Placer County Dems

Support a Public Option!

TCP (Tim Prudhel) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:47:45 EDT

I strongly support President Obama's three principles for real health care reform and urge you to do so too. Any plan Congress passes must reduce health care costs, guarantee choice – including a public insurance option – and ensure quality care for every American.

If President Obama's healthcare plan gets changed to exclude a public option like Medicare, then it is not real healthcare reform. Real healthcare reform depends on whether the American public is allowed to choose a universally available public option or not. If we are allowed to choose a Medicare-like option, the healthcare bill will bring true healthcare reform. It will ensure choice, competition and will reduce costs.

One reason given for opposing a public option is that private insurance companies won't be able to compete in the marketplace if we have a strong public option.

But why should we deny people the right to get healthcare through a public option like Medicare just to put corporate profits ahead of people’s health?

If we're denied a public option, we won't achieve real healthcare reform at all. It's time to stand up to the special interests and enact real reform that includes a public option.

Please support a public option in healthcare reform and urge Congress to do the same.

To see where members of Congress currently stand on the public option and to contact them, see this link: http://standwithdrdean.com/where_congress_stands

Thanks!

See our website!!!

Christa Darlington — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 01:46:24 EDT

We have a new website where you can hear all about our activities- check it out at

www.ofasierrafoothills.org

We have had our rest, now it is time to change hope into action!

~Christa Darlington and the Sierra Foothills team

Free Democratic Leadership Training

California Democratic Council — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 01:52:10 EST

The California Democratic Council is offering a free workshop covering a variety of different topics that activists should learn about if they want to become more involved with the party.

Whether you are a candidate or a volunteer, these topics will help prepare you for rising in the ranks of the Democratic Party.

The next workshop is on March 21, 2009 and will be held in Folsom, CA.

For full details, check out the event listing:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gptp5l

Please not that you must register here: http://www.cdc-ca.org/Training/

Don't miss out!

Change is Coming meeting

! Arry Murphey-Frank-Foothills Area Manager CA CD4 — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:03:52 EST

WoW! I am hosting an event and we have reached capacity with over 50 people!

This tells me that people are HUNGRY for change and they are HUNGRY to help President Obama move forward with his agenda. I am really excited to see this and I most of these people are new voices who were not involved before.

WE DID IT!

! Arry Murphey-Frank-Foothills Area Manager CA CD4 — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:35:42 EST

Congratulations to all of us grassroots workers! We did it, we changed the nation and we now have the most wonderful president! President Obama! Thank you to all that helped out and thank you to all of the wonderfull Obama volunteers here in the foothills. You are fantastic! Thank you BARACK OBAMA for teaching us all to be community organizers and to care about our country again.

PEACE AND LOVE TO ALL,

Arry

What If You Reversed Information about Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin?

Don DePasquale — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:48:11 EST

Ponder the following:
What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, including a three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?
What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a divorcee?
What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe disfiguring car accident, when she no longer measured up to his standards?
What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married?
What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)
What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
What if Obama couldn ' t read from a teleprompter?
What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes? And was never given a command position.
What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many occasions, a serious anger management problem?
What if Michelle Obama ' s family had made their money from beer distribution?
What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?
You could easily add to this list. If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?
This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in
another when there is a color difference.

Educational Background:
Barack Obama: Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Joseph Biden: University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

John McCain: United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899

Sarah Palin: Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester; North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study,
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism, Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester,
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism

Education isn ' t everything, but this is about the two highest offices in the land as well as our standing in the world. You make the call. All too true--up to a point. However, I don't think it's *only* racism. McCain and Palin in their different ways have appealed to deep feelings among (mostly) white lower-middle-class and working-class voters who are scared of change and complexity. I don't know how big the overlap is between what Paul Krugman is calling the "rump" of the GOP and the extreme fundie-christianist Right, but I would guess it's at least 60-70%. Fundamentalism is equally a reactionary response to intense fear and stress in people who have usually been raised in either an authoritarian or a chaotic way--both much more common far down on the income scale, for all ethnic groups.

It's not just that Obama is black; it's that he's "foreign"-sounding, pro-choice (this is huge), pro-change, pro-civic-responsibility. It's that he favors negotiation over violence, allows for nuance and complexity, and above all that he disturbs the vertical identification of these people with wealthy whites. Racism is of course the central scaffolding of this identification, but not its sole component. These "dirty whites," as I call them--European Americans whose white-skin privilege, always tenuous, has been sullied in their minds by the encroachments of nonwhites--have always used this sliver of privilege to maintain the magical belief that they too can scale the economic heights.

Look at not-Joe the not-Plumber. Obama carefully and politely explained to him that unless he made over $250K a year, his taxes would go down rather than up. Not-Joe balked because he has a completely unrealistic fantasy that he can start a plumbing business and be making that much a year *in personal income*. Obama's comment that "sometimes it's good to spread the wealth around" has been taken up by the Palinites as evidence that he is a "socialist," when by the standards of 1960, when the income tax was considerably more progressive as well as better enforced in the upper brackets than it is today, he is a very moderate Democrat.

How to explain this craziness? As someone born in Europe but resident in the US, I think the other component is the core American ideology that anyone can "make it" into the upper middle or upper class if they try hard enough and have the talent. However, the tacit understanding up until roughly the 1970s was that most if not all of the ladders to the top would be reserved for white people. Those old enough may remember the bitter struggles over first school integration in Northern cities (a battle completely won by white-separatist forces) and then over affirmative action (again, won by those forces, aided by some black frontmen like Ward Connerly).

Despite these disgusting victories, about half the black population has managed to make it into the middle-income brackets, while Latinos are increasing rapidly in numbers and economic clout. And now here is Barack Obama, the quintessential American success story--as he himself often and proudly points out. Obama has done what the core ideology says Americans should do. He has worked incredibly hard with great determination and self-discipline to become what he has been and is. But he's not white! The Palinists can't blame his ascent on affirmative action, because they (or their parents) helped get rid of it. Thus, as they struggle day to day to pay the bills and survive their typically exhausting and stupefying and poorly paid jobs and hold their families together, he stands as a living reproach to them: educated, articulate, self-possessed, successful, with a picture-perfect family. And they hate him for it.

Adam Cornford
Precision English
Writing, Editing, Translation
http://www.precision-english.com
(510) 708-3277

"Poetry is a weapon loaded with future" --Gabriel Celaya

An hour and a half with Barack Obama

Don DePasquale — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:49:30 EDT

An interesting perspective.....

Marc Andreessen's post on Obama

An hour and a half with Barack Obama

Mar 3, 2008

I've tried very hard to keep politics out of this blog -- despite nearly overpowering impulses to the contrary -- for two reasons: one, there's no reason to alienate people who don't share my political views, as wrong-headed as those people may clearly be; two, there's no reason to expect my opinion on political issues should be any more valid than any other reader of what, these days, passes for the New York Times.

That said, in light of the extraordinary events playing out around us right now in the runup to the presidential election, I would like to share with you a personal experience that I was lucky enough to have early last year.

Early in 2007, a friend of mine who is active in both high-tech and politics called me up and said, let's go see this first-term Senator, Barack Obama, who's ramping up to run for President.

And so we did -- my friend, my wife Laura, and me -- and we were able to meet privately with Senator Obama for an hour and a half.

The reason I think you may find this interesting is that our meeting in early 2007 was probably one of the last times Senator Obama was able to spend an hour and a half sitting down and talking with just about anyone -- so I think we got a solid look at what he's like up close, right before he entered the "bubble" within which all major presidential candidates, and presidents, must exist.

Let me get disclaimers out of the way: my only involvement with the Democratic presidential campaigns is as an individual donor -- after meeting with the Senator, my wife and I both contributed the maximum amount of "hard money" we could to the Obama campaign, less than $10,000 total for both the primary and the general election. On the other hand, we also donated to Mitt Romney's Republican primary effort -- conclude from that what you will.

I carried four distinct impressions away from our meeting with Senator Obama.

First, this is a normal guy.

I've spent time with a lot of politicians in the last 15 years. Most of them talk at you. Listening is not their strong suit -- in fact, many of them aren't even very good at faking it.

Senator Obama, in contrast, comes across as a normal human being, with a normal interaction style, and a normal level of interest in the people he's with and the world around him.

We were able to have an actual, honest-to-God conversation, back and forth, on a number of topics. In particular, the Senator was personally interested in the rise of social networking, Facebook, Youtube, and user-generated content, and casually but persistently grilled us on what we thought the next generation of social media would be and how social networking might affect politics -- with no staff present, no prepared materials, no notes. He already knew a fair amount about the topic but was very curious to actually learn more. We also talked about a pretty wide range of other issues, including Silicon Valley and various political topics.

With most politicians, their curiosity ends once they find out how much money you can raise for them. Not so with Senator Obama -- this is a normal guy.

Second, this is a smart guy.

I bring this up for two reasons. One, Senator Obama's political opponents tend to try to paint him as some kind of lightweight, which he most definitely is not. Two, I think he's at or near the top of the scale of intelligence of anyone in political life today.

You can see how smart he is in his background -- for example, lecturer in constitutional law at University of Chicago; before that, president of the Harvard Law Review.

But it's also apparent when you interact with him that you're dealing with one of the intellectually smartest national politicians in recent times, at least since Bill Clinton. He's crisp, lucid, analytical, and clearly assimilates and synthesizes a very large amount of information -- smart.

Third, this is not a radical.

This is not some kind of liberal revolutionary who is intent on throwing everything up in the air and starting over.

Put the primary campaign speeches aside; take a look at his policy positions on any number of issues and what strikes you is how reasonable, moderate, and thoughtful they are.

And in person, that's exactly what he's like. There's no fire in the eyes to realize some utopian or revolutionary dream. Instead, what comes across -- in both his questions and his answers -- is calmness, reason, and judgment.

Fourth, this is the first credible post-Baby Boomer presidential candidate.

The Baby Boomers are best defined as the generation that came of age during the 1960's -- whose worldview and outlook was shaped by Vietnam plus the widespread social unrest and change that peaked in the late 1960's.

Post-Boomers are those of us, like me, who came of age in the 1970's or 1980's -- after Vietnam, after Nixon, after the "sexual revolution" and the cultural wars of the 1960's.

One of the reasons Senator Obama comes across as so fresh and different is that he's the first serious presidential candidate who isn't either from the World War II era (Reagan, Bush Sr, Dole, and even McCain, who was born in 1936) or from the Baby Boomer generation (Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, and George W. Bush).

He's a post-Boomer.

Most of the Boomers I know are still fixated on the 1960's in one way or another -- generally in how they think about social change, politics, and the government.

It's very clear when interacting with Senator Obama that he's totally focused on the world as it has existed since after the 1960's -- as am I, and as is practically everyone I know who's younger than 50.

What's the picture that emerges from these four impressions?

Smart, normal, curious, not radical, and post-Boomer.

If you were asking me to write a capsule description of what I would look for in the next President of the United States, that would be it.

Having met him and then having watched him for the last 12 months run one of the best-executed and cleanest major presidential campaigns in recent memory, I have no doubt that Senator Obama has the judgment, bearing, intellect, and high ethical standards to be an outstanding president -- completely aside from the movement that has formed around him, and in complete contradition to the silly assertions by both the Clinton and McCain campaigns that he's somehow not ready.

Before I close, let me share two specific things he said at the time -- early 2007 -- on the topic of whether he's ready.

We asked him directly, how concerned should we be that you haven't had meaningful experience as an executive -- as a manager and leader of people?

He said, watch how I run my campaign -- you'll see my leadership skills in action.

At the time, I wasn't sure what to make of his answer -- political campaigns are often very messy and chaotic, with a lot of turnover and flux; what conclusions could we possibly draw from one of those?

Well, as any political expert will tell you, it turns out that the Obama campaign has been one of the best organized and executed presidential campaigns in memory. Even Obama's opponents concede that his campaign has been disciplined, methodical, and effective across the full spectrum of activities required to win -- and with a minimum of the negative campaigning and attack ads that normally characterize a race like this, and with almost no staff turnover. By almost any measure, the Obama campaign has simply out-executed both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.

This speaks well to the Senator's ability to run a campaign, but speaks even more to his ability to recruit and manage a top-notch group of campaign professionals and volunteers -- another key leadership characteristic. When you compare this to the awe-inspiring discord, infighting, and staff turnover within both the Clinton and McCain campaigns up to this point -- well, let's just say it's a very interesting data point.

We then asked, well, what about foreign policy -- should we be concerned that you just don't have much experience there?

He said, directly, two things.

First, he said, I'm on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I serve with a number of Senators who are widely regarded as leading experts on foreign policy -- and I can tell you that I know as much about foreign policy at this point as most of them.

Being a fan of blunt answers, I liked that one.

But then he made what I think is the really good point.

He said -- and I'm going to paraphrase a little here: think about who I am -- my father was Kenyan; I have close relatives in a small rural village in Kenya to this day; and I spent several years of my childhood living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Think about what it's going to mean in many parts of the world -- parts of the world that we really care about -- when I show up as the President of the United States. I'll be fundamentally changing the world's perception of what the United States is all about.

He's got my vote

Another election nightmare in Florida?

Don DePasquale — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 22:37:40 EDT

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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/24/florida_voting/print.html

To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser

Another election nightmare in Florida? The Obama campaign has inspired a wave of early voters -- but the waits have been long and some fear havoc on Election Day.

By Mike Madden

Oct. 24, 2008 |

Sure, Ted Ravelo likes Barack Obama. But two hours is a long time to stand in line to vote, especially considering that it's still October. "This has to be remedied," Ravelo, 72, said Wednesday morning, shaking his head, as he gave up on voting early -- at least that day -- at the North Miami Public Library, where a couple of dozen voting machines and their operators were struggling in vain to keep pace with a flood of citizens. "Something has to be done." A line stretched two blocks from the building, as other voters doggedly stood -- or sat on the folding chairs many of them had brought along -- for up to two hours while waiting to cast their ballots.

It may have been a bit too much for Ravelo. He said he'd probably have to give it another shot on Election Day, and that his daughters -- who have to work on Nov. 4, and who sent him to scout out the wait time -- might not get to vote at all. But compared to Monday here, when early voting opened, two hours on Wednesday was a breeze; on the first day, officials and community activists said, the wait was three times that long.

A visit to Florida in the waning days of the 2008 presidential campaign threatens to evoke a certain sense of déjà vu for another late October eight years ago. Once again, polls show the state is deadlocked -- and once again, there's a very real possibility that a lot of people who support the Democratic candidate could have trouble voting.

This time, of course, it won't be butterfly ballots or Brooks Brothers riots that get in the way, and there's no chance Pat Buchanan will pick up any votes from confused elderly Jews in Palm Beach or any other county (if only because he's not running). But even so, a combination of heavy turnout and widespread confusion over new ID laws at the polling places could overwhelm the system again. "I don't believe that anybody's going to be ready for the onslaught of voters," said Roger Weeden, an Orlando lawyer who's working with Election Protection, a national coalition of civil rights and public interest groups that will monitor problems with voting around the country through Nov. 4. The new law -- known as "no match, no vote" -- says you need identification at the polls, and you can't vote if the address on it doesn't match what's in state or federal databases. Rumors are flying, especially in minority communities, that the law is even more restrictive. On Tuesday night, Miami's "Hot 105" soul station spent a good 30 minutes during the evening rush hour discussing potential voting problems.

Another difference this time around, though, is that Obama's campaign seems to be ready for problems. Part of the reason early voting has been so busy (nearly half a million people voted in Florida in the first three days) is because the campaign isn't shy about telling supporters to get out and vote ahead of time. "You can vote early right here and right now," Obama told about 30,000 people at a downtown Miami rally Tuesday night. Aides were concerned enough that some of the wilder rumors would suppress turnout that they sent a campaign lawyer out to warm up the crowd before Barack and Michelle Obama appeared. "How many of you have heard the rumor that you won't be allowed to go to the polls and vote if you're wearing a Barack Obama button or T-shirt?" the lawyer asked, getting a big roar from the crowd. "Well, guess what -- that's just not true."

Obama's team has been gearing up to turn people out, focusing especially on getting them to vote early and avoid the crunch on Nov. 4. More than 100 field offices are set up around the state; deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand and his consulting partner Paul Tewes, the duo who engineered the field strategy for Iowa and other early primary and caucus states that helped Obama win the nomination, moved to Florida a few weeks ago to help run their massive operation here. So far, it looks effective: More than 54 percent of the early ballots in have been cast by registered Democrats, according to state statistics, which might help offset a Republican edge in requests for mail-in absentee ballots.

Judging from what some people were saying -- at the Tuesday night rally and among those voting the next morning -- Obama's campaign didn't have to scare anyone into participating early. "I didn't want to take a chance of something happening and me not getting my vote in," said Rony Francis, 43, who directs operations for a transportation company. He waited 90 minutes to vote at the North Miami library, where most of the voters who joined him were Haitians and other immigrants.

"It's always in your mind, especially after eight years ago," said Al Morrell, 51, a truck driver, also from North Miami. "So you gotta be a little wary."

The night before, Tasha Thomas, 26, who works at the University of Miami's veterinary school, had told me she'd been besieged by weird, panicky questions from supporters since she started volunteering at the Obama field office in her Miami neighborhood. People thought they couldn't vote if their voter registration card was starting to fade, or thought they had to go back to the state where they were born to vote, even if they lived in Florida now. "It was eye-opening, how much wrong information so many people have," she said.

Election Protection plans to have lawyers roaming from polling place to polling place around the state on Election Day, ready to help voters who can't find their precincts or have questions about the process. (Though the group is officially nonpartisan, there's not much doubt that anyone working hard to increase turnout is probably sympathetic to Obama.) "Voter suppression is something that anybody who has any sense of commitment to democracy or civil rights would want to fight against," said Weeden, a criminal defense lawyer who also helped monitor election sites in 2004. Back then, he and other volunteers encountered people who had been called and told their polling places had changed, or found suspicious characters lurking outside precincts with clipboards, asking people if they had met rigorous requirements to vote that went above and beyond what the law says.

While McCain is contesting the state as furiously as he is any other battleground -- he made several stops on a bus tour along Interstate 4 on Thursday, crossing from the Atlantic coast to the Gulf of Mexico -- his top surrogate, Gov. Charlie Crist, hasn't been entirely on message when it comes to issues surrounding the ballot box. (Some local Republicans say prospects for the McCain campaign here are looking dim anyway.) In most states, Republicans are busy whipping up a frenzy about alleged voter fraud, mostly trying to tie it to the community organizing group ACORN (which is a member of Election Protection) and, by implication, accusing Obama of trying to steal the White House.

Crist, though, isn't buying the party line on that one. "I don't think we anticipate much of a problem with voter fraud," he told reporters on a conference call organized by McCain's campaign Tuesday afternoon (which it probably regretted later). So far, the state government in Tallahassee hasn't moved to block a ruling that says voters whose IDs don't match their registration information can correct the problem in person on Election Day, rather than having to go to another office and fix it before their ballot is accepted. Perhaps as a result of Crist's calm, even McCain's die-hard supporters at a Thursday morning rally in Ormond Beach didn't seem too worried about voter fraud. Of course, that's a matter of degree; several insisted that Democrats always get away with some fraud, but they didn't expect things to be worse than usual this year.

If Florida were expected to go as easily for McCain as it did for George W. Bush four years ago (if not eight years ago), the issue might not matter that much. But the more people who show up to vote, the better the night is likely to be for Obama. Democrats are paying close attention. "We have a chance this year, as a nation, to go past that horrendous 48 percent of eligible voters who participate in presidential elections, with the unprecedented number of young voters, independent voters, minority voters, that are participating in this," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson told Salon prior to appearing at an early-vote rally for Latinos in Kissimmee, Fla., on Wednesday. He noted that he's heard reports of rumors about voting problems among Hispanic communities in Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico as well. But, he said of expected record turnouts, "It's very healthy for our democracy, and we should take advantage of it, not engage in negative tactics and voter suppression."

Obama's most passionate supporters, meanwhile, say they're ready to show up no matter what they hear. "We're smart," said Sherrie Kendrick, a retired phone operator from Miami, who will turn 54 on Election Day. "We may not look it, but we're smart."

-- By Mike Madden

I'm back and ready to phone bank

! Arry Murphey-Frank-Foothills Area Manager CA CD4 — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:03:35 EDT

So, Iv'e been in India and Nepal for 3 weeks and I am now home. Time to phone bank and GOTV! We are almost there folks so let's all get cracking and don't let just one vote get away!

Poll Position

James "Monte" Salter CD4 Valley Team leader — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:20:59 EDT

It's looking good according to the newest polls from the battlegrounds! But like the song says "...you can't trust freedom when it's not in your hands when everybody's fighting for their promised land." With this in mind, we can never underestimate the power of the republican disenfrancizing machine. VIGILANCE!!!

From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Carrie Dann
*** Swing states swinging to Obama: Most of the national polls -- including our NBC/WSJ survey -- are now showing Obama with a double-digit national lead. And here come a slew of brand-new state polls that also suggest Obama is in command of this presidential contest. The University of Wisconsin’s Big Ten Battleground polls have Obama up 10 points in Indiana (51%-41%), 13 points in Iowa (52%-39%), 22 in Michigan (58%-36%), 19 in Minnesota (57%-38%), 12 in Ohio (53%-41%), 11 in Pennsylvania (52%-41%), 13 in Wisconsin (53%-40%), and nearly 30 in Obama’s home state of Illinois (61%-32%). Meanwhile, there are new Quinnipiac surveys that show Obama up five points in Florida (49%-44%), 14 in Ohio (52%-38%), and 13 in Pennsylvania (53%-40%). And finally, new CNN/Time surveys find Obama ahead by five points among likely voters in Nevada (51%-46%), four points in North Carolina (51%-47%), four in Ohio (50%-46%), and 10 points in Virginia (54%-44%). The lone state survey that shows McCain ahead: CNN/Time’s West Virginia poll, where McCain’s nine (53%-44%).

Block the Vote

James "Monte" Salter CD4 Valley Team leader — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:12:28 EDT

From Rolling Stone:Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. & GREG PALAST

Posted Oct 30, 2008 11:10 AM
• Video: Behind the Story With Kennedy Jr. and Palast

These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas.

Maez was not alone in being denied his right to vote. On Super Tuesday, one in nine Democrats who tried to cast ballots in New Mexico found their names missing from the registration lists. The numbers were even higher in precincts like Las Vegas, where nearly 20 percent of the county's voters were absent from the rolls. With their status in limbo, the voters were forced to cast "provisional" ballots, which can be reviewed and discarded by election officials without explanation. On Super Tuesday, more than half of all provisional ballots cast were thrown out statewide.

This November, what happened to Maez will happen to hundreds of thousands of voters across the country. In state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."

Suppressing the vote has long been a cornerstone of the GOP's electoral strategy. Shortly before the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Paul Weyrich — a principal architect of today's Republican Party — scolded evangelicals who believed in democracy. "Many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo goo' syndrome — good government," said Weyrich, who co-founded Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell. "They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. . . . As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

Today, Weyrich's vision has become a national reality. Since 2003, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, at least 2.7 million new voters have had their applications to register rejected. In addition, at least 1.6 million votes were never counted in the 2004 election — and the commission's own data suggests that the real number could be twice as high. To purge registration rolls and discard ballots, partisan election officials used a wide range of pretexts, from "unreadability" to changes in a voter's signature. And this year, thanks to new provisions of the Help America Vote Act, the number of discounted votes could surge even higher.

Passed in 2002, HAVA was hailed by leaders in both parties as a reform designed to avoid a repeat of the 2000 debacle in Florida that threw the presidential election to the U.S. Supreme Court. The measure set standards for voting systems, created an independent commission to oversee elections, and ordered states to provide provisional ballots to voters whose eligibility is challenged at the polls.

But from the start, HAVA was corrupted by the involvement of Republican superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, who worked to cram the bill with favors for his clients. (Both Abramoff and a primary author of HAVA, former Rep. Bob Ney, were imprisoned for their role in the conspiracy.) In practice, many of the "reforms" created by HAVA have actually made it harder for citizens to cast a ballot and have their vote counted. In case after case, Republican election officials at the local and state level have used the rules to give GOP candidates an edge on Election Day by creating new barriers to registration, purging legitimate names from voter rolls, challenging voters at the polls and discarding valid ballots.

To justify this battery of new voting impediments, Republicans cite an alleged upsurge in voting fraud. Indeed, the U.S.-attorney scandal that resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales began when the White House fired federal prosecutors who resisted political pressure to drum up nonexistent cases of voting fraud against Democrats. "They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments that would scare these alleged hordes of illegal voters away," says David Iglesias, a U.S. attorney for New Mexico who was fired in December 2006. "We took over 100 complaints and investigated for almost two years — but I didn't find one prosecutable case of voter fraud in the entire state of New Mexico."

There's a reason Iglesias couldn't find any evidence of fraud: Individual voters almost never try to cast illegal ballots. The Bush administration's main point person on "ballot protection" has been Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department attorney who has advised states on how to use HAVA to erect more barriers to voting. Appointed to the Federal Election Commission by Bush, von Spakovsky has suggested that voter rolls may be stuffed with 5 million illegal aliens. In fact, studies have repeatedly shown that voter fraud is extremely rare. According to a recent analysis by Lorraine Minnite, an expert on voting crime at Barnard College, federal courts found only 24 voters guilty of fraud from 2002 to 2005, out of hundreds of millions of votes cast. "The claim of widespread voter fraud," Minnite says, "is itself a fraud."

Allegations of voter fraud are only the latest rationale the GOP has used to disenfranchise voters — especially blacks, Hispanics and others who traditionally support Democrats. "The Republicans have a long history of erecting barriers to discourage Americans from voting," says Donna Brazile, chair of the Voting Rights Institute for the Democratic National Committee. "Now they're trying to spook Americans with the ghost of voter fraud. It's very effective — but it's ironic that the only way they maintain power is by using fear to deprive Americans of their constitutional right to vote." The recently enacted barriers thrown up to deter voters include:

1. Obstructing Voter-Registration Drives

Since 2004, the Bush administration and more than a dozen states have taken steps to impede voter registration. Among the worst offenders is Florida, where the Republican-dominated legislature created hefty fines — up to $5,000 per violation — for groups that fail to meet deadlines for turning in voter-application forms. Facing potentially huge penalties for trivial administrative errors, the League of Women Voters abandoned its voter-registration drives in Florida. A court order eventually forced the legislature to reduce the maximum penalty to $1,000. But even so, said former League president Dianne Wheatley-Giliotti, the reduced fines "create an unfair tax on democracy." The state has also failed to uphold a federal law requiring that low-income voters be offered an opportunity to register when they apply for food stamps or other public assistance. As a result, the annual number of such registrations has plummeted from more than 120,000 in the Clinton years to barely 10,000 today.

2. Demanding "Perfect Matches"

Under the Help America Vote Act, some states now reject first-time registrants whose data does not correspond to information in other government databases. Spurred by HAVA, almost every state must now attempt to make some kind of match — and four states, including the swing states of Iowa and Florida, require what is known as a "perfect match." Under this rigid framework, new registrants can lose the right to vote if the information on their voter-registration forms — Social Security number, street address and precisely spelled name, right down to a hyphen — fails to exactly match data listed in other government records.

There are many legitimate reasons, of course, why a voter's information might vary. Indeed, a recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that as many as 20 percent of discrepancies between voter records and driver's licenses in New York City are simply typing mistakes made by government clerks when they transcribe data. But under the new rules, those mistakes are costing citizens the right to vote. In California, a Republican secretary of state blocked 43 percent of all new voters in Los Angeles from registering in early 2006 — many because of the state's failure to produce a tight match. In Florida, GOP officials created "match" rules that rejected more than 15,000 new registrants in 2006 and 2007 — nearly three-fourths of them Hispanic and black voters. Given the big registration drives this year, the number could be five times higher by November.

3. Purging Legitimate Voters From the Rolls

The Help America Vote Act doesn't just disenfranchise new registrants; it also targets veteran voters. In the past, bipartisan county election boards maintained voter records. But HAVA requires that records be centralized, computerized and maintained by secretaries of state — partisan officials — who are empowered to purge the rolls of any voter they deem ineligible. Ironically, the new rules imitate the centralized system in Florida — the same corrupt operation that inspired passage of HAVA in the first place. Prior to the 2000 election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and her predecessor, both Republicans, tried to purge 57,000 voters, most of them African-Americans, because their names resembled those of persons convicted of a crime. The state eventually acknowledged that the purges were improper — two years after the election.

Rather than end Florida-style purges, however, HAVA has nationalized them. Maez, the elections supervisor in New Mexico, says he was the victim of faulty list management by a private contractor hired by the state. Hector Balderas, the state auditor, was also purged from the voter list. The nation's youngest elected Hispanic official, Balderas hails from Mora County, one of the poorest in the state, which had the highest rate of voters forced to cast provisional ballots. "As a strategic consideration," he notes, "there are those that benefit from chaos" at the ballot box.

All told, states reported scrubbing at least 10 million voters from their rolls on questionable grounds between 2004 and 2006. Colorado holds the record: Donetta Davidson, the Republican secretary of state, and her GOP successor oversaw the elimination of nearly one of every six of their state's voters. Bush has since appointed Davidson to the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency created by HAVA, which provides guidance to the states on "list maintenance" methods.

4. Requiring Unnecessary Voter ID's

Even if voters run the gauntlet of the new registration laws, they can still be blocked at the polling station. In an incident last May, an election official in Indiana denied ballots to 10 nuns seeking to vote in the Democratic primary because their driver's licenses or passports had expired. Even though Indiana has never recorded a single case of voter-ID fraud, it is one of two dozen states that have enacted stringent new voter-ID statutes.

On its face, the requirement to show a government-issued ID doesn't seem unreasonable. "I want to cash a check to pay for my groceries, I've got to show a little bit of ID," Karl Rove told the Republican National Lawyers Association in 2006. But many Americans lack easy access to official identification. According to a recent study for the Election Law Journal, young people, senior citizens and minorities — groups that traditionally vote Democratic — often have no driver's licenses or state ID cards. According to the study, one in 10 likely white voters do not possess the necessary identification. For African-Americans, the number lacking such ID is twice as high.

5. Rejecting "Spoiled" Ballots

Even intrepid voters who manage to cast a ballot may still find their vote discounted. In 2004, election officials discarded at least 1 million votes nationwide after classifying them as "spoiled" because blank spaces, stray marks or tears made them indecipherable to voting machines. The losses hit hardest among minorities in low-income precincts, who are often forced to vote on antiquated machines. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in its investigation of the 2000 returns from Florida, found that African-Americans were nearly 10 times more likely than whites to have their ballots rejected, a ratio that holds nationwide.

Proponents of HAVA claimed the law would correct the spoilage problem by promoting computerized balloting. Yet touch-screen systems have proved highly unreliable — especially in minority and low-income precincts. A statistical analysis of New Mexico ballots by a voting-rights group called VotersUnite found that Hispanics who voted by computer in 2004 were nearly five times more likely to have their votes unrecorded than those who used paper ballots. In a close election, such small discrepancies can make a big difference: In 2004, the number of spoiled ballots in New Mexico — 19,000 — was three times George Bush's margin of victory.

6. Challenging "Provisional" Ballots

In 2004, an estimated 3 million voters who showed up at the polls were refused regular ballots because their registration was challenged on a technicality. Instead, these voters were handed "provisional" ballots, a fail-safe measure mandated by HAVA to enable officials to review disputed votes. But for many officials, resolving disputes means tossing ballots in the trash. In 2004, a third of all provisional ballots — as many as 1 million votes — were simply thrown away at the discretion of election officials.

Many voters are given provisional ballots under an insidious tactic known as "vote caging," which uses targeted mailings to disenfranchise black voters whose addresses have changed. In 2004, despite a federal consent order forbidding Republicans from engaging in the practice, the GOP sent out tens of thousands of letters to "confirm" the addresses of voters in minority precincts. If a letter was returned for any reason — because the voter was away at school or serving in the military — the GOP challenged the voter for giving a false address. One caging operation was exposed when an RNC official mistakenly sent the list to a parody site called GeorgeWBush.org — instead of to the official campaign site GeorgeWBush.com.

In the century following the Civil War, millions of black Americans in the Deep South lost their constitutional right to vote, thanks to literacy tests, poll taxes and other Jim Crow restrictions imposed by white officials. Add up all the modern-day barriers to voting erected since the 2004 election — the new registrations thrown out, the existing registrations scrubbed, the spoiled ballots, the provisional ballots that were never counted — and what you have is millions of voters, more than enough to swing the presidential election, quietly being detached from the electorate by subterfuge.

"Jim Crow was laid to rest, but his cousins were not," says Donna Brazile. "We got rid of poll taxes and literacy tests but now have a second generation of schemes to deny our citizens their franchise." Come November, the most crucial demographic may prove to be Americans who have been denied the right to vote. If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat John McCain at the polls — they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering.

Contributing editor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of the nation's leading voting-rights advocates. His article "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" [RS 1002] sparked widespread scrutiny of vote tampering. Greg Palast, who broke the story on Florida's illegal voter purges in the 2000 election, is the author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." For more information, visit No Voter Left Behind and Steal Back Your Vote.

What if....?

Roseville City School Board Member — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:54:51 EDT

HOW RACISM WORKS…..

What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain was still married to the first woman he said "I do" to?
What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?
What if Michelle Obama was a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama was a member of the Keating-5?
What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

You are The Boss... which team would you hire?
With America facing historic debt, 2 wars, stumbling health care, a weakened dollar, all-time high prison population, mortgage crises, bank foreclosures, etc.

Educational Background:

Obama:
Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in
International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899

Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism

Now, which team are you going to hire ?

PS: What if Barack Obama had an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?....

Tahoe Daily Tribune Article :Presidential Polictics plays out in South Shore

Mary Jane Sanchez — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:58:22 EDT

We, In South LAke Tahoe are fired up & ready to go!

A Big turnout for Tahoe to watch debate!!!!

http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/article/20081017/NEWS/110179984/1068&ParentProfile=1056&title=Presidential%20politics%20play%20out%20at%20South%20Shore

McCain Morphology

James "Monte" Salter CD4 Valley Team leader — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:59:27 EDT

What Monster Did McCain Become Last Night?

A horrified America watched John McCain stagger up from his debate chair last night and turn into a monster. He almost caught our Barack Obama! What was happening? Clearly, the special anti-monster juice McCain drinks before public appearances was starting to wear off. They got him in the titanium-lined SWAT van just before he fully transformed. But fully transformed into what?

HORRIBLE MEDIEVAL WEREWOLF: This would actually explain a lot, including, probably, why McCain is always talking about medieval Ireland, when he was a boy, before he was bitten by a werewolf, which put a terrible end to his happy carefree days of being a Celtic warrior who always crashed his horse into the enemy’s village.

HORRIBLE CHILD-EATING DEATH CLOWN: No wonder McCain’s handlers try to get him away from those debate audiences so quick! He was just moments away from turning into this evil-ass thing, the New Hampshire Primary Murder Clown, Rich Uncle Pennywise! Imagine being stuck on Secret Service duty with this campaign. Imagine having to bury the bodies every night.

EVIL GORGON MEDUSA: Walnuts has always roamed the Earth, in his various guises, but by night, he shows his true death’s head, the GORGONEION from Hades, where he spent Five and a Half Million Years. (This is also the face he makes when he has sexytime! Your tax dollars pay for his Viagra!)

DISGUSTING CLASSIC-ROCK GIMMICK CAR: There is nothing more hideous than 700-year-old arena rocker Gene Simmons, so it stands to reason that John McCain is the demon father of the KISS monster. Legend says shitty ‘71 Volkswagen Beetles with home paint jobs and huge styrofoam monster skulls/tongues were frequently on the scene before the Crusaders lost Jerusalem to the Arabs led by Bill Ayers the Terrorist Muslin.

EVIL SILENT-MOVIE GERMAN VAMPIRE: And now, a quote from Bram Stoker’s Dracula: “As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me… a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal. When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demonaic fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat.”

Yes, that sounds about right.

THE BEAST: But our demonic experts here on the Wonkette staff finally concluded McCain was turning into this hell-beast of yore, as seen here in a 16th Century woodcut. These demonic shit-monsters once roamed the Eastern Seaboard, until they were captured by Benedict Arnold in 1776 and taught Naval Command skills at Annapolis. The creatures spawn a single fetus from the “egg duct” every hundred years; the fourth spawn of the cycle is always a crazy, self-obsessed idiot who has no military skillz.

A Dear John Letter

Don DePasquale — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 07:00:02 EDT

A Dear John Letter By John ⋅ October 11, 2008 ⋅ Email ⋅ Print ⋅ Trackback ⋅ Comment

Come on John, whose really in charge over there. It’s no good blaming Steve Schmuk Schmidt your campaign head. You are the candidate

Dear John

Yes, I’m talking to you John McCain. With your baggage of age and that infamous rage. You are, That One, the one that’s running on empty, bereft of ideas, and bereft of sage. Now hear this John, the United States of America is about to turn the page. John, when that hallelulah day arrives, the people of America will owe you big time. Why you ask? For conducting a rotten campaign of course. John, your campaign is in such bad shape it’s beginning to look like you’re running dead. You seemed to manage better when you were on your own. Just like the good old days at the controls of your plane, even though you managed to crash five times. A record I believe.

The Running Mate

But as bad judgement would have it, in looking for a running mate, you went and got “impalined” by lipstick. An Alaskan red on a pitbull look, I believe. A little too aggressive for Estee Lauder cosmetics to sell. John since you’ve been palinised you now seem paralysed. Why in the name of Arizona John, would you choose a running mate like Sarah Palin, aka, Barracuda? She’s not only a wolf killer by nature she’s also a vote loser with her dodgy record and radical views. Your deputy’s been in town just five weeks and already the Alaska legislature has found her guilty of unlawful conduct back at their ranch. Is that a first for a VP running mate?

Playing with Fire

By the way John have you noticed, she’s the one demanding in your name “who is this Barack Obama” and worse. Come on John, whose really in charge over there. It’s no good blaming Steve Schmuk Schmidt your campaign head. You are the candidate - “my friend”. Now you’ve got me saying it. Why are you just standing back waving and turning a crowd into a mob, letting her whip up hatred, racism, smears and riotous behaviour.

Country First?

I hear that the Secret Service is interested in discussing this with you. That would be another dubious first John. Incitement to riot it’s called. Is this the sort of behaviour Americans should expect from you as a potential President? I think not. Where are your policy plans John? Has Barack Obama got you running scared on economic policy? It certainly looks that way when all you offer as your ticket to the White House is mainly a platform of smear and inuendo. Is this the John McCain who promotes the idea he is an American hero. Is this the McCain way of putting the country first?

John that’s strike one against you!

Steering a new Course

John I appreciate that you wouldn’t want me to be the one to mention your POW experience. That’s to be expected, lest we forget, it is your pet subject. Your meal ticket in lieu of policy ideas. John Sidney McCain the third, your father was an Admiral, your grandfather was an Admiral, both were honoured and distinguished men. It appears that the third generation curse and the imperfections it endows must have touched you John? It’s the hand destiny dealt to you and the Navy board signalled this when they rejected your application for further promotion, suggesting career wise”you’ve gone about as far as you can go”.Reminds me of the lyrics from”Everything’s up to date in Kansas City”. So you got up and went, — into politics.

McCain’s irresponsible claims about Iraq … 6 min 36

Stormy Waters

How do I read the tea leaves for November 4th? Wouldn’t know how. But I do observe your fellow republicans.They’re jumping off your campaign ship faster than rats down the mooring lines.Your colleagues have seen the way the wind is blowing. They’ve wet their fingers John. This is what some politicians do. You’ve probably abandoned the political ship from time to time over the years yourself. As an ex navy man you understand the real meaning of, “any port in a storm” and “fair weather friends”. Fair weather friends, rather sums up your relationship with the jailed savings and loan crook Charles Keating, doesn’t it John McCain.

No Foreclosures Here

Keating handsomely rewarded your political services in his dealings and you happily lapped up the benefits while his multi-billion public scam lasted. How many senior citizens lost their life savings as a result of that disgraceful and dishonest financial debacle, John McCain? Do you remember? You couldn’t even remember when a reporter recently inquired how many houses you currently own. I will concede that was a tough question for someone who placed 795th out of a class of 800 at Annapolis. Barack Obama had to answer the same question as it applied to him. His answer, one house and one car. John, it turns out that the media after checking advised that you have 11 houses or condos and 13 cars. Is this is what you meant when you complained that the media doesn’t know enough about Obama?

John, that’s strike 2 against you!

The View from Afar

John, do you realise that if Australians were eligible to vote on November 4th, that Barack Obama would win the election in a landslide according to the latest Readers Digest poll. Australians and those in other countries have valid reasons to be interested in the calibre of the person who occupies the Oval Office and the reason is clear. What happens in America touches every corner of the world. Senator McCain, your good friend George W Bush, whose policies you have enthusiastically supported 90% of the time, has done enormous damage to Australia. His rash decisions have cost Australian lives in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. More fool our former Prime Minister John Howard, for trusting Bush. This is no way to treat a friend and ally.

A reminder of American sacrifice in all wars

The Battle Hymn of the Republic .. Americans in World War Two .. 3 min 54

Australians don’t trust you either, Senator McCain. The one redeeming feature about the length of the Presidential selection process is that it provides people with the opportunity to get to know more about the candidates. In your case John, an opportunity to investigate the myth of McCain, to expose the real McCain and to see with our own eyes, how you perform under pressure. John I am now able to tell you what I have learned after all of the primaries, and with the general election only days away? John McCain, I have learned that you are not equipped to be President of the United States. Senator Barack Obama is, and the rest of the World agrees.

John that’s strike three and you are out!

Will ye no come back agin McSame?

John, a few suggestions to work on should you decide to make a comeback at 76 years of age in 2012. A little self improvement work. Enrol in an anger management course, take classes in personal and professional ethics, accept responsibility for your actions, stop trying to be someone you are not and remember, respect has to be earned. One more thing John, try telling the truth, you’ll find it a liberating experience. Perhaps your pitbull protege Sarah Barracuda, will be keen to have another tilt at republican rabble rousing now you have whetted her lipstick. Some people never learn.

Goodbye John.

Go Obama / Biden Yes we can

Hate and Racism below the surface. Bipartisan Concern About the Dangers of McPalin’s Hate-Mongering

Don DePasquale — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 07:18:49 EDT

This really scares me about America, the hate and fear right below the surface. I lived through the Freedom Marches against racism in the sixties and look what followed: Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and even John Kennedy before them all killed.
Fast forward to today as Obama seems poised to win this presidential election, we have GOP ... Read Moresupporters calling for killing him at McCain rallies. This is beyond the pale. Civilized people do not behave this way. Did I spend my whole life believing that Education makes a difference and here we are facing HATE fueled by Racism, Partisanship and a fear of the OTHER!

Don DePasquale

Bipartisan Concern About the Dangers of McPalin’s Hate-Mongering

Posted by Emptywheel, Firedoglake at 3:43 PM on October 10, 2008.

"I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate ..."
Joshua Holland AlterNet

Former McCain Campaign Chair John Weaver:

John Weaver, McCain’s former top strategist, said top Republicans have a responsibility to temper this behavior.
“People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, the differences with Sen. Obama are ideological, based on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to Sen. McCain,” Weaver said. “And from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive.”

“Sen. Obama is a classic liberal with an outdated economic agenda. We should take that agenda on in a robust manner. As a party we should not and must not stand by as the small amount of haters in our society question whether he is as American as the rest of us. Shame on them and shame on us if we allow this to take hold.”

Republican advisor David Gergen:

COOPER: There’s also the question of ruling after this, and bringing the country together. It’s going to be all the more harder to do that whoever wins with all this anger out there.
GERGEN: This—I think one of the most striking things we’ve seen now in the last few day. We’ve seen it in a Palin rally. We saw it at the McCain rally today. And we saw it to a considerable degree during the rescue package legislation. There is this free floating sort of whipping around anger that could really lead to some violence. I think we’re not far from that.
COOPER: Really?
GERGEN: I think it’s so—well, I really worry when we get people—when you get the kind of rhetoric that you’re getting at these rallies now. I think it’s really imperative that the candidates try to calm people down. And that’s why I’ve argued not only because of the question of the ugliness of it.

Republican Frank Schaeffer:

John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as "not one of us," I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.
[snip]
Stop! Think! Your rallies are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs.
John McCain, you're walking a perilous line. If you do not stand up for all that is good in America and declare that Senator Obama is a patriot, fit for office, and denounce your hate-filled supporters when they scream out "Terrorist" or "Kill him," history will hold you responsible for all that follows.
John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are playing with fire, and you know it. You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations.
Change the atmosphere of your campaign. Talk about the issues at hand. Make your case. But stop stirring up the lunatic fringe of haters, or risk suffering the judgment of history and the loathing of the American people - forever.
We will hold you responsible.

Retiring GOP Congressman Ray LaHood:

LaHood supports the McCain ticket, but doesn't like what he sees at some of the McCain-Palin rallies: When Barack Obama's name has been mentioned by Sarah Palin, there are shouts of "terrorist," and LaHood says Palin should put a stop to it.
"Look it. This doesn't befit the office that she's running for. And frankly, people don't like it."
Congressman LaHood says it could backfire on the Republican ticket.
He says the names that Obama is being called, "Certainly don't reflect the character of the man."

Ta-Nehishi Coates:

When the McCain campaign cast the spell of diabolical jingoism, they have no idea of the forces they are toying with. We remember Martin Luther King's murder as a sad and tragic event. Less remembered is the fact that ground-work for King's murder was seeded, not simply by rank white supremacy, but by people who slandered King as a communist.
This was not some notion bandied about by conspiracy theorist, but an accusation proffered by men who were the pillars of the modern Republican Party:

As late as 1964, Falwell was attacking the 1964 Civil Rights Act as "civil wrongs" legislation. He questioned "the sincerity and intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations." Falwell charged, "It is very obvious that the Communists, as they do in all parts of the world, are taking advantage of a tense situation in our land, and are exploiting every incident to bring about violence and bloodshed."

Falwell was not alone. These men didn't kill Martin Luther King, but they contributed to an atmosphere of nationalism, white supremacy and cheap unreflective patriotism that ultimately got a lot of people killed. Confronted with Aparthied South Africa, men like Helms and Falwell used the same "communist" defense. While Mandella wasted away in prison, they dismissed the whole thing as a communist plot.

Let me be clear--This is the ghost that McCain Campaign is summoning. This is the Ring Of Power that they want to wield. The Muslim charge, the "Hussein" thing is nothing more than today's red-baiting, and it is what it was then--a cover for racists.

David Frum:

Those who press this Ayers line of attack are whipping Republicans and conservatives into a fury that is going to be very hard to calm after November. Is it really wise to send conservatives into opposition in a mood of disdain and fury for a man who may well be the next president of the United States, incidentally the first African-American president? Anger is a very bad political adviser. It can isolate us and push us to the extremes at exactly the moment when we ought to be rebuilding, rethinking, regrouping and recruiting.

Joe Klein:

But seriously, folks, I'm beginning to worry about the level of craziness on the Republican side, the over-the-top, stampede-the-crowd statements by everyone from McCain on down, the vehemence of the crowds that McCain and Palin are drawing with people shouting "Kill him" and "He's a terrorist" and "Off with his head."
Watch the tape of the guy screaming, "He's a terrorist!" McCain seems to shudder at that, he rolls his eyes... and I thought for a moment he'd admonish the man. But he didn't. And now he's selling the Ayres non-story full-time. Yes, yes, it's all he has. True enough: he no longer has his honor. But we are on the edge of some real serious craziness here and it would be nice if McCain did the right thing and told his more bloodthirsty supporters to go home and take a cold shower.

Digby:

We are entering a turbulent period in our country. Validating a bogus accusation that your political rival is a terrorist in our current environment is the most irresponsible thing I've seen a campaign do in many a year. They know they are very likely going to lose this election. And McCain certainly knows that the main reason he is losing is because of the dramatic failures of fellow failed Republican George W. Bush. But even knowing that his candidacy was always very likely doomed is not stopping him from releasing this poison into the bloodstream of the body politic, a poison which will be with us for a long time to come. I guess that's what McCain means when he says that Americans should fight for a cause greater than themselves. That cause, evidently, is him.

Andrew Sullivan:

McCain and Palin have decided to stoke this rage, to foment it, to encourage paranoid notions that somehow Obama is a "secret" terrorist or Islamist or foreigner. These are base emotions in both sense of the word.
But they are also very very dangerous. This is a moment of maximal physical danger for the young Democratic nominee. And McCain is playing with fire. If he really wants to put country first, he will attack Obama on his policies - not on these inflammatory, personal, creepy grounds. This is getting close to the atmosphere stoked by the Israeli far right before the assassination of Rabin.
For God's sake, McCain, stop it. For once in this campaign, put your country first.

John Sweeney:

Sen. John McCain, Gov. Sarah Palin and the leadership of the Republican party have a fundamental moral responsibility to denounce the violent rhetoric that has pervaded recent McCain and Palin political rallies. When rally attendees shout out such attacks as "terrorist" or "kill him" about Sen. Barack Obama, when they are cheered on by crowds incited by McCain-Palin rhetoric -- it is chilling that McCain and Palin do nothing to object.

Paul Krugman:

The crisis isn’t the only scary thing going on. Something very ugly is taking shape on the political scene: as McCain’s chances fade, the crowds at his rallies are, by all accounts, increasingly gripped by insane rage. It’s not just a mob phenomenon — it’s visible in the right-wing media, and to some extent in the speeches of McCain and Palin.
[snip]
What happens when Obama is elected? It will be even worse than it was in the Clinton years. For sure there will be crazy accusations, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some violence.

Greg Sargent:

To my knowledge neither McCain nor Palin has uttered a single syllable of protest as their crowds indulged their fear and loathing of Obama. It's hard to overstate how reckless and lacking in leadership this is -- and how dangerous this is, too.
[snip]
But neither McCain nor Palin has taken a single step to do anything like that. Surely that's the big story here.

Dick Chaney was right on IRAQ see video

Don DePasquale — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:27:44 EDT

In 1994 this interview with Dick Cheney shows how right his assesment of the war in IRAQ was. Look at the video, was he precient on what: paste the URL in your webbrowser.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YENbElb5-xY

George W Bush was equally precient when he stood on the aircraft carrier right after Saddam Husein was deposed and said: "Mission Accomplished".

Dick Cheney and his friends at Hallburton had gotten what they were after: The Oil in Iraq.

Chilling is it not that exactly all Dick Cheney warned about in 1994 come true in 2003.The only difference was a weaker Bush in 2003 compared to his father in 1994, and the injection of Big Oil Companies interests and the climate of 9/11 paranoia.

Meet Sarah Palin's radical right-wing pals

Don DePasquale — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:58:16 EDT

Meet Sarah Palin's radical right-wing pals Extremists Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll helped launch Palin's political career in Alaska, and in return had influence over policy. "Her door was open," says Chryson -- and still is.
By Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert
Editor's note: Research support provided by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund. For Salon's complete coverage of Sarah Palin, click here.
Oct. 10, 2008 |
On the afternoon of Sept. 24 in downtown Palmer, Alaska, as the sun began to sink behind the snowcapped mountains that flank the picturesque Mat-Su Valley, 51-year-old Mark Chryson sat for an hour on a park bench, reveling in tales of his days as chairman of the Alaska Independence Party. The stocky, gray-haired computer technician waxed nostalgic about quixotic battles to eliminate taxes, support the "traditional family" and secede from the United States.

So long as Alaska remained under the boot of the federal government, said Chryson, the AIP had to stand on guard to stymie a New World Order. He invited a Salon reporter to see a few items inside his pickup truck that were intended for his personal protection. "This here is my attack dog," he said with a chuckle, handing the reporter an exuberant 8-pound papillon from his passenger seat. "Her name is Suzy." Then he pulled a 9-millimeter Makarov PM pistol -- once the standard-issue sidearm for Soviet cops -- out of his glove compartment. "I've got enough weaponry to raise a small army in my basement," he said, clutching the gun in his palm. "Then again, so do most Alaskans." But Chryson added a message of reassurance to residents of that faraway place some Alaskans call "the 48." "We want to go our separate ways," he said, "but we are not going to kill you."

Though Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, Chryson has been a political fixture in the hometown of the Republican vice-presidential nominee for over a decade. During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin's campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.

Palin backed Chryson as he successfully advanced a host of anti-tax, pro-gun initiatives, including one that altered the state Constitution's language to better facilitate the formation of anti-government militias. She joined in their vendetta against several local officials they disliked, and listened to their advice about hiring. She attempted to name Stoll, a John Birch Society activist known in the Mat-Su Valley as "Black Helicopter Steve," to an empty Wasilla City Council seat. "Every time I showed up her door was open," said Chryson. "And that policy continued when she became governor."

[ Story continues on www.salon.com ]

Obama on Gandhi

Don DePasquale — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:05:20 EDT

October 2, 2008

Gandhi Service Day

Dear Friends,

It's a pleasure for me to join today in commemorating Mahatma Gandhi's
day of birth, celebrated across America and around the world by service
to our neighbors and other good works. Gandhi's commitment to creating
positive change by bringing people together peacefully to demand it
resonate as strongly today as they did during his lifetime. Through the
power of his example and his own unshakeable spirit, he inspired a
people to resist oppression, sparking a revolution that freed a nation
from colonial rule. In formulating his strategy to achieve freedom,
Gandhi had a choice, and he chose courage over fear.

America faces many choices as we work to address the challenges of our
time. We must act from a place of strength and conviction to reclaim the
high road and position of moral leadership that has defined the United
States at its best.

Gandhi's significance is universal. Countless people around the world
have been touched by his spirit and example - his victory in turn
inspired a generation of young Americans to peacefully wipe out a system
of overt oppression that had endured for a century, and more recently
led to velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe and extinguished apartheid
in South Africa. Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., spoke of their great debt to Gandhi. His portrait hangs in my
office to remind me that real change will not come from Washington - it
will come when the people, united, bring it to Washington.

This is a pivotal election. This is our time for change. For far too
long, we've watched as ordinary Americans work harder and harder for
less and less. We've watched our standing in the world erode as we
continue to lose American lives in a war that should've never been
authorized and never been waged. I need you to stand up and work for
change. Let us all rededicate ourselves, every day from now until
November 4th, and beyond, to living Gandhi's call to be the change we
wish to see in the world.

Sincerely,
Barack Obama

Posted by David Hartsough
PEACEWORKERS - San Francisco, California - USA
phone & fax: (415) 751-0302 - davidhartsough@igc.org -
www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org

Palin Is Ready? Please.

Don DePasquale — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:51:09 EDT

WORLD VIEW

Fareed Zakaria

Palin Is Ready? Please.

McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, that is simply not true.

Published Sep 27, 2008

From the magazine issue dated Oct 6, 2008

Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, "to spend more time with her family"? Having stayed in purdah for weeks, she finally agreed to a third interview. CBS's Katie Couric questioned her in her trademark sympathetic style. It didn't help. When asked how living in the state closest to Russia gave her foreign-policy experience, Palin responded thus:

"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--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--to our state."

There is, of course, the sheer absurdity of the premise. Two weeks ago I flew to Tokyo, crossing over the North Pole. Does that make me an expert on Santa Claus? (Thanks, Jon Stewart.) But even beyond that, read the rest of her response. "It is from Alaska that we send out those ..." What does this mean? This is not an isolated example. Palin has been given a set of talking points by campaign advisers, simple ideological mantras that she repeats and repeats as long as she can. ("We mustn't blink.") But if forced off those rehearsed lines, what she has to say is often, quite frankly, gibberish.

Couric asked her a smart question about the proposed $700 billion bailout of the American financial sector. It was designed to see if Palin understood that the problem in this crisis is that credit and liquidity in the financial system has dried up, and that that's why, in the estimation of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, the government needs to step in to buy up Wall Street's most toxic liabilities. Here's the entire exchange:

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

PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the--it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

This is nonsense--a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase about economics that came into her head. Some commentators, like CNN's Campbell Brown, have argued that it's sexist to keep Sarah Palin under wraps, as if she were a delicate flower who might wilt under the bright lights of the modern media. But the more Palin talks, the more we see that it may not be sexism but common sense that's causing the McCain campaign to treat her like a time bomb.

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. The next administration is going to face a set of challenges unlike any in recent memory. There is an ongoing military operation in Iraq that still costs $10 billion a month, a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan that is not going well and is not easily fixed. Iran, Russia and Venezuela present tough strategic challenges.

Domestically, the bailout and reform of the financial industry will take years and hundreds of billions of dollars. Health-care costs, unless curtailed, will bankrupt the federal government. Social Security, immigration, collapsing infrastructure and education are all going to get much worse if they are not handled soon.

And the American government is stretched to the limit. Between the Bush tax cuts, homeland-security needs, Iraq, Afghanistan and the bailout, the budget is looking bleak. Plus, within a few years, the retirement of the baby boomers begins with its massive and rising costs (in the trillions).

Obviously these are very serious challenges and constraints. 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.

Make-Believe Maverick

Don DePasquale — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:38:27 EDT

URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain

Rollingstone.com

Back to Make-Believe Maverick

Make-Believe Maverick A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty

TIM DICKINSON

Posted Oct 16, 2008 7:00 PM

• VIDEO: Five Myths About John McCain
• The Double-Talk Express
• Mad Dog Palin: The Full Story

At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.

McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.

There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met."

On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.

"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."

"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.

"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.

"Why? Where are you going to, John?"

"Oh, I'm going to Rio."

"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

"I got a better chance of getting laid."

Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."

McCAIN FIRST

This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.

In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.

This, of course, is not the story McCain tells about himself. Few politicians have so actively, or successfully, crafted their own myth of greatness. In Mc- Cain's version of his life, he is a prodigal son who, steeled by his brutal internment in Vietnam, learned to put "country first." Remade by the Keating Five scandal that nearly wrecked his career, the story goes, McCain re-emerged as a "reformer" and a "maverick," righteously eschewing anything that "might even tangentially be construed as a less than proper use of my office."

It's a myth McCain has cultivated throughout his decades in Washington. But during the course of this year's campaign, the mask has slipped. "Let's face it," says Larry Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. "John McCain made his reputation on the fact that he doesn't bend his principles for politics. That's just not true."

We have now watched McCain run twice for president. The first time he positioned himself as a principled centrist and decried the politics of Karl Rove and the influence of the religious right, imploring voters to judge candidates "by the example we set, by the way we conduct our campaigns, by the way we personally practice politics." After he lost in 2000, he jagged hard to the left — breaking with the president over taxes, drilling, judicial appointments, even flirting with joining the Democratic Party.

In his current campaign, however, McCain has become the kind of politician he ran against in 2000. He has embraced those he once denounced as "agents of intolerance," promised more drilling and deeper tax cuts, even compromised his vaunted opposition to torture. Intent on winning the presidency at all costs, he has reassembled the very team that so viciously smeared him and his family eight years ago, selecting as his running mate a born-again moose hunter whose only qualification for office is her ability to electrify Rove's base. And he has engaged in a "practice of politics" so deceptive that even Rove himself has denounced it, saying that the outright lies in McCain's campaign ads go "too far" and fail the "truth test."

The missing piece of this puzzle, says a former McCain confidant who has fallen out with the senator over his neoconservatism, is a third, never realized, campaign that McCain intended to run against Bush in 2004. "McCain wanted a rematch, based on ethics, campaign finance and Enron — the corrupt relationship between Bush's team and the corporate sector," says the former friend, a prominent conservative thinker with whom McCain shared his plans over the course of several dinners in 2001. "But when 9/11 happened, McCain saw his chance to challenge Bush again was robbed. He saw 9/11 gave Bush and his failed presidency a second life. He saw Bush and Cheney's ability to draw stark contrasts between black and white, villains and good guys. And that's why McCain changed." (The McCain campaign did not respond to numerous requests for comment from Rolling Stone.)

Indeed, many leading Republicans who once admired McCain see his recent contortions to appease the GOP base as the undoing of a maverick. "John McCain's ambition overrode his basic character," says Rita Hauser, who served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 2001 to 2004. But the truth of the matter is that ambition is John McCain's basic character. Seen in the sweep of his seven-decade personal history, his pandering to the right is consistent with the only constant in his life: doing what's best for himself. To put the matter squarely: John McCain is his own special interest.

"John has made a pact with the devil," says Lincoln Chafee, the former GOP senator, who has been appalled at his one-time colleague's readiness to sacrifice principle for power. Chafee and McCain were the only Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts. They locked arms in opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And they worked together in the "Gang of 14," which blocked some of Bush's worst judges from the federal bench.

"On all three — sadly, sadly, sadly — McCain has flip-flopped," Chafee says. And forget all the "Country First" sloganeering, he adds. "McCain is putting himself first. He's putting himself first in blinking neon lights."

THE NAVY BRAT

John Sidney McCain III has spent most of his life trying to escape the shadow of greater men. His grandfather Adm. John Sidney "Slew" McCain earned his four stars commanding a U.S. carrier force in World War II. His deeply ambitious father, Adm. "Junior" McCain, reached the same rank, commanding America's forces in the Pacific during Vietnam.

The youngest McCain was not cut from the same cloth. Even as a toddler, McCain recalls in Faith of My Fathers, his volcanic temper was on display. "At the smallest provocation," he would hold his breath until he passed out: "I would go off in a mad frenzy, and then, suddenly, crash to the floor unconscious." His parents cured him of this habit in a way only a CIA interrogator could appreciate: by dropping their blue-faced boy in a bathtub of ice-cold water.

Trailing his hard-charging, hard-drinking father from post to post, McCain didn't play well with others. Indeed, he concedes, his runty physique inspired a Napoleon complex: "My small stature motivated me to . . . fight the first kid who provoked me."

McCain spent his formative years among the Washington elite. His father — himself deep in the throes of a daddy complex — had secured a political post as the Navy's chief liaison to the Senate, a job his son would later hold, and the McCain home on Southeast 1st Street was a high-powered pit stop in the Washington cocktail circuit. Growing up, McCain attended Episcopal High School, an all-white, all-boys boarding school across the Potomac in Virginia, where tuition today tops $40,000 a year. There, McCain behaved with all the petulance his privilege allowed, earning the nicknames "Punk" and "McNasty." Even his friends seemed to dislike him, with one recalling him as "a mean little fucker."

McCain was not only a lousy student, he had his father's taste for drink and a darkly misogynistic streak. The summer after his sophomore year, cruising with a friend near Arlington, McCain tried to pick up a pair of young women. When they laughed at him, he cursed them so vilely that he was hauled into court on a profanity charge.

McCain's admittance to Annapolis was preordained by his bloodline. But martial discipline did not seem to have much of an impact on his character. By his own account, McCain was a lazy, incurious student; he squeaked by only by prevailing upon his buddies to help him cram for exams. He continued to get sauced and treat girls badly. Before meeting a girlfriend's parents for the first time, McCain got so shitfaced that he literally crashed through the screen door when he showed up in his white midshipman's uniform.

His grandfather's name and his father's forbearance brought McCain a charmed existence at Annapolis. On his first trip at sea — to Rio de Janeiro aboard the USS Hunt — the captain was a former student of his father. While McCain's classmates learned the ins and outs of the boiler room, McCain got to pilot the ship to South America and back. In Rio, he hobnobbed with admirals and the president of Brazil.

Back on campus, McCain's short fuse was legend. "We'd hear this thunderous screaming and yelling between him and his roommate — doors slamming — and one of them would go running down the hall," recalls Phil Butler, who lived across the hall from McCain at the academy. "It was a regular occurrence."

When McCain was not shown the pampering to which he was accustomed, he grew petulant — even abusive. He repeatedly blew up in the face of his commanding officer. It was the kind of insubordination that would have gotten any other midshipman kicked out of Annapolis. But his classmates soon realized that McCain was untouchable. Midway though his final year, McCain faced expulsion, about to "bilge out" because of excessive demerits. After his mother intervened, however, the academy's commandant stepped in. Calling McCain "spoiled" to his face, he nonetheless issued a reprieve, scaling back the demerits. McCain dodged expulsion a second time by convincing another midshipman to take the fall after McCain was caught with contraband.

"He was a huge screw-off," recalls Butler. "He was always on probation. The only reason he graduated was because of his father and his grandfather — they couldn't exactly get rid of him."

McCain's self-described "four-year course of insubordination" ended with him graduating fifth from the bottom — 894th out of a class of 899. It was a record of mediocrity he would continue as a pilot.

BOTTOM GUN

In the cockpit, McCain was not a top gun, or even a middling gun. He took little interest in his flight manuals; he had other priorities.

"I enjoyed the off-duty life of a Navy flier more than I enjoyed the actual flying," McCain writes. "I drove a Corvette, dated a lot, spent all my free hours at bars and beach parties." McCain chased a lot of tail. He hit the dog track. Developed a taste for poker and dice. He picked up models when he could, screwed a stripper when he couldn't.

In the air, the hard-partying McCain had a knack for stalling out his planes in midflight. He was still in training, in Texas, when he crashed his first plane into Corpus Christi Bay during a routine practice landing. The plane stalled, and McCain was knocked cold on impact. When he came to, the plane was underwater, and he had to swim to the surface to be rescued. Some might take such a near-death experience as a wake-up call: McCain took some painkillers and a nap, and then went out carousing that night.

Off duty on his Mediterranean tours, McCain frequented the casinos of Monte Carlo, cultivating his taste for what he calls the "addictive" game of craps. McCain's thrill-seeking carried over into his day job. Flying over the south of Spain one day, he decided to deviate from his flight plan. Rocketing along mere feet above the ground, his plane sliced through a power line. His self-described "daredevil clowning" plunged much of the area into a blackout.

That should have been the end of McCain's flying career. "In the Navy, if you crashed one airplane, nine times out of 10 you would lose your wings," says Butler, who, like his former classmate, was shot down and taken prisoner in North Vietnam. Spark "a small international incident" like McCain had? Any other pilot would have "found themselves as the deck officer on a destroyer someplace in a hurry," says Butler.

"But, God, he had family pull. He was directly related to the CEO — you know?"

McCain was undeterred by the crashes. Nearly a decade out of the academy, his career adrift, he decided he wanted to fly combat in Vietnam. His motivation wasn't to contain communism or put his country first. It was the only way he could think of to earn the respect of the man he calls his "distant, inscrutable patriarch." He needed to secure a command post in the Navy — and to do that, his career needed the jump-start that only a creditable war record could provide.

As he would so many times in his career, McCain pulled strings to get ahead. After a game of tennis, McCain prevailed upon the undersecretary of the Navy that he was ready for Vietnam, despite his abysmal flight record. Sure enough, McCain was soon transferred to McCain Field — an air base in Meridian, Mississippi, named after his grandfather — to train for a post on the carrier USS Forrestal.

With a close friend at the base, an alcoholic Marine captain, McCain formed the "Key Fess Yacht Club," which quickly became infamous for hosting toga parties in the officers' quarters and bringing bands down from Memphis to attract loose women to the base. Showing his usual knack for promotion, McCain rose from "vice commodore" to "commodore" of the club.

In 1964, while still at the base, McCain began a serious romance with Carol Shepp, a vivacious former model who had just divorced one of his classmates from Annapolis. Commandeering a Navy plane, McCain spent most weekends flying from Meridian to Philadelphia for their dates. They married the following summer.

That December, McCain crashed again. Flying back from Philadelphia, where he had joined in the reverie of the Army-Navy football game, McCain stalled while coming in for a refueling stop in Norfolk, Virginia. This time he managed to bail out at 1,000 feet. As his parachute deployed, his plane thundered into the trees below.

By now, however, McCain's flying privileges were virtually irrevocable — and he knew it. On one of his runs at McCain Field, when ground control put him in a holding pattern, the lieutenant commander once again pulled his family's rank. "Let me land," McCain demanded over his radio, "or I'll take my field and go home!"

TRIAL BY FIRE

Sometimes 3 a.m. moments occur at 10:52 in the morning.

It was July 29th, 1967, a hot, gusty morning in the Gulf of Tonkin atop the four-acre flight deck of the supercarrier USS Forrestal. Perched in the cockpit of his A-4 Skyhawk, Lt. Cmdr. John McCain ticked nervously through his preflight checklist.

Now 30 years old, McCain was trying to live up to his father's expectations, to finally be known as something other than the fuck-up grandson of one of the Navy's greatest admirals. That morning, preparing for his sixth bombing run over North Vietnam, the graying pilot's dreams of combat glory were beginning to seem within his reach.

Then, in an instant, the world around McCain erupted in flames. A six-foot-long Zuni rocket, inexplicably launched by an F-4 Phantom across the flight deck, ripped through the fuel tank of McCain's aircraft. Hundreds of gallons of fuel splashed onto the deck and came ablaze. Then: Clank. Clank. Two 1,000-pound bombs dropped from under the belly of McCain's stubby A-4, the Navy's "Tinkertoy Bomber," into the fire.

McCain, who knew more than most pilots about bailing out of a crippled aircraft, leapt forward out of the cockpit, swung himself down from the refueling probe protruding from the nose cone, rolled through the flames and ran to safety across the flight deck. Just then, one of his bombs "cooked off," blowing a crater in the deck and incinerating the sailors who had rushed past McCain with hoses and fire extinguishers. McCain was stung by tiny bits of shrapnel in his legs and chest, but the wounds weren't serious; his father would later report to friends that Johnny "came through without a scratch."

The damage to the Forrestal was far more grievous: The explosion set off a chain reaction of bombs, creating a devastating inferno that would kill 134 of the carrier's 5,000-man crew, injure 161 and threaten to sink the ship.

These are the moments that test men's mettle. Where leaders are born. Leaders like . . . Lt. Cmdr. Herb Hope, pilot of the A-4 three planes down from McCain's. Cornered by flames at the stern of the carrier, Hope hurled himself off the flight deck into a safety net and clambered into the hangar deck below, where the fire was spreading. According to an official Navy history of the fire, Hope then "gallantly took command of a firefighting team" that would help contain the conflagration and ultimately save the ship.

McCain displayed little of Hope's valor. Although he would soon regale The New York Times with tales of the heroism of the brave enlisted men who "stayed to help the pilots fight the fire," McCain took no part in dousing the flames himself. After going belowdecks and briefly helping sailors who were frantically trying to unload bombs from an elevator to the flight deck, McCain retreated to the safety of the "ready room," where off-duty pilots spent their noncombat hours talking trash and playing poker. There, McCain watched the conflagration unfold on the room's closed-circuit television — bearing distant witness to the valiant self-sacrifice of others who died trying to save the ship, pushing jets into the sea to keep their bombs from exploding on deck.

As the ship burned, McCain took a moment to mourn his misfortune; his combat career appeared to be going up in smoke. "This distressed me considerably," he recalls in Faith of My Fathers. "I feared my ambitions were among the casualties in the calamity that had claimed the Forrestal."

The fire blazed late into the night. The following morning, while oxygen-masked rescue workers toiled to recover bodies from the lower decks, McCain was making fast friends with R.W. "Johnny" Apple of The New York Times, who had arrived by helicopter to cover the deadliest Naval calamity since the Second World War. The son of admiralty surviving a near-death experience certainly made for good copy, and McCain colorfully recounted how he had saved his skin. But when Apple and other reporters left the ship, the story took an even stranger turn: McCain left with them. As the heroic crew of the Forrestal mourned its fallen brothers and the broken ship limped toward the Philippines for repairs, McCain zipped off to Saigon for what he recalls as "some welcome R&R."

VIOLATING THE CODE

Ensconced in Apple's villa in Saigon, McCain and the Times reporter forged a relationship that would prove critical to the ambitious pilot's career in the years ahead. Apple effectively became the charter member of McCain's media "base," an elite corps of admiring reporters who helped create his reputation for "straight talk."

Sipping scotch and reflecting on the fire aboard the Forrestal, McCain sounded like the peaceniks he would pillory after his return from Hanoi. "Now that I've seen what the bombs and napalm did to the people on our ship," he told Apple, "I'm not so sure that I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam." Here, it seemed, was a frank-talking warrior, one willing to speak out against the military establishment in the name of truth.

But McCain's misgivings about the righteousness of the fight quickly took a back seat to his ambitions. Within days, eager to get his combat career back on track, he put in for a transfer to the carrier USS Oriskany. Two months after the Forrestal fire — following a holiday on the French Riviera — McCain reported for duty in the Gulf of Tonkin.

McCain performed adequately on the Oriskany. On October 25th, 1967, he bombed a pair of Soviet MiGs parked on an airfield outside Hanoi. His record was now even. Enemy planes destroyed by McCain: two. American planes destroyed by McCain: two.

The next day, McCain embarked on his fateful 23rd mission, a bombing raid on a power plant in downtown Hanoi. McCain had cajoled his way onto the strike force — there were medals up for grabs. The plant had recently been rebuilt after a previous bombing run that had earned two of the lead pilots Navy Crosses, one of the force's top honors.

It was a dangerous mission — taking the planes into the teeth of North Vietnam's fiercest anti-aircraft defenses. As the planes entered Hanoi airspace, they were instantly enveloped in dark clouds of flak and surface-to-air missiles. Still cocky from the previous day's kills, McCain took the biggest gamble of his life. As he dived in on the target in his A-4, his surface-to-air missile warning system sounded: A SAM had a lock on him. "I knew I should roll out and fly evasive maneuvers," McCain writes. "The A-4 is a small, fast" aircraft that "can outmaneuver a tracking SAM."

But McCain didn't "jink." Instead, he stayed on target and let fly his bombs — just as the SAM blew his wing off.

To watch the Republican National Convention and listen to Fred Thompson's account of John McCain's internment in Vietnam, you would think that McCain never gave his captors anything beyond his name, rank, service number and, under duress, the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line. His time in Hanoi, we're to understand, steeled the man — transforming him from a fighter jock who put himself first into a patriot who would henceforth selflessly serve the public good.

There is no question that McCain suffered hideously in North Vietnam. His ejection over a lake in downtown Hanoi broke his knee and both his arms. During his capture, he was bayoneted in the ankle and the groin, and had his shoulder smashed by a rifle butt. His tormentors dragged McCain's broken body to a cell and seemed content to let him expire from his injuries. For the next two years, there were few days that he was not in agony.

But the subsequent tale of McCain's mistreatment — and the transformation it is alleged to have produced — are both deeply flawed. The Code of Conduct that governed POWs was incredibly rigid; few soldiers lived up to its dictate that they "give no information . . . which might be harmful to my comrades." Under the code, POWs are bound to give only their name, rank, date of birth and service number — and to make no "statements disloyal to my country."

Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. "I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital," he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. "I had to tell them," he insisted to Dramesi, "or I would have died in bed."

Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain's service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot's behavior as heroic — "he wasn't exceptional one way or the other" — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. "This business of my country before my life?" Dramesi says. "Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he'd be dead."

Once the Vietnamese realized they had captured the man they called the "crown prince," they had every motivation to keep McCain alive. His value as a propaganda tool and bargaining chip was far greater than any military intelligence he could provide, and McCain knew it. "It was hard not to see how pleased the Vietnamese were to have captured an admiral's son," he writes, "and I knew that my father's identity was directly related to my survival." But during the course of his medical treatment, McCain followed through on his offer of military information. Only two weeks after his capture, the North Vietnamese press issued a report — picked up by The New York Times — in which McCain was quoted as saying that the war was "moving to the advantage of North Vietnam and the United States appears to be isolated." He also provided the name of his ship, the number of raids he had flown, his squadron number and the target of his final raid.

THE CONFESSION

In the company of his fellow POWs, and later in isolation, McCain slowly and miserably recovered from his wounds. In June 1968, after three months in solitary, he was offered what he calls early release. In the official McCain narrative, this was the ultimate test of mettle. He could have come home, but keeping faith with his fellow POWs, he chose to remain imprisoned in Hanoi.

What McCain glosses over is that accepting early release would have required him to make disloyal statements that would have violated the military's Code of Conduct. If he had done so, he could have risked court-martial and an ignominious end to his military career. "Many of us were given this offer," according to Butler, McCain's classmate who was also taken prisoner. "It meant speaking out against your country and lying about your treatment to the press. You had to 'admit' that the U.S. was criminal and that our treatment was 'lenient and humane.' So I, like numerous others, refused the offer."

"He makes it sound like it was a great thing to have accomplished," says Dramesi. "A great act of discipline or strength. That simply was not the case." In fairness, it is difficult to judge McCain's experience as a POW; throughout most of his incarceration he was the only witness to his mistreatment. Parts of his memoir recounting his days in Hanoi read like a bad Ian Fleming novel, with his Vietnamese captors cast as nefarious Bond villains. On the Fourth of July 1968, when he rejected the offer of early release, an officer nicknamed "Cat" got so mad, according to McCain, that he snapped a pen he was holding, splattering ink across the room.

"They taught you too well, Mac Kane," Cat snarled, kicking over a chair. "They taught you too well."

The brutal interrogations that followed produced results. In August 1968, over the course of four days, McCain was tortured into signing a confession that he was a "black criminal" and an "air pirate." "

"John allows the media to make him out to be the hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals," says Butler. "John was just one of about 600 guys. He was nothing unusual. He was just another POW."

McCain has also allowed the media to believe that his torture lasted for the entire time he was in Hanoi. At the Republican convention, Fred Thompson said of McCain's torture, "For five and a half years this went on." In fact, McCain's torture ended after two years, when the death of Ho Chi Minh in September 1969 caused the Vietnamese to change the way they treated POWs. "They decided it would be better to treat us better and keep us alive so they could trade us in for real estate," Butler recalls.

By that point, McCain had become the most valuable prisoner of all: His father was now directing the war effort as commander in chief of all U.S. forces in the Pacific. McCain spent the next three and a half years in Hanoi biding his time, trying to put on weight and regain his strength, as the bombing ordered by his father escalated. By the time he and other POWs were freed in March 1973 as a result of the Paris Peace Accords, McCain was able to leave the prison camp in Hanoi on his own feet.

Even those in the military who celebrate McCain's patriotism and sacrifice question why his POW experience has been elevated as his top qualification to be commander in chief. "It took guts to go through that and to come out reasonably intact and able to pick up the pieces of your life and move on," says Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, who has known McCain since the 1980s. "It is unquestionably a demonstration of the character of the man. But I don't think that it is a special qualification for being president of the United States. In some respects, I'm not sure that's the kind of character I want sitting in the Oval Office. I'm not sure that much time in a prisoner-of-war status doesn't do something to you. Doesn't do something to you psychologically, doesn't do something to you that might make you a little more volatile, a little less apt to listen to reason, a little more inclined to be volcanic in your temperament."

"A BELLICOSE HAWK"

The reckless, womanizing hotshot who leaned on family connections for advancement before his capture in Vietnam emerged a reckless, womanizing celebrity who continued to pull strings. The real difference between the McCain of 1967 and the McCain of 1973 was that the latter's ambition was now on overdrive. He wanted to study at the National War College — but military brass turned him down as underqualified. So McCain appealed the decision to the top: John Warner, the Secretary of the Navy and a friend of his father. Warner, who now serves in the Senate alongside McCain, overruled the brass and gave the POW a slot. McCain also got his wings back, even though his injuries prevented him from raising his hands above shoulder height to comb his own hair.

McCain was eager to make up for lost time — and the times were favorable to a high-profile veteran willing to speak out in favor of the war. With the Senate moving to cut off funds for the Nixon administration's illegal bombing of Cambodia, the president needed all the help he could get. Two months after his release, McCain related his harrowing story of survival in a 13-page narrative in U.S. News & World Report, at the end of which he launched into an energetic defense of Nixon's discredited foreign policy. "I admire President Nixon's courage," he wrote. "It is difficult for me to understand . . . why people are still criticizing his foreign policy — for example, the bombing in Cambodia."

In the years to come, McCain would continue to fight the war his father had lost. In his meetings with Nixon, Junior was known for chomping on an unlit cigar, complaining about the "goddamn gooks" and pushing to bomb enemy sanctuaries in Cambodia. His son was equally gung-ho. "John has always been a very bellicose hawk," says John H. Johns, a retired brigadier general who studied with McCain at the War College. "When he came back from Vietnam, he accused the liberal media of undermining national will, that we could have won in Vietnam if we had the national will."

It was the kind of tough talk that made McCain a fast-rising star in far-right circles. Through Ross Perot, a friend of Ronald Reagan who had championed the cause of the POWs, McCain was invited to meet with the then-governor of California and his wife. Impressed, Reagan invited McCain to be the keynote speaker at his annual "prayer breakfast" in Sacramento.

Then, at the end of 1974, McCain finally achieved the goal he had been working toward for years. He was installed as the commanding officer of the largest air squadron in the Navy — the Replacement Air Group based in Jacksonville, Florida — training carrier pilots. It was a post for which McCain flatly admits, "I was not qualified." By now, however, he was unembarrassed by his own nepotism. At the ceremony commemorating his long-sought ascension to command, his father looking on with pride, McCain wept openly.

BOOZE AND PORK

If heroism is defined by physical suffering, Carol McCain is every bit her ex-husband's equal. Driving alone on Christmas Eve 1969, she skidded out on a patch of ice and crashed into a telephone pole. She would spend six months in the hospital and undergo 23 surgeries. The former model McCain bragged of to his buddies in the POW camp as his "long tall Sally" was now five inches shorter and walked with crutches.

By any standard, McCain treated her contemptibly. Whatever his dreams of getting laid in Rio, he got plenty of ass during his command post in Jacksonville. According to biographer Robert Timberg, McCain seduced his conquests on off-duty cross-country flights — even though adultery is a court-martial offense. He was also rumored to be romantically involved with a number of his subordinates.

In 1977, McCain was promoted to captain and became the Navy's liaison to the Senate — the same politically connected post once occupied by his father. He took advantage of the position to buddy up to young senators like Gary Hart, William Cohen and Joe Biden. He was also taken under the wing of another friend of his father: Sen. John Tower, the powerful Texas Republican who would become his political mentor. Despite the promotion, McCain continued his adolescent carousing: On a diplomatic trip to Saudi Arabia with Tower, he tried to get some tourists he disliked in trouble with the authorities by littering the room-service trays outside their door with empty bottles of alcohol.

As the Navy's top lobbyist, McCain was supposed to carry out the bidding of the secretary of the Navy. But in 1978 he went off the reservation. Vietnam was over, and the Carter administration, cutting costs, had decided against spending $2 billion to replace the aging carrier Midway. The secretary agreed with the administration's decision. Readiness would not be affected. The only reason to replace the carrier — at a cost of nearly $7 billion in today's dollars — was pork-barrel politics.

Although he now crusades against wasteful military spending, McCain had no qualms about secretly lobbying for a pork project that would pay for a dozen Bridges to Nowhere. "He did a lot of stuff behind the back of the secretary of the Navy," one lobbyist told Timberg. Working his Senate connections, McCain managed to include a replacement for the Midway in the defense authorization bill in 1978. Carter, standing firm, vetoed the entire spending bill to kill the carrier. When an attempt to override the veto fell through, however, McCain and his lobbyist friends didn't give up the fight. The following year, Congress once again approved funding for the carrier. This time, Carter — his pork-busting efforts undone by a turncoat Navy liaison — signed the bill.

In the spring of 1979, while conducting official business for the Navy, the still-married McCain encountered Cindy Lou Hensley, a willowy former cheerleader for USC. Mutually smitten, the two lied to each other about their ages. The 24-year-old Hensley became 27; the 42-year-old McCain became 38. For nearly a year the two carried on a cross-country romance while McCain was still living with Carol: Court documents filed with their divorce proceeding indicate that they "cohabitated as husband and wife" for the first nine months of the affair.

Although McCain stresses in his memoir that he married Cindy three months after divorcing Carol, he was still legally married to his first wife when he and Cindy were issued a marriage license from the state of Arizona. The divorce was finalized on April 2nd, 1980. McCain's second marriage — rung in at the Arizona Biltmore with Gary Hart as a groomsman — was consummated only six weeks later, on May 17th. The union gave McCain access to great wealth: Cindy, whose father was the exclusive distributor for Budweiser in the Phoenix area, is now worth an estimated $100 million.

McCain's friends were blindsided by the divorce. The Reagans — with whom the couple had frequently dined and even accompanied on New Year's holidays — never forgave him. By the time McCain became a self-proclaimed "foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution" two years later, he and the Gipper had little more than ideology to bind them. Nancy took Carol under her wing, giving her a job in the White House and treating McCain with a frosty formality that was evident even on the day last March when she endorsed his candidacy. "Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided and then we endorsed," she said. "Well, obviously, this is the nominee of the party."

THE CARPETBAGGER

As his marriage unraveled, McCain's naval career was also stalling out. He had been passed over for a promotion. There was no sea command on the horizon, ensuring that he would never be able to join his four-star forefathers. For good measure, he crashed his third and final plane, this one a single-engine ultralight. McCain has never spoken of his last crash publicly, but his friend Gen. Jim Jones recalled in a 1999 interview that it left McCain with bandages on his face and one arm in a sling.

So McCain turned to politics. Receiving advance word that a GOP congressional seat was opening up outside Phoenix, he put the inside edge to good use. Within minutes of the incumbent's official retirement announcement, Cindy McCain bought her husband the house that would serve as his foothold in the district. In sharp contrast to the way he now markets himself, McCain's campaign ads billed him as an insider — a man "who knows how Washington works." Though the Reagans no longer respected him, McCain featured pictures of himself smiling with them.

"Thanks to my prisoner-of-war experience," McCain writes, "I had, as they say in politics, a good story to sell." And sell it he did. "Listen, pal," he told an opponent who challenged him during a candidate forum. "I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived the longest in my life was Hanoi."

To finance his campaign, McCain dipped into the Hensley family fortune. He secured an endorsement from his mentor, Sen. Tower, who tapped his vast donor network in Texas to give McCain a much-needed boost. And he began an unethical relationship with a high-flying and corrupt financier that would come to characterize his cozy dealings with major donors and lobbyists over the years.

Charlie Keating, the banker and anti-pornography crusader, would ultimately be convicted on 73 counts of fraud and racketeering for his role in the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s. That crisis, much like today's subprime-mortgage meltdown, resulted from misbegotten banking deregulation, and ultimately left taxpayers to pick up a tab of more than $124 billion. Keating, who raised more than $100,000 for McCain's race, lavished the first-term congressman with the kind of political favors that would make Jack Abramoff blush. McCain and his family took at least nine free trips at Keating's expense, and vacationed nearly every year at the mogul's estate in the Bahamas. There they would spend the days yachting and snorkeling and attending extravagant parties in a world McCain referred to as "Charlie Keating's Shangri-La." Keating also invited Cindy McCain and her father to invest in a real estate venture for which he promised a 26 percent return on investment. They plunked down more than $350,000.

McCain still attributes the attention to nothing more than Keating's "great respect for military people" and the duo's "political and personal affinity." But Keating, for his part, made no bones about the purpose of his giving. When asked by reporters if the investments he made in politicians bought their loyalty and influence on his behalf, Keating replied, "I want to say in the most forceful way I can, I certainly hope so."

THE KEATING FIVE

In congress, Rep. John McCain quickly positioned himself as a GOP hard-liner. He voted against honoring Martin Luther King Jr. with a national holiday in 1983 — a stance he held through 1989. He backed Reagan on tax cuts for the wealthy, abortion and support for the Nicaraguan contras. He sought to slash federal spending on social programs, and he voted twice against campaign-finance reform. He cites as his "biggest" legislative victory of that era a 1989 bill that abolished catastrophic health insurance for seniors, a move he still cheers as the first-ever repeal of a federal entitlement program.

McCain voted to confirm Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. In 1993, he was the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for a group that sponsored an anti-gay-rights ballot initiative in Oregon. His anti-government fervor was renewed in the Gingrich revolution of 1994, when he called for abolishing the departments of Education and Energy. The following year, he championed a sweeping measure that would have imposed a blanket moratorium on any increase of government oversight.

In this context, McCain's recent record — opposing the new GI Bill, voting to repeal the federal minimum wage, seeking to deprive 3.8 million kids of government health care — looks entirely consistent. "When jackasses like Rush Limbaugh say he's not conservative, that's just total nonsense," says former Sen. Gary Hart, who still counts McCain as a friend.

Although a hawkish Cold Warrior, McCain did show an independent streak when it came to the use of American military power. Because of his experience in Vietnam, he said, he didn't favor the deployment of U.S. forces unless there was a clear and attainable military objective. In 1983, McCain broke with Reagan to vote against the deployment of Marine peacekeepers to Lebanon. The unorthodox stance caught the attention of the media — including this very magazine, which praised McCain's "enormous courage." It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. McCain recognized early on how the game was played: The Washington press corps "tend to notice acts of political independence from unexpected quarters," he later noted. "Now I was debating Lebanon on programs like MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. I was gratified by the attention and eager for more."

When McCain became a senator in 1986, filling the seat of retiring Republican icon Barry Goldwater, he was finally in a position that a true maverick could use to battle the entrenched interests in Washington. Instead, McCain did the bidding of his major donor, Charlie Keating, whose financial empire was on the brink of collapse. Federal regulators were closing in on Keating, who had taken federally insured deposits from his Lincoln Savings and Loan and leveraged them to make wildly risky real estate ventures. If regulators restricted his investments, Keating knew, it would all be over.

In the year before his Senate run, McCain had championed legislation that would have delayed new regulations of savings and loans. Grateful, Keating contributed $54,000 to McCain's Senate campaign. Now, when Keating tried to stack the federal regulatory bank board with cronies, McCain made a phone call seeking to push them through. In 1987, in an unprecedented display of political intimidation, McCain also attended two meetings convened by Keating to pressure federal regulators to back off. The senators who participated in the effort would come to be known as the Keating Five.

"Senate historians were unable to find any instance in U.S. history that was comparable, in terms of five U.S. senators meeting with a regulator on behalf of one institution," says Bill Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, who attended the second meeting. "And it hasn't happened since."

Following the meetings with McCain and the other senators, the regulators backed off, stalling their investigation of Lincoln. By the time the S&L collapsed two years later, taxpayers were on the hook for $3.4 billion, which stood as a record for the most expensive bank failure — until the current mortgage crisis. In addition, 20,000 investors who had bought junk bonds from Keating, thinking they were federally insured, had their savings wiped out.

"McCain saw the political pressure on the regulators," recalls Black. "He could have saved these widows from losing their life savings. But he did absolutely nothing."

McCain was ultimately given a slap on the wrist by the Senate Ethics Committee, which concluded only that he had exercised "poor judgment." The committee never investigated Cindy's investment with Keating.

The McCains soon found themselves entangled in more legal trouble. In 1989, in behavior the couple has blamed in part on the stress of the Keating scandal, Cindy became addicted to Vicodin and Percocet. She directed a doctor employed by her charity — which provided medical care to patients in developing countries — to supply the narcotics, which she then used to get high on trips to places like Bangladesh and El Salvador.

Tom Gosinski, a young Republican, kept a detailed journal while working as director of government affairs for the charity. "I am working for a very sad, lonely woman whose marriage of convenience to a U.S. senator has driven her to . . . cover feelings of despair with drugs," he wrote in 1992. When Cindy McCain suddenly fired Gosinski, he turned his journal over to the Drug Enforcement Administration, sparking a yearlong investigation. To avoid jail time, Cindy agreed to a hush-hush plea bargain and court-imposed rehab.

Ironically, her drug addiction became public only because she and her husband tried to cover it up. In an effort to silence Gosinski, who was seeking $250,000 for wrongful termination, the attorney for the McCains demanded that Phoenix prosecutors investigate the former employee for extortion. The charge was baseless, and prosecutors dropped the investigation in 1994 — but not before publishing a report that included details of Cindy's drug use.

Notified that the report was being released, Sen. McCain leapt into action. He dispatched his top political consultant to round up a group of friendly reporters, for whom Cindy staged a seemingly selfless, Oprah-style confession of her past addiction. Her drug use became part of the couple's narrative of straight talk and bravery in the face of adversity. "If what I say can help just one person to face the problem," Cindy declared, "it's worthwhile."

FAVORS FOR DONORS

In the aftermath of the Keating Five, McCain realized that his career was in a "hell of a mess." He had made George H.W. Bush's shortlist for vice president in 1988, but the Keating scandal made him a political untouchable. McCain needed a high horse — so his long-standing opposition to campaign-finance reform went out the window. Working with Russ Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin, McCain authored a measure to ban unlimited "soft money" donations from politics.

The Keating affair also taught McCain a vital lesson about handling the media. When the scandal first broke, he went ballistic on reporters who questioned his wife's financial ties to Keating — calling them "liars" and "idiots." Predictably, the press coverage was merciless. So McCain dialed back the anger and turned up the charm. "I talked to the press constantly, ad infinitum, until their appetite for information from me was completely satisfied," he later wrote. "It is a public relations strategy that I have followed to this day." Mr. Straight Talk was born.

Unfortunately, any lessons McCain learned from the Keating scandal didn't affect his unbridled enthusiasm for deregulating the finance industry. "He continues to follow policies that create the same kind of environment we see today, with recurrent financial crises and epidemics of fraud led by CEOs," says Black, the former S&L regulator. Indeed, if the current financial crisis has a villain, it is Phil Gramm, who remains close to McCain. As chair of the Senate Banking Committee in the late 1990s, Gramm ushered in — with McCain's fervent support — a massive wave of deregulation for insurance companies and brokerage houses and banks, the aftershocks of which are just now being felt in Wall Street's catastrophic collapse. McCain, who has admitted that "the issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," relies on Gramm to guide him.

McCain also did his part to loosen regulations on big corporations. In 1997, McCain became chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the insurance and telecommunications industries, as well as the CEO pay packages of those McCain now denounces as "fat cats." The special interests with business before the committee were big and well-heeled. All told, executives and fundraisers associated with these firms donated $2.6 million to McCain when he served as the chairman or ranking member.

The money bought influence. In 1998, employees of BellSouth contributed more than $16,000 to McCain. The senator returned the favor, asking the Federal Communications Commission to give "serious consideration" to the company's request to become a long-distance carrier. Days after legislation benefiting the satellite-TV carrier EchoStar cleared McCain's committee, the company's founder celebrated by hosting a major fundraiser for McCain's presidential bid.

Whatever McCain's romantic entanglements with the lobbyist Vicki Iseman, he was clearly in bed with her clients, who donated nearly $85,000 to his campaigns. One of her clients, Bud Paxson, set up a meeting with McCain in 1999, frustrated by the FCC's delay of his proposed takeover of a television station in Pittsburgh. Paxson had treated McCain well, offering the then-presidential candidate use of his corporate jet to fly to campaign events and ponying up $20,000 in campaign donations.

"You're the head of the commerce committee," Paxson told McCain, according to The Washington Post. "The FCC is not doing its job. I would love for you to write a letter."

Iseman helped draft the text, and McCain sent the letter. Several weeks later — the day after McCain used Paxson's jet to fly to Florida for a fundraiser — McCain wrote another letter. FCC chair William Kennard sent a sharp rebuke to McCain, calling the senator's meddling "highly unusual." Nonetheless, within a week of McCain's second letter, the FCC ruled three-to-two in favor of Paxson's deal.

Following his failed presidential bid in 2000, McCain needed a vehicle to keep his brand alive. He founded the Reform Institute, which he set up as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit — a tax status that barred it from explicit political activity. McCain proceeded to staff the institute with his campaign manager, Rick Davis, as well as the fundraising chief, legal counsel and communications chief from his 2000 campaign.

There is no small irony that the Reform Institute — founded to bolster McCain's crusade to rid politics of unregulated soft money — itself took in huge sums of unregulated soft money from companies with interests before McCain's committee. EchoStar got in on the ground floor with a donation of $100,000. A charity funded by the CEO of Univision gave another $100,000. Cablevision gave $200,000 to the Reform Institute in 2003 and 2004 — just as its officials were testifying before the commerce committee. McCain urged approval of the cable company's proposed pricing plan. As Bradley Smith, the former chair of the Federal Election Commission, wrote at the time: "Appearance of corruption, anyone?"

"HE IS HOTHEADED"

Over the years, John McCain has demonstrated a streak of anger so nasty that even his former flacks make no effort to spin it away. "If I tried to convince you he does not have a temper, you should hang up on me and ridicule me in print," says Dan Schnur, who served as McCain's press man during the 2000 campaign. Even McCain admits to an "immature and unprofessional reaction to slights" that is "little changed from the reactions to such provocations I had as a schoolboy."

McCain is sensitive about his physical appearance, especially his height. The candidate is only five-feet-nine, making him the shortest party nominee since Michael Dukakis. On the night he was elected senator in 1986, McCain exploded after discovering that the stage setup for his victory speech was too low; television viewers saw his head bobbing at the bottom of the screen, his chin frequently cropped from view. Enraged, McCain tracked down the young Republican who had set up the podium, prodding the volunteer in the chest while screaming that he was an "incompetent little shit." Jon Hinz, the director of the Arizona GOP, separated the senator from the young man, promising to get him a milk crate to stand on for his next public appearance.

During his 1992 campaign, at the end of a long day, McCain's wife, Cindy, mussed his receding hair and needled him playfully that he was "getting a little thin up there." McCain reportedly blew his top, cutting his wife down with the kind of language that had gotten him hauled into court as a high schooler: "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." Even though the incident was witnessed by three reporters, the McCain campaign denies it took place.

In the Senate — where, according to former GOP Sen. Bob Smith, McCain has "very few friends" — his volcanic temper has repeatedly led to explosive altercations with colleagues and constituents alike. In 1992, McCain got into a heated exchange with Sen. Chuck Grassley over the fate of missing American servicemen in Vietnam. "Are you calling me stupid?" Grassley demanded. "No, I'm calling you a fucking jerk!" yelled McCain. Sen. Bob Kerrey later told reporters that he feared McCain was "going to head-butt Grassley and drive the cartilage in his nose into his brain." The two were separated before they came to blows. Several years later, during another debate over servicemen missing in action, an elderly mother of an MIA soldier rolled up to McCain in her wheelchair to speak to him about her son's case. According to witnesses, McCain grew enraged, raising his hand as if to strike her before pushing her wheelchair away.

McCain has called Paul Weyrich, who helped steer the Republican Party to the right, a "pompous self-serving son of a bitch" who "possesses the attributes of a Dickensian villain." In 1999, he told Sen. Pete Domenici, the Republican chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, that "only an asshole would put together a budget like this."

Last year, after barging into a bipartisan meeting on immigration legislation and attempting to seize the reins, McCain was called out by fellow GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. "Wait a second here," Cornyn said. "I've been sitting in here for all of these negotiations and you just parachute in here on the last day. You're out of line." McCain exploded: "Fuck you! I know more about this than anyone in the room." The incident foreshadowed McCain's 11th-hour theatrics in September, when he abruptly "suspended" his campaign and inserted himself into the Wall Street bailout debate at the last minute, just as congressional leaders were attempting to finalize a bipartisan agreement.

At least three of McCain's GOP colleagues have gone on record to say that they consider him temperamentally unsuited to be commander in chief. Smith, the former senator from New Hampshire, has said that McCain's "temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him." Sen. Domenici of New Mexico has said he doesn't "want this guy anywhere near a trigger." And Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi weighed in that "the thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded."

McCain's frequently inappropriate humor has also led many to question his self-control. In 1998, the senator told a joke about President Clinton's teenage daughter at a GOP fundraiser. "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?" McCain asked. "Because her father is Janet Reno!"

More recently, McCain's jokes have heightened tensions with Iran. The senator once cautioned that "the world's only superpower . . . should never make idle threats" — but that didn't stop him from rewriting the lyrics to a famous Beach Boys tune. In April 2007, when a voter at a town-hall session asked him about his policy toward Tehran, McCain responded by singing, "bomb bomb bomb" Iran. The loose talk was meant to incite the GOP base, but it also aggravated relations with Iran, whose foreign minister condemned McCain's "jokes about genocide" as a testament to his "disturbed state of mind" and "warmongering approach to foreign policy."

"NEXT UP, BAGHDAD!"

The myth of John McCain hinges on two transformations — from pampered flyboy to selfless patriot, and from Keating crony to incorruptible reformer — that simply never happened. But there is one serious conversion that has taken root in McCain: his transformation from a cautious realist on foreign policy into a reckless cheerleader of neoconservatism.

"He's going to be Bush on steroids," says Johns, the retired brigadier general who has known McCain since their days at the National War College. "His hawkish views now are very dangerous. He puts military at the top of foreign policy rather than diplomacy, just like George Bush does. He and other neoconservatives are dedicated to converting the world to democracy and free markets, and they want to do it through the barrel of a gun."

McCain used to believe passionately in the limits of American military power. In 1993, he railed against Clinton's involvement in Somalia, sponsoring an amendment to cut off funds for the troops. The following year he blasted the idealistic aims of sending U.S. troops to Haiti, taking to the Senate floor to propose an immediate withdrawal. He even started out a fierce opponent of NATO air strikes on Serbia during the war in the Balkans.

But such concerns went out the window when McCain began gearing up to run for president. In 1998, he formed a political alliance with William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, who became one of his closest advisers. Randy Scheunemann — a hard-right lobbyist who was promoting Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi — came aboard as McCain's top foreign-policy adviser. Before long, the senator who once

Welcome to Gilead, Governor Palin

Don DePasquale — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:32:24 EDT

Welcome to Gilead, Governor Palin

Tuesday 30 September 2008

by: Cynthia Boaz, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

In Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, "The Handmaid's Tale," women are confined to a few, limited, gender-based tasks. They are kept in submission by the "Aunts," who reassure them that their subjugation is right. The "Aunts," according to Cynthia Boaz, have a whole lot in common with Sarah Palin. (Photo: Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

If you've ever read Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, "The Handmaid's Tale," you will recall the key role that was played by the women assigned to be the "Aunts." The story revolves around a futuristic American society in which fundamentalist Christians install a gender-based caste system where each woman is assigned a specific societal function. It is a commentary on the dangerous erasing of the line between church and state in the contemporary United States. The merging of religion and government is carried out by a group of older, white male "commanders" whose propaganda demands that citizens be constantly terrorized into submission and obedience. The resulting regime is Atwood's vision of the worst-case scenario: an American police-state theocracy where every woman's identity is reduced to her sexual attributes, and each is assigned to a category based on her physical qualifications. Subtle references to racist philosophy are mixed into the literalist religious rhetoric.

The attractive young women of reproductive age are the "handmaids"; the attractive but infertile middle-age women are the "wives"; the dark-skinned women of any age are domestic servants, and so on. All women are forbidden from reading or writing. The country is renamed the Republic of Gilead, a reference to the biblical homeland of the patriarchs. And the Aunts - who are middle-aged white women of some previous prestige and education - are especially sinister characters. The primary job of the Aunts is to keep the handmaids (the childbearers) subservient. They go about this by convincing the handmaids that they are powerless and can only contribute to society when they fulfill their God-given responsibility to serve the commanders. The Aunts' job, put simply, is to exploit other women by keeping them submissive and telling them that it's for the good of all (and even more insidiously, that in obeying, the handmaids "empower" themselves.) What makes the Aunts so remarkable is their collective failure to realize that they are simply being used by the commanders to keep other women in line, and their willingness - glee, even - at doing so is simultaneously sad and terrifying. So what compels the Aunts to become traitors to both their sex and their country? First, they believe that their contribution to the repressive social order is righteous, and second, they've found that under this rigid system of social control, they have the illusion of a tiny bit of power.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should. Governor and Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin is the Gileadian "Aunt" manifested. Her sudden emergence onto the American political scene, accompanied by a burst of enthusiasm on the part of many American women, is a surreal example of life imitating art. Much of Palin's rhetoric, tactics and personal philosophy seem to be taken directly from the Auntie training manual. By accepting the position on the GOP ticket despite her astonishing lack of qualifications, Palin signaled that she was prepared to be used - on the basis of her sex alone - in exchange for the promise of status and power. Refer to Palin's RNC convention speech, which was mostly a fawning homage to McCain's patriotism and leadership, sprinkled with condescending references to Obama as "our opponent." Although the lines were delivered with Palin's own folksy vernacular and over-enunciation, it was not Palin, but McCain - or more accurately, the GOP elders at whose feet he finds himself on election eve - who wrote the speech and whose voice echoed through the hall that night in St. Paul. Women who find themselves drawn to Palin because they think she epitomizes the classic "woman who has it all" might want to take a closer look. Sarah Palin was picked for the ticket solely because of - not despite - the fact that she is female. By keeping her sequestered from the media, McCain has confirmed he does not have faith in an unscripted Palin's ability to represent the campaign to the world. By going along with it, Palin is telling us that she's perfectly fine with being controlled by her male superiors. And by portraying herself as the candidate of the empowered woman (while simultaneously promoting policy that is openly hostile to the interests of working and middle-class American women), she reveals the sad truth about how little progress we've actually made.

Lest we think that Senator McCain is hesitant to keep pushing this stereotype in the face of abysmal performances by Palin in news interviews, the most recent reports reveal that his campaign intends to hype the expected wedding between Palin's pregnant daughter and her boyfriend, the date of which is apparently being set just prior to the November election - with McCain and Palin sitting in the front row. Is it possible that Sarah Palin is just blissfully un-self-aware, or is it that she so eager for any illusion of power that she'll allow herself to be marketed no matter what the cost to the dignity of all women? If Palin were truly an empowered woman, she would have refused to allow herself and her daughter to be used in this manner - to assist a party whose rhetoric and imagery promote the ideal woman as deferential to established norms rather than acting as an independent - or critical - thinker. If her selection was intended to signal to American women that empowerment is possible, why is Palin being kept under lock and key? Clearly, this is not an individual whose intelligence or perspective McCain respects, or else he would permit her to speak for herself. To continue pretending that Palin's selection was anything other than an attempt to manipulate the voting public on the basis of a straitjacketed view of sexual roles is a dangerous lie that no American of any gender can afford to abide.

--------

Cynthia Boaz is assistant professor of political science at Sonoma State University.

Palin attacks Obama

Don DePasquale — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:17:37 EDT

Palin attacks Obama By Mary Ann Ostrom
San Jose Mercury News Article Launched: 10/05/2008 09:00:20 PM PDT

Palin, in her first trip to the Bay Area as the Republican's vice presidential nominee, charged Sunday that Americans don't know "the real Barack Obama," a signal that John McCain's campaign will sharpen its attacks on the Democratic nominee's character and judgment in the final month of the race. Attending a private Burlingame fundraiser, the Alaska governor stuck by her claim that Obama is someone who "would pal around with, and work with, a former domestic terrorist." She was referring to Bill Ayers, founder of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground, blamed for bombings and the death of a San Francisco police officer when Obama was still a child. She initially made the charge Saturday at a fundraiser and public Southern California rally. Obama, who says he knows but does not have a close relationship with Ayers, on Sunday called the McCain campaign's "launching of swiftboat-style attacks on me," a tactic to divert attention from the failing economy. Since the nation's financial crisis took the election-year center stage two weeks ago, Obama has overtaken McCain in nationwide polls and, more crucially, in several key swing states. Most of the sparring between the camps has been on issues, but now it appears each is ready to ratchet up the character attacks. Obama on Sunday released a new television ad, deriding McCain for being "erratic" and "out of touch" on the economy, as backers sought to remind voters of McCain's links to Charles Keating. The Arizona S&L financier, a McCain friend and campaign contributor, was convicted of securities fraud and became the face of the S&L crisis in the late 1980s. McCain met with banking regulators on behalf of Keating twice and was cited by a Senate ethics committee for "poor judgment." Though McCain advisers telegraphed the new focus late last week, Palin at Sunday's fundraiser suggested she was also hearing advice from McCain supporters she met on her two-day California swing: "Enough of you have whispered in my ear "... 'John, take the gloves off. Americans have to start hearing about the real Barack Obama.'" She received rapturous applause from the 1,500 supporters at the sold-out event, which raised $2.5 million for state and national GOP operations and prompted several at the brunch to compare the excitement to that once reserved for Ronald Reagan. Palin's Bay Area appearance also brought out the crowds. Outside the hotel, about 300 protesters, organized by local Democratic Party officials, lined the street, many holding signs and occasionally engaging in competitive chants with a smaller crowd of about 100 McCain-Palin supporters. "I haven't protested in the streets since 1973," said Lynn Roberts of San Mateo, a Democrat who said fear of a McCain-Palin victory brought her out Sunday. "I'm scared about this election," she said. Inside, Palin said that Obama has been "less than truthful" about his relationship with Ayers. Obama has denounced Ayers' radical activities several times during the election season. Since 1995, Ayres, now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Obama have met several times and raised funds for Chicago charities. Ayers hosted a small gathering at his house for Obama in 1995 when Obama was kicking off his political career, a point made by Palin. Media reports have concluded the two men do not have a close relationship. Cognizant of how the presidential race has changed on a dime several times, few national politicians were holding back Sunday. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, appearing Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation," contended that because Obama is leading in the polls, including most of the battleground states, "the Republican position is to try to assassinate Barack Obama's character and try to place him in a position where the trust that he has built dissipates." At Burlingame's Hyatt Regency, Palin was the hit. She spoke for about 30 minutes, impressing the partisan audience with her humor and ability to connect with the crowd, even if she delivered mostly a stump speech. Siebel Systems founder Tom Siebel introduced her. "Sarah Palin carries the flag of outrage "... for each of us who cries out, 'We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore,'" Siebel said. Palin did make one blunder. People are "wondering what the heck we're doing in California anyway -- especially here in Marin County." (Burlingame is in San Mateo County, though arguably the politics of both places is comparable.) Noting she was in California, she vowed, "This is still Reagan Country, and we are here to take it back." Palin pledged to do a better job making a pitch to working-class Americans. The campaign, she acknowledged, "needs to do a better job explaining" how the high cost of energy is affecting average Americans. "The costs of groceries are going up and the value of your paycheck is going down, and that's all because of energy costs," she said. Palin was spotted boarding her airplane to leave the Bay Area with a bag of In-N-Out burgers. She got her biggest laugh when she poked fun at herself for her roundly criticized interviews with CBS anchor Katie Couric. Repeatedly asked why she did "so lousy," Palin deadpanned: "What I should have said was, 'It's just job security for Tina Fey.'" Fey impersonates Palin on NBC's "Saturday Night Live." "(Palin has) moxie," said Joyce Stoer Cordi, a San Jose Republican who spoke briefly with Palin at the Burlingame event. "It's not the so-called talking points. It's the presentation, delivery and commitment." Reflecting concerns articulated by some Republicans inside the hotel and Democrats protesting Palin's appearance outside, Cordi said it was unfortunate that both campaigns appeared to be heading down a negative path. "I fear that the name calling and negative sloganeering is taking away from the issues," said Cordi, who is running a longshot bid to unseat Rep. Mike Honda, D-Campbell. "People I talk to want answers about the economy. They don't know how worried they should be." But Greg Yoder, a San Jose Republican who also attended the fundraiser, said he agrees with Palin's call to "take the gloves off." "Speak the hard and negative truths about Obama," he said. Reach Mary Anne Ostrom at 415-477-3794 or mostrom@mercurynews.com.

Dick Cheney, Role Model the Palin View

Don DePasquale — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:44:04 EDT

Editorial Dick Cheney, Role Model function getSharePasskey() { return 'ex=1380945600&en=0e61e56a90093961&ei=5124';} function getShareURL() { return encodeURIComponent('http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/opinion/04sat1.html'); } function getShareHeadline() { return encodeURIComponent('Dick Cheney, Role Model'); } function getShareDescription() { return encodeURIComponent('It was hard to tell from Gov. Sarah Palin’s remarks in the vice-presidential debate if she understands how Dick Cheney has reshaped and damaged the office.'); } function getShareKeywords() { return encodeURIComponent('Vice Presidents and Vice Presidency (US),Debating,Dick Cheney,Sarah Palin,George W Bush,Katie Couric,Joseph R Jr Biden'); } function getShareSection() { return encodeURIComponent('opinion'); } function getShareSectionDisplay() { return encodeURIComponent('Editorial'); } function getShareSubSection() { return encodeURIComponent(''); } function getShareByline() { return encodeURIComponent(''); } function getSharePubdate() { return encodeURIComponent('October 4, 2008'); } Published: October 3, 2008

In all the talk about the vice-presidential debate, there was an issue that did not get much attention but kept nagging at us: Sarah Palin’s description of the role and the responsibilities of the office for which she is running, vice president of the United States.

In Thursday night’s debate, Ms. Palin was asked about the vice president’s role in government. She said she agreed with Dick Cheney that “we have a lot of flexibility in there” under the Constitution. And she declared that she was “thankful that the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president also, if that vice president so chose to exert it.”

It is hard to tell from Ms. Palin’s remarks whether she understands how profoundly Dick Cheney has reshaped the vice presidency — as part of a larger drive to free the executive branch from all checks and balances. Nor did she seem to understand how much damage that has done to American democracy.

Mr. Cheney has shown what can happen when a vice president — a position that is easy to lampoon and overlook — is given free rein by the president and does not care about trampling on the Constitution.

Mr. Cheney has long taken the bizarre view that the lesson of Watergate was that Congress was too powerful and the president not powerful enough. He dedicated himself to expanding President Bush’s authority and arrogating to himself executive, legislative and legal powers that are nowhere in the Constitution.

This isn’t the first time that Ms. Palin was confronted with the issue. In an interview with Katie Couric of CBS News, the Alaska governor was asked what she thought was the best and worst about the Cheney vice presidency. Ms. Palin tried to dodge: laughing and joking about the hunting accident in which Mr. Cheney accidentally shot a friend. The only thing she had to add was that Mr. Cheney showed support for the troops in Iraq.

There was not a word about Mr. Cheney’s role in starting the war with Iraq, in misleading Americans about weapons of mass destruction, in leading the charge to create illegal prison camps where detainees are tortured, in illegally wiretapping Americans, in creating an energy policy that favored the oil industry that made him very rich before the administration began.

Ms. Couric asked Joseph Biden, Ms. Palin’s rival, the same question in a separate interview. He had it exactly right when he told her that Mr. Cheney’s theory of the “unitary executive” held that “Congress and the people have no power in a time of war.” And he had it right in the debate when he called Mr. Cheney “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had in American history.”

The Constitution does not state or imply any flexibility in the office of vice president. It gives the vice president no legislative responsibilities other than casting a tie-breaking vote in the Senate when needed and no executive powers at all. The vice president’s constitutional role is to be ready to serve if the president dies or becomes incapacitated.

Any president deserves a vice president who will be a sound adviser and trustworthy supporter. But the American people also deserve and need a vice president who understands and respects the balance of power — and the limits of his or her own power. That is fundamental to our democracy.

So far, Ms. Palin has it exactly, frighteningly wrong.

Palin’s Alternate Universe : Sarah Palin is the perfect exclamation point to the Bush years.

Don DePasquale — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:40:45 EDT

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Sarah Palin is the perfect exclamation point to the Bush years

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We’ve lived through nearly two terms of an administration that believed it could create its own reality:

“Deficits don’t matter.” “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.” “Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere.”

Now comes Ms. Palin, a smiling, bubbly vice-presidential candidate who travels in an alternate language universe. For Ms. Palin, such things as context, syntax and the proximity of answers to questions have no meaning.

In her closing remarks at the vice-presidential debate Thursday night, Ms. Palin referred earnestly, if loosely, to a quote from Ronald Reagan. He had warned that if Americans weren’t vigilant in protecting their freedom, they would find themselves spending their “sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.”

What Ms. Palin didn’t say was that the menace to freedom that Reagan was talking about was Medicare. As the historian Robert Dallek has pointed out, Reagan “saw Medicare as the advance wave of socialism, which would ‘invade every area of freedom in this country.’ ”

Does Ms. Palin agree with that Looney Tunes notion? Or was this just another case of the aw-shucks, darn-right, I’m-just-a-hockey-mom governor of Alaska mouthing something completely devoid of meaning?

Here’s Ms. Palin during the debate: “Say it ain’t so, Joe! There you go pointing backwards again ... Now, doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?”

If Governor Palin didn’t like a question, or didn’t know the answer, she responded as though some other question had been asked. She made no bones about this, saying early in the debate: “I may not answer the questions the way that either the moderator or you want to hear.”

The problem with Ms. Palin’s candidacy is that John McCain might actually win this election, and then if something terrible happened, the country could be left with little more than an exclamation point as president.

After Ms. Palin had woven one of her particularly impenetrable linguistic webs, Joe Biden turned to the debate’s moderator, Gwen Ifill, and said: “Gwen, I don’t know where to start.”

Of course he didn’t know where to start because Ms. Palin’s words don’t mean anything. She’s all punctuation.

This is such a serious moment in American history that it’s hard to believe that someone with Ms. Palin’s limited skills could possibly be playing a leadership role. On the day before the debate, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, made an urgent appeal for more troops, saying the additional “boots on the ground,” as well as more helicopters and other vital equipment, were “needed as quickly as possible.”

The morning after the debate, the Labor Department announced that the employment situation in the U.S. had deteriorated even more than experts had expected. The nation lost nearly 160,000 jobs in September, more than double the monthly losses in July and August.

Conditions are probably worse than even those numbers indicate because the government’s statistics do not yet reflect the response of employers to the credit crisis that has taken such a hold in the last few weeks.

Where is the evidence that Governor Palin even understands these complex and enormously challenging problems? During the debate she twice referred to General McKiernan as “McClellan.” Neither Ms. Ifill nor Senator Biden corrected her.

But after Senator Biden suggested that John McCain’s answer to the nation’s energy problems was to “drill, drill, drill,” Ms. Palin promptly pointed out, as if scoring a point, that “the chant is ‘Drill, baby, drill!’ ”

How’s that for perspective? The credit markets are frozen. Our top general in Afghanistan is dialing 911. Americans are losing jobs by the scores of thousands. And Sarah Palin is making sure we know that the chant is “drill, baby, drill!” not “drill, drill, drill.”

John McCain has spent most of his adult life speaking of his love for his country. Maybe he sees something in Sarah Palin that most Americans do not. Maybe he is aware of qualities that lead him to believe she’d be as steady as Franklin Roosevelt in guiding the U.S. through a prolonged economic downturn. Maybe she’d be as wise and prudent in a national emergency as John Kennedy was during the Cuban missile crisis.

Maybe Senator McCain has reason to believe that it would not be the most colossal of errors to put Ms. Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency.

He’s got just four weeks to share that insight with the rest of us.

Economic Unrest Shifts Electoral Battlegrounds

Don DePasquale — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:18:09 EDT

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The turmoil on Wall Street and the weakening economy are changing the contours of the presidential campaign map, giving new force to Senator Barack Obama’s ambitious strategy to make incursions into Republican territory, while leading Senator John McCain to scale back his efforts to capture Democratic states.

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Mr. Obama has what both sides describe as serious efforts under way in at least nine states that voted for President Bush in 2004, including some that neither side thought would be on the table this close to Election Day. In a visible sign of the breadth of Mr. Obama’s aspirations, he is using North Carolina — a state that Mr. Bush won by 13 percentage points in 2004, and where Mr. Obama is now spending heavily on advertisements — as his base to prepare this weekend for the debate on Tuesday.

By contrast, Mr. McCain is vigorously competing in just four states where Democrats won in 2004: Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, followed by Wisconsin and Minnesota. His decision last week to pull out of Michigan reflected in part the challenge that the declining economy has created for Republicans, given that they have held the White House for the last eight years.

But Mr. McCain’s abrupt decision, which caught many members of his own party by surprise, also underlined the tactical political squeeze he finds himself in: by using his fund-raising advantage to compete in so many places, Mr. Obama has forced Mr. McCain to spend money to hold on in what had been viewed as safe Republican states, like Indiana and Missouri, while limiting Mr. McCain’s ability to play offense on Democratic turf.

Mr. Obama now has a solid lead in states that account for 189 electoral votes, and he is well positioned in states representing 71 more electoral votes, for a total of 260, according to a tally by The New York Times, based on polls and interviews with officials from both campaigns and outside analysts. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Mr. McCain has solid leads in states with 160 electoral votes and is well positioned in states with another 40 electoral votes, according to the Times tally, for a total of 200. Just six states representing 78 electoral votes — Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia — are tossups.

Mr. Obama appears to have significantly more options to reach the 270 threshold, particularly if Mr. McCain fails to win any states that Democrats won in 2004, like Pennsylvania, where the Republican ticket has been competing especially vigorously.

That said, the margin in many of these states remains relatively tight, and the field could certainly shift again in the final weeks, as the presidential candidates engage in two more debates and as Mr. McCain steps up his attacks on Mr. Obama, as his aides said he planned to do.

Mr. McCain’s advisers said their hope was that the issue of the economy would recede somewhat from the public consciousness, now that Congress has passed a bailout plan, and open the way to try to turn the contest back into a referendum on Mr. Obama’s credentials. They argued that given everything that had happened, Mr. McCain remained in easy distance of Mr. Obama, evidence of what they said were underlying problems with his appeal.

“Senator Obama has more money than God, the most favorable political climate imaginable — a three-week Wall Street meltdown and financial crisis — and with all that, the most margin he can get is four points?” said Bill McInturff, one of Mr. McCain’s pollsters. “That does speak to the questions there are about lack of experience, his candidacy, and other things that make people say, ‘Gosh, is he really ready?’ ”

Mr. Obama in particular is moving to seize on what both sides think could be a decisive moment in this campaign, using Wall Street as a way to focus attention on related concerns, like Social Security and health care.

Campaigning on Saturday, Mr. Obama told several thousand supporters in Newport News, Va., that Mr. McCain’s health care plan was outdated and had hidden tax increases that would erode companies’ coverage for workers and leave millions of people uninsured.

He called it an “old Washington bait and switch,” adding, “He gives you a tax credit with one hand but raises your taxes with the other.”

Mr. Obama is now running advertisements aimed at elderly voters in South Florida, Las Vegas and Reno, Nev., invoking the Wall Street crisis in criticizing Mr. McCain’s support for allowing individuals to choose to invest part of their payroll taxes in stocks and bonds as an alternative to Social Security. The advertisements assert that the approach will “gamble with your life savings.” (That claim has been described by independent monitoring organizations as deceptive.)

In Florida, voters will begin receiving mailings from Mr. Obama on Monday warning about what they describe as a McCain plan to tax health care benefits “for the first time ever.” A new advertisement released on Friday, using clips from the vice-presidential debate on Thursday night, makes the same attack on Mr. McCain. In Nevada, advertisements are geared toward the mortgage crisis in a state that has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country.

In Virginia, voters stung by fuel costs received a brochure saying, “While you’re running on empty, Exxon made $4 billion in one month,” pointing out that Mr. McCain promised tax breaks to oil companies. (The tax cuts are not specifically for oil companies but are part of a broader proposal to reduce corporate tax rates, including those for alternative energy companies.)

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It is health care, advisers said, that they believe resonates more than other issues for Americans who are worried about their economic condition. It is a less-threatening way to talk about the economy — showing pictures of shuttered banks, for example, could create more worry — that aides said tested well across demographic groups, but particularly among older voters who have been slower to warm to Mr. Obama.

“One of the biggest economic anxieties that people have is the cost of health care,” said Gov. James E. Doyle of Wisconsin, a Democrat in a state where Mr. McCain is making a strong challenge to Mr. Obama. “There is a great deal of uneasiness.”

Mr. McCain’s advisers said that more than anything, it was the bad economy in Michigan, staggered by declining sales of American-made automobiles, that convinced them they had no hope of winning a state that once had been high on their list of targets. Beyond that, they said the Wall Street downturn was hurting Mr. McCain in Florida — where the mortgage crisis has been particularly acute — a state where they were once confident that they could hold off Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama opted out of the federal campaign finance system, which limits spending to $84.1 million, in the belief that he would be able to raise far more than that and outspend Mr. McCain.

Mr. Obama has used his cash advantage both to expand the size of the campaign field — it seems a good bet that Mr. Obama would not be spending money in Missouri if he had an $84.1 million limit — but also to outspend Mr. McCain in battleground states. In Florida over the past two weeks, Mr. Obama has spent $5.3 million on television, compared with just under $1.1 million by Mr. McCain, said Evan Tracey, the head of CMAG, a company that monitors political advertising.

Mr. Tracey said Mr. Obama had been steadily increasing his national television advertising budget by 20 percent each week this fall.

Mr. Obama is making a sustained effort to capture from the Republican column Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. He is putting effort into Missouri and Montana, and though those seem like longer shots, Mr. McCain campaigned in Missouri last week, and Republicans are buying advertising time there.

“That is a lot of defense that John McCain is going to have to play,” said David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager.

Of the four Democratic states where Mr. McCain is competing, his aides said he viewed Pennsylvania — the biggest of them — as offering him the best chance. Mr. Obama lost the Democratic primary there to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Robert A. Gleason Jr., the state’s Republican chairman, said that recent polls suggesting that Mr. Obama was building a lead were misleading, noting that the state was filled with the kind of blue-collar voters with whom Mr. Obama has struggled for much of the year to connect. “Obama is not catching on here,” Mr. Gleason said.

Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, did not dispute Mr. Gleason’s suggestion that Mr. Obama was not as strong in that state as some polls suggested. “I think they know they have catch-up to do here,” Mr. Rendell said. “Senator McCain has been here 17 times since June.”

Mr. Obama’s campaign said that he had been there seven times since the end of the primary season, June 3.

Mr. Rendell said an unusually long one-minute advertisement Mr. Obama produced, which showed him talking directly into the camera about the economic crisis, was one reason polls were showing increasing strength for Mr. Obama in the state.

The McCain campaign’s announcement that it was pulling out of Michigan — the kind of news that can be dispiriting to supporters and contributors — reflects the period the campaign has entered, when it is difficult if not impossible to do the kind of feints and bluffs about where the candidate is playing. (For a while, Mr. Obama’s aides claimed he would be competing in Georgia and even spent some money there before pulling out over the summer.)

With limited time and money left, it now becomes quickly apparent when a candidate takes down his television advertisements or cancels a campaign trip, as Mr. McCain did to Michigan this week. Mr. McCain’s associates said they put the news out on the day of the vice-presidential debate in hopes of minimizing attention to it, though inevitably, it fed the perception that Mr. McCain’s campaign was going through a difficult stretch.

Yet in a sign of how closely contested the campaign remains, both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama have sent people and money into Maine and Nebraska, two states where electoral votes are split, to try to peel off a single electoral vote, with Mr. Obama hoping to pick up one in a particular region of Nebraska, which is otherwise reliably Republican, while Mr. McCain is trying the same thing in Maine, which has gone Democratic in recent presidential elections.

That is not a fanciful battle: There are plausible outcomes that would leave the two men with a 269-269 electoral vote tie, forcing the election into the House of Representatives.

Mr. McCain sent workers from Michigan to Maine, focusing specifically on the state’s rural 2nd Congressional District. And Mr. Obama has added an office filled with organizers in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Omaha, where a large voter registration drive has been under way for weeks.

“I think we’ve got a shot at that,” Mr. Obama said in an interview in the summer about the Nebraska vote. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Corporate Patriotism, the real force behind Congress

Don DePasquale — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:54:15 EDT

UNITED STATES: Corporate patriotism
21 November 2001 BY RALPH NADER US corporations aren't even subtle about it. Waving a flag and carrying a big shovel, corporate interests are scooping up government benefits and taxpayer money in an unprecedented fashion while the public is preoccupied with the September 11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan. Shamelessly, the Bush administration and Congress have taken advantage of the patriotic outpouring to fulfill the wish lists of their most generous corporate campaign donors. Not only is the Treasury being raided, but regulations protecting everything from personal privacy to environmental safeguards are under attack by well-heeled lobbyists who want to stampede Congress to act while the media and citizens are distracted. Only a handful in the Congress -- members like Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin and Representatives Peter DeFazio of Oregon and Barbara Lee of California -- have shown the courage to question the giveaways and the quick wipeout of civil liberties and other citizen protections. In most cases, such as the US$15 billion airline bailout and corporate tax breaks, legislation has been pushed to the forefront with little or no hearings and only fleeting consideration on the floor of the Senate and the House of Representatives. One of the boldest grabs for cash has been by corporations seeking to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which was enacted during the Reagan administration to prevent profitable corporations from escaping all tax liability through various loopholes. Not only do the corporations want relief from the current year's AMT taxes, but they are seeking a retroactive refund of all AMT taxes paid since 1986. This giveaway, as passed by the House of Representatives, would make corporations eligible for US$25 billion in tax refunds. Just 14 corporations would receive US$6.3 billion of the refund. IBM gets US$1.4 billion; General Motors, US$833 million; General Electric US$671 million; DaimlerChrysler, US$600 million; Chevron-Texaco, US$572 million. The 14 biggest beneficiaries of the minimum tax repeal gave US$14,769,785 in "soft money" to the national committees of the Democratic and Republican parties in recent years. Soon to join the bailout parade is the nation's insurance industry, which is lobbying the Congress to have the federal government pick up the tab for future losses like those stemming from the attack on the World Trade Center. Proposals are on the table for taxpayers to either pick up losses above certain levels or to provide loans or loan guarantees for reinsurance. The insurance companies want federal bailouts, but they continue to insist on regulation only by underfunded, poorly staffed state insurance departments, most of which are dominated by the industry. Any bailout or loan program involving the insurance companies must include provisions which ensure that insurance companies cannot refuse to write policies and make investments in low- and moderate-income and minority neighbourhoods. Allegations about insurance company "red-lining" or discrimination against citizens in these areas have been prevalent for many years. It would be a terrible injustice for citizens to be forced to pay taxes to help bail out insurance companies that discriminate against them. People-concerns have been missing in all the bailouts. When the airline companies walked off with US$15 billion plus in bailout money, the thousands of laid-off employees -- airline attendants, maintenance crews, baggage handlers and ticket counter employees -- received not a dime. Attempts to include health benefits and other help for these employees were shouted down on the floor of the House of Representatives. Last month, more than 400,000 employees lost their jobs nationwide and the national unemployment rate rose to 5.4%, the highest level since 1996. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said roughly a fourth of the lost jobs were the direct result of the terrorist attacks of September 11. Bailouts, benefits or other aid for these victims of the attacks? No, that's reserved just for the corporations under the policies of the Bush administration and the present Congress. Yet it is the workers in the low-wage jobs -- like those in restaurants, hotels, retailing and transportation -- who are bearing the brunt of the layoffs in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, according to a report from the New York State Department of Labor. Almost 25,000 people told the department that they lost their jobs because of the trade centre disaster. An analysis by the department of the first 22,000 of the claims found that 16% worked at bars, 14% worked at hotels, 5% worked in air transportation and 21% in a category termed "business services". Only 4% worked at Wall Street brokerage firms. While more workers lose jobs, the administration is pushing for authority to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) under new "fast-track" authority. The Department of Commerce concedes that at least 360,000 jobs have been lost under NAFTA, and private research groups estimate the total may be twice that number. Now, with unemployment rising to alarming levels, the administration decides to cave to pro-NAFTA corporate demands which will only make the labour picture worse. No bailout for laid off workers, just a hard crack across the knees. As Bill Moyers, the author and national journalist, commented: "They (the corporations) are counting on your patriotism to distract you from their plunder. They're counting on you to stand at attention with your hand over your heart, pledging allegiance to the flag, while they pick your pocket." [< Abridged fromA href=" < .] From Green Left Weekly, November 21, 2001.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page. http://www.house.gov/ http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Crisis of a Gilded Age

Don DePasquale — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:45:14 EDT

Crisis of a Gilded Age
By Doug Henwood

It looks like someday finally arrived.

For the past two or three decades skeptics watched as deregulated
finance got ever more reckless, as the gap between rich and poor
widened to a chasm not seen since the turn of the last century, and
they said, "Someday there's going to be hell to pay for all
this." But
despite a few nasty hiccups every few years--the 1987 stock market
crash, the savings and loan debacle of the late 1980s, the Mexican and
Asian financial crises of the mid-1990s, the dot-com bust of the early
2000s--somehow the economy regained its footing for another game of
chicken. Has its luck finally run out?

It might seem odd to link the current financial crisis with the long-
term polarization of incomes, but in fact the two are deeply
connected. During the housing bubble, people borrowed heavily not only
to buy houses (whose prices were rising out of reach of their incomes)
but also to compensate for the weakest job and income growth of any
expansion since the end of World War II. Between 2001 and 2007,
homeowners withdrew almost $5 trillion in cash from their houses,
either by borrowing against their equity or pocketing the proceeds of
sales; such equity withdrawals, as they're called, accounted for 30
percent of the growth in consumption over that six-year period. That
extra lift disguised the labor market's underlying weakness; without
it, the 2001 recession might never have ended.

But that round of borrowing only extended one that had begun in the
early 1980s. At first it was credit cards, but when the housing boom
really got going around 2001, the mortgage market took the lead. Now
households are up to their ears in debt, and the credit markets are
broken.

Borrowing is only one side of the story. As incomes polarized,
America's rich and the financial institutions that serve them found
their portfolios bulging with cash in need of a profitable investment
outlet, and one of the outlets they found was lending to those below
them on the income ladder. (That's one of several places where all the
cash that funded the credit card and mortgage borrowing came from.)
They also poured their money into hedge funds, private equity funds
and just plain old stocks and bonds. That twenty-five-year gusher of
cash led to an enormous expansion in the financial markets. Total
financial assets of all kinds (stocks, bonds, everything) averaged
around 440 percent of GDP from the early 1950s through the late 1970s.
They grew steadily, breaking 600 percent in 1990 and 1,000 percent by
2007. With a few notorious interruptions, it looked like Wall Street
had entered a utopia: an eternal bull market. Regulators stopped
regulating and auditors looked the other way as financial practices
lost all traces of prudence. No figure embodies that negligence better
than Alan Greenspan, who as chair of the Federal Reserve dropped the
propensity to caution and worry characteristic of the central banking
profession and instead cheered the markets onward. As he said many
times in the 1990s and early 2000s, who was he, a mere mortal, to
second-guess the collective wisdom of the markets? He seemed to have
no sense that markets embody no collective wisdom and often act with
all the careful consideration of a mob.

So while the proximate cause, as the lawyers say, of the current
financial crisis is the bursting of the housing bubble and the souring
of so much of the mortgage debt that financed it, that's really only
part of a much larger story. And while it's inevitable that the
government is going to have to spend hundreds of billions to repair
the damage over the next few years, there's a lot more that needs to
be done over the longer term.

This is the point where it's irresistibly tempting to call for a re-
regulation of finance. And that is sorely needed. But we also need to
remember why finance, like many other areas of economic life, was
deregulated starting in the 1970s. From the point of view of the
elite, corporate profits were too low, workers were too demanding and
the hand of government was too heavy. Deregulation was part of a broad
assault to make the economy more "flexible," which translated into
stagnant to declining wages and rising job insecurity for most
Americans. And the medicine worked, from the elites' point of view.
Corporate profitability rose dramatically from the early 1980s until
sometime last year. The polarization of incomes wasn't an unwanted
side effect of the medicine--it was part of the cure.

Although we're hearing a lot now about how the Reagan era is over and
the era of big government is back, an expanded government isn't likely
to do much more than rescue a failing financial system (in addition to
the more familiar pursuits of waging war and jailing people). Nothing
more humane will be pursued without a far more energized populace than
we have. After this financial crisis and the likely bailout, it looks
impossible to go back to the status quo ante--but we don't seem ready
to move on to something appealingly new yet, either.

The Bail out bill before Congress

Don DePasquale — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:38:50 EDT

Message sent to Senator Reid

Donald DePasquale
575 Peach Lane
Newcastle, CA, CA 95658-9368

October 1, 2008

[recipient address was inserted here]

[recipient name was inserted here],

Dear Senator Reid,

I am an Obama volunteer who is an academic. I ran into a panel discussion
at Princeton. You should assign a staffer to watch this video:

This may be a bit too much information, but a Princton panel discusses the
source of our present financial crisis:
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj_JNwNbETA.

The conclusions of this panel is that both the bills, the one before the
House which was defeated, and the one before the Senate which has yet to
be acted on are both wrong.

A conclusion of the panel was, to solve the financial the government
should support the mortgage holders who live in their homes. It would be
less costly than $700 billion and that in itself would solve the problem
of the Financial institutions.

Your phone mail box is full in Washington, D.C., so this is the only way
to communicate with you.

Sincerely,

Donald DePasquale

Address 575 Peach Lane Newcastle, CA, CA 95658-9368Right click for SmartMenu shortcuts

VP Debate

Jack Tracey, Another Veteran for Obama — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:50:46 EDT

As the McSame campaign continues to self-destruct it will be interesting to see if Sarah Palin's Celebrity Status (Remember when Senator Obama was the "Celeb"?) will draw increased numbers to watch. And I have to wonder if the McSame Campaign is hoping people don't watch, thinking that they'll keep "Teleprompter Sarah" in their minds eye, rather than "Troopergate" Sarah, Couric Sarah or SNL Sarah.

I'll certainly be watching, trying to figure out which Sarah we'll see. What we certainly won't see is a Sarah Palin who is ready to be Vice President, let alone President. What we won't see is a Sarah Palin who truly understands the issues and concerns that are central to this election race, and is capable of responding coherently outside of sound bites and talking points -- fed to her by the very Bush-Rove disciples that she claims she and McSame are not.

Get the Popcorn ready!

On the failed Bailout Bill

Don DePasquale — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:33:41 EDT

From: Abigail Marshall (abigailrm@gmail.com) Add contact Sent: Tue 9/30/08 12:35 AM Reply-to: abigailrm@gmail.com

Maybe a glimmer of good news -- this comes from a right-wing source, Larry Kudlow, who is bemoaning the "end" of the US financial system as we know it:
A number of Republican House members and staff, along with others who are plugged in, are telling me that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will come back with a new bill that includes all the left-wing stuff that was scrubbed from the bill that was defeated today in the House.

As this scenario goes, the House Democrats need 218 votes, and they have to pick up a number of black and Hispanic House members who jumped ship because the Wall Street provisions, in their view, were too benign. So things like the bankruptcy judges setting mortgage terms and rates, the ACORN slush-fund spending, the union proxy for corporate boards, stricter limits on executive compensation, and much larger equity ownership of selling banks through warrants will all find itself back in the new bill. Of course, this scenario will lose more Republican votes. But insiders tell me President Bush will take Secretary Paulson's advice and sign that kind of legislation.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmU5YTUwYWZiMzUzNmM1MDcxNDQ1MmQ4ZWE2MWVlNWM=

So maybe this is good news. If we can put back all the good stuff advocated by the Progressive Caucus that was trimmed from the "compromise" .... and push it through that way ... and Bush signs it because his back is to the wall -- we get a plan that is closer to what we truly need. McCain can decided to not show up in the Senate & then spend the next 4 weeks railing against Obama and the Dems for all the "pork" in the bill... -- and meanwhile the Dems would get credit for fixing things after the GOP bailed..

More Debate Snap Polls

Don DePasquale — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:41:08 EDT

On CNN this morning, a Gallup representative said that when their new tracking poll is released today, it will show Obama up by 8 points -- a 3-point jump since yesterday. Bear in mind that these tracking polls use a rolling sample -- 1/3 of each days results is the result of new interviews. A 3-point jump in one day is pretty serious. Note also that this is at a point when the majority of Gallup's tracking sample still had not seen the debate. The full debate impact won't be reflected till Tuesday. ----- Original Message ----- From: john mccutchen To: San Francisco for Obama Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2008 8:50 AM Subject: [SanFranciscoforObama] 2 More Debate Snap Polls

Here's two more insta-polls. First, from MediaCurves, which along with yesterday's insta-poll and focus group summaries show the public (Dems and indies) thought Obama won the debate. Republicans do not matter, at least by themselves (take note, House Republicans.) 57 million people watched the debate.

One more thing. The Pew poll on foreign intervention, including Iraq, was covered here and was an important part of the debate. Anyone watching CNN (with their live graphs of fav/unfav) saw independent and Dem approval go up when Obama said the war was a mistake, and McCain was wrong about it.

The talking heads don't get it, but the voters do. The Surge� is not a winning hand.

Conservatives Begin Questioning Palin’s Heft

Don DePasquale — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:22:47 EDT

Conservatives Begin Questioning Palin’s Heft
by Associated Press
Sunday, September 28, 2008
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/28/conservatives-begin-questioni...

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.

A Note to Bill Clinton: An Obama Loss Will Be on Your Head

Don DePasquale — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:02:38 EDT

A Note to Bill Clinton: An Obama Loss Will Be on Your Head By Paul Slansky, Huffington Post
Posted on September 25, 2008, Printed on September 26, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.huffingtonpost.com//100312/

Given that we would never have had the odious George W. Bush in the White House in the first place if it wasn't for your blow jobs, Bill, it seems obvious that you owe it to the people of this country, and especially to the parents whose kids died in the Iraq War that Gore would never have started, and to all the parents whose kids would be killed in the WarFest that would be a McCain/Palin -- sorry, Palin/McCain -- administration to do everything in your power to get Barack Obama elected.

But that's not what you're doing, Bill, and it's not going unnoticed. We see your rage, Bill, it's too huge to hide. We see that -- as Chris Rock so brilliantly pointed out -- it pains you to even speak Obama's name. We see you petulantly rooting against him even as you go through the motions of doing the barest minimum on his behalf to avoid being blamed if he loses.

You're not fooling anyone, Bill. You've gotten so caught up in yesterday that you've stopped thinking about tomorrow. You have the power to influence millions of voters and you're spitefully sitting on it. Surely you've noticed what's going on in the country. Surely you're aware of what's at stake on November 4th. This is not a game that you can afford to take your ball and go home with if you don't get to play the position you want. An Obama loss will most certainly be part of your legacy.

There's still time to fix it.

How about this for an October surprise? Bill Clinton gets on the road and spends every day until the election sincerely and wholeheartedly communicating the urgency of electing Obama. You're the greatest politician of your generation, Bill. Surely you can fake enthusiasm for a month.

Oh, and stop talking about how much you like Senator McCain. Have you forgotten the vile joke he told a decade ago at your wife's and daughter's expense? Let me remind you: "Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? She's the child of Janet Reno and Hillary Clinton." Are you saying, Bill, that you can forgive McCain for calling Chelsea "ugly" but you can't forgive Obama for defeating Hillary?

If Obama loses a close election -- one in which even one state where you could have made a difference goes for McCain because you sat home and pouted -- it will be on you. We will remember that you couldn't be bothered to rise above your petty resentments for something as trivial as saving your country from the enemies of everything you profess to believe in. We forgave you for Monica, Bill, but we won't forgive you for this.

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

© 2008 Huffington Post All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.huffingtonpost.com//100312/

Sarah Palin's Very Bad Interview

Don DePasquale — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:24:15 EDT

Sarah Palin's Very Bad Interview By AlterNet Staff, AlterNet
Posted on September 26, 2008, Printed on September 26, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/100397/

The first half of the Katie Couric interview with Sarah Palin did not start off well. It was a complete disaster in fact.

It's like watching a train wreck, she seems to have no idea what she is talking about.

But hey, people sometimes get off on the wrong foot. It couldn't get any worse right? She just probably needed to find her rhythm, right?

Well, no. If the first half of the interview was bad, well then the second half of the interview was much, much worse.

From Ryan Powers over at Think Progress:

During the interview, Couric asked Palin why she believes the Wall Street bailout is needed. Palin responded incoherently by claiming that the bailout would "help those who are concerned about health care reform." Palin then appeared to look down at her notes and said, "Oh, it's got to be all about job creation":

COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? ... Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?
PALIN: Ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy- Oh, it's got to be about job creation too. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions
"She's not always responsive when she's asked questions," Couric said of Palin. "It was a really interesting experience for me to interview her yesterday," she added.

Well, people make mistakes. But that has to be the worst of it right? Nope, as Steve Benen over at the Washington Monthly reported:

Earlier, I suggested Sarah Palin's response to Katie Couric's question on the bailout was a low point in Palin's brief career as a candidate for national office. I spoke too soon.
As regular readers know, almost immediately after Palin was added to the Republican ticket, a number of conservatives, including McCain himself, argued Alaska's proximity to Russia necessarily amounts to foreign policy experience. I've been having some fun with this, because, well, it's the dumbest argument I've ever heard.
In the second part of the CBS interview with Palin Couric, to her enormous credit, asks Palin to explain what this talking point means:

COURIC: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?
PALIN: 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. [...]
COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our -- our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia --
COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We -- we do -- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where -- 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 -- to our state.

Usually, candidates for national office get better as time goes on. Palin is clearly getting worse.
I mean, really, think about Palin's argument here. She has foreign policy experience because Russian leaders flies over Alaskan air space on their way to the U.S.? Seriously, that's what Palin told a national television audience.
First, it's probably not true. Moscow is in Western Russia, and if a Russian leader were flying to the U.S., he or she would probably fly over the Atlantic. But geography aside, what does this have to do with foreign policy experience? If a head of state flies over you, you necessarily gain a background in international affairs?
I'm afraid Sarah Palin is not only embarrassing herself, she's quickly become a national joke.

It'd be funny, if it wasn't so painful to watch.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/100397/

What Obama Needs to Do to Nail the Debate

Don DePasquale — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:08:59 EDT

What Obama Needs to Do to Nail the Debate By Drew Westen, Huffington Post
Posted on September 26, 2008, Printed on September 26, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/100399/

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.

John McCain is an Opportunistic Coward

James "Monte" Salter CD4 Valley Team leader — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:12:23 EDT

So now the sky is falling? So now we are in Crisis? What happened to "fundamentally sound"? It is so obvious that McCain is grandstanding for reasons of political expediance, while all the while trying to frame himself as above the fray. I'm sorry to tell you this Johnny, but everyone knows that you are trying to call a time out because you are dropping in the polls like a turd swirling down the toilet. What a cowardly move; ducking out of the debate and using a national crisis for cover. And now they are talking about "delaying" the VP debate. They can hear Palin heaving a sigh of relief all the way in Russia! (cuz she lives in Alaska) I honestly dont think our country can survive another 4-8 years of this these reptilian bastards who will twist, and shape-shift, and manipulate the American people in their never ending quest for absolute power. Country First my ass

September 25, 2008McCain camp to propose postponing VP debatePosted: 10:44 AM ET
From CNN Correspondent Dana Bash

(CNN) — McCain supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham tells CNN the McCain campaign is proposing to the Presidential Debate Commission and the Obama camp that if there's no bailout deal by Friday, the first presidential debate should take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday, October 2 in St. Louis.

In this scenario, the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would be rescheduled for a date yet to be determined, and take place in Oxford, Mississippi, currently slated to be the site of the first presidential faceoff this Friday.

Graham says the McCain camp is well aware of the position of the Obama campaign and the debate commission that the debate should go on as planned — but both he and another senior McCain adviser insist the Republican nominee will not go to the debate Friday if there's no deal on the bailout.

As Homes Are Lost, Fears That Votes Will Be, Too

Don DePasquale — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:55:55 EDT

September 25, 2008 As Homes Are Lost, Fears That Votes Will Be, Too By IAN URBINA

More than a million people have lost their homes through foreclosure in the last two years, and many of them are still registered to vote at the address of the home they lost. Now election officials and voting rights groups are struggling to prevent thousands of them from losing their vote when they go to the polls in November.

Many of these voters will be disqualified at the polls because, in the tumult of their foreclosure, they neglected to tell their election board of their new address. Some could be forced to vote with a provisional ballot or challenged by partisan poll watchers, a particular concern among Democrats who fear that poor voters will be singled out. That could add confusion and stretch out lines that are already expected to be long because of unprecedented turnout.

Federal election officials say they are concerned that voters are not being properly informed of how to update their addresses.

“Our biggest concern is that many of these voters will stay home or that poll workers will give misinformation,” said Rosemary E. Rodriguez, the chairwoman of the federal Election Assistance Commission, which oversees voting.

Todd Haupt, a home builder, lost his home in Josephville, Mo., to foreclosure last year, and said he had since become much more interested in politics. But asked whether he had remembered to update his voter registration information when he moved into his parents’ home in St. Charles, Mo., Mr. Haupt, 33, paused silently. “Is that required?” he said. “I had no idea.”

“I’ve moved three times in the past two years,” he added. “Keeping my voter registration information was not top on my mind because I figured it was all set already.”

Ms. Rodriguez said the commission issued a notice this month encouraging voters to update their registration information before the Oct. 6 cutoff date imposed by many states for new voter registrations. She added that the commission considered issuing a notice this month informing local officials how to handle these voters, but in the end decided not to give poll chal-lengers any ideas on new tactics for singling out voters.

Many of the nation’s highest foreclosure rates are also in crucial swing states like Colorado, Florida, Michigan and Ohio. Because many homeowners in foreclosure are black or poor, and are considered probable Democratic voters in many areas, the issue has begun to have political ramifications. Political parties have long challenged voters with expired registrations, but the possible use of foreclosure lists to remove people from the rolls — though entirely legal — has become a new partisan flashpoint.

Last week, Senator Barack Obama’s campaign filed a lawsuit in federal court, seeking to prohibit the Michigan Republican Party from using foreclosure lists to single out and challenge voters. The state Republican Party has denied having any such plans.

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, sent a letter last week along with a dozen other Democratic senators to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey asking him to ensure that voters facing foreclosure are not harassed or intimidated at polling places.

In Ohio, liberal-leaning groups are planning to help people in foreclosure and families who are homeless to vote by using a five- to seven-day window starting Sept. 30 when state residents are permitted to register and cast an early ballot simultaneously. The Republican Party has filed a lawsuit in state court to block registering and voting on the same day, arguing that state law forbids it.

Asked whether his party planned to use foreclosure information to compile challenge lists, Robert Bennett, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party, said the party did not discuss its election strategies in public.

Similar questions were raised two years ago over how to deal with more than a million people who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Some of these voters were never found, while others were able to vote with absentee ballots or at satellite locations outside New Orleans.

“Foreclosure victims are distinctly vulnerable because they are not officially recognized as a group needing voting help,” said Robert M. Brandon, president of the Fair Elections Legal Network, a liberal-leaning voting rights group.

Last month, his organization sent letters to the secretaries of state in Arizona, Florida, Missouri and Ohio, asking them to better educate foreclosure victims on their rights. The letters argued that the laws in these states do not bar such voters from voting in their former jurisdictions if their intent is to move back as soon as circumstances allow.

On Wednesday, Jennifer L. Brunner, the Ohio secretary of state who is a Democrat, sent out an advisory to all local officials instructing them what to do if anyone who has lost a home to foreclosure shows up at the polls. If the address listed for such voters is no longer valid, and they moved outside the precinct, Ms. Brunner said, poll workers are instructed to send the voter to the polling place that corresponds to the voter’s new address. The voter will then be given a provisional ballot — special ballots that can be counted only after the voter’s eligibility is verified — at the proper polling place, the directive said.

The state requires that election officials send a notice to all registered voters verifying their address 60 days before an election to check the accuracy of the voter rolls. This month, Ms. Brunner ruled that an undeliverable notice will not be grounds enough on its own for a voter to be removed from the registration lists.

So far, election officials in Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Ohio have sent out notices to residents in select counties who have filed for a change of address but who have not updated their voter registration.

But the number of people who have moved, through foreclosure or for any other reason, far exceeds the number of people who have notified their election boards. In Ohio, 375,000 people filed change-of-address forms with the Postal Service, but when state officials sent them cards asking for updated registration information, only 24,000 responded. In Missouri, where 250,000 people notified the Postal Service of their move, only 22,000 told the election board.

Robin Carnahan, the Missouri secretary of state, and a Democrat, said that she is trying to get local election officials to increase the number of poll workers to deal with any confusion or challenges of voters.

In 2004, a Republican Party official challenged a large number of voters at a largely black precinct in Boone County, Mo., causing a backup. Such challenges can cause long lines at polling places if there are not enough poll workers to pull challenged voters out of line, or if the workers have to consult with higher-level election officials for each challenge.

State political parties have traditionally used the mail to determine which voters to challenge. By sending out mailings to voters likely to be of the opposite party, and then seeing which mailings are returned as undeliverable, they know whom to challenge at the polls for not living at their registered address. Using public lists of foreclosed homes, however, can save money by allowing a party to avoiding sending out mailings.

William Nowling, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, said that Democratic complaints about foreclosure victims being singled out were baseless.

“We are not using foreclosure lists in any way,” Mr. Nowling said, accusing Democratic groups of engaging in fear-mongering by spreading rumors of such plans. “Our voter integrity efforts are solely designed to fight voter fraud perpetrated by the Democrats, of which there is ample proof and examples, including previous elections where the F.B.I. had to seize and secure ballots in Detroit because ballot boxes were being stuffed.”

The Crash 1929 and Today

Don DePasquale — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:52:52 EDT

September 24, 2008, 9:30 pm Crash

The big guy with the crew cut and a hand that lost three fingers to a meat grinder looked out at the most powerful men in global capitalism Tuesday, and asked a pointed question:

“I’m a dirt farmer,” said Senator Jon Tester, the Montana Democrat who still lives on his family homestead. “Why do we have one week to determine that $700 billion has to be appropriated or this country’s financial system goes down the pipes?”

Good question, one that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have yet to adequately answer. If they seemed flummoxed, perhaps it’s because they still can’t explain what will be accomplished by nearly nationalizing the banking system and giving the treasury secretary more power than a king.

Another question — since we now own a big part of the world’s largest insurance company, A.I.G., does that mean I can save a load of money on my car insurance? — might be easier to answer.

This bailout, in present form, is toast. Now, with John McCain offering to suspend his campaign and delay Friday’s debate, it looks like the drainage of years past is pulling him down. He wants to back out of facing Barack Obama at the height of the campaign. Why not change the topic, from foreign affairs to the economy?

Some have already tried to protect the true villains of the crash of 2008. Witness Neil Cavuto of Fox News, he of the sycophantic questions to Enron executives and other thieves just before they were exposed, blaming the mortgage crisis on banks lending to “minorities and risky folks,” as he said last week.

There is certainly a food chain of greed, from the lowliest house-flipper in the Southern California exurbs to the Hamptons hedge fund manager. We all put reason in a box and buried it for a time. But before $700 billion is committed to a secretary whose decisions “may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency,” as the original draft of the bailout states, it’s worth remembering where the biggest heist took place, and how Wall Street dragged down the rest of the country once before. You could hear the echoes of history in Tester’s question, riding the fierce urgency of now at a time when the Great Depression and all its gloomy atmospherics are in the air again.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, losing 40 percent of its value over a brutal autumn, barely 2 percent of Americans owned stocks. People asked, sensibly: how could this affect me? Who cared about those swells on Wall Street when cars were rolling off factory lines and the big open expanse of middle America was flush with wheat and corn?

Today, with more than 90 percent of all homeowners paying their mortgages on time and on budget, the parallel question arises: how could this minority of bad loans drag down Western capitalism? It may be news to Joe Biden — with three gaffes this week, he’s approaching a record, even for him – but Franklin Roosevelt was not yet president during the crash. Herbert Hoover was, and there we have the reason why so many people cringed when John McCain said last week that the fundamentals of the economy were sound.

In his first days in office, Hoover said, “Americans are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of the land.” Oops. And just before he was swept to the dunce corner of history, Hoover said, “No one has yet starved.” At the time, people in rural America were eating brined tumbleweed and road-kill rabbits; the unemployment rate was 25 percent.

But the larger lesson is how Wall Street brought down Main Street. Banks were largely unregulated then, free to gamble people’s savings on stock market long-shots. When the market collapsed, the uninsured deposits went with it. By the end of 1932, one fourth of all banks were shuttered, and 9 million people lost their savings.

In this century, thanks to the deregulatory demons released by former McCain adviser Phil Gramm and embraced by just enough lobbyist-greased Democrats, Wall Street was greenlighted again to act like a casino. Banks in the heartland passed on their mortgages to Wall Street, where they were sliced and diced in hundreds of largely incomprehensible ways. And while few people understand how those investment giants made money, this much is clear: it was a killing. In 2006 alone, Wall Street firms paid out $62 billion in bonuses.

With all the urgency of that famous National Lampoon magazine cover that showed a cute pooch with a gun to its head, and the line “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog,” President Bush says the biggest bailout in American history must be passed now or the world will crumble. He said a similar thing in the run-up to war.

Just once, it might be worthwhile to listen to a dirt farmer like Jon Tester, who wonders why the same breathless attention is not given to the concerns of average Americans. Ah, but he’s only been in the Senate two years. Give him another term and he may start quoting Phil Gramm with approval.

Quit beating up on Sarah Palin position of Roe v Wade

Don DePasquale — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:07:10 EDT

Quit beating up on Sarah Palin's position on Roe v Wade, instead here is a suggestion:

Instead of (in addition to?) us all sending around emails about how horrible Palin is, let's all make a donation to Planned Parenthood. In Sarah Palin's name. And here's the good part: when you make a donation to PP in her name, they'll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor. Here's the link to the Planned Parenthood website: https://secure.ga0.org/02/pp10000_inhonor
You'll need to fill in the address to let PP know where to send the 'in Sarah Palin's honor' card. I suggest you use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters, which is:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington , VA 22202

PS make sure you use that link above or choose the pulldown of Donate--Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular 'Donate Online'

Inspirational Video a student project

Don DePasquale — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:19:49 EDT

This something to celebrate: If the link is not highlighted, copy the link and paste it into your webbrowser.

http://www.youtube.com/v/ghSJsEVf0pU&hl=en&fs=1

http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?swf=http%3A//s.ytimg.com/yt/swf/cps-vfl56220.swf&video_id=ghSJsEVf0pU&rel=1&eurl=http%3A//bl141w.blu141.mail.live.com/mail/ApplicationMain_13.1.0132.0805.aspx%3Fculture%3Den-US%26hash%3D2490097690&iurl=http%3A//i4.ytimg.com/vi/ghSJsEVf0pU/default.jpg&t=OEgsToPDskI5CNasyhiw4xpOhUduVKee&use_get_video_info=1&load_modules=1&fs=1%22%3E%3C/param%3E%3Cparam&hl=en

Public Campaign Action Fund (info@pcactionfund.org)

Don DePasquale — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:18:33 EDT

Dear Friend,

The New York Stock Exchange's opening bell sends shivers down the spines of all Americans as we consider the fate of the nation's largest banks and brokerages. Years of easy credit, sub-prime lending, and market deregulation have led us to what may be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. What is Congress doing? Debating a taxpayer-financed bailout for the people who got us into this mess. You can be sure that they are remembering the well over $5 billion the finance, insurance, and real estate firms have poured into campaign contributions and lobbying since 1990. What can we do?

Tell Congress in no uncertain terms: no blank checks for Wall Street donors. The American people can't afford a special interest bailout.

Where's the bailout for people who were taken advantage of by predatory lenders and have now lost their homes? How about a law that caps the sky-high interest rates banks can charge on your credit card? Can we limit the "golden parachute" for the execs who walk away from the bankrupt bank? Sorry, no. The average American failed to write big checks to candidates for office, or attend those lavish fundraisers to bump elbows with members of Congress.

Congress is bailing out their friends on Wall Street and sticking us with the bill. Tell them enough is enough: no blank check bailout for their biggest donors.

If a bailout needs to happen, then make it come with strict provisions for regulation and oversight, and consequences for those executives and investors who fiddled while our financial security burned. Most importantly, include benefits for ordinary taxpayers in the bargain -- like full public financing of elections.

It's almost sickening that Congress has accepted $2 billion from Wall Street bigwigs and other wealthy special interests to finance their campaigns. Let's give our elected officials a choice: they can either continue to accept big money from Wall Street bigwigs and big money special interests or qualify for a grant by showing broad based community support. We can do this by passing the Fair Elections Now Act that is modeled on the Clean Elections programs working in seven states and two cities. Clean Elections gets candidates off the fundraising treadmill and makes them accountable to one interest and one interest only: the voters.

Thank you,
David Donnelly

Public Campaign Action Fund (info@pcactionfund.org)

Truthiness Stages a Comeback

Don DePasquale — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:13:03 EDT

September 21, 2008 Op-Ed Columnist Truthiness Stages a Comeback By FRANK RICH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obama Carries Uneven Record as Debater to First Contest With McCain

Don DePasquale — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:06:45 EDT

Obama Carries Uneven Record as Debater to First Contest With McCain By JOHN M. BRODER

Senator Barack Obama has shown himself at times to be a great orator. His debating skills, however, have been uneven.

Some of his chief strengths — his facility with words, his wry detachment, his reasoning skills, his youthful cool — have not always served him well and may pose significant vulnerabilities in the series of presidential debates that begins Friday, according to political analysts and a review of his earlier debate performances.

Mr. Obama has a tendency to overintellectualize and to lecture, befitting his training as a lawyer and law professor. He exudes disdain for the quips and sound bites that some deride as trivializing political debates but that have become a central part of scoring them. He tends to the earnest and humorless when audiences seem to crave passion and personality. He frequently rises above the mire of political combat when the battle calls for engagement.

This was seen most starkly at last month’s forum at Saddleback Church, where he and Senator John McCain were interviewed back to back by the evangelical church’s pastor, the Rev. Rick Warren. Mr. Obama gave long, discursive answers to questions on loaded topics like abortion and personal moral failings, while Mr. McCain stole the show with earthy anecdotes and humor.

“Obama clearly knows how to float like a butterfly,” said Alan Schroeder, who studies media and the presidency at Northeastern University, “but he needs to work on the sting-like-a-bee part.”

Those who watched his debate performances during the long primary season say he improved markedly from a fairly shaky start but never really mastered the form.

“During the course of 18 months, he learned to give shorter, crisper answers,” said Howard Wolfson, a top adviser to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton who helped prepare her for the two dozen debates she had with Mr. Obama and other Democratic candidates. “I think his command of facts, figures and anecdotes got consistently stronger.”

One of Mr. Obama’s worst moments came in the first Democratic debate, in South Carolina in April 2007. The candidates were asked how they would respond to a new series of terrorist attacks.

Mrs. Clinton gave a short answer, ending, “Let’s focus on those who have attacked us and do everything we can to destroy them.”

But Mr. Obama gave a rambling reply on emergency response, intelligence flaws and the importance of engaging “the international community.” He had to ask for a second chance to answer the question in order to say he would go after the terrorists.

Two months later he was on the defensive over a question of meeting without preconditions with the leaders of hostile states. He said that he would do so and that he disagreed with the Bush administration’s approach of not engaging with Iran, Syria, Cuba and North Korea. His rivals cited this as evidence of his naïveté in foreign affairs.

Perhaps Mr. Obama’s single worst debate moment came early this January in New Hampshire, where Mrs. Clinton was asked why some people found her less likable than some of her rivals. She adopted a hurt tone and said of Mr. Obama: “He’s very likable, I agree with that. But I don’t think I’m that bad.”

Mr. Obama looked at her and said coldly, “You’re likable enough.”

In part because of a sympathy backlash, Mrs. Clinton went on to win the New Hampshire primary, keeping her candidacy alive.

At a debate two weeks later, Mr. Obama apologized for the remark.

From then on, Mr. Obama’s performances improved. At a debate in late January, Mrs. Clinton accused him of getting financial favors from a Chicago “slumlord,” a reference to Antoin Rezko. Mr. Obama shot back that while he was doing community organizing work, she had been sitting on the board of Wal-Mart. But he seemed uncomfortable with the exchange and a few minutes later lightened a tense moment with his answer to a question about whether Bill Clinton had been the first “black president.”

“I would have to investigate more Bill’s dancing abilities and some of this other stuff,” he said with a smile, “before I accurately judged whether in fact he was a brother.”

And, though he focused largely on his Democratic rivals during most of the primary campaign, he said of Mr. McCain at a Democratic debate in January, “Somewhere along the line the Straight Talk Express lost some wheels.”

In February, when Mrs. Clinton tried to goad him over his borrowing some speech lines, mockingly referring to “change you can Xerox,” he brushed off the swipe as part of the “silly season in politics.”

By the final debate of the primary season, on April 16 in Philadelphia, Mr. Obama was both more polished and at times exasperated by the process. He was subjected to repeated severe questioning that night about the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his association with William Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground, and his refusal then to wear a flag pin. He endured the grilling, looking testy at times, but also won some points for empathy by recounting the stories of people he had met along the campaign trail, including a man in Latrobe, Pa., “who lost his job and was trying to figure out where he was going to get the gas money to go find a job.”

Mr. Obama has been involved in high-stakes political debates since his first, unsuccessful race for Congress in 2000, when he took on a popular incumbent, Representative Bobby L. Rush of Illinois.

In the sole televised debate of that campaign, he aggressively attacked Mr. Rush until the moderator cut him off. Mr. Rush dismissed his challenger as an upstart with no record to run on.

“Just what’s he done?” Mr. Rush said, according to an account in “Obama: From Promise to Power,” by David Mendell. “I mean, what’s he done?”

A deflated Mr. Obama went on to lose the election by 30 percentage points.

In 2004, Mr. Obama was running for the Senate against Alan Keyes, a glib talk show host whom Republicans had imported from Maryland to oppose him after more credible candidates were disqualified by personal scandal.

Mr. Obama’s aloofness and windiness were on display in a debate against Mr. Keyes, but he was able to cut through the verbal clutter on occasion to deliver a biting response to him.

“Your logic was not that complicated,” Mr. Obama said to end one exchange on homosexuality and incest. “It’s just wrong.”

On another occasion, Mr. Keyes asserted that Jesus would not vote for Mr. Obama because of his support for abortion rights. Mr. Obama replied that if he had a chance to consult with Jesus, he would not ask him about a Senate race.

“I’d want to know if I was going up or down,” he said. “There’s all sorts of questions that I’d be interested in.”

Lies, Damned Lies, and How Much Should Obama Lie?

Don DePasquale — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 08:00:47 EDT

Lies, Damned Lies, and How Much Should Obama Lie? By Don Hazen, AlterNet
Posted on September 23, 2008, Printed on September 23, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/99891/

Lies are everywhere. It's a veritable lying epidemic out there in campaign America. Yet, it was still surprising when corporate writer Farhad Manjoo suggested that Barack Obama's problem in the campaign was that he wasn't lying enough.

Perhaps it is quaint, but at AlterNet we are in favor of fewer lies, not more. And we won't lie. This article is in part an appeal to support us financially, to help us fight back against the recent plague of lies. More about that in a minute. But, if you already know you want to help us, click here.

Manjoo works for Slate, which is owned by the Washington Post Company, owner of Newsweek and a media empire that stretches from TV channels to children's schoolbooks.

Manjoo catalogued many of the lies strewn about by John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin, and by Obama. Manjoo concluded that McCain was out-lying Obama by more than 2-1, and that Obama had refrained from the big whoppers. Hence, according to Manjoo, "McCain has lied more often and more outrageously than Obama."

Take McCain's ad claiming that Obama's "one accomplishment" on education policy was to push "legislation to teach 'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners." According to Manjoo, "It's difficult to find a single true word in the whole spot. The McCain camp's other sin is one of repetition. They keep saying things that have been proved untrue. In TV ads and at nearly every stump speech, Palin has repeated the line that she stopped the federal government's plan to build the 'bridge to nowhere,' a claim that fact-check sites and nearly every major news organization have shot down."

And here is Manjoo's conclusion: "This is exactly what's so puzzling about Obama's strategy -- why is he paying any attention to the fact-checkers? So far, McCain has seen little blowback from lying." Manjoo also states that 51 percent of the public wrongly believes McCain's claim that Obama will raise taxes on the middle class.

I feel I have to intervene on behalf of all of us and say no to Manjoo, and to the outrageous cynicism required to suggest that Obama should just lie more as a solution. Sure, Obama can get tougher, but he doesn't have to lie to succeed. AlterNet's mission is focused on stopping the lies. And you, our audience, have shown your appreciation of our mission by devouring our material.

In the past few weeks AlterNet has had the most visitors in our 10 years! In one week more than half a million people read our series about Palin's lies. AlterNet's job is blow the whistle on falsehoods. And that is why we hope you will support AlterNet with your donation today.

AlterNet is doing great. We deliver many dozens of articles, blogs and videos every day -- all for free. But, it does cost us money. No lying here. There is no free lunch. In fact, the more people visit AlterNet, the more we have to pay for servers to handle the load. In fact, our server costs are almost $40,000 a year alone. That's just one example of the costs of running a high-traffic, independent Web site. And of course there is rent, salaries, money for writers, insurance and the normal stuff necessary for success.

To wrap it up, Manjoo actually wrote a book about lying -- or, as he calls it, "the disappearance of facts." The book is titled True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society. In it, he argues that "facts are a stock of faltering value." And that "media fragmentation -- the disintegration of the mass media into the many niches of the Web, cable news, and talk radio -- lets us consume news that we like and avoid news that we don't, leading people to perceive reality in a way that conforms to their long-held beliefs."

Well yes, the avoidance of facts is a problem, as we all know. Some voters practice denial. But, that is no reason to stop presenting reality, even when it is painful. Things are not going to change until we face the truth head on. We hope you will support us in our effort to bring more truth to this campaign.

Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.

Four Simple Things to Look for in a Bailout Plan That Isn't a Taxpayer Rip-off

Don DePasquale — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:54:57 EDT

Four Simple Things to Look for in a Bailout Plan That Isn't a Taxpayer Rip-off By Hillary Rosen, Huffington Post
Posted on September 23, 2008, Printed on September 23, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/99888/

Lots of smart people with extensive financial and economic expertise will weigh in on the bailout legislation now winding its way through Congress.

I am going to look for four simple things:

1. Taxpayers need equity in the companies we are saving.

If the government is guaranteeing rather than buying the "bad" paper, once those investments pay off -- and many of them eventually will -- we will have gotten nothing for our money. We will absorb the losses but get nothing for the gains.

2. Executive pay must be limited.

Executives of the firms we save must not be allowed to be the ones benefiting. If the firms stock price and profit's increase during the time we are guaranteeing against their losses, there should be a pool where that money goes to ALL employees after the taxpayers are paid back equity on our investment.

3. Congress must have continued Oversight

The authority should sunset after 6 months. There should be a special committee of Members of Congress on an Oversight Board and they should be forbidden from taking political contributions from the financial sector.

4. Stimulus $ that focuses on more than just mortgages -- we need jobs

If sufficient authority already rests within the Federal Housing Authority, the Bush administration must be required to act on it to help regular folks from losing their houses due to bad loan practices and if it is not adequate, it must be increased.

But the other key point of our economic emergency is that too many people are losing their jobs based on financial decisions beyond their control. We have historically high job losses over the past few months. What could be more of an emergency than to address this now rather than wait another six months for Congress and a new president?

10 Things You Should Know About Bush's Trillion Dollar Fleecing Plan

Don DePasquale — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:52:24 EDT

10 Things You Should Know About Bush's Trillion Dollar Fleecing Plan

By AlterNet Staff, AlterNet. Posted September 23, 2008.

The Bush administration's proposal to bail out some of Wall Street's biggest players with an unprecedented transfer of public wealth to the private sector sent shock-waves throughout the nation.

Already deep in deficit, the administration wants to borrow $700 billion dollars -- in addition to the $900 billion already spent this year to prop up troubled lending institutions and deal with the fall-out from the housing crisis -- and entrust it to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, fresh from a long run on Wall Street himself. He'd then buy up worthless paper from struggling banks.

Who would get the money? Nobody knows. Paulson says he wants to hire Wall Street firms to oversee the process.

Under Bush's plan, the taxpayer would get little, if anything, in return. The whole thing would happen without Congressional oversight, save for a semi-annual report on the process, and Paulson's actions would be beyond challenge in the courts.

It is an economic coup d'etat in the making. And people are talking about little else. Here's 10 things that have been on our radars ...

1. Shock Doctrine: Profiting from Crisis

Robert Borosage of Campaign for America's Future invokes Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine in asking whether we're going to "get fleeced in this crisis" ...

Call it extortion. Every American is told to ante up $2,000--an estimated $700 billion in all--to bail out the banks from their bad bets, or they'll bring down the entire economy.

In a speculative frenzy that allowed the Masters of the Universe to pocket millions personally, the banks filled their coffers with toxic paper that no one wants to buy. Now they sensibly don't want to lend money to each other, since no one knows if the other is solvent. So they go on strike, and threaten to trigger a global depression, if they don't get rescued.

The bailout will happen simply to avoid that depression. But depressions have some salutary effects - the scoundrels go belly up, the weakest get purged, and in the wake of the disaster, people demand strict regulation of the money lenders to keep their greed and predatory behavior in check, and government spends money on the real economy to put people back to work.

2. Has a "Consensus" Really Formed Around the Idea That Something Must Be Done?

Martin Crutsinger of the Associated Press reports that "economists" -- implying, troublingly, all economists -- see the Bush Bailout as"Necessary."

But Atrios -- economist Duncan Black's blog handle -- has some questions about how everyone got on the same page so quickly ...

It's fascinating to watch how easily consensus is manufactured. A few days ago elite opinion seemed to be cheering Paulson's "no bailout" line, and now they're cheering a trillion bucks thrown down the crapper ...

It's unrealistic to imagine that I'd be able to really get enough honest information to have an informed opinion, but I spent some time thinking about what question all the Very Serious People should, at a minimum, want answered before they start cheering on [any] plans. This is what I came up with:

What changed between Monday and Friday? What new information did you have at the end of the week that you did not have at the beginning of the week which caused you to go from $0 to $1 trillion?

And, no, tumbling stock prices or babble about "deteriorating credit conditions" don't count.

3. Is This Even Legal?

The Constitutionality of the plan is being hotly debated, according to Frank James, writing on the Chicago Trib's blog:

Troubling to many critics is the breathtaking extraconstitutionality of the proposal which would give the Treasury secretary unusual powers that couldn't be countermanded by Congress or the courts.

That appears on its face to violate the Constitution's assertion of a balance of powers where no one branch is unchecked by the others.

James goes on to quote Alan Blinder, "former Federal Reserve vice chair and normally a mild-mannered, live-and-let-live Princeton University economics professor," who said Paulson should be booted out of office for his proposal ...

"I'm speaking now as one of the earliest advocates of creating an institution like this, many, many months ago. And it's a crying shame to see the way the Treasury has written this. I think the secretary of the Treasury should be dismissed, frankly. ... Asking for the authority to buy anything, with no review, with no court review, with no limits practically as to quantity or scope, with almost no congressional oversight. We have something more precious at stake than our precious financial system and that's our precious Constitution. And frankly, if I were a member of Congress, having advocated for this for nine or ten months, I would vote against this unless it's changed, dramatically..."

What's Blinder talking about? Section 8 of the draft legislation released on Saturday reads, in its entirety:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Sounds pretty like some pretty unbalanced powers to us.

And who'd be the new Emperor of the U.S. economy? McClatchy's Kevin Hall explains:

Making the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson repeatedly said today's financial problems were long in the making. He should know. He was part of the Gold Rush that has brought the global financial system to the brink of collapse.

Paulson presided over one of the most profitable runs on Wall Street as chairman and chief executive officer of investment banking titan Goldman Sachs & Co. from 1999 until President Bush nominated him on May 30, 2006 to take over the Treasury Department.

[...]

With Paulson now seeking virtually unfettered authority to administer the largest bailout of the financial industry in U.S. history, many are wondering whether Paulson also doesn't come with enormous potential conflicts of interest.

That was one reason Democrats on Sunday expressed reluctance to approve the administration's draft legislation that would leave to Paulson virtually all authority over the proposed $700 billion bailout. The legislation would allow him to decide which securities to buy, from whom to buy them, and which outside companies and people to hire to help him do so.

4. Some Lawmakers Are Angry

The reality is that there's less than a consensus that the "Paulson" plan is the way to go. Over at Open Left, Matt Stoller quotes an angry but (safely) anonymous Democratic Representative venting some spleen ...

Paulsen and congressional Republicans, or the few that will actually vote for this (most will be unwilling to take responsibility for the consequences of their policies), have said that there can't be any "add ons," or addition provisions. Fuck that. I don't really want to trigger a world wide depression (that's not hyperbole, that's a distinct possibility), but I'm not voting for a blank check for $700 billion for those mother fuckers.

Nancy said she wanted to include the second "stimulus" package that the Bush Administration and congressional Republicans have blocked. I don't want to trade a $700 billion dollar giveaway to the most unsympathetic human beings on the planet for a few fucking bridges. I want reforms of the industry, and I want it to be as punitive as possible.

5. Opposition Across the Political Spectrum

And the New York Times' Paul Krugman's not sure if it'll work ...

So, here's my problem: what we have now are a bunch of financial institutions in trouble, because they're highly leveraged, and have mortgage-related assets on their books. And they can't raise cash because nobody wants to buy those assets. The Paulson plan will in effect create a market for toxic paper, thereby supposedly unfreezing the markets.

But what if the institutions are fundamentally broke, even if the liquidity squeeze is relieved? ...

...Suppose that Hank Paulson does his reverse auction, and it turns out that the Treasury's price for toxic waste is 40 cents on the dollar. Even so, [banks are] still underwater. So what does Treasury do then?

One answer, I suppose, is that we think that there aren't too many firms in that position -- and that those that will still fail, even with the Paulson Plan, aren't going to disrupt the markets too much when they go down. But do we know that?

In a subsequent column, Krugman says that he agrees that doing something to prop up the financial sector is necessary, but he opposes the "blank check" -- the lack of oversight built into the plan. In a rare instance, William Kristol agrees with Krugman. After saying that this is no time for ideological devotion to the "free markets," Kristol asks ...

...is the administration's proposal the right way to do this? It would enable the Treasury, without Congressionally approved guidelines as to pricing or procedure, to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of financial assets, and hire private firms to manage and sell them, presumably at their discretion There are no provisions for -- or even promises of -- disclosure, accountability or transparency. Surely Congress can at least ask some hard questions about such an open-ended commitment.

And I've been shocked by the number of (mostly conservative) experts I've spoken with who aren't at all confident that the Bush administration has even the basics right -- or who think that the plan, though it looks simple on paper, will prove to be a nightmare in practice.

6. Do Joe and Jane Tax-Payer Really Have to Foot the Bill?

There's lot's of talk about how the legislation can be improved if it is passed. The WaPo's Sebastian Mallaby thinks it unnecessary to use public dollars to boost ailing banks' liquidity:

Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago suggest ways to force the banks to raise capital without tapping the taxpayers. First, the government should tell banks to cancel all dividend payments. Banks don't do that on their own because it would signal weakness; if everyone knows the dividend has been canceled because of a government rule, the signaling issue would be removed. Second, the government should tell all healthy banks to issue new equity. Again, banks resist doing this because they don't want to signal weakness and they don't want to dilute existing shareholders. A government order could cut through these obstacles.

7. What Would a More Progressive Bailout Look Like?

Economist Dean Baker offers up some "Progressive Conditions for a Bailout" at TPM:

Principles to Guide the Bailout

1) Financial institutions should be forced to endure the bulk of the losses with taxpayer funds only used where absolutely necessary to sustain the orderly operation of the financial system.

2) The bailout must be designed to minimize the opportunity for gaming.

3) The bailout should be designed to minimize moral hazard.

4) In the case of delinquent mortgages that come into the government's possession, there should be an effort to work out an arrangement that allows the homeowner to remain in her house as owner. If this proves impossible, then former homeowners should be allowed to remain in their homes as renters paying the market rent. This should be done even if it leads to losses to the government.

5) There should be serious efforts to severely restrict executive compensation at any companies that directly benefit from the bailout.

He also offers up some ideas for restructuring the financial system so, as they say, read the rest.

8. Could the Plan Get Better Through Negotiation?

It appears to us that the first draft of the bill was so extreme, that it veered so far towards Mussolini's definition of fascism -- a perfect blend of state and corporate power -- that it was intended as a starting point from which the administration could offer its opponents some concessions and still end up with something that's terrible for Main Street.

Along those lines, the Wall Street Journal reports ...

The Bush administration has conceded several changes to its rescue plan for the troubled banking industry, including agreeing to compensation limits for bank chief executives taking part in the plan and the need for more help for homeowners facing foreclosure, a leading House Democrat said Monday.

Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Rep. Barney Frank said the Treasury also agreed to Democrats' idea that the federal government should receive warrants to take an equity stake in financial firms in exchange for the government purchasing toxic assets from them.

Congress may raise the cost of a $700 billion market-rescue deal by adding a new economic stimulus plan to benefit taxpayers, according to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. (Sept. 22)

Senate Democrats also want to add tough new measures, including a provision that would allow the government to take shares of any financial institution that participates in the program.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said on Monday, "we will not simply hand over a $700-billion blank check to Wall Street and hope for a better outcome." But we've heard that before ... we'll see.

Of course, there is a chance that a wave of resistance coming from across the political spectrum could stop the deal, or that it might get mired in partisan bickering -- sometimes "gridlock" is good.

9. Foreign Banks Can Cash in Too

Or perhaps the fact that U.S. tax-payers look like they might also end up bailing out foreign banks will end up being a fly in the ointment.

Now, the U.S. bailout looks as if it is going global, too, a move that could raise its cost and intensify scrutiny by Congress and critics.

Foreign banks, which were initially excluded from the plan, lobbied successfully over the weekend to be able to sell the toxic U.S. mortgage debt owned by their American units to the Treasury, getting the same treatment as U.S. banks.

On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson indicated in a series of appearances on TV talk shows that an original proposal introduced Saturday had been widened. "It's a distinction without a difference whether it's a foreign or a U.S. one," he said in an interview with Fox News.

He's right, in a way. There are no U.S. or foreign mega-banks -- just multinational financial institutions with headquarters at home or somewhere abroad. If one accepts the logic of the plan at all, it might as well extend to multinationals with foreign-sounding names. The rabbit hole is only so deep, and we're already way down it.

10. Is This Signaling a Decline in American Power?

According to Reuters, this all seems to be making the Chinese think that a A Different World is Possible ...

Threatened by a "financial tsunami," the world must consider building a financial order no longer dependent on the United States, a leading Chinese state newspaper said on Wednesday.

The commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily said the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., "may augur an even larger impending global 'financial tsunami'."

[...]

"The eruption of the U.S. sub-prime crisis has exposed massive loopholes in the United States' financial oversight and supervision," writes the commentator, Shi Jianxun.

"The world urgently needs to create a diversified currency and financial system and fair and just financial order that is not dependent on the United States."

Also, the Markets Reaction ...

A lot of people expected the markets to respond positively to the bailout plan, at least over the short-run, but they, too had a thing or two to say on Monday ...

Stock prices and the dollar plunged today -- and oil and other commodities soared -- on growing anxiety about the effect of the government's proposed $700-billion rescue of the financial system.

The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 372.75 points, or 3.3%, to 11,015.69, erasing the index's 368-point gain Friday. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 3.8%, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 4.2%.

It was the Dow's sixth triple-digit increase or decrease in a row, and its fifth 350-point-plus move in six trading days.

Some investors who pulled money out of stocks poured it into commodities.

Oil futures shot up $16.37 a barrel to settle at $120.92 on the New York Mercantile Exchange after spiking as high as $130 in the last hour of trading. An index of 19 major commodities soared 3.9%.

The dollar posted its biggest decline on record against the nearly decade-old euro, and yields on Treasury bonds rose over concerns about the large amount of new debt that the government could take on to fund the bailout plan.

Point # 7 is probably the key argument to keep in mind.

Watch this to see how we think Globally: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5061 190700978034770&vt=lf&

See more stories tagged with: opinion, paulson plan

Here's a roundup of what opponents of the Bush-Paulson plan are saying.

Also in Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace

Four Simple Things to Look for in a Bailout Plan That Isn't a Taxpayer Rip-off
Hillary Rosen

Let's Stop the Greatest Theft in the History of Humankind
Otto Spengler

Calling Paulson's Bluff
Robert Kuttner

Tax the Speculators: A Fair Plan for Economic Recovery
Chuck Collins

Meltdown and Bailout: Why Our Economic System Is on the Verge of Collapse
Joshua Holland

No Laughing Matter

Don DePasquale — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 07:32:10 EDT

Op-Ed Columnist No Laughing Matter function getSharePasskey() { return 'ex=1379649600&en=a609a3d252626ac7&ei=5124';} function getShareURL() { return encodeURIComponent('http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21friedman.html'); } function getShareHeadline() { return encodeURIComponent('No Laughing Matter'); } function getShareDescription() { return encodeURIComponent('George W. Bush never challenged Americans to do anything hard, let alone great. The next president is not going to have that luxury.'); } function getShareKeywords() { return encodeURIComponent('Presidential Election of 2008,United States Economy,United States Politics and Government,Hurricanes and Tropical Storms,Taxation,Sarah Palin,Michael R Bloomberg,George W Bush,John McCain,Barack Obama'); } function getShareSection() { return encodeURIComponent('opinion'); } function getShareSectionDisplay() { return encodeURIComponent('Op-Ed Columnist'); } function getShareSubSection() { return encodeURIComponent(''); } function getShareByline() { return encodeURIComponent('By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN'); } function getSharePubdate() { return encodeURIComponent('September 21, 2008'); }

writePost();new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21friedman.html
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: September 20, 2008

Of all the points raised by different analysts about the economy last week, surely the best was Representative Barney Frank’s reminder on “Charlie Rose” that Ronald Reagan’s favorite laugh line was telling audiences that: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’ ”

Skip to next paragraph Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Thomas L. Friedman

Go to Columnist Page »

Hah, hah, hah.

Are you still laughing? If it weren’t for the government bailing out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and A.I.G., and rescuing people from Hurricane Ike and pumping tons of liquidity into the banking system, our economy would be a shambles. How would you like to hear the line today: “I’m from the government, and I can’t do a darn thing for you.”

In this age of globalization, government matters more than ever. Smart, fiscally strong governments are the ones best able to empower their people to compete and win. I was just in Michigan to give a talk on energy. I can’t tell you how many business cards I collected from innovators who had either started renewable-energy companies or were working for big firms, like the Dow Chemical Company, on clean energy solutions.

It just reminded me how much innovative prowess and entrepreneurial energy is exploding from below in this country. If it were channeled and enhanced by better leadership in Washington, no one could touch us.

If I were to draw a picture of America today, it would be of the space shuttle taking off. There is all this thrust coming from below. But the booster rocket — Washington — is cracked and leaking energy, and the pilots in the cockpit are fighting over the flight plan. So we can’t achieve escape velocity to enter the next orbit — the next great industrial revolution, which is going to be E.T., energy technology.

In many ways, this election is about how we get our groove back as a country. We have been living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. President Bush has nothing to offer anymore. So that leaves us with Barack Obama and John McCain. Neither has wowed me with his reaction to the market turmoil. In fairness, though, neither man has any levers of power to pull. But what could they say that would give you confidence that they could lead us out of this rut? My test is simple: Which guy can tell people what they don’t want to hear — especially his own base.

Think how much better off McCain would be today had he nominated Michael Bloomberg as his vice president rather than Sarah Palin. McCain could have said, “I’m not an expert on markets, but I’ve got one of the best on my team.” Instead of a V.P. to re-energize America, McCain went for a V.P. to re-energize the Republican base.

So what would get my attention from McCain? If he said the following: “My fellow Americans, I’ve decided for now not to continue the Bush tax cuts, because the most important thing for our country today is to get the government’s balance sheet in order. We can’t go on cutting taxes and not cutting spending. For too long my party has indulged that nonsense. Second, I intend to have most U.S. troops out of Iraq in 24 months. We have done all we can to midwife democracy there. Iraqis need to take it from here. We need every dollar now for nation-building in America. We will do everything we can to wind down our presence and facilitate the Iraqi elections, but we’re not going to baby-sit Iraqi politicians who don’t have the will or the courage to reconcile their differences — unless they want to pay us for that. In America, baby sitters get paid.”

What would impress me from Obama? How about this: “The Big Three automakers and the United Auto Workers union want a Washington bailout. The only way they will get a dime out of my administration is if the automakers and unions come up with a joint plan to retool their fleets to get an average of 40 miles per gallon by 2015 — instead of the 35 m.p.g. by 2020 that they’ve reluctantly accepted. I am not going to bail out Detroit with taxpayer money, but I will invest in Detroit’s transformation with taxpayer money, provided the management and unions agree to radical change. At the same time, while I will go along with the bailout of the banking system, it will only be on the condition that the institutions that got us into this mess accept sweeping reforms — in terms of transparency and limits on the leverage they can amass — so we don’t go through something like this again. To help me figure this out, I’m going to keep Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson on the job for a while. I am impressed with his handling of this crisis.”

Those are the kind of words that would get my attention. The last president who challenged his base was Bill Clinton, when he reformed welfare and created a budget surplus with a fair and equitable tax program. George W. Bush never once — not one time — challenged Americans to do anything hard, let alone great. The next president is not going to have that luxury. He will have to ask everyone to do something hard — and I want to know now who is up to that task.

More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on September 21, 2008,

Thank You John McCain

TCP (Tim Prudhel) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:56:28 EDT

At this defining moment, when the stakes could not be higher, we need fundamental change.

The choice in this election could not be clearer. We know that change will not be easy; we’re up against powerful entrenched special interests in Washington that will say anything and do anything to stay in power.

John McCain has been a Washington insider for decades, working for big corporations. His campaign is run by lobbyists. The failed economic policies of the past eight years have hurt American workers and put our economy on shaky ground. We're up against an opponent who not only supports those policies, but is so out of touch that he actually believes "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."

In times like these, can we really afford more insider politics?

Please watch and share this one-minute video:

Thank You John McCain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJThPjvscFs&eurl=http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/20/85055/0190/606/604527

Our destiny is written by us, not for us. It’s in our hands.

DONATE:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/TCP

It's Time to be Campaigning!!!

Don DePasquale — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:20:57 EDT

On a lighter note:

http://www.peteyandpetunia.com/VoteHere/VoteHere.htm

http://www.michaelpalinforpresident.com/index.html

Don't take life too seriously or you will miss all the fun!!

Rachel Maddow Sees 'Palin Effect' for What it Is: Bullsh*t

Don DePasquale — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 06:48:44 EDT

Rachel Maddow Sees 'Palin Effect' for What it Is: Bullsh*t By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet
Posted on September 20, 2008, Printed on September 20, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/99565/

On her show last night Rachel Maddow took an uncommon approach to the issue of women voters in the 2008 election. Instead of hysterically ranting about crazed 'Hillraisers', or condescendingly pontificating about those confused, female multitudes so awestruck by Palin's vagina they would vote against their own interests, Maddow looked at some actual polls.

Based on the numbers, Maddow concluded that the "Palin effect" -- the idea that Palin's addition to the Republican ticket was a stroke of genius that would pull women, en masse, away from Democrats -- is " ... an interesting storyline ... If by interesting, you mean not at all true."

Maddow found that picking Palin did not make McCain more popular with female voters. In fact, "Obama leads McCain by 16 points among women." Among white women, Palin's addition to the ticket has resulted in a drop in support for McCain, with Obama leading by 2 points.

Concluded Maddow, in faux disbelief: "Might it be that women care less about a candidate's gender, and more about a candidate's position on the issues?"

No one from the McCain campaign was available to comment on why a candidate picked to appeal to women is chasing them away from the Republican ticket. (perhaps they were busy explaining to McCain that the Spanish-American war ended a really, really, really long time ago?)

Instead, Maddow interviewed Melinda Henneberger, author of If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians to Hear.

Henneberger pointed out that Obama may do even better with women voters than Bill Clinton. "So the idea Obama has a problem with women .... is just not borne out by any of the facts."

Henneberger added that "A lot of women like Sarah Palin and are excited ... to have conservative women get their own version of Hillary Clinton ... but that doesn't translate into votes".

Even more striking, the McCain/Palin ticket is doing worse with female voters than ... George W. Bush has in previous elections.

Henneberger goes on to say, "I don't think she's winning over those swing voters and definitely not those Hillary voters."

Maddow makes the point that the economic crisis may further shore up women's support for Obama. Across the board women (especially single women) suffer more in times of economic crisis, which is part of the reason they tend to skew progressive.

Maddow concludes that the idea that just this once, women will overwhelmingly vote Republican just because of Palin, is "Not translating across the board .. blowing up the common wisdom here.'

Raw story has the clip:

Download video via RawReplay.com

How the GOP Wired Ohio's 2004 Vote Count for Bush to Win

Don DePasquale — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:49:41 EDT

http://www.alternet.org/democracy/99337/

How the GOP Wired Ohio's 2004 Vote Count for Bush to Win By Steven Rosenfeld
Posted on September 18, 2008, Printed on September 19, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/99337/

An election whistleblower who is a Republican, a nationally known data security and computer architecture expert, and an Ohio resident has filed a sworn affidavit in federal court that describes how Republican Party consultants in 2004 built an electronic vote counting network in Ohio that could have stolen votes to re-elect the president.

The whistleblower, Stephen Spoonamore, who has run or held senior technology positions in six technology companies, and whose clients have included MasterCard, American Express, NBC-GE, and federal agencies including the State Department and the Navy, said Mike Connell, a longtime Republican Party computer networking contractor, "agrees that the electronic voting systems in the US are not secure" and told Spoonamore in 2007 "that he (Connell) is afraid some of the more ruthless partisans of the GOP may have exploited systems he in part worked on for this purpose."

"Mr. Connell builds front end applications, user interfaces and web sites," Spoonamore said in his September 17, 2008 affidavit. "Knowing his team and their skills I find it unlikely they would be the vote thieves directly. I believe however he knows who is doing that work, and has likely turned a blind eye to this activity. Mr. Connell is a devout Catholic. He has admitted to me that in his zeal to 'save the unborn' he may have helped others who have compromised elections. He was clearly uncomfortable when I asked directly about Ohio 2004."

The affidavit, which goes onto describe how a statewide computer network and vote-counting system in part built by Connell's firms in 2004 could have been used to steal votes to re-elect George W. Bush in 2004's final battleground state. It was filed in a federal voting rights suit brought in 2006 that in part sought to preserve ballots from the 2004 presidential election.

After a federal judge ordered those records be preserved, Jennifer Brunner, the Ohio Secretary of State elected in November 2006, discovered that ballots and other records that could determine the accuracy of the 2004 vote count had been destroyed in 56 of Ohio's 88 counties. Brunner is a Democrat; her Republican predecessor, Ken Blackwell, was targeted in the lawsuit. Brunner has since sought to delay action in the case until after the 2008 presidential election.

The Ohio Southern District Court granted a stay, or delay, to the state. However lawyers for aggrieved 2004 voters who brought the lawsuit, filed Spoonamore's declaration to argue the stay be lifted for just Connell, so he can be questioned under oath about the digital vote counting network he build in 2004.

These lawyers, notably Cliff Arnebeck of Coumbus, Ohio, and Spoonamore, believe that Republican partisans could have tapped into a key node in vote-counting networks where county-level results are compiled into state results. At that point, they believe software was used that told the vote-counting mechanism to limit the votes awarded to the Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, and to shift or add votes to the total for George W. Bush.

"I have followed with interest the security issues involved with electronic voting in United States," Spoonamore's affidavit said. "My understanding of the vulnerabilities of American elections to fraudulent manipulation is based upon conversations with professionals in election administration working within state governmental structures as well as information technology specialists working in private industry a contract basis for state governments."

On Election Night in 2004, the Ohio Secretary of State's website posting the official Ohio election results was hosted on Republican-controlled servers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which also were home to many other Republican websites. According to Spoonamore this set-up "modified" more typical electronic vote counting networks, where local precincts would record individual votes and then send them to county tabulators, which in turn would send the countywide counts to a statewide tabulator.

"The vote tabulation and reporting system, as modified at the direction of Mr. (Kenneth J.) Blackwell (Ohio's former Secretary of State, a Republican and co-chair of the president's re-election campaign in Ohio in 2004), allowed the introduction of a single computer in the middle of the pathway," he said. "This computer located at a company principally managing IT Systems for GOP campaign and political operations (Computer C) received all information from each county computer (Computer A) BEFORE it was sent onward to Computer B (Ohio's statewide vote count tabulator)."

Spoonamore's affidavit discusses several scenarios how data containing vote totals could have been intercepted and modified. However, he believes the vote counting server used by Ohio's former secretary of state to host the state's Election Night website was the most likely location where votes were held, reviewed and altered before presentation to the public and media. That conclusion is based on the fact that some counties were faxing their vote counts, which meant there was not uniformity in the counting process until the statewide tabulation stage.

"This centralized collection of all incoming statewide tabulations would make it extremely easy for a single operator, or a preprogrammed single 'force balancing computer' to change the results in any way desired by the team controlling Computer C -- in this case GOP partisan operatives," Spoonamore said. "Again, if this out of state system had ANY digital access to the Secretary of States system it would be cause for immediate investigation by any of my banking clients."

Spoonamore's declaration discusses how it is common in detecting electronic banking fraud to find the insertion of "man in the middle" attacks, where criminals insert a computer between a network's data transmission points. He further describes "force balancing," which he said is a feature of banking industry computers, such as ATMs, which balance sums in user's accounts after deposits and withdrawals. Spoonamore said Ohio's 2004 electronic voting tabulators, made by Diebold (now Premier Election Solutions), which also makes bank ATMs, contain software that add and subtract votes. He said the subtraction feature could only be used to delete votes.

"The Diebold system is riddled with exploitable errors," he said, citing a report on the Diebold's vote counting computers commissioned by former Maryland Gov. Robert Erlich, a Republican. "Many of these concerns are almost comical from the perspective of a computer architect. One example of this: The existence of negative fields being possible in some number fields. Voting machines as custom built computers which should be designed to begin at the number Zero, no votes, and advance only in increments of 1, one vote, until they max out at the most possible votes cast in one day … There is no possible legitimate reason that NEGATIVE votes should ever be entered. And yet these machines are capable of having negative numbers programmed in, injected, or preloaded."

If GOP cyber-partisans intercepted county vote totals and altered the statewide count reported to the public, Spoonamore said the hard drives in the county-level tabulators would contain records that would reveal that the statewide vote count was fraudulent.

"If this had happened, in order to cover up this fact, the hard drives of the county level tabulators would have to be pulled and destroyed, as they would have digital evidence of this hacking from Computer C," he said. "The efforts by the company in charge of these computers to pull out hard drives and destroy them in advance of the Green Party Recount from the 2004 election is a clear signal something was deliberately amiss with the county tabulators."

After the 2004 election, the Green and Libertarian Parties paid for a statewide recount where 3 percent of the vote in counties was to be examined. Green Party observers reported the company programming and servicing the county vote-count tabulators in 41 mostly rural Republican-majority counties, Triad Government Services, Inc., replaced hard drives before the recount was conducted. In Hocking County, when the Board of Election Deputy Director, Sherole Eaton questioned this and recounted the incident in sworn affidavits used in litigation, she subsequently was fired from her job.

David Cobb, the 2004 Green presidential candidate, raised hard disk incident when testifying at a congressional field hearing by the House Judiciary Committee's Democratic staff in Ohio in December 2004. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), who now chairs the committee, asked the FBI to investigate at that time, but nothing came of the investigation.

According to previous statements by Spoonamore, the family that controls Triad and related sister companies , the Rapp family of Xenia, Ohio, are evangelical Republicans and GOP donors. Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Lincoln Bronzeville litigation have previously stated that the 2004 Ohio presidential results only had to be altered in three southeastern counties -- Warren, Cleremont and Butler -- to increase George W. Bush's margin to re-elect him to a second term.

One Rapp family firm, Rapp Systems Corporation, sells commemorative editions of the Palm Beach County Florida "butterfly ballot" that confused elderly Democratic voters in 2000 who mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore.

Apart from discussing the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, Spoonamore's affidavit also said that there is "no possible way" to make paperless electronic voting secure. That is because the voting systems are designed to mask the identity of voters, whereas in banking, each account holder is identified by several lawyers of secure authentication.

"In my opinion, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to make a secure touch screen voting system," Spoonamore said. "None. Secure systems are predicated on establishing securely the identity of every user of the system. Voting is predicated on being anonymous. It is impossible to have a system that does both. It is possible to design relatively secure optical scan machines, but even these can be hacked in even the best of cases. In the case of optical scan (systems where hand-marked paper ballots are scanned by computer counters) you have the ability to recount manually the paper ballot itself, and the ability to spot check the machines for errors against a sample of hand recounting."

In November 2008, approximately 30 percent of the country will be using paperless electronic voting machines, according to VerifiedVoting.org. However, the vote counting landscape in some battleground states will not be the same in 2008 as it was in 2004. Lawyers and other election protection experts -- inside the Democratic Party and in outside non-partisan groups -- are developing numerous checks and balances to attempt to monitor the accuracy of the various stages of tabulating the vote count. These efforts are much more extensive and informed than in 2004.

In Ohio, for instance, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, has forced some of the state's cities to transition from paperless voting to optical scan system, as one response to problems associated with paperless voting. And just this week Brunner decided to allow observers from minor political parties, such as the Greens, to be observers inside polling places and at tabulation rooms in county Boards of Elections. Those observers will be able to track whether local vote totals are being accurately tallied for county-wide counts, which is where they believe vote totals were altered in 2004.

In other 2008 battleground states using paperless voting systems, such as Pennsylvania, there appear to be less-developed plans to monitor the various layers of voting process, although election integrity activists have been pushing for precincts to be supplied with paper ballots if there are machine malfunctions. The Democratic National Committee has extensively surveyed the voting systems in every county in the U.S., which they did not do in 2004, but party officials do not comment on their election protection plans.

Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and author of Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting (AlterNet Books, 2008).

Polls Show Palin Is Starting to Drag Down McCain

Don DePasquale — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:44:56 EDT

Polls Show Palin Is Starting to Drag Down McCain

By Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos. Posted September 19, 2008.

The intense focus to reveal the truth about Sarah Palin's credentials has taken its toll on her numbers

No one can doubt that McCain's choice of Palin rejuvenated a listless, dying campaign. She excited the Theocon Right and brought them home, and being a fresh new face with an interesting bio, she captivated the nation's attention. Her initial numbers were sky high, and she packed them in for McCain. Suddenly, what had been a large Obama post-DNCC bounce turned on a dime, and Palin delivered a huge surge for her ticket.

Bloggers and tradmed reporters took a hard look at Sarah Palin and began raking her over the coals for myriad transgressions. She is a liar with theocratic tendencies, sports an intellect that makes Bush look like a Mensa member, and features an obvious fondness for Cheney-style abuses of power. And that's not even the worst of it.

But then the worriers began to question, "Why are we focusing on Palin? McCain is getting a pass! We're tilting at windmills, since she's too popular to damage!" We were told to stop talking altogether about Palin, as if ignoring her would remove the spell she had cast on America. This Andrew Sullivan post must've been emailed to me two dozen times by panicked worrywarts. A few bad polls, and people seemed to be losing their minds and sense.

But we continued to focus on Palin. Republicans were busy trying to build a positive narrative about Palin -- the "hockey mom" who was so folksy she could "field dress a moose" and had "said no to the Bridge to Nowhere and other government waste" and was overflowing with "small town values." McCain had shot up in the polls because of Palin. Common sense dictated it would be hard to knock him back down as long as she consolidated her popularity. So we set out to build the negative narratives about Palin. This is stuff straight out of Taking on the System. I have a whole chapter on it, in fact.

So we focused heavily on Palin, and make no mistake, it's exactly that intense focus that has taken its toll on her numbers:

Approve Disapprove No Opinion

9/11: 52 35 13 +17
9/12: 51 37 12 +14
9/13: 49 40 11 +9
9/14: 47 42 11 +5
9/15: 47 43 10 +4
9/16: 45 44 11 +1
9/17: 44 45 11 -1
9/18: 42 46 11 -4

That's a shocking 18 21-point collapse in a single week. She went from being just about the most popular person on the top of the ticket, to the (lipstick wearing?) goat. And it's not just our Research 2000 polling showing this collapse.

In the three days after Palin joined Team McCain--Aug. 29-31--32 percent of voters told the pollsters at Diageo/Hotline that they had a favorable opinion of her; most (48 percent) didn't know enough to say [..] By Sept. 4, however, 43 percent of Diageo/Hotline respondents approved of Palin with only 25 percent disapproving--an 18-point split. Apparently, voters were liking what they were hearing. Four days later, Palin's approval rating had climbed to 47 percent (+17), and by Sept. 13 it had hit 52 percent. The gap at that point between her favorable and unfavorable numbers--22 percent--was larger than either McCain's (+20) or Obama's (+13).
But then a funny thing happened: Palin seems to have lost some of her luster. Since Sept. 13, Palin's unfavorables have climbed from 30 percent to 36 percent. Meanwhile, her favorables have slipped from 52 percent to 48 percent. That's a three-day net swing of -10 points, and it leaves her in the Sept. 15 Diageo/Hotline tracking poll tied for the smallest favorability split (+12)** of any of the Final Four. [UPDATE: The Sept. 17 Diageo/Hotline tracking poll shows Palin at 47 percent favorable and 37 percent unfavorable--an even narrower +10 split.] Over the course of a single weekend, in other words, Palin went from being the most popular White House hopeful to the least.

The trendline is indisputable (it was just picked up by CBS). And just as Palin's initial popularity bolstered McCain, her sudden faltering is now bringing him back down to earth. You might have even noticed that the latest round of McCain ads don't even feature her or refer to "McCain/Palin." It's back to just "McCain." She was starting to drag him down.

Palin will continue to excite and energize the wingnut base. She was designed for that purpose, and won't fail at that task. But her cratering popularity now hampers McCain's efforts to expand beyond that core base.

All of this is happening because we did not relent on Palin, blocking Republican efforts to paint her in a positive light. The results are speaking for themselves.

Immigration Deception

Don DePasquale — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 05:41:00 EDT

September 19, 2008 Editorial Immigration Deception

Yes, immigration is a complicated and combustible issue for political candidates — and the economic meltdown is everyone’s top priority. No, that is no excuse for ignoring immigration or lying about it to voters, as John McCain and Barack Obama have been doing.

Mr. McCain lied first, in a Spanish-language ad that accused Mr. Obama of helping to kill immigration reform last year, by voting for amendments that supposedly doomed a bipartisan bill. The ad lamented the result: “No guest worker program. No path to citizenship. No secure borders. No reform. Is that being on our side?”

That is a jaw-dropping distortion. The bill wasn’t killed by any amendments. It was killed by a firestorm of talk-radio rage and a Republican-led filibuster. The very bill that Mr. McCain now mourns is the one he sidled away from as his own party weakened and killed it. It’s the one he says he would now vote against.

For Mr. McCain to suggest that Mr. Obama opposes the “path to citizenship” and “guest worker program” compounds his dishonesty. Mr. Obama supports the three pillars of comprehensive reform — tougher enforcement, expanded legal immigration and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already here.

Mr. McCain was an architect of just such a comprehensive bill. But he is also leading a party whose members rabidly oppose the path to citizenship. So, in deference to them, Mr. McCain now emphasizes border security as the utmost priority. Except when he’s pandering in Spanish.

Mr. Obama’s retaliatory ad, also in Spanish, was just as fraudulent. It slimed Mr. McCain as a friend and full-bore ally of restrictionists like Rush Limbaugh, even though Mr. Limbaugh has long attacked Mr. McCain’s immigration moderation. It quotes Mr. Limbaugh as calling all Mexicans stupid and ordering them to “shut your mouth or get out,” which he never did.

Immigration was broken before the candidates started this repugnant ad war, and looks as if it will stay that way for at least the duration of this campaign.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration keeps raiding factories and farms, terrorizing immigrant families while exposing horrific accounts of workplace abuses. Children toil in slaughterhouses; detainees languish in federal lockups, dying without decent medical care. Day laborers are harassed and robbed of wages. An ineffective border fence is behind schedule and millions over budget. Local enforcers drag citizens and legal residents into their nets, to the cheers of the Minutemen.

Both candidates once espoused smart, thoughtful positions for fixing the problem. But Mr. McCain is shuffling in step with his restrictionist party. Mr. Obama gave immigration one brief mention at the Democratic convention, in a litany of big-trouble issues, like abortion, guns and same-sex marriage, on which he seemed to say that the best Americans could hope for are small compromises and to agree to disagree.

They’re both wrong. The country needs to hear better answers, stated clearly and forthrightly over the shouting. The answer to immigration is what it was last year: comprehensive reform that extends order and the rule of law to a system that is broken in a million complex ways. Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama both know this. They should get back to telling the truth about it, in English and in Spanish.

The McCain of the Week

Don DePasquale — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 05:36:04 EDT

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VIENNA, Ohio

Skip to next paragraph Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Gail Collins

Related Columnist Biography: Gail Collins Readers' Comments

"Please, someone, say ... 'Senator, I worked with John McCain; I knew John McCain. Senator, you're no John McCain.'"

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“The people of Ohio are the most productive in the world!” yelled John McCain at a rally outside of Youngstown on Tuesday. Present company perhaps excluded, since the crowd was made up entirely of people who were at liberty in the middle of a workday.

Folks were wildly enthusiastic as the event began. That was partly because Sarah Palin was also on the bill. (With Todd!) And when McCain took the center stage, they were itching to cheer the war hero and boo all references to pork-barrel spenders.

Nobody had warned them that he had just morphed into a new persona — a raging populist demanding more regulation of the nation’s financial system. And since McCain’s willingness to make speeches that have nothing to do with his actual beliefs is not matched by an ability to give them, he wound up sounding like Bob Dole impersonating Huey Long.

Really, if McCain is going to keep changing into new people, the campaign should send out notices. (Come to a rally for the next president of the United States. Today he’s a vegetarian!)

“We’re going to put an end to the abuses on Wall Street — enough is enough!” this new incarnation yelled, complaining angrily about greed and overpaid C.E.O.’s. Slowly, people begin to peel out of the crowd and drift away. Even in these troubled times, there are apparently a number of Republicans who think highly of corporate executives and captains of high finance.

The whole transformation was fascinating in a cheap-thrills kind of way. It’s not every day, outside of “Incredible Hulk” movies, that you see somebody make this kind of turnaround in the scope of a few hours.

On Monday in Jacksonville, Fla., McCain made his now-famous reassurance that the fundamentals of the economy were still good. It’s a longstanding line of his, but this was perhaps not the best week to dredge it up. So the handlers went to work, and by the time McCain arrived in Orlando a few hours later he was reprogrammed. And angry!

“We’re going to put an end to the abuses on Wall Street! Enough is enough! We’re going to put an end to the greed!” he told a town hall meeting crowded with Hispanic Republicans. It was a rather jumbled message, but the new story line was firm. The fundamentals were not things like employment rates or trade statistics. The fundamentals were the workers.

We are the fundamentals!

And, naturally, the humble, hard-working fundamentals are good. Who could doubt it? Was Barack Obama trying to say that he didn’t think the American working man and woman was good? Was this the sort of thing they talked about at those fancy-schmancy Hollywood fund-raisers? Which, of course, John McCain hates. Give him some hard cider and a log cabin, and he’s happy as a clam.

But wait! The fundamentals are in danger! At risk because of “greed.” Which John McCain was shocked to discover has been running rampant in the canyons of Wall Street.

Now in an election like this, you expect a certain amount of tactical reimagining. McCain used to like reporters, and now he treats them as if they were carrying the Ebola virus. Fair enough, although given the fact that he’s terrible at speeches, and the famous town halls have now become Republican-only lovefests, the campaign really should invent some new method of communication. (And remember, the man doesn’t text.)

It is also disconcerting, of course, to hear the Republicans rail against Washington as if the Socialist Workers Party had been running things there for the last eight years. But really, what would you do if you were McCain? There aren’t a lot of options, and he never did like George W. anyway.

This new tactic is different. McCain has always, genuinely, believed in dismantling government regulations, and there he was, vowing to create new “comprehensive regulations that will apply the rules and enforce them to the fullest.” It makes you think that he’s trying to impersonate something he’s not. Or wasn’t. Or might not be. The image is getting fuzzy.

This week, while McCain’s chief economic adviser was telling reporters that it was wrong to “run for president by denigrating everything in sight and trying to scare people,” McCain’s ad people were unveiling a new spot announcing “Our economy in crisis!” and calling for “tougher rules on Wall Street” along, of course, with more offshore drilling. Mournful unemployment-line music swells.

I have absolutely no idea of how John McCain would handle a financial crisis if he were president. But on behalf of all the nation’s fundamentals I would like to say that he now has me ready to stage a run on the first bank in sight.

More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on September 18, 2008, on page A35 of the New York edition. Past Coverage

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Obama Looks to Shift Focus of Campaign to Economy (September 17, 2008)
Abortion Issue Again Dividing Catholic Votes (September 17, 2008)
McCain Laboring to Hit Right Note o

WE HAVE TO BE TOUGHER NOW

Don DePasquale — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:17:41 EDT

WE HAVE TO BE TOUGHER NOW--report from Boulder, CO From: Madama Ambi (madamaambi@gmail.com) Add contact Sent: Thu 9/18/08 11:18 AM Reply-to: madamaambi@gmail.com
To: San Francisco for Obama (SanFranciscoforObama@groups.barackobama.com)

"They have misjudged us. Just because our political heroes were murdered does not mean that the dream does not still live, buried deep in our broken hearts." Joe Biden September 1993 New Jersey State Democratic Convention, Atlantic City
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To My Friends and Family--some of whom are freaking out or undecided or worried

Lately I've been struggling to bear the turn things have taken in the presidential campaign. Every time someone wants to talk to me about how horrible it is, show me more evidence of the terror in the polls, the lies of all kinds, tricks to forestall young and minority voters, I feel like a nail is pounded deeper into my heart. It's been a long haul. I'm tired and crabby, and I only started volunteering in January. There are people who have been giving their hearts for 19 months.

So I have something to say. We are only weeks away from election day. We still have a brilliant tough strategic unblinking candidate with a vice presidential partner who can hold his own with anyone. (Let me know if you want to hear my story of listening to Joe Biden at a women's economic round table discussion in Denver or excerpts from his biography).

I wonder why we seem surprised at the turn things have taken.

read Marjorie Larner's full essay here

Marjorie Larner is a writer and educator currently co-chairing a team of volunteers for Obama '08. She is also my oldest, dearest friend.

--
MadamaAmbi
Interview4Obama
http://madamaambi.blogspot.com

When you have had enough of CNN, MCNBC, FOX, and all the other news outlets except Jim Lehrer News Hour

Don DePasquale — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:19:04 EDT

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 11:34 AM, kristin tedesco <kristin.tedesco@gmail.com> wrote:
An excellent idea....(why not try it?)

To all my friends who have had enough --

I want to make two specific requests (discussion follows):

1) 3 times a day (more is better) I suggest you say or just think
to yourself "President Obama" and when you do to imagine it being true
right now and feeling all the great feelings that go with this
thought.

2) Please forward this email to all your friends who you know for
a fact are voting for Obama and will be thrilled when he wins,
encouraging them to send it on to their friends.

Discussion:

It dawned on me that many of us are getting caught in the fear orgy
the Republicans love to create because most of their policies are
based in fear. They even fail to recognize that the opposite of fear
is not hope but trust and expectation. So eliminating fear requires
practicing trust and expectation. Fearing the Republicans is just more
fear and feeds their cause. They want us to be afraid, even if all
we're afraid of is them. I don't expect us to never experience fearful
thoughts, but when we notice that we are would be a good time to think
"President Obama" and experience the pleasure that this reality
brings.

When I first thought of this I anticipated that some, me included,
would react with, "well just thinking about it won't do it. Way too
'airy-fairy' What we need is to be in action." Interesting thought,
but aligning our thoughts with what we want never hurts and imagining
what we want never precludes getting into action. In fact, imagining
"President Obama" is more likely to inspire those actions that will
create this wonderful outcome. Not to mention, if a whole bunch of us
are feeling good, instead of afraid, resigned and helpless, then we
will probably get a whole lot more done. Practice this thought and
notice that it makes you feel good and certainly more resourceful. The
decision to send this email came to me last night after deciding to
practice this thought myself yesterday. "President Obama" Aaaaah.
Happy and relieved. Like taking off a shoe that's too tight (or in
this case, maybe a noose).

I did the math and if each of sends this to ten others and only five
send it on then in 13 rounds this email will reach over 244 Million
people. Probably less because of repeats. If we send it to more and
let's say 10 send it on then in 9 rounds 1 Billion emails will be
sent. Staggering and no-one is asking you to send any money anywhere
or informing you that you have inherited money from a long lost
relative.

When I first heard Barak Obama speak in 2004 at the convention, I
thought 'This man could be President someday." I like many others are
inspired by him and know that behind his inspiring words is a strong,
thoughtful and courageous intelligence. Let's join together to make
"President Obama" (Aaaaaah) a reality by imagining together that it
already is. Thanks for your help.

I concur with the first point but do not want to encourage any Chain Letters, so people should really consider dropping by the Obama HQ nearest them. Don Depasquale

Here is another reaction:
I'm phonebanking now - I spoke to an 18 yr old girl in Nevada whose English was slightly better than my Spanish, but who managed to say, "Si, I'm voting for Barack Obama."

There is an older woman sitting behind me who is using a cellular phone for the first time in her life, here, today, to phonebank for Obama.

If people are really worried about how the campaign is going, you can send letters and write impassioned emails and every little bit truly DOES help...

...but there's a large stack of Nevada voters to call here, not to mention the need to enter all that data once the voters are called, not to mention plenty of work to do.

People are busy, but you can literally drop in for half an hour and make a call or three.

Hope to see you soon.

With respect,
Alex Brant-Zawadzki

Person Don DepasqualeRight click for SmartMenu shortcuts

The latest polls and a way to track them

Don DePasquale — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:41:53 EDT

From RCP -> http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/latestpolls/index.html
Thursday, September 18RacePoll ResultsSpreadNew Mexico SurveyUSA Obama 52, McCain 44 Obama +8Wednesday, September 17 RacePollResultsSpread Wisconsin Rasmussen Obama 48, McCain 46 Obama +2Oregon Rasmussen Obama 51, McCain 47 Obama +4National Gallup Tracking McCain 45, Obama 47 Obama +2National Rasmussen Tracking McCain 48, Obama 47 McCain +1National Hotline/FD Tracking McCain 42, Obama 45Obama +3 Florida CNN/Time McCain 48, Obama 48 TieOhio CNN/Time McCain 47, Obama 49 Obama +2North Carolina CNN/Time McCain 48, Obama 47 McCain +1Virginia PPP (D)McCain 46, Obama 48 Obama +2Wisconsin CNN/Time Obama 50, McCain 47 Obama +3Indiana CNN/Time McCain 51, Obama 45 McCain +6Rhode Island Rasmussen Obama 58, McCain 39 Obama +19National CBS News/NY Times McCain 44, Obama 49 Obama +5National CBS News/NY Times McCain 43, Obama 49, Nader 2, Barr 1 Obama +6National Reuters/Zogby McCain 45, Obama 47 Obama +2National Ipsos Public Affairs McCain 45, Obama 45, Nader 2, Barr 1 TieVirginia CNU Virginia Poll McCain 48, Obama 39 McCain +9California Field Obama 52, McCain 36 Obama +16

Obama Over McCain In a Heartbeat

Roseville City School Board Member — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:13:52 EDT

You are The Boss... which team would you hire?

With America facing historic debt, multiple war fronts, stumbling

health care, a weakened dollar, all-time high prison population,

skyrocketing Federal spending, mortgage crises, bank foreclosures, etc.,

this is an unusually critical election year.

Let's look at the educational background of your two options:

Obama:

Occidental College - Two years.

Columbia University - B.A. political science with a specialization in international relations.

Harvard - Jurist Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

& Biden:

University of Delaware - B.A. in history and B.A. in political science.

Syracuse University College of Law - Jurist Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

McCain:

United States Naval Academy - Class rank 894 of 899

& Palin:

Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester

North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study

University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism

Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester

University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in journalism

Now, which team are you going to hire ?