It's looking good according to the newest polls from the battlegrounds! But like the song says "...you can't trust freedom when it's not in your hands when everybody's fighting for their promised land." With this in mind, we can never underestimate the power of the republican disenfrancizing machine. VIGILANCE!!!
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Carrie Dann*** Swing states swinging to Obama: Most of the national polls -- including our NBC/WSJ survey -- are now showing Obama with a double-digit national lead. And here come a slew of brand-new state polls that also suggest Obama is in command of this presidential contest. The University of Wisconsin’s Big Ten Battleground polls have Obama up 10 points in Indiana (51%-41%), 13 points in Iowa (52%-39%), 22 in Michigan (58%-36%), 19 in Minnesota (57%-38%), 12 in Ohio (53%-41%), 11 in Pennsylvania (52%-41%), 13 in Wisconsin (53%-40%), and nearly 30 in Obama’s home state of Illinois (61%-32%). Meanwhile, there are new Quinnipiac surveys that show Obama up five points in Florida (49%-44%), 14 in Ohio (52%-38%), and 13 in Pennsylvania (53%-40%). And finally, new CNN/Time surveys find Obama ahead by five points among likely voters in Nevada (51%-46%), four points in North Carolina (51%-47%), four in Ohio (50%-46%), and 10 points in Virginia (54%-44%). The lone state survey that shows McCain ahead: CNN/Time’s West Virginia poll, where McCain’s nine (53%-44%).
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. & GREG PALAST
These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas.
Maez was not alone in being denied his right to vote. On Super Tuesday, one in nine Democrats who tried to cast ballots in New Mexico found their names missing from the registration lists. The numbers were even higher in precincts like Las Vegas, where nearly 20 percent of the county's voters were absent from the rolls. With their status in limbo, the voters were forced to cast "provisional" ballots, which can be reviewed and discarded by election officials without explanation. On Super Tuesday, more than half of all provisional ballots cast were thrown out statewide.
This November, what happened to Maez will happen to hundreds of thousands of voters across the country. In state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."
Suppressing the vote has long been a cornerstone of the GOP's electoral strategy. Shortly before the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Paul Weyrich — a principal architect of today's Republican Party — scolded evangelicals who believed in democracy. "Many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo goo' syndrome — good government," said Weyrich, who co-founded Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell. "They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. . . . As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
Today, Weyrich's vision has become a national reality. Since 2003, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, at least 2.7 million new voters have had their applications to register rejected. In addition, at least 1.6 million votes were never counted in the 2004 election — and the commission's own data suggests that the real number could be twice as high. To purge registration rolls and discard ballots, partisan election officials used a wide range of pretexts, from "unreadability" to changes in a voter's signature. And this year, thanks to new provisions of the Help America Vote Act, the number of discounted votes could surge even higher.
Passed in 2002, HAVA was hailed by leaders in both parties as a reform designed to avoid a repeat of the 2000 debacle in Florida that threw the presidential election to the U.S. Supreme Court. The measure set standards for voting systems, created an independent commission to oversee elections, and ordered states to provide provisional ballots to voters whose eligibility is challenged at the polls.
But from the start, HAVA was corrupted by the involvement of Republican superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, who worked to cram the bill with favors for his clients. (Both Abramoff and a primary author of HAVA, former Rep. Bob Ney, were imprisoned for their role in the conspiracy.) In practice, many of the "reforms" created by HAVA have actually made it harder for citizens to cast a ballot and have their vote counted. In case after case, Republican election officials at the local and state level have used the rules to give GOP candidates an edge on Election Day by creating new barriers to registration, purging legitimate names from voter rolls, challenging voters at the polls and discarding valid ballots.
To justify this battery of new voting impediments, Republicans cite an alleged upsurge in voting fraud. Indeed, the U.S.-attorney scandal that resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales began when the White House fired federal prosecutors who resisted political pressure to drum up nonexistent cases of voting fraud against Democrats. "They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments that would scare these alleged hordes of illegal voters away," says David Iglesias, a U.S. attorney for New Mexico who was fired in December 2006. "We took over 100 complaints and investigated for almost two years — but I didn't find one prosecutable case of voter fraud in the entire state of New Mexico."
There's a reason Iglesias couldn't find any evidence of fraud: Individual voters almost never try to cast illegal ballots. The Bush administration's main point person on "ballot protection" has been Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department attorney who has advised states on how to use HAVA to erect more barriers to voting. Appointed to the Federal Election Commission by Bush, von Spakovsky has suggested that voter rolls may be stuffed with 5 million illegal aliens. In fact, studies have repeatedly shown that voter fraud is extremely rare. According to a recent analysis by Lorraine Minnite, an expert on voting crime at Barnard College, federal courts found only 24 voters guilty of fraud from 2002 to 2005, out of hundreds of millions of votes cast. "The claim of widespread voter fraud," Minnite says, "is itself a fraud."
Allegations of voter fraud are only the latest rationale the GOP has used to disenfranchise voters — especially blacks, Hispanics and others who traditionally support Democrats. "The Republicans have a long history of erecting barriers to discourage Americans from voting," says Donna Brazile, chair of the Voting Rights Institute for the Democratic National Committee. "Now they're trying to spook Americans with the ghost of voter fraud. It's very effective — but it's ironic that the only way they maintain power is by using fear to deprive Americans of their constitutional right to vote." The recently enacted barriers thrown up to deter voters include:
Since 2004, the Bush administration and more than a dozen states have taken steps to impede voter registration. Among the worst offenders is Florida, where the Republican-dominated legislature created hefty fines — up to $5,000 per violation — for groups that fail to meet deadlines for turning in voter-application forms. Facing potentially huge penalties for trivial administrative errors, the League of Women Voters abandoned its voter-registration drives in Florida. A court order eventually forced the legislature to reduce the maximum penalty to $1,000. But even so, said former League president Dianne Wheatley-Giliotti, the reduced fines "create an unfair tax on democracy." The state has also failed to uphold a federal law requiring that low-income voters be offered an opportunity to register when they apply for food stamps or other public assistance. As a result, the annual number of such registrations has plummeted from more than 120,000 in the Clinton years to barely 10,000 today.
Under the Help America Vote Act, some states now reject first-time registrants whose data does not correspond to information in other government databases. Spurred by HAVA, almost every state must now attempt to make some kind of match — and four states, including the swing states of Iowa and Florida, require what is known as a "perfect match." Under this rigid framework, new registrants can lose the right to vote if the information on their voter-registration forms — Social Security number, street address and precisely spelled name, right down to a hyphen — fails to exactly match data listed in other government records.
There are many legitimate reasons, of course, why a voter's information might vary. Indeed, a recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that as many as 20 percent of discrepancies between voter records and driver's licenses in New York City are simply typing mistakes made by government clerks when they transcribe data. But under the new rules, those mistakes are costing citizens the right to vote. In California, a Republican secretary of state blocked 43 percent of all new voters in Los Angeles from registering in early 2006 — many because of the state's failure to produce a tight match. In Florida, GOP officials created "match" rules that rejected more than 15,000 new registrants in 2006 and 2007 — nearly three-fourths of them Hispanic and black voters. Given the big registration drives this year, the number could be five times higher by November.
The Help America Vote Act doesn't just disenfranchise new registrants; it also targets veteran voters. In the past, bipartisan county election boards maintained voter records. But HAVA requires that records be centralized, computerized and maintained by secretaries of state — partisan officials — who are empowered to purge the rolls of any voter they deem ineligible. Ironically, the new rules imitate the centralized system in Florida — the same corrupt operation that inspired passage of HAVA in the first place. Prior to the 2000 election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and her predecessor, both Republicans, tried to purge 57,000 voters, most of them African-Americans, because their names resembled those of persons convicted of a crime. The state eventually acknowledged that the purges were improper — two years after the election.
Rather than end Florida-style purges, however, HAVA has nationalized them. Maez, the elections supervisor in New Mexico, says he was the victim of faulty list management by a private contractor hired by the state. Hector Balderas, the state auditor, was also purged from the voter list. The nation's youngest elected Hispanic official, Balderas hails from Mora County, one of the poorest in the state, which had the highest rate of voters forced to cast provisional ballots. "As a strategic consideration," he notes, "there are those that benefit from chaos" at the ballot box.
All told, states reported scrubbing at least 10 million voters from their rolls on questionable grounds between 2004 and 2006. Colorado holds the record: Donetta Davidson, the Republican secretary of state, and her GOP successor oversaw the elimination of nearly one of every six of their state's voters. Bush has since appointed Davidson to the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency created by HAVA, which provides guidance to the states on "list maintenance" methods.
Even if voters run the gauntlet of the new registration laws, they can still be blocked at the polling station. In an incident last May, an election official in Indiana denied ballots to 10 nuns seeking to vote in the Democratic primary because their driver's licenses or passports had expired. Even though Indiana has never recorded a single case of voter-ID fraud, it is one of two dozen states that have enacted stringent new voter-ID statutes.
On its face, the requirement to show a government-issued ID doesn't seem unreasonable. "I want to cash a check to pay for my groceries, I've got to show a little bit of ID," Karl Rove told the Republican National Lawyers Association in 2006. But many Americans lack easy access to official identification. According to a recent study for the Election Law Journal, young people, senior citizens and minorities — groups that traditionally vote Democratic — often have no driver's licenses or state ID cards. According to the study, one in 10 likely white voters do not possess the necessary identification. For African-Americans, the number lacking such ID is twice as high.
Even intrepid voters who manage to cast a ballot may still find their vote discounted. In 2004, election officials discarded at least 1 million votes nationwide after classifying them as "spoiled" because blank spaces, stray marks or tears made them indecipherable to voting machines. The losses hit hardest among minorities in low-income precincts, who are often forced to vote on antiquated machines. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in its investigation of the 2000 returns from Florida, found that African-Americans were nearly 10 times more likely than whites to have their ballots rejected, a ratio that holds nationwide.
Proponents of HAVA claimed the law would correct the spoilage problem by promoting computerized balloting. Yet touch-screen systems have proved highly unreliable — especially in minority and low-income precincts. A statistical analysis of New Mexico ballots by a voting-rights group called VotersUnite found that Hispanics who voted by computer in 2004 were nearly five times more likely to have their votes unrecorded than those who used paper ballots. In a close election, such small discrepancies can make a big difference: In 2004, the number of spoiled ballots in New Mexico — 19,000 — was three times George Bush's margin of victory.
In 2004, an estimated 3 million voters who showed up at the polls were refused regular ballots because their registration was challenged on a technicality. Instead, these voters were handed "provisional" ballots, a fail-safe measure mandated by HAVA to enable officials to review disputed votes. But for many officials, resolving disputes means tossing ballots in the trash. In 2004, a third of all provisional ballots — as many as 1 million votes — were simply thrown away at the discretion of election officials.
Many voters are given provisional ballots under an insidious tactic known as "vote caging," which uses targeted mailings to disenfranchise black voters whose addresses have changed. In 2004, despite a federal consent order forbidding Republicans from engaging in the practice, the GOP sent out tens of thousands of letters to "confirm" the addresses of voters in minority precincts. If a letter was returned for any reason — because the voter was away at school or serving in the military — the GOP challenged the voter for giving a false address. One caging operation was exposed when an RNC official mistakenly sent the list to a parody site called GeorgeWBush.org — instead of to the official campaign site GeorgeWBush.com.
In the century following the Civil War, millions of black Americans in the Deep South lost their constitutional right to vote, thanks to literacy tests, poll taxes and other Jim Crow restrictions imposed by white officials. Add up all the modern-day barriers to voting erected since the 2004 election — the new registrations thrown out, the existing registrations scrubbed, the spoiled ballots, the provisional ballots that were never counted — and what you have is millions of voters, more than enough to swing the presidential election, quietly being detached from the electorate by subterfuge.
"Jim Crow was laid to rest, but his cousins were not," says Donna Brazile. "We got rid of poll taxes and literacy tests but now have a second generation of schemes to deny our citizens their franchise." Come November, the most crucial demographic may prove to be Americans who have been denied the right to vote. If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat John McCain at the polls — they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering.
Contributing editor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of the nation's leading voting-rights advocates. His article "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" [RS 1002] sparked widespread scrutiny of vote tampering. Greg Palast, who broke the story on Florida's illegal voter purges in the 2000 election, is the author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." For more information, visit No Voter Left Behind and Steal Back Your Vote.
A horrified America watched John McCain stagger up from his debate chair last night and turn into a monster. He almost caught our Barack Obama! What was happening? Clearly, the special anti-monster juice McCain drinks before public appearances was starting to wear off. They got him in the titanium-lined SWAT van just before he fully transformed. But fully transformed into what?
HORRIBLE MEDIEVAL WEREWOLF: This would actually explain a lot, including, probably, why McCain is always talking about medieval Ireland, when he was a boy, before he was bitten by a werewolf, which put a terrible end to his happy carefree days of being a Celtic warrior who always crashed his horse into the enemy’s village.
HORRIBLE CHILD-EATING DEATH CLOWN: No wonder McCain’s handlers try to get him away from those debate audiences so quick! He was just moments away from turning into this evil-ass thing, the New Hampshire Primary Murder Clown, Rich Uncle Pennywise! Imagine being stuck on Secret Service duty with this campaign. Imagine having to bury the bodies every night.
EVIL GORGON MEDUSA: Walnuts has always roamed the Earth, in his various guises, but by night, he shows his true death’s head, the GORGONEION from Hades, where he spent Five and a Half Million Years. (This is also the face he makes when he has sexytime! Your tax dollars pay for his Viagra!)
DISGUSTING CLASSIC-ROCK GIMMICK CAR: There is nothing more hideous than 700-year-old arena rocker Gene Simmons, so it stands to reason that John McCain is the demon father of the KISS monster. Legend says shitty ‘71 Volkswagen Beetles with home paint jobs and huge styrofoam monster skulls/tongues were frequently on the scene before the Crusaders lost Jerusalem to the Arabs led by Bill Ayers the Terrorist Muslin.
EVIL SILENT-MOVIE GERMAN VAMPIRE: And now, a quote from Bram Stoker’s Dracula: “As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me… a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal. When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demonaic fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat.”
Yes, that sounds about right.
THE BEAST: But our demonic experts here on the Wonkette staff finally concluded McCain was turning into this hell-beast of yore, as seen here in a 16th Century woodcut. These demonic shit-monsters once roamed the Eastern Seaboard, until they were captured by Benedict Arnold in 1776 and taught Naval Command skills at Annapolis. The creatures spawn a single fetus from the “egg duct” every hundred years; the fourth spawn of the cycle is always a crazy, self-obsessed idiot who has no military skillz.
So now the sky is falling? So now we are in Crisis? What happened to "fundamentally sound"? It is so obvious that McCain is grandstanding for reasons of political expediance, while all the while trying to frame himself as above the fray. I'm sorry to tell you this Johnny, but everyone knows that you are trying to call a time out because you are dropping in the polls like a turd swirling down the toilet. What a cowardly move; ducking out of the debate and using a national crisis for cover. And now they are talking about "delaying" the VP debate. They can hear Palin heaving a sigh of relief all the way in Russia! (cuz she lives in Alaska) I honestly dont think our country can survive another 4-8 years of this these reptilian bastards who will twist, and shape-shift, and manipulate the American people in their never ending quest for absolute power. Country First my ass
September 25, 2008McCain camp to propose postponing VP debatePosted: 10:44 AM ETFrom CNN Correspondent Dana Bash
(CNN) — McCain supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham tells CNN the McCain campaign is proposing to the Presidential Debate Commission and the Obama camp that if there's no bailout deal by Friday, the first presidential debate should take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday, October 2 in St. Louis.
In this scenario, the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would be rescheduled for a date yet to be determined, and take place in Oxford, Mississippi, currently slated to be the site of the first presidential faceoff this Friday.
Graham says the McCain camp is well aware of the position of the Obama campaign and the debate commission that the debate should go on as planned — but both he and another senior McCain adviser insist the Republican nominee will not go to the debate Friday if there's no deal on the bailout.
When the chat on The View turned to Palin’s record on earmarks McCain got it wrong:
Barbara Walters: She also took some earmark spending.Joy Behar: A lot.McCain: Well, not as governor she didn’t.
McCain’s wrong here. It’s true she scaled back the state’s federal spending requests within the last two years. But she didn’t eliminate them. She sent a letter on her gubernatorial stationery with $197 million in earmark requests, directly contradicting McCain’s statement. Palin writes:
Palin:In preparing these requests, the State has been mindful of congressional concerned about budget deficits and earmarks. Accordingly, the total number of requests has been reduced significantly from previous years. Approximately two-thirds of the requests involve programs that have been funded previously.
It’s clear Palin knew the gravy train was slowing (in large part because McCain was applying the brakes), but that didn’t stop her from sending the nearly $200 million request (nearly $30 per Alaskan, according to the 2006 Census Bureau population estimates). And we’ve already reported that Palin’s history with earmarks dates back to her time as mayor of Wasilla.
McCain would have been on more solid ground if he were informing his View-ership of his own earmark-busting record. The Arizona senator’s requests have amounted to a big, fat zero. But Palin’s still asking for pork by the barrel, even if the barrels have been downsized.
Posted under FactCheck.org, John McCain, Presidential Election 2008, Sarah Palin
McCain: His plan will force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a government run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor.
McCain: My health care plan will make it easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance.
McCain: [I]nstead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties and Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies.
McCain: We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much.
McCain: We will attack the problem on every front. ...We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas. We will encourage the development and use of flex fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles.
McCain: Reducing government spending and getting rid of failed programs will let you keep more of your own money to save, spend and invest as you see fit.
Obama, Feb. 26: I will make sure that we renegotiate. … I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced.
McCain: We must use all resources and develop all technologies necessary to rescue our economy from the damage caused by rising oil prices and restore the health of our planet.
Palin, Sept. 3: What does he actually seek to accomplish after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet?
SB 99: However, no pupil shall be required to take or participate in any family life class or course on HIV AIDS or family life instruction if his parent or guardian submits written objection thereto, and refusal to take or participate in such course or program shall not be reason for suspension or expulsion of such pupil.
SB99: Course material and instruction shall discuss and providefor the development of positive communication skills to maintain healthy relationships and avoid unwanted sexual activity. ... Course material and instruction shall teach pupils ... how to say no to unwanted sexual advances ... and shall include information about verbal, physical, and visual sexual harassment, including without limitation nonconsensual sexual advances, nonconsensual physical sexual contact, and rape by an acquaintance. The course material and instruction shall contain methods of preventing sexual assault by an acquaintance, including exercising good judgment and avoiding behavior that impairs one's judgment.
Keyes, Oct. 21, 2004: Well, I had noticed that, in your voting, you had voted, at one point, that sex education should begin in kindergarten, and you justified it by saying that it would be "age-appropriate" sex education. [It] made me wonder just exactly what you think is "age-appropriate." Obama: We have a existing law that mandates sex education in the schools. We want to make sure that it's medically accurate and age-appropriate. Now, I'll give you an example, because I have a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old daughter, and one of the things my wife and I talked to our daughter about is the possibility of somebody touching them inappropriately, and what that might mean. And that was included specifically in the law, so that kindergarteners are able to exercise some possible protection against abuse, because I have family members as well as friends who suffered abuse at that age. So, that's the kind of stuff that I was talking about in that piece of legislation.
Davidson (via Education Week): I don’t think [McCain] has a strong track record of putting education at the top of his priorities.
Chapman: ... the ad itself doesn't bother explaining how the candidates differ on school vouchers, the subject of my column. Instead, it insults our intelligence by expecting us to believe that Obama thinks kindergarteners should be taught how to use condoms before they're taught to read. Right. And Joe Biden eats puppies for breakfast.
Palin: Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy, that I worked on as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, overseeing the oil and gas development in our state to produce more for the United States.
McCain: Well, I think Americans are going to be very, very, very pleased. This is a very dynamic person. [Palin's] been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply.
Alaska Resource Development Council: Alaska's oil and gas industry has produced more than 16 billion barrels of oil and 6 billion cubic feet of natural gas, accounting for an average of 20 percent of the entire nation's domestic production.
America laughed again last night as a terrible “green screen” once again appeared behind John McCain, during his big speech at the RNC. Well, the “green” was actually the lawn of a school in North Hollywood, California. And the school is called “Walter Reed Middle School.” And the random idiot assigned the task of picking John McCain’s video background during the biggest speech of his career was apparently told to put a picture of Walter Reed Army Medical Center on the screen, and ineptly googled this utterly random California school picture, instead. And nobody knows what Walter Reed Hospital looks like, anyways, so everybody just assumed it was another one of his mansions. The school is about to release “a statement” damning McCain for inappropriately using the picture of this innocent school. All of this, as Josh Marshall notes, is exactly what happened in the movie Spinal Tap. [Talking Points Memo]
From Wonkette's Sarah K. Smith
"Look George!" said Johnny with the excitement of a young curious child making a new discovery, "all of the poor people look like ants from way up here!" George chuckled knowingly and proceeded to tell little Johnny about the time the poor little ants were in a wild frenzy after the mean ol nasty hurricane flooded their pathetic hovels. "Wow" exclaimed Johnny, smiling like an over ripe jack-o-lantern, "I cant wait to be king of the ants."
So McSame and his buddy George feel that the economy is fundamentally sound....Bullshit. An oil man and the beneficiary of his wife's beer inheritance know the economy is anything but sound. But if you were cusioned from the economic meat hooks and biting economic reality that 99% of Americans are facing, you might have the old "good enough for government work" attitude too. Besides, without extreme social and economic stratification who will these despondent crusty rich old white guys hire to do all of their yucky yard work, laundry, cooking, ass wiping, ect.
From Wonkette:
Here are the current Top Headlines at Bloomberg:
Can you say "Out of Touch"...I knew ya could
Happy days are here again...or.....brother can you spare a dime?
It has happened once before. Poor vetting and sensationalized stories of mental illness and drunk driving caused McGovern to jettison poor old Eagleton from the ticket. Perhaps Palin will suffer the same fate....
From Wikipedia:
Thomas Francis Eagleton was a United States Senator from Missouri, serving from 1968–1987. He is best remembered for briefly being a Democratic Vice Presidential nominee sharing the ticket under George McGovern in 1972.
Selection as vice presidential candidate
In 1972, Richard Nixon appeared unbeatable. When Senator George McGovern won the Democratic nomination for President, virtually all of the high-profile Democrats, including Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie and Birch Bayh turned down offers to run on the ticket.
Having been declined by the "name" Senators, McGovern turned to lesser-known candidates, and Eagleton, who had opposed the Vietnam War, was selected on July 14 with only a minimal background check. Eagleton made no mention of his earlier hospitalizations. Newspapers soon revealed them. McGovern and Eagleton initially joked about the case with Eagleton saying he would undergo a psychiatric examination if other candidates (e.g., Nixon) would do the same. But the charges kept coming. Columnist Jack Anderson wrote a column falsely accusing Eagleton of being arrested for drunk driving — a charge that Anderson had to retract.
Replacement on the ticket
McGovern said he would back Eagleton “1000%”, but on August 1, Eagleton withdrew at McGovern's request and, after a new search by McGovern, was replaced by Kennedy in-law Sargent Shriver.
A Time magazine poll taken at the time found that 77 percent of the respondents said "Eagleton's medical record would not affect their vote." Nonetheless, the press made frequent references to his 'shock therapy', and McGovern feared that this would detract from his campaign platform.[3]
McGovern's handling of the controversy was an opening for the Republican campaign to raise serious questions about his judgment. In the general election, the Democratic ticket won only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
From MSNBC:
NEVADA: Per state political guru Jon Ralston, Democrats now have a 76,000-voter registration edge in Nevada, 565,855 Democrats to 489,802. Ralston asks, “Think John McCain should worry yet?”
Nevada is within our reach!!! Time to phonebank and canvass!!
This is too easy. Me thinks McCain's penchant for former beauty queens has clouded what little sense of judgement he may have had left in his convoluted brain. Any random Googler could have done a better job of vetting than McCain's people....Sheesh!!!!
From andrewhalcro.com:
Andrew Halcro is an American politician from Anchorage, Alaska. Formerly a Republican member of the Alaska Legislature, he ran for Governor of Alaska as an Independent candidate in the 2006 election.
One of these days Governor Sarah Palin will realize that the folks back home can actually hear what she says on the road while representing Alaska. One day she will; but it certainly wasn't yesterday.
According to June Kronholz who writes for the Washington Wire, a Wall Street Journal blog covering politics, at Monday's National Governor's Association meeting, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell was addressing the group as the incoming head of the organization.
Rendell stated that his priority for his coming term would be to push for a larger investment in public infrastructure from congress. He decried the nations $1.6 trillion infrastructure deficit. However Rendell said that there would be difficulties convincing voters of the need for such investments.
Kronholz writes, "A problem for big plans like that, he added, is that such basic-needs spending is out of favor with voters. And the reason for that? “The Bridge to Nowhere,” he said, citing a pet project championed by Alaska’s Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young that was derailed following an outburst of public anger over the cost. Infrastructure “has become just a pork-barrel process in voters’ eyes,” he said."
Kronholz then wrote, "Alaska’s Gov. Sarah Palin—like Stevens, a Republican—rushed over to Rendell afterwards to remind him that she had vetoed construction of the bridge."
Let's pause and listen to that again: "Alaska's Gov. Sarah Palin rushed over to Rendell afterwards to remind him that she had vetoed construction of the bridge."
According to the Ketchikan Daily News edition on August 8, 2006, this is what Sarah Palin rushed over to tell the voters of Ketchikan during the primary election campaign:
'People across the nation struggle with the idea of building a bridge because they’ve been under these misperceptions about the bridge and the purpose,' said Palin, who described the link as the Ketchikan area’s potential for expansion and growth.
Palin said Alaska’s congressional delegation worked hard to obtain funding for the bridge as part of a package deal and that she 'would not stand in the way of the progress toward that bridge.'”
And according to the Ketchikan Daily News on September 29, 2006 this is what Sarah Palin rushed over to tell the voters of Ketchikan during the general election campaign:
'Part of my agenda is making sure that Southeast is heard. That your projects are important. That we go to bat for Southeast when we’re up against federal influences that aren’t in the best interest of Southeast.'
She cited the widespread negative attention focused on the Gravina Island crossing project. 'We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative,' Palin said.
But yet Palin, rushed over to placate Rendell who just got finished doing exactly what she said she'd defend Alaskans against.
It shouldn't surprise anyone.
Governor Sarah Palin, a CEO who couldn't bother to rush over to meet with head of the Mat Maid Dairy when things went sour, instead choosing to wave signs with angry farmers in front of television cameras.
Governor Sarah Palin, a CEO who couldn't bother to rush over to tell her Commissioner of Public Safety that she was replacing him, instead sending an acting staffer to do her dirty work.
Governor Sarah Palin, a CEO who couldn't bother to rush over to tell Ketchikan community leaders as well as the congressional delegation she planned to veto the funding for the Ketchikan bridge, instead sending out a 5:30am press release so it would hit the east coast news cycle.
But yet she rushed over to tell the Governor of Pennsylvania that she wasn't to blame for the negative publicity surrounding the same bridge she promised to fight for during her campaign.
One governor, two faces. What a bargain.
Lyda Green, Republican member of the Alaska Senate and Alaskan Senate President had an interesting reation to the news of Palin as VP:
"She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"
From Politico.com :
State House Speaker John Harris, a Republican from Valdez, was astonished at the news. He didn't want to get into the issue of her qualifications.
"She's old enough," Harris said. "She's a U.S. citizen."
Former House Speaker Gail Phillips, a Republican political leader who has clashed with Palin in the past, was shocked when she heard the news Friday morning with her husband, Walt.
"I said to Walt, 'This can't be happening, because his advance team didn't come to Alaska to check her out," Phillips said.
Phillips has been active in the Ted Stevens re-election steering committee and remains in close touch with Sen. Lisa Murkowski and other party leaders, and she said nobody had heard anything about McCain's people doing research on his prospective running mate.
"We're not a very big state. People I talk to would have heard something."
Few wanted to talk about anything else on talk radio Friday. Conservative host Rick Rydell said there are some benefits to the state, but it's a gamble for McCain to pick an unknown with what he considered "questionable vetting."
"It seems almost like a Hail Mary pass at the end of a football game," Rydell said in an interview after his show Friday.
Rydell said McCain has destroyed his argument about Barack Obama's lack of experience.
From http://wonkette.com/
As you know, the worst mayor ever of anything, Rudy Giuliani, will deliver the keynote address at his party’s convention. Rudy Giuliani is a fucking stupid rat-demon whose pathetic 5th place campaign couldn’t even make it past January after 12 months of exploiting, for political purposes, the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians whose safety he, as mayor of the attacked city, was supposed to protect. He really is the most appropriate symbol for the Republican convention that follows eight years of George W. Bush, although probably not for the same reasons that the speaker selection committee chose him. Anyway he had a conference call today and just completely bombed on it, because he’s fucking stupid.
First he ran his mouth for a while about how John McCain could pick a pro-choice vice president — not supposed to talk about that to the reporters, sport — saying, among other things, “If that person happens to be, among other things, pro-choice, the party will support that.” O rly?
Dungeons & Dragons nerd Michael Goldfarb had to hastily change the subject.
Earlier, this hilarious exchange went down:
Before that, Ron Kampeas, a reporter from the Jewish news outlet J.T.A., essentially accused the McCain campaign of hypocrisy for criticizing Kurtzer for meeting with the Syrians because Giuliani, he said, has represented the company Citgo, which is owned by the Venezuelan government. He also noted that Giuliani’s firm once represented Saudi Arabian interests.“Actually I don’t have any representations with the Saudis, that’s incorrect,” said Giuliani. “And I never represented Citgo in negotiations with the Chavez government. So, both of those are factually inaccurate.”Kampeas said, “Bloomberg reported that your law firm lobbied for Huge Chavez at Citgo — is that not correct?”“It is not correct that I had negotiations with Chavez’s government,” said Giuliani. “It is correct that my law firm for many, many years — it doesn’t any longer — represented Citgo, an American corporation. But it had nothing to do with Chavez.”“And you never represented Saudi Arabia’s oil ministry in a Texas court case?” Kampeas asked.“I never represented Saudi Arabia,” Giuliani said. “I’ve never been to Saudi Arabia.”Moments later Kampeas’s line went dead.
Before that, Ron Kampeas, a reporter from the Jewish news outlet J.T.A., essentially accused the McCain campaign of hypocrisy for criticizing Kurtzer for meeting with the Syrians because Giuliani, he said, has represented the company Citgo, which is owned by the Venezuelan government. He also noted that Giuliani’s firm once represented Saudi Arabian interests.
“Actually I don’t have any representations with the Saudis, that’s incorrect,” said Giuliani. “And I never represented Citgo in negotiations with the Chavez government. So, both of those are factually inaccurate.”
Kampeas said, “Bloomberg reported that your law firm lobbied for Huge Chavez at Citgo — is that not correct?”
“It is not correct that I had negotiations with Chavez’s government,” said Giuliani. “It is correct that my law firm for many, many years — it doesn’t any longer — represented Citgo, an American corporation. But it had nothing to do with Chavez.”
“And you never represented Saudi Arabia’s oil ministry in a Texas court case?” Kampeas asked.
“I never represented Saudi Arabia,” Giuliani said. “I’ve never been to Saudi Arabia.”
Moments later Kampeas’s line went dead.
“I’ve never been to Saudi Arabia,” the fuckshit declares.
May we also note that our beloved Doctor Congressman Ron Paul won 35 pledged delegates in the Republican primary contests this year but was still denied any sort of speaking role at the convention, which is what led him to plan his rival Paultard Convention. Rudy Giuliani won ZERO delegates, because he’s fucking stupid and awful, but has somehow been granted the Keynote Address. They should both be banned to Outer Space.
Giuliani’s Maiden Keynote Conference Call Goes Off the Rails [New York Observer]
Oh ho ho: “According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain, and the fiercely anti-war Ron Paul, though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago, has received more than four times McCain’s haul.” Wow. Barack Obama hates American troops so much that he takes all of their money! [OpenSecrets via AMERICAblog]
The failure of the Federal Government over the last 30 years to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is breaking the back of our local schools and districts accross the country. It is also creating a situation in which children are denied the free and appropriate public education which Brown v the Board of education mandates, and creates defacto segregation as children with special needs are denied educational mainstream access with their peers. As a social worker and parent of a child who recieves special education services, I have a unique perspective into how this issue is hurting families and curtailing the future of millions of children with special needs.
The following information is taken from the National Education Association's website:
In 1975, our country took a major step forward in promoting the inclusion and equality of one of our most disenfranchised groups of citizens. Passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), assured that all children with disabilities receive a free, appropriate public education. Over six million children with disabilities are no longer limited by their families' ability to afford private education; they are no longer forced to attend costly state institutions, or worse, stay home and miss out entirely on the benefits of an education. IDEA ensures that children with disabilities may attend public schools alongside their peers. There is no question about it: students, schools and communities are enriched when all children have a right to a free, appropriate public education.Despite all that has been accomplished on behalf of children with disabilities, much more remains to be done. In the near 30 year history of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal contribution has always fallen far short of the congressional commitment to fully fund IDEA. Local and state budgets have been forced to absorb the shortfall. In the last several years Congress has made significant progress, but IDEA appropriations still need a 139 percent increase before IDEA is fully funded. After 30 years, the magnitude of that shortfall demands a new approach. It is time to make special education funding mandatory and deliver on a long overdue promise.
National Education Association
Charlie Bucket has won a community credential to Invesco Stadium to see Obama's acceptace speech!!!
Check out the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdBGYfzYWLo
Si Se Puede!!!
Monte
God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own creative genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit, and Eternity our measurement. There is no height to which we cannot climb by using the active intelligence of our own minds. Mind creates, and as much as we desire in Nature we can have through the creation of our own minds.
Government left to the free and wanton will and caprice of the individual in an age so corrupt as this, without any vital reprimand or punishment for malfeasance, other than ordinary imprisonment, will continue to produce dissatisfaction, cause counter agitations of a dangerous nature and upheavals destructive to the good of society and baneful to the-higher hopes and desires of the human race.
For those who have abused their trust, images of them should be made and placed in a national hall of criminology and ill fame, and their crimes should be recited and a curse pronounced upon them and their generations.
Marcus Garvey, 1920
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/timeline/index.html
