Theo's Blog

Obama Is Elected President - New York Times

theo — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:44:01 EST

November 6, 2008 Obama Is Elected President as Racial Barrier Falls By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief executive.

The election of Mr. Obama amounted to a national catharsis — a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country.

But it was just as much a strikingly symbolic moment in the evolution of the nation’s fraught racial history, a breakthrough that would have seemed unthinkable just two years ago.

Mr. Obama, 47, a first-term senator from Illinois, defeated Senator John McCain of Arizona, 72, a former prisoner of war who was making his second bid for the presidency.

To the very end, Mr. McCain’s campaign was eclipsed by an opponent who was nothing short of a phenomenon, drawing huge crowds epitomized by the tens of thousands of people who turned out to hear Mr. Obama’s victory speech in Grant Park in Chicago.

Mr. McCain also fought the headwinds of a relentlessly hostile political environment, weighted down with the baggage left to him by President Bush and an economic collapse that took place in the middle of the general election campaign.“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,” said Mr. Obama, standing before a huge wooden lectern with a row of American flags at his back, casting his eyes to a crowd that stretched far into the Chicago night.

“It’s been a long time coming,” the president-elect added, “but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America.”

The focus shifted quickly on Wednesday to the daunting challenges facing the president-elect, with his supporters offering sober reflections of what lies ahead.

“We’re in deep trouble,” said Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and leader in the civil rights movement, on NBC’s Today show.

“We’ve got to get our economy out of the ditch, end the war in Iraq and bring our young men and women home, provide health care for all our citizens,” Lewis said. “And he’s going to call on us, I believe, to sacrifice. We all must give up something.”

Mr. McCain delivered his concession speech under clear skies on the lush lawn of the Arizona Biltmore, in Phoenix, where he and his wife had held their wedding reception. The crowd reacted with scattered boos as he offered his congratulations to Mr. Obama and saluted the historical significance of the moment.

“This is a historic election, and I recognize the significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight,” Mr. McCain said, adding, “We both realize that we have come a long way from the injustices that once stained our nation’s reputation.”

Not only did Mr. Obama capture the presidency, but he led his party to sharp gains in Congress. This puts Democrats in control of the House, the Senate and the White House for the first time since 1995, when Bill Clinton was in office.

The day shimmered with history as voters began lining up before dawn, hours before polls opened, to take part in the culmination of a campaign that over the course of two years commanded an extraordinary amount of attention from the American public.

As the returns became known, and Mr. Obama passed milestone after milestone —Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Iowa and New Mexico — people rolled spontaneously into the streets to celebrate what many described, with perhaps overstated if understandable exhilaration, a new era in a country where just 143 years ago, Mr. Obama, as a black man, could have been owned as a slave.

For Republicans, especially the conservatives who have dominated the party for nearly three decades, the night represented a bitter setback and left them contemplating where they now stand in American politics.

Mr. Obama and his expanded Democratic majority on Capitol Hill now face the task of governing the country through a difficult period: the likelihood of a deep and prolonged recession, and two wars. He took note of those circumstances in a speech that was notable for its sobriety and its absence of the triumphalism that he might understandably have displayed on a night when he won an Electoral College landslide.

“The road ahead will be long, our climb will be steep,” said Mr. Obama, his audience hushed and attentive, with some, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, wiping tears from their eyes. “We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.” The roster of defeated Republicans included some notable party moderates, like Senator John E. Sununu of New Hampshire and Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, and signaled that the Republican conference convening early next year in Washington will be not only smaller but more conservative.

Mr. Obama will come into office after an election in which he laid out a number of clear promises: to cut taxes for most Americans, to get the United States out of Iraq in a fast and orderly fashion, and to expand health care.

In a recognition of the difficult transition he faces, given the economic crisis, Mr. Obama is expected to begin filling White House jobs as early as this week.

Mr. Obama defeated Mr. McCain in Ohio, a central battleground in American politics, despite a huge effort that brought Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, back there repeatedly. Mr. Obama had lost the state decisively to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York in the Democratic primary.

Mr. McCain failed to take from Mr. Obama the two Democratic states that were at the top of his target list: New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. Mr. Obama also held on to Minnesota, the state that played host to the convention that nominated Mr. McCain; Wisconsin; and Michigan, a state Mr. McCain once had in his sights.

The apparent breadth of Mr. Obama’s sweep left Republicans sobered, and his showing in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania stood out because officials in both parties had said that his struggles there in the primary campaign reflected the resistance of blue-collar voters to supporting a black candidate.

“I always thought there was a potential prejudice factor in the state,” Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat of Pennsylvania who was an early Obama supporter, told reporters in Chicago. “I hope this means we washed that away.”

Mr. McCain called Mr. Obama at 10 p.m., Central time, to offer his congratulations. In the call, Mr. Obama said he was eager to sit down and talk; in his concession speech, Mr. McCain said he was ready to help Mr. Obama work through difficult times.

“I need your help,” Mr. Obama told his rival, according to an Obama adviser, Robert Gibbs. “You’re a leader on so many important issues.”

Mr. Bush called Mr. Obama shortly after 10 p.m. to congratulate him on his victory.

“I promise to make this a smooth transition,” the president said to Mr. Obama, according to a transcript provided by the White House .”You are about to go on one of the great journeys of life. Congratulations, and go enjoy yourself.”

For most Americans, the news of Mr. Obama’s election came at 11 p.m., Eastern time, when the networks, waiting for the close of polls in California, declared him the victor. A roar sounded from the 125,000 people gathered in Hutchison Field in Grant Park at the moment that they learned Mr. Obama had been projected the winner.

The scene in Phoenix was decidedly more sour. At several points, Mr. McCain, unsmiling, had to motion his crowd to quiet down — he held out both hands, palms down — when they responded to his words of tribute to Mr. Obama with boos.

Mr. Obama, who watched Mr. McCain’s speech from his hotel room in Chicago, offered a hand to voters who had not supported him in this election, when he took the stage 15 minutes later. “To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn,” he said, “I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too.”

Initial signs were that Mr. Obama benefited from a huge turnout of voters, but particularly among blacks. That group made up 13 percent of the electorate, according to surveys of people leaving the polls, compared with 11 percent in 2006.

In North Carolina, Republicans said that the huge surge of African-Americans was one of the big factors that led to Senator Elizabeth Dole, a Republican, losing her re-election bid.

Mr. Obama also did strikingly well among Hispanic voters; Mr. McCain did worse among those voters than Mr. Bush did in 2004. That suggests the damage the Republican Party has suffered among those voters over four years in which Republicans have been at the forefront on the effort to crack down on illegal immigrants.

The election ended what by any definition was one of the most remarkable contests in American political history, drawing what was by every appearance unparalleled public interest.

Throughout the day, people lined up at the polls for hours — some showing up before dawn — to cast their votes. Aides to both campaigns said that anecdotal evidence suggested record-high voter turnout.

Reflecting the intensity of the two candidates, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama took a page from what Mr. Bush did in 2004 and continued to campaign after the polls opened.

Mr. McCain left his home in Arizona after voting early Tuesday to fly to Colorado and New Mexico, two states where Mr. Bush won four years ago but where Mr. Obama waged a spirited battle.

These were symbolically appropriate final campaign stops for Mr. McCain, reflecting the imperative he felt of trying to defend Republican states against a challenge from Mr. Obama.

“Get out there and vote,” Mr. McCain said in Grand Junction, Colo. “I need your help. Volunteer, knock on doors, get your neighbors to the polls, drag them there if you need to.”

By contrast, Mr. Obama flew from his home in Chicago to Indiana, a state that in many ways came to epitomize the audacity of his effort this year. Indiana has not voted for a Democrat since President Lyndon B. Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964, and Mr. Obama made an intense bid for support there. He later returned home to Chicago play basketball, his election-day ritual.

Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting from Phoenix, Marjorie Connelly from New York and Jeff Zeleny from Chicago.

The Palin Problem - Newsweek

theo — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:27:53 EDT

The Palin Problem Photos: (from left) J. Scott Applewhite / AP; Khue Bui for Newsweek By Jon Meacham

Yes, she won the debate by not imploding. But governing requires knowledge, and mindless populism is just that—mindless.

Jon Meacham NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Oct 13, 2008

The question, the McCain campaign later acknowledged, was a fair one. In one of her sit-downs with Katie Couric of CBS News, Sarah Palin was asked to discuss a Supreme Court decision with which she disagreed. "Well, let's see," Palin replied, pausing. "There's, of course in the great history of America there have been rulings, that's never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but …" Couric followed up: "Can you think of any?" Palin, still pondering, said: "Well, I could think of … any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But, you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a vice president, if I'm so privileged to serve, wouldn't be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today." Asked about the exchange afterward, a McCain adviser who didn't want to be named talking about a sensitive matter said the question was fair, but added: "I wonder how many Americans would be able to name decisions they disagree with. The court is very important, but Palin is on the ticket because she connects with everyday Americans."

Palin is on the ticket because she connects with everyday Americans. It is not shocking to learn that politics played a big role in the making of a presidential team (ticket-balancing to attract different constituencies has been with us at least since Andrew Jackson ran with John C. Calhoun, a man he later said he would like to kill). But that honest explanation of the rationale for her candidacy—not her preparedness for office, but her personality and nascent maverickism in Alaska—raises an important question, not only about this election but about democratic leadership. Do we want leaders who are everyday folks, or do we want leaders who understand everyday folks? Therein lies an enormous difference, one that could decide the presidential election and, if McCain and Palin were to win, shape the governance of the nation.

In an interview before her debate with Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Palin offered a revealing answer to radio host Hugh Hewitt. "Governor, your candidacy has ignited extreme hostility, even some hatred on the left and in some parts of the media," Hewitt said. "Are you surprised? And what do you attribute this reaction to?"

On the phone from McCain's retreat in Sedona, Palin replied: "I think they're just not used to someone coming in from the outside saying, 'You know what? It's time that normal Joe Six-Pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency.' I think that that's kind of taken some people off guard, and they're out of sorts, and they're ticked off about it, but it's motivation for John McCain and I to work that much harder to make sure that our ticket is victorious, and we put government back on the side of the people of Joe Six-Pack like me, and we start doing those things that are expected of our government, and we get rid of corruption, and we commit to the reform that is not only desired, but is deserved by Americans." This is, presumably, good politics: it makes a strength out of a weakness, always a shrewd tactic.

A key argument for Palin, in essence, is this: Washington and Wall Street are serving their own interests rather than those of the broad whole of the country, and the moment requires a vice president who will, Cincinnatus-like, help a new president come to the rescue. The problem with the argument is that Cincinnatus knew things. Palin sometimes seems an odd combination of Chauncey Gardiner from "Being There" and Marge from "Fargo."

Is this an elitist point of view? Perhaps, though it seems only reasonable and patriotic to hold candidates for high office to high standards. Elitism in this sense is not about educational or class credentials, not about where you went to school or whether you use "summer" as a verb. It is, rather, about the pursuit of excellence no matter where you started out in life. Jackson, Lincoln, Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Clinton were born to ordinary families, but they spent their lives doing extraordinary things, demonstrating an interest in, and a curiosity about, the world around them. This is much less evident in Palin's case.

John McCain is a man of accomplishment and curiosity, of wide and deep reading, travel and experience. He is smart without being a snob. He has authored legislation and books. He is a man of parts—the kind of figure whom one could effortlessly imagine being president. Are there many politically attuned people in America now who can honestly say the same thing of Sarah Palin? That they can effortlessly envision President Palin in the Oval Office, ready on day one to manage a market meltdown or a terror attack? Whether one agrees or disagrees with his politics, there is no arguing that McCain is qualified to be president of the United States. But there is plenty of argument about Palin's qualifications. Why should we apply a different standard to the vice president who would stand to succeed him?

Even devoted Republicans doubt whether the Sarah Six-Pack case is the best one to make. After the vice presidential debate, a senior figure in the party, who asked not to be named because he was telling the truth, told me that Palin should talk less about being "just-folks" and more about being governor of a large state.

We have been here before. In 1970 a Nebraska senator, Roman L. Hruska, was defending Richard Nixon's nomination of U.S. circuit Judge G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court. An underwhelming figure, Carswell was facing criticism that he was too "mediocre" for elevation. Hruska tried an interesting counterargument: "Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos." Fair enough, but it still seems sensible to aspire to surpass mediocrity rather than embrace it.

The capacity of the common man (and now woman) to serve in government is the subject of ancient debate. The philosophers Robert Dale Owen and Jeremy Bentham believed in the principle of rotation in office—the idea that citizens could do the work of government for a time, then return to private life—and Andrew Jackson, in the beginning of the modern democratic era, spoke in similar terms about the federal government: "The duties of all public officers are, or at least admit to being made, so plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance." But Jackson was thinking about postmasters, not presidents.

We have had terrific presidents and vice presidents from humble backgrounds, and we have had terrible presidents and vice presidents from privileged ones. The unease with Palin is not class-based. It is empirically based. She is a rising political star, a young woman—she is only 44—who has done extraordinary things. It takes guts to offer oneself for election, and to serve. It is far easier to throw spitballs from the stands than it is to seek and hold office. She is a governor, and she has the courage to go into the arena. For that she should be honored and respected. If she were seeking a Senate seat, or being nominated for a cabinet post—secretary of energy, say, or interior—the conversation about her would be totally different.

But she is not seeking a Senate seat, nor is she being nominated for a cabinet post, and so it is only prudent to ask whether she is in fact someone who should be president of the United States in the event of disaster. She may be ready in a year or two, but disaster does not coordinate its calendar with ours. Would we muddle through if Palin were to become president? Yes, we would, but it is worth asking whether we should have to.

What do we know about Palin after, as she put it with a wink, "like, five weeks"? That she can be a superb political performer (she held her own against Biden, projecting an image of warmth and toughness) and she can be a poor one (too many questions in the debate went completely unanswered, and the Couric interview is full of moments no candidate would like to have out there). But that is only human. Everyone has good days and bad days. Her syntax is sometimes a world unto itself. But George H.W. Bush occasionally sounded as though English were more foe than friend, and he was an astute president who managed complexity with skill and balance. The arsenal of folksy phrases—"doggone it," "you betcha"—grates on some, but seems just great to others.

The story of Palin's brief national career helps explain her uneven performances. She had virtually no time to prepare, and has had virtually no time since. Her star turn began quickly, and mysteriously. When Nicolle Wallace and Matthew Scully, two former Bush aides who now work for McCain, showed up at a dingy Ohio hotel in late August to meet the new running mate, they had no idea who might be waiting for them. Just a day before, Wallace had been in a dentist's chair in New York, getting a root canal, when Steve Schmidt, McCain's top strategist, summoned her to Ohio. She tried to say no, but her dentist, a McCain fan, insisted she could make it, giving her a prescription for Vicodin to numb the pain. The next morning, dazed by the meds, Wallace arrived in Cincinnati and drove with Scully to Middletown, Ohio, where McCain's VP was holed up until the big announcement the following day.

As Wallace and Scully drove up, they were met outside by Schmidt and Mark Salter, McCain's longtime aide and speechwriter. Schmidt escorted the two upstairs, where he dramatically paused before a closed door. "You're No. 7 and 8," Schmidt said, referring to the number of people who were privy to McCain's choice. As the door opened, a woman rose to greet them, shaking their hands enthusiastically. Scully and Wallace, still numb from her procedure, smiled and introduced themselves. The woman, Sarah Palin, looked very familiar, but, as both later recounted to other McCain aides, they did not immediately know who she was. (McCain loves this story, relishing the success of his bid to keep the selection process secret.)

When she shook their hands, the governor of Alaska was already in the surreal bubble of a modern presidential campaign, an odd ethos in which one is rarely alone and yet often lonely. Remembering how John Edwards had brought his own staff to the ticket with John Kerry in 2004, creating immediate and lasting tensions, the McCain camp wanted to exert complete control over their running mate. Schmidt and others assembled a team of well-known Republican hands for the veep squad. The campaign pointedly did not hire anyone from Palinworld.

The governor, meanwhile, is only a recent visitor to McCainworld. After the announcement in Dayton, the Friday before the convention in St. Paul, aides gave her thick binders full of policies and arranged sit-downs with some of McCain's top advisers, including Randy Scheunemann, Doug Holtz-Eakin and Sens. Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham. On the day she was nominated, Palin, joining McCain on a bus tour, was given reading material: every policy speech McCain has given in this campaign.

Some who know her from Alaska suggest that Palin is a deft crammer, and her performance against Biden supports that. Larry Persily, a former Anchorage Daily News editorial-page editor, left the newspaper in May 2007 and worked as an associate director in Palin's Washington, D.C., office until June 2008. He says he left on good terms—Palin offered him another job when he resigned—but he believes she is not qualified to be vice president and is speaking out for that reason. He describes Palin as an easily distracted manager. "Her preppings [briefings] were accentuated by the brevity of them. She's not going to pore over briefing books and charts and white papers and reports for hours and hours. She knows how to connect with people, and it's like, 'Give me bullet points and I'll run with it' … I don't think she had trouble focusing. She didn't have an interest in focusing."

Her isolation in recent weeks has taken a toll, and she has been hungry for company. It has been difficult for Palin to be isolated from her friends not only by distance, but also electronically. Palin's Yahoo account was hacked into in mid-September and messages between her and friends were posted online. (In one such message, a colleague tells Palin not to let the negative press get to her.) Wasilla friend Kristan Cole says that in the initial days after Palin was picked she regularly communicated with Palin via e-mail. That stopped after the hacking incident. The women have always talked electronically. "You can do it on the go and respond at 2 o'clock in the morning, and with all the time changes that was the best way to communicate." Since Palin's account was hacked into, Cole has not sent her a single e-mail or received one from her. "I'm more gun-shy, because when you've had the relationship we have had—my son was in a critical car accident, and working through all that and her family and Trig—it's made me hesitant to say anything very personal [via e-mail], and that's sad."

A turning point came last week, when Kris Perry returned to Palin's immediate orbit. Perry, who worked as her scheduler, was stuck in Anchorage for the past month, waiting to see if she would be deposed in the ongoing "Troopergate" investigation. Only on the Friday before the Thursday debate, after a delay in the investigation, did Perry feel able to leave town and fly south. (Troopergate could make headlines again this Friday, when a special counsel is due to issue his report on the matter.) It was Perry who helped Palin relax and regain her footing prior to last Thursday night's debate.

Sealing Palin off from Perry, whom she met when both were in the hospital giving birth to their children six years ago (in Palin's case it was her fourth, daughter Piper), was a mistake, say those in Palinworld. Next to Todd, says one former aide who did not want to be named discussing sensitive personnel matters, Perry was the person most responsible for "creating a sense of peace around Sarah." Despite recent media reports of a wild temper, those who know Palin say she is more prone to anxiety and frantic overdrive than tantrums. "She's the world's worst multitasker," says the aide. "She'll have a cell phone in one hand, the BlackBerry in the other while she is reading two position papers. You have to tell her prior to the debate, 'Put that down, breathe deep.' They [the McCain staff] are not going to know that."

What Palin knows, and what the country knows about her, is an issue for the next few weeks. Barack Obama is not the Messiah, and Biden is no Simon Peter, but it stretches credulity to say that Obama is no more qualified to be president than Palin is. Though you may prefer McCain-Palin to Obama-Biden, there is not the same threshold question about the Democrats that is now being asked about Palin.

Sitting with her for part of the Couric interview, McCain implicitly compared Palin to Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, saying that they, too, had been caricatured and dismissed by mainstream voices. The linkages are untenable. For all of his manifold sins, Clinton was a longtime governor, and George H.W. Bush's attacks on his qualifications failed for a reason: people may not have respected Clinton's character, but they did not doubt the quality of his mind. A successful two-term governor of California, Reagan had spent decades immersed in politics (of both the left and the right) before running for president. He did like to call himself a citizen-politician, and Lord knows he had an occasionally ambiguous relationship with facts, but he was a serious man who had spent a great deal of time thinking about the central issues of the age. To put it kindly, Palin, however promising a governor she is, has not done similar work.

I could be wrong. Perhaps Sarah Palin will somehow emerge from the hurly-burly of history as a transformative figure who was underestimated in her time by journalists who could not see, or refused to acknowledge, her virtues. But do I think I am right in saying that Palin's populist view of high office—hey, Vice President Six-Pack, what should we do about Pakistan?—is dangerous? You betcha.

With Holly Bailey, Karen Breslau, Suzanne Smalley, Michael Isikoff and Sarah Kliff

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/162396

Polar Bears, Wolves and Moose? Oh My! - TMZ

theo — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 06:41:30 EDT

Polar Bears, Wolves and Moose? Oh My!

Posted Oct 8th 2008 3:21PM by TMZ Staff

Gotta give her points for trying to go green with her ECO friendly canvas bag -- although the tag line, "Real Women Hunt Moose" could use some work.

Guess when it comes to certain sneaky, and notoriously vicious animals, nothing makes a woman feel more alive than a well-placed bullet between the old antlers. So much for the PETA vote.

McCain’s Health Plan Puts at Least 56 Million People with Chronic Disease at Risk of Losing Health Coverage - Center for American Progress Action Fund

theo — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 06:24:42 EDT

McCain’s Health Plan Puts at Least 56 Million People with Chronic Disease at Risk of Losing Health Coverage

Center for American Progress Action Fund

americanprogressaction.org
By Jeanne Lambrew

April 29, 2008

The health plan proposed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would, by design, replace employer-based health insurance with individual-market insurance—a concern for people with chronic disease. Employers do not charge workers or their families different premiums based on their age, gender, health status, or health history. They also offer equal benefits and choices of plans. The individual market, however, plays by different rules. Individual insurers in most states can exclude people with pre-existing conditions directly by denying them coverage or indirectly by charging them exorbitant premiums.1

This could be remedied with stronger rules for insurers—but the McCain plan moves in the opposite direction. It would allow insurers to play by the rules in any state—including the one that has the least protection for people with chronic diseases.

According to an analysis of the National Health Interview Survey, 56 million non-elderly adults with employer-sponsor health insurance have at least one of 12 chronic illnesses.2

This does not count chronically ill children with employer coverage who would also be at risk of losing coverage under the McCain plan. Employers insure 62 percent of all adults with chronic illness, including (note: numbers add to more than 56 million because some individuals have multiple diseases):

21.2 million with hypertension
18.5 million with arthritis
7.8 million with asthma
6.3 million with diabetes
5.5 million with cancer
4.5 million who experience disruptive anxiety or depression

If these Americans were to lose health coverage through employers, they might not be able to regain it. Research has shown that over 70 percent of individuals in poor health found it very difficult or impossible to find affordable, individual-market coverage.3

Compared to people in excellent health, premiums in the individual market are 43 to 50 percent higher for people with major health problems.4

Providing extra tax credits for high-risk people, as McCain has proposed, would reduce, but not eliminate, this problem. In short, the McCain plan may make it harder to get health insurance for people who need it the most.

----

Data analysis by Katherine N. Arnold.

Endotes

1. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) offers continuously-insured individuals losing group insurance with guaranteed access to the individual market or a high-risk pool. But because this guarantee is not linked to limits on the premiums that can be charged, the law has not achieved effective access to individual-market insurance for people with pre-existing condition exclusions.

2. These conditions include: heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, stroke, emphysema, hypertension, asthma, bronchitis, liver condition, severe migraines, and anxiety/depression. This definition was used in a recent report by the Urban Institute and University of Maryland at Baltimore County, “Uninsured Americans with Chronic Health Conditions: Key Findings from the National Health Interview Survey.” (Princeton, NJ: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2005). Percentages were applied to Census Bureau population estimates for 2006.

3. S. Collins et al., “Squeezed: Why Rising Exposure to Health Care Costs Threatens the Health and Financial Well-Being of American Families” (New York: The Commonwealth Fund, 2006).

4. J. Hadley and J.D. Reschovsky, “Health and the Cost of Non-Group Insurance,” Inquiry, 40 (3) (2003): 235-53..

Palin Says She Represents 'Joe Six-Pack' - Associated Press

theo — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:58:31 EDT

Palin says she represents 'Joe Six-pack'

Associated Press

Wed Oct 1, 12:47 AM ET

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin portrayed herself Tuesday as a champion of everyday people while noting her family's stock portfolio took a $20,000 hit last week.

"It's time that normal Joe Six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency," the Republican vice presidential candidate told radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt.

Palin said if she and John McCain win, they will "put government back on the side of the people of Joe Six-pack like me."

Palin said she and her husband, Todd, have been affected by the economic downturn.

"I know what Americans are going through," she said a day after a record 778-point plunge on Wall Street. "Todd and I, heck, we're going through that right now even as we speak, which may put me again kind of on the outs of those Washington elite who don't like the idea of just an everyday, working-class American running for such an office."

Palin makes $125,000 yearly as governor, and her husband makes about $90,000 a year combined from his commercial fishing business and his part-time job as a production operator on the North Slope.

Palin said her husband's 401(k) retirement account lost probably $20,000 in the last week as the market dropped.

According to the most recent state financial disclosure forms, filed March 10, 2008, the Palins had about $164,699 in a private investment account and $198,102 in a separate retirement account.

"The relatively low number of investments that we have, looking at the hit that we're taking, probably $20,000 last week in his 401(k) plan that was hit. I'm thinking, geez, the rest of America, they're facing the exact same thing that we are," she said.

Palin was asked to clarify why things are tight for her family.

"It's just the great financial crisis that America is in, as our savings accounts also, and a 401(k), they're being hit," she said.

She didn't explain how her savings account was being affected.

The Bar Is Painted On The Floor For Sarah Palin - Chicago Tribune

theo — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:13:15 EDT

Originally posted: September 29, 2008
The bar is painted on the floor for Sarah Palin

Estimable Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria has jumped on the pile:

Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start. ...In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.

Zakaria was piqued, as so many have been, by Palin's flabbergasting performance in an interview with Katie Couric last week, an interview in which she gave such rambling, dim-witted responses to predictable questions that "Saturday Night Live" lifted whole hunks of actual transcript verbatim and inserted them into a parody sketch over the weekend.

Syndicated liberal radio talk-show host Ed Schultz (heard locally from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on WCPT AM 820) has been saying this:

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." (From his Web site)

All of which makes me wonder: Is it possible that the Couric interview -- so much worse, even, than Palin's unimpressive interview with Charlie Gibson -- and the supposed leaks to Ed Schultz are part of an audacious attempt to lower the bar down to floor for Palin in her debate Thursday with Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden?

Yes, lowering the bar for one's own candidate is a time-honored political tactic (or is it a strategy?).

Our candidate doesn't really shine in the debate format, whereas our opponent is a veritable forensic champion. Yet we will do our humble best.

This positions your candidate to "win" the debate simply by exceeding expectations.

And it's fair to say that expectations for Palin almost couldn't be lower. Her ditzy ramblings have reinforced the image of her as a sparkly naif that the late-night comics have seized on:

John McCain wants to suspend his debate with Barack Obama until the economic crisis is over. And Sarah Palin wants to suspend her debate with Joe Biden until she can find Europe on a map.....Jay Leno

Similarly bar-lowering was the campaign's decision (tactic? strategy?) to keep Palin under wraps after Friday night's debate instead of coming forward, as Joe Biden did, to speak to reporters and declare victory for the running mate.

So now Palin doesn't have to do better than Joe Biden on Thursday night to "win." She just has to do better than Miss South Carolina did in the Miss Teen USA pageant in 2007. Which, of course, she will.

Won't she?

UPDATE -- I'm going out on a limb here and predicting, at 3 p.m. Monday, that Thursday's debate will not go on as scheduled, and that this will be the result of some annoucement or decision from the McCain camp. Palin will cite a need to return to Alaska to help the state cope with the economic crisis or she will say it's inappropriate to have such a debate when things are so up in the air or she will be ill or she will withdraw from the race to spend more time with her family. Feel free to come back here and taunt me Thursday night when I'm proven wrong.

UPDATE TWO-- Poor, poor victimized Sarah Palin: A Voter Asks A Question, And It's "Gotcha Journalism"

ONLINE:
• `If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.' (re. Kathleen Parker column)
• Palin's foreign policy chops

James Wolcott on the lowered bar:

It's the conservative men who are now the most condescending to Palin, treating her gaffes and knowledge gaps as trifles because she brings something fresh and telegenic to the ticket. Today on Chris Matthews, David Brooks, setting the bar so low for Palin a cricket could hop it, lamely defended her as "smart" and said that if she improved in her debate with Biden, she might rise to the level of "mediocre," the shruggy wave of his hands indicating that mediocre was enough to pass muster with him. Over at NRO, that little scamp Mark Steyn, echoing the cry of Let Sarah Be Sarah, conceded that Palin Unfiltered might be Malaprop City, but what the hey:
All Governor Palin should insist on...is that every interview be live. And, if they're all disasters, they'll wind up like Biden's gaffes or Clinton's adulteries. As Stalin remarked in another context, one is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.
Not the choicest analogy.

The Moderate Voice:

All [Palin] has to do in her debate with Democratic Sen. Joe Biden is to put in a credible performance and not make any gaffes. She has been kept away from the press by McCain’s high command so she already suffers from a bad press due to her inaccessibility. She has become a comedian’s punchline. And she has been lampooned mercilessly by satirists. If she comes across the debate as being serious, thoughtful and able to respond aggressively with accurate facts to back up her responses, many will consider it a win. Expectations — and Fey’s two SNL parodies — have now been set so low that even a blah performance with no major gaffes will allow Palin’s partisans to proclaim it a home run and Biden in the eyes of public opinion could indeed be overshadowed

Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic,com:

How can it be that some people still pretend that Sarah Palin is suited for high office? This country has never seen someone so comprehensively unprepared for the vice presidency; Dan Quayle was Metternich by comparison. I've watched Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric three times, and my astonishment does not diminish. Her nonsensical answer about Russia has deservedly been highlighted, but let me focus on another question...The issue here is not that Palin didn't know the answer. ...The issue here is that she didn't know the question.

Andrew Malcolm at LATimes.com on the lowered bar:

[The Democrats] They have so successfully mocked, derided and lowered expectations for Palin in Thursday night's VP debate that if she doesn't drool or speak in tongues, many millions still open to persuasion will be impressed. Al Gore's campaign made the exact same mistake going into the 2000 debates. So all Texas Gov. George W. Bush had to do was not lose. In that sense, Democrats may have played right into a PR cul-de-sac. Biden, for instance, described Palin as merely better-looking than him. A far better communications strategy would have been to insincerely portray Palin with superlatives as a superwoman, making it harder, not easier, for her to impress. Too late now.

Over at Salon, Joan Walsh lowers the bar still further:

Palin "didn't blink" when McCain asked her to join the ticket, didn't think twice, because she's a supremely self-confident woman with a limited worldview, impressed with her own greatness and not terribly curious about anyone else. ...McCain risked his entire reputation for integrity with his cynical choice of Palin, and he'll have to live with the consequences. One consequence is the loss of respect by many journalists who once admired him. ... Boy, Republicans have to be dreading the Thursday debate, huh?

...and Rebecca Traister muses on what might have/should have been:

Let's consider that there are any number of women who could have been John McCain's running mate -- from Olympia Snowe to Christine Todd Whitman to Kay Bailey Hutchison to Elizabeth Dole to Condoleezza Rice -- who would not have provoked this reaction. Democrats might well have been repulsed and infuriated by these women's policy positions. But we would not have been sitting around worrying about how scared they looked....[Palin] boldly tries to pass off incuriosity and lassitude as regular-people qualities, thereby doing a disservice to all those Americans who also work two jobs and do not come from families that hand out passports and backpacking trips, yet still manage to pick up a paper and read about their government and seek out experience and knowledge....
When you don't have enough regard for your country or its politics to cram effectively for the test -- a test that helps determine whether or not you get to run that country and participate in its politics -- I don't feel bad for you.

Andrew Sullivan makes an important point about the gender issue:

Until Sarah Palin agrees to a full and open press conference, she should not even be considered as a possible vice-president of the United States. What has been going on with her and access to her is an outrage to democratic discourse and the entire electoral system. Since she was selected, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has held more press conferences with American reporters than she has. Forget all this debate spin or pre-spin. Just give her a microphone, a roomful of inquisitive reporters and be done with it. If she were a man, this wouldn't even be debatable. That we are being told these lower standards are acceptable for a woman candidate is sexist cant. When will the press simply stop cooperating with this farce?

Barack Obama's Team Believes He Can Win By A Landslide -Telegraph.co.uk

theo — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:19:26 EDT

US elections: Barack Obama's team believes he can win by a landslide

By Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 8:18PM BST 27 Sep 2008

Barack Obama's senior aides believe he is on course for a landslide election victory over John McCain and will comfortably exceed most current predictions in the race for the White House.

Aides are convinced that Barack Obama has a strong chance of winning no fewer than nine states won by George W. Bush in the closely contested 2000 election.

Their optimism, which is said to be shared by the Democratic candidate himself, is based on information from private polling and on faith in the powerful political organisation he has built in the key swing states.

Insiders say that Mr Obama's apparent calm through an unusually turbulent election season is because he believes that his strength among first time voters in several key states has been underestimated, both by the media and by the Republican Party.

Mr Obama has come under fire from within Democratic ranks over his message and his tactics. Critics say he has failed to connect with the blue-collar workers seen as crucial to winning the election, and too reluctant to make direct attacks on Mr McCain.

But his aides are convinced that he has a strong chance of winning no fewer than nine states won by George W.Bush in the closely contested 2000 election, including former Republican strongholds like North Carolina, Virginia and even Indiana, which have not voted Democrat for a generation.

David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, said last week that Obama had "a lot of opportunity" in states which Mr Bush won four years ago.

But in private briefings in Washington, a member of Mr Obama's inner circle of policy advisers went much further in spelling out why the campaign's working assumptions far exceed the expectations of independent observers.

"Public polling companies and the media have underestimated the scale of new Democratic voters registration in these states," the campaign official told a friend. "We're much stronger on the ground in Virginia and North Carolina than people realise. If we get out the vote this may not be close at all."

To win the presidency, Mr Obama must win 270 votes in the Electoral College, which awards votes to the winner of each state broadly in proportion to the size of the population.

Statewide surveys put the likely Electoral College result at a slender Obama win, 273-265. But his campaign staff believe they have a good chance of securing between 330 and 340 votes, and could win up to 364 votes, a landslide on the scale of Bill Clinton's wins.

The senior Obama advisor said that the Democratic nominee is confident of winning all the states held by John Kerry, the Democratic candidate four years ago, a total of 252 votes.

But his team believes he can also bank victories in Iowa, where he first emerged as a force in the campaign in January, and New Mexico, where Mr Kerry only lost by 20,000 votes in 2004. Those states would leave him just six votes short of outright victory.

Taking Colorado, as Mr Obama's team are very confident of doing, would put him over the top. Even winning the smaller state of Nevada, with its five electoral votes, would be enough to guarantee a 269-269 tie with Mr McCain. If that happens, the US consititution would hand the decision over to the Democrat dominated US House of Representatives, which would presumably come down in Mr Obama's favour.

Most pollsters would regard those expectations as uncontroversial. But the Obama camp is also confident of winning Ohio and Virginia, which commentators believe are "toss up" states with the two candidates chances at 50/50.

Last week Mr Obama began investing heavily in advertising in Indiana, Florida and North Carolina, which many had supposed to be a waste of time and money.

A Washington official who has discussed the electoral mathematics with one of Mr Obama's senior advisers told The Sunday Telegraph that the campaign is spending money only in states which it believes can, and indeed ought to, be won.

"Obama has many more paths to the nomination than McCain," the source said. "They think they can defend the Kerry states. Iowa is gone. That's five votes. New Mexico is in the bag. Then Obama has four or five different ways of winning. He can go Nevada or Colorado, Virginia, any of those, even Indiana.

"McCain has got to run the board, the whole Bush table. He can probably lose New Mexico and Iowa. He can't afford to lose anything else."

The official added: "The poll numbers say Florida's back in play. McCain hasn't spent a single penny there and that's Obama's calculation, that he can capitalise on that. The Republicans can't lose Florida or they're done for."

Conventional wisdom among pollsters is that Mr Obama is at risk of losing both Michigan and Pennsylvania and possibly even Wisconsin, all large Kerry states whose loss would be a damaging blow.

But the Obama camp believes that Wisconsin in safe and that he has strengthened his position in Pennsylvania with a good ground operation. Michigan, home of the Reagan Democrats, is a concern because Mr Obama did not campaign there in the primaries and race relations are raw, but they are confident they can hang on to his slender lead in the polls.

Mainstream pollsters on both sides of the aisle last week called the election as a dead heat. Mark Mellman, who was John Kerry's polling guru, said the 2008 election is "increasingly resembling the real map of 2004" and Matthew Dowd, a top strategist on Bush's re-election campaign, added: "States that were reliably red are reliably red, and states that were reliably blue are reliably blue."

But Mr Obama's campaign team reject that analysis. Their confidence that good organisation will more than compensate for latent racism will be reassuring to some Democrats, who were concerned by a poll last weekend that found Mr Obama would be six points higher in the polls if he were white.

The scale of their ambition will trouble those Democratic sceptics who consider Mr Obama's aides to be complacent and inexperienced in national campaigns.

For McCain and Team, a Host of Ties to Gambling - NY Times

theo — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:12:19 EDT

September 28, 2008

For McCain and Team, a Host of Ties to Gambling

By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.

A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party’s evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain.

The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to Mr. McCain’s campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world’s second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just Mr. McCain’s affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress.

As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America’s casinos, helping to transform the once-sleepy Indian gambling business into a $26-billion-a-year behemoth with 423 casinos across the country. He has won praise as a champion of economic development and self-governance on reservations.

“One of the founding fathers of Indian gaming” is what Steven Light, a University of North Dakota professor and a leading Indian gambling expert, called Mr. McCain.

As factions of the ferociously competitive gambling industry have vied for an edge, they have found it advantageous to cultivate a relationship with Mr. McCain or hire someone who has one, according to an examination based on more than 70 interviews and thousands of pages of documents.

Mr. McCain portrays himself as a Washington maverick unswayed by special interests, referring recently to lobbyists as “birds of prey.” Yet in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors.

When rules being considered by Congress threatened a California tribe’s planned casino in 2005, Mr. McCain helped spare the tribe. Its lobbyist, who had no prior experience in the gambling industry, had a nearly 20-year friendship with Mr. McCain.

In Connecticut that year, when a tribe was looking to open the state’s third casino, staff members on the Indian Affairs Committee provided guidance to lobbyists representing those fighting the casino, e-mail messages and interviews show. The proposed casino, which would have cut into the Pequots’ market share, was opposed by Mr. McCain’s colleagues in Connecticut.

Mr. McCain declined to be interviewed. In written answers to questions, his campaign staff said he was “justifiably proud” of his record on regulating Indian gambling. “Senator McCain has taken positions on policy issues because he believed they are in the public interest,” the campaign said.

Mr. McCain’s spokesman, Tucker Bounds, would not discuss the senator’s night of gambling at Foxwoods, saying: “Your paper has repeatedly attempted to insinuate impropriety on the part of Senator McCain where none exists — and it reveals that your publication is desperately willing to gamble away what little credibility it still has.”

Over his career, Mr. McCain has taken on special interests, like big tobacco, and angered the capital’s powerbrokers by promoting campaign finance reform and pushing to limit gifts that lobbyists can shower on lawmakers. On occasion, he has crossed the gambling industry on issues like regulating slot machines.

Perhaps no episode burnished Mr. McCain’s image as a reformer more than his stewardship three years ago of the Congressional investigation into Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican Indian gambling lobbyist who became a national symbol of the pay-to-play culture in Washington. The senator’s leadership during the scandal set the stage for the most sweeping overhaul of lobbying laws since Watergate.

“I’ve fought lobbyists who stole from Indian tribes,” the senator said in his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination this month.

But interviews and records show that lobbyists and political operatives in Mr. McCain’s inner circle played a behind-the-scenes role in bringing Mr. Abramoff’s misdeeds to Mr. McCain’s attention — and then cashed in on the resulting investigation. The senator’s longtime chief political strategist, for example, was paid $100,000 over four months as a consultant to one tribe caught up in the inquiry, records show.

Mr. McCain’s campaign said the senator acted solely to protect American Indians, even though the inquiry posed “grave risk to his political interests.”

As public opposition to tribal casinos has grown in recent years, Mr. McCain has distanced himself from Indian gambling, Congressional and American Indian officials said.

But he has rarely wavered in his loyalty to Las Vegas, where he counts casino executives among his close friends and most prolific fund-raisers. “Beyond just his support for gaming, Nevada supports John McCain because he’s one of us, a Westerner at heart,” said Sig Rogich, a Nevada Republican kingmaker who raised nearly $2 million for Mr. McCain at an event at his home in June.

Only six members of Congress have received more money from the gambling industry than Mr. McCain, and five hail from the casino hubs of Nevada and New Jersey, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics dating back to 1989. In the presidential race, Senator Barack Obama has also received money from the industry; Mr. McCain has raised almost twice as much.

In May 2007, as Mr. McCain’s presidential bid was floundering, he spent a weekend at the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas strip. A fund-raiser hosted by J. Terrence Lanni, the casino’s top executive and a longtime friend of the senator, raised $400,000 for his campaign. Afterward, Mr. McCain attended a boxing match and hit the craps tables.

For much of his adult life, Mr. McCain has gambled as often as once a month, friends and associates said, traveling to Las Vegas for weekend betting marathons. Former senior campaign officials said they worried about Mr. McCain’s patronage of casinos, given the power he wields over the industry. The officials, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We were always concerned about appearances,” one former official said. “If you go around saying that appearances matter, then they matter.”

The former official said he would tell Mr. McCain: “Do we really have to go to a casino? I don’t think it’s a good idea. The base doesn’t like it. It doesn’t look good. And good things don’t happen in casinos at midnight.”

“You worry too much,” Mr. McCain would respond, the official said.

A Record of Support

In one of their last conversations, Representative Morris K. Udall, Arizona’s powerful Democrat, whose devotion to American Indian causes was legendary, implored his friend Mr. McCain to carry on his legacy.

“Don’t forget the Indians,” Mr. Udall, who died in 1998, told Mr. McCain in a directive that the senator has recounted to others.

More than a decade earlier, Mr. Udall had persuaded Mr. McCain to join the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Mr. McCain, whose home state has the third-highest Indian population, eloquently decried the “grinding poverty” that gripped many reservations.

The two men helped write the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 after the Supreme Court found that states had virtually no right to control wagering on reservations. The legislation provided a framework for the oversight and growth of Indian casinos: In 1988, Indian gambling represented less than 1 percent of the nation’s gambling revenues; today it captures more than one third.

On the Senate floor after the bill’s passage, Mr. McCain said he personally opposed Indian gambling, but when impoverished communities “are faced with only one option for economic development, and that is to set up gambling on their reservations, then I cannot disapprove.”

In 1994, Mr. McCain pushed an amendment that enabled dozens of additional tribes to win federal recognition and open casinos. And in 1998, Mr. McCain fought a Senate effort to rein in the boom.

He also voted twice in the last decade to give casinos tax breaks estimated to cost the government more than $326 million over a dozen years.

The first tax break benefited the industry in Las Vegas, one of a number of ways Mr. McCain has helped nontribal casinos. Mr. Lanni, the MGM Mirage chief executive, said that an unsuccessful bid by the senator to ban wagering on college sports in Nevada was the only time he could recall Mr. McCain opposing Las Vegas. “I can’t think of any other issue,” Mr. Lanni said.

The second tax break helped tribal casinos like Foxwoods and was pushed by Scott Reed, the Pequots’ lobbyist.

Mr. McCain had gotten to know Mr. Reed during Senator Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, which Mr. Reed managed. Four years later, when Mr. McCain ran for president, Mr. Reed recommended he hire his close friend and protégé, Rick Davis, to manage that campaign.

During his 2000 primary race against George W. Bush, Mr. McCain promoted his record of helping Indian Country, telling reporters on a campaign swing that he had provided critical support to “the Pequot, now the proud owners of the largest casino in the world.”

But Mr. McCain’s record on Indian gambling was fast becoming a difficult issue for him in the primary. Bush supporters like Gov. John Engler of Michigan lambasted Mr. McCain for his “close ties to Indian gambling.”

A decade after Mr. McCain co-authored the Indian gambling act, the political tides had turned. Tribal casinos, which were growing at a blazing pace, had become increasingly unpopular around the country for reasons as varied as morality and traffic.

Then came the biggest lobbying scandal to shake Washington.

Behind an Inquiry

At a September 2004 hearing of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain described Jack Abramoff as one of the most brazen in a long line of crooks to cheat American Indians. “It began with the sale of Manhattan, and has continued ever since,” he said. “What sets this tale apart, what makes it truly extraordinary, is the extent and degree of the apparent exploitation and deceit.”

Over the next two years, Mr. McCain helped uncover a breathtaking lobbying scandal — Mr. Abramoff and a partner bilked six tribes of $66 million — that showcased the senator’s willingness to risk the wrath of his own party to expose wrongdoing. But interviews and documents show that Mr. McCain and a circle of allies — lobbyists, lawyers and senior strategists — also seized on the case for its opportunities.

For McCain-connected lobbyists who were rivals of Mr. Abramoff, the scandal presented a chance to crush a competitor. For senior McCain advisers, the inquiry allowed them to collect fees from the very Indians that Mr. Abramoff had ripped off. And the investigation enabled Mr. McCain to confront political enemies who helped defeat him in his 2000 presidential run while polishing his maverick image.

The Abramoff saga started in early 2003 when members of two tribes began questioning Mr. Abramoff’s astronomical fees. Over the next year, they leaked information to local newspapers, but it took the hiring of lobbyists who were competitors of Mr. Abramoff to get the attention of Mr. McCain’s committee.

Bernie Sprague, who led the effort by one of the tribes, the Saginaw Chippewas in Michigan, hired a Democratic lobbyist who recommended that the tribe retain Scott Reed, the Republican lobbyist, to push for an investigation.

Mr. Reed had boasted to other lobbyists of his access to Mr. McCain, three close associates said. Mr. Reed “pretty much had open access to John from 2000 to at least the end of 2006,” one aide said.

Lobbyist disclosure forms show that Mr. Reed went to work for the Saginaw Chippewa on Feb. 15, 2004, charging the tribe $56,000 over a year. Mr. Abramoff had tried to steal the Pequots and another tribal client from Mr. Reed, and taking down Mr. Abramoff would eliminate a competitor.

Mr. Reed became the chief conduit to Mr. McCain’s committee for billing documents and other information Mr. Sprague was digging up on Mr. Abramoff, Mr. Sprague said, who said Mr. Reed “did a great to service to me.”

“He had contacts I did not,” Mr. Sprague said. “Initially, I think that the senator’s office was doing Reed a favor by listening to me.”

A few weeks after hiring Mr. Reed, Mr. Sprague received a letter from the senator. “We have met with Scott Reed, who was very helpful on the issue,” Mr. McCain wrote.

Information about Mr. Abramoff was also flowing to Mr. McCain’s committee from another tribe, the Coushatta of Louisiana. The source was a consultant named Roy Fletcher, who had been Mr. McCain’s deputy campaign manager in 2000, running his war room in South Carolina.

It was in that primary race that two of Mr. Abramoff’s closest associates, Grover Norquist, who runs the nonprofit Americans for Tax Reform, and Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition, ran a blistering campaign questioning Mr. McCain’s conservative credentials. The senator and his advisers blamed that attack for Mr. McCain’s loss to Mr. Bush in South Carolina, creating tensions that would resurface in the Abramoff matter.

“I was interested in busting” Mr. Abramoff, said Mr. Fletcher, who was eventually hired to represent the tribe. “That was my job. But I was also filled with righteous indignation, I got to tell you.”

Mr. Fletcher said he began passing information to John Weaver, Mr. McCain’s chief political strategist, and other staff members in late 2003 or January 2004. Mr. Weaver confirmed the timing.

Mr. McCain announced his investigation on Feb. 26, 2004, citing an article on Mr. Abramoff in The Washington Post. He did not mention the action by lobbyists and tribes in the preceding weeks. His campaign said no one in his “innermost circle” brought information to Mr. McCain that prompted the investigation.

The senator declared he would not investigate members of Congress, whom Mr. Abramoff had lavished with tribal donations and golf outings to Scotland. But in the course of the investigation, the committee exposed Mr. Abramoff’s dealings with the two men who had helped defeat Mr. McCain in the 2000 primary.

The investigation showed that Mr. Norquist’s foundation was used by Mr. Abramoff to launder lobbying fees from tribes. Ralph Reed was found to have accepted $4 million to run bogus antigambling campaigns. And the investigation also highlighted Mr. Abramoff’s efforts to curry favor with the House majority leader at the time, Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, a longtime political foe who had opposed many of Mr. McCain’s legislative priorities.

Mr. McCain’s campaign said the senator did not “single out” Ralph Reed or Mr. Norquist, neither of whom were ever charged, and that both men fell within the “scope of the investigation.” The inquiry, which led to guilty pleas by over a dozen individuals, was motivated by a desire to help aggrieved tribes, the campaign said.

Inside the investigation, the sense of schadenfreude was palpable, according to several people close to the senator. “It was like hitting pay dirt,” said one associate of Mr. McCain’s who had consulted with the senator’s office on the investigation. “And face it — McCain and Weaver were maniacal about Ralph Reed and Norquist. They were sticking little pins in dolls because those guys had cost him South Carolina.”

Down on the Coushattas reservation, bills related to the investigation kept coming. After firing Mr. Abramoff, the tribe hired Kent Hance, a lawyer and former Texas congressman who said he had been friends with Mr. McCain since the 1980s.

David Sickey, the tribe’s vice chairman, said he was “dumbfounded” over the bills submitted by Mr. Hance’s firm, Hance Scarborough, which had been hired by Mr. Sickey’s predecessors.

“The very thing we were fighting seemed to be happening all over again — these absurd amounts of money being paid,” Mr. Sickey said.

Mr. Hance’s firm billed the tribe nearly $1.3 million over 11 months in legal and political consulting fees, records show. But Mr. Sickey said that the billing statements offered only vague explanations for services and that he could not point to any tangible results. Two consultants, for instance, were paid to fight the expansion of gambling in Texas — even though it was unlikely given that the governor there opposed any such prospect, Mr. Sickey said.

Mr. Hance and Jay B. Stewart, the firm’s managing partner, defended their team’s work, saying they successfully steered the tribe through a difficult period. “We did an outstanding job for them,” Mr. Hance said. “When we told them our bill was going to be $100,000 a month, they thought we were cheap. Mr. Abramoff had charged them $1 million a month.”

The firm’s fees covered the services of Mr. Fletcher, who served as the tribe’s spokesman. Records also show that Mr. Hance had Mr. Weaver — who was serving as Mr. McCain’s chief strategist — put on the tribe’s payroll from February to May 2005.

It is not precisely clear what role Mr. Weaver played for his $100,000 fee.

Mr. Stewart said Mr. Weaver was hired because “he had a lot of experience with the Senate, especially the new chairman, John McCain.” The Hance firm told the tribe in a letter that Mr. Weaver was hired to provide “representation for the tribe before the U.S. Senate.”

But Mr. Weaver never registered to lobby on the issue, and he has another explanation for his work.

“The Hance law firm retained me to assist them and their client in developing an aggressive crisis management and communications strategy,” Mr. Weaver said. “At no point was I asked by Kent Hance or anyone associated with him to set up meetings with anyone in or outside of government to discuss this, and if asked I would have summarily declined to do so.”

In June 2005, the tribe informed Mr. Hance that his services were no longer needed.

Change in Tone

After the Abramoff scandal, Mr. McCain stopped taking campaign donations from tribes. Some American Indians were offended, especially since Mr. McCain continued to accept money from the tribes’ lobbyists.

Resentment in Indian Country mounted as Mr. McCain, who was preparing for another White House run, singled out the growth in tribal gambling as one of three national issues that were “out of control.” (The others were federal spending and illegal immigration.)

Franklin Ducheneaux, an aide to Morris Udall who helped draft the 1988 Indian gambling law, said that position ran contrary to Mr. McCain’s record. “What did he think? That Congress intended for the tribes to be only somewhat successful?” Mr. Ducheneaux said.

Mr. McCain began taking a broad look at whether the laws were sufficient to oversee the growing industry. His campaign said that the growth had put “considerable stress” on regulators and Mr. McCain held hearings on whether the federal government needed more oversight power.

An opportunity to restrain the industry came in the spring of 2005, when a small tribe in Connecticut set off a political battle. The group, the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, had won federal recognition in 2004 after producing voluminous documentation tracing its roots.

The tribe wanted to build Connecticut’s third casino, which would compete with Foxwoods and another, the Mohegan Sun. Facing public opposition on the proposed casino, members of the Connecticut political establishment — many of whom had received large Pequot and Mohegan campaign donations — swung into action.

Connecticut officials claimed that a genealogical review by the Bureau of Indian Affairs was flawed, and that the Schaghticoke was not a tribe.

The tribe’s opponents, led by the Washington lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers, turned to Mr. McCain’s committee. It was a full-circle moment for the senator, who had helped the Pequots gain tribal recognition in the 1980s despite concerns about their legitimacy.

Now, Mr. McCain was doing a favor for allies in the Connecticut delegation, including Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a close friend, according to two former Congressional aides. “It was one of those collegial deals,” said one of the aides, who worked for Mr. McCain.

Barbour Griffith & Rogers wanted Mr. McCain to hold a hearing that would show that the Bureau of Indian Affairs was “broken,” said Bradley A. Blakeman, who was a lobbyist for the firm at the time.

“It was our hope that the hearing would shed light on the fact that the bureau had not followed their rules and had improperly granted recognition to the Schaghticoke,” Mr. Blakeman said. “And that the bureau would revisit the issue and follow their rules.”

Mr. McCain’s staff helped that effort by offering strategic advice.

His staff told a lobbyist for the firm that the Indian Affairs Committee “would love to receive a letter” from the Connecticut governor requesting a hearing, according to an e-mail exchange, and offered “guidance on what the most effective tone and approach” would be in the letter.

On May 11, 2005, Mr. McCain held a hearing billed as a general “oversight hearing on federal recognition of Indian tribes.” But nearly all the witnesses were Schaghticoke opponents who portrayed the tribe as imposters.

Mr. McCain set the tone: “The role that gaming and its nontribal backers have played in the recognition process has increased perceptions that it is unfair, if not corrupt.”

Chief Richard F. Velky of the Schaghticokes found himself facing off against the governor and most of the state’s congressional delegation. “The deck was stacked against us,” Mr. Velky said. “They were given lots of time. I was given five minutes.”

He had always believed Mr. McCain “to be an honest and fair man,” Mr. Velky said, “but this didn’t make me feel that good.”

Mr. Velky said he felt worse when the e-mail messages between the tribe’s opponents and Mr. McCain’s staff surfaced in a federal lawsuit. “Is there a letter telling me how to address the senator to give me the best shot?” Mr. Velky asked. “No, there is not.”

After the hearing, Pablo E. Carrillo, who was Mr. McCain’s chief Abramoff investigator at the time, wrote to a Barbour Griffith & Rogers lobbyist, Brant Imperatore. “Your client’s side definitely got a good hearing record,” Mr. Carillo wrote, adding “you probably have a good sense” on where Mr. McCain “is headed on this.”

“Well done!” he added.

Cynthia Shaw, a Republican counsel to the committee from 2005 to 2007, said Mr. McCain made decisions based on merit, not special interests. “Everybody got a meeting who asked for one,” Ms. Shaw said, “whether you were represented by counsel or by a lobbyist — or regardless of which lobbyist.”

Mr. McCain’s campaign defended the senator’s handling of the Schaghticoke case, saying no staff member acted improperly. The campaign said the session was part of normal committee business and the notion that Mr. McCain was intending to help Congressional colleagues defeat the tribe was “absolutely false.”

It added that the senator’s commitment to Indian sovereignty “remains as strong as ever.”

Within months of the May 2005 hearing, the Bureau of Indian Affairs took the rare step of rescinding the Schaghticokes’ recognition. A federal court recently rejected the tribe’s claim that the reversal was politically motivated.

Making an Exception

That spring of 2005, as the Schaghticokes went down to defeat in the East, another tribe in the West squared off against Mr. McCain with its bid to construct a gambling emporium in California. The stakes were similar, but the outcome would be far different.

The tribe’s plan to build a casino on a former Navy base just outside San Francisco represented a trend rippling across the country: American Indians seeking to build casinos near population centers, far from their reservations.

The practice, known as “off-reservation shopping,” stemmed from the 1988 Indian gambling law, which included exceptions allowing some casinos to be built outside tribal lands. When Mr. McCain began his second stint as chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee three years ago, Las Vegas pressed him to revisit the exceptions he had helped create, according to Sig Rogich, the Republican fund-raiser from Nevada.

“We told him this off-reservation shopping had to stop,” Mr. Rogich said. “It was no secret that the gaming industry, as well as many potentially affected communities in other states, voiced opposition to the practice.”

In the spring of 2005, Mr. McCain announced he was planning a sweeping overhaul of Indian gambling laws, including limiting off-reservation casinos. His campaign said Las Vegas had nothing to do with it. In a 2005 interview with The Oregonian, Mr. McCain said that if Congress did not act, “soon every Indian tribe is going to have a casino in downtown, metropolitan areas.”

Prospects for the proposed California project did not look promising. Then the tribe, the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians, hired a lobbyist based in Phoenix named Wes Gullett.

Mr. Gullett, who had never represented tribes before Congress, had known Mr. McCain since the early 1980s. Mr. Gullett met his wife while they were working in Mr. McCain’s Washington office. He subsequently managed Mr. McCain’s 1992 Senate campaign and served as a top aide to his 2000 presidential campaign. Their friendship went beyond politics. When Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, brought two infants in need of medical treatment back to Arizona from Bangladesh, the Gulletts adopted one baby and the McCains the other. The two men also liked to take weekend trips to Las Vegas.

Another of Mr. McCain’s close friends, former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, was a major investor in the Guidivilles’ proposed casino. Mr. Cohen, who did not return calls, was best man at Mr. McCain’s 1980 wedding.

Scott Crowell, lawyer for the Guidivilles, said Mr. Gullett was hired to ensure that Mr. McCain’s overhaul of the Indian gambling laws did not harm the tribe.

Mr. Gullett said he never talked to Mr. McCain about the legislation. “If you are hired directly to lobby John McCain, you are not going to be effective,” he said. Mr. Gullett said he only helped prepare the testimony of the tribe’s administrator, Walter Gray, who was invited to plead his case before Mr. McCain’s committee in July 2005. Mr. Gullett said he advised Mr. Gray in a series of conference calls.

On disclosure forms filed with the Senate, however, Mr. Gullett stated that he was not hired until November, long after Mr. Gray’s testimony. Mr. Gullett said the late filing might have been “a mistake, but it was inadvertent.” Steve Hart, a former lawyer for the Guidivilles, backed up Mr. Gullett’s contention that he had guided Mr. Gray on his July testimony.

When asked whether Mr. Gullett had helped him, Mr. Gray responded, “I’ve never met the man and couldn’t tell you anything about him.”

On Nov. 18, 2005, when Mr. McCain introduced his promised legislation overhauling the Indian gambling law, he left largely intact a provision that the Guidivilles needed for their casino. Mr. McCain’s campaign declined to answer whether the senator spoke with Mr. Gullett or Mr. Cohen about the project. In the end, Mr. McCain’s bill died, largely because Indian gambling interests fought back. But the Department of Interior picked up where Mr. McCain left off, effectively doing through regulations what he had hoped to accomplish legislatively. Carl Artman, who served as the Interior Department’s assistant secretary of Indian Affairs until May, said Mr. McCain pushed him to rewrite the off-reservation rules. “It became one of my top priorities because Senator McCain made it clear it was one of his top priorities,” he said.

The new guidelines were issued on Jan. 4. As a result, the casino applications of 11 tribes were rejected. The Guidivilles were not among them.

Kitty Bennett and Griff Palmer contributed to reporting.

Palin’s Words Raise Red Flags - NY Times

theo — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:08:13 EDT

September 27, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

Palin’s Words Raise Red Flags

By BOB HERBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ms. Couric said, “Mocked?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GOP Concerns About Palin Grow - Politico

theo — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 15:38:15 EDT

GOP concerns about Palin grow
By: Alexander Burns and David Paul Kuhn
September 28, 2008 07:52 AM EST

A growing number of Republicans are expressing concern about Sarah Palin’s uneven — and sometimes downright awkward — performances in her limited media appearances.

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, a former Palin supporter, says the vice presidential nominee should step aside. Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing for the conservative National Review, says “that’s not a crazy suggestion” and that “something’s gotta change.”

Tony Fabrizio, a GOP strategist, says Palin’s recent CBS appearance isn’t disqualifying but is certainly alarming. “You can’t continue to have interviews like that and not take on water.”

“I have not been blown away by the interviews from her, but at the same time, I haven’t come away from them thinking she doesn’t know s—t,” said Chris Lacivita, a GOP strategist. “But she ain’t Dick Cheney, nor Joe Biden and definitely not Hillary Clinton.”

There is no doubt that Palin retains a tremendous amount of support among rank-and-file Republicans. She draws huge crowds, continues to raise a lot of money for the McCain campaign, and state parties report she has sparked an uptick in the number of volunteers.

Asked about Palin's performance in the CBS interview, a McCain official briefing reporters on condition of anonymity said: "She did fine. She's a tremendous asset and a fantastic candidate."

But there is also no doubt many Republican insiders are worried she could blow next week’s debate, based on her unexpectedly weak and unsteady media appearances, and hurt the Republican ticket if she does.

What follows is a viewer’s guide to some of Palin’s toughest moments on camera so far.

Speaking this week with CBS’s Katie Couric, Palin seemed caught off-guard by a very predictable question about the status of McCain adviser Rick Davis’ relationship with mortgage lender Freddie Mac. Davis was accused by several news outlets of retaining ties — and profiting from — the companies despite his denials.

Where a more experienced politician might have been able to brush off Couric’s follow-up question, Palin seemed genuinely stumped, repeating the same answer twice and resorting to boilerplate language about the “undue influence of lobbyists.”

These missteps could be attributed to inadequate preparation and don’t necessarily reflect more deeply on Palin’s ability to perform as vice president. But when reporters have tried to probe Palin’s thinking on subjects such as foreign policy, she’s been similarly opaque.

In an interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson, Palin gave a muddled answer to a question about her opinion of the Bush Doctrine.

And given the chance to describe her foreign policy credentials more fully, Palin recited familiar talking points, telling Gibson that her experience with energy policy was sufficient preparation for dealing with national security issues.

In the same interview, Palin let Gibson lead her into saying it might be necessary to wage war on Russia — a suggestion that most candidates would have avoided making explicitly and that signaled her discomfort in discussing global affairs.

Then, asked this week by Couric to discuss her knowledge of foreign relations — in particular, her assertion that Alaska’s proximity to Russia gave her international experience — Palin tripped herself up explaining her interactions with Alaska’s neighbor to the west.

Watch CBS Videos Online

On the economy, too, Palin has avoided taking clear stances. In a largely friendly interview with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, Palin spoke in tangled generalities in response to a question about a possible Wall Street bailout — and even preempted her campaign by coming out against it.

On Thursday, Palin finally took questions from her traveling press — but shut things down quickly after Politico’s Kenneth P. Vogel asked her whether she would support Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who has been indicted for corruption, and Rep. Don Young, who is under federal investigation, for reelection.

Unlike her other interviews, at least this time Palin had the option to walk away.

SARAH PALIN LOVER REVEALED! - National Enquirer

theo — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 15:26:46 EDT

SARAH PALIN LOVER REVEALED!

In a world exclusive The NATIONAL ENQUIRER names GOP VP Candidate Sarah Palin's secret lover!

No less than three members of the man’s family including one by sworn affidavit have claimed that Sarah Palin engaged in an extramarital affair with husband Todd’s former business partner, Brad Hanson.

These sources have named Hanson as Palin’s secret love, and say their affair nearly wrecked both their marriages.

Hanson owned a snowmobile dealership with Palin’s husband Todd, who immediately dissolved the partnership after he heard stories about the affair, which occurred around 1996, according to the sources. At the time, Palin was mayor of Wasilla.

Palin has vehemently denied cheating on her husband, and Hanson insisted to The NATIONAL ENQUIRER that he was never romantically involved with the 44-year-old Republican vice presidential candidate.

However, Hanson family insider, Jim Burdett, has gone on the record and passed a rigorous polygraph test, revealing details of the affair to The NATIONAL ENQUIRER in a world exclusive interview.

Burdett is a former brother-in-law of Hanson’s estranged wife Carolyn's brother, Craig Batton, and still speaks with many family members.

“I’ve known about Brad having had an affair for a long time, but it wasn’t until just recently that I learned his affair was with Sarah Palin,” Burdett told The NATIONAL ENQUIRER.

“Sarah was elected mayor of Wasilla, Brad became a city council member in the nearby town of Palmer, and they started an affair.

“Todd found out about the affair and was so mad he broke up their partnership at the snowmobile dealership,” Burdett claimed.

Another source, who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions, provided The NATIONAL ENQUIRER with a sworn affidavit attesting to the Palin-Hanson story.

“Todd was away on business a lot and Sarah felt lonely. Brad was a good listener, and Sarah talked to him at length. Eventually, she realized she was falling in love with him,” one insider divulged.

“When Todd got back from one of his trips, Sarah told him that she had begun to have feelings for Brad.”

For the full story and exclusive details of the shocking allegations of Sarah Palin’s affair pick up the latest issue of the NATIONAL ENQUIRER!

Palin Problem, She’s out of her league. - National Review / Kathleen Parker

theo — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:51:55 EDT

September 26, 2008, 0:00 a.m.

Palin Problem
She’s out of her league.

By Kathleen Parker

If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming downstream — away from Sarah Palin.

To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president — and possibly president — is to risk being labeled anti-woman.

Or, as I am guilty of charging her early critics, supporting only a certain kind of woman.

Some of the passionately feminist critics of Palin who attacked her personally deserved some of the backlash they received. But circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey mom with lipstick — what a difference a financial crisis makes — and a more complicated picture has emerged.

As we’ve seen and heard more from John McCain’s running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion.

Yes, she recently met and turned several heads of state as the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York. She was gracious, charming and disarming. Men swooned. Pakistan’s president wanted to hug her. (Perhaps Osama bin Laden is dying to meet her?)

And, yes, she has common sense, something we value. And she’s had executive experience as a mayor and a governor, though of relatively small constituencies (about 6,000 and 680,000, respectively).

Finally, Palin’s narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain’s running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood — a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother.

Palin didn’t make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it.

It was fun while it lasted.

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.”

When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama’s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: “I’m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?”

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

What to do?

McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

— Kathleen Parker is a nationally syndicated columnist.

© 2008, Washington Post Writers Group

McCain will go to debate - Politico

theo — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:42:59 EDT

McCain will go to debate
By: Politico Staff
September 26, 2008 11:37 AM EST

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) ended three days of suspense on Friday morning and announced that he will leave bailout negotiations in Washington and fly to Oxford, Miss., for the opening presidential debate.

McCain had said he would suspend his campaign until an agreement was reached on the administration's $700 billion mortgage proposal.

No such an agreement has been reached, but Republicans said the standoff was hurting McCain's campaign, and he would look terrible if he ruined the nationally televised, eagerly anticipated debate while Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was ready to go onstage.

The text of the statement:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announces: "The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the senator will travel to the debate this afternoon. Following the debate, he will return to Washington to ensure that all voices and interests are represented in the final agreement, especially those of taxpayers and homeowners.

The text of a statement from his camapign at about 11:20 a.m. Eastern:

John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign was made in the hopes that politics could be set aside to address our economic crisis.

In response, Americans saw a familiar spectacle in Washington. At a moment of crisis that threatened the economic security of American families, Washington played the blame game rather than work together to find a solution that would avert a collapse of financial markets without squandering hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to bailout bankers and brokers who bet their fortunes on unsafe lending practices.

Both parties in both houses of Congress and the administration needed to come together to find a solution that would deserve the trust of the American people. And while there were attempts to do that, much of yesterday was spent fighting over who would get the credit for a deal and who would get the blame for failure. There was no deal or offer yesterday that had a majority of support in Congress. There was no deal yesterday that included adequate protections for the taxpayers. It is not enough to cut deals behind closed doors and then try to force it on the rest of Congress — especially when it amounts to thousands of dollars for every American family.

The difference between Barack Obama and John McCain was apparent during the White House meeting yesterday, where Barack Obama’s priority was political posturing in his opening monologue defending the package as it stands. John McCain listened to all sides so he could help focus the debate on finding a bipartisan resolution that is in the interest of taxpayers and homeowners. The Democratic interests stood together in opposition to an agreement that would accommodate additional taxpayer protections.

Senator McCain has spent the morning talking to members of the administration, members of the Senate, and members of the House. He is optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement now that there is a framework for all parties to be represented in negotiations, including Representative Blunt as a designated negotiator for House Republicans. The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the senator will travel to the debate this afternoon. Following the debate, he will return to Washington to ensure that all voices and interests are represented in the final agreement, especially those of taxpayers and homeowners.

Mad About Letterman - New York Post

theo — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:06:16 EDT

MAD ABOUT LETTERMAN

By DON KAPLAN

September 26, 2008 --

CBS News executives were red- faced yesterday trying to explain how David Letterman used unaired news footage of Sen. John McCain with Katie Couric to embarrass the Republican presidential candidate.

McCain canceled his appearance on Letterman's show late Wednesday, several hours before he was due to appear - claiming he had to return to Washington to deal with the financial crisis.

But when Letterman discovered the Senator sitting down with Couric at the same time he was supposed to be taping "Late Night," he unloaded on McCain.

"I'm more than a little disappointed by this behavior," Letterman told viewers. "This doesn't smell right."

"This is not the way a tested hero behaves. Somebody's putting something in his Metamucil," he said.

Later in the show, Letterman showed an internal, live video of McCain being tended to by a make-up artist before the Couric interview. Both Couric and Letterman are on CBS.

Letterman said on the air that McCain had called him personally to apologize and said he was racing to the airport.

"He doesn't seem to be racing to the airport, does he?" Letterman told viewers.

"I feel like we've caught him getting a manicure," Letterman quipped, as a make-up woman dabbed at McCain's face.

Asked if CBS officials had a problem with Letterman using the internal news feed, a spokeswoman for "The Evening News" refused to address the issue.

But several CBS News executives - who asked not to be identified - said that the stunt did not go down well within the news division.

"If we had done something like that to him, someone around here would end up getting fired," one said.

News officials found out Letterman was using the internal feed shortly after it showed up on an internal CBS feed carrying the "Late Show" taping.

"They were pretty aggravated," a CBS News source told The Post.

"But they were not about to start a fight with Letterman," the source said. "We're in the middle of a heavy, heavy news cycle and Letterman is Letterman.

"He does whatever he wants and always has."

McCain spokeswoman Nicole Wallace said that the campaign canceled on Letterman because it "felt this wasn't a night for comedy."

McCain-Obama debate prospects uncertain - Associated Press

theo — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:34:59 EDT

McCain-Obama debate prospects uncertain

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press WriterThu Sep 25, 11:44 PM ET

Prospects were questionable at best that John McCain and Barack Obama would meet Friday for their first presidential debate as progress appeared to dissolve between Congress and the Bush administration on a $700 billion financial industry bailout.

McCain didn't plan to participate in the debate unless there was a consensus. Obama still wants the face-off to go on and was scheduled to travel to the debate site in Oxford, Miss., on Friday.

"I believe that it's very possible that we can get an agreement in time for me to fly to Mississippi," McCain said late Thursday. "I understand how important this debate is and I'm very hopeful. But I also have to put the country first."

In turn, Obama said: "Obviously the biggest priority is making sure that we get this deal done. But I also think it's important to describe to the American people where the next president wants to take the country and how he's going to deal with this crisis."

Both candidates made the rounds on network evening news programs after meeting on the crisis with President Bush and bipartisan congressional leaders at the White House. McCain did not participate in late-night negotiations on Capitol Hill but worked the phones from his Virginia home. A senior McCain official said McCain hasn't signed on to any one proposal, though he agreed there needs to be greater protection for taxpayers.

The debate over the debate is the latest campaign twist as McCain and Obama try to navigate the uncharted politics of the financial meltdown and show leadership at a time of national angst.

In Mississippi, debate organizers continued to prepare, and Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, told a news conference he expected the debate to go on. "This is going to be a great debate tomorrow night," Barbour said.

Television networks, too, said they were moving forward.

Presidential politics ran smack into the delicate discussions over how to stop further weakening the sagging economy.

As McCain returned to Washington at midday, Democratic and Republican negotiators emerged from a closed-door meeting to report an agreement in principle. An Obama campaign official said the Illinois senator called into the meeting. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said McCain didn't participate, but held talks with Republican leaders afterward.

A few hours later, the rivals attended the private White House meeting. They sat three seats away from the president, McCain to his right, Obama to his left. As the meeting broke up, it became apparent that any tentative agreement had started to dissolve.

Afterward, Obama said he tried to understand the objections to the approach being taken by congressional leaders and the Bush administration.

"The question I asked was, 'Well, do we need to start from scratch or are there ways to incorporate some of those concerns?'" Obama said. "At this point the president, the secretary of the Treasury and those who are expressing some of these concerns have to provide some clarity."

Several Republicans and Democrats briefed on the White House meeting said House Republican Leader John Boehner raised the concerns of some of his rank and file about the emerging plan, and McCain urged cooperation by all parties to craft a compromise proposal.

McCain said he knew going in to the meeting that progress wasn't as far along as it seemed.

"There never was a deal, but I do believe the meeting was important to move the process along," McCain said. "It gave us a renewed sense of urgency and I'm confident we will move forward, and I'm confident that we will reach a conclusion."

Obama, for his part, held a news conference at a Washington hotel and suggested McCain was part of the problem.

"I'm not clear that in a very difficult situation like this that doing things in the spotlight and injecting presidential politics is necessarily useful," Obama said.

Later, McCain's campaign issued a statement that said the White House meeting "devolved into a contentious shouting match" and implied Obama was at fault. Democrats differed.

As the day began, McCain portrayed his announced halt to campaign events, fundraising and advertising as an example of putting the country before politics. But in doing so he also hoped to get political credit for a decisive step on a national crisis as polls show him trailing Obama on the economy and slipping in the presidential race.

And politics continued on all sides nonetheless.

Despite McCain's stated hiatus, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, visited memorials in lower Manhattan to those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and McCain aides appeared on news programs. Chief strategist Steve Schmidt said all television advertising was "down." But a McCain ad was later seen on local television in Las Vegas, and perhaps elsewhere.

Industry officials said Obama's campaign was inquiring about buying airtime made available where McCain was absent.

Schmidt said Obama was acting in "politically predatory fashion" by seeking McCain's abandoned air time. But Obama spokesman Bill Burton called Schmidt's claim "categorically false."

Burton also derided McCain's claim to have halted activity as a political stunt, saying: "John McCain hasn't suspended his campaign, he only wants us to suspend disbelief."

Obama, for his part, didn't curtail any of his campaign activities.

In fact, the Democrat also rolled out a new 60-second, TV ad in which he cited economic policies endorsed by Bush and McCain as essentially to blame for the troubles.

"For eight years we've been told that the way to a stronger economy was to give huge tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest. Cut oversight on Wall Street. And somehow all Americans would benefit," Obama says in the ad. "Well now we know the truth."

___

Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn, Nedra Pickler, Christopher Wills and Beth Fouhy contributed to this report.

McCain's Economic Plan: Blurt Out Random Crap - Bob Cesca / HuffingtonPost.com

theo — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:14:49 EDT

McCain's Economic Plan: Blurt Out Random Crap

HuffingtonPost.com

by: Bob Cesca

Posted September 24, 2008 | 03:48 PM (EST)

There are several reasons why Senator Obama is enjoying a double-digit lead in the "honest and trustworthy" category (47 percent to 36 percent according the new ABC News/Washington Post poll). First, Senator Obama doesn't, you know, lie to the American people every damn day. Second, Senator Obama didn't vote with the dishonest, corrupt Bush administration 90 percent of the time.

But one of the main reasons why the nation appears to be lining up against Senator McCain's insanely obvious lack of integrity could be because his very serious and mavericky campaign strategy can be described in four simple words:

Blurt Out Random Crap.

"Crap," in this context, is defined as everything from lies to weasel-words to inexplicably weird nonsense. And it seems like Senator McCain does this a lot. So much so that we can only conclude that it's intentional.

The goal: Get McCain on record saying something no matter how ridiculous. This way, he can hit the stump later and boast that he said something with regards to scary stuff in the news. I said something [that didn't make any sense and was probably a lie] and Senator Obama didn't say anything [also a lie]! My friends! And whenever he's accused of routinely blurting out random crap, Senator McCain trucks out the old punishment theorem: If Senator Obama had only agreed to the town halls, I wouldn't be selling-out the last shreds of my honor or integrity just to get elected. Can't you see? Senator Obama turned me into a hack, dammit!

First thing that pops into his head. Is it truthful? Doesn't matter. Sex education for kindergarteners, for instance. "Palin sold her jet on eBay," for instance. Does it even make sense or is it just a bunch of words strung together to form a sentence? Who cares. "President Putin of Germany," for instance. "Delivering bottled hot water to dehydrated babies," for instance.

I'll admit that the latter category is more fun to document. However, the lying is especially infuriating -- and maybe that's the idea -- piss off the liberals. But it can't be helping with independents and undecideds who are discovering quite rapidly that the mythology of "John McCain" doesn't match the real-life John McCain. The Real McCain is rapidly coming into focus for those in the middle. McRage. McLiar. McPanderer. McIncompetent. McBush. And the Obama campaign only needs to tweak these frames. After all, the McCain campaign is doing all of the heavy lifting by itself.

And as we witnessed with the Zapatero episode, as soon as Senator McCain blurts out random crap, his staff scrambles onto the stage with pronouncements and excuses so as to make it seem as if McCain meant to say what he said -- a routine which only serves to compound the farcical nature of it all.

So it comes as no surprise that the McCain-Palin strategy on the economic crisis is to -- that's right! -- blurt out random crap.

All along and without regard to the actual status of the economy, Senator McCain has blurted out the well-known talking point "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." Why? Because that's the Bush Republican position. Those exact words. And shortly after President Paulson announced his bailout plan when it appeared as if we were on the verge of a complete meltdown, Senator McCain, in the most Pavlovian sense, couldn't help himself and -- WHOOPS! -- he said it again. Why? Because that's what he always says about the economy.

When he was immediately and appropriately called out for being a doof, he blurted out that everyone in the world misunderstood him. The "fundamentals," he claimed, meant "the workers." In other words, American workers are strong. What the hell does that have to do with the status of the economy? Does it mean the workforce can lift heavy things -- like factory equipment that's being shipped to China? How does one quantify worker "strength" as an economic indicator? Even if a crazy economist somewhere includes the morale of the workforce as a fundamental of the economy, the McCain campaign clearly overlooked the reality that we've lost 1.75 million jobs this year and unemployment spiked to 6.1 percent two days after Sarah Palin's overrated acceptance speech. Not strong, McCain. Bad! But, then again, he really didn't mean "the workers" in the first place anyway.

When this failed, he blurted out something about averting the impending economic meltdown by convening a government commission, ostensibly to study the urgent crisis and perhaps issue a recommendation sometime in the future. Decisive!

When that didn't work, he called for the firing of the head of the SEC, Chris Cox, even though Phil Gramm, the author of McCain's economic plan (pre-crisis), is also responsible for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 -- a piece of legislation which, along with Reaganomics and Alan Greenspan's love of all things bubble-shaped, is directly responsible for this present mess. Phil Gramm. A man who said that the economic crisis is mostly a figment of our whiny imagination. A man who could be our next Treasury Secretary and steward of the economy. Hire him, but fire the other guy. Because that'll somehow help. Oh, Magoo.

It's worth noting that while that idea was failing, Senator McCain inexplicably called for the firing of the head of the Federal Elections Commission, Donald F. McGahn II. Poor McGahn II. Minding his own business, and suddenly McCain's on television calling him out for screwing the economic pooch.

When that failed, Senator McCain rolled out one of his most egregious lies to date, claiming that Senator Obama, of all people, has been directly responsible for the crisis. Why? Because the former CEO of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines, once talked on the phone with someone associated with the Obama campaign. Like 16 months ago. And that somehow makes Raines a close economic advisor. Never mind that Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, was on the Freddie Mac payroll as recently as a couple of weeks ago.

Which leads us to Senator McCain blurting out that no-one on his staff is associated in any way with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

What's next, McCain campaign? A Mogwai ate a sandwich after midnight; morphed into a Gremlin; then caused the economic crisis? Or will it be Marty McFly's sports almanac screwing up the space-time continuum? Or will it be Reverend Wright putting a curse on the banks? Whatever is next is bound to be crazier than what's already been said.

And now -- wait. What's this? As I wrap this up, it's being reported that Senator McCain wants to delay the debates so he can focus on the economic crisis. Oh, and now he wants to suspend campaigning. If what we've seen from the senator so far is him "focusing" on the economy -- what the hell is he like when he's multitasking? What's next, McCain? Suspending the election?

So what will a McCain administration economic policy look like? From the lack of foresight and leadership we've witnessed so far, we can assume that McCain might choose a new economic policy totally at random, depending on how saucy he feels from minute to minute. "I'll have a muffin with my Egg Beaters, and replace Bernanke with that hooplehead who weedwacks the knoll." Two minutes later... "Hey Phil, we don't need the Nasdaq anymore. Kill it." Two minutes later... "My God! What have I done! Quickly -- nationalize the paintball industry! Go!"

One thing is for sure. Expecting a workable solution to this economic meltdown from a man as knee-jerk, dishonest and incomprehensible as John McCain would be an exercise in national self-destruction. He doesn't have anything real to say, and what he does say, he can't sell. He simply can't do the gig. A vote for McCain-Palin is absolutely a vote for the end of America as we know it.

Bob Cesca's Goddamn Awesome Blog! Go!

The Day the Momentum Changed: And What Obama Needs to Do in the Debates to Keep It - Drew Westen / HuffingtonPost.com

theo — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:03:21 EDT

Huffington Post

by: Drew Westen

Posted September 22, 2008 | 10:08 AM (EST)

It was Tuesday afternoon last week, and I was heading back from San Diego to the East Coast when I caught a piece of a speech on the economy by Barack Obama. I almost missed my flight because I couldn't walk away from it. My immediate response: This was a game-changer, and we ought to see a five-point shift in the polls if he keeps this up for the rest of the week.

I was wrong. The shift was bigger. He leapt from 2 points behind John McCain to 6 points ahead at one point by the end of the week. His newfound voice in fact yielded dividends. The question is whether he and his campaign will draw the right conclusions about why he earned those dividends or whether they do what they have done so many times before: drop their gloves and start getting beaten up again after having their opponent down on the canvas.

Indicting McCain

Mark Sept 16, 2008 as the date Obama may have turned the election around. What he did in that speech in Colorado was something he had only done once before, in his convention address: not just to inspire voters about himself and his vision for the future, but to make the case against John McCain. The truth, he stated with the razor sharpness of a good prosecutor making his closing statement, is that what McCain was saying in response to the extraordinary financial crisis that was unfolding "fits with the same economic philosophy that he's had for 26 years...It's the philosophy that says even common-sense regulations are unnecessary and unwise. It's a philosophy that lets Washington lobbyists shred consumer protections and distort our economy so it works for the special interests instead of working people...We've had this philosophy for eight years. We know the results. You feel it in your own lives. Jobs have disappeared, and peoples' life savings have been put at risk. Millions of families face foreclosure, and millions more have seen their home values plummet. The cost of everything from gas to groceries to health care has gone up, while the dream of a college education for our kids and a secure and dignified retirement for our seniors is slipping away. These are the struggles that Americans are facing. This is the pain that has now trickled up."

What had he just done? He had said implicitly, as he later made explicit, that the economic pain Americans are experiencing isn't accidental. It isn't an act of God. It is an act of ideology and incompetence, and it reflects the failed ideology of the Republican Party and the conservative movement whose standard bearer in this election is John McCain. And he had spoken in evocative ways about what is happening in real people's lives, not just about how McCain wants to privatize Social Security or seems indifferent to big businesses that are increasingly considering their obligations to their retiring workers optional, but about how the dream of a "dignified retirement" is slipping away. His terms were evocative, up close, and personal.

He went on to compare and contrast what he and McCain had done that might have prevented the collapse of the housing market (and with it the largest asset most middle class Americans have, the equity in their homes) and the tumbling of seemingly rock-solid financial giants like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. He took his listeners back two years, to February 2006, when he introduced legislation to prevent fraudulent or abusive mortgage practices. "A year later," he went on, "before the crisis hit, I warned Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke about the risks of mounting foreclosures and urged them to bring together all the stakeholders to find solutions to the subprime mortgage meltdown. Senator McCain did nothing." After walking his listeners through a timeline of events that transformed a topic that could so easily have seemed dull and lifeless into a riveting whodunit, he made clear that the mystery had been solved: "This is what happens when you confuse the free market with a free license to let special interests take whatever they can get, however they can get it. This is what happens when you see seven years of incomes falling for the average worker while Wall Street is booming...Americans have always pursued our dreams within a free market that has been the engine of our progress. It's a market that has created a prosperity that is the envy of the world, and rewarded the innovators and risk-takers who have made America a beacon of science, and technology, and discovery. But the American economy has worked in large part because we have guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle-that America prospers when all Americans can prosper. That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair, and open, and honest."

This is the language of the heart, not the cerebrum. It raises not just the pocketbook issues that have Americans so worried but the values of honesty, fairness, and community that are central to what parents teach their children. It speaks of "rules of the road" rather than just "regulations." Sure, his words reflect a grasp of the issues that shines through, giving voters the sense that this is a man and a mind who understands what's wrong and how it needs to be righted. But what was present in this speech was precisely what has been absent from his campaign from the start: a sense of outrage at what Bush and those such as McCain who have been complicit in his malfeasance and mismanagement have done, and a willingness to put aside the campfire songs to tell a campfire story about his opponent as someone who is not the right person to lead.

It is no accident that his poll numbers jumped after his convention address, when commentator after commentator said something along the lines of, "Hey, he can throw a punch." And it is no accident that his numbers jumped again after a speech -- and several days of continued attack on McCain's ability to lead the nation out of the economic wilderness -- with words like these: "Make no mistake: my opponent is running for four more years of policies that will throw the economy further out of balance. His outrage at Wall Street would be more convincing if he wasn't offering them more tax cuts. His call for fiscal responsibility would be believable if he wasn't for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and more of a trillion dollar war in Iraq paid for with deficit spending and borrowing from foreign creditors like China. His newfound support for regulation bears no resemblance to his scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement. John McCain cannot be trusted to reestablish proper oversight of our financial markets for one simple reason: he has shown time and again that he does not believe in it."

But what was different about this speech wasn't just the words. It was the way he delivered them. Obama has always been a brilliantly inspiring orator, at least when he chooses to turn on the electricity. But he has always seemed to shy away from a fight, and you don't beat an incumbent party on the ropes by making the election a referendum on the challenger. This time Obama spoke with a dignified but aggressive air of authority that screamed the words, "Commander-in-Chief." He made people feel comfortable with the thought of putting their families' economic security in his hands. He stood tall, with his tall visage framed between two flags, in a way that seemed both presidential and unwavering. And he did not waver the rest of the week, as he peppered his speeches -- and McCain -- with the kind of tough humor we have not seen from him, as when he taunted, "If you think the fundamentals are sound, I have a bridge in Alaska to sell you," and "The old boy network? In the McCain campaign, that's called a staff meeting."

I hope he and his advisors do not take away the wrong message from this speech, that it was his six-point policy prescription at the end that turned things around. Sure, that prescription was good to hear, just as the meat he put on the bones of change in his convention address was important in spelling out what change it is we are supposed to believe in. But I left for the East Coast before he ever got to those policy prescriptions, and I already knew this speech was a game-changer.

What Obama Needs to Do in the Debates

Unfortunately, with a four-point lead that means little, especially for a black candidate who needs to be up by 10 points in battleground states to be safe, the game isn't over yet. The next potential game-changer is his first debate with John McCain, and what he needs to do in the debates is precisely what he has not done thus far in that format, and what no Democrat other than Bill Clinton has done effectively in decades: to connect with voters in a way that makes them feel like they know and share his values, feel confident that he will keep them and their families safe, and will do right by people like them.

How does he do that? By following some basic principles, many of which Democrats would do well to follow in every debate at every level of government:

1. Think of your answers as sandwiches, with emotionally evocative and values-driven language at the beginning and end and with the "meat" in the middle. Emotionally evocative opening and closing statements serve three functions: they draw voters' attention (one of the major function of emotions from an evolutionary standpoint), they signal voters what you are passionate about, and they provide the sound bites that will be replayed over and over on television. The emotional "bread and butter" at the beginning and end can elicit or address voters' anger, hope, concerns, sense of patriotism, faith, or whatever informs your position and moves voters, or it can be a story from your own life or the lives you've encountered on the campaign trail. That is the bread and butter of what voters will remember. Follow it with the "meat": first, how we got here (indicting the GOP for what it has done and making the causal link to the pain people are experiencing and our moral standing in the world), and second, a very brief bulleted description of what you plan to do (no more than three points, which is the most voters will remember). For example, on health care, start with something like, "I believe in a family doctor for every family. Right now, 50 million working Americans and their families can't take their kids to the doctor, and the rest of us are watching our co-pays shoot through the roof and our security disappear as insurance companies are raking in record profits." Then compare McCain's "you're on your own, pal" plan that would knock 150 million people off their employer-provided insurance (which would scare the hell out of most voters if they only knew about it -- and for good reason) with your own, emphasizing the most central points of your plan: if you're happy with your doctor or health plan, you will be able to stay with what you have; if you're not, you'll have choices, including not only an array of private plans that will have to compete for your dollar but the same plan members of Congress get. End with something that again inspires emotion, "If that plan is good enough for people like me in the Senate, it's good enough for the people who pay my salary -- the American taxpayer."

2. Clearly enunciate your principles in virtually every response. Why do you take the position you do, and how does that principle reflect mainstream American values? Get to the specifics after you've established the principle, because it cues voters that you're a person of conviction. The usual Democratic statements such as "I'm for the Second Amendment but for limited regulation of x,y,z" is not a principle, any more than was Al Gore's debate response in 2004, that he supported regulation of new handguns but not old ones. (What's the principle? That old guns are rusty? Voters saw through it and thought he wanted to support gun control but didn't want to say it.) Here's a principle, and one that distinguishes him clearly from McCain and the GOP: "My basic principle on guns is this: I believe in the rights of law-abiding Americans. That's why I support the rights of law-abiding Americans to own firearms to hunt and protect their families, and why I support the rights of parents to send their kids to school in the morning and know they'll come home safely." That sets the framework for a principled position, for example, against assault weapons (e.g., "If you're hunting with an M-16, you're not bringing that meat home for dinner").

3. Look at the audience and know where the camera is at all times. In his Saddleback performance, Obama split his eye contact between his interviewer, Rick Warren, and his shoelaces. He rarely turned to the camera and his broader television audience. Eye contact and body posture are crucial nonverbal cues in primates including humans, and voters unconsciously process those cues about dominance, sincerity, and so forth. Downcast eyes readily suggest shame, low status, or evasiveness. McCain had been coached by a good media coach to respond to his interview with direct eye contact, often using his name, and then to pivot away toward the audience within one to two seconds. Democrats routinely fail to make use of people who can help them enunciate their positions with strength, conviction, and humor.

4. Avoid dispassionate, meandering, intellectualized answers. Nuance and emotional appeal are not mutually exclusive. Sure, it's harder to enunciate a principle that recognizes ambiguity than one that emanates from a Manichean worldview of the good guys vs. the bad guys. But people are often relieved when someone speaks to their ambivalence. It isn't hard to say that business is the engine of our prosperity but that leadership is about keeping that engine on the right track. Nor is it hard to say what most people feel in their gut, that government shouldn't be in the business of forcing one person to live by another person's faith, which is why Sarah Palin has no right to plan our families for us, but that you ought to have a very good reason (e.g., the mother's life or health is seriously in danger) to abort a late-term fetus.

5. Inspire and indict. As I argued in The Political Brain, and in multiple posts here, you can't win a campaign with one story (about why you should be elected), and no one has ever won the presidency by saying only nice things about himself and his opponent. You have to control the dominant story of who you are (and answer attacks on that story directly and immediately) and the story of who your opponent is and why he's not the right person for the job or the times.

6. Don't run from any issue. State your principles clearly and with conviction, and if you worry that the public isn't with you, turn that into a virtue (by making it a mark of genuineness and courage). The failure to state a clear position on hot-button issues has been a standard Democratic error for decades. Republicans never make this mistake. They've been running on a position on abortion that's at 30% in the polls for years--that life begins at conception, and there's no room for compromise--and this year they've even taken the more extreme position that every rapist has the right to choose the mother of his child. If Democrats don't run on abortion and contraception this year, when Republicans have governed or threaten to govern with positions so far to the right that you can't find them on a map of America (e.g., forcing teenagers to have their rapists' babies, perpetuating the cycle of poverty by making contraceptives unavailable to poor women, teaching only abstinence when it's nearly impossible to name a Republican who ever practiced it--they deserve another 3 Alitos and a Scalia for good measure.

7. Don't run from any attack. Answer it with an attack on the attacker. The two biggest mistakes Democrats repeatedly make are to fail to answer an attack and to get on their heels and try to answer every charge. Answer the weakest link in your opponent's attack and go after him for making it. For example, Obama could easily have addressed the "elitist" charged by simply saying, "Let me get this straight. The guy who has to ask his staff how many homes he has, whose wife says you just can't get around Arizona without a private jet, and who's worth over a hundred million dollars is calling the black guy who just recently paid off his student loans elitist? That dog ain't gonna hunt."

8. Don't worry about looking like the angry black man. People don't see you that way. Your bigger worry is that you don't look masculine, muscular, and aggressive enough. Don't let grandpa push you around. (And Joe, that goes for soon-to-be Grandma Palin.)

9. Remember your first mission: to convey, particularly to white voters who are on the fence, that you share their values and understand and care about people like them. Speak their language, talk about what you want and fear for your kids (which is likely the same as what they want and fear for theirs), and don't hide your values in the fine print of your policy prescriptions. Speak from the gut about what matters to you. A campaign isn't a debate on the issues. One strong values statement (e.g., "It's time we had an economy that works again for people who work for a living") or one strong metaphor (okay, something other than lipstick on a pig) is worth a thousand ten-point plans.

10. Remember your second mission: to make people worry about what would happen if they vote for McCain and Palin. Do you really want to lose your employer-based health insurance and be left on your own to fend for yourself? Do you really want a return to coat-hanger abortions and increase the rate of unwanted pregnancies among poor women and teenagers? Do you really want your teenage son drafted (since there's no other way to maintain our security while keeping tens of thousands of troops in Iraq and deterring people with "the right stuff" from signing up and staying in the military)? Stress your theme of unity, and contrast it with the hate-fest in Minneapolis and the divide-and-conquer tactics the Republicans have been using since Lee Atwater and Karl Rove came on the scene.

11. Use humor, especially when throwing a punch. Humor is disarming, and well-timed lines will be replayed on cable over and over and will be the only thing people who didn't watch the debate will know about your performance.

12. Don't "dumb down" your language, but use words that connect with people and don't make them feel ignorant. They don't need to hear about "marginal tax rates." They need to hear what's going to happen to their paychecks if you're in charge of the tax code. Avoid all acronyms and Washington inside baseball. If you're about to say "S-CHIP," try instead, "I believe people who work for a living ought to be able to take their kids to the doctor when they're sick. Plain and simple. My opponent thinks that if your kid has asthma or you have a bad back and can't get health insurance because of a 'pre-existing condition,' tough break."

13. Keep in mind at all times what stories the other side has effectively told about you (you're an empty celebrity, uppity, elitist, weak, and outside the mainstream) and counter them at every turn. Keep in mind at all times what stories you want voters to be telling the next day about your opponent (that he's out of touch with the concerns of everyday Americans; that if you like how things are going now, vote for him; and that he claims to be a straight-talking maverick, but it's hard to know which McCain would show up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue because he's been on virtually every side of every issue), and reinforce them at every turn.

14. Remember who your two audiences are: the people who support you already who you want to show up at the polls, and the people who are on the fence who you want to get off on your side. Don't worry about offending people who already detest you and everything you stand for.

15. Be genuine. Don't take any position you don't really believe in. People can tell. And you don't need to be anything but genuine. The American people agree with you on about 80% of the issues, and as Stan Greenberg and I recently found in polling 10,000 likely voters and putting together a Handbook for Progressive Messaging, Democrats can win on every one of the major issues, from economics, to abortion, to national security, to the role of government, with well crafted, emotionally evocative messages.

This isn't an exhaustive list, but it's a start. Personally, I'd throw away the briefing books and study this list. The debates won't be won or lost on who jams the most facts into 90 minutes. McCain can't tell a Sunni from a Shiite. If you don't know your position and the reasons for it on every issue after two years of campaigning, you're not going to learn it this week, so don't bother trying. There are more important things to get right--like making eye contact with your audience.

People want to know who their potential President is, and they want to like, trust, and be able to identify with him.

That's what Obama needs to accomplish in the debates.

Drew Westen, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation," recently released in paperback with a new postscript on the 2008 election.

Palin Once Blessed To Be Free From 'Witchcraft' - MyWay.com

theo — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 08:44:15 EDT

Palin Once Blessed To Be Free From 'Witchcraft'

Sep 25, 7:11 AM (ET)

By GARANCE BURKE / myway.com

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A grainy YouTube video surfaced Wednesday showing Sarah Palin being blessed in her hometown church three years ago by a Kenyan pastor who prayed for her protection from "witchcraft" as she prepared to seek higher office.

The video shows Palin standing before Bishop Thomas Muthee in the pulpit of the Wasilla Assembly of God church, holding her hands open as he asked Jesus Christ to keep her safe from "every form of witchcraft."

"Come on, talk to God about this woman. We declare, save her from Satan," Muthee said as two attendants placed their hands on Palin's shoulders. "Make her way my God. Bring finances her way even for the campaign in the name of Jesus. ... Use her to turn this nation the other way around."

Palin filed campaign papers a few months later, in October 2005, and was elected governor the next year.

Palin does not say anything on the video and keeps her head bowed throughout the blessing. The Republican vice presidential candidate was baptized at the church but stopped attending regularly in 2002.

A spokesman for the McCain campaign declined to comment. A person who answered the phone at the Wasilla church confirmed the video was from May 2005 but declined further comment.

Palin was baptized Roman Catholic as a newborn.

Pentecostals are conservative in their reading of the Bible. Unlike most other Christians - including most evangelicals - Pentecostals believe in "baptism in the Holy Spirit." That can manifest itself through speaking in tongues, modern-day prophesy and faith healing, which includes the laying on of hands.

Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, has said Palin attends different churches and does not consider herself Pentecostal.

On a visit to the church in June 2008, Palin spoke fondly of the Kenyan pastor and told a group of young missionaries that Muthee's prayers had helped her to become governor.

"Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me, and you know how he speaks and he's so bold," she said. "And he was praying 'Lord make a way, Lord make a way' ... He said, 'Lord make a way and let her do this next step.' And that's exactly what happened."

The Rev. Zipporah Ndiritu, who studied under Muthee in the Kiambu, Kenya-based Word of Faith Church, said the bishop is revered among evangelicals there. In a phone interview from Mombasa, Kenya, she said church doctrine focuses on ridding the world of demons - and witches.

"Even in the days of Jesus Christ, according to the Bible there were witches who were manifesting through demonic forces," she said. "You can seek from the Lord, and if you find demonic forces you cast them out."

Ndiritu said she did not know Palin.

---

On the Net:

Palin-Muthee video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?vkj-on3kfWuE&featurerelated

One-On-One With Sarah Palin - CBS News / Katie Couric

theo — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 08:35:21 EDT

One-On-One With Sarah Palin
NEW YORK, Sept. 24, 2008(CBS) When CBS News anchor Katie Couric sat down for an exclusive interview with vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin Wednesday, she focused on the economy - but also addressed reports that the lobbying firm of Sen. John McCain's campaign manager received payments from the controversial mortgage giant Freddie Mac until last month. Couric asked for her reaction to that.

Sarah Palin: My understanding is that Rick Davis recused himself from the dealings of the firm. I don't know how long ago, a year or two ago that he's not benefiting from that. And you know, I was - I would hope that's not the case.

Katie Couric: But he still has a stake in the company so isn't that a conflict of interest?

Palin: Again, my understanding is that he recused himself from the dealings with Freddie and Fannie, any lobbying efforts on his part there. And I would hope that's the case because, as John McCain has been saying, and as I've on a much more local level been also rallying against is the undue influence of lobbyists in public policy decisions being made.

Next, Couric asked about the $700 billion government bailout of bad debt - and whether she supports it.

Palin: I'm all about the position that America is in and that we have to look at a $700 billion bailout. And as Sen. McCain has said unless this nearly trillion dollar bailout is what it may end up to be, unless there are amendments in Paulson's proposal, really I don't believe that Americans are going to support this and we will not support this. The interesting thing in the last couple of days that I have seen is that Americans are waiting to see what John McCain will do on this proposal. They're not waiting to see what Barack Obama is going to do. Is he going to do this and see what way the political wind's blowing? They're waiting to see if John McCain will be able to see these amendments implemented in Paulson's proposal.

Couric: Why do you say that? Why are they waiting for John McCain and not Barack Obama?

Palin: He's got the track record of the leadership qualities and the pragmatism that's needed at a crisis time like this.

Couric: But polls have shown that Sen. Obama has actually gotten a boost as a result of this latest crisis, with more people feeling that he can handle the situation better than John McCain.

Palin: I'm not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who's more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who's actually done it?

Couric: If this doesn't pass, do you think there's a risk of another Great Depression?

Palin: Unfortunately, that is the road that America may find itself on. Not necessarily this, as it's been proposed, has to pass or we're going to find ourselves in another Great Depression. But, there has got to be action - bipartisan effort - Congress not pointing fingers at one another but finding the solution to this, taking action, and being serious about the reforms on Wall Street that are needed.

Couric: Would you support a moratorium on foreclosures to help average Americans keep their homes?

Palin: That's something that John McCain and I have both been discussing - whether that ... is part of the solution or not. You know, it's going to be a multi-faceted solution that has to be found here.

Couric: So you haven't decided whether you'll support it or not?

Palin: I have not.

Couric: What are the pros and cons of it do you think?

Palin: Oh, well, some decisions that have been made poorly should not be rewarded, of course.

Couric: By consumers, you're saying?

Palin: Consumers - and those who were predator lenders also. That's, you know, that has to be considered also. But again, it's got to be a comprehensive, long-term solution found ... for this problem that America is facing today. As I say, we are getting into crisis mode here.

Couric: You've said, quote, "John McCain will reform the way Wall Street does business." Other than supporting stricter regulations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago, can you give us any more example of his leading the charge for more oversight?

Palin: I think that the example that you just cited, with his warnings two years ago about Fannie and Freddie - that, that's paramount. That's more than a heck of a lot of other senators and representatives did for us.

Couric: But he's been in Congress for 26 years. He's been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.

Palin: He's also known as the maverick though, taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he's been talking about - the need to reform government.

Couric: But can you give me any other concrete examples? Because I know you've said Barack Obama is a lot of talk and no action. Can you give me any other examples in his 26 years of John McCain truly taking a stand on this?

Palin: I can give you examples of things that John McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that is what America needs today.

Couric: I'm just going to ask you one more time - not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.

Palin: I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you.

© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Pakistan's President Tells Palin She is 'Gorgeous' - CNN

theo — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 08:31:18 EDT

Pakistan's president tells Palin she is 'gorgeous' Posted: 06:20 PM ET
From From CNN's Peter Hamby and Wes Little
Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari told Palin she's gorgeous.

NEW YORK (CNN) – Sarah Palin and the foreign leaders she has met with in New York have said very little to reporters over the last two days, but the press happened to be in the room on Wednesday for one eyebrow-raising exchange, as the new president of Pakistan lavished praise on Palin's looks.

On entering a room filled with several Pakistani officials this afternoon, Palin was immediately greeted by Sherry Rehman, the country's Information Minister.

"And how does one keep looking that good when one is that busy?," Rehman asked, drawing friendly laughter from the room when she complimented Palin.

"Oh, thank you," Palin said.

Pakistan's recently-elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, entered the room seconds later. Palin rose to shake his hand, saying she was “honored” to meet him.

Zardari then called her "gorgeous" and said: "Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you."

"You are so nice," Palin said, smiling. "Thank you."

A handler from Zardari's entourage then told the two politicians to keep shaking hands for the cameras.

"If he's insisting, I might hug," Zardari said. Palin smiled politely.

The Alaska governor did not answer questions from reporters at her first two appearances on Wednesday, when she joined McCain in meetings with Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili and Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko, and then traveled downtown to meet with Iraqi president Jalal Talabani.

But she did offer brief remarks to a reporter at the Zardari meeting who asked about her day.

"It's going great," Palin said. "These meetings are very informative and helpful, and a lot of good people sharing appreciation for America."

EXCLUSIVE: LETTERMAN MOCKS MCCAIN CANCELLATION - Drudge Report

theo — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:49:27 EDT

EXCLUSIVE: LETTERMAN MOCKS MCCAIN CANCELLATION
Wed Sep 24 2008 17:41:58 ET

David Letterman tells audience that McCain called him today to tell him he had to rush back to DC to deal with the economy.

Then in the middle of the taping Dave got word that McCain was, in fact just down the street being interviewed by Katie Couric. Dave even cut over to the live video of the interview, and said, "Hey Senator, can I give you a ride home?"

Earlier in the show, Dave kept saying, "You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves." And he joked: "I think someone's putting something in his metamucil."

"He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sara Palin. Where is she?"

"What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"

Developing...

John McCain's Acceptance Speech - JohnMcCain.com

theo — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:07:29 EDT

John McCain's Acceptance Speech

By John McCain
September 5, 2008

Thank you all very much. Tonight, I have a privilege given few Americans -- the privilege of accepting our party's nomination for President of the United States. And I accept it with gratitude, humility and confidence.

In my life, no success has come without a good fight, and this nomination wasn't any different. That's a tribute to the candidates who opposed me and their supporters. They're leaders of great ability, who love our country, and wished to lead it to better days. Their support is an honor I won't forget.

I'm grateful to the President for leading us in those dark days following the worst attack on American soil in our history, and keeping us safe from another attack many thought was inevitable; and to the First Lady, Laura Bush, a model of grace and kindness in public and in private. And I'm grateful to the 41st President and his bride of 63 years, and for their outstanding example of honorable service to our country.

As always, I'm indebted to my wife, Cindy, and my seven children. The pleasures of family life can seem like a brief holiday from the crowded calendar of our nation's business. But I have treasured them all the more, and can't imagine a life without the happiness you give me. Cindy said a lot of nice things about me tonight. But, in truth, she's more my inspiration than I am hers. Her concern for those less blessed than we are -- victims of land mines, children born in poverty and with birth defects -- shows the measure of her humanity. I know she will make a great First Lady.

When I was growing up, my father was often at sea, and the job of raising my brother, sister and me would fall to my mother alone. Roberta McCain gave us her love of life, her deep interest in the world, her strength, and her belief we are all meant to use our opportunities to make ourselves useful to our country. I wouldn't be here tonight but for the strength of her character.

My heartfelt thanks to all of you, who helped me win this nomination, and stood by me when the odds were long. I won't let you down. To Americans who have yet to decide who to vote for, thank you for your consideration and the opportunity to win your trust. I intend to earn it.

Finally, a word to Senator Obama and his supporters. We'll go at it over the next two months. That's the nature of these contests, and there are big differences between us. But you have my respect and admiration. Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us. We are fellow Americans, an association that means more to me than any other. We're dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal and endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. No country ever had a greater cause than that. And I wouldn't be an American worthy of the name if I didn't honor Senator Obama and his supporters for their achievement.

But let there be no doubt, my friends, we're going to win this election. And after we've won, we're going to reach out our hand to any willing patriot, make this government start working for you again, and get this country back on the road to prosperity and peace.

These are tough times for many of you. You're worried about keeping your job or finding a new one, and are struggling to put food on the table and stay in your home. All you ever asked of government is to stand on your side, not in your way. And that's just what I intend to do: stand on your side and fight for your future.

And I've found just the right partner to help me shake up Washington, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. She has executive experience and a real record of accomplishment. She's tackled tough problems like energy independence and corruption. She's balanced a budget, cut taxes, and taken on the special interests. She's reached across the aisle and asked Republicans, Democrats and Independents to serve in her administration. She's the mother of five children. She's helped run a small business, worked with her hands and knows what it's like to worry about mortgage payments and health care and the cost of gasoline and groceries.

She knows where she comes from and she knows who she works for. She stands up for what's right, and she doesn't let anyone tell her to sit down. I'm very proud to have introduced our next Vice President to the country. But I can't wait until I introduce her to Washington. And let me offer an advance warning to the old, big spending, do nothing, me first, country second Washington crowd: change is coming.

I'm not in the habit of breaking promises to my country and neither is Governor Palin. And when we tell you we're going to change Washington, and stop leaving our country's problems for some unluckier generation to fix, you can count on it. We've got a record of doing just that, and the strength, experience, judgment and backbone to keep our word to you.

You know, I've been called a maverick; someone who marches to the beat of his own drum. Sometimes it's meant as a compliment and sometimes it's not. What it really means is I understand who I work for. I don't work for a party. I don't work for a special interest. I don't work for myself. I work for you.

I've fought corruption, and it didn't matter if the culprits were Democrats or Republicans. They violated their public trust, and had to be held accountable. I've fought big spenders in both parties, who waste your money on things you neither need nor want, while you struggle to buy groceries, fill your gas tank and make your mortgage payment. I've fought to get million dollar checks out of our elections. I've fought lobbyists who stole from Indian tribes. I fought crooked deals in the Pentagon. I fought tobacco companies and trial lawyers, drug companies and union bosses.

I fought for the right strategy and more troops in Iraq, when it wasn't a popular thing to do. And when the pundits said my campaign was finished, I said I'd rather lose an election than see my country lose a war.

Thanks to the leadership of a brilliant general, David Petreaus, and the brave men and women he has the honor to command, that strategy succeeded and rescued us from a defeat that would have demoralized our military, risked a wider war and threatened the security of all Americans.

I don't mind a good fight. For reasons known only to God, I've had quite a few tough ones in my life. But I learned an important lesson along the way. In the end, it matters less that you can fight. What you fight for is the real test.

I fight for Americans. I fight for you. I fight for Bill and Sue Nebe from Farmington Hills, Michigan, who lost their real estate investments in the bad housing market. Bill got a temporary job after he was out of work for seven months. Sue works three jobs to help pay the bills.

I fight for Jake and Toni Wimmer of Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Jake works on a loading dock; coaches Little League, and raises money for the mentally and physically disabled. Toni is a schoolteacher, working toward her Master's Degree. They have two sons, the youngest, Luke, has been diagnosed with autism. Their lives should matter to the people they elect to office. They matter to me.

I fight for the family of Matthew Stanley of Wolfboro, New Hampshire, who died serving our country in Iraq. I wear his bracelet and think of him every day. I intend to honor their sacrifice by making sure the country their son loved so well and never returned to, remains safe from its enemies.

I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger. We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties and Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust, when we valued our power over our principles.

We're going to change that. We're going to recover the people's trust by standing up again for the values Americans admire. The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics.

We believe everyone has something to contribute and deserves the opportunity to reach their God-given potential from the boy whose descendents arrived on the Mayflower to the Latina daughter of migrant workers. We're all God's children and we're all Americans.

We believe in low taxes; spending discipline, and open markets. We believe in rewarding hard work and risk takers and letting people keep the fruits of their labor.

We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don't legislate from the bench. We believe in the values of families, neighborhoods and communities.

We believe in a government that unleashes the creativity and initiative of Americans. Government that doesn't make your choices for you, but works to make sure you have more choices to make for yourself.

I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them. I will open new markets to our goods and services. My opponent will close them. I will cut government spending. He will increase it.

My tax cuts will create jobs. His tax increases will eliminate them. My health care plan will make it easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance. His plan will force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a government run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor.

Keeping taxes low helps small businesses grow and create new jobs. Cutting the second highest business tax rate in the world will help American companies compete and keep jobs from moving overseas. Doubling the child tax exemption from $3500 to $7000 will improve the lives of millions of American families. Reducing government spending and getting rid of failed programs will let you keep more of your own money to save, spend and invest as you see fit. Opening new markets and preparing workers to compete in the world economy is essential to our future prosperity.

I know some of you have been left behind in the changing economy and it often seems your government hasn't even noticed. Government assistance for unemployed workers was designed for the economy of the 1950s. That's going to change on my watch. My opponent promises to bring back old jobs by wishing away the global economy. We're going to help workers who've lost a job that won't come back, find a new one that won't go away.

We will prepare them for the jobs of today. We will use our community colleges to help train people for new opportunities in their communities. For workers in industries that have been hard hit, we'll help make up part of the difference in wages between their old job and a temporary, lower paid one while they receive retraining that will help them find secure new employment at a decent wage.

Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.

When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.

Senator Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students. And when I'm President, they will.

My fellow Americans, when I'm President, we're going to embark on the most ambitious national project in decades. We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much. We will attack the problem on every front. We will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells offshore, and we'll drill them now. We will build more nuclear power plants. We will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas. We will encourage the development and use of flex fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles.

Senator Obama thinks we can achieve energy independence without more drilling and without more nuclear power. But Americans know better than that. We must use all resources and develop all technologies necessary to rescue our economy from the damage caused by rising oil prices and to restore the health of our planet. It's an ambitious plan, but Americans are ambitious by nature, and we have faced greater challenges. It's time for us to show the world again how Americans lead.

This great national cause will create millions of new jobs, many in industries that will be the engine of our future prosperity; jobs that will be there when your children enter the workforce.

Today, the prospect of a better world remains within our reach. But we must see the threats to peace and liberty in our time clearly and face them, as Americans before us did, with confidence, wisdom and resolve.

We have dealt a serious blow to al Qaeda in recent years. But they are not defeated, and they'll strike us again if they can. Iran remains the chief state sponsor of terrorism and on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons. Russia's leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power, have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power. They invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world's oil supply, intimidate other neighbors, and further their ambitions of reassembling the Russian empire. And the brave people of Georgia need our solidarity and prayers. As President I will work to establish good relations with Russia so we need not fear a return of the Cold War. But we can't turn a blind eye to aggression and international lawlessness that threatens the peace and stability of the world and the security of the American people.

We face many threats in this dangerous world, but I'm not afraid of them. I'm prepared for them. I know how the military works, what it can do, what it can do better, and what it should not do. I know how the world works. I know the good and the evil in it. I know how to work with leaders who share our dreams of a freer, safer and more prosperous world, and how to stand up to those who don't. I know how to secure the peace.

When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house. A Navy officer rolled down the window, and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I rarely saw my father again for four years. My grandfather came home from that same war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day. In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home with me. I hate war. It is terrible beyond imagination.

I'm running for President to keep the country I love safe, and prevent other families from risking their loved ones in war as my family has. I will draw on all my experience with the world and its leaders, and all the tools at our disposal -- diplomatic, economic, military and the power of our ideals -- to build the foundations for a stable and enduring peace.

In America, we change things that need to be changed. Each generation makes its contribution to our greatness. The work that is ours to do is plainly before us. We don't need to search for it.

We need to change the way government does almost everything: from the way we protect our security to the way we compete in the world economy; from the way we respond to disasters to the way we fuel our transportation network; from the way we train our workers to the way we educate our children. All these functions of government were designed before the rise of the global economy, the information technology revolution and the end of the Cold War. We have to catch up to history, and we have to change the way we do business in Washington.

The constant partisan rancor that stops us from solving these problems isn't a cause, it's a symptom. It's what happens when people go to Washington to work for themselves and not you.

Again and again, I've worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed. That's how I will govern as President. I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again. I have that record and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not.

Instead of rejecting good ideas because we didn't think of them first, let's use the best ideas from both sides. Instead of fighting over who gets the credit, let's try sharing it. This amazing country can do anything we put our minds to. I will ask Democrats and Independents to serve with me. And my administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability.

We're going to finally start getting things done for the people who are counting on us, and I won't care who gets the credit.

I've been an imperfect servant of my country for many years. But I have been her servant first, last and always. And I've never lived a day, in good times or bad, that I didn't thank God for the privilege.

Long ago, something unusual happened to me that taught me the most valuable lesson of my life. I was blessed by misfortune. I mean that sincerely. I was blessed because I served in the company of heroes, and I witnessed a thousand acts of courage, compassion and love.

On an October morning, in the Gulf of Tonkin, I prepared for my 23rd mission over North Vietnam. I hadn't any worry I wouldn't come back safe and sound. I thought I was tougher than anyone. I was pretty independent then, too. I liked to bend a few rules, and pick a few fights for the fun of it. But I did it for my own pleasure; my own pride. I didn't think there was a cause more important than me.

Then I found myself falling toward the middle of a small lake in the city of Hanoi, with two broken arms, a broken leg, and an angry crowd waiting to greet me. I was dumped in a dark cell, and left to die. I didn't feel so tough anymore. When they discovered my father was an admiral, they took me to a hospital. They couldn't set my bones properly, so they just slapped a cast on me. When I didn't get better, and was down to about a hundred pounds, they put me in a cell with two other Americans. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even feed myself. They did it for me. I was beginning to learn the limits of my selfish independence. Those men saved my life.

I was in solitary confinement when my captors offered to release me. I knew why. If I went home, they would use it as propaganda to demoralize my fellow prisoners. Our Code said we could only go home in the order of our capture, and there were men who had been shot down before me. I thought about it, though. I wasn't in great shape, and I missed everything about America. But I turned it down.

A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I'd been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I'd been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.

When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn't know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country and for the men I had the honor to serve with. Because every day they fought for me.

I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's.

I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.

If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you're disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. Enlist in our Armed Forces. Become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed. Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier. Because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.

I'm going to fight for my cause every day as your President. I'm going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank Him: that I'm an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach. Fight with me. Fight with me.

Fight for what's right for our country.

Fight for the ideals and character of a free people.

Fight for our children's future.

Fight for justice and opportunity for all.

Stand up to defend our country from its enemies.

Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America.

Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We're Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.

Thank you, and God Bless you.

Sarah Palin's Speech to the RNC - JohnMcCain.com

theo — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:02:07 EDT

Sarah Palin's Speech to the RNC

By Sarah Palin
September 3, 2008

Mr. Chairman, delegates, and fellow citizens: I am honored to be considered for the nomination for Vice President of the United States...

I accept the call to help our nominee for president to serve and defend America.

I accept the challenge of a tough fight in this election... against confident opponents ... at a crucial hour for our country.

And I accept the privilege of serving with a man who has come through much harder missions ... and met far graver challenges ... and knows how tough fights are won - the next president of the United States, John S. McCain.

It was just a year ago when all the experts in Washington counted out our nominee because he refused to hedge his commitment to the security of the country he loves.

With their usual certitude, they told us that all was lost - there was no hope for this candidate who said that he would rather lose an election than see his country lose a war.

But the pollsters and pundits overlooked just one thing when they wrote him off.

They overlooked the caliber of the man himself - the determination, resolve, and sheer guts of Senator John McCain. The voters knew better.

And maybe that's because they realize there is a time for politics and a time for leadership ... a time to campaign and a time to put our country first.

Our nominee for president is a true profile in courage, and people like that are hard to come by.

He's a man who wore the uniform of this country for 22 years, and refused to break faith with those troops in Iraq who have now brought victory within sight.

And as the mother of one of those troops, that is exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief. I'm just one of many moms who'll say an extra prayer each night for our sons and daughters going into harm's way.

Our son Track is 19.

And one week from tomorrow - September 11th - he'll deploy to Iraq with the Army infantry in the service of his country.

My nephew Kasey also enlisted, and serves on a carrier in the Persian Gulf.

My family is proud of both of them and of all the fine men and women serving the country in uniform. Track is the eldest of our five children.

In our family, it's two boys and three girls in between - my strong and kind-hearted daughters Bristol, Willow, and Piper.

And in April, my husband Todd and I welcomed our littlest one into the world, a perfectly beautiful baby boy named Trig. From the inside, no family ever seems typical.

That's how it is with us.

Our family has the same ups and downs as any other ... the same challenges and the same joys.

Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge.

And children with special needs inspire a special love.

To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters.

I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House. Todd is a story all by himself.

He's a lifelong commercial fisherman ... a production operator in the oil fields of Alaska's North Slope ... a proud member of the United Steel Workers' Union ... and world champion snow machine racer.

Throw in his Yup'ik Eskimo ancestry, and it all makes for quite a package.

We met in high school, and two decades and five children later he's still my guy. My Mom and Dad both worked at the elementary school in our small town.

And among the many things I owe them is one simple lesson: that this is America, and every woman can walk through every door of opportunity.

My parents are here tonight, and I am so proud to be the daughter of Chuck and Sally Heath. Long ago, a young farmer and habber-dasher from Missouri followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency.

A writer observed: "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity." I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman.

I grew up with those people.

They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America ... who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars.

They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town.

I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better.

When I ran for city council, I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too.

Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.

And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves.

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

As for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes, and whoever is listening, John McCain is the same man. I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment.

And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.

But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people.

Politics isn't just a game of clashing parties and competing interests.

The right reason is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it.

No one expects us to agree on everything.

But we are expected to govern with integrity, good will, clear convictions, and ... a servant's heart.

I pledge to all Americans that I will carry myself in this spirit as vice president of the United States. This was the spirit that brought me to the governor's office, when I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau ... when I stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, big oil companies, and the good-ol' boys network.

Sudden and relentless reform never sits well with entrenched interests and power brokers. That's why true reform is so hard to achieve.

But with the support of the citizens of Alaska, we shook things up.

And in short order we put the government of our state back on the side of the people.

I came to office promising major ethics reform, to end the culture of self-dealing. And today, that ethics reform is the law.

While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for.

That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay.

I also drive myself to work.

And I thought we could muddle through without the governor's personal chef - although I've got to admit that sometimes my kids sure miss her. I came to office promising to control spending - by request if possible and by veto if necessary.

Senator McCain also promises to use the power of veto in defense of the public interest - and as a chief executive, I can assure you it works.

Our state budget is under control.

We have a surplus.

And I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending: nearly half a billion dollars in vetoes.

I suspended the state fuel tax, and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress.

I told the Congress "thanks, but no thanks," for that Bridge to Nowhere.

If our state wanted a bridge, we'd build it ourselves. When oil and gas prices went up dramatically, and filled up the state treasury, I sent a large share of that revenue back where it belonged - directly to the people of Alaska.

And despite fierce opposition from oil company lobbyists, who kind of liked things the way they were, we broke their monopoly on power and resources.

As governor, I insisted on competition and basic fairness to end their control of our state and return it to the people.

I fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history.

And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.

That pipeline, when the last section is laid and its valves are opened, will lead America one step farther away from dependence on dangerous foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart.

The stakes for our nation could not be higher.

When a hurricane strikes in the Gulf of Mexico, this country should not be so dependent on imported oil that we are forced to draw from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

And families cannot throw away more and more of their paychecks on gas and heating oil.

With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus, and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.

To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies ... or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia ... or that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries ... we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas.

And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we've got lots of both.

Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems - as if we all didn't know that already.

But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.

Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines ... build more new-clear plants ... create jobs with clean coal ... and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources.

We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers. I've noticed a pattern with our opponent.

Maybe you have, too.

We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers.

And there is much to like and admire about our opponent.

But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state senate.

This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed ... when the roar of the crowd fades away ... when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy ... our opponent is against producing it.

Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit.

Terrorist states are seeking new-clear weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions.

Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights? Government is too big ... he wants to grow it.

Congress spends too much ... he promises more.

Taxes are too high ... he wants to raise them. His tax increases are the fine print in his economic plan, and let me be specific.

The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes ... raise payroll taxes ... raise investment income taxes ... raise the death tax ... raise business taxes ... and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars. My sister Heather and her husband have just built a service station that's now opened for business - like millions of others who run small businesses.

How are they going to be any better off if taxes go up? Or maybe you're trying to keep your job at a plant in Michigan or Ohio ... or create jobs with clean coal from Pennsylvania or West Virginia ... or keep a small farm in the family right here in Minnesota.

How are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy? Here's how I look at the choice Americans face in this election.

In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers.

And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.

They're the ones whose names appear on laws and landmark reforms, not just on buttons and banners, or on self-designed presidential seals.

Among politicians, there is the idealism of high-flown speechmaking, in which crowds are stirringly summoned to support great things.

And then there is the idealism of those leaders, like John McCain, who actually do great things. They're the ones who are good for more than talk ... the ones we have always been able to count on to serve and defend America. Senator McCain's record of actual achievement and reform helps explain why so many special interests, lobbyists, and comfortable committee chairmen in Congress have fought the prospect of a McCain presidency - from the primary election of 2000 to this very day.

Our nominee doesn't run with the Washington herd.

He's a man who's there to serve his country, and not just his party.

A leader who's not looking for a fight, but is not afraid of one either. Harry Reid, the Majority Leader of the current do-nothing Senate, not long ago summed up his feelings about our nominee.

He said, quote, "I can't stand John McCain." Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps no accolade we hear this week is better proof that we've chosen the right man. Clearly what the Majority Leader was driving at is that he can't stand up to John McCain. That is only one more reason to take the maverick of the Senate and put him in the White House. My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of "personal discovery." This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer.

And though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, "fighting for you," let us face the matter squarely.

There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you ... in places where winning means survival and defeat means death ... and that man is John McCain. In our day, politicians have readily shared much lesser tales of adversity than the nightmare world in which this man, and others equally brave, served and suffered for their country.

It's a long way from the fear and pain and squalor of a six-by-four cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office.

But if Senator McCain is elected president, that is the journey he will have made.

It's the journey of an upright and honorable man - the kind of fellow whose name you will find on war memorials in small towns across this country, only he was among those who came home.

To the most powerful office on earth, he would bring the compassion that comes from having once been powerless ... the wisdom that comes even to the captives, by the grace of God ... the special confidence of those who have seen evil, and seen how evil is overcome. A fellow prisoner of war, a man named Tom Moe of Lancaster, Ohio, recalls looking through a pin-hole in his cell door as Lieutenant Commander John McCain was led down the hallway, by the guards, day after day.

As the story is told, "When McCain shuffled back from torturous interrogations, he would turn toward Moe's door and flash a grin and thumbs up" - as if to say, "We're going to pull through this." My fellow Americans, that is the kind of man America needs to see us through these next four years.

For a season, a gifted speaker can inspire with his words.

For a lifetime, John McCain has inspired with his deeds.

If character is the measure in this election ... and hope the theme ... and change the goal we share, then I ask you to join our cause. Join our cause and help America elect a great man as the next president of the United States.

Thank you all, and may God bless America.

Dad At Play On Sarah's Big Day - NY Post

theo — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:40:55 EDT

DAD AT PLAY ON SARAH'S BIG DAY

CENTRAL PK. FUN WITH BABY AS MOM JOINS WORLD LEADERS

By CARL CAMPANILE and KELLY MAGEE

Last updated: 9:46 am
September 24, 2008

WHEEE! ONE: Doting daddy and Alaskan "First Dude" Todd Palin lovingly cradles baby Trig, who has Down syndrome, on The Carousel in Central Park yesterday.

---

While Sarah Palin huddled behind closed doors with global leaders yesterday, hubby Todd and baby Trig took off for some real fun - on the famous carousel in Central Park.

Todd - known as Alaska's "First Dude" - was spotted on the famous ride as he joyfully cradled Trig in his arms. The 5-month-old Trig has Down syndrome.

Daughters Piper, 7, and Willow 13, were on hand, too, but pregnant Bristol Palin, 17, didn't make the trip and neither did Track, 18, who was recently assigned to military duty in Iraq.

As the media followed his wife's every move, Todd also took his brood downtown in the morning to the Statue of Liberty and Ground Zero.

On the last stop of the big-city adventure, the proud father from Alaska schlepped the kids to FAO Schwarz, where Piper enjoyed trying on some Princess dresses, the campaign said.

At Central Park, onlookers were pleasantly surprised at seeing the family of the potential next vice president.

Carousel operator Charlie Mendoza said the happy Palin clan took two rides on the horsies.

Todd then bought hot dogs, soft pretzels and ice cream for lunch and they grabbed a seat on a park bench.

"They looked happy. They all rode the carousel. They were enjoying themselves," Mendoza said.

Mendoza - who has given rides to Angelina Jolie and Robert De Niro - said he did not bar the public from going on the rides while the Palins were there.

"We don't shut down for anybody," Mendoza said.

Upper West Side resident James Soriero captured the "New York moment" with his camera while walking through Central Park.

"I heard the music from the carousel. As I approached, I saw guys that looked like Secret Service," said Soriero, an actor.

"I saw Mr. Palin holding his baby on the ride. I recognized him. I saw him [on TV] at the Republican convention," he said. "It was a fun find."

"It was charming seeing them on the carousel. You could see the joy and love. It was a unique little New York moment. I feel like I caught an unguarded moment. No one else was around."

The Palins kept a low profile at the Millennium Broadway hotel, where they were staying. The family ate breakfast in their rooms.

But there was a mob scene when Sarah Palin returned to the hotel yesterday afternoon. Tourists pulled out video cameras to film the governor.

"We love you, Sarah!" supporters yelled from behind a barricade.

The Palins will be in town through tomorrow.

carl.campanile@nypost.com

For Palin in New York, a Predebate Introduction to Motorcade Diplomacy - NY Times

theo — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:52:44 EDT

September 24, 2008

For Palin in New York, a Predebate Introduction to Motorcade Diplomacy

By MICHAEL COOPER and KATE ZERNIKE

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska met her first head of state on Tuesday as she crisscrossed New York City receiving foreign policy tutorials in advance of her debate next week with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Ms. Palin — who scheduled a series of meetings with world leaders who were in town for the United Nations General Assembly — sat down first with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who told her of the need for more troops in his country and bonded with her over his baby son, Mirwais. She was then whisked to the Colombian Mission to talk free trade and renewable energy with President Álvaro Uribe. She capped off her day meeting with the éminence grise of Republican foreign policy, former Secretary of State Henry A Kissinger, who spoke with her about Georgia, Russia and NATO.

It was Ms. Palin’s introduction to motorcade diplomacy, a lightning round of meetings and photo opportunities designed to portray Ms. Palin — who lacks much in the way of foreign policy experience, has traveled abroad little and had not met a foreign head of state before Tuesday — at ease with world leaders.

Democrats, and some Republicans, have tried to make Ms. Palin’s lack of foreign policy experience an issue in the campaign. The McCain campaign, for its part, has made three main points so far when asked about Ms. Palin’s foreign policy credentials.

It invokes geography, noting Alaska’s proximity to Russia, as Ms. Palin did when she told ABC News, “You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska.” Other times the campaign cites her résumé, noting that as governor she had been commander of the Alaska National Guard for nearly two years. And it often pivots to her work on energy policy, as Mr. McCain did last week, when he said, “I’m proud of her obvious knowledge of this nation’s energy needs, because that’s a national security issue.”

But with next week’s debate looming, the McCain-Palin campaign put her on an accelerated course in foreign policy, and scheduled meetings with world leaders and foreign policy mandarins in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday.

It was not her first trip to New York; she was here last October and visited Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg at City Hall. And while she rode from leader to leader, sometimes causing gridlock along the way, her husband, Todd, took their 5-month-old son, Trig, and two of their daughters, Willow, 14, and Piper, 7, about town. They took pictures with the Statue of Liberty in the background, ate hot dogs in Central Park and stopped in at F.A.O. Schwarz, where Piper tried on some princess dresses, the campaign said.

Ms. Palin’s morning began with a two-hour briefing at her Midtown hotel from the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. The briefings are offered as a courtesy to the presidential and vice-presidential nominees, and the campaign said she was the last of the four to receive one this year. Then it was off to the first of what was scheduled to be two days of meetings.

The point of the meetings was not so much to cram Ms. Palin full of information, according to a McCain campaign adviser who has worked with Ms. Palin, but to introduce her to people like Mr. Kissinger so that she will feel comfortable calling on them for advice and counsel as the campaign continues.

Ms. Palin was accompanied on her rounds by Randy Scheunemann, a senior foreign policy adviser to the McCain campaign, and Steve Biegun, a former staff member of President Bush’s National Security Council.

“Her primary purpose was to develop a relationship and to listen,” said Mr. Biegun, who quickly added, “I think she’s already fully prepared to be vice president.”

Visits between American officials and foreign heads of state are often perfunctory, formal affairs, and reporters are rarely let in for more than a brief photo opportunity. But the McCain-Palin campaign caused a brief rebellion among news people when it initially insisted that only camera crews could cover the first few seconds of each meeting. That proviso was reversed under pressure after the press corps threatened to boycott the events unless at least one reporter was allowed for those opening seconds as well, who could then share the information with other reporters.

Ms. Palin has been carefully shielded from the news media since she was added to the Republican ticket nearly a month ago, granting only a handful of interviews, holding no news conferences yet and exchanging only a few words with reporters on the campaign trail. (When Ms. Palin said Monday at a rally with Mr. McCain in Media, Pa., “I want to ask you a few questions, Media,” her remark was quickly e-mailed to reporters by a Democratic operative under the subject line “Irony.”)

At her first meeting Mr. Karzai spoke with Ms. Palin about the contributions of the Alaska National Guard, and said he had flown in a C-150 with some of its members, Mr. Biegun said. A television news producer who was allowed in the room for the brief photograph, or “spray,” reported that Mr. Karzai spoke of the birth of his first child last year.

“What is his name?” Ms. Palin asked.

“Mirwais,” Mr. Karzai replied. “Mirwais, which means, ‘The Light of the House.’ ”

“Oh nice,” Palin responded, at one point patting her heart.

“He is the only one we have,” Mr. Karzai said.

Later, asked how the meeting went, Mr. Karzai said, “It was fine.” Asked again, he said, “It was a very good meeting, we talked a lot about a lot of things.”

The next stop was with Mr. Uribe of Colombia, who has a warm relationship with Mr. McCain, who paid him a visit in an extremely unusual campaign trip to Colombia over the summer to express support for a free trade agreement.

Ms. Palin wrapped up the day with Mr. Kissinger, where Mr. Biegun said the two discussed China, Iran and Russia, among other things. As photographers were led in to take pictures of them, Mr. Kissinger could be heard saying that he gave someone — just who was unintelligible — “a lot of credit for what he did in Georgia,” according to the reporter who was allowed to watch.

“Good, good,” Ms. Palin said. “And you’ll give me more insight on that, also, huh? Good.”

The photographers were ushered out. When Ms. Palin emerged from the building, a news producer asked her how it went, and she mouthed the words, “It was great.”

Neil MacFarquhar and Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

McCain Aide's Firm Was Paid By Freddie Mac - International Herald Tribune

theo — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:37:13 EDT

McCain aide's firm was paid by Freddie Mac

By Jackie Calmes and David D. Kirkpatrick
Wednesday, September 24, 2008

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

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

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

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

Davis took a leave from Davis & Manafort for the duration of the campaign, but as a partner and equity-holder continues to share in its profits.

A Freddie Mac spokeswoman said the company would not comment. The McCain campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

McCain's campaign has been attacking l Senator Barack Obama, his Democratic rival, for his ties to former officials of the mortgage lenders, both of which have long histories of cultivating allies in the two parties to fend off efforts to restrict their activities. McCain has been running a television commercial suggesting that Obama takes advice on housing issues from Franklin Raines, a former chief executive of Fannie Mae, a contention flatly denied by Raines and the Obama campaign. Freddie Mac's roughly $500,000 in payments to Davis & Manafort began immediately after Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in late 2005 disbanded an advocacy coalition that they had set up and hired Davis to run, the people familiar with the arrangement said.

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

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

Such assertions, along with McCain campaign television ads tying Obama to former Fannie Mae chiefs, have riled current and former officials of the two companies and provoked them to volunteer rebuttals of what they see as the McCain campaign's inaccuracy and hypocrisy. The two officials with direct knowledge of Freddie Mac's post-2005 contract with Davis spoke on condition of anonymity. One is a Democrat and the other a registered independent. Four other outside consultants, three Democrats and a Republican also speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that it was widely known that Davis was being paid though his firm.

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

On Monday, the McCain campaign accused The New York Times of bias for reporting the payments to Davis from the mortgage giants. Davis said that had worked not for the two companies but for the advocacy group, which included other nonprofit organization as well.

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

Davis was hired as a consultant, not a lobbyist, the officials said. Davis & Manafort in recent years has filed federal lobbying reports for a number of companies, including SBC Telecommunications, Fruit of the Loom, Comsat, Gtech, Airborne Express, BellSouth and Verizon—all businesses with legislative interests before the Senate Commerce Committee, where McCain has been chairman or senior Republican. It has filed no reports registering to lobby for Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae.

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

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

A Freddie Mac executive said that as the event was being planned, and organizers were looking for a speaker from each party, "People at the office were saying, 'Well, we have Rick Davis on contract and we never use him for anything. Why don't we at least get him up here to talk like he knows what's going on in the campaigns?"

It was not unusual for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to have well-connected people from both parties on their payrolls, but doing little work, in the high-flying days. The purpose, people who worked at the companies said, was bipartisan insurance against new regulations or loss of the implicit government guarantee, which seemed at risk during both the Clinton and current Bush administrations.

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

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

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

In an interview Tuesday with conservative talk-radio host Neal Boortz, McCain said, "I remember warning at that time that Fannie and Freddie were out of control and that they needed to be reined in. And, frankly, I warned that this kind of thing could lead to serious problems. Now, in full disclosure, I didn't foresee something this huge, but certainly I saw the fundamentals there for serious problems when you have a quasi government agency acting the way they did."

When Boortz noted approvingly that McCain had co-sponsored a Senate bill to mandate new regulations, McCain said, "I remember it very well."

But a Freddie Mac official said McCain "never took on the role that some other Republicans did" to try to limit the companies. He named instead Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, John Sununu of New Hampshire and Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, all of whom were on the banking committee during recent years. "I remember working against a number of amendments and they were always introduced by Hagel and Sununu. John McCain was never anywhere to be found."

A check of the records for the legislation that Boortz mentioned shows that Senator Hagel was the original sponsor on Jan. 26, 2005, and Senators Sununu and Dole were co-sponsors then. McCain did not sign on as a co-sponsor for more than a year, on May 25, 2006.

Palin begins course on foreign affairs - Financial Times

theo — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:15:01 EDT

Palin begins course on foreign affairs

By Harvey Morris Published: September 23 2008 21:11 | Last updated: September 23 2008 21:11

Sarah Palin was on the fringes of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday at the start of a three-day crash course on international affairs to address concerns, even within her Republican party, that the Alaska governor’s knowledge of the outside world is shaky. The schedule of the vice-presidential nominee included meetings with five presidents, a prime minister, Henry Kissinger, doyen of former US secretaries of state, and Bono, the fund-raising activist. Organisers of an anti-Iran rally protesting against the presence at the General Assembly debate of President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad withdrew an invitation for Ms Palin to attend. Hillary Clinton had already pulled out after she learned Ms Palin had also been invited. Ms Palin’s first meeting on Tuesday was with Hamid Karzai, the US-backed president of Afghanistan, whose government is fighting a resurgent Taliban with the support of US and other international forces. Detailed examination of the problems facing Afghanistan will be at the top of the list of foreign policy concerns for the next US administration. Ms Palin’s meeting with Mr Karzai and other world leaders, however, was expected at this stage to be on the level of “meet-and-greet”. The Afghan leader was also due to have a more substantial meeting with Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state. Ms Palin has been ridiculed by her Democratic opponents for having obtained her first passport only last year. They have also claimed the visit she had paid to Iraq – a visit to a checkpoint at the Kuwaiti border – hardly qualified her as an expert on a conflict that posed the most serious challenge of the outgoing administration. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, is promoting his knowledge of international affairs as a selling point in his campaign, playing down the disadvantages of his running mate’s relative lack of experience. Her meeting with Mr Kissinger was to bring her face-to-face with the man who personifies old-style Republican pragmatism in foreign affairs, a trend that has been making a comeback in the closing years of the Bush administration. On one issue confronting the international community, however, the two running mates appear to be at odds – climate change. While Mr McCain has embraced the view that people are responsible for climate, she has focused policies in her native Alaska on adapting to global warming rather than fighting it.

McCain still seeking firm footing on crisis - Politico

theo — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:51:44 EDT

McCain still seeking firm footing on crisis
By: Ben Smith
September 22, 2008 02:08 PM EST

With just four days until the first presidential debate and just 42 days until the November 4 election, Senator John McCain is still feeling for his footing on the financial crisis that seems likely to consume the rest of the presidential campaign.

A McCain aide told reporters last night that the Republican nominee would distance himself from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s trillion-dollar bailout plan, saying it lacks “oversight.” And McCain in a “60 Minutes” interview Sunday Night floated the name of Andrew Cuomo, the confrontational Democratic New York attorney general, as the chairman of a tough new Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Sunday night proposals were the latest in a series of attempts by McCain to draw a dramatic contrast between himself and President George W. Bush as the campaign appeared to shift decisively away from his chosen turf of culture wars and national security, and toward the economy. Obama, for his part, will have a final chance this week to duct tape McCain to the economic crisis and an unpopular president, and bury him in the flood of bad economic news.

But as McCain tries to regain his grip on the campaign narrative, and Obama adopts a more reserved posture his campaign hopes appears “presidential,” both men are struggling with their sheer irrelevance to the fast-moving wrangle between the White House, Congress, and the turbulent stock markets.

“The events are bigger than the candidates,” said Phil Singer, a former aide to Hillary Clinton.

The two candidates’ stances, though, reveal the degree to which this appears to offer Obama – who has regained his narrow lead in most national polls – a chance to pull away.

McCain has scheduled a series of attention-getting gestures: He has scheduled a round of meetings for his running mate, Sarah Palin, with foreign leaders at the United Nations. He’ll share a stage with Bill Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York. And he’s turning to a time-tested method of changing the storyline for a beleaguered presidential candidate: He plans to appear Wednesday on the Late Show with David Letterman.

“I have great respect for Secretary Paulson, but I am greatly concerned that the plan gives a single individual the unprecedented power to spend $1 trillion - trillion - dollars on the basis of not much more than ‘trust me,’” McCain will say Monday, according to an aide. “We will not solve a problem caused by poor oversight with a plan that has no oversight.”

As McCain has struggled to find his balance, Obama has been a steady, relatively low-key presence on the economic crisis. Where McCain offered his own rescue plan, Obama has demurred, saying he doesn’t want to meddle. Like McCain, he’s expressed a skepticism on the margins of the rescue plan. With other Democrats, he’ll push for it to include a domestic stimulus package, though it’s unclear how far he will stand with his party if negotiations turn into a partisan battle.

But he and his running mate, Joe Biden, sought to project a measured and steady hand Friday, a deliberate contrast to McCain.

“There’s all kinds of ideas and Barack and I are putting together a plan,” Biden said in Sterling, Va., Friday. “You can’t do this haphazardly. It’s important to get done thoughtfully so we never repeat this again.”

McCain attacked Obama for having “declined to put forth a plan of his own” in a speech Sunday to a National Guard convention in Baltimore.

“At a time of crisis, when leadership is needed, Senator Obama has simply not provided it,” he said.

McCain’s own plan for a new institution to lead the bailout appears to have been entirely ignored in Washington.

Obama, meanwhile, has chosen targets of opportunity. His campaign attacked McCain in Michigan Sunday for owning Japanese and German cars despite bragging about buying American. And Obama seized on McCain’s suggestion, in an obscure actuarial magazine, that a move to free banking from state regulators ought to be emulated in the health care sector.

“Here’s the really scary part. Now this ‘Great Deregulator’ wants to turn his attention to health care,” Obama said in Charlotte, N.C. Sunday, quoting from the article.

“That’s right, John McCain says he wants to do for health care what Washington has done for banking.”

Obama will spend much of this week in Florida, preparing for Friday night’s debate in Oxford, Miss.

The bright spot for McCain this week, meanwhile, is likely to be Palin, who drew tens of thousands to a Florida rally Sunday. Images of her meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and others, are sure to dominate the news this week.

But Palin was resolutely vague on the economy at Sunday’s massive rally at The Villages in central Florida. She offered general praise for small business and low taxes, and echoed McCain’s swipes at regulators, saying, “we don’t need a dozen agencies doing the job badly, we need the best agencies doing the job right.”

And she testified to the quality McCain has been seeking, with increasing urgency, to project: command of the economy. "Truly there is only man with the wisdom and experience to fix our economy and that man is John McCain,” Palin said.

Carrie Budoff Brown, Victoria McGrane, Amie Parnes and Kenneth P. Vogel contributed to this report.

The Sarah Palin Phenomenon Is Doomed - CBS News, MarketWatch

theo — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:55:14 EDT

The Sarah Palin Phenomenon Is Doomed
NEW YORK, Sept. 15, 2008(MarketWatch) This column was written by MarketWatch's Jon Friedman.

The Sarah Palin Phenomenon is doomed.

But it's not because of her lack of foreign policy experience or her deer-in-the-headlights look during part of her interview last week with ABC's Charles Gibson.

The primary reason why the Palin bubble will burst is that the media will decide that they are bored with her. They'll need to move to shine a light on a fresh issue or individual.

This is how the world works in the age of 24/7 news cycles. Whether the subject is Britney Spears, Michael Jordan or Sarah Palin, we inevitably raise stars to mythic levels, out of all reasonable proportions. Then we knock them down. (Look out, Michael Phelps. Your time is coming, too.)

It isn't a case of quixotic behavior by reporters and editors. Internet sites, blogs and cable news operations all thrive on presenting fresh headlines and updated story angles as often as possible so readers think we're on top of things. The news world moves at warp speed.

Palin's story is especially captivating because she emerged as an overnight sensation. The governor of Alaska was virtually unknown on the national scene before Sen. John McCain tapped her to be his running mate. Amid the media crush accompanying her rise, it now seems as if Palin has been around forever.

For as long as she has been in the public eye, people have been skeptical about her qualifications, but the allure of her beginner's pluck catapulted Palin to the covers of magazines ranging from Time to People.

The interview with Gibson may be remembered as the first brick being pulled out of the wall. The reviews weren't favorable from the media in the segments when Gibson asked Palin questions about foreign policy.

For instance, the New York Times called the exchange "strained." The Washington Post-owned Slate went so far as to say that "The ABC News anchor flummoxes the GOP amateur."

I'll be interested to see how Palin -- not to mention McCain and the Republican campaign machine -- reacts when the media's disillusionment sets in for real. Their actions may determine the course of the 2008 race.

If they handle the media's about-face with aplomb, her chances of looking, well, vice-presidential will be enhanced. But if Palin's handlers blow it out of proportion and show a strain, their behavior will reflect negatively on her.

Gibson, as dignified a newsperson as America has now, treated Palin fairly and didn't resort to hectoring her with "gotcha" questions, either.

Palin's supporters may be chagrined that their candidate didn't sound more self-assured or expert when she discussed Alaska's relationship to Russia. But Gibson didn't try to trip her up. He pretty much asked the kinds of questions I would have put to Palin as well.

Gibson treated her with the respect befitting a vice presidential candidate. ABC, while discussing the interview Friday on "Good Morning America" unleashed political correspondent Jake Tapper to assess the "truthiness" of Palin's remarks on the ABC show.

The television networks appear to be treating Palin carefully, trying hard not to seem sexist or liberal or come across as intellectual, big-city bullies.

When ABC noted that Tapper had found a few holes in Palin's comments (though nothing earth shattering), the network took pains to add that it, too, would be dissecting the statements of Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

Specifically, Palin seemed to have little idea about the Bush Doctrine, in which the U.S must spread democracy around the world to halt terrorist acts. When Gibson put it to her and asked if she agreed with the doctrine, she answered, "In what respect, Charlie?"

Some analysts have suggested that Gibson knew more about the Bush Doctrine than the vice-presidential candidate.

"She sidestepped questions on whether she had the national security credentials needed to be commander-in-chef," the Associated Press noted.

Since we're all clear on the nuances of the Bush Doctrine, we can move on to the Fickle Media Doctrine.

Now that we've built you up, it's about time for us to knock you down.

Can Sarah Palin withstand the body blows that are being inflicted by the national media?

The media aren't the bad guys in the Palin discussion. It's easy to accuse us of acting like sexists or big-city egomaniacs. Let's be real, though. McCain selected Palin for exactly those reasons - because she is a woman from a little-known state, who can take some of the heat off McCain and behave like an attack dog against Barack Obama. So far, the Republicans' plan has worked to perfection, as Palin has dominated the political discourse over the past few weeks. Now we'll see if she has the right stuff to go the distance.

By Jon Friedman
Copyright © 2007 MarketWatch, Inc. All rights reserved

McCain plans new Palin rollout - Politicio

theo — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:18:10 EDT

McCain plans new Palin rollout
By: Mike Allen - Politicio
September 8, 2008 07:56 PM EST

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will speak at her son’s Army deployment ceremony on 9/11 and spend two days with ABC News crews later this week as part of a McCain campaign plan to increase Americans’ comfort with her as a leader.

Campaign and network officials had said on Sunday that her first television interview would be a sit-down with Charles Gibson of ABC’s “World News.”

But it turns out that she is spending much of Thursday and Friday with Gibson — at the ceremony in Fairbanks, Alaska, and at her home in Wasilla, Alaska.

Campaign aides said the anchorman will get extensive, repeated access to Palin throughout her first trip home since becoming the nominee.

“ABC News will have plenty of time to question her and examine her and spend time with her,” a campaign official said. “They’ll do multiple interviews over two days. No topics are off-limits – there are no ground rules. There’s tons of time to talk to her about every topic.”

The remarkable rollout reflects new confidence in Palin by her handlers, who initially had suggested it would be a while before she did interviews. Now, there will be several.

Until now, Palin has been "sequestered," as Sen. Joseph Biden (Del.), her Democratic counterpart, put it on NBC's "Meet the Press" — delivering rousing speeches, but not giving interviews or holding news conferences or answering questions on the fly. She was the only one of the four national candidates not to appear on a Sunday show this weekend.

“Once you start, you don’t stop,” a Republican official said with a chuckle. “That doesn’t mean you run the faucet on high. But once you turn it on, you don’t really ever turn it off.”

The strategy carries risk. ABC is war-gaming tough questions – not gotchas, but some requiring policy knowledge — with the thoroughness that a network prepares for a debate.

The remarkable offer to ABC, made last Friday, is part of an ambitious project to sell Palin well beyond the right — to a broad swath of women and independent voters, including former supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

“I see women right at the forefront of that, but not exclusively,” a campaign adviser said.

The official said Gibson will have the chance to “speak to her on 9/11 about her ideas for keeping America safe in the future; to speak to her as she goes back to Wasilla, where she grew up, about her life and her views and her vision for the country.”

Two interviews with Gibson are planned for Thursday, including a conversation about her support for a natural-gas pipeline – a key applause line in her convention speech. Then on Friday, Palin will spend “as much time as both parties need” in Wasilla and Anchorage, the official said. She will fly into Anchorage and then drive to Wasilla.

Palin riveted last week’s Republican National Convention with a witty, rousing speech, and has injected huge excitement into the party’s ticket in the 10 days since Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) named her as his surprise pick for running mate.

“People don’t understand how to cover women politicians in a way that is completely fair and enlightened yet,” the official said. “And somehow, she has managed to transcend that.”

Christian conservatives were immediately thrilled by McCain’s choice, and his events took on new electricity.

Asked to describe her appeal, one official said: “I think she is accessible. I think she is honest. I think she is real, and I think she is fearless. In Alaska, she has been such a target because she has always fought for the interests of her constituents, because they’re her neighbors.”

The campaign adviser said: “She’s just this real, identifiable, approachable, funny, smart woman.”

Officials wouldn’t say how the ABC anchor was chosen. “There were lots of tremendous and credible and fair journalists to choose from,” an aide said. “Somebody had to go first.”

How Much Is Cindy McCain's $300,000 Outfit Really Worth? by Vanity Fair

theo — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:57:20 EDT

How Much Is Cindy McCain's $300,000 Outfit Really Worth? by Vanity Fair

September 6, 2008, 12:27 PM

Last week, the Vanity Fair fashion department priced out the ensemble Cindy McCain wore to the Republican National Convention. Far be it from those of us at V.F. to criticize people for buying fancy clothes (you've met our advertisers, right?), but even we were astonished when the estimate came back: thanks to a pair of earrings our expert valued at roughly $280,000, the prospective First Lady's get-up appeared was assessed at approximately $300,000!

That got us thinking: what does $300,000 mean to Americans who don't have the luxury of inheriting a gargantuan beer fortune?

To Cindy McCain, $300,000 is the price of an outfit.

To most Americans, $300,000 buys ...

... one and a half houses, given the national median home price of $206,500.

... a year's worth of health care for 750 people.

... the full array of back-to-school supplies and clothes for 500 kids.

... enough gas to drive cross-country 543 times.

... 365 round-trip flights from Washington, D.C., to Anchorage, Alaska.

(John McCain should have splurged on at least one.)

... a three-course steak dinner (at Mat-su Resort) and a movie ticket (for the Mat-su Cinema) for every man, woman, and child in Wasilla, Alaska.

... enough money for three Troopergate investigations

Palin fuses politics and motherhood in new way - International Herald Tribune

theo — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:11:14 EDT

Palin fuses politics and motherhood in new way

International Herald Tribune

By Jodi Kantor, Kate Zernike and Catrin Einhorn

Monday, September 8, 2008

Sarah Palin's baby shower included a surprise guest: her own baby. He had arrived in the world a month early, so on a sunny May day, Palin, the governor of Alaska, rocked her newborn as her closest friends, sisters, even her obstetrician presented her with a potluck meal, presents and blue-and-white cake.

Most had learned that Palin was pregnant only a few weeks before. Struggling to accept that her child would be born with Down syndrome and fearful of public criticism of a governor's pregnancy, Palin had concealed the news that she was expecting even from her parents and children until her third trimester.

But as the governor introduced her son that day, according to a friend, Kristan Cole, she said she had come to regard him as a blessing from God. "Who of us in this room has the perfect child?" said Palin, who declined to be interviewed for this article.

Since that day, Trig Paxson Van Palin, still only 143 days old, has had an unexpected effect on his mother's political fortunes. Before her son was born, Palin went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that his arrival would not compromise her work. She hid the pregnancy. She traveled to Texas a month before her due date to give an important speech, delivering it even though her amniotic fluid was leaking. Three days after giving birth, she returned to work.

But with Trig in her arms, Palin has risen higher than ever. Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, says he selected her as his running mate because of her image as a reformer, but she is also making motherhood an explicit part of her appeal, running as a self-proclaimed hockey mom. In just a few months, she has gone from hiding her pregnancy from those closest to her to toting her infant on stage at the Republican National Convention.

No one has ever tried to combine presidential politics and motherhood in quite the way Palin is doing, and it is no simple task. In the last week, the criticism she feared in Alaska has exploded into a national debate. On blogs and at PTA meetings, voters alternately cheer and fault her balancing act, and although many are thrilled to see a child with special needs in the spotlight, some accuse her of exploiting Trig for political gain.

But her son has given Palin, 44, a powerful message. Other candidates kiss strangers' babies; Palin has one of her own. He is tangible proof of Palin's anti-abortion convictions, which have rallied social conservatives, and her belief that women can balance family life with ambitious careers. And on Wednesday in St. Paul, she proclaimed herself a guardian of the nation's disabled children.

"Children with special needs inspire a special love," Palin said, echoing the message she had shared at the shower.

A New Turn

By last winter, Palin seemed to have everything she had ever wanted. She had raised four children while turning herself into a rising star of the Republican Party of Alaska and then the national one. But then the still-new governor discovered she was pregnant. Piper, the youngest of the Palin brood, was 6. The family had long since given away their crib and high chair.

A few weeks later, after an amniocentesis — a prenatal test to identify genetic defects — Palin learned the results. Some abortion opponents decline such tests, but as her older sister, Heather Bruce, said, Palin "likes to be prepared." With her husband, Todd, away at his job in the oil fields of the North Slope, Palin told no one for three days, she later said.

Once they reunited, the Palins struggled to understand what they would face. Children with Down syndrome experience varying degrees of cognitive disability and a higher-than-average risk of hearing loss, hypothyroidism and seizure disorders. About half are born with heart defects, which often require surgery.

The couple decided to keep quiet about the pregnancy so they could absorb the news, they told people later.

And there were political factors to consider. "I didn't want Alaskans to fear I would not be able to fulfill my duties," Palin told People magazine last week.

The governor, thin to begin with, began an elaborate game of fashion-assisted camouflage. When Vogue photographed her, five months pregnant, for a profile in January, she hid in a big green parka. At work, she wore long, loose blazers and artfully draped accessories.

"All of a sudden she had this penchant for really beautiful scarves," recalled Angelina Burney, who works across the hallway from the governor in Anchorage.

As Palin's clothes grew tighter, Alaskans began to talk. She told several aides that she was pregnant, and a week or so later, her parents and her children, who called other relatives.

On March 5, as she was leaving her office for a reception, she shared the news with three reporters.

"We're expanding," the governor said brightly, said the deputy press secretary, Sharon Leighow.

"You're expanding state government?" one of the reporters asked.

"No, my family's expanding," she said. "I'm pregnant."

The trio fell silent, dropping their eyes from the governor's face to her belly.

"You're kidding," one finally mustered.

She assured them she would not take much time off: she had returned to work the day after giving birth to Piper, the child in tow. "To any critics who say a woman can't think and work and carry a baby at the same time," she said, "I'd just like to escort that Neanderthal back to the cave."

There was no mention of the baby's condition. Instead, she joked about giving her child the middle name Van, since Van Palin would sound sort of like the hard rock band Van Halen.

The next day, her office issued a minimalist masterpiece of a press release, conveying the news in three curt sentences.

In private, the Palins slowly started to share the Down syndrome diagnosis. They wrote a long letter to Bruce, Palin's sister, who has an autistic son, explaining how they had come to embrace the challenges their baby would bring.

A Big Speech

In mid-April, Palin and her husband flew to Texas for an energy conference with fellow Republican governors. Days before, Palin, a little-known governor from a faraway state, was asked to speak to her peers.

Around 4 a.m. on the day of her presentation, Palin stirred in her hotel room to an unusual sensation. According to The Anchorage Daily News, she was leaking amniotic fluid. She woke her husband and called her doctor back home. Go ahead and give the speech, said the doctor, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, who declined to comment for this article.

So Palin marched through the day. At a news conference, a reporter asked the six Republican governors present to raise their hands if they would refuse to serve as McCain's vice-presidential nominee. Palin was one of two who kept their hands down.

In her lunchtime speech, Palin held forth on the trillions of cubic feet of gas in the Alaskan Arctic, competitive bidding over pipeline construction and natural gas combustion. As she left the podium, Governor Rick Perry of Texas joked, "You're not going to give birth, are you?"

Palin just laughed.

"Nobody knew a thing," said Governor Linda Lingle of Hawaii. "I only found out from my security detail on the way home that she had gone into labor and that she had gone home to Alaska."

In fact, Palin was not in labor, and her doctor thought she had time. So the governor flew to Seattle, continued to Anchorage and then drove to a small hospital near her hometown, Wasilla — a journey of at least 10 hours.

"She wanted to get back to Alaska to have that baby," said a friend, Curtis Menard. "Man, that is one tough lady."

A woman with symptoms like Palin's should be examined to determine her condition, said Dr. Laura Riley of Massachusetts General Hospital. The long trip home could have posed a risk, "but the odds were still in her favor that everything would be O.K.," said Susan Gerber of Northwestern University.

When Palin arrived at the hospital, she was still not in labor, so her doctor induced it, Bruce said. Trig was born early the next morning, weighing 6 pounds 2 ounces.

Parents who were in the next delivery room said the scene looked like any other, with no security detail in sight. The three Palin daughters came and went, and as Todd Palin passed through the corridors, he stopped to accept congratulations.

A Discovery

Inside Palin's room, her daughter Willow, 14, immediately noticed her new brother's condition, according to People magazine. "He looks like he has Down syndrome," Willow said. "Why didn't you tell us?"

Palin had wanted to let the news of the pregnancy sink in first, said Cole, her friend. She had intended to tell her family more after she returned from Texas. Then the baby arrived.

Her hesitation gone, Palin glowed with maternal pride. "Sarah was absolutely ecstatic," said a friend, Marilyn Lane. After months of reflection and prayer, friends say, the Palins, who are Christians, had come to believe God had chosen to send them Trig.

Later that day, Palin sent an e-mail message to her relatives and close friends about her new son, Bruce said. She signed it, "Trig's Creator, Your Heavenly Father."

"Many people will express sympathy, but you don't want or need that, because Trig will be a joy," Palin wrote. She added, "Children are the most precious and promising ingredient in this mixed-up world you live in down there on Earth. Trig is no different, except he has one extra chromosome."

Palin's three-day maternity leave has now become legend among mothers. But aides say she eased back into work, first stopping by her office in Anchorage for a meeting, bringing not only the baby but also her husband to look after him.

Many high-powered parents separate work and children; Palin takes a wholly different approach. "She's the mom and the governor, and they're not separate," Cole said. Around the governor's offices, it was not uncommon to get on the elevator and discover Piper, smothering her puppy with kisses.

"She'll be with Piper or Trig, then she's got a press conference or negotiations about the natural gas pipeline or a bill to sign, and it's all business," Burney, who works across the hall, said. "She just says, 'Mommy's got to do this press conference.' "

Palin installed a travel crib in her Anchorage office and a baby swing in her Juneau one. For much of the summer, she carried Trig in a sling as she signed bills and sat through hearings, even nursing him unseen during conference calls.

Todd Palin took a leave from his job as an oil field production operator, and campaign aides said he was doing the same now.

At her baby shower, Palin joked about her months of secrecy, Lane said. "About the seventh month I thought I'd better let people know," Palin said.

"So it was really great," she continued. "I was only pregnant a month."

Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage - NY Times

theo — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:34:30 EDT

September 7, 2008 Op-Ed Columnist Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage By FRANK RICH

SARAH PALIN makes John McCain look even older than he is. And he seemed more than willing to play that part on Thursday night. By the time he slogged through his nearly 50-minute acceptance speech — longer even than Barack Obama’s — you half-expected some brazen younger Republican (Mitt Romney, perhaps?) to dash onstage to give him a gold watch and the bum’s rush.

Still, attention must be paid. McCain’s address, though largely a repetitive slew of stump-speech lines and worn G.O.P. orthodoxy, reminded us of what we once liked about the guy: his aspirations to bipartisanship, his heroic service in Vietnam, his twinkle. He took his (often inaccurate) swipes at Obama, but, in winning contrast to Palin and Rudy Giuliani, he wasn’t smug or nasty.

The only problem, of course, is that the entire thing was a sham.

As is nakedly evident, the speech’s central argument, that the 72-year-old McCain will magically morph into a powerful change agent as president, is a non sequitur. In his 26 years in Washington, most of it with a Republican in the White House and roughly half of it with Republicans in charge of Congress, he was better at lecturing his party about reform than leading a reform movement. G.O.P. corruption and governmental dysfunction only grew. So did his cynical flip-flops on the most destructive policies of the president who remained nameless Thursday night. (In the G.O.P., Bush love is now the second most popular love that dare not speak its name.)

Even more fraudulent, if that’s possible, is the contrast between McCain’s platonic presentation of his personal code of honor and the man he has become. He always puts his country first, he told us: “I’ve been called a maverick.” If there was any doubt that that McCain has fled, confirmation arrived with his last-minute embrace of Sarah Palin.

We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction.

She didn’t say “no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere” until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway. Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states). Though McCain claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard. As for her “executive experience” as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.” Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same.

How long before we learn she never shot a moose?

Given the actuarial odds that could make Palin our 45th president, it would be helpful to know who this mystery woman actually is. Meanwhile, two eternal axioms of our politics remain in place. Americans vote for the top of the ticket, not the bottom. And in judging the top of the ticket, voters look first at the candidates’ maiden executive decision, their selection of running mates. Whatever we do and don’t know about Palin’s character at this point, there is no ambiguity in what her ascent tells us about McCain’s character and potential presidency.

He wanted to choose the pro-abortion-rights Joe Lieberman as his vice president. If he were still a true maverick, he would have done so. But instead he chose partisanship and politics over country. “God only made one John McCain, and he is his own man,” said the shafted Lieberman in his own tedious convention speech last week. What a pathetic dupe. McCain is now the man of James Dobson and Tony Perkins. The “no surrender” warrior surrendered to the agents of intolerance not just by dumping his pal for Palin but by moving so far to the right on abortion that even Cindy McCain seemed unaware of his radical shift when being interviewed by Katie Couric last week.

That ideological sellout, unfortunately, was not the worst leadership trait the last-minute vice presidential pick revealed about McCain. His speed-dating of Palin reaffirmed a more dangerous personality tic that has dogged his entire career. His decision-making process is impetuous and, in its Bush-like preference for gut instinct over facts, potentially reckless.

As The New York Times reported last Tuesday, Palin was sloppily vetted, at best. McCain operatives and some of their press surrogates responded to this revelation by trying to discredit The Times article. After all, The Washington Post had cited McCain aides (including his campaign manager, Rick Davis) last weekend to assure us that Palin had a “full vetting process.” She had been subjected to “an F.B.I. background check,” we were told, and “the McCain camp had reviewed everything it could find on her.”

The Times had it right. The McCain campaign’s claims of a “full vetting process” for Palin were as much a lie as the biographical details they’ve invented for her. There was no F.B.I. background check. The Times found no evidence that a McCain representative spoke to anyone in the State Legislature or business community. Nor did anyone talk to the fired state public safety commissioner at the center of the Palin ethics investigation. No McCain researcher even bothered to consult the relevant back issues of the Wasilla paper. Apparently when McCain said in June that his vice presidential vetting process was basically “a Google,” he wasn’t joking.

This is a roll of the dice beyond even Bill Clinton’s imagination. “Often my haste is a mistake,” McCain conceded in his 2002 memoir, “but I live with the consequences without complaint.” Well, maybe it’s fine if he wants to live with the consequences, but what about his country? Should the unexamined Palin prove unfit to serve at the pinnacle of American power, it will be too late for the rest of us to complain.

We’ve already seen where such visceral decision-making by McCain can lead. In October 2001, he speculated that Saddam Hussein might have been behind the anthrax attacks in America. That same month he out-Cheneyed Cheney in his repeated public insistence that Iraq had a role in 9/11 — even after both American and foreign intelligence services found that unlikely. He was similarly rash in his reading of the supposed evidence of Saddam’s W.M.D. and in his estimate of the number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. (McCain told MSNBC in late 2001 that we could do with fewer than 100,000.) It wasn’t until months after “Mission Accomplished” that he called for more American forces to be tossed into the bloodbath. The whole fiasco might have been prevented had he listened to those like Gen. Eric Shinseki who faulted the Rumsfeld war plan from the start.

In other words, McCain’s hasty vetting of Palin was all too reminiscent of his grave dereliction of due diligence on the war. He has been no less hasty in implying that we might somehow ride to the military rescue of Georgia (“Today, we are all Georgians”) or in reaffirming as late as December 2007 that the crumbling anti-democratic regime of Pervez Musharraf deserved “the benefit of the doubt” even as it was enabling the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. McCain’s blanket endorsement of Bush administration policy in Pakistan could have consequences for years to come.

“This election is not about issues” so much as the candidates’ images, said the McCain campaign manager, Davis, in one of the season’s most notable pronouncements. Going into the Republican convention, we thought we knew what he meant: the McCain strategy is about tearing down Obama. But last week made clear that the McCain campaign will be equally ruthless about deflecting attention from its own candidate’s deterioration.

What was most striking about McCain’s acceptance speech is that it had almost nothing in common with the strident right-wing convention that preceded it. We were pointedly given a rerun of McCain 2000 — cobbled together from scraps of the old Straight Talk repertory. The ensuing tedium was in all likelihood intentional. It’s in the campaign’s interest that we nod off and assume McCain is unchanged in 2008.

That’s why the Palin choice was brilliant politics — not because it rallied the G.O.P.’s shrinking religious-right base. America loves nothing more than a new celebrity face, and the talking heads marched in lock step last week to proclaim her a star. Palin is a high-energy distraction from the top of the ticket, even if the provenance of her stardom is in itself a reflection of exactly what’s frightening about the top of the ticket.

By hurling charges of sexism and elitism at any easily cowed journalist who raises a question about Palin, McCain operatives are hoping to ensure that whatever happened in Alaska with Sarah Palin stays in Alaska. Given how little vetting McCain himself has received this year — and that only 58 days remain until Nov. 4 — they just might pull it off.

From Fox News... McCain Camp ‘Rescues’ Flags From Obama Rally

theo — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 03:56:33 EDT

McCain Camp ‘Rescues’ Flags From Obama Rally

by FOXNews.com Saturday, September 6, 2008

---

Democrats are not caring for their Stars and Stripes. At least that’s the message out of John McCain’s campaign.

McCain supporters, claiming they rescued 12,000 miniature American flags from the site of Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech last Thursday, redistributed the orphan flags to audience members ahead of a McCain rally in Colorado Springs on Saturday.

The move was an overt swipe at Obama from a campaign whose motto has been “country first.” But Democratic convention organizers claimed the flags were not going to be discarded — but instead were snatched from the site of Obama’s historic address to carry out a “cheap political stunt.”

McCain supporters said the flags were discovered by a vendor at Denver’s Invesco Field after the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention. The vendor supposedly found trash bags full of flags in and near garbage bins, and turned them over to the McCain campaign.

Boy Scouts were sorting through 84 bags of flags in Colorado on Saturday, before a McCain supporter had veterans distribute them to the audience.

“We want to find good homes for these flags,” radio host Dan Caplis said at the rally, adding that whatever flags remained would be placed at memorials throughout Colorado.

Audience members, who booed when Caplis announced that the flags were left in Denver, waved the flags and chanted “U.S.A” before McCain arrived at the rally with his running mate, Sarah Palin.

Damon Jones, spokesman for the Democratic National Convention Committee, released a statement saying McCain should applaud the fact that thousands of American flags were “proudly waved” at their convention.

“But instead his supporters wrongfully took leftover bundles of our flags from the stadium to play out a cheap political stunt calling into question our patriotism,” he said.

Obama has faced attacks on his patriotism since the beginning of the Democratic primary race and has set up a Web site specifically designed to fight such charges.

The McCain campaign has denied questioning Obama’s patriotism, and even released a statement Friday calling Obama’s most recent comments on the matter “hysterical.”

Obama said Friday that Republicans are trying to make the election a personality contest, and that “what they’re really saying is ‘we’re going to try to scare people about Barack. So we’re going to say that you know, ‘Maybe he’s got Muslim connections or we’re going to say that, you know, he hangs out with radicals or he’s not patriotic.’”

U.S. Code says the proper method for disposing of an American flag is actually burning, provided it is “no longer a fitting emblem for display.”

The United States Flag Store, which sells full-sized and miniature flags, says on its Web site that flags can also be put in the trash, when they are “worn, damaged or tattered beyond repair.”

FOX News’ Carl Cameron and Bonney Kapp contributed to this report.

Random Thoughts from Michael Moore

theo — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:51:43 EDT

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
Random Thoughts from Michael Moore

Senator McCain Cuts and Runs, Governor Palin's "Labor" Day, and a New Hurricane Called, Um, Ike? Who Writes This Stuff?

Well, I guess God got my email and answered my prayer. Man, the power of the Internet! He even emailed me back! I'll share that with you in the next few days. Proof there is a God in heaven? Never explain comedy or satire or the ironic comment. Those who get it, get it. Those who don't, never will...

John McCain said "it's time to take our Republican hats off and put our American hats on." Really? It would have been nice if Sen. McCain had put on his American hat in the three years since Katrina. Just so no one is fooled by all his fake concern for the people on the Gulf Coast, let's look at his record post-Katrina, compliments of Chris Hayes of The Nation:

If (McCain) cared about New Orleans and the Gulf Coast he could have done something these past three years. He could have made Gulf Reconstruction his issue, he could have excoriated his party for pushing federal dollars into the hands of cronies, for providing inadequate resources, for allowing the further destruction of the wetlands that serve as the only natural barrier to storm surges. He could have taken on the insurance companies that have been serially screwing the residents of the gulf. But he was too busy pushing for more troops, and more war and running for president.

Instead this is his record [via Mother Jones]:

Though McCain issued a statement the next week (after Katrina) calling on Congress to make sacrifices in order to fund recovery efforts, he was quoted in The New Leader on September 1 [2005] cautioning against over-spending in support of Katrina's victims. "We also have to be concerned about future generations of Americans," he said. "We're going to end up with the highest deficit, probably, in the history of this country."

That attitude was borne out in McCain's actions and votes. Forty Senators and 100 members of Congress visited New Orleans before he did; he finally got there in March 2006. He voted against establishing a Congressional commission to examine the Federal, State, and local responses to Katrina in med-September 2005. He repeated that vote in 2006. He voted against allowing up to 52 weeks of unemployment benefits to people affected by the hurricane, and in 2006 voted against appropriating $109 billion in supplemental emergency funding, including $28 billion for hurricane relief.

So honestly, it's an insult to watch him make a show of concern now. ...

The possibility of a storm (a storm that never hit New Orleans, and was no longer a hurricane by last night) was enough for McCain to essentially cancel most of the first day of the convention. Cut and run? The AP reported yesterday that conventions have always been held when the nation was facing perilous moments. Right smack in the middle of World War II, the Republicans and the Democrats both held full conventions. Thousands of Americans were being killed every week. The Republicans held their convention in Chicago less than two weeks after D-Day. No one faulted them for that. In fact, it made Americans feel good that, no matter what happens, NOTHING stops Democracy. No retreat, no surrender...

So McCain and company used the hurricane for political advantage, to have an excuse to not have Bush and Cheney live and in person in St. Paul (Bush will appear Tuesday night via satellite). And he used the hurricane as a chance to release a potentially controversial story in the hopes that the hurricane would dominate the news and not many would notice. One hour after Gustav hit land, the McCain campaign announced that Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's teenage daughter is pregnant. I don't want to say much more beyond this, as I agree with Barack Obama that "people's families are off limits, and people's children are especially off limits."

I do feel very sorry that this minor, this child, now has to have her privacy sacrificed because her mother accepted an offer to run for VP. Obama's right -- the children are off limits. I remember when John McCain cruelly trashed Chelsea Clinton when she was a child in the White House. He told reporters that she was "ugly" "because her father is Janet Reno." Of course, McCain would like us now to accord Palin's daughter the respect he wouldn't give Chelsea.

This does not mean that a discussion about the stupidity of "abstinence-only" sex ed classes is off the table; nor should we not talk about the right of a teenager to terminate a pregnancy (a right that has been essentially eliminated as the Supreme Court believes forcing a child to have a child against its will is not a form of child abuse), or Gov. Palin's desire to make abortion illegal for anyone who is raped or a victim of incest.* She's "proud" of her daughter's "decision to have her baby." Uh-huh. Ok...

Word comes tonight that McCain's people lied about Palin being vetted -- the FBI has admitted they did NOT vet her. So McCain has dispatched ten operatives and investigators to Alaska to find out if there's anything else that's about to hit the fan regarding his veep pick, a woman he had run into only once in his life and then called her on her cell phone two weeks ago at the Alaska State Fair. That was it before she made the short list and was selected. McCain's radar -- honed perhaps during his own self-admitted indiscretionary phase of his life -- is telling him there's more to the Palin story. You mean things like her support of the Alaska Independence Party or being one of the directors of recently-arrested Sen. Ted Stevens' political action groups? Heck, I dunno. We shall see...

But before everyone gets all smug and self-righteous about the Palin selection, remember where you live. You live in a nation of gun owners and hunters. You live in a country where one out of three girls get pregnant before they are 20. You live in a nation of C students. Knocking Bush for being a C student only endeared him to the nation of C students. Knock Palin for having kids, for having a kid who's having a baby, for anything that is part of her normalness -- a normalness that looks very familiar to so many millions of Americans -- well, you do this at your own peril. Assuming she's still on the ticket two weeks from now, she will be a much tougher opponent than anyone expects. You live in a country that voted for Dan Quayle.

I'll close with this report on ABC tonight by investigative reporter Brian Ross. It shows Republicans in St. Paul taking off their Republican hats and putting on their American hats. In the meantime they should keep those hats ready as a new hurricane was announced today. No, not Hannah. She's already on her way to Florida for Friday. The new one is called Ike, scheduled to hit the Gulf early next week. Ike. He's the one who warned us about the "military-industrial complex."

More to come...
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

[Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Palin desires "to make abortion illegal for anyone who is raped, a victim of incest or who may die if they bring the fetus to term." A 2006 Associated Press article states, "Palin said she would support abortion only if the mother's life was in danger. When it came to her daughter, she said, 'I would choose life.' "]

An Open Letter to God, from Michael Moore

theo — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:45:05 EDT

Sunday, August 31st, 2008
An Open Letter to God, from Michael Moore

Dear God,

The other night, James Dobson's organization asked all believers to pray for a storm on Thursday night so that the Obama acceptance speech outdoors in Denver would have to be canceled.

I see that You have answered Dr. Dobson's prayers -- except the storm You have sent to earth is not over Denver, but on its way to New Orleans! In fact, You have scheduled it to hit Louisiana at exactly the moment that George W. Bush is to deliver his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Now, heavenly Father, we all know You have a great sense of humor and impeccable timing. To send a hurricane on the third anniversary of the Katrina disaster AND right at the beginning of the Republican Convention was, at first blush, a stroke of divine irony. I don't blame You, I know You're angry that the Republicans tried to blame YOU for Katrina by calling it an "Act of God" -- when the truth was that the hurricane itself caused few casualties in New Orleans. Over a thousand people died because of the mistakes and neglect caused by humans, not You.

Some of us tried to help after Katrina hit, while Bush ate cake with McCain and twiddled his thumbs. I closed my office in New York and sent my entire staff down to New Orleans to help. I asked people on my website to contribute to the relief effort I organized -- and I ended up sending over two million dollars in donations, food, water, and supplies (collected from thousands of fans) to New Orleans while Bush's FEMA ice trucks were still driving around Maine three weeks later.

But this past Thursday night, the Washington Post reported that the Republicans had begun making plans to possibly postpone the convention. The AP had reported that there were no shelters set up in New Orleans for this storm, and that the levee repairs have not been adequate. In other words, as the great Ronald Reagan would say, "There you go again!"

So the last thing John McCain and the Republicans needed was to have a split-screen on TVs across America: one side with Bush and McCain partying in St. Paul, and on the other side of the screen, live footage of their Republican administration screwing up once again while New Orleans drowns.

So, yes, You have scared the Jesus, Mary and Joseph out of them, and more than a few million of your followers tip their hats to You.

But now it appears that You haven't been having just a little fun with Bush & Co. It appears that Hurricane Gustav is truly heading to New Orleans and the Gulf coast. We hear You, O Lord, loud and clear, just as we did when Rev. Falwell said You made 9/11 happen because of all those gays and abortions. We beseech You, O Merciful One, not to punish us again as Pat Robertson said You did by giving us Katrina because of America's "wholesale slaughter of unborn children." His sentiments were echoed by other Republicans in 2005.

So this is my plea to you: Don't do this to Louisiana again. The Republicans got your message. They are scrambling and doing the best they can to get planes, trains and buses to New Orleans so that everyone can get out. They haven't sent the entire Louisiana National Guard to Iraq this time -- they are already patrolling the city streets. And, in a nod to I don't know what, Bush's head of FEMA has named a man to help manage the federal government's response. His name is W. Michael Moore. I kid you not, heavenly Father. They have sent a man with both my name AND W's to help save the Gulf Coast.

So please God, let the storm die out at sea. It's done enough damage already. If you do this one favor for me, I promise not to invoke your name again. I'll leave that to the followers of Dr. Dobson and to those gathering this week in St. Paul.

Your faithful servant and former seminarian,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. To all of God's fellow children who are reading this, the city of New Orleans has not yet recovered from Katrina. Please click here for a list of things you can do to help our brothers and sisters on the Gulf Coast. And, if you do live along the Gulf Coast, please take all necessary safety precautions immediately.