JB's Blog

Obama Team Had No Inappropriate Contact with Blago

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:55:16 EST

Obama Team Statement on Internal Blago Investigation

Below is a statement from Obama Transition Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer

"At the direction of the President-elect, a review of Transition staff contacts with Governor Blagojevich and his office has been conducted and completed and is ready for release. That review affirmed the public statements of the President-elect that he had no contact with the governor or his staff, and that the President-elect's staff was not involved in inappropriate discussions with the governor or his staff over the selection of his successor as US Senator.

"Also at the President-elect's direction, Gregory Craig, counsel to the Transition, has kept the US Attorney's office informed of this fact-gathering process in order to ensure our full cooperation with the investigation.
"In the course of those discussions, the US Attorney's office requested the public release of the Transition review be deferred until the week of December 22, in order not to impede their investigation of the governor. The Transition has agreed to this revised timetable for release," said Obama Transition Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer.

There is a US Auto Industry that Works

Czarina JB in Arizona — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:57:16 EST

Story Highlights

Fareed Zakaria: Only part of the U.S. auto industry is asking for a bailout
International car companies in the U.S. aren't asking for a bailout, he says
Zakaria says the best reason for a bailout is it will keep jobs in place for now

Editor's note: Fareed Zakaria is a foreign affairs analyst who hosts "Fareed Zakaria: GPS" on CNN at 1 p.m. ET Sundays.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The future of the U.S. auto industry was in doubt Friday after a proposal for $14 billion in federal loans died in a late-night Senate vote.

The Senate voted 52-35 to bring the measure up for a vote -- short of the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation. The failure followed the collapse of negotiations between Senate Democrats and Republicans seeking a compromise that all parties, including the auto companies and the United Auto Workers union, could accept.

The dramatic late-night developments could doom General Motors to bankruptcy and closure in the coming weeks, with Chrysler LLC potentially following close behind.

While Ford Motor has more cash on hand to avoid an immediate crisis, its production could be disrupted by problems in the supplier base, as could the production of overseas automakers with U.S. plants, such as Toyota Motor and Honda Motor.

CNN spoke to world affairs expert and author Fareed Zakaria about a potential bailout.

CNN: Is a bailout of the U.S. automotive industry necessary?

Zakaria: There are really two different U.S. auto industries. And only one part of it would have qualified for the bailout that was just rejected by the U.S. Senate -- the inefficient part that is headquartered in Detroit. There is another auto industry in the United States and it is healthy. While it is obviously going through tough times because of the economic crisis, it has not gone begging to Washington for taxpayer help.

CNN: But aren't the Big Three the drivers of the American auto industry? (No pun intended.)

Zakaria: Actually there are 12 international car companies that have manufacturing operations in the United States. Collectively, they employ 113,000 Americans directly -- even though that is less than the 239,000 at Ford, GM and Chrysler. However, those international car companies sell more cars than the Big Three and their customers love their products. They have millions of American shareholders. They do sophisticated work like research, design and marketing in the United States. All in all, they add jobs and high value to the United States.

CNN: So what are they doing better than the U.S. car companies?

Zakaria: It is simple -- better management. Yes, Detroit has problems because of its legacy costs, the cost of paying health care and pensions to its retirees. But many other Americans firms in other industries have had to change their benefit systems or die. Detroit always managed to avoid making the change in part because of government assistance.

But companies like Toyota, Honda, and BMW are not just skilled at cutting costs -- they make better cars. They have more flexible factories and production systems, and understand what American consumers want.

For example, Toyota and Honda are years ahead of American carmakers in designing and producing hybrid cars, and as consumer demand moves in that direction, they will reap the rewards.

Al Gore remarked on the problem on our show a few weeks back. "It's really tragic that General Motors, for example, allowed Toyota to get a seven-year head start on the hybrid drive train in the Prius that is now positioned to really be a dominant feature of the industry in this century."

CNN: But aren't the Big Three saying they will restructure to compete with their foreign competitors?

Zakaria: Yes, as in the past, now that the heat is on, Detroit has been promising to change its ways -- as long as it gets cash. But many people are skeptical and think of it as just a jobs program.

CNN: So you are against the bailout?

No. But the reasons the CEOs of Ford, GM and Chrysler present -- that they will restructure, they are still competitive, they will change -- are bogus; they won't. The best argument for the bailout is that it is the most cost-effective jobs program that the government can run in the short term.

Spending on infrastructure to create jobs will take months, maybe years. However, keeping the Big Three afloat will keep hundreds of thousands of jobs in place quickly and easily. It's true the companies will eventually go bankrupt but by then hopefully the economy can withstand it.

Surprise: Japanese Korean Carmakers Want a Detroit Bailout

Czarina JB in Arizona — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:45:57 EST

For Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai, a collapse of GM, Ford, or Chrysler would create more problems than opportunities

By Ian Rowley and Moon Ihlwan

Considering the home states of some of the Republican Senators opposed to a $25 billion bailout of Detroit, a cynic might concede that they are doing Asian automakers' work for them. After all, Republicans who have criticized the planned aid package for (GM), Ford (F) and Chrysler include those from states where Japanese and Korean automakers have factories. For instance, Republican Senators Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions represent Alabama, home to Honda (HMC), Toyota (TM), and Hyundai plants. John Cornyn represents Texas, which has a 200,000-capacity Toyota Tundra plant in San Antonio. And Bob Corker, who is "very skeptical" of the package, is a GOP Senator from Tennessee, which has two Nissan (NSANY) plants—in Smyrna and Dechard—and the company's U.S. headquarters in Nashville.

Yet the senators opposing a bailout bill also may be in disagreement with those same Japanese and Korean automakers. For Asia's leading automakers, the prospect of one or all of the Big Three failing is arguably of greater concern than rivals receiving government aid. Indeed, since executives worry the collapse of GM, Ford, or Chrysler would have a negative impact on car sales, hurt the financial health of suppliers, and trigger a possible backlash against import brands, the problems of Detroit are problems for foreign rivals, too.

While a bankruptcy filing would likely boost Asian sales and shares eventually, in the short term it could make matters worse for Toyota, Hyundai, and the others. One problem, notes Andrew Phillips, an analyst at KBC Securities in Tokyo, is that one or more U.S. carmakers entering into Chapter 11 would do little to cut excess capacity and probably worsen consumer confidence. "It's in the Japanese and Korean carmakers' interest for the U.S. economy to stabilize and, if bailing out the Big Three means that, they are not going to be opposed to it," he says.

In Their Interests to Help Detroit

With no bailout plan yet agreed upon, Japanese and Korean automakers are mostly avoiding commenting on what the U.S. authorities should be doing. For one thing, it might look as if they're crowing when rivals are in need of emergency surgery. Those who have spoken have offered qualified support for U.S. government aid for their struggling rivals. Among them, Nissan Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn and Honda CEO Takeo Fukui have indicated that they back bailouts in principle. Fukui, for instance, said on Nov. 6 that he isn't opposed to the U.S. government helping automakers as long as fair competition is maintained. The Honda boss, who would also like to see the Japanese government intervene to weaken the soaring yen, added that it's only natural for a government to support one of its country's key industries.

In Korea, a bailout is also garnering support. President Lee Myung Bak told reporters in Washington on Nov. 16 that a bailout was vital because of links between the U.S. auto industry and the Korean economy. "I'm in favor of the efforts to rescue the U.S. auto industry," Korean newspapers reported Lee as saying. Hyundai, Korea's biggest carmaker, also wishes Detroit well. "We recognize there may be extraordinary situations [which] may require unprecedented actions to assure [the auto industry's] long-term viability and a healthy American economy," says Hyundai spokesman Oles Gadacz.

Consumer Perceptions Matter

Of course, self-interest is the motivating factor. Despite market share in the U.S. of a combined 44% in October, Japanese and Korean automakers are hurting. Toyota, for instance, projects it will only make around $200 million during the second half of its financial year which ends in March and has formed an Emergency Profit Improvement Committee, led by President Katsuaki Watanabe, to search for new ways to trim costs (BusinessWeek.com, 11/6/08) and reevaluate the size and timing of new projects.

A Detroit bankruptcy might only make matters worse, if consumers perceive Asians' success as having unfairly contributed to the Big Three's decline. "A bankruptcy would have a tremendous impact on the U.S. economy and on demand for new cars," says Yasuhiro Matsumoto, an analyst at Shinsei Securities in Tokyo. "In no way should Japanese automakers let their U.S. counterparts fail."

A U.S. car market without one or all of the Big Three might not be as attractive as it first appears. In Japan, Japanese automakers account for well over 90% of sales, but that means they have to compete almost completely with some of the toughest rivals in the industry—each other. Profits are low, but competing with less efficient Big Three rivals may make it easier to eke out bigger earnings. "Japanese carmakers would be wise to help ensure the U.S. market doesn't become like the Japanese market," Matsumoto adds.

Plenty to Lose

Just as important are the close ties between Japanese and Korean automakers and their U.S. rivals. On Nov. 18, Ford sold 20% (BusinessWeek.com, 11/18/08) of Mazda (7261.T), reducing its stake to 13%, but the fortunes of the two automakers remain closely aligned. For example, Mazda and Ford share production at several plants and work closely together on new vehicle development. In particular, Mazda plays a large role in the development of Ford's passenger cars.

Similarly, Korea's Daewoo is responsible for GM's small-car output and would have plenty to lose if GM were to go under. South Korea is the home to GM's small-car design and production and GM Daewoo Auto and Technology made about a quarter of the 4 million cars built in Korea in 2007. "GM's collapse would not only be a disaster for the U.S. economy, but also a major blow to the Korean auto industry," says Kim Jun Kyu, research manager at Korea Automobile Manufacturers Assn. And hundreds of Korean parts makers depend on GM for their sales. "I have invested $16 million to make parts for GM Daewoo's new Gen3 engine, but now nobody knows when GM can introduce new vehicles in the face of the global economic meltdown," says Choi Bum Young, who also heads the association of 228 primary part suppliers of GM Daewoo.

While the linkup is less vital to their financial health, Toyota and GM share production at the New United Motor Manufacturing plant in Fremont, Calif. Meanwhile, Nissan and Chrysler have inked production agreements that will see Nissan make small cars for Chrysler. In return, Chrysler will supply pickups and vehicles to Nissan in North America.

Even Asian carmakers that don't have alliances, particularly Japanese players such as Honda, still share U.S. suppliers with the Detroit Three. Indeed, analysts say that the biggest short-term worry if GM fails is it will also damage suppliers. That would then have an impact on all their customers, says KBC Securities' Phillips. The ideal situation for Japanese automakers is to continue to take market share gradually from Detroit in a way that allows suppliers time to adjust and avoids a consumer backlash against import brands. From a Japanese carmaker's point of view, "It is better that the Big Three slowly wither away, but that scenario is looking increasingly difficult," says Phillips.

Obama's Effort on Ethics Bill Had Role in Governor's Fall

Czarina JB in Arizona — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:59:38 EST

December 10, 2008Obama’s Effort on Ethics Bill Had Role in Governor’s Fall By MIKE McINTIRE and JEFF ZELENYIn a sequence of events that neatly captures the contradictions of Barack Obama’s rise through Illinois politics, a phone call he made three months ago to urge passage of a state ethics bill indirectly contributed to the downfall of a fellow Democrat he twice supported, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich.Mr. Obama placed the call to his political mentor, Emil Jones Jr., president of the Illinois Senate. Mr. Jones was a critic of the legislation, which sought to curb the influence of money in politics, as was Mr. Blagojevich, who had vetoed it. But after the call from Mr. Obama, the Senate overrode the veto, prompting the governor to press state contractors for campaign contributions before the law’s restrictions could take effect on Jan. 1, prosecutors say.Tipped off to Mr. Blagojevich’s efforts, federal agents obtained wiretaps for his phones and eventually overheard what they say was scheming by the governor to profit from his appointment of a successor to the United States Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Obama. One official whose name has long been mentioned in Chicago political circles as a potential successor is Mr. Jones, a machine politician who was viewed as a roadblock to ethics reform but is friendly with Mr. Obama.Beyond the irony of its outcome, Mr. Obama’s unusual decision to inject himself into a statewide issue during the height of his presidential campaign was a reminder that despite his historic ascendancy to the White House, he has never quite escaped the murky and insular world of Illinois politics. It is a world he has long navigated, to the consternation of his critics, by engaging in a kind of realpolitik, Chicago-style, which allowed him to draw strength from his relationships with important players without becoming compromised by their many weaknesses.By the time Mr. Obama intervened on the ethics measure, his relationship with Mr. Blagojevich, always defined more by political proximity than by personal chemistry, had cooled as the governor became increasingly engulfed in legal troubles. There is nothing in the criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday to indicate that Mr. Obama knew anything about plans to seek money and favors in exchange for his Senate seat; he has never been implicated in any other “pay to play” cases that have emerged from the long-running investigation of the Blagojevich administration.But like those previous cases, this latest one features political characters who figure in various stages of Mr. Obama’s climb from little-known state senator to presidential candidate, and who have since become politically radioactive because of corruption scandals. Some of those relationships posed a threat to Mr. Obama during the presidential campaign, forcing him to return tens of thousands of dollars in tainted campaign contributions and providing fodder for attack ads by rival candidates.Though extreme examples, they were emblematic of the path cut by Mr. Obama through Chicago politics, where he became known for making alliances of convenience with personalities that seemed antithetical to his self-image as a progressive reformer. His political roots were in the left-leaning neighborhood of Hyde Park, but at key moments in his career he did not hesitate to form relationships with politicians who were fixtures of the Democratic machine.When he ran for the United States Senate in 2004, he aggressively courted Mr. Jones, a sewer inspector turned legislator who had clawed his way up through ward politics and was viewed as something of a kingmaker in the Illinois Democratic Party. He also formed a good working relationship with Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago, a symbol of establishment politics with whom Mr. Obama had never been close.Mr. Obama was an adviser to Mr. Blagojevich’s first campaign for governor, in 2002, and endorsed him again in 2006, even though by that time questions had been raised about the possible selling of state jobs. Mr. Obama has also credited one of Mr. Blagojevich’s closest confidants, Antoin Rezko, a businessman who was convicted of corruption charges this year, with helping him get his own start in politics.Mr. Rezko was among the first to contribute to Mr. Obama’s earliest State Senate race, in 1995, and later became a major fund-raiser for his campaign for the United States Senate. Mr. Rezko was known around Chicago as a collector of politicians, and he did not hesitate to make the most of his high-level contacts. The New York Times reported last year that when he was entertaining Middle Eastern financiers at a Four Seasons hotel in Chicago, he arranged for Mr. Blagojevich and Mr. Obama to drop by, separately and on different occasions, to impress his guests.Mr. Rezko derived his political influence mainly from his close relationship with Mr. Blagojevich, who relied on him to recommend loyal campaign contributors for state appointments to boards and commissions, according to the complaint unsealed on Tuesday. But as Mr. Rezko’s legal troubles escalated, Illinois politicians who had previously found him useful, including Mr. Obama, disavowed him and started returning his campaign donations.Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Blagojevich was not much better when he made the decision to call Mr. Jones in September about the stalled ethics bill. For Mr. Obama, the move marked an unusual return to Illinois politics, turf from which he had studiously worked to distance himself throughout the presidential race. At the time, one week before the first presidential debate of the general election campaign, Republicans were trying to tarnish him in the eyes of voters by attempting to link him to Chicago’s history of corrupt politics.Mr. Obama used leverage that he had seldom employed — publicly, anyway — and strongly urged Mr. Jones to bypass Mr. Blagojevich and approve the ethics bill, banning the so-called pay-for-play system of influence peddling in Illinois. When asked at the time how Mr. Obama had come to be involved, Mr. Jones replied, “He’s a friend.”When the Illinois Senate passed the measure by 55 to 0 on Sept. 22, with Mr. Jones reversing his position, Mr. Obama praised the move as one creating “a tougher ethics law that will reduce the influence of money over our state’s political process.” Mr. Obama’s intervention deepened a rift between him and Mr. Blagojevich that had been growing for some time.When Mr. Blagojevich left Congress in 2002, he talked openly about the notion of running for president one day. After he was elected governor, and after Senator John Kerry lost the presidential race in 2004, he began eyeing a potential run in 2008.It was short-lived. The federal corruption investigation that eventually led to Mr. Rezko’s indictment, and Tuesday’s charges against Mr. Blagojevich, had already begun to taint the governor’s administration. And by 2006, Mr. Obama had eclipsed the governor as a plausible national candidate, dashing his presidential aspirations.The criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday underscored the acrimony between the two men. Recorded telephone calls showed Mr. Blagojevich being far less than respectful when discussing the president-elect and voicing frustration at his inability to advance beyond the governor’s office.“If I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself,” the governor said, according to the criminal complaint. Later, he said the Senate seat was a “valuable thing — you just don’t give it away for nothing.”Meanwhile, Mr. Blagojevich was busily trying to shake loose up to $2.5 million in campaign donations, much of it from contributors with business before the state, according to federal prosecutors. The governor’s goal was to bring in the money before the end of the year, the complaint said, “before a new state ethics law goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2009.”

Cracks Appear in Obama Foreign Policy Team

Czarina JB in Arizona — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:02:12 EST

WASHINGTON — The first sign of cracks in President-elect Barack Obama's foreign policy team of rivals emerged on Monday as his choices for secretary of state and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations visited the State Department.

As Secretary of State-pick Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.N. envoy-choice Susan Rice separately visited the diplomatic agency's headquarters in Washington's Foggy Bottom neighborhood, persons familiar with the transition said that Rice wants to install her own transition team inside the department.

Such a move by an incoming U.N. ambassador is rare, if not unprecedented, because the job is based at the United Nations in New York, where Rice already has a small transition staff, the sources familiar with the incoming administration.

The push by Rice, an early Obama supporter whose position the President-elect wants to elevate to a cabinet post, is also a signal that she intends to use her influence with the new president to play a more significant role than previous U.N. envoys, they said. The transition sources spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Officials with Clinton's transition team declined to comment on the matter, and aides to Rice could not immediately be reached. State Department officials declined to comment on issues related to the transition.

It was not clear if Clinton and Rice _ who had strained relations during the Democratic primaries because of Rice's steadfast backing of Obama _ saw each other at the State Department as Clinton left the building shortly after Rice arrived.

During the presidential campaign, some Clinton aides saw Rice's early decision to back Obama as a betrayal because of her previous role as a high State Department official during President Bill Clinton's administration. Rice's desire to place her own team in Washington could fuel speculation that those tensions will carry into the new administration.

The officials could not say if Clinton's team had formally objected to Rice's plan, or even if Rice would be able to install a separate transition team inside the State Department. But they noted that dueling transition teams could complicate the handover by blurring lines of authority.

Technically, the job of U.N. envoy falls under the authority of the secretary of state, although some previous U.N. ambassadors have held cabinet rank. The last U.N. ambassador to be part of the president's cabinet was Richard Holbrooke, who had a famously icy relationship with then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during the Clinton administration.

Albright, who was President Clinton's first ambassador to the United Nations, was a mentor to Rice. But the two had a falling out when Albright, America's first female secretary of state, lined up behind Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination and Rice backed Obama.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, was to dine Monday evening with the nation's current and second female secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, at Rice's apartment in the exclusive Watergate complex. The two Rices are not related and Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday that she thought Clinton would do a great job.

Also Monday, Clinton was to meet privately with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. and the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to a Democratic official. Kerry, once a contender for the secretary of state job, will oversee Clinton's confirmation. Kerry has pledged to hold "swift and fair" confirmation hearings.

___

Associated Press writer Andrew Miga contributed to this report.

Obama defends Republic Windows and Doors workers

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:06:37 EST

Obama defends Republic Windows and Doors workers BY ABDON PALLASCH Sun-Times Political Reporter

What Obama Has to Look Forward To

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:59:54 EST

What Obama Has to Look Forward To
A new GAO report says he inherits a federal government rife with waste, fraud, and mismanagement." /> Jonathan Stein" />
December 08" /> , 2008" /> The Department of Homeland Security and Department of Agriculture have no plan to work together in the event of a food-borne disease outbreak or terrorist attack. The Department of Defense's security clearance process takes so long it jeopardizes classified information. The EPA's chemical risk assessment program is improperly influenced by private industry.

When Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) requested a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) listing questions his fellow senators might ask President-elect Barack Obama's political nominees at their upcoming confirmation hearings, he probably didn't expect a 150-page list of Bush administration screwups. But that's what he got.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress that frequently exposes waste, incompetence, and corruption in the federal government, supplemented its proposed questions with summaries of problems in the executive branch. The result is a catalogue of hundreds of unresolved issues that the Bush administration is leaving behind for Obama and his administration.

The report, which is divided by department, is strictly limited to what the GAO calls "basic management capabilities," which means it raises questions about personnel, resource distribution, IT, and "results-oriented decision making." Problems like the politicization of the Justice Department are not mentioned. But this report serves as a peephole into the myriad internal problems of the executive branch, depicting a federal bureaucracy that is rife with mismanagement, inefficiency, and faulty communication practices—all of this combining to jeopardize both the nation's health and security.

Department of Homeland Security
The section on DHS begins with the big picture: "The department lacks not only a comprehensive strategy with overall goals and a timeline, but also a dedicated management integration team to support its management integration efforts." In other words, the agency that's supposed to protect American citizens is really screwed up—spinning wheels and wasting money.

But problems exist at the granular level, too. The department has largely failed to define the Transportation Security Agency's role in securing such vital (and vulnerable) infrastructure as rail systems, highways, and pipelines. DHS and FEMA have not clarified "how prepared they expect first responders to be." Immigration paperwork is ending up in "long-standing backlogs." A program costing hundreds of millions of dollars that aims to collect and share information on selected foreign nationals who enter and exit the United States "still does not have an operational exit tracking capability." The Coast Guard suffers from a shortage of personnel and other resources, and the GAO reports that it is concerned it is "just reducing operations arbitrarily to meet budget constraints."

Department of Defense
The Pentagon is singled out for fierce criticism in the GAO study. It is cited for a lack of strategic thinking in its "investment decision making" and for using "overly optimistic planning assumptions" that regularly leaves the agency lacking funds for its projects. It has done little to address long-standing weaknesses in its billion-dollar business operations that result in "substantial" waste and inefficiency.

The GAO is dubious that the DOD can rebuild its operational readiness, which has been badly hampered by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and simultaneously pursue initiatives to modernize and reshape the armed forces. The department's weapons systems acquisition program is in such disarray that the GAO has put it on its high-risk list.

Department of Agriculture
GAO investigators found that information technology security is so poor at the Department of Agriculture that its operations are "seriously" jeopardized. They also found that the federal farm programs the agency administers are handing out money to people who are not actively engaged in farming. Perhaps most distressing, the agency is not doing enough to secure "high-consequence biological pathogens" at laboratories carrying out agency-funded work. That means labs studying potential biological weapons agents are not handling these materials adequately and pose their own security risk.

Department of Veterans Affairs
The VA is portrayed in the report as mismanaged and out of date. Criticizing both the VA and the DOD for their inability to meet the health care needs of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, the GAO says the VA has huge inventories of pending disability claims and takes far too long to process them. It knocks the department's eligibility criteria for receiving benefits, and notes that its system for assessing the severity of disabilities is outmoded.

Environmental Protection Agency
The EPA lacks the air and water quality data needed "to evaluate the success of its policies and programs," according to the GAO. The EPA's chemical-risk-assessment process should be a scientific one, but instead, the report says, it's influenced by industry groups, the Department of Defense, and others. The report notes that the EPA's attempts to keep Americans safe from toxic chemicals are so subpar that a number of states have introduced their own legislation to fill the regulatory void. One particular problem is that the EPA rarely forces chemical manufacturers to provide data on the safety of their products, instead allowing companies to voluntarily supply information.

Department of Commerce
One division of Commerce is blasted in the report: the Census Bureau. In March 2008, the GAO placed the 2010 census project on its high-risk list, citing "long-standing weaknesses" in the Census Bureau's IT department, problems with the handheld computers used to log census information, uncertainties over cost, and other potential problems. "There have been performance deficiencies and uncertain, escalating costs," writes the GAO.

Department of Energy
The department is planning an $80 billion modernization of the nation's nuclear weapons complex. But the modernization, including the construction of major new facilities, is being planned without "clear requirements from the Department of Defense about its weapons and stockpiling needs," says the GAO. Consequently, the department may be building nuclear complexes that are potentially not needed or properly designed. The department's nonproliferation efforts "need to be reviewed for relevance and effectiveness" and its contract management has been on the high-risk list since 1990 for "fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement." Fixing all of these problems may be tough. According to the GAO, the department lacks staff with project management experience.

Department of Health and Human Services
Incoming HHS chief Tom Daschle has his work cut out for him: The department appears to have problems executing its core functions. According to the report, HHS efforts to boost preparedness for a public health emergency have been stymied by "shortages in the public health workforce" and "difficulties in intergovernmental coordination." Due to "weaknesses in agency capacity and data," the FDA has difficulty overseeing the safety and efficacy of medical products and it cannot effectively ensure food safety because of a lack of "strategic planning."

Department of Transportation
The GAO offers an observation that to most Americans is a no-brainer: "Despite large increases in expenditures in real terms for transportation, the investment has not commensurately improved the performance of the nation's surface transportation system as congestion continues to grow." Translation? We've been spending tons of money and traffic is just as bad.

General Services Administration
The GSA, which provides support services for federal agencies, has a multibillion-dollar repair backlog and owns property that is not needed. The GAO notes that it has been harping since the late 1980s about the GSA's leasing practices, which the GAO says has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Court won't review Obama's eligibility to serve

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:54:42 EST

Court won't review Obama's eligibility to serve Suit claimed Obama was British-born and not a 'natural born' U.S. citizenThe Associated Pressupdated 8:12 a.m. MT, Mon., Dec. 8, 2008WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has turned down an emergency appeal from a New Jersey man who says President-elect Barack Obama is ineligible to be president because he was a British subject at birth. The court did not comment on its order Monday rejecting the call by Leo Donofrio of East Brunswick, N.J., to intervene in the presidential election. Donofrio says that since Obama had dual nationality at birth — his mother was American and his Kenyan father at the time was a British subject — he cannot possibly be a "natural born citizen," one of the requirements the Constitution lists for eligibility to be president. Donofrio also contends that two other candidates, Republican John McCain and Socialist Workers candidate Roger Calero, also are not natural-born citizens and thus ineligible to be president. At least one other appeal over Obama's citizenship remains at the court. Philip J. Berg of Lafayette Hill, Pa., argues that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as Obama says and the Hawaii secretary of state has confirmed. Berg says Obama also may be a citizen of Indonesia, where he lived as a boy. Federal courts in Pennsylvania have dismissed Berg's lawsuit. Federal courts in Ohio and Washington state have rejected similar lawsuits. Allegations raised on the Internet say the birth certificate, showing that Obama was born in Hawaii on Aug. 4, 1961, is a fake. But state officials in Hawaii say they checked health department records and have determined there's no doubt Obama was born in Hawaii. The nonpartisan Web site Factcheck.org examined the original document and said it does have a raised seal and the usual evidence of a genuine document. In addition, Factcheck.org reproduced an announcement of Obama's birth, including his parents' address in Honolulu, that was published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Aug. 13, 1961.

Specter in tough position on card check

Czarina JB in Arizona — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:29:00 EST

Business & Lobbying

By Ian Swanson and Kevin Bogardus Posted: 12/02/08 06:12 PM [ET] Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the only Republican senator who voted two years ago for a labor priority making it easier to form unions, is under heavy pressure to flip his position.Specter is in a tough spot. If he sticks to his guns and supports card check legislation, as he did in 2007, he could count on union support when he seeks reelection in 2010. But business groups warn he could strengthen a primary challenger.By flipping his position and voting against the Employee Free Choice Act, Specter would almost certainly lose the backing of unions and hurt himself in the general election.“It could be a very big problem for him. I think he understands that,” said former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who narrowly lost a primary challenge to Specter in 2004 and has not ruled out a rematch. “He’s significantly more vulnerable now than he was in 2004.”The legislation would allow workers to bypass secret-ballot elections when forming a union and is seen as a must-stop by business groups. In 2007, every Senate Democrat present voted to advance the card check bill, but Democrats lacked the 60 votes needed to overcome a procedural hurdle.This time around, Democrats control 56 seats and the two independents also caucus with Democrats, giving card check supporters as many as 58 votes in the Senate next year. If two Republicans vote with Democrats, the measure could pass.Specter has not said how he will vote on the legislation this coming Congress, but over the summer signaled a willingness to hear from both sides.In a July 2008 article in the Harvard Journal on Legislation calling for reforms to labor law and public hearings, Specter said card check is not the answer. “The reform the country needs is not as simple as instituting card check or mandating secret-ballot elections. Neither of these options would cure the weak remedies or procedural delays at the [National Labor Relations Board],” Specter wrote.He said lawmakers should work to pass legislation that would ensure employees’ freedom of choice regarding their representation instead of “serving the interests of unions or employers.” Both unions and employers have abused the system, according to the article co-written by Specter and one of his aides.Specter also expressed a willingness in the article to look at other methods for organizing unions. “Is it possible to secure a non-coercive selection process for employees through a process other than card check?” Specter asked. Under card check, a majority of workers would have to sign cards authorizing a union to represent them. Business groups argue this would eliminate the secret-ballot process now used to organize workers, and would give union bosses the ability to intimidate workers into forming unions. Unions argue employers have too much influence to intimidate workers into voting against organizing. Labor officials said if Specter supports them, unions will help him in 2010.“At the AFL-CIO, we look at the voting record of a candidate and he is going to have a lot of tough votes this year,” said Bill George, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO. “If he stays in line with us, we will probably stay with him.”George said Specter would have to vote for cloture as well as the bill itself when legislation comes to the Senate floor next year. Otherwise, Specter’s standing with his state’s labor unions could be damaged.“It would be very critical,” George said of Specter’s card check vote.George’s more than 900,000-member union endorsed Specter in the 2004 election. His group encouraged its GOP members to vote for him in his primary battle against Toomey and also sent out direct mail and made phone calls for Specter during the general election. Specter has often straddled the divide between the two parties, earning a reputation of being an unorthodox Republican by, for example, supporting labor and abortion rights. However, he has on occasion voted against his labor allies. In 2001, he voted against rescinding a move by the Bush administration to void a federal ergonomics rule, which angered unions. Specter has also drawn fire from both sides of the political spectrum when reviewing judicial nominations put forward by this White House.Toomey, the president of the Club for Growth, and conservative activist Grover Norquist both said Specter would hurt himself in a primary by voting to move card check forward. When Specter voted to move the bill forward in 2007, he did so knowing the legislation lacked the votes to advance in the Senate. President Bush had threatened to veto the bill even if the Senate had passed it. President-elect Barack Obama, who voted for the bill as a senator, would almost certainly sign it into law.“Before, it was a free vote,” Norquist said in an interview. “Now, if he makes the vote, he’d almost certainly be the key vote.”Specter also has to watch out for challenges in the 2010 general election. He’s one of only four Northeast Republican senators, and Democrats are eyeing his seat as one of their most favorable pickup opportunities.
Television pundit Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” is among those Democrats considering a run.Specter predicted on Sunday he would have a tough opponent in the GOP primary and in the general election.“Well, I’m going to have an opponent,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “Late Edition.” “In fact, I’m going to have two opponents, Wolf: one in the primary where I always have a tough race, and again in the general.”He said he would be prepared “whoever my opponents are.”

Reluctant defense secretary 'impressed' with Obama

Czarina JB in Arizona — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:19:28 EST

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President-elect Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates may have policy differences, but Gates said Tuesday he was "impressed" by statements Obama has already made on issues such as the Iraq War.

A day after reluctantly agreeing to remain as secretary of defense in the incoming administration, Gates, 65, said he looked forward to taking an active stance on several key issues.

"I spent a long time hoping the question would never be popped ... and then yesterday, it became a reality," Gates told reporters. "It should go without saying that I have no intention of being a caretaker secretary."

He listed challenges -- including budget, acquisition and procurement reform, war strategy, care of the wounded and modernization and capitalization projects -- that he vowed to give his "personal attention."

Obama has called for U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraq within 16 months, and Gates said he does not necessarily oppose the president-elect's views. Watch Gates discuss his views on Iraq »

"He also said he wanted to have a responsible drawdown, and he also said that he was prepared to listen to his commanders," Gates said. "That's exactly the position a president-elect should be in."

Gates said Obama impressed him last month when the two men met in the fire station at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. On the same day, Obama met with Bush and shortly before he met with Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"I was impressed by his reaching out to Admiral Mullen, to come sit down and talk with him, and he has made clear that he wants to have a regular dialogue with the chairman and the chiefs and the commanders," he said.

Gates also said he was impressed by Michelle Obama's desire to work on behalf of military families.

"I think all of these send very positive signals to our men and women in uniform about the way the new commander-in-chief looks upon his responsibilities as commander-in-chief, but also as the person for whom all of these men and women in uniform work."

Gates confirmed that Mullen was en route to India after last week's series of terrorist attack in Mumbai, India.

Gates said he has not registered with a political party, but considers himself a Republican, and noting that, until Monday, all of his senior appointments had been under Republican presidents.

He said that in the 60 years that the job of secretary of defense has existed, he is the first to be asked by an incoming president of either party to keep the job, and thanked President-elect Barack Obama "for his confidence in me."

Gates worked for more than two decades at the CIA and the National Security Council.

He turned down a request from President George W. Bush to serve as the first secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which was created in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks. But in December 2006, he agreed to replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense.

Regarding the threat of terrorism in South Asia, Gates called on the United States to strengthen its partnership with Pakistan and help the nation assess involvement in last week's terror attacks in Mumbai.

"It clearly was the act of an extremist group that apparently was targeting Americans and Britons, but the truth is most of the people who were killed were Indian," he said. "So, it's important that we find out who did it and try and prevent it from ever happening again."

Gates said Afghanistan will be a priority for the Obama administration, but said the major responsibility must be borne by Afghans.

"It's very important for us to do everything we can to make sure the Afghans understand this is their fight, and they have to be out front in their fight," he said.

Gates deflected a question about increasing troop strength in Afghanistan, but talked at length about plans to ease the burden on the American military, which has been stretched thin trying to fight two wars.

He said he "will probably increase" the time at home between 12-month deployments from 12 months to 15 or 18 months.

"I think that process could begin perhaps as early as spring," he said.

He said he hopes that, "fairly soon, and especially with the drawdowns in Iraq, that we will begin to see a further decrease in stop-loss."

Stop-loss refers to the involuntary extension of a service member's active duty hitch beyond what was to be the end of their term of service.

We Are All Obamacans Now

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 14:10:50 EST

I'm as struck as Mark McKinnon by the sudden, if tempered, swooning of the center-right for Obama. even Fred Barnes has had an epiphany of sorts. They are responding to his obviously sensible and accomplished picks for the economy and foreign affairs as if they have realized for the first time who "that one" actually is. He is not now and never has been a leftist ideologue. That was a paranoid fantasy that helped kill the GOP this year. He is a pragmatic, sane, reasoned centrist liberal. He doesn't want to surrender to terror or abolish capitalism - he wants to hone our fight against the Islamists to better effect and to save capitalism from itself. And the core meaning of his candidacy - an end to the polarizing culture war battles of the post-Vietnam era - is not just hype. It's real:

It appears the political classes have briefly sobered up and decided to act responsibly, selflessly and -- dare we say it -- in the best interest of the country. The times are simply so serious, so dangerous, so calamitous that we can’t afford politics as usual. And for once, politicians seem to get it. We all wish President-elect Obama success. Because there’s a good chance that if he fails, we all go down together. Way down.
And let's give credit where it's due. The spirit of good will is being significantly leveraged by Obama, who has had made a series of very smart, practical, pragmatic and non-ideological picks for his cabinet.
Eight years ago, George W. Bush said he wanted to change the tone in Washington. Well, a recount crippled that idea before it got out of the crib. It simply wasn't the right time for the message or the messenger.

And Bush was never that serious about it. Obama is.

Good Time For a Brainy President

Czarina JB in Arizona — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:58:22 EST

Good Time For a Brainy PresidentBy David S. Broder
Thursday, November 27, 2008; A29When I started covering the White House more than 50 years ago, I believed that the smarter a president was, the better he would be. That was wrong.Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan were certainly not intellectuals, but they understood the power of the presidency and they knew how to impose their agendas on their political partners and rivals.By contrast, Jimmy Carter was a whiz at policy analysis and Bill Clinton grasped the connections among issues almost intuitively. Yet neither of them left the White House with a record of great achievements.So for several years, I have been arguing that there are traits much more important to the success of a president than brainpower. Self-confidence, curiosity, an eye for talent, the ability to communicate, a temperament that invites collaboration -- all these and more rank higher on the list of desirable presidential traits.I am not ready to abandon that view. But I am struck by how lucky this country is, at the moment, that the president-elect is a super-smart person like Barack Obama.With each passing day, it becomes more evident that even the smartest and most experienced managers of the American economy are struggling to understand -- and fix -- what has gone wrong in our markets.I attempt to follow the discussion in newspapers and on Jim Lehrer's "NewsHour" and other deeply serious television programs about the latest moves by the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury -- and I am stumped.The sums are so staggering, the vocabulary so unfamiliar, the experience so uninformative that I have not a clue whether Bernanke, Paulson and Co. are on top of the situation or are inadvertently making things worse.That's an embarrassing admission. I get paid to cover the government, and this is by far the most important challenge facing Washington. But I am utterly dependent on others to decipher the clues that may unravel these mysteries.Obama is not similarly handicapped. Even in the emotional maelstrom of his election victory, and even with the pressures of assembling his administration, everything points to his managing to focus on the policy choices looming in the economic field.I have talked to two people on the fringe of the transition team -- both members of Congress with major responsibilities in the economic area. Both have been asked for input by Obama, and both say that the quality of his questions -- and his follow-ups -- were a measure of the depth of his knowledge of the situation.He has not been tested that rigorously in the news conferences he has held so far, but his ability to respond to the questions he has been asked, to make his points in a coherent, balanced way and to avoid any misstatement has certainly been a treat to watch.The appointments he has made to his economic team have been impressive, and the response to them has been almost uniformly positive from Capitol Hill to Wall Street. But it is not just the incoming White House and Cabinet people who have been reassuring; it has been Obama himself.As well as he handled himself during the long campaign, he has been equally sure-footed in the transition. And behind the smooth public performance is a mind that seems able to stretch to encompass even the most complex of policy choices.I am sure that in coming weeks and months, there will be judgments that will jar this confidence and decisions that Obama himself may come to regret.But for a nation in crisis, it is worth giving thanks for the performance the next president has turned in so far -- and for the mind that is working on the nation's behalf.davidbroder@washpost.com

Sophisticated Attacks, but Al Qaeda Link Disputed

Czarina JB in Arizona — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:47:07 EST

By ALAN COWELL and MARK McDONALDPublished: November 27, 2008 PARIS — A day after the terror attacks in Mumbai that killed over 100 people, one question remained as impenetrable as the smoke that still billowed from one of the city’s landmark hotels: who carried out the attack?Security officials and experts agreed that the assaults represented a marked departure in scope and ambition from other recent terrorist attacks in India, which targeted local people rather than foreigners and hit single rather than multiple targets.The Mumbai assault, by contrast, was “uniquely disturbing”, said Sajjan Gohel, a security expert in London, because it seemed directed at foreigners, involved hostage-taking and was aimed at multiple “soft, symbolic targets.” The attacks “aimed to create maximum terror and human carnage and damage the economy,” he said in a telephone interview.But the central riddle was the extent to which local assailants had outside support. The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, said the attacks probably had “external linkages”, reflecting calculations among Indian officials that the level of planning, preparation and coordination could not have been achieved without help from experienced terrorists, particularly groups affiliated to Al Qaeda. The planning of the attack has profound political implications for both India and its neighbor, Pakistan.But the identity of the Mumbai attackers remained a mystery.An e-mail message to Indian media outlets taking responsibility for the attacks in Mumbai on Wednesday night said the militants were from a group called Deccan Mujahedeen. Almost universally, experts and intelligence officials said that name was unknown.Deccan is a neighborhood of the Indian city of Hyderabad. The word also describes the middle and south of India, which is dominated by the Deccan Plateau. Mujahedeen is the commonly used Arabic word for holy fighters. But the combination of the two, said Mr. Gohel in London, is a “front name. This group is nonexistent.”“It’s even unclear whether it’s a real group or not,” said Bruce Hoffman, a professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the author of the book “Inside Terrorism.” An Indian security official who spoke in return for anonymity because he was not authorized to be identified said the name suggested ties to a group called Indian Mujahedeen, which has been implicated in a string of bombing attacks in India killing around 200 people this year alone.On Sept. 15, an e-mail published in Indian newspapers and said to have been sent by representatives of Indian Muhajedeen threatened potential “deadly attacks” in Mumbai. The message warned counter-terrorism officials in the city that “you are already on our hit-list and this time very, very seriously.” Several high-ranking law enforcement officials, including the chief of the antiterrorism squad and a commissioner of police, were, indeed, reported killed in the attacks in Mumbai.Christine Fair, senior political scientist and a South Asia expert at the RAND Corporation, was careful to say that the identity of the terrorists could not yet be known. But she insisted the style of the attacks and the targets in Mumbai suggested the militants were likely to be Indian Muslims and not linked to Al Qaeda or Lashkar-e-Taiba, another violent South Asian terrorist group. “There’s absolutely nothing Al Qaeda-like about it,” she said of the attack. “Did you see any suicide bombers? And there are no fingerprints of Lashkar. They don’t do hostage-taking and they don’t do grenades.” By contrast, Mr. Gohel in London said “the fingerprints point to an Islamic Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group.”Mr. Hoffman he said the attacks, which he called “tactical, sophisticated and coordinated,” perhaps pointed to a broader organization behind the perpetrators. The Indian security official said the attackers likely had ties to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a guerrilla group run by Pakistani intelligence in the conflict with India in the disputed territory of Kashmir. On Thursday, the group denied involved in the Mumbai attacks. India blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba for a suicide assault on its Parliament by gunmen in December, 2001 that led to a perilous military standoff with Pakistan.

In London, Mr. Gohel said the Mumbai assaults seemed to blend the tactics of the attack on parliament and an event two years earlier -- the 1999 hijacking of an Air India flight to Afghanistan that affected foreigners and involved hostage-taking.

The Obama Effect

Czarina JB in Arizona — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:21:25 EST

The Obama effectVisions of an increasingly colorblind Arkansas. YES WE DID: An Obama supporter.History, of course, will record Nov. 4, 2008, as a watershed moment in the United States. But if you happened to be riding in a particular van to and from Nixa, Mo., on the next-to-the-last weekend in October, you would have gotten a sneak preview of what Barack Obama's election could mean for Arkansas race relations. As the white and black Sheree´ Williamses of the state begin to step forward into positions of power, Arkansans may not have to endure much longer the spectacle of middle-aged whites and blacks at school board meetings armed with antennae as big as satellite dishes scouring the room for a racial meaning to whatever topic is at hand. It is not necessarily the way people want to conduct the people's business, but for those of us over a certain age, this instinct to see life through a racial lens comes with the territory. Arguably, given our history, it could not be otherwise. White supremacy has defined the state's politics since slavery. Through every era many of us have lugged the baggage of race, but we seem loath to put it down. As our 30-year-old “team leader,” Williams' volunteer job in the Arkansas Obama campaign that Saturday morning was to transport to Nixa volunteers who had agreed to canvass in Missouri, a “battleground” state, and then deliver us back to the North Little Rock headquarters Sunday night. Seated up front with Williams was a black female student at Philander Smith. In the back were four white males, three of us over 40, two of us in our 60s. Though the scenario was hardly “Driving Mr. Daisy,” the son of Temple and Jake Stockley, who were members of the 1948 openly white supremacist “Dixiecrat” Party, right away felt comfortable enough with his team leader to share this information about his parents. For her part, Williams would eventually tell me enough of her life history to help me understand the path she has taken to becoming a dedicated supporter of Barack Obama. Not surprisingly, both her grandmothers had been domestics for whites in Little Rock. Her mother, Valerie Peterson, who graduated from Central in 1974, had endured harassment from whites but had succeeded in becoming the first black High Stepper at Central. In 1974, Williams' mother, who became an LPN, married Dowayne Peterson Sr., who had grown up in extreme poverty in east Little Rock. Williams was in the fifth grade when the family moved from a mixed neighborhood off Barrow Road to a house on Pleasant Forest, in a virtually all-white neighborhood. Williams said that they were moving “to better schools and a better area.” She credits her parents for teaching her to not “act white” but neither to “act black.” She was simply to be herself. As a child, Williams attended Romine and Fulbright elementary and middle schools. For two years the family lived in Kentucky and then returned to Little Rock. Whatever problems ail the Martin Luther King Jr. Commission at the moment — and there appear to be many — Williams gives it and state Sen. Tracy Steele, former director of the commission, high marks at a critical time in her life. The 1990s are remembered as a time of violence, gangs, and drugs in Pulaski County. On March 5, 1995, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette began a three-part series that documented, among other statistics, that “about one of every 11 teen-agers in Pulaski County belongs to a gang. … The ratio in public schools could be closer to one in eight.” Williams was on a different path. As a 14-year-old, she was selected to become a “junior” MLK commissioner. With other black youngsters, she was taught the ABCs of political leadership. Much of it was about how to present herself in public. Junior commissioners were given lessons in etiquette and grooming, but they also were exposed to the politicians and issues of the day. She was introduced to leaders as different as Jim Guy Tucker and Mike Huckabee. Being a junior commissioner also meant learning to give back to the community, especially the economically disadvantaged. Junior commissioners participated in service projects as elementary as picking up trash. The emphasis was on service. Entering Hall High in 1993, Williams had ample opportunity to fall in with the wrong crowd. But Williams, always a good student who got along with her teachers, both black and white, graduated with honors. Receiving a full scholarship to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff was another important milestone. Her brother had gone to the UA at Fayetteville and did not have a good experience. Williams majored in social work and minored in psychology and felt the nurturing environment of a small black school. If you missed class, she said, your professor “wanted to know” the reason for your absence. After graduation, she got a job with Federated Corporate Offices and was sent to Cincinnati. Her mother called her three times a day to make sure she was OK. Tragically, her mother developed cancer. Williams came home to take care of her. She died in 2002. In 2002, Williams married Eric Williams, a man she'd known since junior high. They first lived in the Levy area in North Little Rock but moved in July 2005 to Shannon Hills in Saline County. Williams, who had two children and a stepdaughter to raise, said the move was prompted by the desire to live in a safe neighborhood with good schools. In her view, her neighborhood, which she estimates was then about 50 percent white, was deteriorating, and her home was decreasing in value. At the time she and her family moved to Shannon Hills, it was at least 90 percent white, she said, but since then it has become perhaps 70 percent white. With her job as a pharmaceutical rep and her husband working for a computer parts company, the family was middle- to upper-middle class.Raised in a traditional black church, Williams as an adult wanted to find a more diverse venue in which to express her faith. For six years she attended the charismatic integrated mega-church Agape in West Little Rock, but became disenchanted with the minister, “Happy” Caldwell, who she believed was overtly supporting George W. Bush. She and her family now attend the Church at Rock Creek, a Baptist church that is also integrated. Somewhat ironically, she thought she had lost her interest in Democratic politics, feeling that neither the Democratic nor Republican organizations in Arkansas had anything to offer her. “They were cliquish,” she said flatly. Williams withdrew her affiliation as a Democrat and registered as an independent. She directed her energies to her family, job and church. And then like millions of other Americans, she watched Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Interested, she read his books “Dreams from my Father” and “The Audacity of Hope” and heard him speak in Little Rock at the State Capitol in the fall of 2006. Still, she said she “was trending” to Hillary. But around June 2007 she received a call from the Obama campaign that impressed her enough to send in a donation that very day. It was the beginning of a commitment that grew into a passion. The campaign was not just about sending money or getting something in the mail. In an interview with Williams after the election, she sat down at my computer and logged in to the campaign website mybarackobama.com and showed me her own “page.” It documents that she had hosted 19 “events” and attended 56 “functions.” She was named as the “administrator” of a group of more than 100 sales representatives who were supporting Obama. What made Obama different for people like Williams was how her support was not only won but how it was valued. As a supporter, she participated in conference calls where she offered her own opinions about issues. By early September 2008 she was convinced it was her personal responsibility to make an even greater commitment; she used her saved-up vacation days to begin volunteering full-time at the North Little Rock headquarters. There, she registered voters, did radio interviews to create awareness about early voting, made phone calls to voters in swing states, handled the front desk when needed, and did all the other nuts-and-bolts chores of a campaign. None of this, she said, would have been possible without the support and help of her husband, grandmother, an aunt and her brother. At the campaign headquarters Williams encountered a racially mixed group of volunteers and identified a group of eight (five whites and three African-Americans) she grew particularly close to. Williams remembered, “When you work with a group of people with a common purpose for so long … we became an extended family. We laughed together; we cried together; we had each other's back. We became one. All of us came from different backgrounds and political affiliations but all of us wanted Senator Obama to become our next president because we believe in the future of America.”Cherie Grotewold, a 56-year-old white woman from North Little Rock who had worked on Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign in 1980 and participated in the Republican Convention as an alternate, was one of this group at the North Little Rock headquarters. She had never voted for a Democrat until Obama, but, she, too, became a rabid supporter and traveled to Louisiana, Texas, Pennsylvania, Mississippi and Missouri.Grotewold grew up close to Pike Avenue, where the railroad tracks separated the black and white communities. Her father could neither read nor write. The “N” word was in common use about the house. But Grotewold considered herself more of a political conservative than a social one. When her family needed a loan, they turned to other family members, believing people should take care of their own and not depend on the government. She believed welfare made people lazy. She never thought of herself in these times as being without compassion for others. Indeed, the label of “compassionate conservative” fit her.A black co-worker at Sears had once tried to disabuse her of the notion that she was a Republican. When she ran into him after the election and told him she had voted for Obama, he took credit for her conversion. When Obama announced he was going to run, it seemed as if “he was speaking directly to me,” Grotewold said a week after the election. Government, she now believes, does need to help people. On election night Williams' group was inseparable. They started at the official Obama site at Sticky Fingerz restaurant in the River Market and ended with their own celebration at 2 a.m. at a suite in the Little Rock Hilton. Williams said that at the moment it was announced that Obama had won, “There really isn't a word to describe how happy I felt. It was a dream come true after all of the hard work. I cried with tears of joy and hugged my friends that I have grown to love as a family that I was with. I was so proud that America had chosen the right person, not based on the color of his skin but the content of his character.” The day after the election, Williams was interested in conveying how the campaign had made her think in terms of her responsibility as a citizen and supporter. Williams focused on the responsibility of people like herself who had worked so tirelessly for Obama's election. “His campaign made us take personal responsibility. When people were crying last night, ‘we' won. It was ‘our campaign'.”Of course, all campaign operatives talk about mobilizing supporters at the grassroots, but Obama and his campaign were somehow truly able to touch their supporters at their core. Grotewold remembers seeing in Sticky Fingerz a white man in his 60s crying uncontrollably when the announcement was made that Obama had won. She said, “We started screaming. People were jumping in the air and cheering and hugging each other.” It was “total euphoria.” But like her friend Williams, “then it hit what we had done … a calm came over me. We've done it. Everything is going to be OK.” Had I not witnessed first-hand the complete absence of racial tension or any awkwardness in each transaction and encounter on our trip to and from to Missouri, it would be easier to remain my usual skeptical self when it comes to race relations in Arkansas. What I witnessed in Williams was competence, self-confidence, generosity and a concern for others' well-being. In the best sense of the word, Williams mothered us through those two days. She did all the driving, made and coordinated all the arrangements, sprang for hors d'oeuvres for the whole table out of her own pocket during two meals, even provided us with a bag of cookies for the return trip. She was always solicitous of aging bladders, at one point quizzing me as if I were one of her children when I didn't leave the van during a rest stop. Tony Washington, a paid Obama staff member in the North Little Rock office, talked about Williams' commitment during the campaign. Among other duties in the office beginning the first of September, Washington supervised voter registration. He said, “From day one she was so enthused. She brought in 100 new voter registrations every week.” Washington, whose regular job is public affairs liaison for Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, was given an opportunity to take a leave of absence and leaped at the chance to work for the Obama campaign. He's from my hometown of Marianna, and his choices in life have been similar to Williams'. If you are in your 30s and from Lee County, the question is bound to come up: Did he know any members of the infamous Chambers family in Marianna, some of whom ended up in the 1980s in Detroit and created a vast cocaine empire? In school with three members of the Chambers family (none of whom followed their brothers to Detroit) and in a town with almost no employment opportunities for black teen-agers, Washington had ample opportunity to stray. Indeed, recruitment in Marianna for a job in Detroit was not unknown. Marianna soon had a cocaine problem as well. Raised in the country outside of Marianna by a strict grandmother who was never satisfied with anything less than all As on his report card, Washington graduated in the top 10 percent of Lee High School in 1991 and eventually obtained a hard-earned degree in computer sciences from UAPB.It is public service, however, that fascinates him, and for the time being he is more than content to work for McDaniel, who he said does not recognize “black” and “white” politics as separate categories. Covering 33 counties, Washington says, there are many days when he is the only black person in the room. He claims that he has always been treated as an equal. Obama he sees as a modern-day Martin Luther King Jr. Age matters. Arkansas exit polls showed that 49 percent of the 18-to-29 age group voted for Obama, proving perhaps that this younger generation with its technological proficiency is much more sophisticated about the world they inhabit than their elders. In a speech at the Darragh Center after the election, political scientist Jay Barth said that “race was clearly a factor in how many Arkansans voted but not the only reason. Those Arkansans who had problems with his candidacy perceived Obama as the ‘other' in a number of ways. With a poll showing that only 44 per cent identified him as a Christian, Arkansans in this election expressed a cultural isolationism that is unique in the country.”
Whatever Barack Obama does as president of the United States, he has motivated people like Washington to consider running for and winning state-wide office some day. No matter how you voted, this is good news for Arkansas. I asked Washington what the election of Barack Obama means to him. He replied, “Hope for America, hope for my son.” What could express the American Dream better?Five from the North Little Rock Obama campaign office — Williams, Grotewold, Washington, Darrell Stevens and Betsy Woodyard — will be driving up together for the inaugural.

Obama and family hand out food at a Chicago church

Czarina JB in Arizona — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:14:01 EST

Obama and family hand out food at a Chicago churchCHICAGO – President-elect Barack Obama and his wife took their daughters to work at a food bank on the day before Thanksgiving, saying they wanted to show the girls the meaning of the holiday, especially when so many people are struggling.Ten-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha joined their parents to shake hands and give holiday wishes to hundreds of people who had been lined up for hours at the food bank on Chicago's south side.Sasha wore a pink stocking hat over her pigtails and Malia had on a purple striped hat as the family handed out wrapped chickens to the needy in the chilly outdoor courtyard. Those seeking food on Wednesday at St. Columbanus also received boxes with potatoes, oranges, fresh bread, peanut butter, canned goods, oatmeal, spaghetti and coffee.The president-elect, dressed casually in a leather jacket, black scarf and khaki pants, was in a jovial mood, calling out "happy thanksgiving" and telling everyone "you can call me Barack."He told reporters that he wants the girls "to learn the importance of how fortunate they are, and to make sure they're giving back."The soon-to-be first lady said the Obamas wanted to give their children "an understanding of what giving and Thanksgiving is all about."The Obama family's activities in the courtyard quickly drew the attention of schoolchildren whose windows overlooked the courtyard. They put up a sign against the glass that read: "We love our prez" and screamed when the president-elect waved to them.Obama then turned to his wife and suggested they go visit the kids. Secret Service agents, looking surprised, disappeared inside the building to accommodate his request.Minutes later, hundreds of children were brought down to the school auditorium, and Obama loped onstage as they screamed and cheered."I just wanted to come by and wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving," he said. He then asked the children what they would be eating for Thanksgiving dinner.Turkey? Stuffing? Green beans? Sweet potato pie?Perhaps it was a hint at the planned menu for the Obamas, who are planning to host a holiday gathering at their Hyde Park home.The president-elect then took questions from the children, one of whom wanted to know what it was like to be followed around all the time. It is a topic that seems to touch a nerve in Obama, who has lamented the lack of privacy that comes with his new job."I gotta admit, sometimes it's kinda strange ... you just want to go take a walk or go out and ride your bike or something, and you always have someone with you," Obama said. "So you don't have a lot of privacy and that's one of the things you have to sacrifice in order to run for president."

How Obama is Already Taking Charge

Czarina JB in Arizona — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:54:56 EST

By Robert Reich - November 22, 2008, 5:53PMObama's immediate challenge is to fill the leadership vacuum created by a lame-duck president with historically-low approval ratings who seems to have lost interest in his job (at this writing, he's out of the country) and who's disappeared from the media, and a Treasury chief who has all but punted on coming up with any workable solution to the crisis. But Obama doesn't become president until 12 noon eastern standard time on January 20 -- and the national economy is imploding right now.How does Obama manage this feat? Two ways: (1) appoint a highly-capable economic team, and (2) tell the nation what he plans to do starting the afternoon of January 20. Specifically:(1) The members of Obama's new economic team fit the bill. They're reported (I have no inside knowledge) to include Tim Geithner at Treasury, Peter Orszag at the Office of Management and Budget, Jack Lew and Jason Furman at the National Economic Council, and Austan Goolsbee at the Council of Economic Advisors. All have several things in common. They're relatively young, in their late 30s or 40s, representing a generational change and a fresh start. Despite their youth, they're also experienced; almost all were up-and-comers in the Clinton Treasury, NEC, and OMB.All are pragmatists. Some media have dubbed them "centrists" or "center-right," but in truth they're remarkably free of ideological preconception. All have well-earned reputations as hard workers, well-versed in the technical details of public and private finance. They are not visible veterans of the old battles over supply-side economics or deficit reduction, nor are they well-known to the public. They are not visionaries but we don't need visionaries when the economic perils are clear and immediate. We need competence. Obama could not appoint a more competent group.(2) The President-Elect has also signaled the country what he wants to do: enact an "Economic Recovery Plan" that will mean 2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011. In his words (from Saturday's radio address), a plan "big enough to meet the challenges we face ... a two-year, nationwide effort to jumpstart job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy." Again, I have no inside knowledge, but I'd expect it to be about $600 to $700 billion.Its focus will be on infrastructure of a sort that will not only put people to work but also improve the productivity of the economy. His words: "We'll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels; fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead."In short, Obama's job-stimulus plan will be a down-payment on his larger plan to increase the nation's public investment. "These aren't just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis," he says, "these are the long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long. And they represent an early down payment on the type of reform my Administration will bring to Washington." He could not be more specific, at least while still President-Elect.At a time when aggregate demand is shriveling because consumers aren't spending and investors have stopped investing, and exports are shrinking, Obama recognizes that government must be the spender of last resort. He will combine old-fashioned Kaynesian economics with newly-fashioned public investments to pull the economy out of its slump.By putting his economic team in place barely three weeks after he was elected, and telling the nation what he plans to do immediately after he takes office, the President-Elect is asserting leadership at a time when the the Bush administration has all but abdicated.

Ethics Complaint Filed Against Palin Over Fox News Interview

Czarina JB in Arizona — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:01:13 EST

"As Sarah Palin settles back into her job as the state's chief executive, a new ethics complaint filed Tuesday says she's already improperly mixing her official duties and broader political ambitions," the Anchorage Daily News reports.The charge: That Palin broke state ethics rules by holding national television interviews about her run for vice president from the governor's office.
The complaint comes as Palin's personal life, her prospects as a future presidential candidate and everything she says and does continues to draw headlines.Zane Henning, a North Slope worker from Wasilla, said he filed the complaint with the attorney general. He says Palin is promoting her future political career on state property, pointing in particular to the governor's Nov. 10 interview with Fox News Channel host Greta Van Susteren."The governor is using her official position and office in an attempt to repair her damaged political image on the national scene," Henning wrote.The Palin camp, besieged by interview requests, said the governor was no longer a candidate at the time of interviews, but otherwise had little to say about the complaint."The consideration of complaints under the executive branch ethics act is a confidential process, by law," wrote Palin spokesman Bill McAllister. Here's video of Palin's appearance with Greta van Susteren. The wide-ranging interview covered such familiar topics as the $150,000 spent on Palin's wardrobe for the campaign, as well as the report that she was unable to name all the countries in North America and did not understand that Africa is a continent rather than a nation. Palin denied any knowledge of the RNC's extravagant clothing bills, going so far as to say that she's never set foot in a Neiman Marcus (one of the upscale stores where the RNC racked up a $75,000 bill). Palin also denied the report that she was unaware Africa is a continent.

With Obama, Murdoch Defies His Image

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:34:47 EST

With Obama, Murdoch Defies His Image By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

Big, bright pictures, including a two-page poster, show the president-elect in poses ranging from warm and fuzzy to downright heroic. Headlines blare “Top Dog,” “One Cool Dude” and “Brink of History.”

All this from a charter member of what conservatives deride as the biased liberal media, right? Not quite. This take on Barack Obama comes from The New York Post, the feisty, generally conservative tabloid that is, like the Fox News Channel, part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, the News Corporation.

So has Mr. Murdoch gone soft on liberals — or perhaps just reacted pragmatically to Mr. Obama’s sizable victory? The answer, according to people who have watched him operate at close range, is that Mr. Murdoch is a less predictable, less doctrinaire character than his critics imagine.

Editors and reporters who have worked at The Post tell innumerable stories of Mr. Murdoch calling to order up specific articles, often with a specific slant. And only one topic interests him as much as newspapers, his underlings say, and that is politics.

“He influences the political coverage, as directly as you can possibly get at The Post, but also with other newspapers,” said Michael Wolff, a writer who was given access to Mr. Murdoch, for a book to be published on Dec. 1. “He’s on the phone with them all the time, telling them what they should do. It is the job of those newspapers to imagine or divine or intuit what he wants.”

Gary Ginsberg, an executive vice president of the News Corporation, said that overstated the boss’s relationship with The Post and its editor, Col Allan, who declined to comment.

“Rupert’s too busy to direct coverage,” he said. “He puts someone like Col Allan in charge and trusts that Col Allan’s views will be largely in sync with his own.”

The Post’s editorials and columnists continued to lean to the right this year — it endorsed Senator John McCain for president — but its everyday coverage of the general election campaign was more evenhanded. The Post mentioned Mr. Obama’s damaging associations with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright and William Ayers less often than several other large American newspapers, including its archrival tabloid, The Daily News.

Starting the day before the voting, the paper’s coverage of Mr. Obama turned positive, even admiring, sprinkled with gauzy bits about his family life, even urging him at one point to adopt a particular puppy for his daughters. A few days after the election, The Post published a 12-page special section about Mr. Obama, wrapped in that two-page photo of him.

The Post and Mr. Murdoch have run overtly hot and cold on politicians, notably on Hillary Rodham Clinton — ridicule in the ’90s, rapprochement in this decade, and then cooling again. In this country, the view of him has been dominated by the conservative stance of Fox News, but Mr. Murdoch’s own record is more mixed — he supported Tony Blair in Britain, and even held a fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton in 2006.

Over the years, some of his aides and a number of politicians, usually speaking anonymously to avoid risking his wrath, have said that such flexibility is nothing more than convenient alliance with the winning side. But Mr. Wolff sees a different kind of expedience.

“It’s more a case of, ‘This is what you should do to be most attuned to what the readers want and to the zeitgeist,’ ” he said. Mr. Wolff said that when he asked Mr. Murdoch whether he should vote for Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primary, “he said Obama, because he’ll sell more papers.”

Mr. Ginsberg insists such talk is too cynical. “He has core beliefs in free markets, individual freedom and education reform,” he said of Mr. Murdoch, “but he also has a very curious, agile mind that allows for many different points of view.”

As for Mr. Obama, he said, “Rupert met him, spent a good deal of time with him, and I think he’s been very taken by his intellect, by his ability to inspire and by the opportunity that he has to truly take America in a positive direction on education issues, social issues and others,” he said.

A number of the people closest to Mr. Murdoch, in his company and his family, support Democrats. His daughter, Elisabeth, held an Obama fund-raiser — leading to some speculation that they have influenced his private views.

Mr. Murdoch arranged a meeting early this year with Mr. Obama and Roger Ailes, president of the Fox News Channel, in what Mr. Wolff and News executives say was a bid to moderate Fox’s coverage of Mr. Obama. Fox remained notably tougher on the candidate than competing networks during the campaign.

But people who have worked for Mr. Murdoch or, like Mr. Wolff, have closely followed his career, say he treats each property differently. Mr. Murdoch gave Fox News a general direction and sometimes makes suggestions, they say, giving Mr. Ailes a free hand in running the channel.

Mr. Murdoch and his team, for example, have put more politics into the news pages of The Wall Street Journal, which he took over last December, but not a notable political point of view.

“But The Post is different,” Mr. Wolff said. “That’s his.”

Five Reasons Hillary Clinton Should Not Be Secretary of State

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:06:48 EST

Five Reasons Hillary Clinton Should Not Be Secretary of State

By Ken Silverstein

It looks like Barack Obama has offered Hillary Clinton the post of Secretary of State and she’s mulling over whether to take the job or not. Obama’s apparent offer makes him look magnanimous and delights Hillary Clinton’s former backers, so maybe it’s smart politics. But there are a number of good reasons why Clinton should not be secretary of state. Here are five:

Hillary Clinton will have her own agenda (as will her husband). She’s not a team player and will bring in a crew of cronies whose chief aim will be to promote the boss, not the administration. Obama may wake up one day and discover that Hillary has decreed a new “Clinton Doctrine” of foreign policy.
It would be impossible, politically, to fire Hillary. No matter what she says or does, or how insubordinate, Obama will be stuck with her as long as she wants to stay.
Her husband is a walking conflict of interest. Bill helps a Canadian businessman land a uranium contract in Kazakhstan, and soon afterwards the businessman contributes to the Clinton Foundation. Bill’s personal and business dealings are embarrassing enough without Hillary heading the State Department.
The Clinton style of management–for example, pitting one faction of staff against another–would be a disaster at the State Department. Just look at how well it worked on the campaign trail.
And the strongest strike of all against Hillary as secretary of state… look at who endorses her.

GQ Has Named Barack Obama one of its Men of the Year

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:13:04 EST

GQ has named Barack Obama one if its "Men of the Year" with a cover and article — penned by Senator Ted Kennedy — that went to press before Election Day.

Obama is joined by Michael Phelps, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jon Hamm, each of whom grace one of GQ's four "Men of the Year" covers.

GQ named Obama "Game Changer of the Year," and an excerpt of Kennedy's piece appears below:

As I write this, Barack Obama and John McCain have just completed their final debate, and the country is a few short days away from a historic election. Of course, I'm doing all that I can for my candidate. But whether he wins or loses, Barack Obama has ushered in a new era of American politics with a limitless vision of a better future that will endure for many years to come. Through his candidacy, Obama has provided a glimpse of a stronger, better, fairer America, where change comes from the bottom up, where we all come together to meet the great challenges of our time. He has inspired millions of new voters of all ages, races, and incomes to lend their voices for real change. For in this man, Americans can see not just the audacity but the possibility of hope for the country that is yet to be....

That is what I saw when I enlisted in his campaign. I saw new hope for a way out of the economic wilderness and for a just and fair prosperity that rewards the many and not the few. New hope that this nation will at last lead the world to turn the tide of global warming and turn aside from an energy future that threatens the future itself. New hope that we will teach all our children well. New hope--and this is the cause of my life--that we will guarantee for every American quality affordable health care as a fundamental right and not as a privilege. New hope--and this is the great cause of America itself--that we shall overcome once and for all the setting of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay.

Win or lose, with the Obama candidacy the torch has been passed, and I hope I made a difference.

For Incomes Below $100,000, a Better Tax Break in Obama's Plan

Czarina JB in Arizona — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:58:10 EDT

New York TimesOctober 31, 2008

By STEVEN GREENHOUSEIndependent analyses of the presidential candidates' tax proposals show that those who make less than $250,000 a year would not see their taxes raised under Senator Barack Obama's plans. Further, Mr. Obama would generally cut taxes more than Senator John McCain would for households with incomes less than $100,000 a year. Mr. McCain would cut taxes generally on par with Mr. Obama for those making $100,000 to $250,000 a year, the analyses found, but those making $250,000 a year and above would typically pay less in taxes under Mr. McCain.The analyses were conducted independently by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, and Deloitte, the accounting giant, at the request of The New York Times.

Old man's media coverage negative cuz media covering negative old man

Czarina JB in Arizona — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:30:33 EDT

Old man's media coverage negative cuz media covering negative old manLiberals have long laughed off any suggestion of liberal media bias, but this week, Politico.com reveals that the perceived media slant against McCain is absolutely real. They cite a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism that shows that over the last six weeks, John McCain got four times as many negative stories as positive ones while Barack Obama received more than twice as much positive coverage as McCain. Why? The McCain campaign is a shambles. It has failed to achieve any of its goals and its steady collapse may spell trouble for the future of the GOP. No reasonable person would disagree. Yet, is that any reason for such negative coverage? The media's continued insistence on reporting the facts about the disgraceful McCain campaign is liberal bias, pure and simple.And it's not just politics. Liberal media bias is everywhere. For example, let's take a look at coverage of the new movie, Saw V. As of this writing, Metacritic.com, which aggregates music and film reviews and assigns them a weighted score based on the severity of criticism, currently gives the film a score of 20 out of 100. A similar site, RottenTomatoes.com, reports that Saw V has received negative reviews from 86 percent of critics. What gives? Just because the movie is by all accounts a ponderous, contrived mess, is that any reason for the press to so blatantly showcase its bias? It's this kind of treatment that links the Saw V and the McCain campaign. Sure, one is a disappointing and gruesome spectacle filled with blood-spattered bodies and shocking images that force viewers to turn away in disgust, and the other is a bad film. But they have more in common than you might think.Similarly, consider the case of the Idaho child molester whose probation was revoked after he gained access to the Internet. The media's attitude toward this sexual deviant has been almost uniformly negative. Whatever happened to telling both sides of the story? Isn't that the media's job? Instead, we get a completely lopsided account that makes this convicted sex offended look like a monster, simply because the facts of the story bear that out.Remember that the next time you read another smear piece about how infighting, mismanagement and bad decision making put John McCain's presidential dreams in the toilet. Just because it's true is no reason to ignore the other, untrue side of the story. We urge the media, for once, please stop doing your jobs, and let's get back to the kind of evenhanded-at-any-cost journalism we all enjoy.

What Is the True Story of McCain’s Wartime Experience? by Mary Hershberger

Czarina JB in Arizona — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:42:02 EDT

What Is the True Story of McCain’s Wartime Experience? by Mary Hershberger

October 28, 2008

Journalists have had years to vet John McCain’s account of wartime heroism in Vietnam. But no real critique of its veracity has emerged from leading media outlets. Reporters and commentators remain remarkably disinclined to investigate a major underpinning of McCain’s argument that he is qualified to be commander-in-chief. Here, historian Mary Hershberger questions why.

As we approach the end of an astonishing campaign season, one thing grows clear: John McCain’s campaign has suffered a string of disastrous decisions. These mistakes have overwhelmed even the campaign’s trump card—its image of John McCain as war hero. And not just an ordinary war hero but one who was captured by enemies, imprisoned near death, and “resurrected” to return home with visible wounds that marked his sacrifice.

Aside from the patriotic fervor and powerful religious themes this tale evokes in American Christians who believe that redemptive violence lies at the core of their faith, McCain’s campaign correctly counted on the media treating the image of war hero as if it stood outside history, beyond journalistic scrutiny. The “swift boating” of John Kerry four years ago left the media reluctant to engage in legitimate examination of John McCain’s claims.

As a historian who has studied Vietnam War documents, I read McCain’s Faith of My Fathers with growing concern over the troubling inconsistencies and internal contradictions that I found there. When I sought out official reports, news accounts, film footage and other reliable sources to help resolve these contradictions, I consistently found questionable assertions in McCain’s claims. All memoirs are constrained by the limitations of our memory, but McCain’s accounts are unusually problematic, with many stories grossly exaggerated or simply made up.

Given the media scrutiny heaped upon Cindy McCain’s life during this campaign, one might expect the candidate himself would face equal investigation. That has not been true. When I wrote a piece documenting McCain’s less-than-heroic actions following the disastrous fire on the USS Forrestal, mainstream print newspapers and magazines turned it down, including those that printed investigative pieces on his wife and relentlessly dredged up every scrap of information to expose her vulnerabilities. Ask yourself—have you seen investigative reports of McCain’s claims about his military record that match the level of scrutiny given his wife?

McCain’s war record is a legitimate topic of investigation precisely because he cites it as evidence that he should be president, as proof that he is tested and ready to lead from day one. As such, it ought to be more thoroughly examined than anything else. The few investigations that have been carried out are not reassuring.

On the single issue of his plane crashes, for example, the Los Angeles Times has concluded that “though standards were looser and crashes more frequent in the 1960s, McCain’s record stands out.” A pilot whose performance included two plane crashes and a collision with power lines usually underwent official review to determine his fitness to fly. McCain refuses to allow his military records to be released so that the voting public can see whether his record matches his claims.

Much of the mainstream media frequently repeat without question McCain’s assertions about his war record, including his recent claim that he was on track to be promoted to admiral when he left the Navy. It is due to the diligence of writers on the Internet that claims like this have been investigated.

A recent column by John Dean at Findlaw.com, which includes a Q & A with me, looks at other areas in which McCain has made claims at stark odds with official documents or news reports. Dean concludes that the dwindling importance of the mainstream media is related to its reluctance to “sort fact from fiction” in the wake of the Swift Boaters. The result is that the media gives McCain a pass “rather than risk irritating him by digging out the truth of his military background.”

The irony of McCain’s free pass is that newspapers like the New York Times need look no further than their own pages to check his claims. For example, McCain says that when he was shot down on October 26, 1967, the Vietnamese beat him over and over and refused to provide medical treatment for days until, in desperation, he told them that his father was an important military officer. In contrast, the New York Times, on October 28, 1967, quoted Hanoi radio reporting the day before that, “the son of the commander of the United States Naval Forces in Europe was captured in North Vietnam.” At the time, the New York Times reported that the Vietnamese knew about McCain’s family connections as soon as he was captured, not days later. Which story is true?

Likewise, as a Rolling Stone piece recently pointed out, the New York Times reported on November 11, 1967, less than two weeks after McCain was captured, that he had said that Vietnam appeared to be winning the war and the United States appeared isolated. There is a significant conflict between this and McCain’s memoirs, one that has gone unexamined in the Times.

I have found enough compelling discrepancies between McCain’s claims of his treatment in Hanoi and other sources, including his fellow POWs, to cast serious doubt on his overall account of mistreatment and torture there. McCain’s account of his meeting with French journalist Francois Chalais four days after he was captured asserts that he was combative with guards in the room and refused to talk about the care he was receiving. His account is significantly undercut by recently released filmed footage of that meeting and by Chalais’ printed report at the time.

Many newspapers that recently endorsed Barack Obama also paid homage to McCain’s record as a war hero and former prisoner of war and have lamented that, as the St. Petersburg Times put it, “his campaign in recent months has been unworthy of his record.” If the media had examined his war record as it should have, rather than taking his self-serving memoir at face value, it would be less surprised today that McCain the candidate has been prone to poor judgment, erratic behavior under pressure, and risky decision-making. The similarities between John McCain’s campaign record and his war record outweigh their differences.

The Top Ten Reasons Conservatives Should Vote for Obama by Andrew Sullivan

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:30:12 EDT

27 Oct 2008 03:33 pm

The Top Ten Reasons Conservatives Should Vote For Obama By Andrew Sullivan

My take: 10. A body blow to racial identity politics. An end to the era of Jesse Jackson in black America. 9. Less debt. Yes, Obama will raise taxes on those earning over a quarter of a million. And he will spend on healthcare, Iraq, Afghanistan and the environment. But so will McCain. He plans more spending on health, the environment and won't touch defense of entitlements. And his refusal to touch taxes means an extra $4 trillion in debt over the massive increase presided over by Bush. And the CBO estimates that McCain's plans will add more to the debt over four years than Obama's. Fiscal conservatives have a clear choice. 8. A return to realism and prudence in foreign policy. Obama has consistently cited the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush as his inspiration. McCain's knee-jerk reaction to the Georgian conflict, his commitment to stay in Iraq indefinitely, and his brinksmanship over Iran's nuclear ambitions make him a far riskier choice for conservatives. The choice between Obama and McCain is like the choice between George H.W. Bush's first term and George W.'s. 7. An ability to understand the difference between listening to generals and delegating foreign policy to them. 6. Temperament. Obama has the coolest, calmest demeanor of any president since Eisenhower. Conservatism values that kind of constancy, especially compared with the hot-headed, irrational impulsiveness of McCain. 5. Faith. Obama's fusion of Christianity and reason, his non-fundamentalist faith, is a critical bridge between the new atheism and the new Christianism. 4. A truce in the culture war. Obama takes us past the debilitating boomer warfare that has raged since the 1960s. Nothing has distorted our politics so gravely; nothing has made a rational politics more elusive. 3. Two words: President Palin. 2. Conservative reform. Until conservatism can get a distance from the big-spending, privacy-busting, debt-ridden, crony-laden, fundamentalist, intolerant, incompetent and arrogant faux conservatism of the Bush-Cheney years, it will never regain a coherent message to actually govern this country again. The survival of conservatism requires a temporary eclipse of today's Republicanism. Losing would be the best thing to happen to conservatism since 1964. Back then, conservatives lost in a landslide for the right reasons. Now, Republicans are losing in a landslide for the wrong reasons. 1. The War Against Islamist terror. The strategy deployed by Bush and Cheney has failed. It has failed to destroy al Qaeda, except in a country, Iraq, where their presence was minimal before the US invasion. It has failed to bring any of the terrorists to justice, instead creating the excresence of Gitmo, torture, secret sites, and the collapse of America's reputation abroad. It has empowered Iran, allowed al Qaeda to regroup in Pakistan, made the next vast generation of Muslims loathe America, and imperiled our alliances. We need smarter leadership of the war: balancing force with diplomacy, hard power with better p.r., deploying strategy rather than mere tactics, and self-confidence rather than a bunker mentality. Those conservatives who remain convinced, as I do, that Islamist terror remains the greatest threat to the West cannot risk a perpetuation of the failed Manichean worldview of the past eight years, and cannot risk the possibility of McCain making rash decisions in the middle of a potentially catastrophic global conflict. If you are serious about the war on terror and believe it is a war we have to win, the only serious candidate is Barack Obama. (Photo: Darren Hauck/Getty.)

Hagel: Palin "Arguably The Thinnest-Résumé Candidate" For VP In U.S. History

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:30:21 EDT

The Huffington Post October 27, 2008Hagel: Palin "Arguably The Thinnest-Résumé Candidate" For VP In U.S. HistoryIn early June, Senators Chuck Hagel and John McCain met in Hagel's office on Capitol Hill. McCain, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee, considered Hagel--a fellow-Republican and the senior senator from Nebraska--among his closest friends in Congress. Six months earlier, in December, 2007, McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, had asked Hagel to endorse McCain and campaign with him in the upcoming primaries. Hagel had demurred. . . . Hagel skipped the Republican Convention, choosing instead to go, with two aides, on a fact-finding trip to Latin America. He did hear McCain's speech, which, in its evocation of the need to bridge a disabling partisan divide, echoed the theme of his discussion with McCain in their meeting in June. But, Hagel said, he's been "very disappointed" by McCain's campaign. "He gave one unifying speech and then has spent fifty million dollars to destroy his opponent." Hagel may be the only senior Republican elected official who has publicly criticized McCain's choice of Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. "I don't believe she's qualified to be President of the United States," Hagel told me. "The first judgment a potential President makes is who their running mate is--and I don't think John made a very good selection." He scoffed at McCain's attempts to portray her as an experienced politician. "To try to make the excuse that she looks out her window and sees Russia--and that she's commander of the Alaska National Guard." He added, "There is no question that this candidate is arguably the thinnest-résumé candidate for Vice-President in the history of America."

Bush Orders DOJ to Probe Ohio Voter Registrations

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:05:24 EDT

Bush Orders DOJ to Probe Ohio Voter Registrations By Jason Leopold
The Public Record
Friday, October 24, 2008 Favoured : 16Published in : Nation/WorldIn a déjà vu moment from Campaign 2006, President George W. Bush again is asking his Attorney General to launch an investigation into the registration of hundreds of thousands of new voters, many of whom are expected to vote Democratic.Bush forwarded to Attorney General Michael Mukasey a Republican request that he intervene in the battleground state of Ohio to force 200,000 new voters to either verify the information on their registration forms or cast provisional ballots, which are often thrown out after the voter leaves the polling place.Similarly, two years ago when Bush feared Democratic victories in congressional races, the President “spoke with Attorney General [Alberto] Gonzales in October 2006 about their concerns over voter fraud,” according to a Justice Department Inspector General’s reported released earlier this month.In 2006, the White House and some congressional Republicans also put pressure on the Justice Department and U.S. Attorneys around the country to bring last-minute indictments against pro-Democratic voter registration drives.When some federal prosecutors balked because they found a lack of evidence, they were purged as part of an unprecedented firing of nine U.S. Attorneys, who were deemed not “loyal Bushies.”That “prosecutor-gate” scandal led to the resignations of several senior White House and Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Gonzales. President Bush then asserted broad executive privilege to block testimony by Karl Rove and other top White House officials.Now, two years later, Bush is again putting the Justice Department in position to act on a new round of “voter fraud” suspicions pushed by Republican leaders and his favored successor, Sen. John McCain.While the goal in 2006 was to salvage Republican control of Congress, Bush’s latest move appears aimed at keeping the White House in Republican hands.Federal intervention – if ordered by Mukasey – could wreak havoc at polling places across Ohio, with Republican operatives using data on mismatches to challenge thousands of voters and causing long lines in Democratic strongholds.House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, sent a letter to Bush asking for his extraordinary intervention after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to get involved in the Ohio dispute.“Unless action is taken by the [Justice] Department immediately, thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of names whose information has not been verified through the [Help America Vote Act] procedures mandated by Congress will remain on the voter rolls during the Nov. 4 election. …“There is a significant risk if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted. Given the Election Day is less than two weeks away, immediate action by the Department is not only warranted, but also crucial.”On Friday, White House spokesman Carlton Carroll said Bush had referred Boehner’s letter “to the Department of Justice for their review.”Little Evidence

However, independent studies have shown that phony registrations rarely result in illegally cast ballots because there are so many other safeguards built into the system.

For instance, from October 2002 to September 2005, a total of 70 people were convicted for federal election related crimes, according to figures compiled by the New York Times last year. Only 18 of those were for ineligible voting.In recent years, federal prosecutors reached similar conclusions despite pressure from the Bush administration to lodge “election fraud” charges against voter registration groups seen as bringing more Democratic voters into the democratic process.

Federal investigative guidelines also discourage election-related probes before ballots are cast because of the likelihood that the inquiries will become politicized and might influence the election outcomes.

“In most cases, voters should not be interviewed, or other voter-related investigation done, until after the election is over,” according to the Justice Department’s guidelines for election offenses.

In 2004, Republican-controlled Ohio was one state where voters complained that their votes cast on electronic voting machines for Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, were recorded for Bush.Additionally, tens of thousands of voters were purged from voter registration rolls. Early exit polls showed Kerry leading Bush in Ohio, but Bush carried the state by 119,000 votes.

At issue now is a federal law – the Help America Vote Act, which was passed when Republicans dominated Congress in 2002 – that requires states to verify the eligibility of voters.Lawsuit Filed

The Ohio Republican Party filed a lawsuit last month against Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, claiming that voter registration information for hundreds of thousands of new voters did not match official government data, such as Social Security records and driver’s licenses.But in court filings, GOP officials did not provide documentary evidence to back up those claims. Voting advocates also note that many mismatches can be irrelevant, such as the use of a middle name in one form but not another or a typographical error in a database.Still, Republicans faulted Brunner for her “steadfast refusal to provide the HAVA ‘mismatch’ data to the county boards of elections in a meaningful way.” They accused Brunner of violating federal election laws by “actively working to conceal fraudulent activity.”

Brunner said the lawsuit was “politically motivated” and could result in disenfranchisement of voters because of "misstated technical information or glitches in databases. …

“Many of those discrepancies bear no relationship whatsoever to a voter's eligibility to vote a regular, as opposed to a provisional, ballot,'' Brunner said, adding that mismatches “may well be used at the county level unnecessarily to challenge fully qualified voters and severely disrupt the voting process.”

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s ruling that had favored the Republicans. The high court said lawsuits “brought by a private litigant" could not be used to force states to abide by federal laws.

Boehner then sought, via the letter to Bush, to have Mukasey force Brunner to comply with HAVA’s requirements.Sen. McCain also has elevated the issue of irregularities in registration forms, saying during the third presidential debate that the grassroots group ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”Although McCain’s comment was largely hyperbole, it set the stage for widespread Republican challenges to new voters, what GOP critics say is just the latest chapter of a long history of Republican “voter suppression.”Recent investigations launched against ACORN – now including the reported involvement of the FBI – have raised other concerns, especially that Republicans are flogging this issue in an effort to stir up anger, to revive McCain’s campaign, and to intimidate new voters. Boehner also wrote Bush on Wednesday asking him to block federal funding to ACORN.Ohio’s 20 electoral votes could be crucial for McCain to achieve a comeback victory over his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, who is leading in Ohio by five to seven percentage points, according to most polls.Republican success in disqualifying large numbers of new voters – while creating long lines in Democratic precincts – could tip Ohio into McCain’s column on Election Night.On Friday, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said he was "disappointed" that Bush "chose to interject partisan politics into the election. My confidence in Secretary Brunner's work remains unchanged. She will ensure that every eligible Ohio vote is counted."

Brown asked Mukasey not to intervene in the matter.

Keating law firm donates $50,000 to McCain campaign

Czarina JB in Arizona — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:00:28 EDT

22 October 2008Keating law firm donates $50,000 to McCain campaignThose voting for the first time this year may not have even been alive during the Keating Five scandal, the political corruption case that threatened to end John McCain's political career back in 1989. Much to the chagrin of those Democrats gesticulating wildly at the very silent elephant in the room, the Obama campaign has largely refrained from touching upon the issue, perhaps preferring to leave past associations well alone, for understandable reasons. But sometimes history throws little reminders into our present path, and this is one of those times. Campaign finance records have revealed that the law firm founded by Charles Keating - before he went to jail for fraud, racketeering, and conspiracy for his activities as chairman of Lincoln Savings and Loans - has made donations totalling over $50,000 to McCain's campaign.The Center for Responsive Politics has done the maths, and says: "In amounts ranging from $200 to $2,300, about 30 partners and employees of the legal firm Keating, Muething and Klekamp, as well as their family members, have contributed $50,200 to McCain's 2008 campaign. All but two of the contributions came in July, and all but three of those July donations were logged on July 31, suggesting they were delivered at the same time. As with any bundle of campaign contributions, it's difficult to determine which donor was the "bundler," the person who solicited the contributions on the campaign's behalf. McCain's online roster of bundlers, which purports to name any individual bundling $50,000 or more for the campaign, does not associate any of McCain's major fundraisers with the Keating firm."This is not improper in itself, and the only Keating included in the bundle is William J. Keating, Jr., Charles Keating's nephew, who is listed as a partner in the firm and contributed $1,000.But it reminds us of McCain's role in "The Keating Five," a group of senators who received a total of $1.4 million in campaign contributions connected to Keating and personally intervened with government regulators to allow Lincoln Savings and Loans to make highly risky investments that defrauded thousands of investors and cost taxpayers $3.4 billion. Keating, now 84, once wrote to McCain that "I'm yours till death do us part". Could he be keeping his promise?

David Fum: Sory Senator, Let's Salvage What We Can

Czarina JB in Arizona — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 12:52:46 EDT

Sorry, Senator. Let's Salvage What We Can.By David Frum
Sunday, October 26, 2008; B01There are many ways to lose a presidential election. John McCain is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him.A year ago, the Arizona senator's team made a crucial strategic decision. McCain would run on his (impressive) personal biography. On policy, he'd hew mostly to conservative orthodoxy, with a few deviations -- most notably, his support for legalization for illegal immigrants. But this strategy wasn't yielding results in the general election. So in August, McCain tried a bold new gambit: He would reach out to independents and women with an exciting and unexpected vice presidential choice.That didn't work out so well either. Gov. Sarah Palin connected with neither independents nor women. She did, however, ignite the Republican base, which has come to support her passionately. And so, in this last month, the McCain campaign hasPalinized itself to make the most of its last asset. To fire up the Republican base, the McCain team has hit at Barack Obama as an alien, a radical and a socialist.Sure enough, the base has responded. After months and months of wan enthusiasm among Republicans, these last weeks have at last energized the core of the party. But there's a downside: The very same campaign strategy that has belatedly mobilized the Republican core has alienated and offended the great national middle, which was the only place where the 2008 election could have been won.I could pile up the poll numbers here, but frankly . . . it's too depressing. You have to go back to the Watergate era to see numbers quite so horrible for the GOP.McCain's awful campaign is having awful consequences down the ballot. I spoke a little while ago to a senior Republican House member. "There is not a safe Republican seat in the country," he warned. "I don't mean that we're going to lose all of them. But we could lose any of them."In the Senate, things look, if possible, even worse.The themes and messages that are galvanizing the crowds for Palin are bleeding Sens. John Sununu in New Hampshire, Gordon Smith in Oregon, Norm Coleman in Minnesota and Susan Collins in Maine. The Palin approach might have been expected to work better in more traditionally conservative states such as Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, but they have not worked well enough to compensate for the weak Republican economic message at a moment of global financial crisis. Result: the certain loss of John Warner's Senate seat in Virginia, the probable loss of Elizabeth Dole's in North Carolina, an unexpectedly tough fight for Saxby Chambliss's in Georgia -- and an apparent GOP surrender in Colorado, where it looks as if the National Republican Senatorial Committee has already pulled its ads from the air.The fundraising challenge only makes things worse. The Republican senatorial and congressional committees have badly underperformed compared with their Democratic counterparts -- and the Republican National Committee, which has done well, is directing its money toward the presidential campaign, rather than to local races. (It was RNC funds, not McCain '08 money, that paid the now-famous $150,000 for Palin's campaign wardrobe, for example.) This is a huge mistake.In these last days before the vote, Republicans need to face some strategic realities. Our resources are limited, and our message is failing. We cannot fight on all fronts. We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first.A beaten party needs a base from which to recover. In 1993, our Republican base was found in the states and the cities. We had the governorships of California, Michigan and Wisconsin in 1993, and Rudy Giuliani won the New York mayor's race later that year. The reform we delivered at the state and local levels contrasted acutely with the shambles of President Clinton's first two years -- and helped us win both houses of Congress in 1994.I very much doubt that we will be able to show that same kind of local strength in 2009. The statehouses were the engine of our renewal in the 1990s; the Senate will have to play the same role after this defeat. That's especially true because of two unique dangers posed by the impending Democratic victory.First, with the financial meltdown, the federal government is now acquiring a huge ownership stake in the nation's financial system. It will be immensely tempting to officeholders in Washington to use that stake for political ends -- to reward friends and punish enemies. One-party government, of course, will intensify those temptations. And as the federal government succumbs, officeholders will become more and more comfortable holding that stake. The current urgency to liquidate the government's position will subside. The United States needs Republicans and conservatives to monitor the way Democrats wield this extraordinary and dangerous new power -- and to pressure them to surrender it as rapidly as feasible.Second, the political culture of the Democratic Party has changed over the past decade. There's a fierce new anger among many liberal Democrats, a more militant style and an angry intolerance of dissent and criticism. This is the culture of the left-wing blogosphere and MSNBC's evening line-up -- and soon, it will be the culture of important political institutions in Washington.Unchecked, this angry new wing of the Democratic Party will seek to stifle opposition by changing the rules of the political game. Some will want to silence conservative talk radio by tightening regulation of the airwaves via the misleadingly named "fairness doctrine"; others may seek to police the activities of right-leaning think tanks by a stricter interpretation of what is tax-deductible and what is not.The best bulwark for a nonpolitical finance system and a national culture of open debate will be the strongest possible Republican caucus in the Senate. And it is precisely that strength that is being cannibalized now by the flailing end of the McCain-Palin campaign.What should Republicans be doing differently? Two things:1. Every available dollar that can be shifted to a senatorial campaign must be shifted to a senatorial campaign. Right now, we are investing heavily in Pennsylvania in hopes of corralling those fabled "Hillary Democrats" for McCain. But McCain's hopes in Pennsylvania are delusive: The state went for Kerry in 2004, Gore in 2000 and Clinton in 1992 and 1996, and McCain lags Obama by a dozen points in recent polls. But even if we were somehow to take the state, that victory would not compensate for the likely loss of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and other states tipped to the Democrats by demographic changes and the mortgage crisis. The "win Pennsylvania and win the nation" strategy may have looked plausible in August and September, when McCain trailed Obama by just a few digits. Now it looks far-fetched.But it is not far-fetched to hope that we can hold 45 or 46 of our current 49 Senate seats. In 1993, then-Senate Minority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) stopped Hillary-care with only 43 seats. But if we are reduced to just 40 or 41 senators, as could easily happen, Republicans and conservatives would find themselves powerless to stop anything -- and more conservative Democrats would lose bargaining power with the Obama White House.2. We need a message change that frankly acknowledges that the Democrats are probably going to win the White House -- and that warns of the dangers of one-party, left-wing government. There's a lot of poll evidence that voters prefer divided government. By some estimates, perhaps as many as 8 percent of voters consciously cast strategic votes in favor of division. These are the voters we need to be talking to now.I'm not suggesting that the RNC throw up its hands. But down-ballot Republicans need to give up on the happy talk about how McCain has Obama just where he wants him, take off their game faces and say something like this:"We're almost certainly looking at a Democratic White House. I can work with a Democratic president to help this state. But we need balance in Washington."The government now owns a big stake in the nation's banking system. Trillions of dollars are now under direct government control. It's not wise to put that money under one-party control. It's just too tempting. You need a second set of eyes on that cash. You need oversight and accountability. Otherwise, you're going to wake up two years from now and find out that a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House have been funneling a ton of that money to their friends and allies. It'll be a big scandal -- but it will be too late. The money will be gone. Divided government is the best precaution you can have."

It's the only argument we have left. And, as the old Washington saying goes, it has the additional merit of being true.

Frank Rich: In Defense of White Ameicans

Czarina JB in Arizona — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 11:32:12 EDT

October 26, 2008Op-Ed ColumnistIn Defense of White Americans By FRANK RICHIT seems like a century ago now, but it was only in 2005 that a National Journal poll of Beltway insiders predicted that George Allen, then a popular Virginia senator, would be the next G.O.P. nominee for president. George who? Allen is now remembered, if at all, as a punch line. But any post-mortem of the Great Republican Collapse of 2008 must circle back to the not-so-funny thing that happened on his way to the White House. That would be in 2006, when he capsized his own shoo-in re-election race by calling a 20-year-old Indian-American “macaca” before a white audience (and a video camera). “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia,” Allen told the young Democratic campaign worker for good measure, in a precise preview of the playbook that has led John McCain and Sarah Palin to their tawdry nadir two years later. It wasn’t just Allen’s lame racial joke or his cluelessness about 21st-century media like YouTube that made him a harbinger of the current G.O.P. fiasco. It was most of all the national vision he set forth: There are Real Americans, and there are the Others. The Real are the small-town white folks Allen was addressing in southwestern Virginia. The Others — and their subversive fellow travelers, the Elites — are Americans like the young man who Allen maligned: a high-achieving son of immigrant parents who was born and raised in Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs during its technology boom. (Allen, the self-appointed keeper of real Virginia, grew up in California.) Cut to 2008. You’d think that this incident would be a cautionary tale, but the McCain campaign instead embraced Allen as a role model, with Palin’s odes to “real” and “pro-America” America leading the charge. The farcical apotheosis of this strategy arrived last weekend, again on camera and again in Virginia, when a McCain adviser, Nancy Pfotenhauer, revived Allen’s original script, literally, during an interview on MSNBC. After dismissing the Northern Virginia suburbs, she asserted that the “real Virginia” — the part of the state “more Southern in nature” — will prove “very responsive” to the McCain message. All Pfotenhauer left out was “macaca,” but with McCain calling Barack Obama’s tax plan “welfare” and campaign surrogates (including the robo-calling Rudy Giuliani) linking the Democrat to violent, Willie Horton-like criminality, that would have been redundant.We don’t know yet if McCain will go the way of Allen in a state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since 1964, when L.B.J. vanquished another Arizona Republican in a landslide. But we do know that Obama swept like a conquering hero through Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, last week and that he leads in every recent Virginia poll. There are at least two larger national lessons to be learned from what is likely to be the last gasp of Allen-McCain-Palin politics in 2008. The first, and easy one, is that Republican leaders have no idea what “real America” is. In the eight years since the first Bush-Cheney convention pledged inclusiveness and showcased Colin Powell as its opening-night speaker, the G.O.P. has terminally alienated black Americans (Powell himself now included), immigrant Americans (including the Hispanics who once gave Bush-Cheney as much as 44 percent of their votes) and the extended families of gay Americans (Palin has now revived a constitutional crusade against same-sex marriage). Subtract all those players from the actual America, and you don’t have enough of a bench to field a junior varsity volleyball team, let alone a serious campaign for the Electoral College.But the other, less noticed lesson of the year has to do with the white people the McCain campaign has been pandering to. As we saw first in the Democratic primary results and see now in the widespread revulsion at the McCain-Palin tactics, white Americans are not remotely the bigots the G.O.P. would have us believe. Just because a campaign trades in racism doesn’t mean that the country is racist. It’s past time to come to the unfairly maligned white America’s defense.That includes acknowledging that the so-called liberal media, among their other failures this year, have helped ratchet up this election cycle’s prevailing antiwhite bias. Ever since Obama declared his candidacy, the press’s default setting has been to ominously intone that “in the privacy of the voting booth” ignorant, backward whites will never vote for a black man. A leading vehicle for this journalistic mind-set has been the unending obsession with “the Bradley effect” — as if nothing has changed in America since 1982, when some polls (possibly for reasons having nothing to do with race) predicted erroneously that a black candidate, Tom Bradley, would win the California governorship. In 2008, there is, if anything, more evidence of a reverse Bradley effect — Obama’s primary vote totals more often exceeded those in the final polls than not — but poor old Bradley keeps being flogged anyway.So do all those deer hunters in western Pennsylvania. Once Hillary Clinton whipped Obama in the Rust Belt, it’s been a bloviation staple (echoing the Clinton camp’s line) that a black guy is doomed among Reagan Democrats, Joe Sixpacks, rednecks, Joe the Plumbers or whichever condescending term you want to choose. (Clinton at one low point settled on “hard-working Americans, white Americans.”) Michigan in particular was repeatedly said to be slipping out of the Democrats’ reach because of incorrigible racism — until McCain abandoned it as hopeless this month in the face of a double-digit Obama lead. The constant tide of anthropological articles and television reports set in blue-collar diners, bars and bowling alleys have hyped this racial theory of the race. So did the rampant misreading of primary-season exit polls. On cable TV and the Sunday network shows, there was endless chewing over the internal numbers in the Clinton victories. It was doomsday news for Obama, for instance, that some 12 percent of white Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania said race was a factor in their choice and three-quarters of them voted for Clinton. Ipso facto — and despite the absence of any credible empirical evidence — these Clinton voters would either stay home or flock to McCain in November. The McCain campaign is so dumb that it bought into the press’s confirmation of its own prejudices. Even though registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 1.2 million in Pennsylvania (more than double the 2004 gap), even though Obama leads by double digits in almost every recent Pennsylvania poll and even though no national Republican ticket has won there since 1988, McCain started pouring his dwindling resources into the state this month. When the Democratic Representative John Murtha described his own western Pennsylvania district as a “racist area,” McCain feigned outrage and put down even more chips on the race card, calling the region the “most patriotic, most God-loving” part of America. Well, there are racists in western Pennsylvania, as there are in most pockets of our country. But despite the months-long drumbeat of punditry to the contrary, there are not and have never been enough racists in 2008 to flip this election. In the latest New York Times/CBS News and Pew national polls, Obama is now pulling even with McCain among white men, a feat accomplished by no Democratic presidential candidate in three decades, Bill Clinton included. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey finds age doing more damage to McCain than race to Obama.Nor is America’s remaining racism all that it once was, or that the McCain camp has been hoping for it to be. There are even “racists for Obama,” as Politico labels the phenomenon: White Americans whose distrust of black people in general crumbles when they actually get to know specific black people, including a presidential candidate who extends a genuine helping hand in a time of national crisis. The original “racist for Obama,” after all, was none other than Obama’s own white, Kansas-raised grandmother, the gravely ill Madelyn Dunham, whom he visited in Hawaii on Friday. In “Dreams From My Father,” Obama wrote of how shaken he was when he learned of her overwhelming fear of black men on the street. But he weighed that reality against his unshakeable love for her and hers for him, and he got past it.When Obama cited her in his speech on race last spring, the right immediately accused him of “throwing his grandmother under the bus.” But Obama’s critics were merely projecting their own racial hang-ups. He still loves his grandmother. He was merely speaking candidly and generously — like an adult — about the strange, complex and ever-changing racial dynamics of America. He hit a chord because many of us have had white relatives of our own like his, and we, too, see them in full and often love them anyway. Such human nuances are lost on conservative warriors of the Allen-McCain-Palin ilk. They see all Americans as only white or black, as either us or them. The dirty little secret of such divisive politicians has always been that their rage toward the Others is exceeded only by their cynical conviction that Real Americans are a benighted bunch of easily manipulated bigots. This seems to be the election year when voters in most of our myriad Americas are figuring that out.

Republican fears of historic Obama landslide unleash civil war for the future of the party

Czarina JB in Arizona — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 17:37:28 EDT

Republican fears of historic Obama landslide unleash civil war for the future of the party Senior Republicans believe that John McCain is doomed to a landslide defeat which will hand Barack Obama more political power than any president in a generation. By Tim Shipman in Durango, Colorado
Last Updated: 9:35PM BST 25 Oct 2008Aides to George W.Bush, former Reagan White House staff and friends of John McCain have all told The Sunday Telegraph that they not only expect to lose on November 4, but also believe that Mr Obama is poised to win a crushing mandate.They believe he will be powerful enough to remake the American political landscape with even more ease than Ronald Reagan did in 1980.The prospect of an electoral rout has unleashed a bitter bout of recriminations both within the McCain campaign and the wider conservative movement, over who is to blame and what should be done to salvage the party's future.Mr McCain is now facing calls for him to sacrifice his own dwindling White House hopes and focus on saving vulnerable Republican Senate seats which are up for grabs on the same day.Their fear is that Democrat candidates riding on Mr Obama's popularity may win the nine extra seats they need in the Senate to give them unfettered power in Congress.If the Democrat majority in the Senate is big enough - at least 60 seats to 40 - the Republicans will be unable to block legislation by use of a traditional filibuster - talking until legislation runs out of time. No president has had the support of such a majority since Jimmy Carter won the 1976 election. President Reagan achieved his political transformation partly through the power of his personality.David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, told The Sunday Telegraph that Republicans should now concentrate all their fire on "the need for balanced government"."It's hard to see a turnaround in the White House race," he said. "This could look like an ideological as well as a party victory if we're not careful. It could be 1980 in reverse."With this huge new role for federal government in the economy, the possibility for mischief making is very, very great. One man should not have a monopoly of political and financial power. That's very dangerous."In North Carolina, where Senator Elizabeth Dole seems set to loose, Republicans are running adverts that appear to take an Obama victory for granted, warning that the Democrat will have a "blank cheque" if her rival Kay Hagen wins. "These liberals want complete control of government in a time of crisis," the narrator says. "All branches of Government. No checks and balances."Democrats lead in eight of the 12 competitive Senate races and need just nine gains to reach their target of 60. Even Mitch McConnell, the leader of Senate Republicans, is at risk in Kentucky, normally a rock solid red state. A private memo on the likely result of the congressional elections, leaked to Politico, has the Republicans losing 37 seats.Ed Rollins, who masterminded Ronald Reagan's second victory in 1984, said the election is already over and predicted: "This is going to turn into a landslide."A former White House official who still advises President Bush told The Sunday Telegraph: "McCain hasn't won independents, nor has he inspired the base. It's the worst of all worlds. He is dragging everyone else down with him. He needs to deploy people and money to salvage what we can in Congress."The prospect of defeat has unleashed what insiders describe as an "every man for himself" culture within the McCain campaign, with aides in a "circular firing squad" as blame is assigned.More profoundly, it sparked the first salvoes in a Republican civil war with echoes of Tory infighting during their years in the political wilderness.One wing believes the party has to emulate David Cameron, by adapting the issues to fight on and the positions they hold, while the other believes that a back to basics approach will reconnect with heartland voters and ensure success. Modernisers fear that would leave Republicans marginalised, like the Tories were during the Iain Duncan Smith years, condemning them to opposition for a decade.Mr Frum argues that just as America is changing, so the Republican Party must adapt its economic message and find more to say about healthcare and the environment if it is to survive.He said: "I don't know that there's a lot of realism in the Republican Party. We have an economic message that is largely irrelevant to most people."Cutting personal tax rates is not the answer to everything. The Bush years were largely prosperous but while national income was up the numbers for most individuals were not. Republicans find that a hard fact to process."Other Republicans have jumped ship completely. Ken Adelman, a Pentagon adviser on the Iraq war, Matthew Dowd, who was Mr Bush's chief re-election strategist, and Scott McClellan, Mr Bush's former press secretary, have all endorsed Mr Obama.But the real bile has been saved for those conservatives who have balked at the selection of Sarah Palin.In addition to Mr Frum, who thinks her not ready to be president, Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's greatest speechwriter and a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, condemned Mr McCain's running mate as a "symptom and expression of a new vulgarisation of American politics." Conservative columnist David Brooks called her a "fatal cancer to the Republican Party".The backlash that ensued last week revealed the fault lines of the coming civil war.Rush Limbaugh, the doyen of right wing talk radio hosts, denounced Noonan, Brooks and Frum. Neconservative writer Charles Krauthammer condemned "the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama", while fellow columnist Tony Blankley said that instead of collaborating in heralding Mr Obama's arrival they should be fighting "in a struggle to the political death for the soul of the country".During the primaries the Democratic Party was bitterly divided between Barack Obama's "latte liberals" and Hillary Clinton's heartland supporters, but now the same cultural division threatens to tear the Republican Party apart.Jim Nuzzo, a White House aide to the first President Bush, dismissed Mrs Palin's critics as "cocktail party conservatives" who "give aid and comfort to the enemy".He told The Sunday Telegraph: "There's going to be a bloodbath. A lot of people are going to be excommunicated. David Brooks and David Frum and Peggy Noonan are dead people in the Republican Party. The litmus test will be: where did you stand on Palin?"Mr Frum thinks that Mrs Palin's brand of cultural conservatism appeals only to a dwindling number of voters.He said: "She emerges from this election as the probable frontrunner for the 2012 nomination. Her supporters vastly outnumber her critics. But it will be extremely difficult for her to win the presidency."Mr Nuzzo, who believes this election is not a re-run of the 1980 Reagan revolution but of 1976, when an ageing Gerald Ford lost a close contest and then ceded the leadership of the Republican Party to Mr Reagan.He said: "Win or lose, there is a ready made conservative candidate waiting in the wings. Sarah Palin is not the new Iain Duncan Smith, she is the new Ronald Reagan." On the accuracy of that judgment, perhaps, rests the future of the Republican Party.

National GOP group pulling ads in CO Senate ads backing Schaffer

Czarina JB in Arizona — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:20:27 EDT

National GOP group pulling ads in CO Senate ads backing Schaffer

By Michael Riley
The Denver Post

Article Last Updated: 10/24/2008 09:51:37 AM MDT

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is pulling out of the battle for Colorado's Senate seat, yanking its ads from television stations across the state beginning next week, according to an NRSC spokesman.

That decision leaves Republican Bob Schaffer on his own to try and close what some polls show is a double digit gap in the critical closing days of the campaign for Colorado's open Senate seat.

The decision of the national Senate committees to give up on a state is traditionally taken as a dour sign for a campaign, but in this case it's muddied somewhat by the decision earlier this week of the Democratic Senate committee to pull out first a sign, Democrats said, that Schaffer was too far behind to be considered a threat.

Schaffer campaign manager Dick Wadhams said his candidate has plenty of cash on hand and that the race is still close.

"That's what they decided and we'll live with it," Wadhams said. "Our tracking shows this race is in single digits with a large body of undecided voters still out there."

The NRSC has been one of Schaffer's strongest allies, spending over $3.5 million to defend their candidate and attack Democrat Mark Udall.

"The NRSC knows this is the best time to own the airwaves with the (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee) ads down," said Udall campaign spokeswoman Tara Trujillo. "So that tells me the NRSC found out the hard way that not only have their ads backfired and turned off voters, but that Coloradans are standing with Mark Udall."

As recently as Tuesday, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who heads the national Senate re-election effort, told an audience at the National Press Club that the polls were tightening in Colorado and that the committee would stick it out in Colorado "until the end."

Rebecca Fisher, a spokesman for the NRSC, confirmed this morning that the committee was pulling its ads beginning next week.

The DSCC pull-out could have provided an opportunity for the GOP if they thought the race was close, analysts say, using the sudden spending advantage to hammer away at the Democrat and close the gap.

But a galloping economic crisis has scrambled races across the country, and several GOP Senate incumbents now find themselves in close campaigns. With the DSCC decision to leave Colorado, that also allowed the Republicans to shift money to must-win races in other states, including Kentucky and Georgia..

Poll Finds Obama Strong with Some Bush Backers

Czarina JB in Arizona — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:40:54 EDT

Poll finds Obama strong with some Bush backers By Jim Rutenberg and Marjorie Connelly
Friday, October 24, 2008

Senator Barack Obama is showing surprising strength among portions of the political coalition that returned George W. Bush to the White House four years ago, a cross section of support that, if it continues through Election Day, would exceed that of Bill Clinton in 1992, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News polls.

Underscoring the building strength of Obama's candidacy in the final phase of the campaign, he was ahead of McCain among various groups that voted for Bush four years ago: those with incomes greater than $50,000 a year; married women; suburbanites; white Catholics, and is even competitive among white men — a group that has not voted for a Democrat over a Republican since 1972, when pollsters began surveying people after they voted.

Of potential concern for Obama's strategists, a third of voters surveyed said they knew someone who does not support the Illinois Democrat because he is black. And, coming shortly after Obama's running mate, Senator Joseph Biden Jr. of Delaware, warned a group of Democratic donors that foreign leaders would test a President Obama in the first months of his term, voters are closely divided about Obama's ability to handle a crisis.

But, overall, the poll found that Obama would defeat Mr. McCain if the election were held now, with 52 percent of those identified as probable voters saying they would vote for Obama and 39 percent of them saying they would vote for McCain. Among registered voters, the spread between the two is almost identical, with 51 percent saying they would vote for Obama and 38 percent saying they would vote for McCain. A New York Times/CBS News poll taken a week ago showed a similar margin of victory for Obama.

The latest nationwide telephone poll was conducted Sunday through Wednesday with 1,152 adults nationwide, of whom 1,046 said they were registered to vote. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. To measure support for the candidates among specific voting blocs, The Times combined data from the latest poll with that of the one conducted last week because some of the sub-groups were too small to be statistically reliable when extracted from a single survey.

Despite McCain's continued questioning of Obama's readiness, the number of voters surveyed who say Obama has prepared himself well enough for the presidency was at its highest yet in the newest poll, at 56 percent. When The Times and CBS News first asked the question, more voters said they believed Obama was not ready, 49 percent, than believed he was not, 44 percent. McCain still holds an edge on that front, with 64 percent saying they believe he is prepared for the presidency.

And there was fresh evidence that McCain's attacks on Obama's character and qualifications in tough commercials, mailings, speeches and robotic telephone calls were, if anything, harming McCain. The percentage of people who view McCain unfavorably was at its highest level since The Times and CBS began asking the question in 1999 — 46 percent said they held unfavorable views of him, with 39 percent saying they viewed him favorably. Obama was viewed favorably by 52 percent of the voters surveyed, and unfavorably by 31 percent of them.

Voters were almost evenly split over Obama's ability to handle a crisis wisely: 49 percent said they were confident he could, and 47 percent said they would be uneasy. But respondents showed less ease with McCain: 51 percent said they would be uneasy with his approach and 46 percent expressed confidence.

Obama fared still better than McCain on economic matters: 65 percent said they were somewhat confident or very confident in Obama's ability to handle the economy; 47 percent said the same thing about McCain.

In spite of McCain's sustained attack on Obama's proposal to raise income taxes on households and businesses that earn more than $250,000 a year — attacks often delivered with allusions to "Joe the Plumber" — Obama's plan received significant support in the new poll. It was called a "good idea" by 62 percent and a "bad idea" by 33 percent.

Yet, at the same time, voters were evenly divided over McCain's plan to make permanent Bush's 2001 tax cuts.

In another area where McCain could take heart, the last two polls offered fresh evidence that his choice of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate had helped to excite two traditional bases of support for Republican presidential candidates — white people who say they attend church every week, who preferred McCain over Obama by 61 percent to 29 percent, and people from the South, 51 percent of whom said they would vote for McCain, compared with 40 percent who preferred Obama.

But the percentage of people who view Palin unfavorably, 40 percent, was still higher than the percentage of people who view her favorably, 31 percent.

Senior strategists of both parties have viewed the unpopularity of Bush and the Republican Party as major drags on McCain's chances. And the favorability ratings for both are at all-time lows: Bush's approval rating of 22 percent is tied for its worst in the history of the Times/CBS poll, and opinions of Republican Party are at their lowest since the poll first included questions about the political parties in 1985. Only 36 percent expressing a favorable opinion of the Republicans, compared with 56 percent who expressed a favorable view of the Democrats.

That difference in standing was reflected in comments from some respondents who said they had voted for Bush in 2004 but were now planning to vote for Obama.

"I've always been a Republican, but I've switched in the last four years," said Helen Taylor, 64, of Los Fresnos, Texas, in a follow-up interview. "I voted for Bush because I knew more about him than Kerry and I stuck with the Republican stance on things at that time. But I became concerned about things Bush was doing and now I'm more in line with the Democratic platform. I also like Barack Obama because he has intelligence and class and the ability to think on his feet."

Obama has a 16 point advantage over McCain among women in the combined data of the last two polls; Senator John Kerry outpolled Bush by three percentage points among women in 2004, according to exit polls conducted then.

Obama is supported by 45 percent of white women, and McCain is preferred by 42 percent; Bush had beaten Kerry with 55 percent of the vote among white women, according to exit polls.

Obama is tied with McCain among white men, a group that Bush won with 61 percent of their vote. Even Bill Clinton lost to George H.W. Bush among white men when he won the White House in 1992.

Yet some voters still ascribe racial motives those opposing Obama this year.

Among the 33 percent who said they knew someone who does not support Obama mainly because he is black was Robert Richter, a Democrat from Dunbar, Pennsylvania. "Some people are prejudiced and don't want to vote for him, for one thing, because he's black and for another, because they feel he's a Muslim," said Richter, who works at a gas station. "I think for some people saying Obama is a Muslim is their way of getting around the black issue."

Obama is Christian but a number of e-mails have circulated falsely alleging he is Muslim.

Correction:
Notes:
Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

Why McCain Has Lost Our Vote by CC Goldwater

Czarina JB in Arizona — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:28:53 EDT

The Huffington Post October 23, 2008 CC Goldwater Posted October 23, 2008 | 10:28 AM (EST) Why McCain Has Lost Our Vote Being Barry Goldwater's granddaughter and living in Arizona, one would assume that I would be voting for our state's senator, John McCain. I am still struck by certain 'dyed in the wool' Republicans who are on the fence this election, as it seems like a no-brainer to me. Myself, along with my siblings and a few cousins, will not be supporting the Republican presidential candidates this year. We believe strongly in what our grandfather stood for: honesty, integrity, and personal freedom, free from political maneuvering and fear tactics. I learned a lot about my grandfather while producing the documentary, Mr. Conservative Goldwater on Goldwater. Our generation of Goldwaters expects government to provide for constitutional protections. We reject the constant intrusion into our personal lives, along with other crucial policy issues of the McCain/Palin ticket. My grandfather (Paka) would never suggest denying a woman's right to choose. My grandmother co-founded Planned Parenthood in Arizona in the 1930's, a cause my grandfather supported. I'm not sure about how he would feel about marriage rights based on same-sex orientation. I think he would feel that love and respect for ones privacy is what matters most and not the intolerance and poor judgment displayed by McCain over the years. Paka respected our civil liberties and passed on the message that that we should conduct our lives standing up for the basic freedoms we hold so dear. For a while, there were several candidates who aligned themselves with the Goldwater version of Conservative thought. My grandfather had undying respect for the U.S. Constitution, and an understanding of its true meanings. There always have been a glimmer of hope that someday, someone would "race through the gate" full steam in Goldwater style. Unfortunately, this hasn't happened, and the Republican brand has been tarnished in a shameless effort to gain votes and appeal to the lowest emotion, fear. Nothing about McCain, except for maybe a uniform, compares to the same ideology of what Goldwater stood for as a politician. The McCain/Palin plan is to appear diverse and inclusive, using women and minorities to push an agenda that makes us all financially vulnerable, fearful, and less safe. When you see the candidate's in political ads, you can't help but be reminded of the 1964 presidential campaign of Johnson/Goldwater, the 'origin of spin', that twists the truth and obscures what really matters. Nothing about the Republican ticket offers the hope America needs to regain it's standing in the world, that's why we're going to support Barack Obama. I think that Obama has shown his ability and integrity. After the last eight years, there's a lot of clean up do. Roll up your sleeves, Senators Obama and Biden, and we Goldwaters will roll ours up with you.

McCain Cuts Off Murphy, Critical 2000 Chief Strategist

Czarina JB in Arizona — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:23:20 EDT

McCain Cuts Off Murphy, Critical 2000 Chief StrategistThe Huffington Post | Rachel Weiner | October 23, 2008 09:12 AM Many observers have marveled at how drastically different John McCain's campaign this year is from the one he ran in 2000. Now the New York Times reports that McCain has cut off all communication with Mike Murphy, the chief strategist of the '00 campaign and a longtime friend and adviser to the candidate. The reason -- McCain sees Murphy's criticisms of his current campaign as a "betrayal." Mr. McCain has told associates that he has viewed Mr. Murphy's criticisms of his campaign -- its advertisements, his selection of Ms. Palin and Mr. McCain's aggressive manner -- as an act of betrayal, the actions of a former friend seeking attention and a network platform. Mr. McCain was described as particularly incensed that one of Mr. Murphy's platforms was MSNBC, which Mr. McCain's campaign has repeatedly treated as an enemy.
Mr. McCain has cut off all communications with Mr. Murphy, associates said. And McCain aides, including Steve Schmidt, a chief strategist who worked with Mr. Murphy on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign for governor of California, have stopped talking to him as well, ignoring telephone calls or e-mail messages, according to Republicans close to the campaign.Mr. Murphy, in a brief e-mail comment, said that he was saying only what he believed, and that he still admired Mr. McCain.Murphy's latest critique of his former boss is a post on Time's Swampland blog offering sarcastic potential responses to the news of Palin's $150,000 makeover: I saw the RNC statement on Gov. Palin's $150,000 clothing bender on the RNC's tab. This caper is gonna make for a long day at the office for the good folks at the RNC/McCain press operation. Thought I'd offer a little help in a humorous vein; some other possible spin lines for the RNC.
1.) What you sneering critics in the liberal MSM fail to see here is... a Jobs Program! Saks floorwalkers, cashiers, a team of sweating porters to haul the merchandise from the store to the motorcade... chiropractors to treat those porters. Sarah Palin knows how to create jobs!2.) What's the difference between a Pit Bull and a Hockey Mom? You can feed a pit-bull for 483 years with 150 grand.3.) Still cheaper than Mitt Romney's hair products. We're saving money here...4.) William Ayres is a terrorist!5.) New ad slogan: "Clothes for Gov. Palin? $150,000. Time machine to go back two months to late August and ask what the Hell were Schmidt and Davis thinking when they cooked up this idea and sold it to McCain? Priceless."

Waiting for November 4th

Czarina JB in Arizona — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:58:03 EDT

Larry DavidPosted October 22, 2008 | 06:44 PM (EST) Waiting for Nov. 4th Top of FormI 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.

Republican Richard Lugar Endorses Obama's Approach to Diplomacy

Czarina JB in Arizona — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:53:17 EDT

Republican Richard Lugar endorses ObamaWed, 10/15/2008 - 3:37pm — Indforobama Obama’s ‘Diplomacy’ Wins a Republican Endorsement By Adam Graham-Silverman, CQ Staff The ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee parted ways with his party’s presidential nominee Wednesday by endorsing Democrat Barack Obama ’s approach to diplomacy. In a lengthy speech at the National Defense University, Indiana Sen. Richard G. Lugar weighed the benefits of talking to foreign leaders, including U.S. enemies, against other actions, such as military force. The issue marks one of the sharpest divides between Obama and John McCain , who has called the Democratic nominee naive for suggesting that he would sit down with leaders such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Lugar, however, praised Obama, noting that isolation often does not resolve contentious issues. “He correctly cautions against the implication that hostile nations must be dealt with almost exclusively through isolation or military force,” Lugar said in a prepared remarks released before his speech. “In some cases, refusing to talk can even be dangerous.” Lugar, however, said McCain is right to warn that “there are times when diplomatic approaches to rogue regimes have little efficacy.” But he cited North Korea, which was just removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror, as a diplomatic success story and urged more contact with Syria and Iran. This is not the first time Lugar and Obama have seen eye-to-eye on foreign policy issues. Lugar noted back in July that he was “pleased” to have worked with Obama on nuclear proliferation issues after an Obama ad ran mentioning Lugar by name. Lugar also used his speech to underscore his concern that U.S. foreign policy has become too reactive. “If most U.S. foreign policy attention is devoted to crises fomented by hostile regimes, we are ceding the initiative to our enemies and reducing our capacity to lead the world in ways that are more likely to affect our future,” Lugar said.

Gordon Smith, Another GOP Senator Decries Ayers Robocalls

Czarina JB in Arizona — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:38:18 EDT

Another GOP Senator Decries Ayers RobocallsOctober 22, 2008 03:24 PM Oregon's Gordon Smith has become the fourth Republican Senator to disavow John McCain's robocalls linking Barack Obama to Bill Ayers.In a statement to the Huffington Post, Smith for Senate press secretary Lindsay Gilbride said:
"They [the Ayers calls] are not taking place in Oregon and Senator Smith does not condone these sort of calls. Negative robocalls are not appropriate and have no place in campaigns."

The McCain campaign's tactics have come under heavy fire in recent days, including from Republican Senators Norm Coleman, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin even acknowledged that voters were becoming "irritated" by the onslaught of campaign calls. Meanwhile, McCain himself was forced to defend the tactic in a recent interview, saying "that robocall is exactly accurate."Even as the campaign tactic has courted disdain from fellow Republicans, it's not clear that the robo calls have helped McCain's campaign. A CNN poll released this week showed that most Americans now believe that McCain's attacks against Obama are unfair.It's not hard to figure why Smith's camp made the move to officially distance itself from the McCain robocalls: Obama is on pace to handily carry the state on November 4.Meanwhile, according to Pollster.com's average of surveys in Oregon, the two-term Smith is running behind his challenger, Democratic State House Speaker Jeff Merkley.So far in the race, Smith has repeatedly referenced Obama positively in his advertisements, suggesting that he has worked closely with the Democratic nominee in the Senate. Now, by distancing himself from the Ayers robocalls, it appears the vulnerable Republican is banking on a strategy of not offending Obama voters.UPDATE: Jeff Merkley's campaign responds to Sen. Smith's new position, describing it as hypocritical in a statement:"Gordon Smith is a complete hypocrite. Just like John McCain, Gordon Smith and Karl Rove are using robocalls to attack Jeff Merkley. On top of that, Smith and the Oregon Republican Party are paying this company (FLS) thousands of dollars for undisclosed services. Smith should immediately fire this group of Bush-Rove hacks and demand that Freedom's Watch get out of Oregon."The Merkley campaign cites FEC reports showing that FLS-Connect, the company in charge of McCain's robocalls, has been paid nearly $100,000 by Smith's campaign in the last year.Oregon's Gordon Smith has become the fourth Republican Senator to disavow John McCain's robocalls linking Barack Obama to Bill Ayers.

How Obama Is Winning Veterans

Czarina JB in Arizona — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:34:49 EDT

Posted October 21, 2008 | 10:32 AM (EST) How Obama Is Winning Veterans

Colin Powell's announcement on Sunday that he is supporting Barack Obama for President dominated the news, as well as it should. The chattering class appears to regard it a one-off event. But is it?

Far removed from the public glare, Obama has, for some time, been meeting with retired senior officers and other influential veterans and gaining their confidence.* Some, including Powell's longtime chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, are actively campaigning for Obama.

Colin Powell made up his own mind, but the support of veterans backing Obama - Wilkerson included -may have been among the factors that led to Powell's stunning announcement.

Obama began meeting with veterans more than a year ago, before he emerged as the likely Democratic nominee. These were not the typical grip-and-grins of a photo op. The meetings entailed lengthy discussions of substantive issues - not just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but force structure, military recruitment, health care for wounded veterans and nuclear proliferation. The result: retired senior officers, who were largely nonpolitical or politically inclined to the GOP, began to see that Obama was no ordinary politician, that he was well-versed in international relations, military affairs and a broad range of issues that affect the security of our nation.

Some of those veterans have since stepped forward and taken an active role in the Obama campaign. The most visible manifestation came at the Democratic Convention in August, when 20 generals and admirals appeared together in support for Obama.

I saw it on display in Fairfax, Virginia, this past weekend. Now granted, this is Northern Virginia, which Joe McCain (brother of John) recently declared "communist country." It is also a section of the Commonwealth that McCain aide, Nancy Pfotenhauer, disdained as not part of the "real Virginia."

Yet, Virginia it is, and the "Veterans & Military Families Rally for Obama," which attracted 200-250 people on Saturday, appears emblematic of the inroads Obama is making into a community that had, in the past, been highly resistant to Democratic presidential candidates.

David McGinnis, a retired Army brigadier general and combat infantryman, spoke of meeting Obama for the first time and spending three hours discussing a broad range of military issues. "Here's a man who wanted to learn how to be commander-in-chief and was willing to listen and was willing to be held accountable," he said. "That's what you want in a leader."

McGinnis was also impressed with Obama's efforts on behalf of veterans dealing with mental health issues, substance abuse and homelessness.

James A. Kelley, a retired Army major general, cited Obama's support of greater funding for the Army and increased intelligence assets, both of which McCain opposed. Obama voted for "up-armoring vehicles and personnel gear," Kelley said. "Senator McCain voted against that."

In his final assignment, Deputy Commanding General of the Third Army in the Middle East, Kelley met Obama when the senator visited Kuwait in 200Na5. He recalled Obama's meeting individual soldiers, shooting baskets with them and taking the time to meet them in small groups or one to one. No cameras, no reporters. Obama stayed until the last soldier left.

"I'm not for this war," Obama told Kelley at the time, "but I am for these soldiers. I will support them."

Obama made good on that promise. Disabled American Veterans, a nonpartisan charitable organization that works on behalf of severely wounded veterans, gave John McCain a score of 20 out of a possible 100. Obama earned an 80.

Larry Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, served as chief of staff when Colin Powell was Secretary of State. In European and Asian capitals, he said, "they do not judge us by our rhetoric anymore. We have failed the international community with our words. They know President Bush lied when he said we do not torture. Waterboarding has been torture since the Spanish Inquisition."

He went on to say: "We've had no leadership for eight years. Think about that. The only leadership we've had is that of Dick Cheney behind the scenes corrupting our Constitution, corrupting everything we believe in and advocating publicly for torture."

Later, in response to a question, Wilkerson added: "The Vice President of the United States not only lied to the American people and to the Congress of the United States, particularly a man named Dick Armey [the Texas Republican who was then the House Majority Leader], but he also lied to the President of the United States. And all of this is going to come out because in our country you can't keep secrets - not for very long. And historians and others are going to find this presidency and this vice-presidency, as I said before, the most unprecedentedly incompetent, secretive and abusive of power in our history."

Paul "Bud" Bucha never rose beyond the rank of Army captain, but he has something few veterans possess: the Congressional Medal of Honor, awarded for his extraordinary courage as a young infantry officer in Vietnam. Bucha later taught at West Point and still teaches young men and women embarking on military careers about character and leadership. (He had recently returned from a visit with cadets at the Air Force Academy, which happens to be my alma mater.)

Bucha said of Obama: "This is a man that understands uniting and honor. He says there is nothing more they must do who serve abroad to come home with honor. There is nothing more that we can add or we can subtract to what they have done. They are already owed their full honor. So, it is wrong to say someone must surrender to allow us to win before they can have honor."

Later on, he added: "The wonderful thing about Barack Obama, he started out with this word, hope. What more gracious, wonderful thing to base a campaign on. Hope. Not destruction of the opposition, but hope."

In previous elections, the GOP seemed to have a lock on the votes of veterans. The remarks I heard in Fairfax suggest that change may be coming. Veterans are looking for more from their politicians than "Support Our Troops" magnets. They want leaders who understand the challenges we face and will not squander the lives of our armed forces on the next neocon wet dream of a cakewalk in some foreign land. They want a president who recognizes, as Obama has, that the nation has a solemn obligation to care for soldiers wounded in battle and to support the families of those who die in service to our country.

Near the end of this event, Larry Wilkerson, a self-described lifelong Republican, who became familiar with the Democratic party when he campaigned for Jim Webb's 2006 Senate race, had this to say: "Let me tell you that I have found a collegiality, a warmth, a compassion, a humanity in your party that I never found in mine."

If Democrats live up to the promises Obama has made to our soldiers, the shift I glimpsed in Fairfax last weekend could ultimately alter the political landscape.

Doing the right thing. What a concept. What a way to drive a spike through the ugly heart of Rovian politics.

Lieberman: U.S. May Be Attacked In 2009

Czarina JB in Arizona — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:39:16 EDT

Lieberman: U.S. May Be Attacked In 2009WASHINGTON, June 29, 2008 (CBS) In describing the reasons he believes the Republicans' presumptive nominee for president would be better prepared than the Democrats' to lead the nation next January, Sen. Joe Lieberman said that history shows the United States would likely face a terrorist attack in 2009.

"Our enemies will test the new president early," Lieberman, I-Conn., told Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer. "Remember that the truck bombing of the World Trade Center happened in the first year of the Clinton administration. 9/11 happened in the first year of the Bush administration."

Lieberman nonetheless distanced himself from remarks by McCain chief strategist Charlie Black, who came under criticism for suggesting in an interview that McCain's election chances would be improved if a terrorist attack occurred before November.

"Sometimes even the best of them say things that are not what they intended to say," Lieberman said. "Certainly the implications there I know were not what Charlie intended. And he apologized for it. Senator McCain said he didn't agree. And, of course, I feel the same way.

"But here's the point. We're in a war against Islamist extremists who attacked us on 9/11. They've been trying to attack us in many, many ways since then."

A former Democratic nominee for vice president, Lieberman endorsed McCain for president because, he says, the Democratic Party he joined in the early 1960s is not reflected by the party's current leadership.

He also said that he feels McCain is better prepared to be commander in chief than Barack Obama. "[McCain] knows the world," Lieberman said. "He's been tested. He's ready to protect the security of the American people."

Lieberman also assailed Obama and fellow Senators who called for a timetable of withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and opposed the "surge" of additional U.S. forces pushed forth by President Bush.

"It's now working," Lieberman told Schieffer. "If we had done what Senator Obama asked us to do for the last couple of years, today Iran and al Qaeda would be in control of Iraq. It would be a terrible defeat for us and our allies in the Middle East and throughout the world. Instead, we've got a country that's defending itself, that's growing economically, where there's been genuine political reconciliation, and where Iran and al Qaeda are on the run. And that's the way it ought to be."

However, McCain's readiness was disputed by retired General Wesley Clark, who is backing Obama for president, despite McCain's storied military experience in Vietnam. "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," he said. "I think Joe has it exactly backwards here," Clark told Schieffer. "I think being president is about having good judgment. It's about the ability to communicate. And what Barack Obama brings is incredible communication skills, proven judgment. You look at his meteoric rise in politics and you see a guy who deals with people well, who understands issues, who brings people together, and who has good judgment in moving forward.

"And I think what we need to do, Bob, is we need to stop talking about the old politics of left and right, and we need to pull together and move the country forward. And I think that's what Barack Obama will do.

“Because in the matters of national security policymaking, it's a matter of understanding risk. It's a matter of gauging your opponents and it's a matter of being held accountable. John McCain's never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service … But he hasn't held executive responsibility."

Obama Takes Time for a Woman Dear to Him

Czarina JB in Arizona — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:16:17 EDT

· Obama Takes Time for a Woman Dear to Him By JULIE BOSMANPublished: October 21, 2008 In his speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president, Senator Barack Obama spoke of how his grandmother started as a secretary without a college degree and worked her way up to be a vice president of a bank. “She’s the one who taught me about hard work,” Mr. Obama said in that speech in Denver. “She’s the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me. And although she can no longer travel, I know that she’s watching tonight and that tonight is her night as well.”Mr. Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has been a powerful figure throughout his life, one he has frequently invoked in his speeches, in his television advertisements and in his memoir. But now 85, she has a broken hip and other ailments, and her medical condition has been described by his campaign as “very serious.” He is therefore canceling his campaign appearances for two days to fly to her bedside on Thursday, with less than two weeks to go in his quest for the presidency.The timing is something Mr. Obama could not have foreseen when writing in his memoir about the grandmother he calls Toot, a tough-as-nails woman who loved playing bridge, reading Agatha Christie mysteries and coming home from work to slip into a muumuu and have a smoke. Ms. Dunham has rarely been interviewed, but Mr. Obama has woven her into the narrative of his campaign as the influential presence who was there even when his father, a black Kenyan, abandoned him, and his mother, a free-spirited anthropologist, lived thousands of miles away. She is the last survivor of the people who raised him.In a television advertisement, Ms. Dunham was deployed as a reminder of Mr. Obama’s family roots in Kansas. In a voice-over, he said she “taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland.”Mr. Obama talked about his grandmother in March when he defended the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. in one of the most wrenching speeches of his career. “I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother,” Mr. Obama said. “A woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”And in his memoir “Dreams from My Father,” Mr. Obama recalled an incident from his childhood, when his grandmother refused to take the bus to work after being harassed by a panhandler at a bus stop. “She’s been bothered by men before,” Mr. Obama’s grandfather told him at the time. “You know why she’s so scared this time? I’ll tell you why. Before you came in, she told me the fella was black. That’s the real reason why she’s bothered.” Mr. Obama recalled that his grandfather’s words were “like a fist in my stomach.” The trip on Thursday will be the second time since August that Mr. Obama has flown to Hawaii, where he grew up. While on a weeklong vacation there, Mr. Obama visited Ms. Dunham at her modest apartment building in Honolulu nearly every day, often with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters in tow.During the trip, Mr. Obama told reporters that Ms. Dunham was “sharp as a tack,” but that her osteoporosis prevented her from traveling. While in Hawaii, Mr. Obama also visited Punchbowl National Cemetery, where his grandfather Stanley Dunham, a World War II veteran, is buried. During the war, Ms. Dunham worked on a bomber assembly line in Kansas while her husband was overseas. Ms. Dunham’s illness may remind some voters of Mr. Obama’s white, Midwestern family at a time when Republicans are trying to create doubts about his identity. Some supporters worry, however, that the visit to Hawaii will cost him precious time on the campaign trail. But Mr. Obama may be troubled by the painful memory of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who died of ovarian cancer in 1995. “The biggest mistake I made was not being at my mother’s bedside when she died,” he told The Chicago Sun-Times in 2004. “She was in Hawaii in a hospital, and we didn’t know how fast it was going to take, and I didn’t get there in time.”

McCain's Incoherence

Czarina JB in Arizona — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:57:06 EDT

October 20, 2008 11:52 IncoherencePosted by Joe Klein | John McCain had a fabulously loony weekend, flipping out charges and attacks like a mud tornado. The truly remarkable thing about McCain's attacks, especially on Obama's economic policies, is that McCain, in each case, is "guilty" of supporting some version of the policies he's attacking: 1. He attacks Obama for increasing "welfare" by providing refundable tax credits--that is giving people the cash equivalent if they don't pay enough in income taxes to reap the full benefit of the credit--but McCain's own $5000 health insurance credit is also refundable.2. He attacks Obama for spreading "socialism," but McCain supported the bailout that enabled the Bush Administration to partially nationalize the banking system last week. If that ain't a (very mild) form of socialism, I don't know what is.3. He attacks Obama's tax plan as a form of "spreading the wealth"--the words Obama used when talking to Joe the Unlicensed Tax Dodger in Ohio--because Obama would reduce taxes on the middle class and pay for it by restoring Clinton-era marginal tax rates on the wealthy. And yet, McCain proudly voted for a major tax hike and wealth redistribution scheme in his early days in his early days in Congress. In fact he touts it regularly, including on Fox News Sunday, as bipartisan cooperation at its finest: Ronald Reagan's agenda was very different from that of Tip O'Neill's. Yet Ronald Reagan and Tip O'NEILL sat down together across the table and sat down and worked out a way to save Social Security for quite a period of time. In fact, that was an enormous--and necessary--tax increase, but it tilted heavily against working Americans. Payroll taxes have been increased no fewer than seven times since Reagan was President and, so far as I know, never been cut--but large capital gains and marginal rate cuts, and all sorts of corporate loopholes, have been built into the tax system during that same period--a massive redistribution of wealth toward the wealthy. Finally, McCain had this exchange about his campaign's skeevy robo-calls this weekend on Fox:WALLACE: ... and you said the following [after the South Carolina primary campaign in 2000], "I promise you, I have never and will never have anything to do with that kind of political tactic." Now you've hired the same guy who did the robo calls against you to — reportedly, to do the robo calls against Obama and the Republican Senator Susan Collins, the co-chair of your campaign in Maine, has asked you to stop the robo calls. Will you do that?MCCAIN: Of course not. These are legitimate and truthful, and they are far different than the phone calls that were made about my family and about certain aspects that — things that this is — this is dramatically different, and either you haven't — didn't see those things Legitimate and truthful? I supposed that's why Susan Collins, one of McCain's closest friends in the Senate, criticized him for this trashball tactic. Oh, and the "same guy" Wallace was referring to is none other than Warren Tompkins, whose name was a synonym for satan among the McCain inner circle in 2000. I can imagine John breaking the news to Cindy, "Hey, honey, great news! Remember that guy who was involved in spreading the rumors about your addiction to pain killers and Bridget being an illegitimate interracial child? Well, we've got him doing that same sort of high-minded stuff for us!"

Joe The Plumber Tanks in Swing States

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:01:34 EDT

Joe The Plumber Tanks In Swing States October 20, 2008 01:23 PM Campaign aides to John McCain told the New York Times last week that "Joe the Plumber" would form the bedrock of their strategy for the rest of the race: Mr. McCain's advisers said that in his speeches, television advertisements and mailings, he would seize on a remark Mr. Obama made in an encounter with an Ohio voter, Joe Wurzelbacher, who had pressed him to explain his support for a tax increase for upper-income filers. Mr. Obama responded by saying he wanted to "spread the wealth." Mr. McCain repeatedly invoked that encounter with the man, whom he called "Joe the Plumber," during the debate on Wednesday.Has it worked? Not exactly. A Suffolk University poll of Ohio and Missouri finds that name recognition of "Joe the Plumber" is very high in both states -- but only a handful of voters said it made them more likely to vote for the Republican candidate. In Ohio, 68% of respondents had heard the Joe story. Six percent said it made them more likely to vote for McCain; four percent said it made them more likely to vote for Obama. In Missouri a whopping 80% knew of Joe. Eight percent were more likely to vote McCain as a result; 3 percent more likely to vote Obama. In both states, vast majorities said the plumber's story did not affect their decision at all. Meanwhile, Obama is leading McCain in Ohio and is nearly tied with him in Missouri. More from the poll: With just over two weeks left before the presidential election, voters in the key state of Ohio are giving the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden a 9-point lead (51 percent-42 percent) over the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin, according to a poll released today by Suffolk University.
In Missouri, McCain led by 1 percent (45 percent to 44 percent) statewide. He also led the bellwether test of Platte County, Mo."If Ohio goes for Obama, it may be lights out for McCain," said David Paleologos, director of the Political Research Center at Suffolk University in Boston. "At least today, the probability of an Ohio win is supported by the high-single-digit lead in the statewide poll coupled with the Perry County bellwether, which showed Obama leading by 4 percent."In 2008, Suffolk University bellwethers were 95 percent accurate in predicting straight-up winners in both Democratic and Republican primaries, and, when coupled with statewide Suffolk polls, were 100 percent accurate in predicting straight-up winners.

McCain Camp Hits Up Russian Envoy

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:44:24 EDT

McCain camp hits up Russian envoy

On a day on which McCain campaign manager Rick Davis hinted that Obama was taking foreign money, the Russian Mission to the United Nations has released a standard-issue fundraising letter gone a bit astray: It was addressed to the Russian envoy to the U.N., Vitaly Churkin, at the mission's address, but without his title.

As the Russian newswire RIA-Novosti tells it:

Russia's permanent mission to the UN has received a letter from U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain asking for financial support of his election campaign, the mission said in a statement on Monday.

"We have received a letter from Senator John McCain with a request for a financial donation to his presidential election campaign. In this respect we have to reiterate that neither Russia's permanent mission to the UN nor the Russian government or its officials finance political activities in foreign countries," the statement said.

According to Ruslan Bakhtin, press secretary of the Russian mission, the letter dated September 29 and signed by McCain, was addressed to Vitaly Churkin, Russia's envoy to the UN, and arrived on October 16.

The ambassador's title was not included in the letter, and was not clear why the letter had taken over two weeks to arrive.

Enclosed was a request for a donation of up to $5,000 to McCain's election campaign to be returned with a check or permission to withdraw the money from the donor's credit card until October 24.

Bakhtin confirmed the story to Politico, and wouldn't comment on the added oddity of the error coming from the anti-Russian McCain. "We just find it amusing," he said.

Obama Leads in Ohio; Joe the Plumber not Having Big Impact

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:32:17 EDT

Obama leads in Ohio; Joe the plumber not having big impact, poll says Email|Link|Comments (37) Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor October 20, 2008 11:32 AM Barack Obama boasts a comfortable lead in the ultimate bellwether state -- Ohio -- while he and Republican rival John McCain are statistically tied in the swing state of Missouri, according to a new poll released today. Obama leads in Ohio 51 percent to 42 percent among likely voters, while McCain has 45 percent and Obama 44 percent among likely voters in Missouri, according to the poll conducted by Suffolk University's political research center in Boston. "If Ohio goes for Obama, it could be the tipping point that will usher him into the White House,” David Paleologos, the research center's director, said in a statement. Meanwhile, the Republican ticket's emphasis on Joe the plumber -- the Ohio man who challenged Obama on his tax plan and who McCain and running mate Sarah Palin are trying to turn into a symbol -- is not paying huge dividends, according to the poll. While 68 percent of Ohio respondents said they recognized Joe the plumber, only 6 percent said that Joe's story will make them more likely to vote for McCain. An additional 4 percent said the tale made them more likely to vote for Obama; and 85 percent were not affected. In Missouri, where 80 percent had heard of the plumber, 8 percent said they were more likely to vote McCain, 3 percent more likely to vote Obama, and 86 percent said they were not affected by his story.The Ohio poll was conducted Thursday through Sunday, and the Missouri survey was conducted Friday through Sunday, and both have a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Let's Get Fiscal by Paul Krugman

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:03:20 EDT

Let’s Get Fiscal By PAUL KRUGMANPublished: October 16, 2008 The Dow is surging! No, it’s plunging! No, it’s surging! No, it’s ...Nevermind. While the manic-depressive stock market is dominating the headlines, the more important story is the grim news coming in about the real economy. It’s now clear that rescuing the banks is just the beginning: the nonfinancial economy is also in desperate need of help. And to provide that help, we’re going to have to put some prejudices aside. It’s politically fashionable to rant against government spending and demand fiscal responsibility. But right now, increased government spending is just what the doctor ordered, and concerns about the budget deficit should be put on hold.Before I get there, let’s talk about the economic situation. Just this week, we learned that retail sales have fallen off a cliff, and so has industrial production. Unemployment claims are at steep-recession levels, and the Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing index is falling at the fastest pace in almost 20 years. All signs point to an economic slump that will be nasty, brutish — and long.How nasty? The unemployment rate is already above 6 percent (and broader measures of underemployment are in double digits). It’s now virtually certain that the unemployment rate will go above 7 percent, and quite possibly above 8 percent, making this the worst recession in a quarter-century.And how long? It could be very long indeed.Think about what happened in the last recession, which followed the bursting of the late-1990s technology bubble. On the surface, the policy response to that recession looks like a success story. Although there were widespread fears that the United States would experience a Japanese-style “lost decade,” that didn’t happen: the Federal Reserve was able to engineer a recovery from that recession by cutting interest rates.But the truth is that we were looking Japanese for quite a while: the Fed had a hard time getting traction. Despite repeated interest rate cuts, which eventually brought the federal funds rate down to just 1 percent, the unemployment rate just kept on rising; it was more than two years before the job picture started to improve. And when a convincing recovery finally did come, it was only because Alan Greenspan had managed to replace the technology bubble with a housing bubble. Now the housing bubble has burst in turn, leaving the financial landscape strewn with wreckage. Even if the ongoing efforts to rescue the banking system and unfreeze the credit markets work — and while it’s early days yet, the initial results have been disappointing — it’s hard to see housing making a comeback any time soon. And if there’s another bubble waiting to happen, it’s not obvious. So the Fed will find it even harder to get traction this time. In other words, there’s not much Ben Bernanke can do for the economy. He can and should cut interest rates even more — but nobody expects this to do more than provide a slight economic boost.On the other hand, there’s a lot the federal government can do for the economy. It can provide extended benefits to the unemployed, which will both help distressed families cope and put money in the hands of people likely to spend it. It can provide emergency aid to state and local governments, so that they aren’t forced into steep spending cuts that both degrade public services and destroy jobs. It can buy up mortgages (but not at face value, as John McCain has proposed) and restructure the terms to help families stay in their homes.And this is also a good time to engage in some serious infrastructure spending, which the country badly needs in any case. The usual argument against public works as economic stimulus is that they take too long: by the time you get around to repairing that bridge and upgrading that rail line, the slump is over and the stimulus isn’t needed. Well, that argument has no force now, since the chances that this slump will be over anytime soon are virtually nil. So let’s get those projects rolling.Will the next administration do what’s needed to deal with the economic slump? Not if Mr. McCain pulls off an upset. What we need right now is more government spending — but when Mr. McCain was asked in one of the debates how he would deal with the economic crisis, he answered: “Well, the first thing we have to do is get spending under control.”If Barack Obama becomes president, he won’t have the same knee-jerk opposition to spending. But he will face a chorus of inside-the-Beltway types telling him that he has to be responsible, that the big deficits the government will run next year if it does the right thing are unacceptable.He should ignore that chorus. The responsible thing, right now, is to give the economy the help it needs. Now is not the time to worry about the deficit.

Banking on Early Votes for Barack

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:51:01 EDT

Banking on early votes for BarackHow the Obama campaign is aiming to turn out early voters, and why it could be crucial for Election Day.By Mike MaddenOct. 17, 2008 | GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Mel Watt had a pretty simple message as he marched in the North Carolina A&T University homecoming parade last weekend. "Morning! Vote early! Avoid the rush!" the seven-term member of Congress called out. Watt didn't even bother saying whom to vote for; the crowd at the parade, many of them his constituents, were all pretty excited about the whole Democratic ticket in North Carolina, from Barack Obama on down. Watt's only goal was to get them to bank their votes well before Nov. 4. "Avoid the rush! Vote early!"Early voting in North Carolina started Thursday; it's one of 31 states (plus the District of Columbia) that allow voters to cast ballots in person ahead of time without providing election officials with a reason they can't be there on Election Day. Which means that as both presidential campaigns shift from registering voters to getting out the vote, the election has actually already started. As much as 30 percent of the votes cast this fall will probably come in before Nov. 4, according to the National Association of Secretaries of State.In some battleground states, such as New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida, that number could be even higher -- up to 50 percent or more, aides to Obama and to John McCain said. On the first day of early voting in North Carolina, early-vote locations were swamped. (One library in Charlotte reported waits of up to two hours.) New Mexico Democratic Party chairman Brian Colón expects close to half the electorate to have voted by Election Day. In Georgia, where Obama's campaign is apparently considering trying to compete again, more than half a million people have already voted; 210,000 of them were African-American, an encouraging sign to Democrats. Operatives in both campaigns expect a spike in early voting as it begins in states that allow it, then for it to subside for a little while, then spike again as the deadline approaches. Both McCain and Obama are focusing on early voting, but with a surge of new voters expected to hit ballot booths on Election Day -- mostly to support Obama -- Democrats are putting more effort than ever before into getting their supporters in ahead of time. "We are devoting our entire field operation to making sure that people are voting early," said Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe. In past elections, Democratic candidates sent absentee ballot applications or mailers urging an early vote to their most passionate, reliable supporters. That helped bank a decent number of votes ahead of time, but it also meant that the get-out-the-vote work on Election Day was that much harder, because the people who needed more encouragement to actually head to the polls did not become the campaign's focus until the last minute. "When it comes to our efforts on the ground, at the door, on the phones ... we [now] tend to aim those efforts at our supporters who have the weakest voting history," said Jon Carson, Obama's national field director.Part of how they're doing that is with a Web site, VoteforChange.com, which lets supporters type in their address and find out polling places, registration deadlines and early vote dates. (Of course, they also have to type in their name and e-mail address, putting them in the campaign's massive database.) But in states that have started voting already, the volunteers and field staffers who spent the past year contacting and identifying supporters are now also getting out and reminding them to vote early. "If it's your neighbor knocking on your door or giving you a phone call and saying, 'Hey I'm going to go vote on Tuesday,' then it's that much more effective," Carson said.Republicans, who have long been more adept than Democrats at getting supporters to vote absentee and early, were already doing the same thing. Early voting "cuts down your GOTV [get out the vote] universe on Election Day," said Rich Beeson, the political director for the Republican National Committee, which oversees McCain's turnout operation through its Victory committee. "In these states, we aren't talking to the entire turnout universe, we're talking to just the people who haven't gone out to vote yet." The GOP has a national database of its own; each night workers upload information from state and county officials on who has voted early so aides know they don't need to keep reaching out to them. (Carson said Obama's organization is also tracking that information.)Democrats are also pushing election officials in battleground states to add more early voting locations and to expand the hours when people can cast ballots -- which may have an important strategic purpose. More than 5 million new voters registered this year in battleground states; if they all try to show up at once on Nov. 4, segments of the electoral system could be overwhelmed.Particularly in states with no early voting, that could pose a serious problem. "All of the turnout has to arrive at the same time," said Ken Smukler, a Democratic consultant who works on voter turnout in Philadelphia, in a state where you can only vote absentee with a justification such as a work conflict, illness or travel. "The [election] infrastructure is not prepared to handle it." Though early voting means more work for election officials, who have to staff polling places and stock ballots weeks before Election Day, if it eases the crunch next month, they won't mind. "Election Day has morphed into election season," said Kay Stimson, spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of State.Some voting rights advocates, though, worry that even a steady tide of early ballots won't ease the pressure on Election Day. "You're still going to have these issues on Election Day," said Jonah Goldman, who runs the election protection division of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. "The uptick in early voting -- I don't think that’s going to eliminate the problems at the polls." Some instances of early voting so far may be an indication. In Georgia, voters have waited hours to cast ballots in the last few weeks. In North Carolina on Thursday, wait times ranged from 15 or 20 minutes to a few hours. "Our lines went throughout the building," said Sarah Poole, a spokeswoman for the public library system in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, N.C., where polling places have been set up in several branches. "It's nothing like it was four years ago." For Democrats, in this race there may well be an additional benefit to wide early voting turnout: The polls currently show Obama winning by big margins in state after state. There's no risk of McCain recovering some momentum if people's votes are locked up now. And in an election with as many ups and downs as this one has had, those banked votes could come in quite handy indeed.

The Case for Barack Obama from Fareed Zacaria

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:46:23 EDT

The Case for Barack ObamaObama is pushing to change the parameters of the country's comfort zone. That's leadership.Published Oct 18, 2008 From the magazine issue dated Oct 27, 2008It has become fashionable to lament the state of presidential politics and decry the tenor of campaigns. But in fact, this election has been a pleasant surprise. In the last debate, as the candidates discussed their respective health-care plans in some detail, the danger was that the Ameri-can people would be turned off not by negativity but by boredom.Compare this election to the one in 1988—when the Pledge of Allegiance, Willie Horton, flag factories and Belgian endives dominated the campaign. Or contrast the relatively brief appearance of William Ayers with the barrage of Swift-Boat attacks on John Kerry. Some of this is because the American people have clearly tired of slash-and-burn campaigns. But much of it is because the two candidates are men of decency and honor.John McCain is brave, and this courage has manifested itself not simply in the prisons of Vietnam. Over the past two decades he has broken with his party and president on global warming, campaign finance, government spending and the use of torture. He has chosen, for the most part, to forgo the racial coding that the Republican Party had used for decades in its campaigns. But despite these tremendous strengths, as a candidate for president in 2008, he is the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time.To watch McCain address the current economic crisis is to see a man out of step with his time. His responses have been a recitation of old slogans—cut taxes, limit the government, cut spending—that are largely irrelevant to today's problems. Does anyone really believe that tackling earmarks will get credit markets functioning? In some ways, McCain's intellectual fatigue reflects the exhaustion of the ideological revolution begun by Reagan and Thatcher. The country needs fresh thinking that is ready to accept new facts and new ideas. It's a new world out there.On foreign policy, John McCain is a fighter. In fact, his bellicosity has increased over the past few years as he has discovered his inner neoconservative. He wants to keep the battle going in Iraq, speaks casually of bombing Iran and is skeptical of the Bush administration's diplomacy with North Korea. He wants to kick Russia out of the G8 and humiliate China by excluding it from that body as well. He sees a "league of democracies" locked in conflict with an alliance of autocracies. This is cold-war nostalgia, not a strategy for the 21st century.McCain's problem is not only one of substance but perhaps more crucially of temperament. Throughout the campaign, he has been volatile and impulsive. He moves suddenly and unpredictably—one day suspending his campaign, the next urging that the chairman of the SEC be fired, the third blaming Democrats for the economic crisis. He apparently wanted to name as his vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, a pro-choice semi-Democrat with decades of experience, but then instead picked someone close to the opposite—Sarah Palin, a rabble-rousing ultraconservative with limited experience and knowledge of the issues.

Roland Martin: Time for Palin to Answer Tough Questions

Czarina JB in Arizona — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:20:11 EDT

Commentary: Time for Palin to answer tough questions

Story Highlights
Roland Martin: Gov. Palin talks tough on the campaign trail
Martin: Palin has ducked questions about many difficult issues
Palin has given only a limited number of interviews, Martin says
Palin hasn't been forthcoming on the Alaska ethics investigation, he says

By Roland Martin
CNN Contributor

Editor's note: Join Roland S. Martin for his weekly sound-off segment on CNN.com Live at 11:10 a.m. ET Thursday. If you're passionate about politics, he wants to hear from you. A nationally syndicated columnist and Chicago-based radio host, Martin has said he will vote for Barack Obama in November. He is the author of "Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith" and "Speak, Brother! A Black Man's View of America." Visit his Web site for more information.

(CNN) -- Do you know what was so great about Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan? They were three of the biggest trash talkers in the history of the NBA, but they had the game to back it up.

Somebody should tell that to Gov. Sarah Palin.

Sen. John McCain's vice presidential running mate has been running around the country, firing up her -- yes, her, and not necessarily McCain's -- loyal supporters by blasting Sen. Barack Obama for "palling around with terrorists" and demanding that the American people know exactly when he learned of the past of 1960s radical William Ayers.

She has stoked the crowds by saying, "This is not a man who sees America the way that you and I see America." We all know what that is designed to do: Portray Obama as a foreigner who isn't as American as she. Or you. Or Joe Six-pack, the hockey mom, soccer mom, Wal-Mart mom, NASCAR dad and the other coded words she uses regularly.

But what is truly pathetic is that Palin talks tough, but is really scared of facing her own issues.

Since she is good at proclaiming that the American people need to know who Barack Obama is -- an attempt to paint him as a shady figure who might occupy the White House -- the American people deserve to hear Palin answer if her husband, Todd, a former member of the Alaska Independence Party, agreed with its founder, who wanted to secede from the union.

Is there anything more anti-American than wanting to sever ties with the country? Send Roland Martin your questions and listen to his program on CNNRadio and CNN.com Live, Thursday at noon ET.

It's critical that Palin answer questions about whether she disagrees with John McCain's criticism of the Bush administration's decision to remove North Korea from the terrorist nation list. She spoke in favor of it. McCain didn't. Are they on the same page or not?

The American people deserve to hear from Palin as to why she didn't say a word to rebuke the hateful, pathetic and degrading comments made at rallies featuring her, such as when someone in the crowd called Obama a terrorist, someone else shouted, "Off with his head" and others suggested he is a traitor.

Lastly, don't you think the self-described maverick needs to own up to what really happened with the firing of the commissioner in Alaska? She was declared by a special investigator to have been within her rights in firing the commissioner, but she was blasted for abuse of power and violating the state's ethics act.

So what did she say in a conference call with Alaska reporters -- who were not allowed by the McCain camp to ask follow-up questions? That she was cleared of all wrongdoing, legally and ethically.

That's right. She repeated over and over and over an absolute lie, and we are supposed to say, "Hey, it's all fine. She winks at us. We love her hockey mom schtick. Don't worry about that abuse of power thing."

Well, after having to deal with Vice President Dick Cheney being accused of beating the drum for war by berating and pushing our intelligence apparatus to match his political views on Iraq, don't you think we should really care about someone who has been accused in a report, authorized by Democrats and Republicans, of using their power and influence to get their way?

Sure, her supporters will say she's talked to the "media." She was questioned by Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh and that self-described journalist -- yes, he really called himself that -- Fox's Sean Hannity.

Palin has done interviews with ABC's Charlie Gibson and CBS's Katie Couric, and local TV folks. But why is she so scared of NBC's Brian Williams? And why is she so fearful of CNN?

Does she somehow think that our big guns like Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper and Campbell Brown are just too tough in asking questions? My goodness, Tina Fey has actually done more interviews about playing Sarah Palin than Sarah Palin has done about being Sarah Palin!

Hmmm. McCain, Sen. Joe Biden, Barack and Michelle Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton, Cindy McCain and even McCain's 95-year-old momma and Palin's daddy have all done interviews with CNN, sharing their thoughts on the campaign. But Palin? Not a whisper.

It's clear that Palin really isn't a true frontier woman. See, when you tote a gun, carry a big stick and spit fire, you aren't afraid to take on all comers.

So, Sarah, if you want to talk big on the campaign trail to those audiences that don't talk back, go right ahead. But if you truly are the maverick politician you say you are, come on and talk to us soft, coddled, elitist journalists. Surely we aren't as tough as the moose you like to take down with your Second Amendment-protected hunting rifle.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

McCain's Hero Petraeus: I Do Think you have to talk to enemies

Czarina JB in Arizona — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:54:04 EDT

McCain's Hero Petraeus: "I Do Think You Have To Talk To Enemies"By Greg Sargent - October 9, 2008, 2:18PMSo General Petraeus agrees with Barack Obama -- and not John McCain -- on the question of whether we should meet with hostile enemies?In an interview that aired on CBS last night, John McCain, when asked which three living people he'd like to have dinner with most, promptly chose General Petraeus. McCain frequently hails Petraeus as an "American hero."McCain, however, might not enjoy that dinner so much if he heard Petraeus' views on one of the leading foreign policy differences he has with Barack Obama.In a case of comically awful timing, Petraeus yesterday gave a talk at the Heritage Foundation in which he more or less echoed Barack Obama's views on negotiating with hostile foreign leaders -- views that McCain has repeatedly subjected to criticism and ridicule.Asked by a questioner specifically about the disagreement on this topic that McCain and Obama had at Tuesday night's debate, Petraeus demurred a bit, but said: "I do think you have to talk to enemies.""I'm not trying to get into the middle of domestic politics," Petraeus also said, "but I mean what we did do in Iraq ultimately was sit down with some of those that were shooting at us. What we tried to do was identify those who might be reconcilable."Petraeus' comments were reported on yesterday by Spencer Ackerman and were noted elsewhere today, and we think they deserve more attention. We went to the video on Heritage's site to get a longer transcript, and sure enough, the context shows that Petraeus was more or less backing up Obama's point of view.What Petraeus said isn't a perfect endorsement of Obama's views -- he didn't specifically discuss Iran, and the question of "no preconditions" didn't come up -- but it's pretty darn close.That's because it's as clear as day that the context specifically was the debate between Obama and McCain on this topic on Tuesday night. During that exchange, the candidates clashed on whether to meet with the leaders of Iran, and the questioner at Heritage posed the subject about talking to enemies specifically in that light.And while Petraeus did say he didn't see Tuesday's debate, the general no doubt knows precisely what the disagreement between the two men is on this topic. So the question Petraeus was asked was basically the same as him being asked whose views he endorsed when it comes to the two men's very public disagreement. Petraeus' own joke about not wanting to wade into "a minefield" and his allusion to not getting "involved in domestic politics" would suggest that that's how he saw the question, too.And Petraeus more or less picked the Obama argument.Maybe Petraeus and McCain can discuss this at dinner someday.

McCain Linked to Private Group in Iran-Contra Case

Czarina JB in Arizona — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:37:06 EDT

Oct 7, 5:58 AM EDT

McCain linked to private group in Iran-Contra case
By PETE YOST
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- GOP presidential nominee John McCain has past connections to a private group that supplied aid to guerrillas seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra affair.

McCain's ties are facing renewed scrutiny after his campaign criticized Barack Obama for his link to a former radical who engaged in violent acts 40 years ago.

The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe.

The council's founder, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona. Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member in the group.

"McCain was a new guy on the block learning the ropes," Singlaub told The Associated Press in an interview. "I think I met him in the Washington area when he was just a new congressman. We had McCain on the board to make him feel like he wasn't left out. It looks good to have names on a letterhead who are well-known and appreciated.

"I don't recall talking to McCain at all on the work of the group," Singlaub said.

The renewed attention over McCain's association with Singlaub's group comes as McCain's campaign steps up criticism of Obama's dealings with William Ayers, a college professor who co-founded the Weather Underground and years later worked on education reform in Chicago alongside Obama. Ayers held a meet-the-candidate event at his home when Obama first ran for public office in the mid-1990s.

Obama was roughly 8 years old when Ayers, now at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was working with the Weather Underground, which took responsibility for bombings that included nonfatal blasts at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. McCain's vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, has said that Obama "pals around with terrorists."

In McCain's case, Singlaub knew McCain's father, a Navy admiral who had sought Singlaub's counsel when McCain, a Navy pilot, became a prisoner of war and spent 5 1/2 years in North Vietnamese hands.

"John's father asked me for advice about what he ought to do now that his son had been shot down and captured," Singlaub recalled in one of two recent interviews. "I said, 'As long as you don't give any impression that you care more about him than you care about any of the other prisoners, he won't be treated any differently.'"

Covert arms shipments to the rebels called Contras, financed in part by secret arms sales to Iran, became known as the Iran-Contra affair. They proved to be the undoing of Singlaub's council.

In 1987, the Internal Revenue Service withdrew the tax-exempt status of Singlaub's group because of its activities on behalf of the Contras.

Elected to the House in 1982 and at a time when he was on the board of Singlaub's council, McCain was among Republicans on Capitol Hill expressing support for the Contras, a CIA-organized guerrilla force in Central America. In 1984, Congress cut off CIA funds for the Contras.

Months before the cutoff, top Reagan administration officials ramped up a secret White House-directed supply network and put National Security Council aide Oliver North in charge of running it. The goal was to keep the Contras operational until Congress could be persuaded to resume CIA funding.

Singlaub's private group became the public cover for the White House operation.

Secretly, Singlaub worked with North in an effort to raise millions of dollars from foreign governments.

McCain has said previously he resigned from the council in 1984 and asked in 1986 to have his name removed from the group's letterhead.

"I didn't know whether (the group's activity) was legal or illegal, but I didn't think I wanted to be associated with them," McCain said in a newspaper interview in 1986.

Singlaub does not recall any McCain resignation in 1984 or May 1986. Nor does Joyce Downey, who oversaw the group's day-to-day activities.

"That's a surprise to me," Singlaub said. "This is the first time I've ever heard that. There may have been someone in his office communicating with our office."

"I don't ever remember hearing about his resigning, but I really wasn't worried about that part of our activities, a housekeeping thing," said Singlaub. "If he didn't want to be on the board that's OK. It wasn't as if he had been active participant and we were going to miss his help. He had no active interest. He certainly supported us."

McCain's Nazi-Cocaine Connection

Czarina JB in Arizona — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:35:53 EDT

McCain's Nazi-Cocaine Connection
Also see: "Bush, McCain and the Old Iran-Contra Team"

ELECTION
gawker.com
10-07-08

Well, this election is fast turning into an opposition-research-fueled shitstorm. On Meet The Press Sunday, Democratic strategist Paul Begala casually mentioned that John McCain sat on the board of the U.S. Council For World Freedom. And the Associated Press this morning elaborated on exactly what that entails [see below]. "The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America.," AP said. Very interesting! But the rest of the article doesn't give any details on these Nazis or the role of this group, called the World Anti-Communist League, in launching a "Cocaine Coup" that turned Bolivia into a drug trafficking hub and hotbed of brutal torture. Luckily a former AP and Newsweek reporter named Roberty Parry wrote an oddly fun book called Lost History, which can provide further illumination:
In 1966, the Asian Peoples Anti-Communist League expanded into the World Anti-Communist League, an international alliance that pulled together traditional conservatives with former Nazis, overt radicalists and Latin American "death squad" operatives. In an interview, reitred U.S. Army Gen. John K. Singlaub, a former WACL president], said "the Japanese [WACL] chapter was taken over almost entirely by the Moonies."

Through WACL and other political relationships, [Moonies founder Sun Myung] Moon built bridges to right-wing forces in South America during the 1970s.... [a] Bolivian WACL leader [last name Gasser]... was a leading figure in the coup....

...CAUSE, one of Moon's anti-communist organizations, listed as members nearly all the leading Bolivian coup-makers.

...An architect of the Bolivian coup was World War II Nazi fugitive Klaus Barbie, who was working as a Bolivian intelligence officer under the name Klaus Altmann. Barbie drew up plans modeled after the 1976 Argentine coup and contacted the Argentines for help. As the coup took shape, Barbie organized a secret lodge, called Thule, where he lectured his followers under swastikas by candlelight. [[!!!??!!]]

....The slaughter was fierce.... Labor leader Marcelo Quiroga... 'was dragged off to police headuarters to be the object of a game played by torture experts imported from Argentina's dreaded Mechanic School of the Navy...' [[-pages 38-41, 200-202]]

The WACL/Moonie/Barbie forces then transported cocaine on behalf of the drug lords they had made a deal with prior to the coup, Parry wrote. The drug trafficking eventually became an issue for the U.S. government (despite evidence the CIA was complicit in the coup) and the Moonies pulled out. And about a year later the Moonies, apparently flush with cash, launched the conservative Washington Times at an alleged cost of about $100 million per year! Very interesting.

Supposedly McCain was involved with this WACL council about as little as Obama was involved with 1960s radical Bill Ayers. "I don't recall talking to McCain at all on the work of the group," Singlaub (the retired Army general from the quote above) told AP. Singlaub, however, doesn't remember McCain quitting the group in 1984 as McCain has long claimed he did. That's probably because McCain attended the group's 1985 "Freedom Fighter Of The Year" awards! (See HuffPo link at top.)

Dredging up this McCain link is a crafty bit of flackery on behalf of Barack Obama's campaign in that it seems to neutralize the issue of Obama's affiliation with Ayers. Trouble is, the Ayers issue was useful mainly as an excuse to paint Obama as he was already seen by some voters — an un-American terrorist sympathizer. And the people who think that aren't going to care about some extreme anti-communist group McCain affiliated himself with a long time ago. The people who might care about that, in fact, are mostly already voting for Obama. So, nice going, oppo-wise, linking McCain with Nazis and so forth, but it's probably not going to stop all this "Who Is Barack Obama?" business.

Palin Should Distance Herself from an Anti-Semite

Czarina JB in Arizona — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:49:07 EDT

Wednesday, October 8, 2008PALIN MUST DISTANCE HERSELF FROM IDEAS ROOTED IN THE DEMENTIA OF AN ANTI-SEMITE AND PURVEYED BY SEAN HANNITY AND FOX NEWS We now know that Sean Hannity and FOX news was getting its ideas about Bill Ayers all along from a crackpot anti-Semite man with a history of mental illness. Now FOX news and Sean Hannity have sold those outrageous ideas to a woman who could be our next president, and she in turn, is trying to to sell those ideas to the American public.

The bizarre thing is that Jewish voters haven't yet recognized what she is doing and where she got her ideas. In the mean time, Joe Lieberman is facilitating the whole road show in Florida. This time they must be made to understand that ideas rooted in the paranoid lunatic mind of a raging anti-Semite have no place in a respectable national political campaign.

Now that Sean Hannity has been exposed as a man who has no qualms about palling around with anti-Semites (great job Robert Gibbs), it will be interesting to see if Sarah Palin continues to repeat Hannity's bizarre attacks on Obama, spouting the bizarre theories of ANDY MARTIN - - that Obama was a terrorist in training in Chicago - - when that idea is clearly a delusion of a mentally ill man. Palin needs to stop selling the ideas of a mentally ill known anti-Semite NOW, and avoid all contact with the news outlets that are feeding her this garbage. If Palin gets her ideas from people who are demonstrably mentally ill and cannot make crucial discernments with clear judgment, once again it become clear that she is disqualified for office.

So this is a direct appeal to the voters of Florida, and to Jewish voters nationwide: Either you are going to tolerate this brand of anti-Semitic hatred or you aren't.

If Sarah Palin wants to goosestep through Florida spouting the theories of a raging lunatic anti-Semite, then the voters of America should make her an example for all history - - hatred and bigotry do not work. When she loses, and she will, there needs to be a concerted effort to clearly link that loss to her abhorrent tactics and lack of character.

When she hires a policeman, contrary to the Hatch Act, to introduce Obama as "Hussein," voters should rise up and say "not here in America."

When she pulls her George Wallace quote out - - "Obama doesn't see the world the same way we [whites] do" - - she needs to see a clear link between this behavior and the loss of political prizes like Florida.

When supporters shout "treason," "terrorist," "kill him," voters should picket and demonstrate and do everything possible to make sure that voters of all races feel comfortable going to the polls.

Her rallies are beginning to look like Nuremberg, and that is unacceptable.

Finally, some Jewish leaders in this country need to pull Joe Lieberman aside and tell him directly that he will be ostracized for good if he campaigns any longer in Florida with Sarah Palin unless she drops her anti-Semitic rooted attacks on Obama.

In the mean-time, all people including the Jewish community needs to start boycotting Hannity and refusing to watch or to appear on his show (that means you, Lanny Davis and you, Dick Morris). It is a scandal that this hasn't happened earlier.

If Palin wants to spew the McCarthyite anti-Semitic theories of Andy Martin, as fed to her by Hannity, then she should lose those political prizes, period: Americans need to stand up NOW against this McCarthyism so that never again do these tactics have any currency in our political process.

This is a dangerous time, and voters everywhere must make a statement.

Hannity made a terrible mistake featuring Martin, and Palin must reject him clearly and soundly, or face the wrath of a growing chorus of outraged Jewish and other concerned voters. If she continues to go on Fox she should be made to feel a tidal wave of disgust, not just from voters, but from responsible journalists.

When Palin appears on Fox, the only station she grants interviews to, this topic needs to get raised time and again. Posted by euddoggwyn at 1:52 PM

McCain Health Plan Estimate A Little Too Cozy?

Czarina JB in Arizona — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:13:44 EDT

McCain Health Plan Estimate A Little Too Cozy?

This morning the McCain campaign released a rather surprising study claiming that the senator's health plan would actually cover more than half of the nation's 47 million uninsured -- and two million more than the plan put forward by Senator Obama.

The study, by a team of economists at the Minnesota-based HSI Network LLC, is a distinct outlier. Several other studies have found that McCain's tax credit plan would cover only a relatively small percentage of the uninsured, while Obama's plan, although much more expensive, would cover far more.

The McCain press release from McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin trumpets the new study as "an independent assessment similar to one done on the Obama health reform plan." But how independent is it?

The lead author is Roger Feldman, a professor of health economics at the University of Minnesota. A quick Google search finds that Feldman is a longtime advocate of the type of "consumer-driven" health policies that McCain has been pushing. And Feldman's frequent writing partner is none other than Stephen Parente, his fellow Golden Gopher economics prof.

Who's Parente, you ask? We'll let Holtz-Eakin answer that question -- here's what he told Politico.com last April: "Holtz-Eakin said the health-policy experts who helped write McCain's plan include Stephen T. Parente, a health economist at the University of Minnesota..."

And by the way, Parente's CV lists him as a principal (i.e. part owner) of the consulting firm that wrote the report.

The Palins' Un-American Activities

Czarina JB in Arizona — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:10:28 EDT

The Palins' un-American activitiesImagine if the Obamas had hooked up with a violently anti-American group in league with the government of Iran.By David TalbotOct. 7, 2008 | "My government is my worst enemy. I'm going to fight them with any means at hand." This was former revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers back in his old Weather Underground days, right? Imagine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incendiary quote as she tears into Barack Obama this week. Only one problem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that's the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year. ("Keep up the good work," Palin told AIP members. "And God bless you.") AIP chairwoman Lynette Clark told me recently that Sarah Palin is her kind of gal. "She's Alaskan to the bone ... she sounds just like Joe Vogler." So who are these America-haters that the Palins are pallin' around with? Before his strange murder in 1993, party founder Vogler preached armed insurrection against the United States of America. Vogler, who always carried a Magnum with him, was fond of saying, "When the [federal] bureaucrats come after me, I suggest they wear red coats. They make better targets. In the federal government are the biggest liars in the United States, and I hate them with a passion. They think they own [Alaska]. There comes a time when people will choose to die with honor rather than live with dishonor. That time may be coming here. Our goal is ultimate independence by peaceful means under a minimal government fully responsive to the people. I hope we don't have to take human life, but if they go on tramping on our property rights, look out, we're ready to die." This quote is from "Coming Into the Country," by John McPhee, who traipsed around Alaska's remote gold mining country with Vogler for his 1991 book. The violent-tempered secessionist vowed to McPhee that if any federal official tried to stop him from polluting Alaska's rivers with his earth-moving equipment, he would "run over him with a Cat and turn mosquitoes loose on him while he dies." Vogler wasn't just a blowhard either. He put his secessionist ideas into action, working to build AIP membership to 20,000 -- an impressive figure by Alaska standards -- and to elect party member Walter Hickel as governor in 1990. Vogler's greatest moment of glory was to be his 1993 appearance before the United Nations to denounce United States "tyranny" before the entire world and to demand Alaska's freedom. The Alaska secessionist had persuaded the government of Iran to sponsor his anti-American harangue. That's right ... Iran. The Islamic dictatorship. The taker of American hostages. The rogue nation that McCain and Palin have excoriated Obama for suggesting we diplomatically engage. That Iran. AIP leaders allege that Vogler, who was murdered that year by a fellow secessionist, was taken out by powerful forces in the U.S. before he could reach his U.N. platform. "The United States government would have been deeply embarrassed," by Vogler's U.N. speech, darkly suggests Clark. "And we can't have that, can we?" The Republican ticket is working hard this week to make Barack Obama's tenuous connection to graying, '60s revolutionary Bill Ayers a major campaign issue. But the Palins' connection to anti-American extremism is much more central to their political biographies. Imagine the uproar if Michelle Obama was revealed to have joined a black nationalist party whose founder preached armed secession from the United States and who enlisted the government of Iran in his cause? The Obama campaign would probably not have survived such an explosive revelation. Particularly if Barack Obama himself was videotaped giving the anti-American secessionists his wholehearted support just months ago. Where's the outrage, Sarah Palin has been asking this week, in her attacks on Obama's fuzzy ties to Ayers? The question is more appropriate when applied to her own disturbing associations.

Feds to Look into Lee County Sheriff Scott's Hussein Obama Comment at Palin Rally

Czarina JB in Arizona — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:40:29 EDT

Feds to look into Lee County Sheriff Scott's 'Hussein' Obama comment at Palin rally A federal investigation is being opened into the actions and comments of Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott at a rally for Gov. Sarah Palin in Estero on Monday.

Erica S. Hamrick, senior attorney at the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, wrote in an e-mail to a third party that her office will be investigating under the Hatch Act, which governs political activities of certain elected officials.

The complainant stated the sheriff violated that act because the sheriff’s office receives federal money, engaged in political activity while on duty, engaged in political activity while in uniform, wore political buttons while on duty and used political influence or authority to interfere with an election.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel addresses the Hatch Act as it pertains to local officials on their Web site, which states the following:

“The Hatch Act applies to executive branch state and local employees who are principally employed in connection with programs financed in whole or in part by loans or grants made by the United States or a federal agency. Employees who work for educational or research institutions which are supported in whole or in part by a State or political subdivision of the State are not covered by the provisions of the Hatch Act.

“Employees of private nonprofit organizations are covered by the Hatch Act only if the statute through which the organization receives its federal funds contains language which states that the organization shall be considered to be a state or local agency for purposes of the Hatch Act, e.g., Headstart and Community Service Block Grant statutes.

“An employee’s conduct is also subject to the laws of the state and the regulations of the employing agency. Additionally, employees should be aware that the prohibitions of the Hatch Act are not affected by state or local laws.”

Neither Hamrick nor her office could be immediately reached for comment.12:48 p.m. updateOfficials in the Lee County Sheriff’s public information office have stopped counting the number of callers who called to express their complaints or praise for Sheriff Mike Scott’s comments at a rally for Gov. Sarah Palin on Monday.

Lt. Robert Forrest said he stopped counting shortly before noon, but that there were approximately 500 calls total by that point, which he said were split fairly evenly for and against.

He said the one employee who was brought from a different department to help them accept calls has returned to her regular duties, and Forrest is hoping operations will return to normal soon.12:32 p.m. updateLocal activists are speaking out against a statement made Monday by Sheriff Mike Scott, saying they will be withdrawing their support of his candidacy.

James Muwakkil, founder of the Fort Myers Coalition for Justice and member of the Lee County chapters of the NAACP and ACLU, said that while he supports Scott’s right to speak his mind, he criticized him for doing so while in uniform.

“He spoke in an inflammatory manner, and we want to know exactly who he was speaking to, because even the Palin campaign distanced himself from that,” Muwakkil said. “He’s saying he’s not going to apologize. Well I think he should rethink that. The point of view we’re making that Sheriff Scott to exercise his right to free speech, but he didn’t’ have the right to do it in uniform.”

Muwakkil and others will be holding a press conference at 4:30 this afternoon at Utopia Barber Shop on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Muwakkil said it is significant because it is a place where many minority voters rallied to show Scott their support during his previous campaign events.

Commissioner Tammy Hall said the commission offices have been receiving a number of e-mails and phone calls, many from out-of-state, regarding Scott’s statement, in which he said the full name of the Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama. His middle name is Hussein.

Hall said many people might not be aware that the commissioners do not oversee the sheriff’s office. That oversight lies with the governor’s office and the voters.

“It's nice of them to share these thoughts with us, but we are not the oversight for the sheriff,” Hall said. “But we do have a very good working relationship with Sheriff Scott. He does a great job in his position, and he certainly has the integrity and intention to keep this county safe in the most cost-effective way possible.”11:30 a.m. update: Sheriff's office bombarded with phone callsLee County Sheriff Mike Scott has drawn some ire from constituents and others for wearing his uniform at the rally for vice presidential candidate, Gov. Sarah Palin in Estero Monday. His controversial decision to use Barack Obama’s middle name, Hussein, during his speech, have drawn attention to the matter, and have some asking if it was inappropriate for him to be wearing his uniform while making politically-charged statements.

But according to the Florida Sheriff’s Association in Tallahassee, a sheriff is always on duty, and can wear his uniform whenever he wants as he sees fit.

“Since the sheriff is the sheriff of the county and is the incumbent, he is allowed to wear his uniform or not as he sees fit,” said William Powers, general legal council for the association. “It is up to his discretion. Deputies can not campaign in their uniforms, but the incumbent can because he is an elected official.”

Scott is running on the Republican ticket, and his name will be on the local ballot Nov. 4.

Scott has said his choice of words reflected only his opinions and not those of the entire sheriff’s office or of the residents of Lee County.

Meanwhile, the calls continue to flood into the public information office, many from across the country. Lt. Robert Forrest said the volume of calls was not expected. He has had to bring at least one other person from a different department to help answer the phones.

“We thought we would come in and there would be a few messages from overnight,” Forrest said. “Frankly, we never expected this many people to call, though I do support people’s right to express their opinions. That being said, the sheriff is moving on. He is a busy man, and I will not tie up my public information office with these calls after today.”

Of those calling, about half are for the sheriff’s statements, while the other half are against, Forrest said. The sheriff, he said, has declined national media interviews.• Video: Sheriff Scott speaks at Palin rallyFrom this morning's editions of The News-PressSheriff Mike Scott defended his use of Barack Obama’s middle name, “Hussein,” while on stage Monday at a rally for vice presidential hopeful Gov. Sarah Palin.

“I absolutely, unequivocally don’t regret saying it,” Scott said. “In order to be a speaker at this event, I had to give my full name — Michael Joseph Scott — to the Secret Service, even though I’m the sheriff of Lee County. So why would I apologize? Is there some kind of double standard here where I have to give my full name, but I can’t use his?”

Scott was one of several people who spoke before Palin’s arrival in front of a standing room-only crowd at Germain Arena.When Scott took the stage, he declared the world had three types of people, “the ones who make things happen, the ones who watch what happens and the ones who wonder what happened. Let’s leave Barack Hussein Obama wondering what happened.”

The arena, about three-quarters full at the time, burst into screams and applause.

Obama’s middle name comes from his father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., who was from Kenya.

The name is of Arabic origin and is a common last name in Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa. Obama is a Christian.

Peter Bergerson, a politics professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, said Scott isn’t the first person to use Obama’s middle name, and given that Election Day is four weeks away, he likely won’t be the last. Bergerson said he wasn’t sure of Scott’s intentions, but others have used Obama’s middle name to allude the Democrat might be Muslim. It also reminds people of Saddam Hussein.

“It’s been used by some conservative radio commentators and entertainers with a negative twist to it,” Bergerson said. “It could have been designed to remind people of Barack Obama’s father’s heritage, and it has a Muslim name to it.”

Scott’s comments immediately became the talk of the cable news networks. A McCain spokesman, Tucker Bounds, condemned the comments on MSNBC.

Palin’s spokeswoman Tracey Schmidt quickly sent out a press release, while the rally was still going on, distancing the Palin camp from the comment.

“We do not condone this inappropriate rhetoric, which distracts from the real questions of judgment, character, and experience that voters will base their decisions on this November.”

Scott said that didn’t change his stance.

“That’s somebody else’s comment, not mine,” he said. “I have nothing to apologize for.

“People have a date of birth, a Social Security number and a name. All I did was say the man’s name.”

When asked why he then didn’t use Palin’s middle name, he admitted he didn’t know it. He related there are times when he uses his daughter’s middle name, and this should be viewed as no different.

“I just wanted to use his full name,” Scott said. “And frankly, if this is such a hot-button issue, he, as a Harvard lawyer, could have changed it if he didn’t like it.”

Scott, who was wearing his uniform, said he was representing his own views, not his office.

He defended making those comments while in uniform, though.

“That’s what I wear every day,” Scott said. “That’s what I wore to the McCain rally in Tampa with my fellow sheriffs. But at no point did I say I was speaking on behalf of the sheriff’s office.”

— Staff writer Dave Breitenstein contributed to this story.

Make Believe Maverick

Czarina JB in Arizona — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:07:21 EDT

Make-Believe Maverick A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty By TIM DICKINSONAt Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met."On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe."I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran.""Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively."It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says."Why? Where are you going to, John?""Oh, I'm going to Rio.""What the hell are you going to Rio for?"McCain, a married father of three, shrugs."I got a better chance of getting laid."Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."McCAIN FIRSTThis is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.This, of course, is not the story McCain tells about himself. Few politicians have so actively, or successfully, crafted their own myth of greatness. In Mc- Cain's version of his life, he is a prodigal son who, steeled by his brutal internment in Vietnam, learned to put "country first." Remade by the Keating Five scandal that nearly wrecked his career, the story goes, McCain re-emerged as a "reformer" and a "maverick," righteously eschewing anything that "might even tangentially be construed as a less than proper use of my office." It's a myth McCain has cultivated throughout his decades in Washington. But during the course of this year's campaign, the mask has slipped. "Let's face it," says Larry Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. "John McCain made his reputation on the fact that he doesn't bend his principles for politics. That's just not true."We have now watched McCain run twice for president. The first time he positioned himself as a principled centrist and decried the politics of Karl Rove and the influence of the religious right, imploring voters to judge candidates "by the example we set, by the way we conduct our campaigns, by the way we personally practice politics." After he lost in 2000, he jagged hard to the left — breaking with the president over taxes, drilling, judicial appointments, even flirting with joining the Democratic Party.In his current campaign, however, McCain has become the kind of politician he ran against in 2000. He has embraced those he once denounced as "agents of intolerance," promised more drilling and deeper tax cuts, even compromised his vaunted opposition to torture. Intent on winning the presidency at all costs, he has reassembled the very team that so viciously smeared him and his family eight years ago, selecting as his running mate a born-again moose hunter whose only qualification for office is her ability to electrify Rove's base. And he has engaged in a "practice of politics" so deceptive that even Rove himself has denounced it, saying that the outright lies in McCain's campaign ads go "too far" and fail the "truth test."The missing piece of this puzzle, says a former McCain confidant who has fallen out with the senator over his neoconservatism, is a third, never realized, campaign that McCain intended to run against Bush in 2004. "McCain wanted a rematch, based on ethics, campaign finance and Enron — the corrupt relationship between Bush's team and the corporate sector," says the former friend, a prominent conservative thinker with whom McCain shared his plans over the course of several dinners in 2001. "But when 9/11 happened, McCain saw his chance to challenge Bush again was robbed. He saw 9/11 gave Bush and his failed presidency a second life. He saw Bush and Cheney's ability to draw stark contrasts between black and white, villains and good guys. And that's why McCain changed." (The McCain campaign did not respond to numerous requests for comment from Rolling Stone.)Indeed, many leading Republicans who once admired McCain see his recent contortions to appease the GOP base as the undoing of a maverick. "John McCain's ambition overrode his basic character," says Rita Hauser, who served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 2001 to 2004. But the truth of the matter is that ambition is John McCain's basic character. Seen in the sweep of his seven-decade personal history, his pandering to the right is consistent with the only constant in his life: doing what's best for himself. To put the matter squarely: John McCain is his own special interest."John has made a pact with the devil," says Lincoln Chafee, the former GOP senator, who has been appalled at his one-time colleague's readiness to sacrifice principle for power. Chafee and McCain were the only Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts. They locked arms in opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And they worked together in the "Gang of 14," which blocked some of Bush's worst judges from the federal bench."On all three — sadly, sadly, sadly — McCain has flip-flopped," Chafee says. And forget all the "Country First" sloganeering, he adds. "McCain is putting himself first. He's putting himself first in blinking neon lights."THE NAVY BRATJohn Sidney McCain III has spent most of his life trying to escape the shadow of greater men. His grandfather Adm. John Sidney "Slew" McCain earned his four stars commanding a U.S. carrier force in World War II. His deeply ambitious father, Adm. "Junior" McCain, reached the same rank, commanding America's forces in the Pacific during Vietnam.The youngest McCain was not cut from the same cloth. Even as a toddler, McCain recalls in Faith of My Fathers, his volcanic temper was on display. "At the smallest provocation," he would hold his breath until he passed out: "I would go off in a mad frenzy, and then, suddenly, crash to the floor unconscious." His parents cured him of this habit in a way only a CIA interrogator could appreciate: by dropping their blue-faced boy in a bathtub of ice-cold water.Trailing his hard-charging, hard-drinking father from post to post, McCain didn't play well with others. Indeed, he concedes, his runty physique inspired a Napoleon complex: "My small stature motivated me to . . . fight the first kid who provoked me."McCain spent his formative years among the Washington elite. His father — himself deep in the throes of a daddy complex — had secured a political post as the Navy's chief liaison to the Senate, a job his son would later hold, and the McCain home on Southeast 1st Street was a high-powered pit stop in the Washington cocktail circuit. Growing up, McCain attended Episcopal High School, an all-white, all-boys boarding school across the Potomac in Virginia, where tuition today tops $40,000 a year. There, McCain behaved with all the petulance his privilege allowed, earning the nicknames "Punk" and "McNasty." Even his friends seemed to dislike him, with one recalling him as "a mean little fucker."McCain was not only a lousy student, he had his father's taste for drink and a darkly misogynistic streak. The summer after his sophomore year, cruising with a friend near Arlington, McCain tried to pick up a pair of young women. When they laughed at him, he cursed them so vilely that he was hauled into court on a profanity charge.McCain's admittance to Annapolis was preordained by his bloodline. But martial discipline did not seem to have much of an impact on his character. By his own account, McCain was a lazy, incurious student; he squeaked by only by prevailing upon his buddies to help him cram for exams. He continued to get sauced and treat girls badly. Before meeting a girlfriend's parents for the first time, McCain got so shitfaced that he literally crashed through the screen door when he showed up in his white midshipman's uniform.His grandfather's name and his father's forbearance brought McCain a charmed existence at Annapolis. On his first trip at sea — to Rio de Janeiro aboard the USS Hunt — the captain was a former student of his father. While McCain's classmates learned the ins and outs of the boiler room, McCain got to pilot the ship to South America and back. In Rio, he hobnobbed with admirals and the president of Brazil.Back on campus, McCain's short fuse was legend. "We'd hear this thunderous screaming and yelling between him and his roommate — doors slamming — and one of them would go running down the hall," recalls Phil Butler, who lived across the hall from McCain at the academy. "It was a regular occurrence."When McCain was not shown the pampering to which he was accustomed, he grew petulant — even abusive. He repeatedly blew up in the face of his commanding officer. It was the kind of insubordination that would have gotten any other midshipman kicked out of Annapolis. But his classmates soon realized that McCain was untouchable. Midway though his final year, McCain faced expulsion, about to "bilge out" because of excessive demerits. After his mother intervened, however, the academy's commandant stepped in. Calling McCain "spoiled" to his face, he nonetheless issued a reprieve, scaling back the demerits. McCain dodged expulsion a second time by convincing another midshipman to take the fall after McCain was caught with contraband."He was a huge screw-off," recalls Butler. "He was always on probation. The only reason he graduated was because of his father and his grandfather — they couldn't exactly get rid of him."McCain's self-described "four-year course of insubordination" ended with him graduating fifth from the bottom — 894th out of a class of 899. It was a record of mediocrity he would continue as a pilot.BOTTOM GUNIn the cockpit, McCain was not a top gun, or even a middling gun. He took little interest in his flight manuals; he had other priorities."I enjoyed the off-duty life of a Navy flier more than I enjoyed the actual flying," McCain writes. "I drove a Corvette, dated a lot, spent all my free hours at bars and beach parties." McCain chased a lot of tail. He hit the dog track. Developed a taste for poker and dice. He picked up models when he could, screwed a stripper when he couldn't.In the air, the hard-partying McCain had a knack for stalling out his planes in midflight. He was still in training, in Texas, when he crashed his first plane into Corpus Christi Bay during a routine practice landing. The plane stalled, and McCain was knocked cold on impact. When he came to, the plane was underwater, and he had to swim to the surface to be rescued. Some might take such a near-death experience as a wake-up call: McCain took some painkillers and a nap, and then went out carousing that night.Off duty on his Mediterranean tours, McCain frequented the casinos of Monte Carlo, cultivating his taste for what he calls the "addictive" game of craps. McCain's thrill-seeking carried over into his day job. Flying over the south of Spain one day, he decided to deviate from his flight plan. Rocketing along mere feet above the ground, his plane sliced through a power line. His self-described "daredevil clowning" plunged much of the area into a blackout.That should have been the end of McCain's flying career. "In the Navy, if you crashed one airplane, nine times out of 10 you would lose your wings," says Butler, who, like his former classmate, was shot down and taken prisoner in North Vietnam. Spark "a small international incident" like McCain had? Any other pilot would have "found themselves as the deck officer on a destroyer someplace in a hurry," says Butler."But, God, he had family pull. He was directly related to the CEO — you know?"McCain was undeterred by the crashes. Nearly a decade out of the academy, his career adrift, he decided he wanted to fly combat in Vietnam. His motivation wasn't to contain communism or put his country first. It was the only way he could think of to earn the respect of the man he calls his "distant, inscrutable patriarch." He needed to secure a command post in the Navy — and to do that, his career needed the jump-start that only a creditable war record could provide.As he would so many times in his career, McCain pulled strings to get ahead. After a game of tennis, McCain prevailed upon the undersecretary of the Navy that he was ready for Vietnam, despite his abysmal flight record. Sure enough, McCain was soon transferred to McCain Field — an air base in Meridian, Mississippi, named after his grandfather — to train for a post on the carrier USS Forrestal.With a close friend at the base, an alcoholic Marine captain, McCain formed the "Key Fess Yacht Club," which quickly became infamous for hosting toga parties in the officers' quarters and bringing bands down from Memphis to attract loose women to the base. Showing his usual knack for promotion, McCain rose from "vice commodore" to "commodore" of the club.In 1964, while still at the base, McCain began a serious romance with Carol Shepp, a vivacious former model who had just divorced one of his classmates from Annapolis. Commandeering a Navy plane, McCain spent most weekends flying from Meridian to Philadelphia for their dates. They married the following summer.That December, McCain crashed again. Flying back from Philadelphia, where he had joined in the reverie of the Army-Navy football game, McCain stalled while coming in for a refueling stop in Norfolk, Virginia. This time he managed to bail out at 1,000 feet. As his parachute deployed, his plane thundered into the trees below.By now, however, McCain's flying privileges were virtually irrevocable — and he knew it. On one of his runs at McCain Field, when ground control put him in a holding pattern, the lieutenant commander once again pulled his family's rank. "Let me land," McCain demanded over his radio, "or I'll take my field and go home!"TRIAL BY FIRESometimes 3 a.m. moments occur at 10:52 in the morning.It was July 29th, 1967, a hot, gusty morning in the Gulf of Tonkin atop the four-acre flight deck of the supercarrier USS Forrestal. Perched in the cockpit of his A-4 Skyhawk, Lt. Cmdr. John McCain ticked nervously through his preflight checklist.Now 30 years old, McCain was trying to live up to his father's expectations, to finally be known as something other than the fuck-up grandson of one of the Navy's greatest admirals. That morning, preparing for his sixth bombing run over North Vietnam, the graying pilot's dreams of combat glory were beginning to seem within his reach.Then, in an instant, the world around McCain erupted in flames. A six-foot-long Zuni rocket, inexplicably launched by an F-4 Phantom across the flight deck, ripped through the fuel tank of McCain's aircraft. Hundreds of gallons of fuel splashed onto the deck and came ablaze. Then: Clank. Clank. Two 1,000-pound bombs dropped from under the belly of McCain's stubby A-4, the Navy's "Tinkertoy Bomber," into the fire.McCain, who knew more than most pilots about bailing out of a crippled aircraft, leapt forward out of the cockpit, swung himself down from the refueling probe protruding from the nose cone, rolled through the flames and ran to safety across the flight deck. Just then, one of his bombs "cooked off," blowing a crater in the deck and incinerating the sailors who had rushed past McCain with hoses and fire extinguishers. McCain was stung by tiny bits of shrapnel in his legs and chest, but the wounds weren't serious; his father would later report to friends that Johnny "came through without a scratch."The damage to the Forrestal was far more grievous: The explosion set off a chain reaction of bombs, creating a devastating inferno that would kill 134 of the carrier's 5,000-man crew, injure 161 and threaten to sink the ship.These are the moments that test men's mettle. Where leaders are born. Leaders like . . . Lt. Cmdr. Herb Hope, pilot of the A-4 three planes down from McCain's. Cornered by flames at the stern of the carrier, Hope hurled himself off the flight deck into a safety net and clambered into the hangar deck below, where the fire was spreading. According to an official Navy history of the fire, Hope then "gallantly took command of a firefighting team" that would help contain the conflagration and ultimately save the ship.McCain displayed little of Hope's valor. Although he would soon regale The New York Times with tales of the heroism of the brave enlisted men who "stayed to help the pilots fight the fire," McCain took no part in dousing the flames himself. After going belowdecks and briefly helping sailors who were frantically trying to unload bombs from an elevator to the flight deck, McCain retreated to the safety of the "ready room," where off-duty pilots spent their noncombat hours talking trash and playing poker. There, McCain watched the conflagration unfold on the room's closed-circuit television — bearing distant witness to the valiant self-sacrifice of others who died trying to save the ship, pushing jets into the sea to keep their bombs from exploding on deck.As the ship burned, McCain took a moment to mourn his misfortune; his combat career appeared to be going up in smoke. "This distressed me considerably," he recalls in Faith of My Fathers. "I feared my ambitions were among the casualties in the calamity that had claimed the Forrestal."The fire blazed late into the night. The following morning, while oxygen-masked rescue workers toiled to recover bodies from the lower decks, McCain was making fast friends with R.W. "Johnny" Apple of The New York Times, who had arrived by helicopter to cover the deadliest Naval calamity since the Second World War. The son of admiralty surviving a near-death experience certainly made for good copy, and McCain colorfully recounted how he had saved his skin. But when Apple and other reporters left the ship, the story took an even stranger turn: McCain left with them. As the heroic crew of the Forrestal mourned its fallen brothers and the broken ship limped toward the Philippines for repairs, McCain zipped off to Saigon for what he recalls as "some welcome R&R."VIOLATING THE CODEEnsconced in Apple's villa in Saigon, McCain and the Times reporter forged a relationship that would prove critical to the ambitious pilot's career in the years ahead. Apple effectively became the charter member of McCain's media "base," an elite corps of admiring reporters who helped create his reputation for "straight talk."Sipping scotch and reflecting on the fire aboard the Forrestal, McCain sounded like the peaceniks he would pillory after his return from Hanoi. "Now that I've seen what the bombs and napalm did to the people on our ship," he told Apple, "I'm not so sure that I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam." Here, it seemed, was a frank-talking warrior, one willing to speak out against the military establishment in the name of truth.But McCain's misgivings about the righteousness of the fight quickly took a back seat to his ambitions. Within days, eager to get his combat career back on track, he put in for a transfer to the carrier USS Oriskany. Two months after the Forrestal fire — following a holiday on the French Riviera — McCain reported for duty in the Gulf of Tonkin.McCain performed adequately on the Oriskany. On October 25th, 1967, he bombed a pair of Soviet MiGs parked on an airfield outside Hanoi. His record was now even. Enemy planes destroyed by McCain: two. American planes destroyed by McCain: two.The next day, McCain embarked on his fateful 23rd mission, a bombing raid on a power plant in downtown Hanoi. McCain had cajoled his way onto the strike force — there were medals up for grabs. The plant had recently been rebuilt after a previous bombing run that had earned two of the lead pilots Navy Crosses, one of the force's top honors.It was a dangerous mission — taking the planes into the teeth of North Vietnam's fiercest anti-aircraft defenses. As the planes entered Hanoi airspace, they were instantly enveloped in dark clouds of flak and surface-to-air missiles. Still cocky from the previous day's kills, McCain took the biggest gamble of his life. As he dived in on the target in his A-4, his surface-to-air missile warning system sounded: A SAM had a lock on him. "I knew I should roll out and fly evasive maneuvers," McCain writes. "The A-4 is a small, fast" aircraft that "can outmaneuver a tracking SAM."But McCain didn't "jink." Instead, he stayed on target and let fly his bombs — just as the SAM blew his wing off.To watch the Republican National Convention and listen to Fred Thompson's account of John McCain's internment in Vietnam, you would think that McCain never gave his captors anything beyond his name, rank, service number and, under duress, the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line. His time in Hanoi, we're to understand, steeled the man — transforming him from a fighter jock who put himself first into a patriot who would henceforth selflessly serve the public good.There is no question that McCain suffered hideously in North Vietnam. His ejection over a lake in downtown Hanoi broke his knee and both his arms. During his capture, he was bayoneted in the ankle and the groin, and had his shoulder smashed by a rifle butt. His tormentors dragged McCain's broken body to a cell and seemed content to let him expire from his injuries. For the next two years, there were few days that he was not in agony.But the subsequent tale of McCain's mistreatment — and the transformation it is alleged to have produced — are both deeply flawed. The Code of Conduct that governed POWs was incredibly rigid; few soldiers lived up to its dictate that they "give no information . . . which might be harmful to my comrades." Under the code, POWs are bound to give only their name, rank, date of birth and service number — and to make no "statements disloyal to my country."Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. "I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital," he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. "I had to tell them," he insisted to Dramesi, "or I would have died in bed."Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain's service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot's behavior as heroic — "he wasn't exceptional one way or the other" — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. "This business of my country before my life?" Dramesi says. "Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he'd be dead."Once the Vietnamese realized they had captured the man they called the "crown prince," they had every motivation to keep McCain alive. His value as a propaganda tool and bargaining chip was far greater than any military intelligence he could provide, and McCain knew it. "It was hard not to see how pleased the Vietnamese were to have captured an admiral's son," he writes, "and I knew that my father's identity was directly related to my survival." But during the course of his medical treatment, McCain followed through on his offer of military information. Only two weeks after his capture, the North Vietnamese press issued a report — picked up by The New York Times — in which McCain was quoted as saying that the war was "moving to the advantage of North Vietnam and the United States appears to be isolated." He also provided the name of his ship, the number of raids he had flown, his squadron number and the target of his final raid.THE CONFESSIONIn the company of his fellow POWs, and later in isolation, McCain slowly and miserably recovered from his wounds. In June 1968, after three months in solitary, he was offered what he calls early release. In the official McCain narrative, this was the ultimate test of mettle. He could have come home, but keeping faith with his fellow POWs, he chose to remain imprisoned in Hanoi.What McCain glosses over is that accepting early release would have required him to make disloyal statements that would have violated the military's Code of Conduct. If he had done so, he could have risked court-martial and an ignominious end to his military career. "Many of us were given this offer," according to Butler, McCain's classmate who was also taken prisoner. "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.""He makes it sound like it was a great thing to have accomplished," says Dramesi. "A great act of discipline or strength. That simply was not the case." In fairness, it is difficult to judge McCain's experience as a POW; throughout most of his incarceration he was the only witness to his mistreatment. Parts of his memoir recounting his days in Hanoi read like a bad Ian Fleming novel, with his Vietnamese captors cast as nefarious Bond villains. On the Fourth of July 1968, when he rejected the offer of early release, an officer nicknamed "Cat" got so mad, according to McCain, that he snapped a pen he was holding, splattering ink across the room."They taught you too well, Mac Kane," Cat snarled, kicking over a chair. "They taught you too well."The brutal interrogations that followed produced results. In August 1968, over the course of four days, McCain was tortured into signing a confession that he was a "black criminal" and an "air pirate." ""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," says Butler. "John was just one of about 600 guys. He was nothing unusual. He was just another POW."McCain has also allowed the media to believe that his torture lasted for the entire time he was in Hanoi. At the Republican convention, Fred Thompson said of McCain's torture, "For five and a half years this went on." In fact, McCain's torture ended after two years, when the death of Ho Chi Minh in September 1969 caused the Vietnamese to change the way they treated POWs. "They decided it would be better to treat us better and keep us alive so they could trade us in for real estate," Butler recalls.By that point, McCain had become the most valuable prisoner of all: His father was now directing the war effort as commander in chief of all U.S. forces in the Pacific. McCain spent the next three and a half years in Hanoi biding his time, trying to put on weight and regain his strength, as the bombing ordered by his father escalated. By the time he and other POWs were freed in March 1973 as a result of the Paris Peace Accords, McCain was able to leave the prison camp in Hanoi on his own feet.Even those in the military who celebrate McCain's patriotism and sacrifice question why his POW experience has been elevated as his top qualification to be commander in chief. "It took guts to go through that and to come out reasonably intact and able to pick up the pieces of your life and move on," says Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, who has known McCain since the 1980s. "It is unquestionably a demonstration of the character of the man. But I don't think that it is a special qualification for being president of the United States. In some respects, I'm not sure that's the kind of character I want sitting in the Oval Office. I'm not sure that much time in a prisoner-of-war status doesn't do something to you. Doesn't do something to you psychologically, doesn't do something to you that might make you a little more volatile, a little less apt to listen to reason, a little more inclined to be volcanic in your temperament.""A BELLICOSE HAWK"The reckless, womanizing hotshot who leaned on family connections for advancement before his capture in Vietnam emerged a reckless, womanizing celebrity who continued to pull strings. The real difference between the McCain of 1967 and the McCain of 1973 was that the latter's ambition was now on overdrive. He wanted to study at the National War College — but military brass turned him down as underqualified. So McCain appealed the decision to the top: John Warner, the Secretary of the Navy and a friend of his father. Warner, who now serves in the Senate alongside McCain, overruled the brass and gave the POW a slot. McCain also got his wings back, even though his injuries prevented him from raising his hands above shoulder height to comb his own hair.McCain was eager to make up for lost time — and the times were favorable to a high-profile veteran willing to speak out in favor of the war. With the Senate moving to cut off funds for the Nixon administration's illegal bombing of Cambodia, the president needed all the help he could get. Two months after his release, McCain related his harrowing story of survival in a 13-page narrative in U.S. News & World Report, at the end of which he launched into an energetic defense of Nixon's discredited foreign policy. "I admire President Nixon's courage," he wrote. "It is difficult for me to understand . . . why people are still criticizing his foreign policy — for example, the bombing in Cambodia."In the years to come, McCain would continue to fight the war his father had lost. In his meetings with Nixon, Junior was known for chomping on an unlit cigar, complaining about the "goddamn gooks" and pushing to bomb enemy sanctuaries in Cambodia. His son was equally gung-ho. "John has always been a very bellicose hawk," says John H. Johns, a retired brigadier general who studied with McCain at the War College. "When he came back from Vietnam, he accused the liberal media of undermining national will, that we could have won in Vietnam if we had the national will."It was the kind of tough talk that made McCain a fast-rising star in far-right circles. Through Ross Perot, a friend of Ronald Reagan who had championed the cause of the POWs, McCain was invited to meet with the then-governor of California and his wife. Impressed, Reagan invited McCain to be the keynote speaker at his annual "prayer breakfast" in Sacramento.Then, at the end of 1974, McCain finally achieved the goal he had been working toward for years. He was installed as the commanding officer of the largest air squadron in the Navy — the Replacement Air Group based in Jacksonville, Florida — training carrier pilots. It was a post for which McCain flatly admits, "I was not qualified." By now, however, he was unembarrassed by his own nepotism. At the ceremony commemorating his long-sought ascension to command, his father looking on with pride, McCain wept openly.BOOZE AND PORKIf heroism is defined by physical suffering, Carol McCain is every bit her ex-husband's equal. Driving alone on Christmas Eve 1969, she skidded out on a patch of ice and crashed into a telephone pole. She would spend six months in the hospital and undergo 23 surgeries. The former model McCain bragged of to his buddies in the POW camp as his "long tall Sally" was now five inches shorter and walked with crutches.By any standard, McCain treated her contemptibly. Whatever his dreams of getting laid in Rio, he got plenty of ass during his command post in Jacksonville. According to biographer Robert Timberg, McCain seduced his conquests on off-duty cross-country flights — even though adultery is a court-martial offense. He was also rumored to be romantically involved with a number of his subordinates.In 1977, McCain was promoted to captain and became the Navy's liaison to the Senate — the same politically connected post once occupied by his father. He took advantage of the position to buddy up to young senators like Gary Hart, William Cohen and Joe Biden. He was also taken under the wing of another friend of his father: Sen. John Tower, the powerful Texas Republican who would become his political mentor. Despite the promotion, McCain continued his adolescent carousing: On a diplomatic trip to Saudi Arabia with Tower, he tried to get some tourists he disliked in trouble with the authorities by littering the room-service trays outside their door with empty bottles of alcohol.As the Navy's top lobbyist, McCain was supposed to carry out the bidding of the secretary of the Navy. But in 1978 he went off the reservation. Vietnam was over, and the Carter administration, cutting costs, had decided against spending $2 billion to replace the aging carrier Midway. The secretary agreed with the administration's decision. Readiness would not be affected. The only reason to replace the carrier — at a cost of nearly $7 billion in today's dollars — was pork-barrel politics.Although he now crusades against wasteful military spending, McCain had no qualms about secretly lobbying for a pork project that would pay for a dozen Bridges to Nowhere. "He did a lot of stuff behind the back of the secretary of the Navy," one lobbyist told Timberg. Working his Senate connections, McCain managed to include a replacement for the Midway in the defense authorization bill in 1978. Carter, standing firm, vetoed the entire spending bill to kill the carrier. When an attempt to override the veto fell through, however, McCain and his lobbyist friends didn't give up the fight. The following year, Congress once again approved funding for the carrier. This time, Carter — his pork-busting efforts undone by a turncoat Navy liaison — signed the bill.In the spring of 1979, while conducting official business for the Navy, the still-married McCain encountered Cindy Lou Hensley, a willowy former cheerleader for USC. Mutually smitten, the two lied to each other about their ages. The 24-year-old Hensley became 27; the 42-year-old McCain became 38. For nearly a year the two carried on a cross-country romance while McCain was still living with Carol: Court documents filed with their divorce proceeding indicate that they "cohabitated as husband and wife" for the first nine months of the affair.Although McCain stresses in his memoir that he married Cindy three months after divorcing Carol, he was still legally married to his first wife when he and Cindy were issued a marriage license from the state of Arizona. The divorce was finalized on April 2nd, 1980. McCain's second marriage — rung in at the Arizona Biltmore with Gary Hart as a groomsman — was consummated only six weeks later, on May 17th. The union gave McCain access to great wealth: Cindy, whose father was the exclusive distributor for Budweiser in the Phoenix area, is now worth an estimated $100 million.McCain's friends were blindsided by the divorce. The Reagans — with whom the couple had frequently dined and even accompanied on New Year's holidays — never forgave him. By the time McCain became a self-proclaimed "foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution" two years later, he and the Gipper had little more than ideology to bind them. Nancy took Carol under her wing, giving her a job in the White House and treating McCain with a frosty formality that was evident even on the day last March when she endorsed his candidacy. "Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided and then we endorsed," she said. "Well, obviously, this is the nominee of the party."THE CARPETBAGGERAs his marriage unraveled, McCain's naval career was also stalling out. He had been passed over for a promotion. There was no sea command on the horizon, ensuring that he would never be able to join his four-star forefathers. For good measure, he crashed his third and final plane, this one a single-engine ultralight. McCain has never spoken of his last crash publicly, but his friend Gen. Jim Jones recalled in a 1999 interview that it left McCain with bandages on his face and one arm in a sling.So McCain turned to politics. Receiving advance word that a GOP congressional seat was opening up outside Phoenix, he put the inside edge to good use. Within minutes of the incumbent's official retirement announcement, Cindy McCain bought her husband the house that would serve as his foothold in the district. In sharp contrast to the way he now markets himself, McCain's campaign ads billed him as an insider — a man "who knows how Washington works." Though the Reagans no longer respected him, McCain featured pictures of himself smiling with them."Thanks to my prisoner-of-war experience," McCain writes, "I had, as they say in politics, a good story to sell." And sell it he did. "Listen, pal," he told an opponent who challenged him during a candidate forum. "I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived the longest in my life was Hanoi."To finance his campaign, McCain dipped into the Hensley family fortune. He secured an endorsement from his mentor, Sen. Tower, who tapped his vast donor network in Texas to give McCain a much-needed boost. And he began an unethical relationship with a high-flying and corrupt financier that would come to characterize his cozy dealings with major donors and lobbyists over the years.Charlie Keating, the banker and anti-pornography crusader, would ultimately be convicted on 73 counts of fraud and racketeering for his role in the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s. That crisis, much like today's subprime-mortgage meltdown, resulted from misbegotten banking deregulation, and ultimately left taxpayers to pick up a tab of more than $124 billion. Keating, who raised more than $100,000 for McCain's race, lavished the first-term congressman with the kind of political favors that would make Jack Abramoff blush. McCain and his family took at least nine free trips at Keating's expense, and vacationed nearly every year at the mogul's estate in the Bahamas. There they would spend the days yachting and snorkeling and attending extravagant parties in a world McCain referred to as "Charlie Keating's Shangri-La." Keating also invited Cindy McCain and her father to invest in a real estate venture for which he promised a 26 percent return on investment. They plunked down more than $350,000.McCain still attributes the attention to nothing more than Keating's "great respect for military people" and the duo's "political and personal affinity." But Keating, for his part, made no bones about the purpose of his giving. When asked by reporters if the investments he made in politicians bought their loyalty and influence on his behalf, Keating replied, "I want to say in the most forceful way I can, I certainly hope so."THE KEATING FIVEIn congress, Rep. John McCain quickly positioned himself as a GOP hard-liner. He voted against honoring Martin Luther King Jr. with a national holiday in 1983 — a stance he held through 1989. He backed Reagan on tax cuts for the wealthy, abortion and support for the Nicaraguan contras. He sought to slash federal spending on social programs, and he voted twice against campaign-finance reform. He cites as his "biggest" legislative victory of that era a 1989 bill that abolished catastrophic health insurance for seniors, a move he still cheers as the first-ever repeal of a federal entitlement program.McCain voted to confirm Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. In 1993, he was the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for a group that sponsored an anti-gay-rights ballot initiative in Oregon. His anti-government fervor was renewed in the Gingrich revolution of 1994, when he called for abolishing the departments of Education and Energy. The following year, he championed a sweeping measure that would have imposed a blanket moratorium on any increase of government oversight.In this context, McCain's recent record — opposing the new GI Bill, voting to repeal the federal minimum wage, seeking to deprive 3.8 million kids of government health care — looks entirely consistent. "When jackasses like Rush Limbaugh say he's not conservative, that's just total nonsense," says former Sen. Gary Hart, who still counts McCain as a friend.Although a hawkish Cold Warrior, McCain did show an independent streak when it came to the use of American military power. Because of his experience in Vietnam, he said, he didn't favor the deployment of U.S. forces unless there was a clear and attainable military objective. In 1983, McCain broke with Reagan to vote against the deployment of Marine peacekeepers to Lebanon. The unorthodox stance caught the attention of the media — including this very magazine, which praised McCain's "enormous courage." It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. McCain recognized early on how the game was played: The Washington press corps "tend to notice acts of political independence from unexpected quarters," he later noted. "Now I was debating Lebanon on programs like MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. I was gratified by the attention and eager for more."When McCain became a senator in 1986, filling the seat of retiring Republican icon Barry Goldwater, he was finally in a position that a true maverick could use to battle the entrenched interests in Washington. Instead, McCain did the bidding of his major donor, Charlie Keating, whose financial empire was on the brink of collapse. Federal regulators were closing in on Keating, who had taken federally insured deposits from his Lincoln Savings and Loan and leveraged them to make wildly risky real estate ventures. If regulators restricted his investments, Keating knew, it would all be over.In the year before his Senate run, McCain had championed legislation that would have delayed new regulations of savings and loans. Grateful, Keating contributed $54,000 to McCain's Senate campaign. Now, when Keating tried to stack the federal regulatory bank board with cronies, McCain made a phone call seeking to push them through. In 1987, in an unprecedented display of political intimidation, McCain also attended two meetings convened by Keating to pressure federal regulators to back off. The senators who participated in the effort would come to be known as the Keating Five."Senate historians were unable to find any instance in U.S. history that was comparable, in terms of five U.S. senators meeting with a regulator on behalf of one institution," says Bill Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, who attended the second meeting. "And it hasn't happened since."Following the meetings with McCain and the other senators, the regulators backed off, stalling their investigation of Lincoln. By the time the S&L collapsed two years later, taxpayers were on the hook for $3.4 billion, which stood as a record for the most expensive bank failure — until the current mortgage crisis. In addition, 20,000 investors who had bought junk bonds from Keating, thinking they were federally insured, had their savings wiped out."McCain saw the political pressure on the regulators," recalls Black. "He could have saved these widows from losing their life savings. But he did absolutely nothing."McCain was ultimately given a slap on the wrist by the Senate Ethics Committee, which concluded only that he had exercised "poor judgment." The committee never investigated Cindy's investment with Keating.The McCains soon found themselves entangled in more legal trouble. In 1989, in behavior the couple has blamed in part on the stress of the Keating scandal, Cindy became addicted to Vicodin and Percocet. She directed a doctor employed by her charity — which provided medical care to patients in developing countries — to supply the narcotics, which she then used to get high on trips to places like Bangladesh and El Salvador.Tom Gosinski, a young Republican, kept a detailed journal while working as director of government affairs for the charity. "I am working for a very sad, lonely woman whose marriage of convenience to a U.S. senator has driven her to . . . cover feelings of despair with drugs," he wrote in 1992. When Cindy McCain suddenly fired Gosinski, he turned his journal over to the Drug Enforcement Administration, sparking a yearlong investigation. To avoid jail time, Cindy agreed to a hush-hush plea bargain and court-imposed rehab.Ironically, her drug addiction became public only because she and her husband tried to cover it up. In an effort to silence Gosinski, who was seeking $250,000 for wrongful termination, the attorney for the McCains demanded that Phoenix prosecutors investigate the former employee for extortion. The charge was baseless, and prosecutors dropped the investigation in 1994 — but not before publishing a report that included details of Cindy's drug use.Notified that the report was being released, Sen. McCain leapt into action. He dispatched his top political consultant to round up a group of friendly reporters, for whom Cindy staged a seemingly selfless, Oprah-style confession of her past addiction. Her drug use became part of the couple's narrative of straight talk and bravery in the face of adversity. "If what I say can help just one person to face the problem," Cindy declared, "it's worthwhile."FAVORS FOR DONORSIn the aftermath of the Keating Five, McCain realized that his career was in a "hell of a mess." He had made George H.W. Bush's shortlist for vice president in 1988, but the Keating scandal made him a political untouchable. McCain needed a high horse — so his long-standing opposition to campaign-finance reform went out the window. Working with Russ Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin, McCain authored a measure to ban unlimited "soft money" donations from politics.The Keating affair also taught McCain a vital lesson about handling the media. When the scandal first broke, he went ballistic on reporters who questioned his wife's financial ties to Keating — calling them "liars" and "idiots." Predictably, the press coverage was merciless. So McCain dialed back the anger and turned up the charm. "I talked to the press constantly, ad infinitum, until their appetite for information from me was completely satisfied," he later wrote. "It is a public relations strategy that I have followed to this day." Mr. Straight Talk was born.Unfortunately, any lessons McCain learned from the Keating scandal didn't affect his unbridled enthusiasm for deregulating the finance industry. "He continues to follow policies that create the same kind of environment we see today, with recurrent financial crises and epidemics of fraud led by CEOs," says Black, the former S&L regulator. Indeed, if the current financial crisis has a villain, it is Phil Gramm, who remains close to McCain. As chair of the Senate Banking Committee in the late 1990s, Gramm ushered in — with McCain's fervent support — a massive wave of deregulation for insurance companies and brokerage houses and banks, the aftershocks of which are just now being felt in Wall Street's catastrophic collapse. McCain, who has admitted that "the issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," relies on Gramm to guide him.McCain also did his part to loosen regulations on big corporations. In 1997, McCain became chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the insurance and telecommunications industries, as well as the CEO pay packages of those McCain now denounces as "fat cats." The special interests with business before the committee were big and well-heeled. All told, executives and fundraisers associated with these firms donated $2.6 million to McCain when he served as the chairman or ranking member.The money bought influence. In 1998, employees of BellSouth contributed more than $16,000 to McCain. The senator returned the favor, asking the Federal Communications Commission to give "serious consideration" to the company's request to become a long-distance carrier. Days after legislation benefiting the satellite-TV carrier EchoStar cleared McCain's committee, the company's founder celebrated by hosting a major fundraiser for McCain's presidential bid.Whatever McCain's romantic entanglements with the lobbyist Vicki Iseman, he was clearly in bed with her clients, who donated nearly $85,000 to his campaigns. One of her clients, Bud Paxson, set up a meeting with McCain in 1999, frustrated by the FCC's delay of his proposed takeover of a television station in Pittsburgh. Paxson had treated McCain well, offering the then-presidential candidate use of his corporate jet to fly to campaign events and ponying up $20,000 in campaign donations."You're the head of the commerce committee," Paxson told McCain, according to The Washington Post. "The FCC is not doing its job. I would love for you to write a letter."Iseman helped draft the text, and McCain sent the letter. Several weeks later — the day after McCain used Paxson's jet to fly to Florida for a fundraiser — McCain wrote another letter. FCC chair William Kennard sent a sharp rebuke to McCain, calling the senator's meddling "highly unusual." Nonetheless, within a week of McCain's second letter, the FCC ruled three-to-two in favor of Paxson's deal.Following his failed presidential bid in 2000, McCain needed a vehicle to keep his brand alive. He founded the Reform Institute, which he set up as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit — a tax status that barred it from explicit political activity. McCain proceeded to staff the institute with his campaign manager, Rick Davis, as well as the fundraising chief, legal counsel and communications chief from his 2000 campaign.There is no small irony that the Reform Institute — founded to bolster McCain's crusade to rid politics of unregulated soft money — itself took in huge sums of unregulated soft money from companies with interests before McCain's committee. EchoStar got in on the ground floor with a donation of $100,000. A charity funded by the CEO of Univision gave another $100,000. Cablevision gave $200,000 to the Reform Institute in 2003 and 2004 — just as its officials were testifying before the commerce committee. McCain urged approval of the cable company's proposed pricing plan. As Bradley Smith, the former chair of the Federal Election Commission, wrote at the time: "Appearance of corruption, anyone?""HE IS HOTHEADED"Over the years, John McCain has demonstrated a streak of anger so nasty that even his former flacks make no effort to spin it away. "If I tried to convince you he does not have a temper, you should hang up on me and ridicule me in print," says Dan Schnur, who served as McCain's press man during the 2000 campaign. Even McCain admits to an "immature and unprofessional reaction to slights" that is "little changed from the reactions to such provocations I had as a schoolboy."McCain is sensitive about his physical appearance, especially his height. The candidate is only five-feet-nine, making him the shortest party nominee since Michael Dukakis. On the night he was elected senator in 1986, McCain exploded after discovering that the stage setup for his victory speech was too low; television viewers saw his head bobbing at the bottom of the screen, his chin frequently cropped from view. Enraged, McCain tracked down the young Republican who had set up the podium, prodding the volunteer in the chest while screaming that he was an "incompetent little shit." Jon Hinz, the director of the Arizona GOP, separated the senator from the young man, promising to get him a milk crate to stand on for his next public appearance.During his 1992 campaign, at the end of a long day, McCain's wife, Cindy, mussed his receding hair and needled him playfully that he was "getting a little thin up there." McCain reportedly blew his top, cutting his wife down with the kind of language that had gotten him hauled into court as a high schooler: "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." Even though the incident was witnessed by three reporters, the McCain campaign denies it took place.In the Senate — where, according to former GOP Sen. Bob Smith, McCain has "very few friends" — his volcanic temper has repeatedly led to explosive altercations with colleagues and constituents alike. In 1992, McCain got into a heated exchange with Sen. Chuck Grassley over the fate of missing American servicemen in Vietnam. "Are you calling me stupid?" Grassley demanded. "No, I'm calling you a fucking jerk!" yelled McCain. Sen. Bob Kerrey later told reporters that he feared McCain was "going to head-butt Grassley and drive the cartilage in his nose into his brain." The two were separated before they came to blows. Several years later, during another debate over servicemen missing in action, an elderly mother of an MIA soldier rolled up to McCain in her wheelchair to speak to him about her son's case. According to witnesses, McCain grew enraged, raising his hand as if to strike her before pushing her wheelchair away.McCain has called Paul Weyrich, who helped steer the Republican Party to the right, a "pompous self-serving son of a bitch" who "possesses the attributes of a Dickensian villain." In 1999, he told Sen. Pete Domenici, the Republican chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, that "only an asshole would put together a budget like this."Last year, after barging into a bipartisan meeting on immigration legislation and attempting to seize the reins, McCain was called out by fellow GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. "Wait a second here," Cornyn said. "I've been sitting in here for all of these negotiations and you just parachute in here on the last day. You're out of line." McCain exploded: "Fuck you! I know more about this than anyone in the room." The incident foreshadowed McCain's 11th-hour theatrics in September, when he abruptly "suspended" his campaign and inserted himself into the Wall Street bailout debate at the last minute, just as congressional leaders were attempting to finalize a bipartisan agreement.At least three of McCain's GOP colleagues have gone on record to say that they consider him temperamentally unsuited to be commander in chief. Smith, the former senator from New Hampshire, has said that McCain's "temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him." Sen. Domenici of New Mexico has said he doesn't "want this guy anywhere near a trigger." And Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi weighed in that "the thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded."McCain's frequently inappropriate humor has also led many to question his self-control. In 1998, the senator told a joke about President Clinton's teenage daughter at a GOP fundraiser. "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?" McCain asked. "Because her father is Janet Reno!"More recently, McCain's jokes have heightened tensions with Iran. The senator once cautioned that "the world's only superpower . . . should never make idle threats" — but that didn't stop him from rewriting the lyrics to a famous Beach Boys tune. In April 2007, when a voter at a town-hall session asked him about his policy toward Tehran, McCain responded by singing, "bomb bomb bomb" Iran. The loose talk was meant to incite the GOP base, but it also aggravated relations with Iran, whose foreign minister condemned McCain's "jokes about genocide" as a testament to his "disturbed state of mind" and "warmongering approach to foreign policy.""NEXT UP, BAGHDAD!"The myth of John McCain hinges on two transformations — from pampered flyboy to selfless patriot, and from Keating crony to incorruptible reformer — that simply never happened. But there is one serious conversion that has taken root in McCain: his transformation from a cautious realist on foreign policy into a reckless cheerleader of neoconservatism."He's going to be Bush on steroids," says Johns, the retired brigadier general who has known McCain since their days at the National War College. "His hawkish views now are very dangerous. He puts military at the top of foreign policy rather than diplomacy, just like George Bush does. He and other neoconservatives are dedicated to converting the world to democracy and free markets, and they want to do it through the barrel of a gun."McCain used to believe passionately in the limits of American military power. In 1993, he railed against Clinton's involvement in Somalia, sponsoring an amendment to cut off funds for the troops. The following year he blasted the idealistic aims of sending U.S. troops to Haiti, taking to the Senate floor to propose an immediate withdrawal. He even started out a fierce opponent of NATO air strikes on Serbia during the war in the Balkans.But such concerns went out the window when McCain began gearing up to run for president. In 1998, he formed a political alliance with William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, who became one of his closest advisers. Randy Scheunemann — a hard-right lobbyist who was promoting Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi — came aboard as McCain's top foreign-policy adviser. Before long, the senator who once cautioned against "trading American blood for Iraqi blood" had been reborn as a fire-breathing neoconservative who believes in using American military might to spread American ideals — a belief he describes as a "sacred duty to suffer hardship and risk danger to protect the values of our civilization and impart them to humanity." By 1999, McCain was championing what he called "rogue state rollback." First on the hit list: Iraq.Privately, McCain brags that he was the "original neocon." And after 9/11, he took the lead in agitating for war with Iraq, outpacing even Dick Cheney in the dissemination of bogus intelligence about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. "There's other organizations besides Mr. bin Laden who are bent on the destruction of the United States," he warned in an appearance on Hardball on September 12th. "It isn't just Afghanistan. We're talking about Syria, Iraq, Iran, perhaps North Korea, Libya and others." A few days later, he told Jay Leno's audience that "some other countries" — possibly Iraq, Iran and Syria — had aided bin Laden.A month after 9/11, with the U.S. bombing Kabul and reeling from the anthrax scare, McCain assured David Letterman that "we'll do fine" in Afghanistan. He then added, unbidden, "The second phase is Iraq. Some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq."Later that month on Larry King, McCain raised the specter of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction before he peddled what became Dick Cheney's favorite lie: "The Czech government has revealed meetings, contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mohamed Atta. The evidence is very clear. . . . So we will have to act." On Nightline, he again flogged the Czech story and cited Iraqi defectors to claim that "there is no doubt as to [Saddam's] avid pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. That, coupled with his relations with terrorist organizations, I think, is a case that the administration will be making as we move step by step down this road."That December, just as U.S. forces were bearing down on Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora, McCain joined with five senators in an open letter to the White House. "In the interest of our own national securi

Palin Pledges of Alaska Sunshinre Marred by Secrets

Czarina JB in Arizona — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:38:28 EDT

Palin pledges of Alaska sunshine marred by secrets By RITA BEAMISH, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 42 minutes ago Sarah Palin's promise for a new era of government openness as the reform governor of Alaska started to crack even before Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign built a wall of protectiveness around her. Palin was elected nearly two years ago with splashy moves like publishing the state spending checkbook online. She kept a campaign pledge to allow the public to view online communications between state officials and potential bidders on a major gas pipeline, a contrast to her predecessor.But her administration has claimed broad exceptions to Alaska's freedom of information rules to keep government e-mails secret, and it's shown reluctance to disclose documents about sensitive topics, ranging from polar bears to policy issues. And her state's online checkbook is limited in its detail.Disclosures about private e-mail accounts used by Palin and her top aides have raised questions about whether they were trying to evade disclosure under the state's public records law. Her aides have denied this.Alaska's attorney general, appointed by Palin, determined in August that any personal communications on state-reimbursed cell phones and BlackBerrys can be kept secret under the Public Records Act. That could sweep information from public view if it were deemed personal, although the attorney general said state officials or courts still could review the records as needed.For citizens or journalists seeking public records in Alaska, the government generally must provide copies of records upon request within 10 days. The Associated Press has received some documents it sought in as little as one day.But when the AP asked for documents about nursing homes last June, state officials initially demanded $5,000 in fees. The fee was only waived three months later and the request satisfied after the AP printed a story on how state officials had effectively turned over questions about Palin's record to members of the McCain political campaign.Alaska now charges $960 per e-mail account for searches, plus additional fees for copying.Like Palin, McCain has promised to set new standards for transparency and accountability. Before becoming governor, Palin resigned from a state oil and gas board where she said confidentiality rules prohibited her from publicly discussing ethics problems she encountered and reported internally.Now Palin is dogged by accusations of stonewalling in a home-state investigation into whether she pressured officials to fire her former brother-in-law, a state trooper. After initially promising to cooperate, Palin challenged the lawmakers' impartiality. The results of that investigation are expected to be made public as early as Friday."As soon as the heat comes on, the openness and transparency goes away," said Anchorage Daily News editorial page editor Matt Zencey.At a campaign rally, Palin described her state's online checkbook and said she would "bring that kind of transparency, that responsibility, and accountability" to Washington. But the U.S. government already has a more in-depth public accounting system, a result of legislation sponsored by Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and co-sponsored by McCain, Palin's running mate.The site, USASpending.gov, offers details about federal contracts, loans, grants and insurance payments. Alaska's Online Checkbook provides little detail beyond the vendor and amount spent, such as money spent on travel. Citizens must separately submit a formal public records request to learn who traveled, the destination and travel purpose.Even while Palin ditched the prickly press relations of her predecessor, Frank Murkowski, her staff complained about TV crews waiting to question people outside her office. Longtime state Capitol reporter Gregg Erickson said there were early signs she wouldn't meet the high bar of openness that she had set for herself.Palin asked Erickson early on why he had to sue an earlier administration to get public records."I told her the reason governors keep it secret is they find it lots easier to govern if they can control the flow of public information. That seemed to stun her," said Erickson, editor of the Alaska Budget Report newsletter. "It's a principle she certainly discovered. Within a few weeks we were running up against difficulty," he added. He described a set of heavily edited records that he only received in full after appealing on legal grounds.Alaska lawmakers found Palin secretive about her budget plans, and they were angered she didn't signal her vetoes before axing projects they supported."The problem is, she campaigned on being open and transparent," Democratic state Rep. Beth Kerttula said. "She says she's open but the reality with the budget is, the goals she did lay out didn't seem to be followed." A University of Alaska professor, Rick Steiner, spent months working to obtain reports by Alaska marine mammal experts that didn't mesh with Palin's opposition to the federal designation of polar bears as a threatened species. Steiner was told variously that he had to be more specific in his request, that the information didn't exist, that he could find it on a state Web site, and finally that it was protected by a "deliberative process" provision under state law. Palin made her name as a reformer when she ferreted out e-mails of a state official she suspected of wrongdoing. Back then, she said withholding such information violated her beliefs as a public servant. Now Palin's aides are withholding swaths of e-mails exchanged among her and top staff that critics and news organizations have sought under the Public Records Act. Some were sent to Palin's husband, Todd. "It's incumbent on the government to explain why these communications should be treated as confidential if outsiders are included," said John McKay, a First Amendment lawyer in Anchorage. Any messages about official business are public records, but the state e-mail servers capture them only if at least one party uses an Alaska state e-mail address, said Kevin Brooks, deputy commissioner of administration. Palin has been careful to send copies of official e-mails to at least one employee's government address so they would be retained, spokeswoman Meg Stapleton said. She said Palin used a private e-mail account to avoid conducting personal business using state equipment. Former Alaska Gov. Wally Hickel once fled an elevator to avoid a reporter's questions, but Palin invited Bob Tkacz, a business freelance reporter who covers Alaska government, for a chat when he staked her out this summer. That didn't mean she spilled the scoops. "She's a nice lady," he said, "but when she doesn't want to say something it's very hard to get anything out of her." ___ AP National Writer Martha Mendoza contributed to this report.

McCain Campaign: "Palin Clueless", "Debate Prep Disasterous"

Czarina JB in Arizona — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 10:17:53 EDT

McCain Campaign: "Palin Clueless", "Debate Prep Disasterous" & Tidbits, Poll by Excelscior1 Fri Sep 26, 2008 at 05:51:43 AM PDTI haven't seen this reported on Kos yet.But talk show host Ed Shultz has published on his website, that Capitol Hill sources are reporting that McCain insiders are scared shitless of Palin's upcoming debate (or shriek) holding a press conference, and would love to skip the VP debate if they could.I believe this report. Not just because of the disastrous Katie Couric and Charles Gibson interviews. But this is one of those "inside Washington facts, that everyone knows, but they're afraid to talk about. Well Ed Just published the truth (as J. Scarborough, M.Murphy and P.Buchanan echoed on Morning Joe this morning).Too make matters worse, even The Morning Joe Crew said this morning, that Palin's interview with Katie Couric was terrible, and CBS has even more damaging video on file, that makes her look more a complete idiot, and once again, clearly showcases McCain's poor judgment.It gets worse guys. Just keep reading. McCain's meeting was a total farce, and there's more video in the CBS vaults.Here's the Shultz "breaking news"Breaking News from Big Eddie:
McCain Camp insiders say Palin "clueless"
Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people
are more than concerned about Palin. The campaign has held
a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as "disastrous." One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, "What are we going to do?" The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is "clueless." http://www.wegoted.com/Can you believe that? The McCain campaign held a mock debate and press conference, and she was horrible, and they asked themselves "what are we gonna do?.The speculation I'm hearing now from various radio reporters (including Errol Lewis here in NY on 1600AM), is that McCain is really trying to back Palin out of her debate. The memo must be spreading.Joe Scarborough, Pat Buchanan and Mike Murphy all simultaneously, argued that Palin was not the best choice today on Morning Joe. Scarborough said:If she can't answer basic questions, that's tough. Katie did not ask her tough questions, her questions were very fair. Apparently Katie asked her, "what's the worst thing Dick Cheney did", and she answered "Shooting his friend with the gun". Us Elections aren't a meritocracy, about picking the most qualified people, it's obvious she has very little knowledge of US facts. She may be a good person and a good governor, she has also has a high approval rating, but is this is the best person you can find for Vice President? but what does this say about Palin and McCain's judgment? Mmmmh. That was Joe.Former McCain campaign Manager, "Hot" Mike Murphy, said that:Is my Mike on, Lol. Well you know Pat, I never agreed with the Palin pick in the first place. I said she's a good base pick, but this is not a base vote type of year. The McCain camp has problems, because it seems CBS has more footage, and it's not any better, then what we've already seen. Pat Buchanan said:Either way, McCain doesn't look good. If he doesn't support the bailout, they'll say he killed it, but if he does, the house Republicans will be angry. But at this point he has to go[to the debate]. Wow! How do things change.Katie Couric has given the Repubs the signal to openly criticize Palin and (bingo) McCain's judgment. Hopefully now, it will be open season on McCain's judgment.Yesterday, McCain swooped into the White House meeting, and by all accounts he said very little, was disruptive and Obama actually led the meeting (by questioning Paulson and House Republican's). Now, how's that for true leadership?At the end, Obama had to speak directly to McCain to enunciate a response, after McCain sat silent for 45 minutes of an hour long meeting.
Why did he go?Politico had an excellent/the best article I read, detailing the meeting This long quote is priceless guys:Both McCain and his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, would leave the White House without comment, and the meeting was described as among the wildest in memory. A beleaguered President Bush had to struggle to maintain order and reassert himself. And when Democrats left to caucus in the Roosevelt Room, Paulson pursued them, begging that they not "blow up" the legislation.The former Goldman Sachs CEO even went down on one knee as if genuflecting, to which Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) is said to have joked, "I didn’t know you were Catholic."It was McCain who had urged Bush to call the White House meeting but Democrats made sure Obama had a prominent part. And much as they complained later of being blindsided, the whole event turned out to be something of an ambush on their part—aimed at McCain and House Republicans."Speaking professionally," said one Republican aide, "They did a very good job."When Bush yielded early to Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nev.) to speak, they yielded to Obama to speak for the assembled Democrats. And it was Obama who raised the subject of the conservative alternative and pressed Paulson on what he thought of the idea.House Republicans felt trapped—squeezed by Treasury, House Democrats and a bipartisan coalition in the Senate. And while McCain spoke surprisingly little after asking for the meeting, he conceded that it appeared there were not the votes for the core Paulson plan without major changes.

Debate Coverage Shortfalls

Czarina JB in Arizona — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:55:09 EDT

Wed, Sep 24, 2008 12:As debates loom, will media learn from past coverage shortfalls?Summary: As the media prepare to cover the debates, Media Matters has compiled several items from the 2004 presidential debates identifying patterns of misinformation in the media, at least one of which has already resurfaced this year.As the media prepare to cover the 2008 presidential and vice-presidential debates, Media Matters for America has compiled several items from the 2004 presidential debates identifying patterns of misinformation in the media. These include echoing the Bush campaign's claims that Sen. John Kerry's debating skills were vastly superior to those of President Bush, thereby lowering expectations for Bush; reversing themselves on the significance of a debate after a consensus emerged that Kerry won; hosting politically skewed panels to analyze debates; and purporting to give balanced fact checks by equating assertions by Kerry that were true, but in their judgment incomplete, with claims by Bush that the media themselves identified as false. Media Matters has already identified at least one of these patterns resurfacing.Not-So-Great Expectations: Media's spin favors Bush -- againIn the run-up to the 2004 presidential debates, media including CNN and columnists at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Time, and The Miami Herald played the "expectations game," setting the bar low for Bush while heightening both the expectations and the stakes by treating the debates as make-or-break for Kerry. As Media Matters demonstrated, this repeated the media's performance prior to the 2000 election, in which they raised the stakes for Vice President Gore and set a low bar for then-Gov. Bush.This week, Media Matters has identified at least one instance in which the media asserted that expectations for Sen. Barack Obama are higher than for Sen. John McCain, with Politico's Eamon Javers saying that a "stumble[]" by Obama "could be a real disaster for the Obama camp." After "make-or-break" buildup, CNN commentators downplayed debates' significanceIn the buildup to the first presidential debate of 2004, CNN commentators called the event "a decisive moment"; a "key opportunity" for Kerry; "the most important night of John Kerry's presidential campaign"; a chance for the candidates to win "the very big prize" of undecided voters; and "a pivotal moment." After the debate, these same CNN commentators said Kerry performed well -- but then downplayed the significance of the debates.Networks persisted with façade of "balance" in post-debate fact checksAfter the October 8, 2004, presidential debate, TV networks continued a pattern of false equivalence that Media Matters documented after both the first presidential and the vice-presidential debates. In the purported interest of fairness, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN juxtaposed, for example, Kerry's accurate employment figures, which they characterized as incomplete, with Bush falsehoods about Kerry's tax plan and about inroads the United States had made in dismantling Al Qaeda.Debate debacle: An MMFA review of MSNBC's skewed debate coverageMedia Matters analyzed MSNBC's coverage of all three presidential debates, as well as the vice-presidential debate, and identified imbalanced panels featuring conservatives and Republicans such as Pat Buchanan and Ben Ginsberg without any Democratic counterparts; definitive declarations of victory for the Republican ticket that were dramatically at odds with the consensus throughout the media and through public polling; faulty fact checks and focus groups; unequal numbers and order of guests; and numerous individual instances of conservative distortion and misinformation.Also, Media Matters had noted after the October 13, 2004, presidential debate that four of the first five guests on MSNBC's coverage were supporters of Bush; a second Kerry supporter was not interviewed until exactly one hour after the debate had concluded. Indeed, after interviewing Kerry political adviser Robert M. Shrum, the next four guests were then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), Bush campaign senior adviser Karen Hughes, former New York City mayor and Republican National Convention prime-time speaker Rudolph Giuliani, and then-White House communications director Dan Bartlett. —J.H.

Obama’s Surge Strategy: A Page from Petraeus Book?

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:42:54 EDT

Obama’s Surge Strategy: A Page from Petraeus Book?

I got the call last week and tomorrow I leave for the American heartland to join the Obama campaign officially. My “deployment” is not a total surprise, as I did my “basic training” in Chicago at Camp Obama in June 2007 and since then have volunteered in seven states. Independent of the campaign, I conducted “psy-ops” on the net as a blogger and worked with other supporters in “rapid response” to online critics and negative media. But now I am called to official duty and by this time next week I will be on the “front lines” in a crucial swing state.

Am I to be part of a Pre-electoral “Surge”, a sort of “counter-insurgency doctrine” applied to this election in the closing days of the Presidential campaign? That may be what Obama’s deputy national campaign director Steve Hildebrand has in mind to ensure Victory on November 4. He is the “four-star general” who won the first battle for the nomination when Obama took the Iowa caucus. Lately Hildebrand has been moving his troops around in what looks like an attempt to “clear, hold, and build” support in swing states. That is where organization, registration, and turnout could deliver the vote margin that spells the difference between “victory and defeat.”

Reports from Georgia confirm Hildebrand has “drawn down” his forces in Georgia and redeployed elsewhere. That does not imply Obama has abandoned Georgia, but does mean a greater reliance on remaining staff backed by an army of local volunteers who delivered a decisive primary win. At the same time, the redeployment reflects a need to strengthen Obama’s presence in states where he lost to Hillary Clinton and did not develop as much grass roots support. It looks and sounds like its erstwhile namesake in Iraq, but this surge too can only succeed if certain other conditions apply.

Perhaps the most important of those conditions is “political reconciliation.” The Denver convention speeches of Hillary and Bill Clinton marked a symbolic end to internal Democratic opposition to Obama’s nomination. Some small “rebel factions” of the party had intended to continue “resistance”. But John McCain’s subsequent nomination of Sarah Palin as his running mate sparked a “civil awakening” and the rebellion fell flat. Now former adversaries are working to elect Obama and avoid the frightening prospect of a “fundamentalist” religious right Republican Administration. What remains for the Obama forces is to reassure independent voters and moderate Republicans that Obama is a “safe” choice who will represent their interests.

The Obama campaign also benefits from improved intelligence on voting conditions in some key swing states where there were serious problems at the polls in 2000 and 2004. His base is alert to Republican tactics designed to intimidate and disenfranchise voters, and sabotaging elections. As they obtain “actionable intelligence” the campaign will be able to address problems promptly. And after replacing some local elected officials with Democrats, they can count on better cooperation to ensure the integrity of the electoral process.

As I leave for the front I anticipate this will be my last posting for a while. But I expect that this surge too will succeed “beyond our wildest dreams.”

Loan Titans Paid McCain Adviser Nearly $2 Million

Czarina JB in Arizona — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:58:54 EDT

Loan Titans Paid McCain Adviser Nearly $2 Million By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and CHARLES DUHIGGPublished: September 21, 2008 Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing. He and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, have donors and advisers who are tied to the companies.But last week the McCain campaign stepped up a running battle of guilt by association when it began broadcasting commercials trying to link Mr. Obama directly to the government bailout of the mortgage giants this month by charging that he takes advice from Fannie Mae’s former chief executive, Franklin Raines, an assertion both Mr. Raines and the Obama campaign dispute.Incensed by the advertisements, several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions.“The value that he brought to the relationship was the closeness to Senator McCain and the possibility that Senator McCain was going to run for president again,” said Robert McCarson, a former spokesman for Fannie Mae, who said that while he worked there from 2000 to 2002, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together paid Mr. Davis’s firm $35,000 a month. Mr. Davis “didn’t really do anything,” Mr. McCarson, a Democrat, said. Mr. Davis’s role with the group has bubbled up as an issue in the campaign, but the extent of his compensation and the details of his role have not been reported previously. Mr. McCain was never a leading critic or defender of the mortgage giants, although several former executives of the companies said Mr. Davis did draw Mr. McCain to a 2004 awards banquet that the companies’ Homeownership Alliance held in a Senate office building. The organization printed a photograph of Mr. McCain at the event in its 2004 annual report, bolstering its clout and credibility. The event honored several other elected officials, including at least two Democrats, Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania and Representative Artur Davis of Alabama.In an interview Sunday night with CNBC and The New York Times, Mr. McCain noted that Mr. Davis was no longer working on behalf of the mortgage giants. He said Mr. Davis “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.”Asked about the reports of Mr. Davis’s role, a spokesman for Mr. McCain said that during the time when Mr. Davis ran the Homeownership Alliance, the senator had backed legislation to increase oversight of the mortgage companies’ accounting and executive compensation. The legislation, however, did not seek to change their anomalous structure as private companies with federal support.The spokesman, Tucker Bounds, also noted that the Homeownership Alliance included nonprofit organizations like Habitat for Humanity and the Urban League. “It’s not controversial to promote homeownership and minority homeownership,” Mr. Bounds said. More than a half-dozen current and former executives, however, said the Homeownership Alliance was set up mainly to defend Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by promoting their role in the housing market, and the two companies paid almost the entire cost of the group’s operations.“They were financed largely, possibly exclusively, by Fannie and Freddie,” said William R. Maloni, a Democrat who is a former head of industry relations for Fannie Mae. “We thought it would be helpful to have someone who was a broadly recognized Republican to be the face of the organization, and that person became Rick Davis.” Mr. Maloni added, “Rick, for that purpose, turned out to be quite good.” (Several executives said Mr. Davis’s compensation was not unusual for the companies’ well-connected consultants.)The federal bailout of the two mortgage giants has become an emblem of what critics say is the outdated or inadequate regulatory system that allowed the financial system to slide into crisis this summer. At the time that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recruited Mr. Davis to run the Homeownership Alliance in 2000, they were under new pressure from private industry rivals and deregulation-minded Republicans who argued that the two companies’ federal sponsorship gave them an unfair advantage and put taxpayers at risk. Critics of the companies had formed their own Washington-based advocacy group, FM Watch. They were pushing for regulations that would deter the companies from expanding into new areas, including riskier and more profitable mortgages. Mr. Davis had recently returned to his lobbying firm from running Mr. McCain’s unexpectedly strong 2000 Republican primary campaign, which elevated Mr. McCain’s profile as a legislator and Mr. Davis’s as a lobbyist.“You can say what you want about free-market distortions, but people like the system because it gets them into houses cheap,” Mr. Davis said to Institutional Investor magazine in 2000, adding that he would run the advocacy group out of his Alexandria, Va., lobbying firm.The organization also hired Public Strategies, a communications firm that included former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon. Mr. Davis wrote letters and gave speeches for the group. In April 2001, he sent out a press release headlined, “It’s Tax Day — Do You Know Where Your Deductions Are? For Most Americans, They’re in Your Home.” But by the end of 2005, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were recovering from accounting problems and re-examining costs, former executives said. The companies decided the Homeownership Alliance had outlived its usefulness, and it disappeared.

McCain and the POW Coverup

Czarina JB in Arizona — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:24:32 EDT

McCain and the POW Cover-up By Sydney H. SchanbergSeptember 17, 2008John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books. Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain's role in it, even as McCain has made his military service and POW history the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War have also turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them. The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a Special Forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington and even sworn testimony by two defense secretaries that "men were left behind." This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number--probably hundreds--of the US prisoners held in Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain. The Pentagon had been withholding significant information from POW families for years. What's more, the Pentagon's POW/MIA operation had been publicly shamed by internal whistleblowers and POW families for holding back documents as part of a policy of "debunking" POW intelligence even when the information was obviously credible. The pressure from the families and Vietnam veterans finally produced the creation, in late 1991, of a Senate "Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs." The chair was John Kerry, but McCain, as a POW, was its most pivotal member. In the end, the committee became part of the debunking machine. Included in the evidence that McCain and his government allies suppressed or tried to discredit is a transcript of a senior North Vietnamese general's briefing of the Hanoi Politburo, discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar in the 1990s. The briefing took place only four months before the 1973 peace accords. The general, Tran Van Quang, told the Politburo members that Hanoi was holding 1,205 American prisoners but would keep many of them at war's end as leverage to ensure getting reparations from Washington. Throughout the Paris negotiations, the North Vietnamese tied the prisoner issue tightly to the issue of reparations. Finally, in a February 1, 1973, formal letter to Hanoi's premier, Pham Van Dong, Nixon pledged $3.25 billion in "postwar reconstruction" aid. The North Vietnamese, though, remained skeptical about the reparations promise being honored (it never was). Hanoi thus held back prisoners--just as it had done when the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and withdrew their forces from Vietnam. France later paid ransoms for prisoners and brought them home. Two defense secretaries who served during the Vietnam War testified to the Senate POW committee in September 1992 that prisoners were not returned. James Schlesinger and Melvin Laird, secretaries of defense under Nixon, said in a public session and under oath that they based their conclusions on strong intelligence data--letters, eyewitness reports, even direct radio contacts. Under questioning, Schlesinger chose his words carefully, understanding clearly the volatility of the issue: "I think that as of now that I can come to no other conclusion...some were left behind." Furthermore, over the years, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) received more than 1,600 firsthand reports of sightings of live American prisoners and nearly 14,000 secondhand accounts. Many witnesses interrogated by CIA or Pentagon intelligence agents were deemed "credible" in the agents' reports. Some of the witnesses were given lie-detector tests and passed. Sources provided me with copies of these witness reports. Yet the DIA, after reviewing them all, concluded that they "do not constitute evidence" that men were still alive. There is also evidence that in the first months of Reagan's presidency, the White House received a ransom proposal for a number of POWs being held by Hanoi. The offer, which was passed to Washington from an official of a third country, was apparently discussed at a meeting in the Roosevelt Room attended by Reagan, Vice President George H.W. Bush, CIA director William Casey and National Security Adviser Richard Allen. Allen confirmed the offer in sworn testimony to the Senate POW committee on June 23, 1992. Allen was allowed to testify behind closed doors, and no information was released. But a San Diego Union-Tribune reporter, Robert Caldwell, obtained the portion of the testimony relating to the ransom offer and wrote about it. The ransom request was for $4 billion, Allen testified. He said he told Reagan that "it would be worth the president going along and let's have the negotiation." When his testimony appeared in the Union-Tribune, Allen quickly wrote a letter to the panel, this time not under oath, recanting the ransom story, saying his memory had played tricks on him. But the story didn't end there. A Treasury agent on Secret Service duty in the White House, John Syphrit, came forward to say he had overheard part of the ransom conversation in the Roosevelt Room in 1981. The Senate POW committee voted not to subpoena him to testify. On November 11, 1992, Dolores Alfond, sister of missing airman Capt. Victor Apodaca and chair of the National Alliance of Families, an organization of relatives of POW/MIAs, testified at one of the Senate committee's public hearings. She asked for information about data the government had gathered from electronic devices used in a classified program known as PAVE SPIKE. The devices were primarily motion sensors, dropped by air, designed to pick up enemy troop movements. But they also had rescue capabilities. Someone on the ground--a downed airman or a prisoner on a labor gang--could manually enter data into the sensor, which were regularly collected electronically by US planes flying overhead. Alfond stated, without any challenge from the committee, that in 1974, a year after the supposedly complete return of prisoners, the gathered data showed that a person or people had manually entered into the sensors--as US pilots had been trained to do--"no less than 20 authenticator numbers that corresponded exactly to the classified authenticator numbers of 20 US POW/MIAs who were lost in Laos." Alfond added, says the transcript: "This PAVE SPIKE intelligence is seamless, but the committee has not discussed it or released what it knows about PAVE SPIKE." McCain, whose POW status made him the committee's most powerful member, attended that hearing specifically to confront Alfond because of her criticism of the panel's work. He bellowed and berated her for quite a while. His face turning anger-pink, he accused her of "denigrating" his "patriotism." The bullying had its effect--she began to cry. After a pause Alfond recovered and tried to respond to his scorching tirade, but McCain simply turned and stormed out of the room. The PAVE SPIKE file has never been declassified. We still don't know anything about those 20 POWs. The committee's final report, issued in January 1993, began with a forty-three-page executive summary--the only section that drew the mainstream press's attention. It said that only "a small number" of POWs could have been left behind in 1973. But the document's remaining 1,180 pages were quite different. Sprinkled throughout are findings that contradict and disprove the conclusions of the whitewashed summary. This insertion of critical evidence that committee leaders had downplayed and dismissed was the work of a committee staff that had opposed and finally rebelled against the cover-up. Pages 207-209 of the report, for example, contain major revelations of what were either massive intelligence failures or bad intentions. These pages say that until the committee brought up the subject in 1992, no branch of the intelligence community that dealt with analysis of satellite and lower-altitude photos had ever been informed of the distress signals US forces were trained to use in Vietnam--nor had they ever been tasked to look for such signals from possible prisoners on the ground.

Frank Rich Article: Truthiness Stages a Comeback

Czarina JB in Arizona — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:09:20 EDT

Truthiness Stages a Comeback By FRANK RICHPublished: September 20, 2008 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.

Barack Was Right: Surge did not work

Czarina JB in Arizona — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 20:16:44 EDT

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Satellite images taken at night show heavily Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Baghdad began emptying before a U.S. troop surge in 2007, graphic evidence of ethnic cleansing that preceded a drop in violence, according to a report published on Friday.

The images support the view of international refugee organizations and Iraq experts that a major population shift was a key factor in the decline in sectarian violence, particularly in the Iraqi capital, the epicenter of the bloodletting in which hundreds of thousands were killed.

Minority Sunni Arabs were driven out of many neighborhoods by Shi'ite militants enraged by the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February 2006. The bombing, blamed on the Sunni militant group al Qaeda, sparked a wave of sectarian violence.

"By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left," geography professor John Agnew of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study, said in a statement.

"Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," said Agnew, who studies ethnic conflict.

Some 2 million Iraqis are displaced within Iraq, while 2 million more have sought refuge in neighboring Syria and Jordan. Previously religiously mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad became homogenized Sunni or Shi'ite Muslim enclaves.

The study, published in the journal Environment and Planning A, provides more evidence of ethnic conflict in Iraq, which peaked just before U.S. President George W. Bush ordered the deployment of about 30,000 extra U.S. troops.

The extent to which the troop build-up helped halt Iraq's slide into sectarian civil war has been debated, particularly in the United States, with supporters of the surge saying it was the main contributing factor, and others arguing it was simply one of a number of factors.

"Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighborhood homogenization that is now largely achieved," Agnew's team wrote in their report.

Agnew's team used publicly available infrared night imagery from a weather satellite operated by the U.S. Air Force.

"The overall night light signature of Baghdad since the U.S. invasion appears to have increased between 2003 and 2006 and then declined dramatically from 20 March 2006 through 16 December 2007," their report said.

They said the night lights of Shi'ite-dominated Sadr City remained constant, as did lights in the Green Zone government and diplomatic compound in central Baghdad. Lights increased in the eastern New Baghdad district, another Shi'ite enclave.

Satellite studies have also been used to help document forced relocations in Myanmar and ethnic cleansing in Uganda.

McCain Secretly Plans New Tax on Middle Class

Czarina JB in Arizona — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 12:07:19 EDT

Thursday, September 18, 2008McCain Secretly Plans New Tax on Middle Class By United Steelworkers International President Leo W. Gerard

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

September 16th, 2008 John McCain should not be traveling in a bus called the Straight Talk Express. No, that equivocating multimillionaire who kowtows constantly to the wealthy should be riding in one of those private, gilded railroad cars.That would be symbolically appropriate as well since he is trying to railroad the middle class on taxes.He is actually proposing a brand new tax on the middle class.This has gotten so little attention it is astounding. And frightening, frankly, as television reporters and commentators focus instead on inane incidents like the lipstick-on-pigs remark.McCain intends to tax workers for the value of health insurance that they receive from their employers.Really.Although it’s not included in the description of his plan on his web site. It is, however, on the site of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit organization that specializes in health policy.I understand McCain neglecting to mention this new tax on the middle class. If I were proposing this shocking tax increase, one that will cost the average American worker an additional $110 a month in taxes out of the blue, I would conceal it as best I could too.So let me provide you with some clarity. This comes from the Kaiser Foundation evaluation of the McCain and Barack Obama health plans. It says McCain would “reform the tax code to eliminate the exclusion of the value of health insurance plans offered by employers from workers’ taxable income.”The value of the typical plan provided by an employer to a family is $12,106, of which the employer pays $8,824, and the worker pays the remaining $3,282. The median household income is $44,389, which places most American families in the 15 percent income tax bracket.McCain wants to add the employer’s cost — an additional $8,824 — to that middle class family’s income, then tax it. The hit to the average family is 15 percent of the McCain-added income — $1,323 more in income taxes.This new tax would affect the 158 million Americans who are insured through their employer.Right now you should be yelling, “What?” And demanding to know why you haven’t heard about this before. That is because the media keeps focusing on McCain’s proposed health care tax credits — $5,000 for families and $2,500 for individuals.McCain certainly wants the attention to stay on those credits. It sounds so much better to be giving families tax credits than tax increases. But what you need to know about those tax credits is that they don’t go to you – they’re to be sent to the insurance companies. You never get actual money in your pocket. McCain says it right on his web site: “the money would be sent directly to the insurance provider.”So if you choose to remain with your employer-based insurance, there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever see any benefit from that $5,000 payment. In addition, giving young healthy workers $2,500 to buy insurance on their own, where it won’t be taxed, will encourage them to leave employer-based plans, quickly raising the costs for everyone remaining and thus eliminating benefits of the tax credits. Finally, the tax credits rise only at the rate of inflation, not the vastly faster rate of medical costs, so, again, their value will quickly erode, according to several studies, including one released last week by health economists from Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan and published in the journal “Health Affairs.”Still, somehow, no one mentions the new tax part of McCain’s plan. Even the credits don’t sound so great after you hear the whole story.John McCain wants to kill employer-provided health insurance. He wants every American to go out on his or her own and try to buy insurance. He says that on his site if you read between the doubletalk. He says, for example, “The key to health care reform is to restore control to the patients themselves.. . .Health care. . . should not be limited by where you work.”Here’s the way the New York Times put it in an April 30 story, in which there was only straight talk: “Mr. McCain’s health care plan would shift the emphasis from insurance provided by employers to insurance bought by individuals.”Since 2000, the percentage of employers offering health insurance has declined from 69 percent to 60 percent.Many more companies would dump their plans as soon as the federal government offered tax credits to individuals who bought their own. Corporations would disingenuously justify this abandonment the same way McCain does — by saying workers would get the advantage of carrying their individual plans from job to job as they move around the country.They won’t mention the cost, however. To buy plans comparable to what workers now receive from employers, families are going to have to shell out a lot more money from their own pockets.The math is simple. To buy the $12,106 plan with the $5,000 family tax credit, a worker is going to have to cough up an additional $3,824. (That is the $8,824 the employer previously paid toward the plan minus the $5,000 credit.)
That is, assuming, of course, that you can get coverage. Insurance companies are notorious for rejecting anyone with pre-existing conditions, including acne, being overweight and diabetes.John McCain himself would likely be unable to find an insurer on the private market since he’s had the most serious form of skin cancer, melanoma, more than once.
But he doesn’t have to worry because, as a U.S. senator, he’s covered by a government plan. And he’s certainly not proposing eliminating that!McCain could resolve the exclusion problem by requiring insurance companies to accept people with pre-existing conditions. But he doesn’t. Instead, he suggests setting up a system in which states would become responsible making sure those people get insurance. He says he won’t shift the costs to the states, but what’s the chance of that? He’s establishing a pool of all of those rejected by insurance companies – thus those with the highest risk. And he’s telling the states to deal with the problem that creates.Meanwhile, insurance companies would be left to profit big time by providing insurance for the young, the healthy and everyone who doesn’t have anything at all wrong with them. What a deal!He claims this plan will increase competition and drive down prices – as if an individual worker, on his own, without any real knowledge of the system, has the negotiating power of a major corporation with full-time experts on its staff whose only function is to buy insurance for a pool of hundreds or thousands of workers.While McCain is planning to increase your taxes if you’ve got insurance at work or to force you into the insurance market at a huge financial loss, he intends, at the same time, to cut taxes on corporations — you know, like those giant oil companies that just raked in the largest quarterly profits of any firm ever in the history of mankind. And he plans to permanently retain those income tax cuts his friend George W. Bush gave to the rich, because, of course, the wealthiest Americans, like McCain and Bush, need a break today.In the meantime, McCain is traveling to states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, hard hit by the economic devastation caused by eight years of Bush administration fiscal policy failures. At each stop, McCain is sucking up the middle class – as if his administration wouldn’t cost workers dearly.He needs to stop lying to America’s workers.In fact, maybe Mr. Straight-Talk-Express needs to slap on some lipstick. Because sometimes the truth is a bitch.

How John McCain Lost Me from auhor of Citizen McCain

Czarina JB in Arizona — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:35:12 EDT

I have been a longtime admirer of John McCain. During the 2000 Republican presidential primaries I publicly defended McCain against the pro-Bush Republicans’ whisper campaign that he was too unstable to be president (aware though I was that he had a temper). Two years later I published a positive book about him, “Citizen McCain.”

I admired John McCain as a man of principle and honor. He had become emblematic of someone who spoke his mind, voted his conscience, and demonstrated courage in bucking his own party and fighting for what he believed in. He gained a well-deserved reputation as a maverick. He was seen as taking principled positions on such issues as tax equity (opposing the newly elected Bush’s tax cut), fighting political corruption, and, later, taking on the Bush administration on torture. He came off as a man of decency. He took political risks.

Having emerged, ironically, from his bitter 2000 primary fight against Bush as an immensely popular figure, he set out to be a new force in American politics. He decided to form and lead a centrist movement, believing that that was where the country was and needed leadership. He went against the grain of his party on the environment, patients’ bill of rights, and, of course, campaign finance reform. While McCain’s movement to the center was widely popular (if not on the right) – and he even flirted with becoming a Democrat – there’s now strong reason to question whether it was anything but a temporary, expedient tactic. (In his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For,” he wrote, revealingly, “I didn’t decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. . . . In truth, I’d had the ambition for a long time.”)

When he decided to run for president in 2008, he felt he couldn’t win without the support of the right, so he adapted.

In retrospect, other once-hailed McCain efforts – his cultivation of the press (“my base”) and even his fight for campaign finance reform (launched in the wake of his embarrassment over the Keating Five scandal) now seem to have been simply maneuvers. The “Straight Talk Express” – a brilliant p.r. stroke in 2000 – has now been shut down.

When the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, widely opposed by Republicans, began to seem a liability during the 2008 primaries, his reforming zeal gave way to political exigencies, and he ceased mentioning his one-time triumph. Though in 2003 he had introduced a bill to fix some other problems with the campaign finance system, in later years his name was no longer on the bill.

When Bush, issued a “signing statement” in 2006 on McCain’s hard-fought legislation placing prohibitions on torture, saying he would interpret the measure as he chose, McCain barely uttered a peep. And then, in 2006, in one of his most disheartening acts, McCain supported a “compromise” with the administration on trials of Guantanamo detainees, yielding too much of what the administration wanted, and accepted provisions he had originally opposed on principle. Among other things, the bill sharply limited the rights of detainees in military trials, stripped habeas corpus rights from a broad swath of people “suspected” of cooperating with terrorists, and loosened restrictions on the administration’s use of torture. (The Supreme Court later ruled portions of this measure unconstitutional.)

McCain’s caving in to this “compromise” did it for me. This was further evidence that the former free-spirited, supposedly principled, maverick was morphing into just another panderer – to Bush and the Republican Party’s conservative base.

Other aspects of McCain, including his temperament, began to trouble me. He seemed disturbingly bellicose. He gave the Iraq war unflagging support no matter the facts. He still talks about “winning” the war, though George W. Bush gave that up some time ago. As the war became increasingly unpopular, he employed the useful technique of blaming its execution rather than recognizing the misconceptions that had led him to be one of the most enthusiastic champions of the war in the first place.

Similarly, in making a big issue of having backed the surge (and simplifying the reasons for its apparent success), he preempts debate on the very idea of the war. He has talked (and sung) loosely about attacking Iran. More recently, he oversimplified this summer’s events in Georgia and made intemperate remarks about Russia, about which he’s been more belligerent than the administration for some time. (He has his own set of neocons.)

There’s an argument that all this compromise wasn’t necessary: some very smart political analysts believed from the outset that McCain could win the nomination by sticking with his old self. And they still believe that McCain won the nomination not because he gave himself over to the base but as a result of a process of elimination of inferior candidates who divided up the conservative vote, as these observers had predicted. (These people insisted on anonymity because McCain is known in Republican circles to have a long memory and a vindictive streak.)

By then I had already concluded that that there was a disturbingly erratic side of McCain’s nature. There’s a certain lack of seriousness in him. And he does not appear to be a reflective man, or very interested in domestic issues. One cannot imagine him ruminating late into the night about, say, how to educate and train Americans for the new global and technological challenges.

McCain’s making a big issue of “earmarks” and citing entertaining examples of ridiculous-sounding ones, circumvents discussion of the larger issues of the allocation of funds in the federal budget: according to the Office of Management and Budget, earmarks represent less than one percent of federal spending.

Now he’s back to declaring himself a maverick, but it’s not clear what that means. If he gains the presidency, is he going to rebel against the base he’s now depending on to get him elected? (Hence his selection of running mate Sarah Palin.) Campaigns matter. If he means “shaking up the system” (which is not the same thing), opposing earmarks doesn’t cut it.

McCain’s recent conduct of his campaign – his willingness to lie repeatedly (including in his acceptance speech) and to play Russian roulette with the vice-presidency, in order to fulfill his long-held ambition – has reinforced my earlier, and growing, sense that John McCain is not a principled man.
In fact, it’s not clear who he is.

Elizabeth Drew is author of “Citizen McCain” (Simon & Schuster, 2002; paperback with new introduction, 2008.)

Republicans Back Obama's Version of Meeting with Iraqi Leaders

Czarina JB in Arizona — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:31:30 EDT

Undermining McCain Campaign Attack, Republicans Back Obama‘s Version of Meeting With Iraqi Leaders September 19, 2008 1:06 PMEarlier this week, the campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., seized upon a column in the New York Post that described Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as having urged Iraqi leaders in a private meeting to delay coming to an agreement with the Bush administration on the status of U.S. troops."Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a drawdown of the American military presence," Post columnist Amir Taheri wrote, quoting Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who told the Post that Obama, during his meeting with Iraqi leaders in July, "asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the U.S. elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington."The charge -- that Obama asked the Iraqis to delay signing off on a "Status of Forces Agreement," thus delaying U.S. troop withdrawal and interfering in U.S. foreign policy -- has been picked up on the Internet, talk radio and by Republicans, including the McCain campaign, which seized on the story as possible evidence of duplicity. The Obama campaign said that the Post report consisted of "outright distortions."Lending significant credence to Obama's response is the fact that -- though it's absent from the Post story and other retellings -- in addition to Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, this July meeting was also attended by Bush administration officials, such as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and the Baghdad embassy's legislative affairs advisor Rich Haughton, as well as a Republican senator, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.Attendees of the meeting back Obama's account, including not just Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., but Hagel, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers from both parties. Officials of the Bush administration who were briefed on the meeting by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad also support Obama's account and dispute the Post story and McCain attack.The Post story is "absolutely not true," Hagel spokesman Mike Buttry told ABC News."Barack Obama has never urged a delay in negotiations," said Obama campaign national security spokesperson Wendy Morigi, "nor has he urged a delay in immediately beginning a responsible drawdown of our combat brigades."Buttry said that Hagel agrees with Obama's account of the meeting: Obama began the meeting with al-Maliki by asserting that the United States speaks with one foreign policy voice, and that voice belongs to the Bush administration. A Bush administration official with knowledge of the meeting says that, during the meeting, Obama stressed to al-Maliki that he would not interfere with President Bush's negotiations concerning the U.S. troop presence in Iraq, and that he supports the Bush administration's position on the need to negotiate, as soon as possible, the Status of Forces Agreement, which deals with, among other matters, U.S. troops having immunity from local prosecution.Obama did assert at the meeting with the Iraqis that he agrees with those -– including Hagel and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- who advocate congressional review of the Strategic Framework Agreement being worked out between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government, including the Iraqi parliament. The Strategic Framework Agreement is a document that generally describes what the relationship between the two countries should look like over time. According to one person present at the meeting, Obama told al-Maliki that the American people wouldn't understand why the Iraqi parliament would get to have a say on the Strategic Framework Agreement, but the U.S. Congress would not, especially since Bush is only months from leaving the White House, regardless of whether Obama or McCain succeeds him.Morigi said in a statement that "Barack Obama has consistently called for any Strategic Framework Agreement to be submitted to the U.S. Congress so that the American people have the same opportunity for review as the Iraqi parliament."It’s possible, Obama advisers believe, that either Zebari or Taheri confused the Strategic Framework Agreement -- which Obama feels should be reviewed by Congress -- with the Status of Forces Agreement, which Obama says the Bush administration should negotiate with the Iraqis as soon as possible.Two officials of the Bush administration say that if Obama had done what the Post story asserted –- which they believe to be untrue -– Crocker and embassy officials attending the meeting would have ensured that the Bush administration heard about it immediately. If such an incident occurred in front of officials of the Bush administration, it would have constituted a foreign policy breach and would have been front-page huge news; it would not have leaked out two months later in an op-ed column.Nonetheless, based on nothing more than the Post report, McCain senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann issued a statement earlier this week, expressing outrage. “It should be concerning to all that (Obama) reportedly urged that the democratically-elected Iraqi government listen to him rather than the U.S. administration in power,” Scheunemann said, apparently not having talked to anyone with knowledge about the meeting in the Bush administration, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Hagel, or any Republican staffers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.“If news reports are accurate, this is an egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas,” Scheunemann continued. “Sen. Obama needs to reveal what he said to Iraq's foreign minister during their closed door meeting. The charge that he sought to delay the withdrawal of Americans from Iraq raises serious questions about Sen. Obama's judgment, and it demands an explanation.” What actually demands an explanation is why the McCain campaign was so willing to give credence to such a questionable story with such tremendous international implications without first talking to Republicans present at Obama’s meeting with al-Maliki, who back Obama’s version of the meeting and completely dismiss the Post column as untrue.

Wall Street Journal editorial criticized McCain for his recent condemnation of Christopher Cox

Czarina JB in Arizona — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:09:28 EDT

From CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney

McCain said he would fire SEC chairman Cox.
(CNN) — John McCain's recent comments on the economy aren't just coming under fire from Barack Obama's campaign: arguably the country's most conservative editorial board said Friday the Arizona senator's recent "populist rifting" was downright "un-presidential."

A Friday Wall Street Journal editorial sharply criticized McCain for his recent condemnation of Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Committee. The Republican presidential nominee told an Iowa crowd Thursday Cox had "betrayed the public trust" and should be fired.

"Mismanagement and greed became the operating standard while regulators were asleep at the switch. The primary regulator of Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission kept in place trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino," McCain said.

In the bruising editorial, the Journal said those comments an "assault on Mr. Cox is both false and deeply unfair."

"It's also un-Presidential," the Journal said.