way to get out of the thing without offending Gov. Murkowski” and the state Republican Party regulars, some of whom were pissed off they didn’t get appointed.

But ever the opportunist, Palin quickly concocted a way. First, she waged a campaign with the local news media claiming that the position was overpaid and should be abolished – despite the fact that she lobbied Murkowski hard to get it. Then, mounting what she saw as a white horse, Palin raised a cloud of dust by resigning from the OGCC and riding away with an undeserved reputation as a “reformer.”

But when a local reporter dared to suggest that the reformer Empress has no clothes, Palin tried to get her fired.

“She came at me like I was trying to steal her kids,” said the targeted reporter, who now works for an oil company in Anchorage. “I heard she had a wild temper and vicious mean streak but it’s nothing like you can imagine until she turns it on you.”

Not surprising since some of her high school classmates still openly call her “Sarah Barracuda,” Kilkenny insists.

Still, as a Republican Party hack Palin managed to get herself elected running under the false flag of a “reformer.”

And what did she bring to the job? No legislative experience other than a city council of a village of 5,000 people, which is smaller than some high schools in Chicago. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; after all, she needed to hire a city administrator to run Wasilla. No executive experience, except for almost being recalled as mayor. A philosophy of setting public policy based on one word: No.

And what has she done since winning the job?

According to Kilkenny, nothing. Well, nothing other than suggesting the state’s multi-multi-million dollar, oil-generated surplus be distributed to residents and finance future state needs by borrowing money. Gee, doesn’t that sound precisely what George Bush did with the surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton in 2001 and we all know in what great shape Bush’s economic policies left the nation.

It may explain why, when asked by reporters, including me, what she thought about Palin being picked to be McCain’s running mate, her mother-in-law replied with a sardonic, “What has Sarah done to qualify her to be vice president?” Of course, when the woman – said by many I spoke with to be well-respected in Wasilla – was running to succeed Palin as mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her, so that may explain the family tension.

As Governor, Palin gave the legislature no direction and budget guidelines, according to the chair of a legislative committee. But then she staged a huge grandstand play of line-item vetoing countless projects, calling them pork. “They were restored because of public outcry and legislative action,” the aide said. “She vetoed them mostly because she had no idea what they were or why they were important.”

But it was enough to get the McCain, who is mostly unobservant of the world around him anyway, to think Palin has a reputation as being “anti-pork”.

In fact, Juneau observers note that Palin kept her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork ladled out by indicted Sen. Ted Stevens. She only opposed the “bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be politically unwise to keep supporting it, these same insiders assert. Then, Palin fell back on her old habits and publicly humiliated him for pork-barrel politics.

As for being “ready on day one” to be commander in chief, despite the repeated public claims she’s made, the Alaska National Guard commander said that, “she has made no command decisions, other than sending some troops to help fight a few brush fires and march in parades at county fairs.”

“Sambo Beat the Bitch”
“Palin is a conniving, manipulative, a**hole,” someone who thinks these are positive traits in a governor told me, summing up Palin’s tenure in Alaska state and local politics.

“She’s a bigot, a racist, and a liar,” is the more blunt assessment of Arnold Gerstheimer who lived in Alaska until two years ago and is now a businessman in Idaho.

Juneau is a small town; everybody knows everyone else,” he adds. “These stories about what she calls blacks and Eskimos, well, anyone not white and good looking actually, were around long before she became a glint in John McCain’s rheumy eyes. Why do I know they’re true? Because everyone who isn’t aboriginal or Indian in Alaska talks that way.”

“Sambo beat the bitch” may be everyday language up in the bush. Whether it – and the outlook, politics and worldview Palin reflects when she says such things in public – should be part of a presidential campaign is another thing altogether. The comment says as much about McCain as it does about Palin, and it says a lot of things about Americans who overlook such statements (as well as her record) and vote anyway for McCain.

by Charley James

Friends: This article has been inundated with comments. We are no longer accepting comments. Please see the followup article by reporter Charley James, “Me and Sarah Palin.” –Eds.

Charley James is an American journalist, author and essayist who lives in Toronto.

http://www.laprogressive.com/2008/09/06/sarah-palin-and-me/

[sidecross]

10 Questions for Sarah Palin

What ABC News anchor Charles Gibson should ask the candidate.

By Jack Shafer

Posted Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2008, at 6:17 PM ET


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ABC News anchor Charles Gibson's forthcoming interview with Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin—her first since being hoisted onto the ticket by John McCain—will give a national audience an unvarnished look at the candidate. Because Palin is telegenic and the interview will be shot against scenic Alaskan backdrops, the only thing to prevent the interview from turning into sweet Republican syrup will be tough questions from Gibson.

Gibson and his team got knocked by Washington Post columnist Tom Shales as "shoddy," "despicable," and "prosecutorial" after they hosted the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Although I think the transcript tells a different story, Gibson will surely approach this interview on tip-toe lest he become the story again.

Gibson enters this Q&A at a disadvantage: Palin and her associates know volumes more about Gibson and his interviewing techniques and the questions that he's likely to ask than he knows about her and her positions. She'll have crammed like a Ph.D. candidate preparing for an oral examination, and her expert coaches will have prepared her on how to slip out of questions for which she doesn't have answers.

Gibson will wisely avoid the "gotcha" questions designed to prove that she's an ignoramus because she can't name all the capitals of the now-independent Soviet republics. Likewise, he'll skip the complicated hypotheticals ("If the president of North Korea has a stroke and nobody seems to be in charge and the country appears to have restarted its nuclear program, as president, what do you do?").

Because this is Palin's first interview, her coming-out if you will, Gibson has an obligation to ask questions about the issues thrust into the news by her words and actions. After covering that area, he needs to ask the sort of open-ended questions that will dislodge her from the script the McCainites have prepared. We need to hear her genuine views—which are largely unknown—on a range of issues.

Because the first instincts of a politician are to evade a tough question by dismissing it, filibustering, or answering a question that wasn't asked, Gibson's toughest job will be formulating the follow-up question to block her retreat.

Because the McCain campaign is running against Washington, they're got to run against George W. Bush and the Republican majority that not so long ago held Congress. Gibson needs a question that defines this separation. So he should start by asking:

1) What Bush administration policy do you disagree with most, and what would you have done differently?

She'll praise the president before damning his increased spending. To that answer Gibson should volley:

Then how much smaller would the McCain budget be and where precisely should he cut?

If she tries to vague Gibson out, which she will, he need only restate his request for specifics. It will be like pouring sand into her gears. No Republican president has ever delivered on the promise to shrink the federal government, and no Republican president ever will.

Next question:

2) How are you like Hillary Clinton?

Palin will flash that million-dollar, time-buying smile. It's a trick question, but it's an honest trick question because it forces her to acknowledge the obvious similarities. Both women are ambitious, underrated, glass-ceiling crackers and family-career jugglers, but Palin will do her best to distance herself from the comparison because it violates her sense of self. In Palin's mind, Clinton is a baby-killer, a socialist, a Washington insider, and a vain pig. She'll evade with gracious words about how she differs from Clinton, but Gibson can guide her toward self-reflection by noting the similarities (ambitious, underrated, cracker, juggler) and daring her to deny them.

Some questions work because they contain a preface that prevents the questioned from escaping. Here's the earmark-pork question Gibson should ask:

3) You're running as a reformer, a crusader against the special interests and politics as usual. Setting aside for a moment Sen. Ted Stevens' legal problems, should Alaska return to the Senate this Republican who has delivered more pork to his state than virtually any other elected official? Yes or no?

Like a good, loyal Republican, she'll resist condemning Stevens and will extol his virtues, perhaps by perhaps by talking about his struggle to make government smaller. After she runs the line out 100 feet or so, Gibson should give it this yank:

But in the past you had no problem with asking Alaskans to vote out a standing Republican. You challenged the incumbent Republican governor, Frank Murkowski, on a pork-slaying, reformist platform and beat him in the primary. Isn't Stevens as antithetical to your views on good government as Murkowski?

The McCain campaign believes that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia has given Palin standing as a foreign policy maven, or something akin. For the purposes of his interview, Gibson could accept this as a given in his preface and ask:

4) Unique among all U.S. governors, you lead a state that shares a border with Russia, a sometimes hostile nation with a nuclear arsenal and new geopolitical ambitions. Given that, how do you evaluate Vladimir Putin?

This untethered question evaporates upon being asked: Palin will respond with generalities from the "trust but verify" stockpile. Gibson's duty will be to wrap her answer in barbed wire and toss it back to her:

That's not very specific, governor. It's the sort of response I might get from the governor of Iowa. Can you share any special insight about Russia and Putin that you've gleaned from your years in office?

The vice president can't be the voice of loyal opposition to the president. She is always his slave, so on the campaign trail Palin will have to recant her previously stated view that global warming is not caused by man and accept McCain's view that it is. Politicians should feel free to change their views, if only because the process by which they change their views informs how they will govern. (Tim Russert used to cruise these waters every Sunday.) Gibson should force her to expand on how her mind was changed by asking:

5) Do you still disagree with John McCain's position that global warming is caused by man? If you've changed your mind in the last couple of weeks, please tell me why you changed your mind and when that happened.

She'll try to filibuster about the need for a vigorous debate on the issue, but Gibson is enough of a pro to make her fold and admit that she has surrendered to McCain's position. This follow-up will expose her as a socialist greenie:

Do you favor McCain's advocacy of a carbon-emission cap-and-trade system to stem climate change? If you've changed your mind in the last couple of weeks, please tell me why you changed your mind and when that happened.

Here's another issue that will require genuflection on Palin's part and force her to show how and why she changes her mind. She supports drilling in ANWAR. McCain does not. Gibson should ask:

6) On the campaign trail or as vice president, will you try to persuade Mr. McCain to adopt your position on drilling in ANWAR? Or have you adopted his?

Some questions must be asked simply because they're on everybody's mind. Just because the candidate will have a well-rehearsed answer shouldn't disqualify it. So, let's hear Gibson ask:

7) Were you for the bridge to nowhere before you were against it?

She can't shrug off the question or joke her way out of this one. If she's smart—and I think she is—she'll call it the biggest mistake of her political career and one from which she's learned many valuable lessons. Gibson's follow-up should explore the libertarian socialist paradise that Alaska has become and ask her if she intends block it from the federal trough. Make her give a number for Alaska's fair take, Charlie.

Every candidate hates the press, but no smart candidate vents on the topic without thinking through the consequences. Palin scalded the press in her acceptance speech, saying she wasn't seeking the "good opinion" of Washington "reporters and commentators." The comment may presage a campaign against the press, or it could have been just a populist wisecrack. Gibson could open the topic with this softball:

8) For most in the nation, you're an unknown quantity. What questions should the press be asking you?

She'll probably throw down platitudes about the glories of the First Amendment and salute the newspaper reporters in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau who have kept government accountable. Blah, blah, blah. If she doesn't become unhinged, Gibson should invite her to with this follow-up:

What questions are out of bounds?

Will she protest the coverage of Bristol Palin's pregnancy, the nature of Trig Palin's birth, the investigation of her role in the firing of her state trooper brother-in-law? Will she draw a circle around her nuclear family that she forbids the press to enter, or will she acknowledge that she has already made every member of her clan a McCain-Palin campaign appendage and that it's too late to complain? If she's smart—and I think she is—she'll laugh and say that the testing only made her family stronger and better prepared for the future. As cheerful as can be, she'll say, I wish that the news about Bristol's pregnancy could have been released on our family's time table, not that of the press that was asking whether Trig was my baby. But that's all passed. I'm as used to sharp-elbow politics as I am to sharp-elbow basketball, so I hold no grudge against anybody, not even the nasty anonymous bloggers.

If she goes this direction, you can be sure that the McCain campaign will urge the press to consider no question out of bounds for the Obama-Biden ticket.

As a foreign policy novice, Palin deserves an open-ended question like this about what she knew before McCain picked her and what she's learned since:

9) What have you learned about foreign policy from John McCain since joining the ticket?

She'll ably recite chapter and verse from the McCain manual. Gibson's goal here shouldn't be to force a fumble but to see how far she'll carry the ball when given a field that stretches a thousand yards before her. Will she have a beginning, a middle, and an end questioning her answer? Will it reveal her a foreign policy prodigy or a dope whose understanding is miles wide and nano-inches deep. Gibson should resist asking a follow-up and just smile and nod his lunkhead nod that says, Tell me more. Can she fill dead air? Can she resist it?

Finally, Palin is the sort of politician for whom the personal is the political. She's already reaped political rewards from the deployment of her son, a soldier, to Iraq, so Gibson has every right to personalize her views by asking:

10) Your son is being sent to Iraq. What is he fighting for?

Follow-ups:

John McCain says we're on the road to victory in Iraq. How do you define victory? What exactly have we won?

******

Bonus questions for Gibson: What rights do suspected terrorists have? And if Gibson is up to it, this one: On Sept. 2, you and your husband issued a statement about Bristol Palin's pregnancy stating that you were "proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents." Was it Bristol's independent decision to have her baby? Would you have blocked her from getting an abortion if that had been her decision?

Send additional Palin questions to slate.pressbox@gmail.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum; in a future article; or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)

Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For e-mail notification of errors in this specific column, type the word Gibson in the subject head of an e-mail message, and send it to slate.pressbox@gmail.com.

Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.

http://www.slate.com/id/2199668/

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Published on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 by TruthDig.com

She’s Clueless, He’s Worse

by Robert Scheer

Ignorance is bliss, which perhaps explains Gov. Sarah Palin being so confidently wrong about the root cause of the federalization of most of the nation's mortgage market. But what is Sen. John McCain's excuse? Both act as if the financial meltdown of the U.S. economy has nothing to do with the policies of the political party they represent -- but she at least may not know any better.

Distracted momentarily from her campaign revelries of maverick opposition to the "bridge to nowhere," which she had supported until it became a public relations debacle, and congressional earmarks for which she, as a small-town mayor, had hustled piggishly at the federal trough, Palin made the mistake of dealing with an unscripted subject.

Referring to the government's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Palin opined that the two had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers," displaying abysmal ignorance of the fact that only now will those privately owned banks become a huge taxpayer obligation, as the federal government takes them over. Nor can the meltdown of home values be traced to those two beleaguered institutions, because they did not make the original subprime mortgage commitments.

The housing bubble was the result of the Ponzi-scheme antics of those other financial entities: commercial banks, stockbrokers and hedge funds, which were allowed in a GOP-deregulated market to get into the "swap" business. Through the rampant reselling of loans, the obligation to collect on a loan was divorced from the act of selling it in the first place, so who cared if the recipient of the loan was not at all qualified or the appraisal of the property value was inflated, as long as the paper was traded away, or insured, before the moment of foreclosure?

As with any Ponzi scheme, the perps, who included the legislators as well as the bankers who exploited the loopholes they provided, expected to bail long before the bubble burst. The role of the legislators, Republican-led but with far too many Democratic running dogs, was critical to the success of the scam.

The mortgage swaps distancing the originator of the loan from the ultimate collector were made legal only as a result of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, pushed through Congress just hours before the 2000 Christmas recess. Gramm, until recently co-chair of the McCain campaign, also had co-authored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which became law in 1999 with President Bill Clinton's signature. That gem, which Gramm had pushed for years with massive financial industry lobbying, destroyed the Depression-era barrier to the merger of stockbrokers, banks and insurance companies. Those two acts effectively ended significant regulation of the financial community, and no wonder we have witnessed an even more rapid and severe meltdown in housing values than during the Great Depression.

Not surprisingly, Gramm was rewarded for his service upon retirement as a senator and as head of the Senate Banking Committee with a top position at the Swiss-based UBS bank, which is close to drowning in the subprime mortgage nightmare he helped create. These folks have no shame, as was evidenced when the senator's wife, Wendy, was named a director of Enron, whose roiling of the energy market had been made possible only through yet another provision of Gramm's Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

While neophyte Palin can claim ignorance of such matters, that would be particularly difficult for McCain, who as a senator consistently lined up with Gramm in his deregulation crusade. Clearly McCain had not learned much from his previous involvement with the savings-and-loan debacle about the risks to consumers in unregulated banking.

McCain served as chair of Gramm's abortive 1996 presidential campaign, and Gramm returned the favor, providing critical support for McCain with the hard-line Republican base, including the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. It was assumed in the business press that Gramm was the front-runner to be Treasury secretary in a McCain administration. Gramm left his role as the top economic person near McCain only after he made an embarrassing statement blaming the current economic downturn on "whiners," an awkward reference to the victims of his disastrous legislation.

Amazingly, the turmoil in the housing market, which has led to the socializing of the nation's revered homeownership market in a massive expansion of the role of big government, has apparently not troubled McCain's conservative supporters. As I said, ignorance is bliss, and evidently not just for the newbie Palin.

Robert Scheer is author of a new book, "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/10-1

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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.

By Cathleen Decker
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 14, 2008

For weeks, John McCain and his campaign have made claims contradicted by reality: Barack Obama favors sex education for kindergartners and insulted Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin; Palin sold her state plane on EBay and turned down federal money for the "bridge to nowhere."

Obama has argued that McCain doesn't understand voter concern about the foundering economy and -- attention, Michigan voters -- has refused to support loan guarantees for the auto industry.

If any of those statements rings true, then a campaign adage has proved itself again: Repeat something often enough, and it becomes real, even when it isn't.

Political innocents may wonder why a candidate like McCain, whose campaign is premised on what he calls "straight talk" -- and to a lesser extent Obama -- have veered from the flat truth.

The answer is simple: because it works.

Both major party candidates for president vowed to run a different kind of campaign, implicitly promising a break from the spin-fests that past contests had become. But the close race and the tumultuous media environment in which McCain and Obama now find themselves appear to have crushed those notions.

"When you are seeking people's approval, you tend to tell them what you think they want to hear," said Brooks Jackson, a former Associated Press and CNN reporter who runs the online truth-squad effort Fact Check.org.

Analysts who have studied campaign rhetoric point out that rhetorical excess is hardly new. Plato railed against it 2,400 years ago. But even he might have been taken aback this year, particularly by the GOP ticket's recent comments and advertisements.

On Saturday, the McCain team was on the defensive after the Boston Globe reported that Palin's 2007 trip to Iraq, which the campaign had forwarded as evidence of foreign policy experience, was actually a trip to a Kuwait-Iraq border crossing. The campaign earlier had said the trip -- her only one outside North America -- included a visit to Ireland, but later acknowledged that was a refueling stop.

On Friday, McCain himself added to the list of untruths. He said on ABC's "The View" that his running mate would help him put a stop to congressional pork projects known as "earmarks," which are put into appropriations bills without the normal review procedures.

When co-host Barbara Walters noted that Palin herself has requested earmarks, McCain inaccurately responded, "No, not as governor she didn't."

In fact, she requested $198 million in earmarks this year as governor, atop millions more when she was mayor of the small town of Wasilla.

McCain also brushed back criticism of two misleading ads released by his campaign this week, one that attacked Obama on sex education and another that said he equated her with a pig. Both ads have been debunked by independent analysts. FactCheck called the sex education ad "simply false" and said along with others that Obama was talking about McCain's government reform strategy, not Palin, when he said the campaign was putting "lipstick on a pig."

On "The View," co-host Joy Behar asked McCain about the ads, calling them "lies."

"Actually they are not lies," McCain replied.

McCain and his campaign have insisted that all of their complaints about Obama are grounded in fact, as Obama has when confronted with errors in his criticisms of McCain.

In this presidential campaign, as in others before it, words can be shaded in a variety of ways -- direct falsehoods, technically accurate but misleading statements, incendiary suggestions or cherry-picked information lacking necessary context.

Careful attention to the wording is key.

McCain and Palin have emphasized her reformist credentials by saying she put the Alaska state plane for sale on EBay; McCain went so far as to say she sold it for a profit. Actually, the plane did not find a buyer on EBay and was later sold for a loss by a broker.

Obama claims in a Michigan ad, according to FactCheck, that McCain "refused to support loan guarantees for the auto industry. Now he's just paying lip service, not talking straight." Translation: McCain now supports loan guarantees, a fact not included in the ad.

On some level, truth or fiction has come to be almost beside the point, since the claims all take root.

Republican political analyst Dan Schnur noted that the current media environment allows misstatements from both sides to skitter through the Internet and onto ideologically based cable and radio shows.

When campaign coverage was the purview of mainstream political reporters, Schnur said, "it was less likely that a statement that wouldn't pass the smell test of the traditional news media could still be heard by the voters."

Now, he said, "there's plenty of talk shows and sites to deliver the message when the mainstream media chooses not to."

Sites such as FactCheck, a project of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, also seek to clarify public comments by candidates, to growing response from voters. Jackson, the project's director, said well over a million people visited the site last week.

His organization, nonpartisan and nonprofit, seeks to smother heated campaign rhetoric with the cool weight of logic. No use of the word "lie," for example, since intent is hard to divine; rather, something erroneous is judged "less than honest."

"I can't be sure if they are being cynically manipulative or being bamboozled by their own rhetoric," he said.

The intent of a factually challenged argument could be anything from trying to force an opponent to respond in anger -- thus alienating voters -- to just planting a seed to flourish in voters' minds. As Jackson said, the McCain campaign has barraged voters with the notion that Obama would raise their taxes. Even though Obama has pledged not to raise taxes on all but the wealthiest Americans, polls show voters now believe McCain's claims.

Stanley Renshon, a psychoanalyst and City University of New York political science professor, said voters use all manner of information, wrong or not, to construct their own portrait of a candidate. "People take bits and pieces and put them together in what is the most obvious and not exactly the most correct way," he said.

Take the sex education ad. McCain's ad ominously contends that Obama's single accomplishment in education was "legislation to teach comprehensive sex education to kindergartners." In fact, the measure would have allowed teachers, with parental approval, to inform young children about the dangers of inappropriate touching by adults.

Obama was not the measure's author, and the bill ultimately failed, meaning that it was not an accomplishment for anyone.

"People will have doubts about sex education for kindergartners," said Renshon, referring to the McCain campaign's choice of words. "What McCain is doing is he's planting a doubt."

Martin Medhurst, distinguished professor of rhetoric and communication at Baylor University, said that in one way the candidates are merely giving voters what they want.

Consider the "bridge to nowhere."

On the stump, Palin claims that she told Congress "thanks, but no thanks" and that, if Alaska wanted the bridge, Alaska would build it itself. The line became one of the most popular in her early campaign appearances.

Actually, Palin backed federal financing for the bridge when running for governor in 2006. Once in office, she pulled the plug after the proposed bridge proved such an embarrassment that Congress scrapped the earmark. While the "no thanks" implied that she turned back the money, it was actually spent on other Alaska projects.

Explaining that she changed her tune because political circumstances had changed "would be the truth, but you can't say that," Medhurst said. "We want simple narratives. We don't want complexity."


http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-truth14-2008sep14,0,711936,print.story

[Isaiah Mpski]

Sc.will you accept my meek and humble offering to a man who has never had a lobster in America.
Surely a man,such as your sel.Retiring in the great state of fruits and nuts would welcome a chance to escape before The Great Tribulation.
I know that that you probaly could help me put together a plan in which we will lead the world into a New Reality.
SB is heading tghis way.
If CM doesn't have the balls to meet her in Siouux Falls,Montana,I'll pay for the rip out here if she'll come by and pick up you and JPC.
Either that or she can fly to Tulsa.

[sidecross]

Sc.will you accept my meek and humble offering to a man who has never had a lobster in America.
Surely a man,such as your sel.Retiring in the great state of fruits and nuts would welcome a chance to escape before The Great Tribulation.
I know that that you probaly could help me put together a plan in which we will lead the world into a New Reality.
SB is heading tghis way.
If CM doesn't have the balls to meet her in Siouux Falls,Montana,I'll pay for the rip out here if she'll come by and pick up you and JPC.
Either that or she can fly to Tulsa.


Thank you for your kind thought, but I am physically disabled with three bad discs in my lower back. I have eight vertical hours a day separated by a one to two hour lie down.

I would be of no help.

[sidecross]

For Palin, It’s a (Christian) Man’s World

by Chris Hedges

Sarah Palin may be a governor and a vice presidential candidate, but in the hyper-masculine world of the Christian right she is subservient to a male hierarchy that claims to speak for God.

A cult of masculinity defines the Wasilla Assembly of God Church and the Juneau Christian Centre where she worshipped. This cult propagates a vision of the world where believers are warriors. They are taught to ready themselves to engage in a final cataclysmic clash with the forces of Satan. This cosmic struggle, infused with the language of war, death and violence, leads inevitably to the slaughter by the righteous of all non-Christians. The photos of Palin hunched over dead animals she has shot are not simply images of a woman who is a member of the National Rifle Association. They are images of a woman who believes violence against nonbelievers is ultimately part of her religious life.

The cult of masculinity is used to banish ambiguity, especially sexual ambiguity. It fosters a world of binary opposites: God and man, the saved and the unsaved, the church and the world, Christianity and secular humanism, and male and female. All in life is rigidly defined. Disorder and chaos are banished. Reality, when it is defined in these absolutes, is predictable and understandable, something deeply comforting to believers who have often had trouble coping with the messiness of human existence.

All configurations of human life that do not conform to the rigid Christian model, such as homosexuality, are forms of disorder, tools of Satan, and must be abolished. This is why Palin opposes gay marriage and calls for gays to be cured. A world that can be predicted and understood, a world that has clear markers, can be made rational. It can be managed and controlled. The petrified, binary world of fixed, immutable and established roles is a world where people, many of them damaged by bouts with failure and despair, can bury their chaotic and fragmented personalities. They can live with the illusion that they are strong, whole and protected. Those who do not fit into these narrow definitions must be proselytized and converted.

The decline of America is ascribed to the decline of male prowess. This decline has led to weakness and moral decay. It has resulted in a bewildering human and social complexity that, often seen as feminine, is the work of Satan. This is why Palin consistently celebrates "male" values.

James Dobson, one of Palin's most ardent supporters, has built his career on perpetuating these rigid male stereotypes. On his Family.org Web site he discusses "the countless physiological and emotional differences between the sexes." The article "Gender Gap?" on the Web site lists the physical distinctions between man and woman, including strength, size, red blood cell count and metabolism. For a woman, Dobson writes, love is her most important experience: Love gives woman her "zest," it makes up her "life-blood," it is her primary "psychological need." Love holds less meaning in a man's life than a woman's -- though a man can appreciate love, he does not "need" it.

"Genesis tells us that the Creator made two sexes, not one, and that He designed each gender for a specific purpose," Dobson goes on. And these differences mean different roles: They mean the man is the master and the woman must obey.

"One masculine need comes to mind that wives should not fail to heed. It reflects what men want most in their homes. A survey was taken a few years ago to determine what men care about most and what they hope their wives will understand. The results were surprising. [...] What [men] wanted most was tranquility at home. Competition is so fierce in the workplace today, and the stresses of pleasing a boss and surviving professionally are so severe, that the home needs to be a haven to which a man can return. It is a smart woman who tries to make her home what her husband needs it to be."

Dobson says that to achieve this tranquility wives have to be submissive. He instructs the husband in how he "should handle his wife's submission" and goes on in Family.org to insist that "... submission is a choice we make. It's something each one of us must decide to do. And this decision happens first in the heart. If we don't decide in our hearts that we are going to willingly submit to whomever it is we need to be submitting to, then we are not truly submitting." The choice not to submit to the male head of the household, Dobson makes clear, is a violation of God's law.

By disempowering women, by returning them to their "proper" place as a subservient partner in the male-dominated home, the movement creates the larger paradigm of the Christian state. The men's movement Promise Keepers, which at its height a decade ago drew tens of thousands of men into football stadiums, called on men to "take back" their role as the head of the household. The movement used the verse from Ephesians that calls on wives to "be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord" (5:22). Women were not allowed to attend the events, although some could volunteer at concession stands outside. The founder of the group, former Colorado football coach Bill McCartney, called the movement's battle against abortion the "Second Civil War" and lambasted gays and lesbians as "stark raving mad." He dismissed gays and lesbians as "a group of people who don't reproduce, yet want to be compared to people who do reproduce, and that lifestyle doesn't entitle anyone to special rights." The organization mounted campaigns such as "Real Men Matter," in which men were instructed to recover their maleness in a "morally-bankrupt, godless society." The goal of the movement, strongly supported by Dobson, was to help men regain their place in society. And while Promise Keepers is on the wane, its agenda is embedded in the Christian right.

In the mega-churches the pastor, nearly always male, is obeyed by the congregation. It is the pastor who interprets the word of God. It is why Palin, along with Alaska Lt. Gov. Scott Parnell, went to be publicly blessed before some 6,000 congregants by Wasilla Assembly of God's Head Pastor Ed Kalnins. It is why she calls Kalnins, who claims that some parts of the globe are controlled by demons and that family curses can be passed down through generations, for guidance and advice. He is her male conduit to a male God. The male leader in this belief system governs through a divine mandate. He can heal the sick. He can speak in tongues. He can prophesy. And if Palin wants to remain in God's favor she must be guided by men like Kalnins.

The movement builds concentric male fiefdoms. They radiate out from the home. They do not permit revolt, discussion or dissent. And women who buy into the paradigm, one that supposedly protects their families, makes their boys into men, their husbands into protectors and themselves into Godly Christian women, cede most of their personal, political and economic power. Those who are weak or different, those who do not conform to the stereotype, those who have other ways of being, must be forced by the stern father to obey. If they do not they will be destroyed by God.

The religious leaders that Palin admires, such as Dobson, are petty despots. They travel on private jets, have huge personal fortunes and descend on the faithful surrounded by a retinue of burly bodyguards. These little kingdoms, awash in the male leadership cult, mirror the America they seek to create. In this America there is no questioning. In this America followers surrender their personal and political power. The divinely anointed male leader rules a flock of obedient and submissive sheep. All must hand over their freedom. All must cease to think independently.

The simple-minded earnestness on the part of believers such as Palin gives the Christian mass movement its sense of sincerity and decency. Believers are not brainwashed. They are not mindless automatons. They are convinced that what they are doing is Godly, moral and good. They work with the passion of the converted to bring this Christian goodness to everyone, even those who resist. They believe that what they promote is moral and beneficial. They fear for their own souls and they fear for the souls of those who remain unsaved. This earnestness, although employed for frightening ends, is a powerful part of Palin's attraction. She is willing to make great personal sacrifices for the cause of Christ. But nonbelievers, in the end, have no place on her moral map.

Danuta Pfeiffer, who from 1983 to 1988 was the co-host on "The 700 Club" with Pat Robertson, was, on some level, the Palin of her day. She reached heights because of her celebrity status, usually reserved for men, although it was clear she always had a role subservient to Robertson's. She was the first person to be allowed to lead the mandatory half-hour chapel service held before lunch at the Christian Broadcasting Network, where "The 700 Club" is filmed. She was sent to speak at national Christian women's groups and later mixed audiences, numbering in the thousands, at several of the nation's largest mega-churches.

Her reception at the gatherings she addressed was frightening. Crowds swarmed toward her. They asked her to touch them and heal them. Her status was nothing compared with that of Robertson, she said, "who stands for his followers as the embodiment of God's conscience."

"They were seeking a message, a healing, hope, a little encouragement," she remembered. "They wanted a little piece of God. They thought I could give it to them. People wept when I prayed for them, touched them or hugged them. It was as if they were meeting a rock star."

She was increasingly disturbed by the power that had been thrust upon her and the emotions unleashed by those who begged her for guidance. She understood how pliant these people had become and how cleverly they were being manipulated. The realization led her finally to leave the movement. Her experience was a window into how willingly followers hand over their conscience to these male leaders. Followers abandon all moral responsibility to obey those who elevate themselves to quasi-deities.

"They trusted us more than their family," she said. "They thought we had a clearer path to God because we were on television. They thought we were on television because God put us there. We were prophets to these people. We were seen as people who could walk on clouds and heal and pray. We were God's special messengers. Pat was seen as having the ear of God. He had words of knowledge that could identify their deepest fears and illnesses. We would identify people on the air by speaking about the color of their clothes or an illness they had. We would say, ‘there is a woman with a blue blouse crying at this moment. She has bad hearing in one ear. She is being healed right now.' And viewers would claim these healings. They saw our presence on the show as a sign that we were anointed. They wanted to know how to live, how to operate on a daily basis, how to communicate with their family and friends, what jobs to get and how to interpret the world around them, even the daily news. They wanted every type of emotional, spiritual and physical information. We had this kind of authority over their lives. They abdicated their hopes and lives to us because we spoke for God."

Palin enjoys the enthusiastic backing of the Christian right because she is blindly obedient to the male hierarchy. She does not question. She submits and obeys. Her views on abortion and marriage, on the Middle East, on gays and the war against Islam are precooked. They are handed to her by men who claim to speak for God. And in power she would be the perfect conduit for an ideology that seeks, in the end, to eradicate individual moral choice and replace it with subservience to a terrifying Christian fascism.

Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C.

Chris Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School, is the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/15

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The Ugly New McCain


Wednesday 17 September 2008

»
by: Richard Cohen, The Washington Post


Presidential candidate John McCain. (Photo: Darren Abate / Wireimage.com)

Following his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain did something extraordinary: He confessed to lying about how he felt about the Confederate battle flag, which he actually abhorred. "I broke my promise to always tell the truth," McCain said. Now he has broken that promise so completely that the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised.

The precise moment of McCain's abasement came, would you believe, not at some news conference or on one of the Sunday shows but on "The View," the daytime TV show created by Barbara Walters. Last week, one of the co-hosts, Joy Behar, took McCain to task for some of the ads his campaign has been running. One deliberately mischaracterized what Barack Obama had said about putting lipstick on a pig - an Americanism that McCain himself has used. The other asserted that Obama supported teaching sex education to kindergarteners.

"We know that those two ads are untrue," Behar said. "They are lies."

Freeze. Close in on McCain. This was the moment. He has largely been avoiding the press. The Straight Talk Express is now just a brand, an ad slogan like "Home Cooking" or "We Will Not Be Undersold." Until then, it was possible for McCain to say that he had not really known about the ads, that the formulation "I approve this message" was just boilerplate. But he didn't.

"Actually, they are not lies," he said.

Actually, they are.

McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains - his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that's all - but just as honorably. No more, though.

I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician's lap.

Not so. What impressed me most about McCain was the effect he had on his audiences, particularly young people. When he talked about service to a cause greater than oneself, he struck a chord. He expressed his message in words, but he packaged it in the McCain story - that man, beaten to a pulp, who chose honor over freedom. This had nothing to do with access. It had to do with integrity.

McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir - the person in whose hands he would leave the country - is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.

At a forum last week at Columbia University, McCain said, "But right now we have to restore trust and confidence in government." This was always the promise of John McCain, the single best reason to vote for him. America has been cheated on too many times - the lies of Vietnam and Watergate and Iraq. So many lies. Who believes that in Afghanistan last month, only five civilians were killed by the American military in an airstrike, instead of the approximately 90 claimed by the Afghan government? Not me. I first gave up on the military during Vietnam and then again when it covered up the death of Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger and former NFL player who was killed in 2004 by friendly fire.

McCain was going to fix all that. He was going to look the American people in the eyes and say, not me. I will not lie to you. I am John McCain, son and grandson of admirals. I tell the truth.

But Joy Behar knew better. And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can - as he did in South Carolina - renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work. Karl Marx got one thing right - what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.

http://www.truthout.org/article/the-ugly-new-mccain?print

[sidecross]

September 21, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

Truthiness Stages a Comeback

By FRANK RICH

NOT until 2004 could the 9/11 commission at last reveal the title of the intelligence briefing President Bush ignored on Aug. 6, 2001, in Crawford: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” No wonder John McCain called for a new “9/11 commission” to “get to the bottom” of 9/14, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off another kind of blood bath in Lower Manhattan. Put a slo-mo Beltway panel in charge, and Election Day will be ancient history before we get to the bottom of just how little he and the president did to defend America against a devastating new threat on their watch.

For better or worse, the candidacy of Barack Obama, a senator-come-lately, must be evaluated on his judgment, ideas and potential to lead. McCain, by contrast, has been chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, where he claims to have overseen “every part of our economy.” He didn’t, thank heavens, but he does have a long and relevant economic record that begins with the Keating Five scandal of 1989 and extends to this campaign, where his fiscal policies bear the fingerprints of Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina. It’s not the résumé that a presidential candidate wants to advertise as America faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. That’s why the main thrust of the McCain campaign has been to cover up his history of economic malpractice.

McCain has largely pulled it off so far, under the guidance of Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé. A Rovian political strategy by definition means all slime, all the time. But the more crucial Rove game plan is to envelop the entire presidential race in a thick fog of truthiness. All campaigns, Obama’s included, engage in false attacks. But McCain, Sarah Palin and their surrogates keep repeating the same lies over and over not just to smear their opponents and not just to mask their own record. Their larger aim is to construct a bogus alternative reality so relentless it can overwhelm any haphazard journalistic stabs at puncturing it.

When a McCain spokesman told Politico a week ago that “we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say” about the campaign’s incessant fictions, he was channeling a famous Bush dictum of 2003: “Somehow you just got to go over the heads of the filter.” In Bush’s case, the lies lobbed over the heads of the press were to sell the war in Iraq. That propaganda blitz, devised by a secret White House Iraq Group that included Rove, was a triumph. In mere months, Americans came to believe that Saddam Hussein had aided the 9/11 attacks and even that Iraqis were among the hijackers. A largely cowed press failed to set the record straight.

Just as the Bushies once flogged uranium from Africa, so Palin ceaselessly repeats her discredited claim that she said “no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. Nothing is too small or sacred for the McCain campaign to lie about. It was even caught (by The Christian Science Monitor) peddling an imaginary encounter between Cindy McCain and Mother Teresa when McCain was adopting her daughter in Bangladesh.

If you doubt that the big lies are sticking, look at the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll. Half of voters now believe in the daily McCain refrain that Obama will raise their taxes. In fact, Obama proposes raising taxes only on the 1.9 percent of households that make more than $250,000 a year and cutting them for nearly everyone else.

You know the press is impotent at unmasking this truthiness when the hardest-hitting interrogation McCain has yet faced on television came on “The View.” Barbara Walters and Joy Behar called him on several falsehoods, including his endlessly repeated fantasy that Palin opposed earmarks for Alaska. Behar used the word “lies” to his face. The McCains are so used to deference from “the filter” that Cindy McCain later complained that “The View” picked “our bones clean.” In our news culture, Behar, a stand-up comic by profession, looms as the new Edward R. Murrow.

Network news, with its dwindling handful of investigative reporters, has barely mentioned, let alone advanced, major new print revelations about Cindy McCain’s drug-addiction history (in The Washington Post) and the rampant cronyism and secrecy in Palin’s governance of Alaska (in last Sunday’s New York Times). At least the networks repeatedly fact-check the low-hanging fruit among the countless Palin lies, but John McCain’s past usually remains off limits.

That’s strange since the indisputable historical antecedent for our current crisis is the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal of the go-go 1980s. When Charles Keating’s bank went belly up because of risky, unregulated investments, it wiped out its depositors’ savings and cost taxpayers more than $3 billion. More than 1,000 other S.&L. institutions capsized nationwide.

It was ugly for the McCains. He had received more than $100,000 in Keating campaign contributions, and both McCains had repeatedly hopped on Keating’s corporate jet. Cindy McCain and her beer-magnate father had invested nearly $360,000 in a Keating shopping center a year before her husband joined four senators in inappropriate meetings with regulators charged with S.&L. oversight.

After Congressional hearings, McCain was reprimanded for “poor judgment.” He had committed no crime and had not intervened to protect Keating from ruin. Yet he, like many deregulators in his party, was guilty of bankrupt policy-making before disaster struck. He was among the sponsors of a House resolution calling for the delay of regulations intended to deter risky investments just like those that brought down Lincoln and its ilk.

Ever since, McCain has publicly thrashed himself for his mistakes back then — and boasted of the lessons he learned. He embraced campaign finance reform to rebrand himself as a “maverick.” But whatever lessons he learned are now forgotten.

For all his fiery calls last week for a Wall Street crackdown, McCain opposed the very regulations that might have helped avert the current catastrophe. In 1999, he supported a law co-authored by Gramm (and ultimately signed by Bill Clinton) that revoked the New Deal reforms intended to prevent commercial banks, insurance companies and investment banks from mingling their businesses. Equally laughable is the McCain-Palin ticket’s born-again outrage over the greed of Wall Street C.E.O.’s. When McCain’s chief financial surrogate, Fiorina, was fired as Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive after a 50 percent drop in shareholders’ value and 20,000 pink slips, she took home a package worth $42 million.

The McCain campaign canceled Fiorina’s television appearances last week after she inadvertently admitted that Palin was unqualified to run a corporation. But that doesn’t mean Fiorina is gone. Gramm, too, was ostentatiously exiled after he blamed the economic meltdown on our “nation of whiners” and “mental recession,” but he remains in the McCain loop.

The corporate jets, lobbyists and sleazes that gravitated around McCain in the Keating era have also reappeared in new incarnations. The Nation’s Web site recently unearthed a photo of the resolutely anticelebrity McCain being greeted by the con man Raffaello Follieri and his then girlfriend, the Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway, as McCain celebrated his 70th birthday on Follieri’s rented yacht in Montenegro in August 2006. It’s the perfect bookend to the old pictures of McCain in a funny hat partying with Keating in the Bahamas.

Whatever blanks are yet to be filled in on Obama, we at least know his economic plans and the known quantities who are shaping them (Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin, Paul Volcker). McCain has reversed himself on every single economic issue this year, often within a 24-hour period, whether he’s judging the strength of the economy’s fundamentals or the wisdom of the government bailout of A.I.G. He once promised that he’d run every decision past Alan Greenspan — and even have him write a new tax code — but Greenspan has jumped ship rather than support McCain’s biggest flip-flop, his expansion of the Bush tax cuts. McCain’s official chief economic adviser is now Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who last week declared that McCain had “helped create” the BlackBerry.

But Holtz-Eakin’s most telling statement was about McCain’s economic plans — namely, that the details are irrelevant. “I don’t think it’s imperative at this moment to write down what the plan should be,” he said. “The real issue here is a leadership issue.” This, too, is a Rove-Bush replay. We want a tough guy who will “fix” things with his own two hands — let’s take out the S.E.C. chairman! — instead of wimpy Frenchified Democrats who just “talk.” The fine print of policy is superfluous if there’s a quick-draw decider in the White House.

The twin-pronged strategy of truculence and propaganda that sold Bush and his war could yet work for McCain. Even now his campaign has kept the “filter” from learning the very basics about his fitness to serve as president — his finances and his health. The McCain multihousehold’s multimillion-dollar mother lode is buried in Cindy McCain’s still-unreleased complete tax returns. John McCain’s full medical records, our sole index to the odds of an imminent Palin presidency, also remain locked away. The McCain campaign instead invited 20 chosen reporters to speed-read through 1,173 pages of medical history for a mere three hours on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. No photocopying was permitted.

This is the same tactic of selective document release that the Bush White House used to bamboozle Congress and the press about Saddam’s nonexistent W.M.D. As truthiness repeats itself, so may history, and not as farce.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21rich.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

[sidecross]

September 24, 2008

McCain Aide’s Firm Was Paid by Freddie Mac

By JACKIE CALMES and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON — One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.

The disclosure undercuts a statement by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years.

Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the people said.

They said they did not recall Mr. Davis’s doing much substantive work for the company in return for the money, other than speak to a political action committee of high-ranking employees in October 2006 on the approaching midterm Congressional elections. They said Mr. Davis’s firm, Davis & Manafort, had been kept on the payroll because of Mr. Davis’s close ties to Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, who by 2006 was widely expected to run again for the White House.

Mr. Davis took a leave from Davis & Manafortfor the the presidential campaign, but as a partner and equity-holder continues to benefit from its income. No one at Davis & Manafort other than Mr. Davis was involved in efforts on Freddie Mac’s behalf, the people familiar with the arrangement said.

A Freddie Mac spokeswoman said the company would not comment.

Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for the McCain campaign, did not dispute the payments to Mr. Davis’s firm. But she said that Mr. Davis had stopped taking a salary from his firm by the end of 2006 and that his work did not affect Mr. McCain.

“Senator McCain’s positions on policy matters are based upon what he believes to be in the public interest,” Ms. Hazelbaker said in a written statement.

The revelations come at a time when Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama are sparring over ties to lobbyists and special interests and seeking political advantage in a campaign being reshaped by the financial crisis and the plan to bail out investment firms.

Mr. McCain’s campaign has been attacking Senator Barack Obama, his Democratic rival, for ties to former officials of the mortgage lenders, both of which have long histories of cultivating allies in the two parties to fend off efforts to restrict their activities. Mr. McCain has been running a television commercial suggesting that Mr. Obama takes advice on housing issues from Franklin D. Raines, former chief executive of Fannie Mae, a contention flatly denied by Mr. Raines and the Obama campaign.

Freddie Mac’s roughly $500,000 in payments to Davis & Manafort began immediately after Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in late 2005 disbanded an advocacy coalition that they had set up and hired Mr. Davis to run, the people familiar with the arrangement said.

From 2000 to the end of 2005, Mr. Davis had received nearly $2 million as president of the coalition, the Homeownership Alliance, which the companies created to help them oppose new regulations and protect their status as federally chartered companies with implicit government backing. That status let them borrow cheaply, helping to fuel rapid growth but also their increased purchases of the risky mortgage securities that were their downfall.

On Sunday, in an interview with CNBC and the New York Times, Mr. McCain responded to a question about Mr. Davis’s role in the advocacy group through 2005 by saying that his campaign manager “has had nothing to do with it since, and I’ll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it.”

Such assertions, along with McCain campaign television ads tying Mr. Obama to former Fannie Mae chiefs, have riled current and former officials of the two companies and provoked them to volunteer rebuttals. The two officials with direct knowledge of Freddie Mac’s post-2005 contract with Mr. Davis spoke on condition of anonymity. Four other outside consultants, three Democrats and a Republican also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the arrangement was widely known among people involved in Freddie Mac’s lobbying efforts.

As president of the Homeownership Alliance, Mr. Davis got $30,000 to $35,000 a month. Mr. Davis, along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have characterized the alliance as a coalition of many housing industry and consumer groups to promote homeownership, but numerous current and former officials at both companies say the two mortgage companies created and bankrolled the operation to combat efforts by competitors to rein in their business. They dissolved the group at the end of 2005 as part of cost-cutting in the wake of accounting scandals and, at Freddie Mac, a lobbying scandal that forced out its former top Republican lobbyist.

On Monday, the McCain campaign accused The New York Times of bias for reporting the payments to Mr. Davis for the alliance work from the mortgage giants. Mr. Davis said that had worked not for the two companies but for the advocacy group, which included other nonprofit organization as well, and was focused only on promoting homeownership.

After the Homeownership Alliance was dissolved, Mr. Davis asked to stay on a retainer, the people familiar with the deal said. Hollis McLoughlin, who was chief of staff to Richard F. Syron, Freddie Mac’s chief executive, arranged for a new contract with Davis & Manafort, at the reduced rate of $15,000 a month, they said. Mr. Syron lost his job in the government takeover this month. Mr. McLoughlin, who through a spokeswoman declined to comment, was a former chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady in the first President Bush’s administration, and has longstanding Republican ties.

Mr. Davis was hired as a consultant, not a lobbyist, the officials said. Davis & Manafort in recent years has filed federal lobbying reports for a number of companies but not Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae.

Later in 2006, Mr. Davis was working on Mr. McCain’s emerging presidential campaign, as chief financial officer. The only thing that Freddie Mac officials could recall Mr. Davis doing for the company was the October 2006 pre-election forum with mid-level and senior executives who contribute to Freddie PAC, the company’s political action committee.

An electronic invitation to the employees, read by an official to the New York Times, said “Please join us for political food for thought” with Paul Begala, a longtime Democratic consultant, “and Rick Davis, former 2000 presidential campaign manager and current advisor to Senator John McCain.” Mr. Begala, who also was a paid consultant to Freddie Mac until this month, confirmed that the event took place.

At least two other people associated with Mr. McCain have ties to either Freddie Mac. The lobbying firm of the Republican that Mr. McCain has enlisted to plan his transition to the White House should he be elected, William Timmons Sr., earned nearly $3 million from Freddie Mac between 2000 and its seizure, federal lobbying records show. Mr. Timmons is founder of Timmons & Co., one of Washington’s best-known lobbying shops. The payments were first reported by Bloomberg News.

Mark Buse, Mr. McCain’s chief of staff for his Senate office, also is a Freddie Mac alumnus. He and his former lobbying employer, ML Strategies, registered to lobby for the company in July 2003, and received $460,000 before the association ended after 2004.

Mr. McCain and his advisers have argued that whatever connections Mr. Davis and other McCain campaign officials have had to the mortgage giants, Mr. McCain in the Senate has been an advocate for reforming them. And they have suggested that Mr. Obama is linked to the companies through donations from their employees ties to former officials there, including James Johnson, another former chief executive of Fannie Mae who was the head of Mr. Obama’s vice presidential search team until stepping aside after coming under criticism for getting a mortgage on favorable terms.

Since his first campaign for the Senate in 2004, Senator Obama has received about $126,000 in contributions from employees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while Senator McCain, over the last decade, has received about $22,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/us/politics/w24davis.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

[snow]

http://www.nysun.com/opinion/palin-on-ahmadinejad-he-must-be-stopped/86311/

I am honored to be with you and with leaders from across this great country — leaders from different faiths and political parties united in a single voice of outrage.

Tomorrow, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will come to New York — to the heart of what he calls the Great Satan — and speak freely in this, a country whose demise he has called for.

Ahmadinejad may choose his words carefully, but underneath all of the rhetoric is an agenda that threatens all who seek a safer and freer world. We gather here today to highlight the Iranian dictator's intentions and to call for action to thwart him.

He must be stopped.

The world must awake to the threat this man poses to all of us. Ahmadinejad denies that the Holocaust ever took place. He dreams of being an agent in a "Final Solution" — the elimination of the Jewish people. He has called Israel a "stinking corpse" that is "on its way to annihilation." Such talk cannot be dismissed as the ravings of a madman — not when Iran just this summer tested long-range Shahab-3 missiles capable of striking Tel Aviv, not when the Iranian nuclear program is nearing completion, and not when Iran sponsors terrorists that threaten and kill innocent people around the world.

The Iranian government wants nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that Iran is running at least 3,800 centrifuges and that its uranium enrichment capacity is rapidly improving. According to news reports, U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Iranians may have enough nuclear material to produce a bomb within a year.

The world has condemned these activities. The United Nations Security Council has demanded that Iran suspend its illegal nuclear enrichment activities. It has levied three rounds of sanctions. How has Ahmadinejad responded? With the declaration that the "Iranian nation would not retreat one iota" from its nuclear program.

So, what should we do about this growing threat? First, we must succeed in Iraq. If we fail there, it will jeopardize the democracy the Iraqis have worked so hard to build, and empower the extremists in neighboring Iran. Iran has armed and trained terrorists who have killed our soldiers in Iraq, and it is Iran that would benefit from an American defeat in Iraq.

If we retreat without leaving a stable Iraq, Iran's nuclear ambitions will be bolstered. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons — they could share them tomorrow with the terrorists they finance, arm, and train today. Iranian nuclear weapons would set off a dangerous regional nuclear arms race that would make all of us less safe.

But Iran is not only a regional threat; it threatens the entire world. It is the no. 1 state sponsor of terrorism. It sponsors the world's most vicious terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah. Together, Iran and its terrorists are responsible for the deaths of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s, in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, and in Iraq today. They have murdered Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, and other Muslims who have resisted Iran's desire to dominate the region. They have persecuted countless people simply because they are Jewish.

Iran is responsible for attacks not only on Israelis, but on Jews living as far away as Argentina. Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial are part of Iran's official ideology and murder is part of its official policy. Not even Iranian citizens are safe from their government's threat to those who want to live, work, and worship in peace. Politically-motivated abductions, torture, death by stoning, flogging, and amputations are just some of its state-sanctioned punishments.

It is said that the measure of a country is the treatment of its most vulnerable citizens. By that standard, the Iranian government is both oppressive and barbaric. Under Ahmadinejad's rule, Iranian women are some of the most vulnerable citizens.

If an Iranian woman shows too much hair in public, she risks being beaten or killed.

If she walks down a public street in clothing that violates the state dress code, she could be arrested.

But in the face of this harsh regime, the Iranian women have shown courage. Despite threats to their lives and their families, Iranian women have sought better treatment through the "One Million Signatures Campaign Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws." The authorities have reacted with predictable barbarism. Last year, women's rights activist Delaram Ali was sentenced to 20 lashes and 10 months in prison for committing the crime of "propaganda against the system." After international protests, the judiciary reduced her sentence to "only" 10 lashes and 36 months in prison and then temporarily suspended her sentence. She still faces the threat of imprisonment.

Earlier this year, Senator Clinton said that "Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is in the forefront of that" effort. Senator Clinton argued that part of our response must include stronger sanctions, including the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization. John McCain and I could not agree more.

Senator Clinton understands the nature of this threat and what we must do to confront it. This is an issue that should unite all Americans. Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Period. And in a single voice, we must be loud enough for the whole world to hear: Stop Iran!

Only by working together, across national, religious, and political differences, can we alter this regime's dangerous behavior. Iran has many vulnerabilities, including a regime weakened by sanctions and a population eager to embrace opportunities with the West. We must increase economic pressure to change Iran's behavior.

Tomorrow, Ahmadinejad will come to New York. On our soil, he will exercise the right of freedom of speech — a right he denies his own people. He will share his hateful agenda with the world. Our task is to focus the world on what can be done to stop him.

We must rally the world to press for truly tough sanctions at the U.N. or with our allies if Iran's allies continue to block action in the U.N. We must start with restrictions on Iran's refined petroleum imports.

We must reduce our dependency on foreign oil to weaken Iran's economic influence.

We must target the regime's assets abroad; bank accounts, investments, and trading partners.

President Ahmadinejad should be held accountable for inciting genocide, a crime under international law.

We must sanction Iran's Central Bank and the Revolutionary Guard Corps — which no one should doubt is a terrorist organization.

Together, we can stop Iran's nuclear program.

Senator McCain has made a solemn commitment that I strongly endorse: Never again will we risk another Holocaust. And this is not a wish, a request, or a plea to Israel's enemies. This is a promise that the United States and Israel will honor, against any enemy who cares to test us. It is John McCain's promise and it is my promise.

Thank you.

[sidecross]

Anyone who feels this strongly against Iran should move to Israel.

Has any thought that if Germany and Japan had won World War Two and that they might have decided to give American indigenous people their land back, that the current Americans might feel as the Palestinians?

As for Iraq, it is a nation drawn up by the victors of World War One.

The argument to support McCain is a support of Empire and the wars that keep that thought as a reality.

The U.S. is a nation that contains only 4% of the world’s population. It is a fool’s errand to think we can impose our will on the other 96% of the world’s population.

The idea of Empire and war is now an obsolete method of operation on a planet of 6.5 billion people and expected to grow to 9 billion by 2050. If we continue as we have done in the past we will become an extinct species because of our own hubris.

[craazyman]

I'm beginning to see why John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his VP.

To be honest, she's pretty hot. I probably am not her type, I can't dog-sled or hunt with a bow and arrow like somebody in Jack London short story. But I would definitely spend a week salmon fishing with someone like her in Alaska -- if she wasn't married.

Now this doesn't mean I will vote for her.

But I will say this . . . Johnny . . . you stud!

ha ha ha.

[sidecross]

I'm beginning to see why John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his VP.

To be honest, she's pretty hot. I probably am not her type, I can't dog-sled or hunt with a bow and arrow like somebody in Jack London short story. But I would definitely spend a week salmon fishing with someone like her in Alaska -- if she wasn't married.

Now this doesn't mean I will vote for her.

But I will say this . . . Johnny . . . you stud!

ha ha ha.

I know now the meaning of 'penis head'.

[Isaiah Mpski]

......Peter?:D

[craazyman]

Love Thine Enemies! :p


She may be our first Vice President to have been through an exorcism. Although some of those fellows from the 19th century were pretty weird too. Who knows? Maybe not.

[Isaiah Mpski]

I think the transcendentalists were right on,Both artists and writers.

Emerse's verses son was very thoreau in his whit man's view of life.Probably because his soul had lived forever.
And when he pissed up there in his pond,the water has now finally reached NYC picante sauce and thus is showing up in SC's contempt.:skeptic:

Either that or it's the straining earth beneath his feet giving off some bad vibes.
SC,we sure need someone mechanicly oriented to put up and maintain our wind generators.

[sidecross]

Below is part of yesterday's transcript from Democracy Now.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play for you Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s comments on the bailout. She was interviewed by CBS’s Katie Couric. Couric appeared on The Early Show and introduced part of her interview with the Alaskan governor.


KATIE COURIC: She’s not always responsive when she’s asked questions and sometimes does slip back to her talking points, so it was a really interesting experience for me to interview her yesterday.


MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ: Let’s see if that’s the case here. We have an excerpt where you ask her about her opinion on the bailout.


KATIE COURIC: OK.


Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with healthcare, housing, gas and groceries, allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy, instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?


GOV. SARAH PALIN: That’s why I say, I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in, where it is the taxpayers looking to bailout. 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, helping the—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 have—we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.



AMY GOODMAN: Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin on CBS. Paul Krugman, your response?


PAUL KRUGMAN: You know, I’m sorry, but, you know, I am a college teacher, and that sounds like nothing so much as a freshman who hasn’t actually done any of the—read any of the readings and is confronted with an essay question on the exam, and so he throws in sort of random paragraphs of stuff that he thinks kind of sounds like economics. That was incredible. That was totally incoherent.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/26/bailout_talks_founder_wamu_collapses_in

[sidecross]

September 27, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

Palin’s Words Raise Red Flags

By BOB HERBERT

The country is understandably focused on the financial crisis. But there is another serious issue in front of us that is not getting nearly enough attention, and that’s whether Sarah Palin is qualified to be vice president — or, if the situation were to arise, president of the United States.

History has shown again and again that a vice president must be ready to assume command of the ship of state on a moment’s notice. But Ms. Palin has given no indication yet that she is capable of handling the monumental responsibilities of the presidency if she were called upon to do so.

In fact, the opposite is the case. We know that there are some parts of Alaska from which, if the day is clear and your eyesight is good, you can actually see Russia. But the infantile repetition of this bit of trivia as some kind of foreign policy bona fide for a vice presidential candidate should give us pause.

The McCain campaign has done its bizarre best to shield Ms. Palin from any sustained media examination of her readiness for the highest offices in the land, and no wonder. She has been an embarrassment in interviews.

But the idea that the voters of the United States might install someone in the vice president’s office who is too unprepared or too intellectually insecure to appear on, say, “Meet the Press” or “Face the Nation” is mind-boggling.

The alarm bells should be clanging and warning lights flashing. You wouldn’t put an unqualified pilot in the cockpit of a jetliner. The potential for catastrophe is far, far greater with an unqualified president.

The United States has been lucky in terms of the qualifications of the vice presidents who have had to step in over the last several decades for presidents who either died or, in Richard Nixon’s case, were forced to leave office. Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson became extraordinary presidents in their own right. Gerald Ford successfully guided the nation through the immediate aftermath of one of the most traumatic political crises in its history.

For those who think Sarah Palin is in that league, there is no problem. But her unscripted public appearances would lead most honest observers to think otherwise. When asked again this week about her puerile linkage of foreign policy proficiency and Alaska’s proximity to Russia, this time by Katie Couric of CBS News, here is what Ms. Palin said she meant:

“That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land — boundary that we have with — Canada.”

She went on, but lost her way midsentence: “It’s funny that a comment like that was kind of made to — cari — I don’t know, you know? Reporters ...”

Ms. Couric said, “Mocked?”

“Yeah, mocked,” said Ms. Palin. “I guess that’s the word. Yeah.”

It is not just painful, but frightening to watch someone who could become the vice president of the United States stumbling around like this in an interview.

Ms. Couric asked Ms. Palin to explain how Alaska’s proximity to Russia “enhances your foreign policy credentials.”

“Well, it certainly does,” Ms. Palin replied, “because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of. And there—”

Gently interrupting, Ms. Couric asked, “Have you ever been involved in any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?”

“We have trade missions back and forth,” said Ms. Palin. “We do. It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to our state.”

It was surreal, the kind of performance that would generate a hearty laugh if it were part of a Monty Python sketch. But this is real life, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. As Ms. Palin was fumbling her way through the Couric interview, the largest bank failure in the history of the United States, the collapse of Washington Mutual, was occurring.

The press has an obligation to hammer away at Ms. Palin’s qualifications. If it turns out that she has just had a few bad interviews because she was nervous or whatever, additional scrutiny will serve her well.

If, on the other hand, it becomes clear that her performance, so far, is an accurate reflection of her qualifications, it would behoove John McCain and the Republican Party to put the country first — as Mr. McCain loves to say — and find a replacement for Ms. Palin on the ticket.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/opinion/27herbert.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

[suebee]

i hope biden doesnt blow the debate with miss south carolina on thursday. all he has to do is stand there and watch her with a very slightly puzzled look. no big histrionics, no wide eyed ayfkm looks, no patrionizing crap, just serious slow deliberate answers and looking down at the floor when his head is about to explode. maybe give him a valium.

[suebee]

did you see mccain's handshake at the beginning of the debate?

[craazyman]

She might rise to the occassion. This is what everyone used to say about Reagan. That he was a dope and an idiot. It's dangerous rhetoric.

Biden is in a tough spot. He can't do a Llyod Bensten on her. The way Lloyd hit Dan Quail.

He'd look like an abusive male.

And he can't mock her or patronize her.

He'd look like a patronizing white male.

He's in a tough spot, to win without losing.

His best bet is to let her trip herself up and just focus on the questions and not get too high and mighty.

[suebee]

yeah right. reagan at least could name a news magazine he had read. what a dipshit.
and where does she get her bravado? if i had half her cheek id be a millionaire attorney.
chris mattthews at least finally said something real today after the debate:
"i thought she was doing a briefing run-thru last night and it was scary people were impressed by it."

70 million viewers. half of them 'joe sixpack.' what a country.

[craazyman]

Didn't watch any of it, but I bet she'd put a bear rug in front of the fireplace in the VP mansion across from the White House.

Wonder if she'd stock the kitchen for the winter with whale meat.

It might be tough for her to cope with the DC winter, it's mostly rain and mud with frequent warm spells. Not much dog sledding in her future for at least 4 years if she wins.

I hope she's a better shot than Cheney.

[Isaiah Mpski]

I thought she looked animated,rehearsed,looking often at her teleprompter and notes.
Her little statements,like "Joe Sixpack" and "you're darned right" turned my intellectualism(I don't have much left) off.

I was just as taken aback by Biden's remarks about starting another surge and pouring more money and troops into Afganistan.When will those guys learn nobody has whipped those dudes from the mountains in history,particularily in the winter,and particularily when our men and equipment are worn out.God help them get back home.
The only thing Al Quida knows is to terrorize and kill.The Chinese don't believe in religion,let them deal with them.They need the oil as bad as we do.

I cannot back a warmonger-unless he is trying to collect long over-due loans to other nations or our seized oil refineries in our own hemishere-so it looks like I am in between a rock and a hard place.:D

[sidecross]

October 5, 2008

The Nation

Who You Callin’ a Maverick?

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

There’s that word again: maverick. In Thursday’s vice-presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican candidate, used it to describe herself and her running mate, Senator John McCain, no fewer than six times, at one point calling him “the consummate maverick.”

But to those who know the history of the word, applying it to Mr. McCain is a bit of a stretch — and to one Texas family in particular it is even a bit offensive.

“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?sq=maverick&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print

[craazyman]

McCain is no maverick.

Maverick was a closeted homo, which is clear to anyone who saw the movie "Top Gun" where Tom Cruise played "Maverick". McCain is a blockhead, a patriot, a brave man, slightly crazy, a bonehead, probably a pretty good guy in person, a man of basic integrity (with a few loose flaps fundraising).

But, he is not a Maverick. No way.

Which is probably good for him. Because a homo would not get elected president, no matter how much of a maverick he is.

Case closed.

If "The Nation" or anyone else wants to hire me to write cogent political commentary for their publication, please send a self-addressed stamped envelope to:

Warren Wordsmith
Cultural Analysis Associates
37373737 Presidential Parkway
Buena Vista, South Dakota 3283767-9983

[Isaiah Mpski]

cm,DO THE ACTS PERFORMED BY pRES cLINTON in the White House,and I mean the acts performed by Monica qualify Mr. Clinton as a repressed homo?:p

There were alot of fruits who got their way during the Clinton Administration.

I agree that Mr McCain has honorably served his country.
The point is he has had serious chemo etc which can rapidly deterioate his intellect ie-you figure what that was.Darn right.

Stastically speaking,without chelation,Mr McCain had 10 yrs to LIVE,at the last round of chemo and he would probably have to be treated again while in office which means you have a bunch of doctors-probably overweight with their stock portfolio,telling us whether (I'm sorry-the cancer) the chemo fried Mr McCain's brain so that he was incapacitatd.And like others on this forum,I think that Mr McCain after his experiences in Viet Nam would have liitle conscience about setting China back 4000 years.Darn Right.:eek:

[suebee]

PLENTY magazine 9/30/08
By Jessica A. Knoblauch

Anybody can run for President, anybody with money that is. It’s no secret that Obama and McCain are both relying on hefty financial donations to help them win the presidency. But just who’s donating to whom, and how much? Most importantly, how will those donations affect the candidate’s policies?

There’s no crystal ball to tell us exactly what high roller contributions mean for an Obama or McCain presidency. But Plenty (with help from the Center for Responsive Politics) peeked at Obama and McCain’s donor trail to get an idea of what possible paths the two candidates could take when faced with tough environmental issues. Surprisingly enough, we found that big-time financial contributors are already holding the flashlight when it comes to leading presidential candidates down the dark path of environmental quandaries.

Oil and Gas
When it comes to reigning in the black gold industry, McCain’s got it made. Overall, the oil and gas industry loves Republicans, a long standing trend. So far, the industry has given $16,979,854 to the Republican Party in 2008. Meanwhile, the Democrats picked up a measly $5,552,713, mere chump change to big time contenders. And, the industry on the whole thinks McCain is their man, which is probably why he was the industry’s top recipient for funds for this year, totaling a whopping $1,663,590. In comparison, Obama has only received $464,023.

However, look at the fine print, and the numbers go into unfamiliar territory. For example, though Exxon Mobil gives most of its money to Republicans—with only 22% to Democrats—surprisingly Obama, not McCain, is Exxon’s top recipient. He’s raked in $61,050 in campaign contributions, while McCain is currently in third place at $45,315.

Another big oil and gas dealer is Chevron, which contributed $496,552 to Republicans and $181,774 to Democrats so far this year. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, ChevronTexaco lobbies hard on many energy issues and is in favor of opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. But unlike Exxon and BP, Chevron is hedging its bets pretty evenly. So far it’s given John McCain $41,551 and Obama $39,857. Despite the even numbers, McCain seems grateful, even making a special trip in August down to the Louisiana Bay to visit a Chevron-owned oil rig.

Coal Mining
Both presidential candidates are big promoters of clean coal, and after taking a look at the political contributions that the coal industry has given, it’s easy to see why. This year alone, the coal mining industry has given $1,704,932 to Republicans and $768,498 to Democrats. The industry clearly favors McCain, who’s so far received $78,596 in campaign contributions, while Obama has received only $12,900. Despite the paltry figure, Obama knows that the coal issue sways voters (particularly in West Virginia and Kentucky), which is probably why he’s such a cheerleader for clean coal technology lately (though his running mate Joe Biden is a bit tougher on the issue, strongly arguing that clean coal doesn’t have a place in the US.)

McCain has also put on the pom-poms for coal, even making a special visit to Consol, one of the country’s largest coal producers, to take a tour of its research facilities where engineers are trying to perfect a way to burn waste coal using high-pressure cylinders. “Coal is America's greatest natural resource, as far as energy is concerned,” McCain gushed after touring the facility.

The Auto Industry
The auto world is more than just sexy mechanics with mussed shirts and oil-stained fingers. Despite Detroit’s long-standing financial troubles, the US auto manufacturing industry has given big bucks to politicians--$1,005,926 to Republicans and $984,590 to Democrats so far in 2008. This even keel of funds indicates that both political parties will continue to lend an ear to the auto industry in a desperate attempt to win their favor.

Car dealers in particular are heavy hitters when it comes to campaign contributions, favoring Republicans over Democrats because of their pro-business stance. So far they’ve given $5,019,531 to Republicans and $1,593,456 to Democrats. This year McCain received $456,651 in contributions, while Obama picked up a mere $88,142. Maybe that’s why Obama only has one car, while McCain can afford 13. Obama’s one car policy speaks volumes when gauging the likelihood of an Obama Presidency calling for fewer cars on the road.

Green Ventures
For the first time, well, ever, the alternative energy industry, which lumps together wind, solar and geothermal power, crop-based ethanol and other biofuels, is making a significant contribution to presidential hopefuls’ pockets. No surprises here. The industry overwhelmingly supports Democrats over Republicans ($746,552 compared to $275,004 respectively), with Obama raking in an impressive $90,557. Not bad for wind power.

The top contributor in the industry is National Biofuels, which has given a respectable $160,400, all to Democrats. Both McCain and Obama heavily tout biofuels’ benefits.

Environmentalists in general are also stepping up to the plate in campaign contributions, so far giving $1,808,387 to Democrats and $150,731 to Republicans with $201,050 to Obama. The Environmental Defense Fund and Defenders of Wildlife are the big hitters in this category, spending a little over $8 million in lobbying efforts, while Sierra Club has opted out of the contribution game, instead choosing to spend money on issue ads.

So there it is: the down and dirty on campaign contributions. Overall, it’s clear that in general major polluters, such as Big Oil and Auto are choosing McCain as their man, but those who are keen on Obama should keep in mind that’s he no eco saint. Still, greener industries like alternative energy are starting to emerge as significant players in the presidential hopefuls’ pocket padding game, which signals that White House sponsored eco-friendlier initiatives just may be on the horizon.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Great post SueBee.
No.I promise I would tease you SueBee.
A fruit is a fruit is a fruit and an apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.
It's probably all genetic anyway.

Seriously though.I wonder when I see a psychiatric diagnosis of a repressed homo,does Mr Clinton fit into that bag?

Clinton was the big fuck up who came up with Nafta and stopped the Serbs in Bosnia.If he had not done that Russia would be in Iraq,not US.
Obama's camp is full of Clinton people.

We are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to choosing a president.
I think though because of his experiences in Asia,Mr McCain,because chemo has fried his brian,would fight a war with China.Only Russia would come out the victor in that and Kruchev's prophecy of'
"We will bury you." might come true.:skeptic:

[suebee]

whipping up crowds is one thing, but palin and mccain are hysterical. the tone of the shout outs at their 'town hall' meetings has devolved into a roman colosseum thumbs frenzy. will some adult please take over the republican party.

[Isaiah Mpski]

All we need now is for McCain Sr (Bush) to start a big war somewhere and raise the price of oil again.:hmm:
He will,without a doubt compete with Clinton as the worse President ever.
I always believed that Nixon could not be surpassed for ineptness,until the "burning" Bush came into power.:skeptic:

[suebee]

"john mccain: if your campaign does not stop equating senator barack obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying mr. obama as 'not one of us,' i accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence...you are doing this in wartime, you are doing this as our economy collapses. you are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations."

[suebee]

doesnt anyone else think the 'bradley effect' and the 'acorn voter registration scandal' are kind of buzz words to take the focus off what might really derail this election - sabotaged voting machines?

[craazyman]

Iran better lay low if they know what's good for them. No foolin'. They mght get lit up like the fourth of July before the fourth of November.

Those voting machines will work just fine. Obama by 5. That's Nostradamus calling it, just like he called the housing collapse, the market collapse, the FAnnie/Freddie collapse, the debt solvency (not liquidity) problem, and all the fumbling around by the Hank and Ben show. Trust me. Ha ha.

[Isaiah Mpski]

..yeah a fieldgoal in the last second ruined our day didn't it CM.
Clouded your thinking.

War fare and technology haven't really caught up with the possibilities of annilation of our troops.Look what they did to Alexander.
This time,aided by China 90 %-yes at least 90% of our navy could be destroyed by the beast and his followers.
The smart thing is to pack up,come home,and concentrate on the Monroe Doctrine and contracts between our brothers and sisters.

I thing we have to get absolutely vlear BOTHer's is we would all be better off if the South won the civil war.
It has very litle to do with color as it does intelligence and comfort level.

That's what scares me about Biden.He honestly thinks all those good men and women getting killed and maimed in our Armed Forces overseas is good for our country.I can't accept that stance.It is a losing and expensive one.
I think a better plan would be to send our bad guys over there to live.Like Castro did to us.:skeptic:

Something else to think about CM.Insurance companies are -I mean life and property insurance-are going to have a hard time recuperating their losses in the market.Well over a trillion and Many will go belly up.

That probably means ownership in that Hew Jersey of thy youth will probably end up in the assests of a nursing or a medical corporation.

And I've changed my mind about something else too CM.
I want a 18 wheeler instead of an RV.At least a 56 ft aluminum stainless steel trailer.
I hope some of you Bothers have thoght about investing in some fertile Oklahoma lakefront farmland with partial mineral rights.
I could deck it out with all sorts of modern comforts.

[suebee]

'the only people who didnt lose money in the depression were the insurance companies'....what makes this any different today?

[Isaiah Mpski]

The insurance companies then were kinda like banks,and believe it or not health costs were significantly cheaper.
Today insurance companies are top heavy in the market.
Believe me.I'va already gone through it.There are going to be alot of people who don't get what they've paid for.

It all seems kinda dark and foreboding but all is not lost.It might pay to look at history.
We are about in the same shape as Germany during the early days of the second world war.Germany responded to other countries not buying her "insurance"-der wharmacht- buy just printing and circulating more money.Paper is nothing more than paper but often can be more valuable than gold.
It would have worked if Germany had natural resourses and geographicaly useful abundant farmland.She did not and made the fatal mistake of invading Russia in the winter-that's what amphetamine abuse will do.Make you overconfident..I think also some of their rye bread musts been contaminated with an ergot too.

Drugs carry their own karma.
Yes CM,I have taken aprolazalam(xanax) over 20 years now.I am very lucky to be able to get it,as well as opiates,cocaine-like drug,antiviral,antibacterial,antihistamine,steroid s.And no before any of you ask I no longer have prescription privs and I rarely share my medications.

I haven't had a cold in over twentu years-knock on wood-just a few psychotic episodes but these are decreasing in intensity with age.

I look forwad to living in Mexico with as many wives as possible.
Yes,the FBI will tell you I am a Koresh type figure without the good looks and the guns.I believe in a strong leader but everybody has a voice in the final major decisions.

SB,if you can possibly afford or consider it.Liquadate half of you portfolio and buy a piece of my property or lets go together and buy a place in Mexico.:D

Anybody with a swimming pool...Anyway by investing herewill always have a garden spot next to a very large body of water and somebody around who will help and be friends with you.Also you will be within a couple of hrs of Willow who lies just across the Red River.

[suebee]

"drugs carry their own karma"

that is about the most erudite thing i have read on this 'drug' board.

[Isaiah Mpski]

SB.You can have as many husbands as you can afford in my system.

Remember though,
In all things,moderation.:hmm:

[suebee]

quite a lure, isaiah. ive managed to stay single all these years, cant see any reason to put a mrs in front of my name at this late date.


christopher hitchens unloaded on palin, surprise surprise.
mccain is about to implode.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Well Ms SueBee,you're right about one thing.Christ did say that in the Kingdom of Heaven there would be no such thing as marriage.

He said alot of other things that are worth listening to and following.:D

[suebee]

there are myriad cross cultural cross millenium 'sayings'. i have no purchase on religion isaiah. or i should say religion has no purchase on me. none whatsoever. you believe what you want to believe.

i heard on the news today that 50 out of 65,000 new registrations by acorn were found to be bogus in ohio.
also that about 15 states were engaging in unlawful dumping of registered voters, and also requiring unlawful proof of identity.

[Isaiah Mpski]

I want to believe that you believe in what I believe.
Obviously I can't believe in everything you tell me.

What I want you to believe is the world must overcome certain mythic projections or adopt a totally new one.Thus the ridiculous rise of Scientology.
What I can't understand is your obsession with the voting process.People have been cheating at it since the beginning.I have already told you O'Bama will win.You need to quit worrying about that and spend more time trying to influence how fast he can get our army home so we can put a bunch of people to work making NG-electric cars and wind generators.

It's like this

[suebee]

its dismaying that so many people cannot 'figure out' obama's connection to william ayers. there was a very good article in the wsj yesterday by someone who knows ayers. of course these people will never read the wsj or any newpaper, obviously. they need educations. they need exposure. they probably need vitamins. there should be a test before citizens are allowed to vote. make all of us pass the immigrant citizenship test.

the other side of me says it doesnt matter what we try to do, the mega masters wont let anything resembling true democracy happen, and i should sit back enjoy my short life.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Piss on the immigrant citzenship.
Build a big wall around our part of the world and tell the Arabs to go to Heaven.They are going to have a hell of a time when the Chinese and Russians decide to take their oil.
Who would have thought?A Chinese-Jewish cospiracy:eek:.

[suebee]

hate talk express. :p

[sidecross]

October 16, 2008

Is 'Joe the Plumber' a Plumber? That's Debatable

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 8:02 p.m. ET

HOLLAND, Ohio (AP) -- 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.

Wurzelbacher instantly became a media celebrity, fielding calls during the debate and facing reporters outside his home near Toledo on Thursday morning for an impromptu nationally televised news conference.

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 still 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.

State and local records show Wurzelbacher has no license, although his employer does. Golis said there are no records of inspectors citing Wurzelbacher for unlicensed work in Toledo.

And then there was the matter of his taxes.

Wurzelbacher owes the state of Ohio $1,182.98 in personal income tax, according to Lucas County Court of Common Pleas records.

In January 2007, Ohio's Department of Taxation filed a claim on his property until he pays the debt, according to the records. The lien remains active.

At the debate, McCain cited Wurzelbacher as an example of someone who wants to buy a plumbing business but would be hurt by Obama's tax plans.

Wurzelbacher, a self-described conservative, had spoken to Obama at a rally Sunday near his home and asked him whether his tax plan would keep him from buying the business that currently employs him, which earns more than $250,000 a year.

''Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?'' Wurzelbacher asked.

Obama said that under his proposal taxes on any revenue from $250,000 on down would stay the same, but that amounts above that level would be subject to a 39 percent tax, instead of the current 36 percent rate.

McCain said Obama's plan would stop entrepreneurs such as Wurzelbacher from investing in new small businesses and keep existing ones from growing.

The McCain campaign posted a Web ad featuring the exchange between Wurzelbacher and Obama.

During an afternoon taping of ''Late Night with David Letterman,'' McCain said he had not yet spoken to Wurzelbacher, and apologized for the press attention he had received.

''Joe, if you're watching, I'm sorry,'' McCain said.

Wurzelbacher had to deal with a clog of two dozen reporters outside his home on a narrow street lined with ranch- and split-level homes Thursday morning. No detail about the divorced father of a 13-year-old boy was too small: Was he a registered voter? Did he have a plumbing license? Whom will he vote for?

Leaning against his black Dodge Durango SUV, Wurzelbacher at first was amused by it all, then overwhelmed and finally a little annoyed.

''I don't have a lot of pull. It's not like I'm Matt Damon,'' he said ''I just hope I'm not making too much of a fool of myself.''

He indicated he was a fan of the military and McCain but wouldn't say who will get his vote. He is registered as a Republican, the county elections board said, because he voted in the GOP primary in March.

Wurzelbacher said a McCain campaign official contacted him several days before the debate to ask him to appear with the candidate at a Toledo rally scheduled for Sunday.

He told reporters he's unsure if he'll attend, since he's now scheduled to be in New York for TV interviews.

On Thursday in New Hampshire, Obama said McCain was misleading voters by proposing tax plans that favor the rich while criticizing an Obama tax plan that would raise taxes only on people making more than $250,000 a year, just 5 percent of all taxpayers.

''He's trying to suggest that a plumber is the guy he's fighting for,'' Obama said. ''How many plumbers you know that are making a quarter-million dollars a year?''

Wurzelbacher said he felt a bit overwhelmed by all the attention.

''I'm kind of like Britney Spears having a headache. Everybody wants to know about it,'' he joked.

------

Associated Press writer Sharon Theimer in Washington contributed to this report.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-Joe-the-Plumber.html?pagewanted=print

[craazyman]

didn't see the debate but the New York Post -- a republican mouthpiece -- had a columnist who said McCain was nearly out of control with damnation, sarcasm, hysteria, j'accuse! like the Dreyfus affair (for you who know history) -- almost anyway.

And Obama was just sitting there, cool and smiling, figuring probably "Keep this up John and you're setting my landslide victory." I could not imagine Obama was happier at McCain's attacks.

The Ayers stuff is total transparent nonsense. Ayers is a kook. A criminal and an intellectual lightweight fraud. An angry man raging at scapegoats of his own design. A petulant idiot. I piss on his kind. But I don't fault Obama at all for the association. I have had some strange friends myself, LOL. And I am the veritable picture of probity and decency.

[suebee]

i can not believe what john mccain is saying live in this alfred e smith memorial foundation dinner in nyc. sidey i hope youre catching this. and now this crazy emcee.

[craazyman]

suebee, it's a toast and roast event, supposed to be over the top and wacky, like that. They're having fun.

It's democracy at its best. Some really funny lines and zingers in that one.

I suspect McCain and Obama will actually be friends after the election and probably on very good terms -- sort of like Bush One and Clinton. I would think it's a real bonding experience, to go through something like that, running against each other for President. So few are in that club and the closeness of those who are is probably something the rest of us can never, ever understand.

I really respect that strength. To stand up in front of a nation and world and lead and not give the universe over to all sorts of dark and labyrinthine forces that are supposedly exerting dark and malicious control. No, that's the imagination not reality. It's up to you. And they are doing it, whether we agree with them or not.

[sidecross]

As many of you know I made my living as a union auto mechanic. This meant I had earned a Journeyman’s card form my local of the Machinists Union. I also had three state licenses from the state of California and was Nationally Certified from the A.S.E.

‘Joe the Plumber’ according to the practice of plumbers in his location was just a ‘helper’ and not certified to do licensed plumbing work.

How ‘Joe the Plumber’ thought he was going to buy his plumbing employer is beyond my understanding, and what is more troubling is that the McCain people did not vet ‘Joe the Plumber’ before making him a national icon.

[suebee]

c man i agree with you that these candidates have intense stamina and focus. i am in awe of john mccain's fortitude, but not much else. yes he is just human with human flaws. yes he has served his country. but hes not smart enough to be president in 2008 and in my book he is not honorable. i wouldnt be friends with him, but perhaps my definition of friendship is different from what you mean.

i knew it was supposed to be a roast, but to me mccain was mean spirited even if he was funny. the stereotype of obama having to look every bit the black man forced to submit to white man crap was just ugly. obama was also sharp in his comments but he is ever more the gentleman.

you will recall i voted for hillary so im not completely starry eyed.

heres a blip about ayers: www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/he_lied_about_bill_ayers.html

[Isaiah Mpski]

Have you abandoned me SB?
Lets concede.O'Bama has the election won.So lets start to influence what will happen under his administration.
To me it is basically the Clinton machine up and running again.

It is also obvious to me from listening to parts of the roast the conception of a Messiah was thrown at Obama from McCain like the Messiah couldn't possibly be colored.And I quess Native Americans are considered colored aren't we?

I often amaze when I look at some of the African attributes that must have been bred into them by selective breeding.If they had been as big as many of them are now I can't see anyway some Mad Dog Englishmen could have thrown a net over them and put them in chains.That also shows you part of the white mentality that has been trying to bully overseas for almost 60 yrs and US true Americans for several hundred yrs.

I think I better get back to work.:p

[suebee]

i dont concede obama has won. go watch stealing america vote by vote, the move i mentioned last year. its out now in wide release. go see it if you can stomach it. and go to electiondefensealliance.org if you want to volunteer at a polling place.

heres another one re ayers: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122402888900234543.html

congresswoman michelle bachmann from minnesota is a piece of work.

it is insane what mccain's automatic message phone calls are claiming. im no apologist for the man, but ayers never killed anyone. he called ahead to make sure the buildings were people-free before they set the bombs off. not like our current fascist who has killed thousands of our children for 6 years and will continue to kill them as long as he can. for oil.

[craazyman]

I hope I am a better man than you, Suebee, or we'd both be in trouble.

I will admit I didn't see the roast. Just read about it in the paper, briefly. Frankly, I don't know what McCain said. So maybe I am jumping a gun on this one.

And yes, I would not vote for him either probably. I have a hard time seeing under what circumstances I would vote for him. I think he's a bit nuts. And I've had enough of tax breaks for the rich and handouts to moron Wall Streeters. Enough already. I want to let the welfare queens run the place for a while and see what they do. It couldn't be worse.

You and I will likely never have a chance to be friends with McCain or Obama, neither of us has achieved enough public acclaim and likely will not to make it to "that level". But I suspect they will become friends of sorts, for the reasons I said.

It may also be that my view of Ayres is way out of date and based on his willingness to put narcissism ahead of thought--as a young man. I do believe in redemption. And I am far from an Ayers expert, caring not a whit about it.

[suebee]

mcblame is blaming obama for joe the plumber's loss of privacy.

[Isaiah Mpski]

CM,with my stories and your writing ability we should be able to come up with a best seller by Christmas.
I have ask you to join with me and represent our commission to the Chinese Embasy but I guess you,like I was a bit intimidated by the Lions(lines) in front and did not follow through with a visit.Same for Dr SB.

My idea now is to still reach out to the Chinese for help.
Yes,they too have some wise benovalent(sp) people.

I have stories about the Weathermen and I have stories from Canada about Viet Nam deserters trying to smuggle parts of HUGE nuclear bomb and I have stories about Beiruit and the 26th floor of the Holiday Inn in 1975-76.
I have stories of delivering supplies-money and weapons -to the uprising in the State of Chiapas for the Benedictine Brotherhood from Pecos NM-Good Food,good wine ,Loose women.
I have stories of Torture and how last words can haunt you.
I have stories of Roberto D'Abusion and political killings and pictures while flying into El Salvador and Guadamala and the volcanos letting off steam.

Now then CM,several things-phenomena-have happened-wild cards I call them.If you can imagine somebody killing Willow because she ask for part of the ranch and alimony,image about a 100 times deeper.
This character apparently,who recently contacted me,has probably AIDS and says if I will cure him-I have that reputation if I don't lose interest or am led astray-he will do anything I ask.Since he is in the business of serving warrants and beating people up I can only believe he means anything.
Somehow I have to interject this bolt of lighting into the battles I am fighting.
That would certainly make a good introduction to the book.
First i am surprised no one ask any questions as to why i may have been interrogated.I posted a picture of my Mother standing next to Jack Ruby two minutes or so before John FK was shot in Dallas.
Or maybe my psychiatrist wanted to rape my wife-the sorry judist bitch-she knew the cops were coming to get me that Sunday morning in Galveston.October it was,October 23rd.Thje Day before Diana's birthdauy.
Cop whopped me in the mouth.First judge released me,second judge(Youngblood) let me be crucified.
Coals are getting about ready.OU ready to whallop Kansas(sic)
Inch and a half Porterhouses CM.Some exotic mushrooms a bottle of cheap wine and good bud.80 degree weather-39 at night.Make you appreciate the heavenly starlight.
And SB,:p

SB says she can edit anything,so where shall we start?

[suebee]

so how about colin powell? good for him. wonder if it makes any difference. and how come no one ever talks about obama being white. what a f. idiot nation half of this country is.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Powell is one of the most intelligent people in our time.He understood all too well that war is hell and is very expensive.
He,as much as Obama,shows,no matter what color Juan is:it's the condition he is brought up in,as well as his education that contibutes greatly to his Id and Ego.:D
I wonder alot about his ego and hope he is a moral and honorable man.I hope this is not the beginning of black race overtaking America.My Okra-from Africa-did extra well this year for you synchronolgists.
Thus Mother Nature's longing for the perfect society will involve a uniting of the races.:skeptic:
..there's a new Mother Nature taking over...dadada...

:p

[craazyman]

-there's Malt Liquor in the fridge where the Budweiser used to be.

-the smell of blunts are in the Oval Office air.

-there's a dice game every Saturday night in the West Wing.

-the White House barber is named Leroy.

Booowahahahaha

-Fried chicken is the main course at state dinners.

-there's no one there on Fridays after about 4 p.m.

-the President gets tipped if he's standing by the coat check

Whoooohahahahaha:p

- Cadillac comes out with a new model -- the Presidential

- there's 6 cars in the White House driveway, all rusted and up on blocks

- somebody gets arrested there for gun posession -- and it's the President.

Ewwwwww:mad:

- It's "Shaft" re-runs every night on the tube, instead of the news.

- It's OK to wear your track suit on a state visit.

and, ho ho,

- even rich white lobbyists start buckling their pants waist halfway down their legs.

boowahahahahahaha:p

[Isaiah Mpski]

CM.O'bama's Mother and GrandMother are white.That makes him as much white as black.Thank God.:D

I appreciate your humor but you forgot about wearing my baseball cap backwards.:hmm:

[craazyman]

Yeah I know. I have lampooned everything and everybody, here.

Mostly I've seen the white dudes wearing the cap backwards, usually the gang bangers wear the nylon hair net over the corn rows. LOL.

I am voting for Obama (unless I decide to vote for Nader). Surpised Lyndon LaRouche isn't running again, but maybe he's still in jail.

Also, I doubt anyone knows who Shaft is anymore. That was a while back. The time is passing.

[suebee]

everyone picked up on that uptight bimbo from minnesota michelle bachmann's rant. how does a state elect paul wellstone and then someone like her? her democratic rival this election got $700,000 in donations in three days after her diatribe on chris matthews' show.

[suebee]

early voting in west virginia showing democratic pick on machine switches to republican.

omg palin's on cnn saying (lyin) joe the plumber thinks obama is a socialist and so does she. like either of them can give a definition of socialism.

[craazyman]

I see them on the streets of the city, their pants down near their fly and the boxer shorts sticking 4 or 5 inches up above their belt.

I don't know how the hell they don't trip over themselves.

What happens after they pull the stick up? They must have to hoist up the pants and run, then lower the pants back down and adjust the boxer shorts again, after they've made the escape.

Hard to figure. These things.

Hopefully Obama will enforce a dress code, with Colin Powell as the muscle in the background. Even Louis Farrakhan would go for it, natty dresser that he is. No boxers sticking out of his waistline.

Truly, there was some talk about that in the Virginia state legislature last year, sponsored by the black delegates who thought the kids needed to have their pants pulled up once and for all. But it didn't get any traction.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Totally correct SB.:eek:
Did you know, just before the Great Depression.the Socialist Party was the most popular in Okla?

And as fer you CM,don't you,as a Yankee wish the South had won the Civil War?

As for the Civil War-it truly was fought on the backs of guys like in Dancing with Wolves movie.Such was true of men like Stonewall Jackson and when we lost him(shot by his own men) we lost the war.

I am totally against this next bail-out.:skeptic:They would be better off giving the money to people who lost big in the stock market.:D

Joe Brown for Supreme Court.
No more marriage,just contracts.:snore:

[sidecross]

October 22, 2008

Moved by a Crescent

By MAUREEN DOWD

Colin Powell had been bugged by many things in his party’s campaign this fall: the insidious merging of rumors that Barack Obama was Muslim with intimations that he was a terrorist sympathizer; the assertion that Sarah Palin was ready to be president; the uniformed sheriff who introduced Governor Palin by sneering about Barack Hussein Obama; the scorn with which Republicans spit out the words “community organizer”; the Republicans’ argument that using taxes to “spread the wealth” was socialist when the purpose of taxes is to spread the wealth; Palin’s insidious notion that small towns in states that went for W. were “the real America.”

But what sent him over the edge and made him realize he had to speak out was when he opened his New Yorker three weeks ago and saw a picture of a mother pressing her head against the gravestone of her son, a 20-year-old soldier who had been killed in Iraq. On the headstone were engraved his name, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, his awards — the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star — and a crescent and a star to denote his Islamic faith.

“I stared at it for an hour,” he told me. “Who could debate that this kid lying in Arlington with Christian and Jewish and nondenominational buddies was not a fine American?”

Khan was an all-American kid. A 2005 graduate of Southern Regional High School in Manahawkin, N.J., he loved the Dallas Cowboys and playing video games with his 12-year-old stepsister, Aliya.

His obituary in The Star-Ledger of Newark said that he had sent his family back pictures of himself playing soccer with Iraqi children and hugging a smiling young Iraqi boy.

His father said Kareem had been eager to enlist since he was 14 and was outraged by the 9/11 attacks. “His Muslim faith did not make him not want to go,” Feroze Khan, told The Gannett News Service after his son died. “He looked at it that he’s American and he has a job to do.”

In a gratifying “have you no sense of decency, Sir and Madam?” moment, Colin Powell went on “Meet the Press” on Sunday and talked about Khan, and the unseemly ways John McCain and Palin have been polarizing the country to try to get elected. It was a tonic to hear someone push back so clearly on ugly innuendo.

Even the Obama campaign has shied away from Muslims. The candidate has gone to synagogues but no mosques, and the campaign was embarrassed when it turned out that two young women in headscarves had not been allowed to stand behind Obama during a speech in Detroit because aides did not want them in the TV shot.

The former secretary of state has dealt with prejudice in his life, in and out of the Army, and he is keenly aware of how many millions of Muslims around the world are being offended by the slimy tenor of the race against Obama.

He told Tom Brokaw that he was troubled by what other Republicans, not McCain, had said: “ ‘Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no. That’s not America. Is something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?”

Powell got a note from Feroze Khan this week thanking him for telling the world that Muslim-Americans are as good as any others. But he also received more e-mails insisting that Obama is a Muslim and one calling him “unconstitutional and unbiblical” for daring to support a socialist. He got a mass e-mail from a man wanting to spread the word that Obama was reading a book about the end of America written by a fellow Muslim.

“Holy cow!” Powell thought. Upon checking Amazon.com, he saw that it was a reference to Fareed Zakaria, a Muslim who writes a Newsweek column and hosts a CNN foreign affairs show. His latest book is “The Post-American World.”

Powell is dismissive of those, like Rush Limbaugh, who say he made his endorsement based on race. And he’s offended by those who suggest that his appearance Sunday was an expiation for Iraq, speaking up strongly now about what he thinks the world needs because he failed to do so then.

Even though he watched W. in 2000 make the argument that his lack of foreign policy experience would be offset by the fact that he was surrounded by pros — Powell himself was one of the regents brought in to guide the bumptious Texas dauphin — Powell makes that same argument now for Obama.

“Experience is helpful,” he says, “but it is judgment that matters.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/opinion/22dowd.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

[craazyman]

So true Isaiah. They should give it to those of us losing our shirts in Gold too. Down 20%+ from where I bought it. What the hell is going on with this stuff?

I was never much of a capitalist at heart. Only because I had to be to survive. But I'm a socialist and almost a communist now. This bailout business is such a systemic fraud it's unbelievable. And the sad thing is the rest of us are so dependent on "the system" for jobs, food, healthcare, etc. that if it fell apart it would be hell for tens of millions more than it already is.

But the delusion persists among the power structure that the system works, it just needs a little adjustment. They don't get it, any of it.

I wonder how this will resonate politically over the next few years. We need a new way, a new deal, a new start. I wonder if our politicians are up for it. I tend to doubt it. I still believe in private property and the ability to choose your path in life, but our financial institutions are so corrupt, so incompetent, so malicious and miserable that the entire system is a parasite on the back of the working man.

[suebee]

gas prices are going down, we can drive our Christian God sanctioned suv's again, we can drill our way out of this recession, people dont believe in global warming or they dont believe humans cause any of it, no one is willing to conserve anything, no one wants to read labels, no one wants to take any responsibility for their own part of this or any other problem, parents dont have time for their children, children embrace ghetto butt pants and c'rap' and learn nothing about how to deal with being a kid until the kids they pick on open fire, the national IQ has plummeted, neither kids nor adults have any real role models (maybe firemen), fully half the country has no IQ due to lack of education/experience/exposure to anything outside the numerous vehicles lost in the grass of their front yards, less than 1% of the population is even involved in trying to improve society, less than that try to serve their fellow humans, most 'smart' people either dont want to be bothered or dont believe they have any power, there are real life pirates among us who steal from anyone they can in any number of legal ways, put me on that jury, oh forget it i dont care anymore either.
800 acres.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Yeah SB,anyway you want it. How bout 40 acres wide and 20 acres deep.
I plan to build a subterrian community connected via tunnel to Lake Eufaula for access with our yellow submarine.In the other direction we will build another tunnel(all downhill) to the town of Checotah,to which we will send electric power(wind and solar powered).We will also have a gas well that will produce forever.
What do you think Carrie Underwood's autograph would be worth?

With a little American Capitalism and political influence we will take back the 40 thousand acres of farmland the government bought at ridiculously low prices and start some giant commercial enterprise.Put up seven years of food for 50,000 people.When that asteroid hits CM,gold ain't going to buy you food.

Again,on the other hand,we as a society need to get back to quality,not quanity.Same holds true to our children's educations.It,from the 1st grade through med school needs to be revamped.

Seriously SB.I think you may have the capital to what you wish.We all more or less came to this board as a way to spend more time in Mexico,but there are some serious bargains out there.Buy us a little place in Galveston love.
Real Estate is at a bargain now. Galveston was the Capitol of the South when she surrendered.But I will abandon that pipe dream to get to spend the winter in Mexico.

When I am able SB,I will buy us at least 800 acres in Mexico-desert that it is-and give you an acre.But just like CM,I have my weak points.He is a master at stocks,I am not.I am a master with gold.I bought 40 fifty peso gold coins CM many moons ago.Lived off of them for twenty years.Kinda like a friend of mine who invested in banks in Mexico.
He took 1000,put it in Mexican bank which was paying almost 100% and literally lived there for a year free.
Real Esatate is cheap right now SB.I will put up 10 k if you or Willow or CM will match it and we will buy some land near Tepic.This is where the monastaries built their wineries.

Remember this.As it gets hard in America,it gets tougher in Mexico.

Willow and SB.I have send you both private messages in the past three days.Have you received them.
Willow tell DC I hate death and suffering too and my thoughts are with you both.
SB.Get out while you CAN.I'll meet you at the airport.

[suebee]

stealingamericathemovie.org now has the movie gratis......

[Isaiah Mpski]

"Hijack the Starship" brings me back to yung man's time.
There is a song there meant just for you.

Yes I too,put the weathermen up for a day or two
while they mapped the electric lines and refineries.

When I figured out who they were I ran them off from Galveston of British still fighting the "War".
What a lot of idiots can think of to mess things up.
We don't have alot of time to get it together.

It's passing so fast.

The weather here today is beautiful.Garden is Great.
Need to get out and cut some wood.

Mind is racing in 10,000 ways.

McIntosh County dear is where we make our start.

That song is,
"Have you seen the stars tonight,
would you like to go up on A deck and look at them with me,have you seen the stars tonight?" :D

[suebee]

Larry David - Huffington Post

I can't take much more of this. Two weeks to go, and I'm at the end of my rope. I can't work. I can eat, but mostly standing up. I'm anxious all the time and taking it out on my ex-wife, which, ironically, I'm finding enjoyable. This is like waiting for the results of a biopsy. Actually, it's worse. Biopsies only take a few days, maybe a week at the most, and if the biopsy comes back positive, there's still a potential cure. With this, there's no cure. The result is final. Like death.

Five times a day I'll still say to someone, "I don't know what I'm going to do if McCain wins." Of course, the reality is I'm probably not going to do anything. What can I do? I'm not going to kill myself. If I didn't kill myself when I became impotent for two months in 1979, I'm certainly not going to do it if McCain and Palin are elected, even if it's by nefarious means. If Obama loses, it would be easier to live with it if it's due to racism rather than if it's stolen. If it's racism, I can say, "Okay, we lost, but at least it's a democracy. Sure, it's a democracy inhabited by a majority of disgusting, reprehensible turds, but at least it's a democracy." If he loses because it's stolen, that will be much worse. Call me crazy, but I'd rather live in a democratic racist country than a non-democratic non-racist one. (It's not exactly a Hobson's choice, but it's close, and I think Hobson would compliment me on how close I've actually come to giving him no choice. He'd love that!)

The one concession I've made to maintain some form of sanity is that I've taken to censoring my news, just like the old Soviet Union. The citizenry (me) only gets to read and listen to what I deem appropriate for its health and well-being. Sure, there are times when the system breaks down. Michele Bachmann got through my radar this week, right before bedtime. That's not supposed to happen. That was a lapse in security, and I've had to make some adjustments. The debates were particularly challenging for me to monitor. First I tried running in and out of the room so I would only hear my guy. This worked until I knocked over a tray of hors d'oeuvres. "Sit down or get out!" my host demanded. "Okay," I said, and took a seat, but I was more fidgety than a ten-year-old at temple. I just couldn't watch without saying anything, and my running commentary, which mostly consisted of "Shut up, you prick!" or "You're a fucking liar!!!" or "Go to hell, you cocksucker!" was way too distracting for the attendees, and finally I was asked to leave.

Assuming November 4th ever comes, my big decision won't be where I'll be watching the returns, but if I'll be watching. I believe I have big jinx potential and may have actually cost the Dems the last two elections. I know I've jinxed sporting events. When my teams are losing and I want them to make a comeback, all I have to do is leave the room. Works every time. So if I do watch, I'll do it alone. I can't subject other people to me in my current condition. I just don't like what I've turned into -- and frankly I wasn't that crazy about me even before the turn. This election is having the same effect on me as marijuana. All of my worst qualities have been exacerbated. I'm paranoid, obsessive, nervous, and totally mental. It's one long, intense, bad trip. I need to come down. Soon.

[willoweyes]

thanks suebee--i needed that.

Who is this Larry David anyway? I think I'll marry him.

[craazyman]

It's Obama by 5.

No rigged election machines.
No fraud (any more than usual anyway).
No October surprise.
No nothing.

Just a victory.

[sidecross]

Some Voters Are Going to Have to Lose Their Homes Before They Connect the Dots

By Garrison Keillor, Tribune Media Services


We are a stalwart and stouthearted people, and never more so than in hard times. People weep in the dark and arise in the morning and go to work. The waves crash on your nest egg and a chunk is swept away and you put your salami sandwich in the brown bag and get on the bus.

In Philly, a woman earns $10.30/hour to care for a man brought down by cystic fibrosis. She bathes and dresses him in the morning, brings him meals, puts him to bed at night. It's hard work lifting him and she has suffered a painful hernia that, because she can't afford health insurance, she can't get fixed, but she still goes to work because he'd be helpless without her. There are a lot of people like her. I know because I'm related to some of them.

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.

Some Republicans adore her because they are pranksters at heart and love the consternation of grown-ups. The ne'er-do-well son of the old Republican family as president, the idea that you increase government revenue by cutting taxes, the idea that you cut social services and thereby drive the needy into the middle class, the idea that you overthrow a dictator with a show of force and achieve democracy at no cost to yourself -- one stink bomb after another, and now Governor Palin.

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 forty 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.

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/104728

[craazyman]

I saw John McCain once, in 2000 (I think it was) when he was running against Bush for the republican nomination.

It was mid-day on a Friday and they had set up a stump speech stand on Wall Street and Broad Street, in the skycraper canyons of lower Manhattan for a McCain rally.

Not much of a crowd really, sort of a scattered bunch of stragglers and he was up on stage looking around with a politician's smile trying to rev up the folks milling around. They had a loud speaker rythmically blaring "John Mc-Cain, John Mc-Cain, John Mc-Cain -- a three syllable beat with a fourth pause -- Daa da Daa, uh, Daa da Daa, uh, Daa da Daa, uh . . . John Mc-Cain. His name would echo around and the bounce right back to where he was.

He looked a bit lost and bewildered, and it was strange to be there, an anonymous face in a loose crowd, staring up at this sort of famous guy. He also looked surprisingly short, in real life.

I felt kind of bad for him. I knew he was going to lose to Bush and I know he knew it too. There wasn't much energy there, except for the loud speakers. I think I had arrived after he said whatever he said.

I just remember how some trash was blowing around, flyers and menus and the paper that always blows around down there in the wind off the harbor, and how people were sort of moving on. And then he wound down. It was a grey day with a high overcast sky, grey empty space around those canyons, and the echo of John McCain, John McCain.

They had taken down the security gates, and most people were leaving.

Still, I thought, this is a remarkable man in many ways. And I thought how hard he was trying and how badly he had taken a beating from Bush's handlers, the sleazy attempts to discredit him, the sleaze of politics, the sleaze of ambition and the madness of the lust for power.

My feelings turned from pathos and, some degree of pity, to a stubborn admiration for him, standing up there on the border of humiliation, making an effort, trying, trying, trying. The way so few of us ever try. Staring rejection in the face and still coming on -- John Mc-Cain, John Mc-Cain -- with the old white hair, POW, broken legs, shot down out of the sky, no medical care, John Mc-Cain, somehow surviving, salute off the plane on American soil, John Mc-Cain, John McCain -- I would have already been dead or a basket case probably.

And here he is, still at it, on the verge of all of it.

I will not vote for him. I think he's a bit nuts. But still, he's a fighter -- and at a certain level so am I -- and I respect that about him, profoundly, because the punches hurt, they hurt like hell, and to stand up there alone and take them . . . I wish him good luck as a man, but I hope he gets his butt kicked on election day.

[sidecross]

How McCain Turned His Back on the Vietnamese Man Who Saved His Life

By Norman Stockwell, AlterNet


Sunday, Oct. 26 marked the 41st anniversary of John McCain's plane being shot down over Hanoi. It's a narrative that has become a central theme of McCain's presidential campaign -- but in the four decades since his capture, the story has become revisionist history.

In March of 2008, I traveled to Vietnam for the 40th anniversary of the incidents in Son My village that have come to be known to the world as the My Lai Massacre. During my visit, I spent some time in Hanoi visiting the museums and relics of what the Vietnamese call "the American war." One of these trips took me to the notorious Hoa Lo prison, or "Hanoi Hilton" -- formerly a French prison where independence fighters were jailed during the decades of French colonial rule, but which had later been turned into a stockade for U.S. pilots shot down over Hanoi from the mid-1960s to early 1970s. It was here that John McCain spent most of his 5½ years in captivity as a prisoner of war. Today, the prison museum features photos of McCain, both as a prisoner between 1967 and 1973 and on a return visit as a U.S. senator.

McCain was a hot commodity in Vietnam during my visit. According to my official translator from the Foreign Press Center, many other translators had been assigned to various foreign news crews around Hanoi that were all gathering material on McCain's time in Vietnam. McCain is well known to the Vietnamese; they all seemed familiar with his Senate career and his runs for the White House. The Vietnamese press was writing about McCain too; one article from a local paper particularly caught my eye. It was the story of McCain's rescue from Truc Bach Lake, accompanied by a grainy photo of a battered John McCain being dragged to the shore on a long bamboo pole. McCain had been reunited with his rescuer, Mai Van On, in 1996.

Upon returning to the United States, I looked for the story of McCain's rescuer but found little mention in the English language press. But in late March, Britain's Daily Mail published a story that made me realize that I knew the U.S. veteran who had helped reunite McCain with On. His name was Chuck Searcy, and he is now the country representative for the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Fund. So in early August, I called Searcy in Hanoi and interviewed him for WORT radio in Madison, Wis.

*****

Norm Stockwell: Let me start by asking how you first came to meet Mr. Mai Van On and your connection with getting him in touch with Senator McCain.

Chuck Searcy: In 1995 I rented an apartment on the Truc Bach Lake, which is the lake where John McCain parachuted in when he was shot down. Some time during that year, an old man who was my neighbor sought me out (along with) another veteran who was living on the other side of the lake.

And he found us and wanted to tell us this story, that he was the guy who pulled McCain out of the lake. Of course, we didn't know whether to believe him or not. But he had a letter that he asked me to deliver to McCain. And I asked my landlord and my landlady and neighbors and others who were living around the lake if what he had said was true, and they said yeah -- the ones who remembered that day back in 1967 when McCain was shot down -- they said yes, that's the way it happened.

So I had the letter translated and sent it off to McCain. … And I got a reply from a staff person who sort of discounted the letter and the suggestion that this may have been the man who pulled McCain out of the lake, because apparently they had heard some such allegation before. So I just sort of let it ride -- until I saw McCain in Washington, I guess that same year, at a Veterans' breakfast and I mentioned it to him. And he said, "Oh, let's see if we can, I'd like to meet the guy, next time I come to Vietnam." And so that's how it happened.

NS: So then Senator McCain was involved with some of the discussions going on about normalization of relations between the United States and Vietnam in 1995, and he came to Hanoi, and you actually facilitated a meeting with Senator McCain and Mr. On. What took place there?

CS: Well, as you said, McCain, yes, was very much involved in the reconciliation efforts; he and Senator John Kerry really paved the way for President Clinton to declare normalization of relations with Vietnam, which occurred in 1995.

It was about in October, I think, of 1996 that I got a call from the U.S. Embassy one morning and they said that Senator McCain had just landed (in Vietnam) and he would like to meet Mr. Mai Van On in the afternoon if that was possible.

So I went to his house because he had no telephone -- he was quite poor -- and asked him if he would meet with McCain and, of course, he was excited, and he said yes. So that afternoon, they met at the offices of the Vietnamese Union of Friendship organization, the Vietnam-USA Society, which is very near his house and near my house, also. And so they met for the first time since that day in 1967 when McCain was shot down.

NS: And Mr. On told McCain the story of what happened that day and then McCain gave him a gift.

CS: Mr. On described what happened that day in a very animated way, and he was quite excited to tell the story, because I think it was quite a highlight in his life.

And McCain listened, with some interest, I guess, because McCain was badly injured when he ejected from his plane. I think he broke both his arms and he broke one leg, so he was in very bad shape and apparently he was mostly unconscious, and so he said, at the outset of the conversation, that he didn't remember much about that day, and he asked Mr. On to describe it, which he did in great graphic detail, with a lot of excitement.

NS: Now, in fact, he, Mr. On, actually saved McCain's life twice that day. Talk about that a little bit.

CS: That's true. McCain would have, (or) he might have, drowned if Mr. On and his neighbor had not jumped in the lake. They swam out to the middle of the lake where McCain's parachute was and, because of his injuries, McCain was hardly in condition to survive in the water. So apparently he had kicked himself up from the bottom of the lake a couple of times and he was going down maybe for the third and last time, when Mr. On and his friend reached the parachute, and they pulled McCain up by the straps and they rolled him across this bamboo log that they had floated out there, and then they kicked in to the lakeshore. When they got to the bank, there was a crowd of men -- mostly men and maybe a few women -- but some men jumped into the lake and helped to drag McCain out. But they were angry, and some of them were threatening -- and in fact, a couple of them started to attack McCain. I think one hit him, and somebody I think stabbed him in the leg, according to McCain's account. And Mr. Mai Van On and this wonderful old nurse who was there at the time -- Mrs. Teng was her name -- they both just, through the power of their persuasion, they stopped the crowd from attacking him. The old man said, "Look, when he was in the air bombing us, he was our enemy, but now he's on the ground and he's a helpless human being and we're not going to hurt him." And it sounds like the crowd was just sort of shamed into submission, and they backed away and stopped the attacks on McCain. So that really may have saved his life again.

NS: Now, this is a really touching story of friendship between peoples at a real people-to-people level, and yet, when McCain wrote his political biography, and told the story of that time, he doesn't really mention this incident at all. That was in 1999, I guess.

CS: Yes, McCain mentions being pulled out of the lake by the group of Hanoians who jumped into the lake as he got to the bank and he does not mention any details about Mr. Mai Van On -- maybe because he couldn't remember those details himself, and didn't want to include them in the book without having that personal memory, personal knowledge, I don't know. But in any case, right, he omitted the references to Mr. Mai Van On for whatever reason. He recounted the story, I guess, exactly as he remembered it.

NS: Now, McCain came back and visited (Hoa Lo) prison. He also came back and visited the lake where his plane had crashed. In the year 2000, I think it was, when he was running for president, there was an AP story about that. But he never really visited Mr. On again, did he?

CS: I don't think he ever visited him again. I suppose it was … I guess he had a busy schedule. I'm sure it was not very high on his agenda. I think the family was a little bit disappointed in that. But they probably put much more stock in those events than McCain did, who has, you know, had a very eventful and very highly publicized life. So it was probably just not very high on his agenda, I assume.

NS: Now, again at that meeting that you were able to facilitate (in 1996) for Senator McCain and Mr. Mai Van On, McCain gave him a key chain of some sort, a Senate key chain, which he kept throughout his life. He passed away, I guess, in 2006, but he kept it throughout his entire life as a … almost like a medal.

CS: Actually, yeah, as I recall, it was … I think it was more like a paperweight -- it was a replica of the Senate seal, I think. It was probably the kind of thing that senators can give out to people easily, but it's true, Mr. Mai Van On treasured it as if it were some kind of medal of honor. I think he displayed it prominently in his house until he died.

NS: One printed story in the media said that before he died, he told his family not to sell that, but to keep it because if they ever came to America, that it might be valuable as an entrée to get into U.S. society or something.

CS: Yeah, I think so. You know, like a lot of post-war mythology, it's sort of a touching story. It would not have been of any real value, but sentimental and emotional value to Mr. On and his family … although he attached much more value to it than that, I think.

NS: Now, I understand that when Mr. On died, that a message was sent to try to get Senator McCain to issue some condolences to the family. Do you know anything about that?

CS: Actually, I sent a message to one of the staff people, just to notify Senator McCain that Mr. On had died, but I don't even know if the message reached them or if it ever reached Senator McCain or not. I just thought it was something he might like to know about. I don't know if there were other notifications to him or not. I don't even know if the news ever reached him.

NS: Now, Chuck, you work on a day-to-day basis in Vietnam with people, and you see all kinds of evidence of reconciliation being built between our peoples, you know, in spite of the role the United States played during the war. How does this story fit into that general scheme of people-to-people friendship between the peoples of Vietnam and the United States?

CS: Well, the story is really a graphic illustration of a phenomenon which is difficult for us as Americans to really understand, and that is that the Vietnamese people never viewed the American people as their enemy, ever. They always felt -- and they still do feel -- that the U.S. government made some tragic policy decisions and made some terrible mistakes in bringing the war to Vietnam. But they're very forgiving of the American people and very respectful, and they've always had the view, even during the war, that one day they and the American people would be friends. So this incident back in 1967 just illustrates that, and there are thousands of other examples of that. I mean, I see it every day of my life over here. And it took me a while to understand and accept, (but) I know now that it's a fact. The Vietnamese people have never felt any hostility to America. And they just felt a lot of anguish and sadness and almost disbelief that there would be a war in their country involving Americans, for whom they have always had tremendous respect. So, for me and many other veterans who have been back to Vietnam and who work here, Americans who have come back and experienced that, it's a touching and remarkable learning experience for most of us.

*****

Months after my interview with Searcy, I was in St. Paul, Minn., at the Republican National Convention. As I stood on the floor of the Xcel Energy Center, some 50 yards from John McCain as he accepted his party's presidential nomination, the projector flashed that same black-and-white photo image I had seen in Vietnam of McCain being dragged to the shore of Truc Bach Lake. Moments later, to my surprise, I heard McCain say: " … I was beginning to learn the limits of my selfish independence. Those men saved my life." But McCain wasn't talking about the Vietnamese people who pulled him from that lake, people whose homes he had just bombed. He was talking about his fellow American POWs. Had McCain truly erased from his memory a touching reunion that took place just over a dozen years before?

I could only think about how different the narrative would be had McCain said: "I was beginning to learn the limits of my selfish independence. Those (Vietnamese civilians) saved my life (because they understood the humanity in all of us that transcends government and country)."

Norman Stockwell is a freelance journalist and operations coordinator at WORT-FM community radio in Madison, Wis. In March he traveled to Vietnam to cover the 40th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/104860

[bopes]

Nice post, cm. Elegaic.

The trouble with old soldiers who never die and/or don't fade away is that if they stick around long enough they might just get endorsed by the wrong people (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/opinion/26kristof.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin).

[craazyman]

Yeah he keeps gauranteeing victory like Joe Namath.

Maybe he's just showboating, but I worry.

Maybe they REALLY DO have the voting machines rigged, like the radical left wing wackos are saying.:confused:

[willoweyes]

Craazy, Google David Foster Wallace's riff for Rolling Stone on McCain's 2000 campaign.

You won't regret it.

[suebee]

wackos? sometimes i worry about you c-man.

how about these unnamed insiders saying palin has no relationship of trust with anyone including her family. someone gave her a chance at the brass ring; anyone here not believe she would sell her children to get it?

willow that was an interesting read.

[craazyman]

Palin? I wonder if she is a worse VP pick than was Andrew Johnson, who was somehow foisted on Lincoln.

The story goes that Johnson got so drunk at Lincoln's inaugural that Lincoln commanded his staff to secure Johnson in his room for the duration of the event.

There have been some very, very bad VPs in American history.

Palin would have tough competition, but she may reign supreme.

I still predict Obama by 5 and I think McCain is just being McCain the showboat. He may have picked Palin just to put his own wife on notice and keep her in line.

Booowhahahahahaha:p:p

Did you hear she brought a kid back from Cambodia or someplace and said to John, we have another child in the family now. Didn't even tell him beforehand. I'm sure he sometimes feels the need to tighten her leash.

[sidecross]

Craazy, Google David Foster Wallace's riff for Rolling Stone on McCain's 2000 campaign.

You won't regret it.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18420304/the_weasel_twelve_monkeys_and_the_shrub

[sidecross]

John McCain in the Echo Chamber

by Gore Vidal

October proved to be the cruelest month, for that was the time that Sen. McCain, he of the round, blank, Little Orphan Annie eyes, chose to try out a number of weird lies about Barack Obama ostensibly in the interest of a Republican Party long overdue for burial.

It is a wonder that any viewer survived his furious October onslaught whose craziest lie was that Obama wished to become president in order to tax the poor in the interest of a Democratic Party in place, as he put it in his best 1936 voice, to spend and spend because that's what Democrats always do. This was pretty feeble lying, even in such an age as ours. But it was the only thing that had stuck with him from those halcyon years when Gov. Alfred M. Landon was the candidate of the Grand Old Party, which in those days was dedicated to erasing every policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose electoral success was due to, they thought, Harry Hopkins' chilling mantra, "we shall ... spend and spend and elect and elect." Arguably, the ignorant McCains of this world have no idea what any of this actually signifies; Hopkins' comment is a serious one, and serious matters seldom break through to cliché-ridden minds.

Although I am no fan of the television of my native land, I thought that an election featuring two historic novelties—the first credible female candidate for president and the first black nominee—would be great historic television, yet I should have been suspicious whenever I looked at McCain's malicious little face, plainly bent on great mischief. Whenever Obama made a sensible point, McCain was ready to trump it with a gorgeous lie.

When Obama said that only a small percentage of the middle class would suffer from income tax during his administration, McCain would start gabbling the 1936 Republican mantra that this actually meant that he would spend and spend and spend in order to spread the money around, a mild joke he has told for the benefit of a plumber who is looking forward to fiscal good fortune and so feared the tax man, using language very like that of long-dead socialists to reveal Obama's sinister games.

Advice to Obama: No civilized asides are permitted in McCain Land, where every half-understood word comes from the shadowy bosses of a diabolic Democratic Party, eager to steal the money of the poor in order to benefit, perversely, the even poorer.

So October (my natal month) was no joy for me, as the degradation of our democratic process was being McCainized. McCain is a prisoner of the past. Later, in due course he gave us the old address book treatment: names from Obama's past, each belonging to a potential terrorist. Even from the corpse of the Republican Party, which Abraham Lincoln left somewhat hastily in the 19th century, this was an unusually sickening display.

Happily, physicists assure us that there is no action without reaction.

There were still a few bright glimmers of something larger than a mere candidate of the Republican Party, but Mr. McCain seems to be in the terminal throes of a self-love that causes him to regard himself as a great American hero. From time to time, he likes to shout at us, "I have fought in many, many wars," and, "I have won many of them," but he has, so far, never told us which were the ones that he has actually won, since every war that he has graced with his samurai presence seems to have been thoroughly lost by the United States. Consistency is all-important to the born loser as well as to the committed liar.

So what little fame he has rests on the fact that he was taken a prisoner of war by the Vietnamese—hardly a recommendation for the leadership of the "free world"—and thus aware of the meagerness of his own curriculum vitae, for his vice presidential choice he then turned radically, in the age of the awakening to power of women, to an Alaskan politician; a giggly Piltdown princess out of pre-history.

Her qualification? She has once been mayor (or was it "mare"?) of an Alaskan village and later governor of what had been known as "Seward's Icebox," named for Lincoln's secretary of state, William Seward, who had over the misgivings of many bought all that ice from Russia.

One does get the impression that the senator from Arizona is living in a sort of echo chamber of nonsensical phrases, notions and unreality.

To further add insult to injury, as it were, he describes himself as a "maverick," which one critic in the audience assures him he is not, anyway, like the great Maury Maverick, a New Deal congressman from Texas who was so dedicated to freedom that he allowed his cattle to roam unbranded, freely on the range—a tribute to a time when Texans were freer than now in the post-Bush era.

The critic in the audience said that he was no maverick in the usual sense on the ground that he was simply a sidekick. That just about sums it up: Sidekick to the only president we have ever had who lacked any interest in governance.

As we are going through a religious phase in this greatest of all great nations, I am reminded of Chancellor Bismarck's remark about us Americans in the 19th century when he said: "God looks after drunks, little children and the United States of America."

Amen.

National Book Award winner Gore Vidal has written twenty-three novels, five plays, many screenplays, short stories, well over two hundred essays, and a memoir.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/28-0

[Isaiah Mpski]

Amen...........

[suebee]

i hope gore vidal lives to 120.

[Isaiah Mpski]

For you youngsters,I remember these days back in 72,in the war against Nixon.These were some of our finest hours.
You hear alot about ,
:"Four Dead in Ohio".
but did you know that 16 people were bayoneted at the same time in an anti-war rally at the University of New Mexico.Six of my brother's and sisters died that day in Albuquerque.Did you hear about that northern Man.Did you hear about that"
We planted a rose garden where their blood wes shed,
Did you hear about that northern man?Did you hear about that?

[willoweyes]

Isaiah, all i could find was this:

"At the University of New Mexico, dissenting students fought with "straights" over whether the flag should be lowered to half-staff to honor the Kent State dead. Three of the dissenters came away with knife wounds"

from May 19, 1970-Time.

and also an unconsciously hilarious website, "New Mexic State Police."

300+ were killed in a Mexico City demonstration in 1968--

I was a senior in high school in 1970--our principal announced the Kent State killings on the school intercom system, and suggested that the country would be better off if 2/3rds of the country's students were dealt with similarly--I was a lonely (verbal) protestor against that statement, which led to my being denied honor graduate status, and a National Merit scholarship.

It changed my life.

That principal was a wicked pervert--God rest his Soul.

One of many lessons re the weak vs. the Powerful.

Oh, how I love Vidal. Thanks, Sidey.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Willow,trot down to Albuquerque and ask where the rose garden is.There should be a plaque there that tells the truth.Very solemn and emotion-filled nook in the cranie.UNM.
I was there Willow,as I was at a similar demo in Houston.

There were at least 6 people stabbed to death there that day.Blood everywhere.No mercy.if you were there and didn't run you got stuck at the site of the Rose Garden on the campus of the Univ of New Mexico.

[willoweyes]

I will trust you on this one, Isaiah--the eye is a better witness than the Net--and I will visit the rose garden too. To get to the bottom of things can take years of bull headed obstinate digging--

On this point, here is a book, "Unquiet Grave-The FBI and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country" by Steve Hendricks, chronicling the murder of a Native American activist:

"For his investigation into the recent history of the American Indian, he starts with the biggest mystery that still surrounds events that took place thirty years ago on Pine Ridge Lakota Reserve in South Dakota – the death of Anna Mae Aquash. Anna Mae was a member of AIM who was found dead on a back road in South Dakota. Right from the discovery of her body, the FBI did their best to distort the facts. They even refused to come clean on how many agents showed up at the scene after the crime was reported.

Hendricks recounts the story again in all its sordid detail: how her hands were cut off and sent to Washington for fingerprinting, because nobody supposedly recognised her. How the first autopsy said she died of exposure even though there was a bullet wound in the back of her neck leaking blood and the bullet could be clearly seen as a protuberance through her face. Thirty years later rumours and accusations are still flying on all sides about who killed her and why. " (From a review of the book by Richard Marcus in the online magazine, "Blogcritics.")

[willoweyes]

Yesterday I was arrested by the lead-on to OETA's "Oklahoma News Report" announced by host Gerry Bonds: "Okahomans and others across the nation are buying guns in record numbers, in advance of the coming election. Find out why on the Oklahoma News Report [quoted from memory]."

Watching the segment, which featured various gun-purchasers as well as an Oklahoma gun merchant ("We can't keep Black Guns [his name for assault rifles] on the shelf.") I was struck by the fear and anger of these people, and felt fear myself.

It was like the mindless fury of ants--they are angry and ready to sting, although they do not realize yet that their hill has been crushed by a careless foot.

So are we in America, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

[suebee]

In The Spirit of Crazy Horse by peter matthiessen which my friends in so. dakota gave me when i was there. my friend volunteers on the pine ridge reservation. he knows some of the people involved way back. pretty sad situation to this day as the feds continue to crush whats left of their ant hill.

the first chapter of Unquiet Grave is at SteveHendricks.org. it reads like a tony hillerman (rip) novel. good.

[sidecross]

In The Spirit of Crazy Horse by peter matthiessen which my friends in so. dakota gave me when i was there. my friend volunteers on the pine ridge reservation. he knows some of the people involved way back. pretty sad situation to this day as the feds continue to crush whats left of their ant hill.

the first chapter of Unquiet Grave is at SteveHendricks.org. it reads like a tony hillerman (rip) novel. good.

justplaincross will miss Tony Hillerman; she has every book he has written.

[Isaiah Mpski]

He was one of my teachers at UNM.
Anybody want to hear a good Indian Story?:skeptic:

[craazyman]

Friday October 31
Dissociated Press (DP)
New York

Oct. 31 -- Republican Presidential candidate John McCain informed his staff late last night that Alaskan governor Sarah Palin will be replaced by Joe the Plumber on the republican presidential ticket, sources close to Mr. McCain said.

Mr. McCain reportedly made the decision after a night of drinking and general merriment at a Tuscson, Arizona bar.

"With all the shit in Washington, we need a man with plumbing skills to unclog the national toilet," Mr. McCain reported told his close associates. "Let's just get Joe on the ticket."

Sarah Palin has reportedly been in discussions with NBC for her own late night comedy show. These discussions were proving to be an irritating behind the scene distraction to Mr. McCain's campaign, sources said.

Asked about Joe the Plumber's lack of political experience, Mr. McCain replied, "Who cares? What does a vice president do anyway?" When reminded that Joe would be one step away from the presidency, Mr. McCain ordered another round of drinks and changed the subject.

An official announcement is reportedly scheduled for Friday afternoon.

--

[Isaiah Mpski]

CM,Your humor-or brain tumor-made me forget what I was going to say.:eek:
Great piece of work CM and I hope it makes you some money.

I also want alot of people to read it for this thread contains the magic elemnt that could save the election for McCain.
That is, he announces he is going to establish a Foreign Legion-based on French model.That should pull several million votes from Lord Whamma Obama.

And talk about vice-president's-and I love Biden-but I wouldn't be surprised to see him fire up a Doobie on National T.V.

He Haw.:D

[suebee]

i was watching sidney III in slo mo today and manchurian candidate came to mind.

[craazyman]

The archetype of John McCain brings to mind, somewhat in a tangential way, the title of a book by the late and fairly great (although I don't think he went quite far enough down the trail) John Mack, the Alien abduction researcher and general new-age good guy -- who -- before he discovered aliens -- wrote an apparently Pulitzer Prize winning biography of the English author and adventurer (or more accurately, adventurer and then author) T. E. Lawrence of World War I in Arabia fame (whose Revolt in the Desert and Seven Pillars of Wisdom I have indeed read) called "A Prince of Our Disorder". I think that accurately sums up Mr. McCain in relation to the American psyche. His archetypical resonance drawing from the fountain of his father's has empowered his own life to an incredible degree. Never underestimate the power of the archetypes, is my take away. It's a force of nature, in and of itself. Of course, those overpowered and powered by one tend to think that one size fits all -- and therein all the problems begin.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Sue Bee,it looks like your prediction of alot of fraud is coming true.
And Bopes I heard,because of heavy voter turnout,that your area will vote on November 5th.;)

I do not think I have ever voted for a winning President.The fact that he is black will turn out to be a much more,like CM said,an archetype he will have difficulty overcoming,as will I.

I hope,like me.He remains a warrior and conqueor,but only in his half of the world.I hope he surrounds himself with intellectuals and realists,not a bunch of queers like Clinton did.:p

Yes,for any of you who follow me,I am upset today.
These voting irregularites are showing the worst of free elections,and like your thoughts reflected SB,it may be time to fight against such trash.

What do you think about a book CM?If we got on it now,we might be able to put something together by Christmas.I'v got several hundred pages down.It needs a liitle frosting on the cake.Get a mail box or whatever and i will overnight the shit to you and see what you think.
Maybe SB will do the final edit for us.
And Jim Hart,of New York City,said he would script it for us.
That's how it works.You publish a solid manuscript.Get it Scripted and present it to the right people.

My home phone # is 918-473-5532.I'm not near all the time but I'm very serious about a book.:eek:Send me an address via e-mail and I'll mail what I have fer you to peruse. jccamp007@yahoo.com

I got into that game with the Scientolgists an although they kinda got to me with the first one-2500 bucks for the movie rights,Jim said Juan's real money is in the second Juan.

[suebee]

sidney sounded pretty gracious last night. good for him. maybe he's still in there somewhere. are we gonna shut down this thread now? or use it for future palin pinups?

[Isaiah Mpski]

No,SB.Let's use it like a bunch of "Jews" at Daniel's expenseand write our book and perhaps screenplay on it.Do them both together and not waste time with collective book,unless you'd rather just edit and make wine?

I must admit I'm terribly ADDICTED(Freudian slide I guess) to romantic stories love,particularily one's from the Bible.

Susan.Does anyone have a biblical story about Susan.Or Willow?What is your real name our little Jewish cow.:p