All Political Posts Go Here!

[strandinthewind]

Palin won't meet with 'Troopergate' investigator By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
10 minutes ago



A campaign spokesman says Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin won't speak with an investigator hired by lawmakers to look into the firing of her public safety commissioner.

McCain campaign spokesman Ed O'Callaghan told a news conference Monday that the governor, the Republican nominee for vice president, will not cooperate as long as the investigation "remains tainted." He said he doesn't know whether Palin's husband would challenge a subpoena issued to compel his cooperation.

The campaign insists the investigation has been hijacked by Democrats. It says it can prove Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan was fired because of insubordination on budget issues — not because he refused to fire a state trooper who had divorced Palin's sister.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080916/ap_on_el_pr/palin_troopergate

Sounds like Cheney and Bush all over again :shrug:

If I were Obama, I would get on this like white on rice. I would say Palin obviously thinks she is above reproach and the law. Moreover, if anyone "can prove Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan was fired because of insubordination on budget issues," then let them come forward and show their evidence to the Commissioner.

Plain makes me sicker by the hour. I sure an glad she is such a devout faux Christian because Christ sure never practiced this type of lying and then persecuted anyone who dared call Him on it :rolleyes:

[BombaySapphire3]

So she has sociopathic tendancies of entitlement along with all the other "fun " things about her..I hate to say it but W has finally moved out of my head and this treacherous b*tch has taken up residence in it.:laugh:But really if some people are too dense to realize how W has f%cked up this country then let them vote in the geezer and the snowbilly..I don't want to see them win of course but it may be the final nails in the coffin of the onetime GOP.Just at what price though?

[Musicman408]

Sarah Palin=No Good for America.:distress:

[estranged4life]

I like her....

































Easier to make fun of compared to the Hill-Billy Clinton :D

<div align=center><img src="http://www.newsfromreality.com/sarahpalinwatch/funnypictures/bullwinkle_assassinated_small.jpg"></div>

[estranged4life]

<div align=center><img src="http://www.hereinreality.com/more_funny_pics/albums/userpics/10001/normal_juneau.jpg"></div>

[estranged4life]

<div align=center><img src="http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/J/I/2/mccain-palin-lipstick-pig.jpg"></div>

[BombaySapphire3]

I have to say all of those are hilarious :laugh:..I needed a laugh today thanks!

[estranged4life]

<div align=center><img src="http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/l/G/2/palin-abstinence-for-some.jpg"></div>

[estranged4life]

<div align=center><img src="http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/e/G/2/mccain-failin.jpg"></div>

[BombaySapphire3]

Those are good!The scary thing is that so many people are actually buying into this trick.Sarah Palin .I can only imagine what the rest of the world is thinking right now..as if W and his idiocy hadn't embarresed us enough.

[estranged4life]

<div align=center><img src="http://craphound.com/images/2008-09-03-NotVettingSarahPalin.jpg"></div>

[BombaySapphire3]

<div align=center><img src="http://craphound.com/images/2008-09-03-NotVettingSarahPalin.jpg"></div>

best one yet:lol::lol::lol::lol:

[estranged4life]

<div align=center><img src="http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/G/G/2/mccain-palin-gothic.jpg"></div>

[estranged4life]

<div align=center><img src="http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/a/G/2/mac-palin-white-people.jpg"></div>

[estranged4life]

<div align=center><img src="http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/x/I/2/pit-bull-ad.jpg"></div>

[estranged4life]

<div align=center><img src="http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/9/H/2/palin-librarian.jpg"></div>

[estranged4life]

but easier on the eyes to:

<div align=center><img src="http://www.hi-defwallpapers.com/images/funny-hidef/Hillary_Clinton_Ugly.jpg"></div>

[BombaySapphire3]

:but easier on the eyes to:

<div align=center><img src="http://www.hi-defwallpapers.com/images/funny-hidef/Hillary_Clinton_Ugly.jpg"></div>

Really I'd have loved to see Hillary debate the ice bumpkin though..I think she'd turn that barracuda into a blowfish.

[estranged4life]

<div align=center><img src="http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/L/y/1/obama_driving_hillary_crazy.jpg"></div>

[estranged4life]

<div align=center><img src="http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/_/z/1/hillary_no_new_scandals.jpg"></div>

[estranged4life]

when this fake quarter was shown on Late Night with Conan O'Brien - And days later they started to show up on eBay POing the Secret Service:

<div align=center><img src="http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/b/I/clinton_arkansasquarter.jpg"></div>

[estranged4life]

Presidunce Shrub needs some Viagra/Cialis it appears, tsk, tsk, tsk...Ya know, Shrub rhymes with STUB, ouch!!!!!!!!!!!

<div align=center><img src="http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/7/E/b/gop_paging_dr_freud.jpg"></div>

[gldstwmn]

Surprise, surprise...

[strandinthewind]

<div align=center><img src="http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/a/G/2/mac-palin-white-people.jpg"></div>

Brian J. - you are da man for these :cool:

Also, I am so glad McCain refused the cover of People - I mean I would not want him to be thought of as a celebrity or anything since he obviously is more than willing to falsely apply that status to others and state that that status negates the ability to be an effective President :rolleyes:

[strandinthewind]

I think he points out the hypocrisy quite well!

Four more years indeed :mad:

____________________________________________________

McCain/Palin offer insight to how they would govern

By Jay Bookman | Tuesday, September 16, 2008, 08:13 AM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

So Sarah Palin, the “reformer” advocating greater transparency in government, is now refusing to take any part in a state investigation to which she once pledged total cooperation. She is also trying to squelch release of emails and other evidence in the case.

The issue is stark: Did Palin abuse her authority and fire her state’s top public-safety official because she did not get her way in a personal family dispute? Her record as mayor of Wasilla suggests she is prone to such high-handed behavior; the fact that after just a year and a half as governor, she already found herself embroiled in another such controversy is telling.

We have had almost eight years of an administration that believed that rules were for other people, an administration that has acted as if it was immune to outside oversight. It is not “change” to replace that administration with another just like it. It is not reform.

The McCain campaign claims Palin can prove that Walt Monegan was fired as part of a budget dispute. If so, the investigation established by the Alaska Legislature — a process set up with Palin’s full support — offers a forum in which that evidence can be viewed and weighed.

But Palin refuses to do so. Is this how a McCain/Palin administration would be run, arrogantly and secretly?

[strandinthewind]

The latest - if I am not mistaken, a special prosecutor was appointed by the Legislature via the bipartisan process. That special prosecutor surely has the right to subpoena witnesses. So, I am unsure where the Alaskan AG gets the authority to refuse to comply with the subpoena. In any event, there must be something really damning for Palin for the R's to use this technique. Again, why is Palin, the great champion of transparant govt., refusing to set the record straight?

AG says state employees won't honor subpoenas

By STEVE QUINN, Associated Press Writer
5 minutes ago

Alaska's investigation into whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power, a potentially damaging distraction for John McCain's presidential campaign, ran into intensified resistance Tuesday when the attorney general said state employees would refuse to honor subpoenas in the case.

In a letter to state Sen. Hollis French, the Democrat overseeing the investigation, Republican Attorney General Talis Colberg asked that the subpoenas be withdrawn. He also said the employees would refuse to appear unless either the full state Senate or the entire Legislature votes to compel their testimony.

Colberg, who was appointed by Palin, said the employees are caught between their respect for the Legislature and their loyalty to the governor, who initially agreed to cooperate with the inquiry but has increasingly opposed it since McCain chose her as his running mate.

"This is an untenable position for our clients because the governor has so strongly stated that the subpoenas issued by your committee are of questionable validity," Colberg wrote.

Last week, French's Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed 13 people. They include 10 employees of Palin's administration and three who are not: her husband, Todd Palin; John Bitney, Palin's former legislative liaison who now is chief of staff for Republican House Speaker John Harris; and Murlene Wilkes, a state contractor.

French did not immediately return a telephone call Tuesday for comment.

Earlier in the day, Harris, who two months ago supported the "Troopergate" investigation, openly questioned its impartiality and raised the possibility of delaying the findings.

Like Colberg's letter, the surprise maneuver by Harris reflected deepening resolve by Republicans to spare Palin embarrassment or worse in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.

And it marked a further fraying of a bipartisan consensus, formed by a unanimous panel before Palin became McCain's running mate, that her firing of the state's public safety commissioner justified the ethical investigation.

In a letter, Harris wrote that what "started as a bipartisan and impartial effort is becoming overshadowed by public comments from individuals at both ends of the political spectrum," and he urged lawmakers to meet quickly to decide on a course.

"What I may be in favor of is having the report delayed, but only if it becomes a blatant partisan issue," he told The Associated Press, while indicating he already believes it has become politically tainted.

Democratic state Sen. Kim Elton, chairman of the Legislative Council, the 14-member panel that authorized the probe, had no immediate comment on Harris' request. Under an unusual power-sharing agreement, the council is made up of 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats.

At issue is whether Palin abused her power by pressing the commissioner to remove her former brother-in-law as an Alaska state trooper, then firing the commissioner when he didn't.

The matter risks casting a shadow on Palin's reputation, central to her appeal in the campaign, that she is a clean-government advocate who takes on entrenched interests — not a governor who tried to use her authority behind the scenes to settle a personal score.

Palin has defended her behavior and said she welcomed the investigation. "Hold me accountable," she said. But she and the McCain campaign have taken actions that could slow the probe, possibly past Election Day.

Also Tuesday, five Republican state lawmakers filed a lawsuit against an investigation they called "unlawful, biased, partial and partisan." None serves on the bipartisan Legislative Council that unanimously approved the inquiry. They want it pushed past the election or top Democrats removed from the probe.

Making clear the dispute has ramifications beyond Alaska, Liberty Legal Institute, a Texas-based legal advocacy group, was working on the lawsuit. The institute has taken on a variety of cases in defense of conservative Christian positions.

Elton called the lawsuit "a distraction."

"The silver lining in this action initiated by the five lawmakers is that some of that debate now has been kicked to the judicial branch which, unlike the Legislature and the governor's office, is more insulated from the red-hot passion of presidential politics," he said.

Palin fired public safety commissioner Walt Monegan in July.

Weeks later, it emerged that Palin, her husband, Todd, and several high-level staffers had contacted Monegan about state trooper Mike Wooten, who had gone through a nasty divorce from Palin's sister before Palin became governor. While Monegan says no one from the administration ever told him directly to fire Wooten, he says their repeated contacts made it clear they wanted Wooten gone.

Palin maintains she fired Monegan over budget disagreements, not because he wouldn't dismiss her ex-brother-in-law. She has sought through her lawyer to have the matter investigated in a more favorable forum, the state personnel board.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/palin_troopergate&printer=1;_ylt=AhNjC4egyk7SszZgpFMWPFZh24cA

[strandinthewind]

To me, the circling of the wagons indicates there is more to this than the public information indicates. I think the facts should be given. Again, this is the c*nt who is all for "transparent government" -- moreover, she agreed to the investigation in July and in August she stated that although initially in July, she denied that there had been any pressure on Monegan to fire Wooten, either from herself or from anyone in her administration - in August, Palin acknowledged that "pressure could have been perceived to exist, although I have only now become aware of it."

How about the July letter from former U.S. Attorney Wevley Shea, who had acted previously as an informal advisor to Palin, wrote her a letter in which he urged her to apologize for "overreaching or preceived overreaching" to get Wooten fired, and warned that the matter could snowball into a bigger scandal. The letter said that she should fire any aides who had raised concerns with Monegan.

No wonder the McCain team is circling the wagons :eek:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Public_Safety_Commissioner_dismissal

_______________________________________________________

McCain campaign clamps down on questions in Alaska
By ANNE SUTTON, Associated Press Writer

Wed Sep 17, 3:11 AM ET

GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is effectively turning over questions about her record as Alaska's governor to John McCain's political campaign, part of an ambitious Republican strategy to limit any embarrassing disclosures and carefully shape her image for voters in the rest of the country.

Republican efforts include dispatching a former top U.S. terrorism prosecutor from New York, Ed O'Callaghan, to assist Palin's personal lawyer working to derail or delay a pending ethics investigation in Alaska. The probe, known as "Troopergate," is examining whether the governor abused her power by trying to remove her former brother-in-law as a state trooper.

O'Callaghan is just part of a cadre of high-powered operatives patrolling Alaska as reporters and Democrats scrutinize every detail of Palin's tenure in government, plus her family and friends. One strategy: Carefully coordinate any information that's released. The McCain campaign is demanding that it becomes the de facto source for answers about the operations of Alaska's government during the past 20 months.

Palin's normal press secretary, for example, now turns away inquiries from any reporter who isn't permanently based in Alaska, referring questions to the presidential campaign. Trouble is, some of McCain operatives only recently have arrived in Alaska and struggle to explain Palin's positions on arcane state issues.

When a reporter for The Associated Press asked the state's Department of Health and Social Services about lawsuits involving state health policies, he was directed to call Meg Stapleton, a former spokeswoman for Palin now working for McCain.

"In general the state is sending media inquiries this way because we're just inundated with hundreds and hundreds of phone calls," Stapleton said. "It provides for the most expeditious channel to get stuff out there."

O'Callaghan, who helped prosecute terrorism and national security cases for the Justice Department until a few weeks ago, was sent to Alaska to handle "legal issues that are affecting the political dynamic of the campaign," said Taylor Griffin, a former Treasury Department spokesman in the Bush administration. O'Callaghan is expected to leave after this week.

Translation: O'Callaghan is helping ratchet up the heat on the Troopergate investigation, a probe with which Palin once promised to cooperate. O'Callaghan was the one who threw down the gauntlet during a news conference this week: Palin herself was unlikely to talk to the Alaska Legislature's investigator.

McCain's campaign has sent at least one dozen researchers and lawyers to Alaska to pore over Palin's background, ready to respond to questions about her tenure as governor and mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. Griffin has been leading the team in Alaska, which includes operatives of the Republican National Committee.

Republicans are rebutting what they describe as smears against Palin. Last week, McCain's campaign formed a "truth squad," which includes current and former GOP politicians who agree to speak with reporters. Heading up the effort from Arlington, Va., are Mark Paoletta and O'Callaghan, both Republican lawyers, and Brian Jones, a former communications director for McCain.

Democrats, meanwhile, are relying on Palin's homegrown critics in Alaska. They call themselves "Alaska Mythbusters," a nod to the popular television show. The team is made up mostly of elected officials who have opposed or know Palin and who criticize her work, such as the mayor of tiny Ketchikan, Bob Weinstein. Ketchikan was involved in Alaska's infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," a construction project that Palin initially supported but now says she opposed as an example of wasteful spending.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080917/ap_on_go_pr_wh/palin_mccain_operatives

[gldstwmn]

To me, the circling of the wagons indicates there is more to this than the public information indicates. I think the facts should be given.

Oh yeah. This is typical behavior on their part. The law doesn't apply to them.

[strandinthewind]

Oh yeah. This is typical behavior on their part. The law doesn't apply to them.

The smear job on the alleged victims has been completed by the R's. Again, that they two guys were jerks is irrelevant to whether Palin inappropriately tried to get Wooten fired because of a personal issue and then fired Monegan because he would not fire Wooten for Palin's personal reason. Moreovoer, it is disingenuous to assert that Palin was justified in firing Monegan anyway because he was a jerk. Again, Plain offered Monegan a high level state job after firing him. Why would she do that if she fired Monegan for being a jerk in his personal life? the answer is she did not fire him for those reasons and the R party is throwing them out there to attack the alleged victim on an irrelevant point to change focus from the actual issue, which is whether Palin fired Monegan because Monegan refused the pressure to carry out Palin's personal vendetta.

In any event, Palin now is complying with a separate investigation she requested from the state Personnel Board, the members of which she is able to fire. Palin is not, however, cooperating with the Legislature's investigation (the members of which she cannot fire) - which she agreed to cooperate with. She has asserted that she withdrew her cooperation (and the cooperation of the state employees under subpoena as well as that of her husband) because the investigation became a partisan affair. The passages in bold below indicate her assertion of partisanship is undupported and false.

Again, this is the person who alleges she will bring reform to Washington and wants to establish a transparent government whose actions can be judged by the people. Interestingly, like the current Bush Admin., she cannot apply those rules to herself.

Finally, the statement "This governor cannot wait for her story to be told," Stapleton said. Asked why the governor did not air that story publicly, she said, "We are working with her schedule right now." -- is utter cr*apola -- she sat down for two national interviews and discussed this. Moreover, she has a staff who could prepare her statement. Does she and the RNC actually expect anyone believe this turd pile?

In the end and again, I do not care if she is innocent or gulity. Moreover, no one can really make that judgement until all of the facts are known. Her actions, however, suggest she is covering up something, which make her look the very picture of the corrupt person alleged. She needs to clear her name publicly.


Trooper probe now 'confidential,' Palin aides say

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (CNN) -- Republican campaign officials indicated they are done answering questions about an investigation into Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner Tuesday, citing a request by a state investigator.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is being investigated for the possibly improper firing of a state official.

"He has asked to keep things confidential, so we will respect those wishes," campaign spokeswoman Meg Stapleton told reporters.

Palin has dropped an earlier pledge to cooperate with a probe by the state Legislature, with aides arguing it has been "tainted" by partisan politics since she became Sen. John McCain's running mate. But Stapleton said Palin's lawyers have agreed to "general parameters of immediate cooperation" with the investigation she requested from the state Personnel Board, which has hired Anchorage lawyer Timothy Petumenos to conduct the inquiry.

"The governor waived confidentiality, and Mr. Petumenos has just stated as of this moment that he would like for things to remain confidential," Stapleton said. "So that is why we are telling you as of today, we are no longer going to be discussing aspects of this as directed by Mr. Petumenos."

Stapleton said Petumenos -- a registered Democrat -- has pledged to run a "fair and impartial" investigation. She said Palin's staff is working to schedule interviews for the governor and her husband, Todd, who refused last week to comply with a subpoena issued in the legislative probe. And Petumenos has asked for a list of documents and e-mails from her lawyer, she said.

"This governor cannot wait for her story to be told," Stapleton said. Asked why the governor did not air that story publicly, she said, "We are working with her schedule right now."

Monegan says he was fired after he refused to fire the governor's ex-brother-in-law, a state trooper who was involved in an acrimonious divorce from Palin's sister. Palin has denied any wrongdoing, telling Fox News last week that Monegan was "insubordinate" in disputes over budget issues.

The Legislature's inquiry is scheduled to be completed by October 10. The state senator managing the probe, Anchorage Democrat Hollis French, has been under fire since a September 2 interview with ABC News in which he said the inquiry could lead to an "October surprise" for the GOP ticket.

No date has been set for completing the personnel board probe, which Palin's campaign argues is the proper legal venue for the investigation. Under state law, those investigations can take as long as two years.

Campaign spokesman Ed O'Callaghan said he believed Petumenos would act in "an expedited manner," but that results may not emerge before the November elections.

"If that is concluded before the election, so be it. If that is concluded after the election, so be it," he said.

O'Callaghan, a former federal prosecutor brought in by the McCain campaign, said it was "frankly irresponsible" for investigators to set a deadline. But a leading Republican lawmaker told CNN that the legislative investigation into Monegan's firing needs to go ahead despite the increasingly heated opposition of the campaign.

Rep. Jay Ramras, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday that he still has confidence in the special counsel hired by the state Legislature and said there was "zero chance" that efforts to shut down the probe would succeed.

"There's no question the report is going to be produced," he said. "There is a question of which folks will participate in it and which ones won't."

For more than a week, Stapleton and O'Callaghan have held routine "truth squad" press conferences to criticize French and accuse Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign of attempting to manipulate the probe. Ramras discounted the criticism as a result of national politics.

"The hyperbole from the truth squad is a little farfetched," he said. "To those of us who have monitored this thing from the front-row seats, it's a misnomer."

Stapleton said she had no comment on Ramras' remarks.

Ramras said he is supporting the McCain-Palin ticket, though he and Palin have clashed on other issues. His committee concurred with the September 12 decision to issue subpoenas to Todd Palin and a dozen others, and the swing vote in issuing those subpoenas was a state senator he described as "a conservative, pro-life Republican."

"We all took an oath of office, and this is an important report to come out," he said. [Comment - why is she scared of these R's. I get that French should have kept his mouth shut, but Ramras and crew are supporters of Plain. Why should she fear that they are partisan? ]

www.cnn.com

[GoS]

Palin should step down, conservative commentator says
Posted: 04:27 PM ET

From CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney

Palin was in New York City Thursday.

(CNN) – Prominent conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, an early supporter of Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin, said Friday recent interviews have shown the Alaska governor is "out of her league" and should leave the GOP presidential ticket for the good of the party.

The criticism in Parker's Friday column is the latest in a recent string of negative assessments toward the McCain-Palin candidacy from prominent conservatives.

It was fun while it lasted," Parker writes. "Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who is clearly out of her league."

Palin's interview with Couric drew criticism when the Alaska governor was unable to provide an example of when John McCain had pushed for more regulation of Wall Street during his Senate career. Palin also took heat for defending her foreign policy credentials by suggesting Russian leaders enter Alaska airspace when they come to America. Palin was also criticized last week for appearing not to know what the Bush Doctrine is during an interview with Charlie Gibson.

“If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself," Parker also writes. "If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true."

Parker, who praised McCain's "keen judgment" for picking Palin earlier this month and wrote the Alaska governor is a "perfect storm of God, Mom and apple pie," now says Palin should step down from the ticket.

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

Parker's comments follow those by prominent conservatives David Brooks, George Will, and David Frum who have all publicly questioned Palin's readiness to be vice president.

"Sarah Palin has many virtues," Brooks wrote in a recent column. "If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she'd be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness."

[ajmccarrell]

I saw that, but what it amounts to is that each candidate has a gaffe machine for a running mate. No more, no less. Either running mate stepping down would be disastrous for either candidacy. The big problem with this is that Palin set the base on fire and it would be suicide to throw her under the bus at this point. She is still extraordinarily popular and attracts crowds of Obama magnitude at her rallies.

[GoS]

I saw that, but what it amounts to is that each candidate has a gaffe machine for a running mate. No more, no less. Either running mate stepping down would be disastrous for either candidacy. The big problem with this is that Palin set the base on fire and it would be suicide to throw her under the bus at this point. She is still extraordinarily popular and attracts crowds of Obama magnitude at her rallies.

Yeah, I agree. And besides, she is a big help to Obama, the more she goes out there, the more popular he will be:laugh::laugh::laugh:

[ajmccarrell]

Yeah, I agree. And besides, she is a big help to Obama, the more she goes out there, the more popular he will be:laugh::laugh::laugh:

Eh, I doubt it. Obama is seeing a surge because, as Americans, we don't understand how the economy works. For some odd reason democrats get the edge on this issue. I've never really understood it. Frankly, any president has little to do with the economy besides setting tax policy. If we boom or bust, it's because of market forces and not the president either way.

[GoS]

Eh, I doubt it. Obama is seeing a surge because, as Americans, we don't understand how the economy works. For some odd reason democrats get the edge on this issue. I've never really understood it. Frankly, any president has little to do with the economy besides setting tax policy. If we boom or bust, it's because of market forces and not the president either way.

The President can control what the oversight situation looks like. And besides, 10 billion dollars a month freed up and who knows where that money could have been put to use.

[ajmccarrell]

The President can control what the oversight situation looks like. And besides, 10 billion dollars a month freed up and who knows where that money could have been put to use.

Unfortunately, government money tends to "crowd out" private money and in the end hurts market forces. It's vastly less efficient than private money because government cannot really create wealth, it more or less redistributes it. If you factor in the money multiplier, it gets even less efficient, etc.

[GoS]

Unfortunately, government money tends to "crowd out" private money and in the end hurts market forces. It's vastly less efficient than private money because government cannot really create wealth, it more or less redistributes it. If you factor in the money multiplier, it gets even less efficient, etc.

I meant places like bridge building (remember that horrible collapse everyone?) and government things rather than the economy. Maybe some tax cuts for working people or alternative energy. We have sent so much money there that hurts to think what else we could have used it for.

[David]

Maybe some tax cuts for working people or alternative energy.I favor tax cuts for all sectors of the population: rank & file employees, shopkeepers, corporations, blue-bloods, blue collars, white collars, butchers, bakers, & candlestick makers. But I also favor a complete overhaul of the tax code -- initiation of flat or fair or consumption tax on goods & services, elimination of sneaky loopholes & gross kickbacks & entitlements, regulation of lobbyists & PACs -- as well as a very drastic reduction of wasteful spending at all government levels.

Smash the tyranny of the two major parties by not voting for either of them!!

[estranged4life]

aka "WTF did she just say?"

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tjZW4z9zqqY&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tjZW4z9zqqY&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

[BombaySapphire3]

a parody of a parody ..how odd.:lol:

[Sorceress]

This is the best argument I've seen yet for people to come to their senses.
Palin will never do it and McCain can't, at this point, admit he was wrong. Of course, let's see what happens after the debate on Thursday.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/fareed_zakaria/2008/09/palin_is_ready_please.html

Palin Is Ready? Please.
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.

Posted by Fareed Zakaria on September 28, 2008 10:56 PM

[SuzeQuze]

Wow. Scary how closely Tina's dialog followed the real thing!

[TrueFaith77]

it's down already

[Musicman408]

Yes, I want her as my VP.......:shrug:

[SuzeQuze]

SNL are Nazis about pulling their stuff off of YouTube.

[omigodstevie]

I thought it was once again, genius. I liked the first one better, though.

But some people haven't gotten that what Tina was saying wasn't just an exaggeration of the real thing. A good chunk of it WAS the real thing! How sad.

[Musicman408]

I thought it was once again, genius. I liked the first one better, though.

But some people haven't gotten that what Tina was saying wasn't just an exaggeration of the real thing. A good chunk of it WAS the real thing! How sad.

I know, for real, right?

[LukeA]

SNL are Nazis about pulling their stuff off of YouTube.

And rightfully so, since they have an incredibly comprehensive video archive of sketches on its own website.

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://widgets.nbc.com/o/4727a250e66f9723/48e30fb33d341d27/4741e3c5156499a7/118b89a6/logoLink/http%3a%2f%2fwww.nbc.com%3fvty+%3d+fromWidget_Video/clipID/704042/siteDomain/nbc/graboffUrl/http%3a%2f%2fvideo.nbcuni.com%2fwidgetxml%2fsingleClip1%2fnbcshare.png/siteShow/nbc.com/moreLikeLink/http%3a%2f%2fwww.nbc.com%2fSaturday_Night_Live%2fvideo%2fclips%2fcouric-palin-open%2f704042%2f/textFieldColor/FFFFFF/videoPlayerSkin/http%3a%2f%2fvideo.nbcuni.com%2fwidgetxml%2fsingleClip1%2fskin14.swf/showID/61/bgndUrl/http%3a%2f%2fvideo.nbcuni.com%2fwidgetxml%2fsingleClip1%2fbg.swf/configID/1105/configxmlPath/http%3a%2f%2fvideo.nbcuni.com%2fwidgetxml%2fsingleClip1%2fsingleclip_omniConfig.xml/wName/NBC+Video/video_title/NBC+Video?storeInPid=true" id="W4727a250e66f972348e30fb33d341d27" height="283" width="384"><param value="http://widgets.nbc.com/o/4727a250e66f9723/48e30fb33d341d27/4741e3c5156499a7/118b89a6/logoLink/http%3a%2f%2fwww.nbc.com%3fvty+%3d+fromWidget_Video/clipID/704042/siteDomain/nbc/graboffUrl/http%3a%2f%2fvideo.nbcuni.com%2fwidgetxml%2fsingleClip1%2fnbcshare.png/siteShow/nbc.com/moreLikeLink/http%3a%2f%2fwww.nbc.com%2fSaturday_Night_Live%2fvideo%2fclips%2fcouric-palin-open%2f704042%2f/textFieldColor/FFFFFF/videoPlayerSkin/http%3a%2f%2fvideo.nbcuni.com%2fwidgetxml%2fsingleClip1%2fskin14.swf/showID/61/bgndUrl/http%3a%2f%2fvideo.nbcuni.com%2fwidgetxml%2fsingleClip1%2fbg.swf/configID/1105/configxmlPath/http%3a%2f%2fvideo.nbcuni.com%2fwidgetxml%2fsingleClip1%2fsingleclip_omniConfig.xml/wName/NBC+Video/video_title/NBC+Video?storeInPid=true" name="movie"/><param value="transparent" name="wmode"/><param value="all" name="allowNetworking"/><param value="always" name="allowScriptAccess"/></object>

[BombaySapphire3]

I thought it was once again, genius. I liked the first one better, though.

But some people haven't gotten that what Tina was saying wasn't just an exaggeration of the real thing. A good chunk of it WAS the real thing! How sad.

A silly stupid cow Palin is..what a complete disaster..odd how her defenders on here seem to have vanished.:shrug:

[Sorceress]

odd how her defenders on here seem to have vanished.:shrug:

Yes, but nearly everyone who was engaged in those discussions seems to have vanished too. Even without anyone to argue with, there's so much to talk about these days. Where is everyone?



Here's some food for thought:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/style/features/2008/rhetoric/gallery.html

Check out the link, there's all sorts of video illustrating the author's points.

Shooting From the Hip, With a Smile to Boot
BY LIBBY COPELAND - WASHINGTON POST STAFF WRITER | WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2008
The heart of Sarah Palin's appeal is --

Wait, did you see that? There! She did it again: wrinkled up her nose in a way that either looks like a sneer or is adorably reminiscent of Samantha from "Bewitched." Depending on whom you talk to.

Next time you see a clip of the Republican vice presidential nominee, try this exercise. Mute your TV and just watch that face. How often do you see someone in political life so extravagantly expressive? The eyebrows go up, the shoulder leans in, the thumb jauntily gestures backward, the tongue actually fixes in the cheek. To mock Barack Obama, she licks her finger and holds it to the imaginary wind! And that smile, that nearly ever-present smile, which either indicates -- oh, dear, here we go again -- that she's sarcastic and dismissive or that she's letting you in on a very clever joke.

People love her so. People hate her so. At the heart of it is the delivery, a style of speaking we'll see again in tomorrow night's debate, a style that reaches past folksy and veers into the territory of -- to hell with it, cue the charges of sexism -- cute.

"She's perky, she's spunky," says Republican speechwriter Landon Parvin, who has written for both Presidents Bush. "She has this quality -- in a 1950s comedy, her father would call her 'Button.' "

And?

"This allows her to get away with murder," he says.
All you wannabe hockey moms who imagine yourselves having coffee with Sarah Palin and swapping five-minute dinner recipes? Who find it endearing when Palin refers to her husband as "my guy"? Who like the smiling certainty in her tone, the determination in her squint?This is for you.

And all you Pal-lergics who dislike not only her hard-edged politics but that spoonful of sugar she serves it with? Who say her manner reminds you of -- we'll quote here from a Pal-lergic named Judi Dickerson who coaches actors on dialogue -- "the snotty head cheerleader in high school who was untouchable because she was always gonna win"? This is for you, too.

Sarah Palin is many things -- somber is not one of them. There's something about her delivery that suggests she's almost always having fun. You know how they call Joe Biden the happy warrior? Palin has a similar quality -- the ability to attack without seeming angry. Some of that is the smile on her face and the evident humor in her voice, as Sheila Tate, Nancy Reagan's former press secretary, points out.

But there's a lot more at work. It starts with the way Palin's delivery allows her to leap through the camera into your living room. Perhaps in part because of her background as a television reporter and beauty pageant competitor, she seems to understand how the camera works.

"What she knows is that the camera is a thief," says Republican strategist Ron Bonjean, who has worked for former House speaker Dennis Hastert and former Senate majority leader Trent Lott, among others. "The camera will steal your emotions and make you flat, and what she's doing is over-emphasizing her emotions, over-emphasizing her delivery, in order to get that realness across to the camera."

The realness is what her fans talk about -- that she's like them, that she doesn't seem contrived. "We feel like she talks like we do," says Susan Geary, a Richmond retiree who attended a McCain-Palin rally in Fairfax last month. "Like she's sitting in your kitchen."

There's a consistency to Palin's appeal -- if you go back and look at old clips of her, you see many of the same stylistic elements -- the warmth and the eager delivery, the voice that drops and rises emphatically, the dropped g's.

"That's been her bread and butter for 20 years, from the day she sat down in front of the TV cameras to do her sportscasting," says Anchorage-based pollster Ivan Moore. "Her success in her political career has been based on being able to project this enormously friendly, enormously appealing physical presence -- and, some people would argue, use it to conceal this very much more ruthless and nakedly political character."
Palin's fans are drawn to her story, that folk-hero combination of caribou-hunting toughness and traditional femininity that John McCain's campaign has played up. For many Palin supporters, her attractiveness does not weaken her appeal -- rather, it balances those tales of valor on the tundra. Supporters have charged her critics with sexism but at the same time, at the GOP convention, delegates wore buttons that said "Hottest VP From the Coolest State." For a while, Cindy McCain was introducing Palin as a "true Western woman," evoking images of pretty prairie wives with rifles who could out-hunt their husbands and still get dinner on the table. (Hot chicks with guns being a beloved American archetype.)

They are also drawn to the notion of Palin's PTA-mom-just-like-you-ness, which is enhanced by the hair, which has not been cut short in the style of many political women, and the voice, which has not been brought down to a deeper register, or stripped of its Alaska-by-way-of-middle-America nasality. Palin does more than mention her five children as biographical fact in appearances -- she also speaks in mom language. What other major political figure would attempt what she said at her welcome-home rally in Fairbanks last month?

"I see some of our staff members here and cabinet members," she told the audience at a rally. "I can't wait to give you guys a hug."

Palin's huggability is evidence of her accessibility -- or of her lack of gravitas, depending on where you sit. When she met Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in New York recently, he called her "gorgeous" and joked he might hug her. In response, she laughed.

Much of Palin's appeal -- as well as what some find grating -- is about the language she chooses, which is folksy in the extreme. She says "heck" and "darn" and "gosh" and "shoot" and "oh, gee." She says, "Guys and gals, our regulatory system is outdated." And: The nation's financial system "needs some shakin' up and some fixin.' " She pronounces things "awesome" and "cool," as in: "He's an awesome bundle of joy" (baby Trig) and "It was so cool growin' up in this church and gettin' saved here" (the Wasilla Assembly of God). The critics -- she calls 'em "haters."

Could central casting produce a more ideal messenger for the new Republican populism?

"I'm sure she's not from Alaska -- she's been sitting on a Hollywood sound stage for years waiting for this," says Paul Costello, the former press aide to Rosalynn Carter and Kitty Dukakis. "She's so unbelievably perfect. . . . Even the red ruby shoes that she's been wearing."

In speeches, Palin's comedic timing is spot-on and her intonation is exaggerated, sweeping her audience along on the current of her message. "Very story-timey," says John Neffinger, a communications consultant who coaches corporate speakers and Democratic congressional candidates. "She varies her intonation all over the place so you know exactly what feelings she's trying to convey. Lots of warmth, very sing-songy."
In the few interviews she has given, or when taking questions from voters, Palin speaks with speed and a rat-a-tat delivery, as if a pause were a sign of weakness. Sometimes she drops her voice to a rock-and-roll growl. Her hands move in concert, pointing to her lips, jabbing over her shoulder. Her delivery is "decisive, task-focused," says Ken Brousseau, who consults with executive search firm Korn/Ferry International on corporate leadership styles. "Very black and white." Contrast that with Barack Obama's more deliberative style, his long "uuuhs," his concessions to the opposition. ("John, you're absolutely right," in the presidential debate, over and over.)

When she's forced outside her comfort zone, as has happened a few times of late, Palin tends to "slip back to her talking points," as CBS's Katie Couric recently put it. John McCain is a maverick. Lots of things need some shakin' up. Palin may try to turn a question around ("In what respect, Charlie?") or stall when asked for examples to bolster her argument ("I'll try to find you some and I'll bring 'em to ya!")

"Forgive me, Mrs. Palin," faux Katie Couric said to faux Sarah Palin on last week's "Saturday Night Live," "but it seems to me that when cornered you become increasingly adorable."

There's a youthfulness and an enthusiasm there -- Palin is all emoticons; Rachel Ray as candidate for higher office. (When she ran for mayor of Wasilla in 1996, her campaign ad boasted upbeat, jazzy music and a slogan reminiscent of daytime TV: "Positively Sarah.") She speaks with supreme confidence (Ya can't blink, Charlie). On Monday, she said she looked forward to meeting Senate veteran Joe Biden at their debate.

"I've been hearing about his Senate speeches since I was in, like, the second grade," she told an audience in Columbus, Ohio -- emphasizing her youth, as well as suggesting an unusual attentiveness to the earliest speeches of Biden, who was sworn in when she was 8.

Perhaps, suggests former Miss America Kate Shindle, an undecided Republican, there's a touch of the pageant world to Palin's voice, to her careful adherence to sound bytes, and that "cheerful aggressiveness" that Shindle calls "part cheerleader, part news anchor and part drill sergeant."

The confidence is underscored by something Palin does frequently at the ends of her sentences. She sets her lips in forceful line (perfectly captured by Tina Fey in her first "Saturday Night Live" impersonation) as if to communicate that the matter is settled.
Now mute the television again. Watch Palin's body. She expresses excitement through encouraging nods as well as what Karen Bradley -- a University of Maryland dance professor who studies body movement -- calls this "little shoulder wiggle." And watch that nose wiggle -- which Parvin, the Republican speechwriter, says sometimes conveys "a cute determination" and sometimes "a cute distastefulness." And sometimes, it operates as a sort of "exclamation point," conveying agreement, he says. He calls her "Gidget goes to Washington."

"She is playing into a cultural stereotype," says Drew Westen, a psychiatry professor at Emory University who also works as a Democratic consultant and wrote "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation." And the stereotype? Westen cites Marlo Thomas in "That Girl," Mary Tyler Moore in the "The Dick Van Dyke Show," Sally Field in "The Flying Nun" -- a model of perky femininity that "was really salient in the early '60s before the sexual revolution and the cultural revolution took hold."

These physical and rhetorical habits set Palin in relief to Hillary Clinton, who projected great strength but much less of what one Democratic political consultant calls "traditional feminine warmth." Which was why it caused such a splash when Clinton once told a crowd, "I'm your girl" -- there is little that's girly about Hillary Clinton's public persona. Palin calls herself a "gal" and it's utterly believable.

"She's not a woman trying to deliver a speech like a man, and there is an integrity to that," says Parvin.

And all of which means Sarah Palin is either great or awful, depending on whom you talk to, because her style and her conservative beliefs are either post-feminist or the antithesis of feminism. If Palin's cuteness is disarming to her supporters, it is troubling to those who worry that she lacks intellectual heft, and infuriating to those who feel she's being coddled. Not too long ago, CNN anchor Campbell Brown suggested the McCain campaign was being sexist by shielding Palin from interviews. Acting coach Dickerson suggests that Palin gets to be as nakedly political as any other candidate while being shielded from retaliation because of the perception that she is, after all, just a gal.

"You have a very glamorous, pretty woman with, actually, a very girly delivery -- but what comes out of her are the words of a very savvy, very tough politician," says Dickerson. "It creates a mixed message of allowing her to really say anything that she wants."

Then again, who decides what's fair? Sarah Palin is hugging us all into confusion.

[SuzeQuze]

The fact that the package is more important to people than the content really irks me.

[gretchen]

The fact that the package is more important to people than the content really irks me.

I understand what you're saying totally, but humans are visual animals, it is in our very nature...for better or worse you know?

[SuzeQuze]

I understand what you're saying totally, but humans are visual animals, it is in our very nature...for better or worse you know?

Yeah but we also have brains, you know? I wish more people used theirs.

[gretchen]

Yeah but we also have brains, you know? I wish more people used theirs.

Oh I agree.

[Sorceress]

The fact that the package is more important to people than the content really irks me.

Yes, and it also bothers me that this type of package has so much appeal.

"Gidget goes to Washington."

"She is playing into a cultural stereotype," says Drew Westen, a psychiatry professor at Emory University who also works as a Democratic consultant and wrote "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation." And the stereotype? Westen cites Marlo Thomas in "That Girl," Mary Tyler Moore in the "The Dick Van Dyke Show," Sally Field in "The Flying Nun" -- a model of perky femininity that "was really salient in the early '60s before the sexual revolution and the cultural revolution took hold."

So she gets away with saying whatever she wants because either: a) people are apparently distracted by the "cuteness" and don't listen to what she is saying, or b) people apparently need a woman's authority to be cloaked in cuteness in order to not be threatened by her?

I just don't get it.

[BombaySapphire3]

QUOTE=Sorceress;777454]Yes, but nearly everyone who was engaged in those discussions seems to have vanished too. Even without anyone to argue with, there's so much to talk about these days. Where is everyone?"

Well it looks like ajmccarrell has been suspended again..I didn't cause it this time though:laugh:I actually tried to help the boy.:shrug:

[GoS]

QUOTE=Sorceress;777454]Yes, but nearly everyone who was engaged in those discussions seems to have vanished too. Even without anyone to argue with, there's so much to talk about these days. Where is everyone?"

Well it looks like ajmccarrell has been suspended again..I didn't cause it this time though:laugh:I actually tried to help the boy.:shrug:

Why/When did he get suspended?

[BombaySapphire3]

Why/When did he get suspended?

I don't know about this time but he has been put on '"registered " status and can't post, a temporary banning ?which is what he was on last time when I admittedly baited him into going on a rant..I later made peace with him after he gave a very heartfelt explanation about what he has been through in his life..I disagree with him 95% of the time about politics but he did keep things moving around here that is certain.

[GoS]

I don't know about this time but he has been put on '"registered " status and can't post, a temporary banning ?which is what he was on last time when I admittedly baited him into going on a rant..I later made peace with him after he gave a very heartfelt explanation about what he has been through in his life..I disagree with him 95% of the time about politics but he did keep things moving around here that is certain.

I saw that he was put on "registered" status, he hasn't posted in a while, and that his signature was removed. I didn't notice anything too offensive in most of his posts. He and I had just been exchanging PM's and actually getting along. The boards are so boring without him.

[GoS]

I don't know about this time but he has been put on '"registered " status and can't post, a temporary banning ?which is what he was on last time when I admittedly baited him into going on a rant..I later made peace with him after he gave a very heartfelt explanation about what he has been through in his life..I disagree with him 95% of the time about politics but he did keep things moving around here that is certain.

Oo, I know!! http://ledge.fleetwoodmac.net/showthread.php?t=37516

That is hilarious!!! That'll explain why he and Shackin' Up were suspended.

[BombaySapphire3]

Oo, I know!! http://ledge.fleetwoodmac.net/showthread.php?t=37516

That is hilarious!!! That'll explain why he and Shackin' Up were suspended.

Oh senor!!:lol: I had never seen this one.the poor guy never does know when someone is playing him.

[Musicman408]

Alright, so who watched this.

I did, and I was surprised because Sarah Palin did much better than I thought she would, and I think much of the nation agrees with that.

That being said, I think Biden won the thing. That man knows his stuff, and can rattle off points like none other, and that is a good thing.:nod:

GO OBAMA BIDEN!!

[GoS]

I didn't watch, which is a surprise for anyone who knows me. I have finally decided to lay back. I can't stop screaming at McCan't/Palin because every time they ope their mouth, they say something that is not true or really disrespectful. I get so mad every time I just think about Palin. So I wont watch too many of the debates from here on out.

[jannieC]

I get so mad every time I just think about Palin. So I wont watch too many of the debates from here on out.

Be glad you didn't watch last night, then. She is ridiculous. RIDICULOUS. She crammed for this like a college student cramming for finals. She was able to answer questions intelligently, but was winking at the camera and making phony facial expressions while saying things like "Joe 6-pack" and "soccer mom". She was also able to muster a faux Southern accent at different points in the debate; I guess when she was attempting to appear like a human being?

Fortunately, it's the only VP debate. Seriously, I'm just ready to get this **** over with.

[kathy1]

no i didn't watch it.

[BombaySapphire3]

Mooseilini is annoying as hell and that is even without taking into consideration her extreme and myopic policies..The good news is this: McCain /Palin are at this point rearranging chairs on a ship that is gong down..I look for them to start going nasty in a Rovian swiftboating way but I don't think even that will salvage them now..Middle America is finally catching on just what the Chimp and his crew have done to us and that McCain/Palin will continue too manyof his idiotic policies.

[gretchen]

I was enjoying a Linds show :p.

[GypsySorcerer]

Biden was terrific. Very sharp and very much in command of policy. I thought he was smart in choosing not to attack Palin personally. He did, however, hammer McCain effectively. I wish he were at the top of the ticket.

I thought Palin overdid the "folksiness." I guess some people buy into that, though. I personally thought she came across better when she was actually using her own thoughts as opposed to the Republican talking points. She also did a very poor job defending McCain. Obviously, there's not much to defend there, but she is his running mate and failed to counter any of Biden's attacks, which is her job to do so. Most of that is attributed to Biden's effectiveness, but she could have at least said something, anything...even if it were about stem cell research or the fact that McCain is one step up on Bush for at least admitting global warming is real. :rolleyes:

[jannieC]

...but she could have at least said something, anything...even if it were about stem cell research or the fact that McCain is one step up on Bush for at least admitting global warming is real. :rolleyes:

If she wasn't coached to do so...:shrug:

[GypsySorcerer]

If she wasn't coached to do so...:shrug:

I know, but I still can't believe she can't think on her feet a little. Like the magazine question from Couric, how hard was it to say Newsweek, Time?

[Mad4stevie]

I watched it. Both did well, IMO.

However, I have to say that Biden did make one mistake that even my law students pointed out to me as being an error. Despite having been a senator longer than I have been alive, and being a lawyer before that, he apparentely does not know where in the Constitution it discusses the VP role. When questioned about the role of the VP, he said it is grounded in the Executive branch of government (which IS correct), and that anyone who looks at Article I of the Constitution can see that (which is incorrect). Article I is the Legislative branch of government; Article II is the Executive branch.

[omigodstevie]

Joe Biden defffinitely was the better debater. However, you're right, Palin did better than expected. She still has no idea what she's doing and is a complete joke, but she did alright.

[BombaySapphire3]

Well the nasty vile personal attacks from the McCain camp have predictably begun..Today Palin accused Obama of "paling around with terrorist" beacuse he lived next door to an anti-Vietnam war activist..Thanks Sarah you just got Obama another $100 donation to his campaign!:laugh:

[vermicious knid]

"Anti-Vietnam war activist" is a very nice way of describing William Ayers. And it's not so benign as Obama just living next door to him. Obama had his "coming out" party, so to speak, at William Ayers' house. It was the event in the nineties where Obama was personally ushered into the world of Chicago politics. They served on the same board together for five years, and it wasn't by happenstance. They had a significant relationship. Obama acts like they weren't close, but they had a close enough personal relationship for Obama to read and endorse a book written by Ayers.

[GoS]

"Anti-Vietnam war activist" is a very nice way of describing William Ayers. And it's not so benign as Obama just living next door to him. Obama had his "coming out" party, so to speak, at William Ayers' house. It was the event in the nineties where Obama was personally ushered into the world of Chicago politics. They served on the same board together for five years, and it wasn't by happenstance. They had a significant relationship. Obama acts like they weren't close, but they had a close enough personal relationship for Obama to read and endorse a book written by Ayers.

But Obama has announced Ayers' actions. All us have friends that do/did stupid things, everythig is just on a larger scale in politics

[SuzeQuze]

But Obama has announced Ayers' actions. All us have friends that do/did stupid things, everythig is just on a larger scale in politics

And an activist does not equal a terrorist.

I watched the second half of the debate but only half paid attention. That's all the attention I can give without screaming at the idiocy that is Palin. Tina Fey again did a perfect job playing her last night on SNL. She was winking, doing talking points, the folksy thing, etc. And Queen Latifa was BRILLIANT as moderator. :lol:

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/vp-debate-open-palin-biden/727421/

[Lee]

I watched most of the debate & fell asleep at the very end. I do not like Sarah Palin & I believe Joe won the debate anyway.

Tina Fey is a dead ringer for Sarah Palin. That was a funny skit last night & I love Queen Latifah. She is hilarious.

Lee :)

[strandinthewind]

"Anti-Vietnam war activist" is a very nice way of describing William Ayers. And it's not so benign as Obama just living next door to him. Obama had his "coming out" party, so to speak, at William Ayers' house. It was the event in the nineties where Obama was personally ushered into the world of Chicago politics. They served on the same board together for five years, and it wasn't by happenstance. They had a significant relationship. Obama acts like they weren't close, but they had a close enough personal relationship for Obama to read and endorse a book written by Ayers.

Well said and very accurate. Personally, I think there is not much of a story there because all they really did contact wise (in a repeated manner) was serve on that board together, which is not dispositive of a personal relationship that qualifies as "pallin around." In fact, that mostly tangential relationship is commonplace in that world.

True, Obama praised Ayers' book "A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court." But, that book hardly is a terroristic act. Ayers taught offenders in Chicago's juvenile court system. The book is a "searing and timely account of the juvenile court system" (www.nytimes.com) -- In the book, Ayers compares the U.S. to South African apartheid and dismisses the notion the U.S. is a just nation while questioning whether America should maintain a prison system. That book, while clearly radical, is bascially calling for a better penal system for juvenilles in America. Again, hardly terroristic. Here is a link to some reviwes of the book, which I suggest people actually read before making a judgement on it http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0807044032/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

As for McCain throwing stones, he had better be careful. McCain was let off of the hook with a slap on the wrist because of his manipulation of the media and his selling out of his co-conspirators in the Keating investigation in the late 1980's and early 1990's. The facts of that situation condensed were that McCain and the other four Senators had substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB in its investigation of Lincoln Savings, which Keating headed, stole millions from, ran into the ground via fraud, and cost thousands their money. McCain eventually was cleared of having acted improperly. Instead, he was criticized for having exercised "poor judgment." In sum, McCain met with Keating many times and tried to help Keating out by stalling an investigation into the S&L, all allegedly solely because Keating was merely a constituent who employed many people. Despite and in direct contrast to that hollow excuse:

McCain and Keating had become personal friends following their initial contacts in 1981,[11] and McCain was the closest socially to Keating of the five senators.[31] Like DeConcini, McCain considered Keating a constituent as he lived in Arizona.[25] Between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.[32] In addition, McCain's wife Cindy McCain and her father Jim Hensley had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators. McCain, his family, and their baby-sitter had made nine trips at Keating's expense, sometimes aboard Keating's jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating's opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay. McCain did not pay Keating (in the amount of $13,433) for some of the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln.[7][33]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five

That, along with McCain's repeated meeting with Keating, proves that McCain was in bed with Keating and that Keating was not merely an important constituent as alleged by McCain :shrug:

Here are some articles on the Keating Five:

http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/mccain/articles/2007/03/01/20070301mccainbio-chapter7.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/01/mccain-repeating-keating_n_130612.html

http://mccainkeatingfive.com/ (clearly biased, but full of accurate quotes, etc.)

In the end, McCain's actions during the Keating Five scandal, even if just poor judgement (which McCain admits) - will ring far louder and relevant in today's failing banking system than Obama's clearly tangential relationship with a man who did a bad thing when Obama was thousands of miles away and only eight years old.

In any event, read the facts of both and judge for yourself who exercised the larger incident of poor judgement and whose poor judgement had the worst effect. Obama's poor judgement (and clearly it was) in tangential associations affected no one adversely in that the charity supposedly has helped thousands. McCain, on the other hand, had a significant part in bilking thousands out of their money.

Finally and on edit, I think the far more important point is that Palin implies Obama consorts with Muslim terrorists, a situation she wants to create to fuel peoples' suspicions that Obama is a Muslim, which is untrue . Plain does not and cannot set out the facts as I did and let people judge for themselves. If she did, people would see her innuendo is patently incorrect. But, Palin's ticket quickly is losing any chance of election. So, they now need to lie by innuendo to save themselves. So, in a move straight from the Rove playbook, they falsely attack character instead of discussing the issues because they apparently cannot win on the issues. Again, if character comes into play, McCain will be called out on the carpet for the Keating scandal (in which has admitted doing something wrong and was all but censured for it) in a time when McCain already is seen as a big friend to helping corporate CEO's at the expense of the common man in a falied R economy. McCain also has apologized for using poor judgement in refusing the MLK holiday and for acknowledging that flying the confederate flag (which he ackowledged people viewed as a heritage thing) over the NC state capital. If Palin wants this debate, so be it.

Food for thought.

[estranged4life]

Sorry, politics arent on my schedule when it is MLB playoff time...

And I dont see 'em being there AFTER the World Series either.

[strandinthewind]

As for the debate, Biden clearly won it on the facts.

The R's praise Palin because the bar was set so low for her in the first place after her disasterous interviews with Couric and others, save for Hannity, who went after her as if supporting her rhetoric in an info - mercial (look at how well that vacuum gets the dirt :rolleyes: ) -- I mean that Palin did not again look like a complete idiot was where the bar was set.

Palin also clearly lied about Obama. Just go to factcheck to see all about that. And, when called on those lies, she just smiled. Biden also had his share of inaccuracies, which that site confirms, though I submit Biden's inaccuracies were not as bold faced as Palin's.

Instead of answering the questions, Palin mostly tried to assert that she is for Joe Six Pack and the Soccer Moms out there. To me, that rang hollow when standing next to the blue collar Biden :shrug:

Palin also made it seem like knowing the law, the working of Congress, and National foreign policy were mere mostly unimportant incidentals to her. She implied that because she is some sort of outsider "maverick," that should be enough for the American people to support her even though she layed out little detail regarding McCain's plans. She asserted that Gidget esq. or Call Me Madame esq. self portrayal would be enough to get her through a complex negotiation with, say, North Korea. She also fails to say anything other than she will reform Washington. No details regarding how McCain and she will do this have been offered in any significant manner or in any manner that separates them from Obama. That anyone believes her without any details rather astounds me.

Moreover, Plain's running mate is a clear Washington insider who voted 95% with W and ate his words about tax cuts during war time for a better election position. All of this makes her reply about Joe looking to the past instead of the future nonsensical at best and an outright lie at the worst. The facts are McCain is the same as W 95% of the time last year ( http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/is_it_true_john_mccain_voted_with.html ) and McCain's platform all but mirrors the RNC platform, which consistently is W's platform. In sum, while McCain may have been a maverick in the past, he has shedded that image to get elected.

Finally, I took her as talking down to blue collar America as opposed to talking to them.

[macpai]

I very much agree with you.

But interviews showed people on the fence did like her on the basis of her simplicity. It disturbs me deeply that someone who they didn't have to try hard at all to spoof on SNL could bethiscloseto the vice presidency, let alone the presidency.

[jannieC]

Finally, I took her as talking down to blue collar America as opposed to talking to them.

Yes, I agree. And it is disturbing to me to think that many people buy her shtick.

[estranged4life]

Yes, I agree. And it is disturbing to me to think that many people buy her shtick.

MANY are buying into it.

MSN had on their home page, the evening of the debate, that she may have been the winner of the debate.

Couldn't tell ya who won that debate, But I can tell ya the CUBS choked!!!

[macpai]

She came nowhere near winning that debate. She either avoided the question and went on to talk about whatever she wanted to AND/OR she chided Obama for voting a certain way on issues in which her running partner did the same. So what is she proving?

[David]

She be a poopy-poo pie.

But these folk be better:
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zfwRb_XKFvA&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zfwRb_XKFvA&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

[strandinthewind]

Hey - who's on first?

[rubytuesday]

As for the debate, Biden clearly won it on the facts.

The R's praise Palin because the bar was set so low for her in the first place after her disasterous interviews with Couric and others, save for Hannity, who went after her as if supporting her rhetoric in an info - mercial (look at how well that vacuum gets the dirt :rolleyes: ) -- I mean that Palin did not again look like a complete idiot was where the bar was set.

Palin also clearly lied about Obama. Just go to factcheck to see all about that. And, when called on those lies, she just smiled. Biden also had his share of inaccuracies, which that site confirms, though I submit Biden's inaccuracies were not as bold faced as Palin's.

Instead of answering the questions, Palin mostly tried to assert that she is for Joe Six Pack and the Soccer Moms out there. To me, that rang hollow when standing next to the blue collar Biden :shrug:

Palin also made it seem like knowing the law, the working of Congress, and National foreign policy were mere mostly unimportant incidentals to her. She implied that because she is some sort of outsider "maverick," that should be enough for the American people to support her even though she layed out little detail regarding McCain's plans. She asserted that Gidget esq. or Call Me Madame esq. self portrayal would be enough to get her through a complex negotiation with, say, North Korea. She also fails to say anything other than she will reform Washington. No details regarding how McCain and she will do this have been offered in any significant manner or in any manner that separates them from Obama. That anyone believes her without any details rather astounds me.

Moreover, Plain's running mate is a clear Washington insider who voted 95% with W and ate his words about tax cuts during war time for a better election position. All of this makes her reply about Joe looking to the past instead of the future nonsensical at best and an outright lie at the worst. The facts are McCain is the same as W 95% of the time last year ( http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/is_it_true_john_mccain_voted_with.html ) and McCain's platform all but mirrors the RNC platform, which consistently is W's platform. In sum, while McCain may have been a maverick in the past, he has shedded that image to get elected.

Finally, I took her as talking down to blue collar America as opposed to talking to them.

Yeah I watched most of it and her responses were so vacant and just standard rhetoric but his contained a lot of detail. I agree also about her coming off well just because the bar was so low for her that simply being able to respond at all made her look good. I know there's only vice presidents but I would feel comfortable with him as the president but her as president scares the crap out of me.

[strandinthewind]

Yeah I watched most of it and her responses were so vacant and just standard rhetoric but his contained a lot of detail. I agree also about her coming off well just because the bar was so low for her that simply being able to respond at all made her look good. I know there's only vice presidents but I would feel comfortable with him as the president but her as president scares the crap out of me.

Of the four, Biden is the only one that has a relatively clean reputation. The only thing I can think of is the plagarism "scandal," and if that is all, then he is as clean as the they come in that arena.

[estranged4life]

Hey - who's on first?

and the rest of the lineup:

First Base: Who
Second Base: What
Third base: I Don't Know
Left field: Why
Center Field: Because
Right field: Naturally
Pitcher: Tomorrow
Catcher: Today
Shortstop: I Don't Care

[BombaySapphire3]

Voting 95% of the time with Bush's policies is not the only thing McCain has in common with that ruinous Chimp..He will now begin to engage in the same brand of low road Rovian smear tactics,fear mongering and personal attacks that Bush and crew used on him back in the 2000 primary. So truly he would be but an extension of Bush in nearly every way..What a sad old man that he cannot win by selling himself and his ideas to the American people so he now has only this left to try and salvage his campaign.I just hope that the American people are not that stupid again.

[LukeA]

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nHW-RO1_WN0&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nHW-RO1_WN0&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

[strandinthewind]

Voting 95% of the time with Bush's policies is not the only thing McCain has in common with that ruinous Chimp..He will now begin to engage in the same brand of low road Rovian smear tactics,fear mongering and personal attacks that Bush and crew used on him back in the 2000 primary. So truly he would be but an extension of Bush in nearly every way..What a sad old man that he cannot win by selling himself and his ideas to the American people so he now has only this left to try and salvage his campaign.I just hope that the American people are not that stupid again.

I think McCain is correct is questioning anyone'sw association with a known terrorist. My beef if that it is very clear there is no story there. It is a red herring. McCain knows this, but he lies about the association by making innuendos that are baseless. That to me supports your statement "What a sad old man that he cannot win by selling himself and his ideas to the American people so he now has only this left to try and salvage his campaign."

Also, as predicted:

McCain, Obama camps trade barbs on negative ads

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer

The McCain and Obama presidential campaigns traded accusations of mudslinging Monday in the wake of new ads dredging up infamous events from 20, 30, even 40 years ago.

Nancy Pfotenhauer, an adviser to the McCain campaign, said it's "absolutely essential" that Americans hear not only about his plans for the future but also "about the decision they have to make about these two individuals." She said she thought that commercials that raise new questions about Obama's associations "have struck a nerve" with the Democrat.

Obama's communications director, Robert Gibbs, countered that the new McCain offensive — including GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's allegation that Obama "pals around with terrorists" is happening because Republicans want to talk about something other than the struggling economy.

Gibbs, who appeared with Pfotenhauer on ABC's "Good Morning America" Monday, charged that the McCain campaign is resorting to "a despicable smear campaign."

Democrats on Sunday had denounced Palin's charge and warned that it would trigger reexaminations of McCain's past. Sure enough, Obama's campaign released a Web video and a letter about McCain's role in the Keating Five scandal from the early 1990s.

McCain "does not want to play guilt-by-association, or this thing could blow up in his face," Democratic strategist Paul Begala said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

The names being bandied about — Bill Ayers and Charles Keating — are unfamiliar to millions of Americans, and their wrongdoings occurred decades ago. But political operatives dredged them up over the weekend, and they could play a prominent role in the campaign's final month.

Palin, the Alaska governor, defended her earlier comments about Obama and Ayers, in which she said the Democratic nominee is "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Ayers was a founder of the violent Weather Underground group during the Vietnam era. Its members were blamed for several bombings when Obama was a child. Obama has denounced Ayers' radical views and activities.

The two men live in the same Chicago neighborhood and once worked on the same charity board. Ayers hosted a small meet-the-candidate event for Obama in 1995, early in his political career. Obama strategist David Axelrod has said the two men are "friendly."

On Sunday, Palin told reporters in California that her comments were about "an association that has been known but hasn't been talked about. I think it's fair to talk about where Barack Obama kicked off his political career, in the guy's living room."

In fact, Obama was questioned about Ayers during a prime-time Democratic debate against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton before April's Pennsylvania primary.

"The heels are on, the gloves are off," Palin said of her campaign strategy.

Obama, speaking Sunday to thousands at an outdoor event in Asheville, N.C., fired back. He said McCain and his aides "are gambling that he can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance."

He described the criticisms as "Swiftboat-style attacks on me," a reference to the unsubstantiated allegations about 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry's military record in Vietnam.

Other Democrats rushed to Obama's defense. Veteran party activist Hillary Rosen, on CNN's "Late Edition," said, "If they throw mud like that, then you go back to Charles Keating, you go back to Sarah Palin's investigation." She was referring to inquiries into the firing of Alaska's top police official.

"You know, I just don't think that John McCain wants to take this nuclear strategy," Rosen said.

Just months into his Senate career, in the late 1980s, McCain made what he has called "the worst mistake of my life." He participated in two meetings with banking regulators on behalf of Keating, a friend, campaign contributor and savings and loan owner who was later convicted of securities fraud.

The Senate ethics committee investigated five senators relationships with Keating. The panel cited McCain for a lesser role than the others, but faulted his "poor judgment."

Obama's new Web video, being e-mailed to millions of his supporters, summarizes a 13-minute Web "documentary" that the campaign plans to distribute Monday.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in a statement, "McCain's Keating history is relevant and voters deserve to know the facts."

On Sunday, Obama also unveiled a TV ad on the economy that describes McCain was "erratic in a crisis." Some see that as a reminder of McCain's age, 72.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081006/ap_on_el_pr/candidates_attacks

Here is the Obama schtick:

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s.

John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal -- the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors' money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry -- actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.

HomeFull Documentary Available at 12:00 PM Eastern

Active content removed Active content removed Top News
Revisiting McCain’s Keating 5 history
Seattle Times - Sept. 4, 2008
Keating 5 ring a bell?
Los Angeles Times - Sept 25, 2008
McCain’s recent history
Sioux Falls Argus Leader - Sept. 15, 2008
Did McCain Learn From the S&L Crisis?
The Washington Independent - Sept. 29, 2008
John McCain’s Presidential Campaign and the Keating 5: A Fresh Look at a Dead Scandal
American Chronicle - Sept. 26, 2008
McCain’s role in S&L collapse rouses bitter memories
Orange Country Register - Sept, 26, 2008
The Keating Five is more relevant now than ever
The Daily Voice - Sept. 23, 2008
Ignoring Keating
Media Matters - Sept. 26, 2008
John McCain & The Ghost of Keating Five
The Nation - Sept. 17, 2008
Remember the S&L Bailout? John McCain Hopes You Don’t
Mother Jones
Research & Downloads (permalink)
The ABCs of John McCain, Charles Keating & The Savings & Loan (S&L) Crisis
Downloads
The ABCs of John McCain, Charles Keating & The Savings & Loan (S&L) Crisis

John McCain’s Letter on behalf of Keating to James Baker, White House Chief of Staff

John McCain’s First Letter on behalf of Keating to Edwin Gray, banking regulator

John McCain’s Second Letter on behalf of Keating to Edwin Gray, banking regulator

John McCain’s Third Letter on behalf of Keating to Edwin Gray, banking regulator

John McCain’s Letter on behalf of Keating to Donald Regan, Secretary of Treasury

John McCain with Charles Keating III (The Phoenix Gazette - September 12, 1993)
During S&L Crisis, 747 Savings & Loans Banks Failed, Costing US Taxpayers $124 Billion; Deregulation Allowed Riskier Investments By S&Ls, Leading To Widespread Collapses And Fraud. In the 1980’s and early 1990’s the US economy was badly shaken by the failure of 747 savings and loan (S&L) institutions that had to be taken over and bailed out by the federal government. In total, the failures cost taxpayers $124 billion. One of the main causes for the epidemic of failures was the unregulated expansion of S&L’s, which had traditionally only dealt with home loans, into more exotic and riskier investments. When many of those investments failed, the institutions collapsed. [Chicago Tribune, 7/3/98, Los Angeles Times, 9/17/08]

S&L’s Risky Investments With Federally-Insured Money Led To Call For More Regulation. In the early 1980’s, Charles Keating’s American Continental Corporation purchased a California S&L named Lincoln. At that time, S&Ls like Lincoln were able to go beyond their traditional purpose of offering home loans and engage in riskier forms of investment. Since the deposits of S&Ls were insured by the federal government, regulators began to take notice of the investments being made by Keating and at other S&Ls. The Federal Home Loan Band Board (FHLLB), which had regulatory authority over the S&Ls, began to worry about the risks of this trend, and proposed a “direct investment” regulation to limit the money S&Ls could direct to these riskier investments. [Senate Ethics Committee Keating Five Investigation, 1990]

At Keating’s Request, McCain Wrote 5 Letters, Supported Bill To Forestall Direct Investment Rule. Keating was unhappy with the direct investment rule and began actively lobbying against it. Senate Ethics Committee Special Counsel Robert Bennett explained during the 1990 Keating Five hearings that John McCain wrote at least five letters to regulators, Treasury and White House officials to argue against these proposed restrictions on risky investments by S&Ls. Bennett said that “In 1984 and ‘85, then Congressman McCain wrote several letters to Chairman [Edwin] Gray [of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board] and White House officials urging them to postpone promulgation of the direct investment rule… There is evidence that Senator McCain did so at the urging of Mr. Keating or other representatives of Lincoln.” McCain’s work for Keating also included signing onto a bill to delay the direct investment rule in 1984 [Senate Ethics Committee Keating Five Investigation, 1990; HCONRES 363, 98th Congress]

With New Regulations In Place, Officials Began Investigation That Found That Keating’s Lincoln S&L Had Operated As Massive Fraud. After the direct investment rule was enacted the Federal Home Loan Bank Board began a more vigorous investigation into Lincoln’s practices, beginning to uncover a vast web of fraud and accounting irregularities designed to embezzle money to Keating and his family and friends. Top regulator William Black later said that Lincoln “operated like a Ponzi scheme, or financial pyramid dependent on an ever-increasing churning of assets.” Black said, “Its parent, Keating's American Continental Corp., was no more than a shell that siphoned dividends from Lincoln and distributed them through inflated salaries to Keating, his family members and associates.” [Senate Ethics Committee Keating Five Investigation, 1990; Associated Press, 12/5/90]

Keating Asked McCain And Other Senators To Whom He Had Contributed To Intervene With Regulators. In the most well-known episode of the scandal, Charles Keating asked five U.S. Senators including McCain to intervene with regulators from the Federal Home Loan Bank Board on his behalf. The Senators attended two meetings with the regulators in 1987. Reports of the meetings and the fact that Keating had contributed heavily to those Senators led to an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee in 1990 into what became known as Keating Five scandal. [Senate Ethics Committee Keating Five Investigation, 1990; Chicago Tribune, 6/14/90; Los Angeles Times, 5/30/89]

Keating Admitted He Was Trying To Buy Influence. Keating was asked if his contributions bought him influence with the Senators, to which Keating replied, “I want to say in the most forceful way I can, I certainly hope so.” [Los Angeles Times, 5/30/89]

Ethics Committee Special Counsel Said McCain Had Closest Relationship to Keating. Robert Bennett, the Special Counsel for the Senate Ethics Committee said during the 1990 hearings: “of the five senators here before you, Senator McCain had the closest personal friendship with Charles Keating. Their friendship predated Senator McCain's political career. Senator McCain also was the only one who received personal as well political benefits from Charles Keating.” [Senate Ethics Committee Hearing into the Keating Five]

McCain Received $166,000 In Campaign Contributions from Charles Keating and his Associates. “Together with friends and associates, Keating contributed $56,000 to McCain's first House race, another $56,000 to the second and $54,000 to his 1986 Senate campaign,” contributions that were key to early success as a politician. [New York Times, 5/25/97]

McCain Used Keating’s Private Planes on Nine Occasions. “From August 1984 to August 1986, Sen. John McCain and his family flew across the country and to the Bahamas on at least nine occasions at Charles H Keating Jr.'s expense,” often to stay at the Keatings’ exclusive Cat Cay getaway. [Arizona Republic, 10/8/89]

McCain Had Direct Financial Ties To Keating. Keating brought in McCain’s wife and father-in-law as the largest investors in an Arizona shopping center investment. Fountain Square Shopping Center was a no-risk investment that virtually guaranteed a 25% return and a “significant tax write-off” through a tax shelter technique available to the wealthy that was soon outlawed. When reporters first questioned the deal, McCain said to reporters “It’s up to you to find that out, kids.” [Arizona Republic, 10/8/89]

McCain Originally Denied Reports of Connection. “When the story broke, McCain did nothing to help himself. ‘You're a liar,’ McCain said” when asked about the investments. He challenged reporters saying, ‘It's up to you to find that out, kids.’” [Arizona Republic, 3/1/2007]

McCain Rebuked By Senate Ethics Committee For Exercising “Poor Judgment.” In 1990, the bipartisan (three members of each party) Senate Ethics Committee rebuked McCain “for exercising ‘poor judgment’ for intervening with the federal regulators on behalf of Keating.” [Arizona Republic, 3/1/2007]

Keating’s S&L Was Declared Insolvent; $3.4 Billion Bailout Most Expensive in Meltdown. Federal regulators declared Lincoln Savings and Loan insolvent. It ended up costing taxpayers $3.4 billion to clean up the mess and cover federally-insured deposits at Lincoln, making it the most expensive failure in the entire S&L meltdown. [Washington Post, 11/29/92; New York Times, 2/21/08]

Keating Also Bilked 23,000 Investors – Many Elderly – With Junk Bonds. As his deeds unraveled under the scrutiny of regulators and civil and criminal court cases, it became clear that he had sold worthless junk bonds to 23,000 investors, many of them elderly retirees who had thought their investments were insured and lost their lost savings to Keating’s crimes. [Associated Press, 2/23/08]

Keating Was Found Guilty of 73 Counts of Fraud, Lost Two Criminal And One Civil Case. “a federal jury convicted him of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud in the collapse of American Continental and Lincoln,” a keystone of the Savings & Loan scandal as Keating “looted” the bank. Keating was also found guilty in civil court and lost a massive class action suit by investors he bilked. [Arizona Republic, 3/1/2007; Associated Press, 4/7/99]

Learn MoreTop News
Revisiting McCain’s Keating 5 history
Seattle Times - Sept. 4, 2008

Keating 5 ring a bell?
Los Angeles Times - Sept 25, 2008

McCain’s recent history
Sioux Falls Argue Leader - Sept. 15, 2008

http://www.keatingeconomics.com/

[TrueFaith77]

Mooseilini is annoying as hell and that is even without taking into consideration her extreme and myopic policies..

I'm not trying to start an argument, but can you give me examples of 'extreme' and 'myopic' policy of hers (I assume you mean "her" as governor)? I ask because I do not know her policies as Gov. of Alaska. I wish that the interviews with her (including those on FoxNews) had touched on her actual record. So since you know, please share with me. I'm having a hard time deciding who to vote for this election (I'm considering writing-in Jimmy Carter, our last good president, since he only had one term and, thus, would be eligible, legally!).

[strandinthewind]

I'm not trying to start an argument, but can you give me examples of 'extreme' and 'myopic' policy of hers (I assume you mean "her" as governor)? I ask because I do not know her policies as Gov. of Alaska. I wish that the interviews with her (including those on FoxNews) had touched on her actual record. So since you know, please share with me. I'm having a hard time deciding who to vote for this election (I'm considering writing-in Jimmy Carter, our last good president, since he only had one term and, thus, would be eligible, legally!).

Here are some of her extreme and myopic views:

1. No right to choose for a woman who has been brutually raped or impregnanted by her father or brother.

2. Allowing the p0lice to make a woman's insurance company pay for her rape kit.

3. Not really caring to learn anything about our political system, but wanting to lead the country and reform Washington a la Doris Day in a smart Dior outfit taking on the mean railroad in "It Happened to Jane."

4. Thinking that she knows how to deal with Russia (the cold war is over BTW) because some remote part of Russia is next to a remote part of the remotely situated Alaska.

5. Thinking that having a two or so day Eva Peron esq. "Rainbow Tour" in Manhattan qualifies her on foreign policy.

6. Thinking that the Amercian people are so stupid that they will believe unsupported innuendos designed to promote bigotry.

There are others, but these are, at the least, illustrative.

Also -- poor Carter. He is, I think, an honest and good man. I truly like his ideas and manner. He was, however, wholly ineffective as Pres. Maybe his post Presidential experience has made him rich in being effective.

In the end, Gov. Palin has made the obvious choice to place herself as a Washington outsider (which she is) who is coming to town to kick a$$ and take names. Sadly, she has offered no plan to do that. She and McCain instead rely on Gov. Palin's self-described "maverick" status. Note - it is up to her to provide the details :shrug: As an aside, Gov. Palin once again is myopic here because she is running with a total Wahington insider whose association with the Keating Five makes him the very definition of the type of reform she baselessly touts herself as wanting go against.

[BombaySapphire3]

I'm not trying to start an argument, but can you give me examples of 'extreme' and 'myopic' policy of hers (I assume you mean "her" as governor)? I ask because I do not know her policies as Gov. of Alaska. I wish that the interviews with her (including those on FoxNews) had touched on her actual record. So since you know, please share with me. I'm having a hard time deciding who to vote for this election (I'm considering writing-in Jimmy Carter, our last good president, since he only had one term and, thus, would be eligible, legally!).

I believe Jason has answered this question very well..Before this is all over I predict that McCain and the aforementioned b*tch will sink as low as they possibly can and attempt to play the race card .When all else fails they will appeal to the most base instincts of a certain segment of the American people.I once thought McCain had more scruples and class than that but at this point I do not believe that he does.

[GoS]

I once thought McCain had more scruples and class than that but at this point I do not believe that he does.

At this point, I am wondering if he has/might maybe have it the future/had a plan. He seems to be making it up as he goes along, not caring about continuity or the truth. He seems to think, like many politicians, that people in his party will believe him no matter what he says.

[strandinthewind]

I am rather speechless after reading this article.

I also think that the R's better not have the effrontery to cry foul at someone questioning McCain's service record in light of what they did to Kerry and Cleland. And - in the case Kerry, the Swift Boat accusations were proven as untrue. Moreover, it was an assault to decency that "I worked in Alabama for a Senator while in the National Guard but no one remembered me there" W and "I had better things to do" Cheney would actually attack Kerry's service record in that kerry actually volunteered to go to Nam and was injured there - much less Cleland who lost his limbs there. Finally, McCain and Plain openly rely on McCain's POW status to support McCain's character as sterling and even.

It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Make-Believe Maverick

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

TIM DICKINSON

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 ****er."

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 ****faced 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 ****-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 ****." 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 ****." 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 ****ing 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: "**** you! I know more about this than anyone in the room." The incident foreshadowed McCain's 11th-hour theatrics in September, when he abruptly "suspended" his campaign and inserted himself into the Wall Street bailout debate at the last minute, just as congressional leaders were attempting to finalize a bipartisan agreement.

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

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

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

"NEXT UP, BAGHDAD!"

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

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

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

But such concerns went out the window when McCain began gearing up to run for president. In 1998, he formed a political alliance with William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, who became one of his closest advisers. Randy Scheunemann — a hard-right lobbyist who was promoting Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi — came aboard as McCain's top foreign-policy adviser. Before long, the senator who once cautioned against "trading American blood for Iraqi blood" had been reborn as a fire-breathing neoconservative who believes in using American military might to spread American ideals — a belief he describes as a "sacred duty to suffer hardship and risk danger to protect the values of our civilization and impart them to humanity." By 1999, McCain was championing what he called "rogue state rollback." First on the hit list: Iraq.

Privately, McCain brags that he was the "original neocon." And after 9/11, he took the lead in agitating for war with Iraq, outpacing even Dick Cheney in the dissemination of bogus intelligence about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. "There's other organizations besides Mr. bin Laden who are bent on the destruction of the United States," he warned in an appearance on Hardball on September 12th. "It isn't just Afghanistan. We're talking about Syria, Iraq, Iran, perhaps North Korea, Libya and others." A few days later, he told Jay Leno's audience that "some other countries" — possibly Iraq, Iran and Syria — had aided bin Laden.

A month after 9/11, with the U.S. bombing Kabul and reeling from the anthrax scare, McCain assured David Letterman that "we'll do fine" in Afghanistan. He then added, unbidden, "The second phase is Iraq. Some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq."

Later that month on Larry King, McCain raised the specter of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction before he peddled what became Dick Cheney's favorite lie: "The Czech government has revealed meetings, contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mohamed Atta. The evidence is very clear. . . . So we will have to act." On Nightline, he again flogged the Czech story and cited Iraqi defectors to claim that "there is no doubt as to [Saddam's] avid pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. That, coupled with his relations with terrorist organizations, I think, is a case that the administration will be making as we move step by step down this road."

That December, just as U.S. forces were bearing down on Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora, McCain joined with five senators in an open letter to the White House. "In the interest of our own national security, Saddam Hussein must be removed from power," they insisted, claiming that there was "no doubt" that Hussein intended to use weapons of mass destruction "against the United States and its allies."

In January 2002, McCain made a fact-finding mission to the Middle East. While he was there, he dropped by a supercarrier stationed in the Arabian Sea that was dear to his heart: the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the giant floating pork project that he had driven through over President Carter's veto. On board the carrier, McCain called Iraq a "clear and present danger to the security of the United States of America." Standing on the flight bridge, he watched as fighter planes roared off, en route to Afghanistan — where Osama bin Laden had already slipped away. "Next up, Baghdad!" McCain whooped.

Over the next 15 months leading up to the invasion, McCain continued to lead the rush to war. In November 2002, Scheunemann set up a group called the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq at the same address as Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. The groups worked in such close concert that at one point they got their Websites crossed. The CLI was established with explicit White House backing to sell the public on the war. The honorary co-chair of the committee: John Sidney McCain III.

In September 2002, McCain assured Americans that the war would be "fairly easy" with an "overwhelming victory in a very short period of time." On the eve of the invasion, Hardball host Chris Matthews asked McCain, "Are you one of those who holds up an optimistic view of the postwar scene? Do you believe that the people of Iraq, or at least a large number of them, will treat us as liberators?"

McCain was emphatic: "Absolutely. Absolutely."

Today, however, McCain insists that he predicted a protracted struggle from the outset. "The American people were led to believe this could be some kind of day at the beach," he said in August 2006, "which many of us fully understood from the beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking." McCain also claims he urged Bush to dump Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "I'm the only one that said that Rumsfeld had to go," he said in a January primary debate. Except that he didn't. Not once. As late as May 2004, in fact, McCain praised Rumsfeld for doing "a fine job."

Indeed, McCain's neocon makeover is so extreme that Republican generals like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft have refused to endorse their party's nominee. "The fact of the matter is his judgment about what to do in Iraq was wrong," says Richard Clarke, who served as Bush's counterterrorism czar until 2003. "He hung out with people like Ahmad Chalabi. He said Iraq was going to be easy, and he said we were going to war because of terrorism. We should have been fighting in Afghanistan with more troops to go after Al Qaeda. Instead we're at risk because of the mistaken judgment of people like John McCain."

MR. FLIP-FLOP

In the end, the essential facts of John McCain's life and career — the pivotal experiences in which he demonstrated his true character — are important because of what they tell us about how he would govern as president. Far from the portrayal he presents of himself as an unflinching maverick with a consistent and reliable record, McCain has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to taking whatever position will advance his own career. He "is the classic opportunist," according to Ross Perot, who worked closely with McCain on POW issues. "He's always reaching for attention and glory."

McCain has worked hard to deny such charges. "They're drinking the Kool-Aid that somehow I have changed positions on the issues," he said of his critics at the end of August. The following month, when challenged on The View, McCain again defied those who accuse him of flip-flopping. "What specific area have I quote 'changed'?" he demanded. "Nobody can name it."

In fact, his own statements show that he has been on both sides of a host of vital issues: the Bush tax cuts, the estate tax, waterboarding, hunting down terrorists in Pakistan, kicking Russia out of the G-8, a surge of troops into Afghanistan, the GI Bill, storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, teaching intelligent design, fully funding No Child Left Behind, offshore drilling, his own immigration policy and withdrawal timelines for Iraq.

In March, McCain insisted to The Wall Street Journal that he is "always for less regulation." In September, with the government forced to bail out the nation's largest insurance companies and brokerage houses, McCain declared that he would regulate the financial industry and end the "casino culture on Wall Street." He did a similar about-face on Bush's tax cuts, opposing them when he planned to run against Bush in 2001, then declaring that he wants to make them larger — and permanent — when he needed to win the support of anti-tax conservatives this year. "It's a big flip-flop," conceded tax abolitionist Grover Norquist. "But I'm happy he's flopped."

In June of this year, McCain reversed his decades-long opposition to coastal drilling — shortly before cashing $28,500 from 13 donors linked to Hess Oil. And the senator, who only a decade ago tried to ban registered lobbyists from working on political campaigns, now deploys 170 lobbyists in key positions as fundraisers and advisers.

Then there's torture — the issue most related to McCain's own experience as a POW. In 2005, in a highly public fight, McCain battled the president to stop the torture of enemy combatants, winning a victory to require military personnel to abide by the Army Field Manual when interrogating prisoners. But barely a year later, as he prepared to launch his presidential campaign, McCain cut a deal with the White House that allows the Bush administration to imprison detainees indefinitely and to flout the Geneva Conventions' prohibitions against torture.

What his former allies in the anti-torture fight found most troubling was that McCain would not admit to his betrayal. Shortly after cutting the deal, McCain spoke to a group of retired military brass who had been working to ban torture. According to Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former deputy, McCain feigned outrage at Bush and Cheney, as though he too had had the rug pulled out from under him. "We all knew the opposite was the truth," recalls Wilkerson. "That's when I began to lose a little bit of my respect for the man and his bona fides as a straight shooter."

But perhaps the most revealing of McCain's flip-flops was his promise, made at the beginning of the year, that he would "raise the level of political dialogue in America." McCain pledged he would "treat my opponents with respect and demand that they treat me with respect." Instead, with Rove protégé Steve Schmidt at the helm, McCain has turned the campaign into a torrent of debasing negativity, misrepresenting Barack Obama's positions on everything from sex education for kindergarteners to middle-class taxes. In September, in one of his most blatant embraces of Rove-like tactics, McCain hired Tucker Eskew — one of Rove's campaign operatives who smeared the senator and his family during the 2000 campaign in South Carolina.

Throughout the campaign this year, McCain has tried to make the contest about honor and character. His own writing gives us the standard by which he should be judged. "Always telling the truth in a political campaign," he writes in Worth the Fighting For, "is a great test of character." He adds: "Patriotism that only serves and never risks one's self-interest isn't patriotism at all. It's selfishness. That's a lesson worth relearning from time to time." It's a lesson, it would appear, that the candidate himself could stand to relearn.

"I'm sure John McCain loves his country," says Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar under Bush. "But loving your country and lying to the American people are apparently not inconsistent in his view."

[From Issue 1063 — October 16, 2008]


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

[strandinthewind]

. . . I predict that McCain and the aforementioned b*tch will sink as low as they possibly can and attempt to play the race card . . . .

They already have for the most part in that Palin's recent innuendos clearly are meant to portray Obama as a non-white Muslim Terrorist :shrug:

[Musicman408]

That's a really long article and I currently don't have the time to read all of it, sadly. What is it saying, however?

[ajmccarrell]

http://krla870.townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2008/10/06/keating_five_member_is_obama_surrogate

This in addition to Franklin Raines, the guy responsible for the demise of Fannie Mae, being on Obama's board of economic advisors. Why Palin or McCain are not hammering Obama with this is beyond me?! :shrug: It's much worse than Ayers or Wright.

[nickay]

This is just to funny


<!--[if IE]><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" id=W4727a250e66f972348ea80ab77c7d795" width="384" height="283"><param name="movie" value="http://widgets.nbc.com/o/4727a250e66f9723/48ea80ab77c7d795/4741e3c5156499a7/f6dceb4/-cpid/9b352bc621baa7ed" /><![endif]--><!--[if !IE]>--><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://widgets.nbc.com/o/4727a250e66f9723/48ea80ab77c7d795/4741e3c5156499a7/f6dceb4/-cpid/9b352bc621baa7ed" id="W4727a250e66f972348ea80ab77c7d795" width="384" height="283"><!--<![endif]--><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="allowNetworking" value="all" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /></object>

[strandinthewind]

Update --

This sow wants anything but the truth to be known.

Palin ethics probes beset by secrecy and lawsuit

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin says she's an open book regarding an abuse-of-power investigation. Apparently her staff doesn't feel the same way.

While the Alaska governor has waived her privacy rights so details about her firing of a state commissioner can be made public, she has not called on others in her administration to do the same. Unless they do, the results of the personnel board investigation may never be revealed.

The personnel board and the state Legislature are running separate investigations into whether Palin abused her power by firing Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, who says he resisted pressure to fire a state trooper involved in a messy divorce with the governor's sister.

The controversy, known in Alaska as Troopergate, could hurt John McCain's presidential bid. Legislative investigators are due to submit a report Friday that could reveal embarrassing details about Palin's leadership and provide campaign fodder in the final weeks of before the election.

Palin refuses to cooperate with that inquiry, which she says has become too political, citing comments made by the Democratic senator overseeing the case. She is only cooperating with the personnel board inquiry, which is much more secretive, is run by people she can fire, and could take years to resolve.

With the stakes so high, both sides were planning a week of court fighting ahead of Friday's deadline.

To head off the report, five Republican state lawmakers asked the Alaska Supreme Court on Monday to shut down the legislative investigation. Oral arguments are scheduled for Wednesday.

A legal fight is also brewing over the secrecy of the personnel board investigation. Anchorage white collar attorney Meg Simonian wants the board's independent council Tim Petumenos to conduct his probe in public and says she's planning a lawsuit to force him to do so.

"Gov. Palin has said repeatedly, through her 'Truth Squad,' that she has nothing to hide and wants the personnel board's investigation to be open," Simonian wrote in a letter to Petumenos. "That does not appear to be true of her politically appointed employees."

Asked whether the governor would call for her aides to open the investigation, her attorney, deferred to Petumenos.

"The governor waived her confidentiality and wanted this matter decided openly," attorney Thomas Van Flein said. "Mr. Petumenos is in charge of his investigation and until and unless he says otherwise, we will respect his decision."

Petumenos did not respond to a message seeking comment Monday but, in a letter to Simonian, he said he was required by law to keep the matter confidential because those under scrutiny have not waived their privacy rights.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081006/ap_on_el_pr/palin_troopergate

[ajmccarrell]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2098601/posts

WSJ article on Biden's unhinged thinking.

http://michaelmedved.townhall.com/blog/g/2edf57de-edbc-4ec5-a319-e253c91ac85f

Truly this man is unhinged from reality.

Anyone else think Biden is Ted Baxter reincarnated?! :D
Do we trust a man with a net worth of $150,000.00 on a salary of $200,000.00? Maybe he's spending too much at Home Depot or the diner he referenced that was actually closed for years.

[vermicious knid]

What TrueFaith77 asked for were examples of her policies as governor. None of those examples from strandinthewind are policies that she put in place as governor or mayor. Certainly not that scurillous "rape kit" lie. The Wasilla police never charged a single woman (or her insurance co.) after being raped. Some hospitals across the state were doing so, and there is no reason to believe that Sarah Palin had any clue about this. I think the lies on this subject being spread by other website are more sleazy than any purple heart lie about John Kerry.

TrueFaith77, I am aware of one thing she did as governor. She increased the tax rate that oil companies pay to extract the oil in her state. Those companies had been colluding with corrupt legislators for years, and she helped put a stop to what they were doing.

[ajmccarrell]

Half of what Biden said wasn't true. I mean, "The US and French kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon??!?! Just because he SOUNDS smart doesn't mean he knows what the hell he's talking about. Ted Baxter lives.

[ajmccarrell]

What TrueFaith77 asked for were examples of her policies as governor. None of those examples from strandinthewind are policies that she put in place as governor or mayor. Certainly not that scurillous "rape kit" lie. The Wasilla police never charged a single woman (or her insurance co.) after being raped. Some hospitals across the state were doing so, and there is no reason to believe that Sarah Palin had any clue about this. I think the lies on this subject being spread by other website are more sleazy than any purple heart lie about John Kerry.

TrueFaith77, I am aware of one thing she did as governor. She increased the tax rate that oil companies pay to extract the oil in her state. Those companies had been colluding with corrupt legislators for years, and she helped put a stop to what they were doing.

Not to mention that the Alaska State Constitution says that the oil belongs to the people, which means the profits HAD to be given to the people. It is not the same thing as a "windfall profits tax". Yet another outright lie!

[ajmccarrell]

I think McCain is correct is questioning anyone'sw association with a known terrorist. My beef if that it is very clear there is no story there. It is a red herring. McCain knows this, but he lies about the association by making innuendos that are baseless. That to me supports your statement "What a sad old man that he cannot win by selling himself and his ideas to the American people so he now has only this left to try and salvage his campaign."

Also, as predicted:

McCain, Obama camps trade barbs on negative ads

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer

The McCain and Obama presidential campaigns traded accusations of mudslinging Monday in the wake of new ads dredging up infamous events from 20, 30, even 40 years ago.

Nancy Pfotenhauer, an adviser to the McCain campaign, said it's "absolutely essential" that Americans hear not only about his plans for the future but also "about the decision they have to make about these two individuals." She said she thought that commercials that raise new questions about Obama's associations "have struck a nerve" with the Democrat.

Obama's communications director, Robert Gibbs, countered that the new McCain offensive — including GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's allegation that Obama "pals around with terrorists" is happening because Republicans want to talk about something other than the struggling economy.

Gibbs, who appeared with Pfotenhauer on ABC's "Good Morning America" Monday, charged that the McCain campaign is resorting to "a despicable smear campaign."

Democrats on Sunday had denounced Palin's charge and warned that it would trigger reexaminations of McCain's past. Sure enough, Obama's campaign released a Web video and a letter about McCain's role in the Keating Five scandal from the early 1990s.

McCain "does not want to play guilt-by-association, or this thing could blow up in his face," Democratic strategist Paul Begala said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

The names being bandied about — Bill Ayers and Charles Keating — are unfamiliar to millions of Americans, and their wrongdoings occurred decades ago. But political operatives dredged them up over the weekend, and they could play a prominent role in the campaign's final month.

Palin, the Alaska governor, defended her earlier comments about Obama and Ayers, in which she said the Democratic nominee is "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Ayers was a founder of the violent Weather Underground group during the Vietnam era. Its members were blamed for several bombings when Obama was a child. Obama has denounced Ayers' radical views and activities.

The two men live in the same Chicago neighborhood and once worked on the same charity board. Ayers hosted a small meet-the-candidate event for Obama in 1995, early in his political career. Obama strategist David Axelrod has said the two men are "friendly."

On Sunday, Palin told reporters in California that her comments were about "an association that has been known but hasn't been talked about. I think it's fair to talk about where Barack Obama kicked off his political career, in the guy's living room."

In fact, Obama was questioned about Ayers during a prime-time Democratic debate against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton before April's Pennsylvania primary.

"The heels are on, the gloves are off," Palin said of her campaign strategy.

Obama, speaking Sunday to thousands at an outdoor event in Asheville, N.C., fired back. He said McCain and his aides "are gambling that he can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance."

He described the criticisms as "Swiftboat-style attacks on me," a reference to the unsubstantiated allegations about 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry's military record in Vietnam.

Other Democrats rushed to Obama's defense. Veteran party activist Hillary Rosen, on CNN's "Late Edition," said, "If they throw mud like that, then you go back to Charles Keating, you go back to Sarah Palin's investigation." She was referring to inquiries into the firing of Alaska's top police official.

"You know, I just don't think that John McCain wants to take this nuclear strategy," Rosen said.

Just months into his Senate career, in the late 1980s, McCain made what he has called "the worst mistake of my life." He participated in two meetings with banking regulators on behalf of Keating, a friend, campaign contributor and savings and loan owner who was later convicted of securities fraud.

The Senate ethics committee investigated five senators relationships with Keating. The panel cited McCain for a lesser role than the others, but faulted his "poor judgment."

Obama's new Web video, being e-mailed to millions of his supporters, summarizes a 13-minute Web "documentary" that the campaign plans to distribute Monday.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in a statement, "McCain's Keating history is relevant and voters deserve to know the facts."

On Sunday, Obama also unveiled a TV ad on the economy that describes McCain was "erratic in a crisis." Some see that as a reminder of McCain's age, 72.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081006/ap_on_el_pr/candidates_attacks

Here is the Obama schtick:

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s.

John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal -- the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors' money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry -- actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.

HomeFull Documentary Available at 12:00 PM Eastern

Active content removed Active content removed Top News
Revisiting McCain’s Keating 5 history
Seattle Times - Sept. 4, 2008
Keating 5 ring a bell?
Los Angeles Times - Sept 25, 2008
McCain’s recent history
Sioux Falls Argus Leader - Sept. 15, 2008
Did McCain Learn From the S&L Crisis?
The Washington Independent - Sept. 29, 2008
John McCain’s Presidential Campaign and the Keating 5: A Fresh Look at a Dead Scandal
American Chronicle - Sept. 26, 2008
McCain’s role in S&L collapse rouses bitter memories
Orange Country Register - Sept, 26, 2008
The Keating Five is more relevant now than ever
The Daily Voice - Sept. 23, 2008
Ignoring Keating
Media Matters - Sept. 26, 2008
John McCain & The Ghost of Keating Five
The Nation - Sept. 17, 2008
Remember the S&L Bailout? John McCain Hopes You Don’t
Mother Jones
Research & Downloads (permalink)
The ABCs of John McCain, Charles Keating & The Savings & Loan (S&L) Crisis
Downloads
The ABCs of John McCain, Charles Keating & The Savings & Loan (S&L) Crisis

John McCain’s Letter on behalf of Keating to James Baker, White House Chief of Staff

John McCain’s First Letter on behalf of Keating to Edwin Gray, banking regulator

John McCain’s Second Letter on behalf of Keating to Edwin Gray, banking regulator

John McCain’s Third Letter on behalf of Keating to Edwin Gray, banking regulator

John McCain’s Letter on behalf of Keating to Donald Regan, Secretary of Treasury

John McCain with Charles Keating III (The Phoenix Gazette - September 12, 1993)
During S&L Crisis, 747 Savings & Loans Banks Failed, Costing US Taxpayers $124 Billion; Deregulation Allowed Riskier Investments By S&Ls, Leading To Widespread Collapses And Fraud. In the 1980’s and early 1990’s the US economy was badly shaken by the failure of 747 savings and loan (S&L) institutions that had to be taken over and bailed out by the federal government. In total, the failures cost taxpayers $124 billion. One of the main causes for the epidemic of failures was the unregulated expansion of S&L’s, which had traditionally only dealt with home loans, into more exotic and riskier investments. When many of those investments failed, the institutions collapsed. [Chicago Tribune, 7/3/98, Los Angeles Times, 9/17/08]

S&L’s Risky Investments With Federally-Insured Money Led To Call For More Regulation. In the early 1980’s, Charles Keating’s American Continental Corporation purchased a California S&L named Lincoln. At that time, S&Ls like Lincoln were able to go beyond their traditional purpose of offering home loans and engage in riskier forms of investment. Since the deposits of S&Ls were insured by the federal government, regulators began to take notice of the investments being made by Keating and at other S&Ls. The Federal Home Loan Band Board (FHLLB), which had regulatory authority over the S&Ls, began to worry about the risks of this trend, and proposed a “direct investment” regulation to limit the money S&Ls could direct to these riskier investments. [Senate Ethics Committee Keating Five Investigation, 1990]

At Keating’s Request, McCain Wrote 5 Letters, Supported Bill To Forestall Direct Investment Rule. Keating was unhappy with the direct investment rule and began actively lobbying against it. Senate Ethics Committee Special Counsel Robert Bennett explained during the 1990 Keating Five hearings that John McCain wrote at least five letters to regulators, Treasury and White House officials to argue against these proposed restrictions on risky investments by S&Ls. Bennett said that “In 1984 and ‘85, then Congressman McCain wrote several letters to Chairman [Edwin] Gray [of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board] and White House officials urging them to postpone promulgation of the direct investment rule… There is evidence that Senator McCain did so at the urging of Mr. Keating or other representatives of Lincoln.” McCain’s work for Keating also included signing onto a bill to delay the direct investment rule in 1984 [Senate Ethics Committee Keating Five Investigation, 1990; HCONRES 363, 98th Congress]

With New Regulations In Place, Officials Began Investigation That Found That Keating’s Lincoln S&L Had Operated As Massive Fraud. After the direct investment rule was enacted the Federal Home Loan Bank Board began a more vigorous investigation into Lincoln’s practices, beginning to uncover a vast web of fraud and accounting irregularities designed to embezzle money to Keating and his family and friends. Top regulator William Black later said that Lincoln “operated like a Ponzi scheme, or financial pyramid dependent on an ever-increasing churning of assets.” Black said, “Its parent, Keating's American Continental Corp., was no more than a shell that siphoned dividends from Lincoln and distributed them through inflated salaries to Keating, his family members and associates.” [Senate Ethics Committee Keating Five Investigation, 1990; Associated Press, 12/5/90]

Keating Asked McCain And Other Senators To Whom He Had Contributed To Intervene With Regulators. In the most well-known episode of the scandal, Charles Keating asked five U.S. Senators including McCain to intervene with regulators from the Federal Home Loan Bank Board on his behalf. The Senators attended two meetings with the regulators in 1987. Reports of the meetings and the fact that Keating had contributed heavily to those Senators led to an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee in 1990 into what became known as Keating Five scandal. [Senate Ethics Committee Keating Five Investigation, 1990; Chicago Tribune, 6/14/90; Los Angeles Times, 5/30/89]

Keating Admitted He Was Trying To Buy Influence. Keating was asked if his contributions bought him influence with the Senators, to which Keating replied, “I want to say in the most forceful way I can, I certainly hope so.” [Los Angeles Times, 5/30/89]

Ethics Committee Special Counsel Said McCain Had Closest Relationship to Keating. Robert Bennett, the Special Counsel for the Senate Ethics Committee said during the 1990 hearings: “of the five senators here before you, Senator McCain had the closest personal friendship with Charles Keating. Their friendship predated Senator McCain's political career. Senator McCain also was the only one who received personal as well political benefits from Charles Keating.” [Senate Ethics Committee Hearing into the Keating Five]

McCain Received $166,000 In Campaign Contributions from Charles Keating and his Associates. “Together with friends and associates, Keating contributed $56,000 to McCain's first House race, another $56,000 to the second and $54,000 to his 1986 Senate campaign,” contributions that were key to early success as a politician. [New York Times, 5/25/97]

McCain Used Keating’s Private Planes on Nine Occasions. “From August 1984 to August 1986, Sen. John McCain and his family flew across the country and to the Bahamas on at least nine occasions at Charles H Keating Jr.'s expense,” often to stay at the Keatings’ exclusive Cat Cay getaway. [Arizona Republic, 10/8/89]

McCain Had Direct Financial Ties To Keating. Keating brought in McCain’s wife and father-in-law as the largest investors in an Arizona shopping center investment. Fountain Square Shopping Center was a no-risk investment that virtually guaranteed a 25% return and a “significant tax write-off” through a tax shelter technique available to the wealthy that was soon outlawed. When reporters first questioned the deal, McCain said to reporters “It’s up to you to find that out, kids.” [Arizona Republic, 10/8/89]

McCain Originally Denied Reports of Connection. “When the story broke, McCain did nothing to help himself. ‘You're a liar,’ McCain said” when asked about the investments. He challenged reporters saying, ‘It's up to you to find that out, kids.’” [Arizona Republic, 3/1/2007]

McCain Rebuked By Senate Ethics Committee For Exercising “Poor Judgment.” In 1990, the bipartisan (three members of each party) Senate Ethics Committee rebuked McCain “for exercising ‘poor judgment’ for intervening with the federal regulators on behalf of Keating.” [Arizona Republic, 3/1/2007]

Keating’s S&L Was Declared Insolvent; $3.4 Billion Bailout Most Expensive in Meltdown. Federal regulators declared Lincoln Savings and Loan insolvent. It ended up costing taxpayers $3.4 billion to clean up the mess and cover federally-insured deposits at Lincoln, making it the most expensive failure in the entire S&L meltdown. [Washington Post, 11/29/92; New York Times, 2/21/08]

Keating Also Bilked 23,000 Investors – Many Elderly – With Junk Bonds. As his deeds unraveled under the scrutiny of regulators and civil and criminal court cases, it became clear that he had sold worthless junk bonds to 23,000 investors, many of them elderly retirees who had thought their investments were insured and lost their lost savings to Keating’s crimes. [Associated Press, 2/23/08]

Keating Was Found Guilty of 73 Counts of Fraud, Lost Two Criminal And One Civil Case. “a federal jury convicted him of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud in the collapse of American Continental and Lincoln,” a keystone of the Savings & Loan scandal as Keating “looted” the bank. Keating was also found guilty in civil court and lost a massive class action suit by investors he bilked. [Arizona Republic, 3/1/2007; Associated Press, 4/7/99]

Learn MoreTop News
Revisiting McCain’s Keating 5 history
Seattle Times - Sept. 4, 2008

Keating 5 ring a bell?
Los Angeles Times - Sept 25, 2008

McCain’s recent history
Sioux Falls Argue Leader - Sept. 15, 2008

http://www.keatingeconomics.com/

Glad you posted this! John Glenn, another Keating 5 member is one of Obama's advisors! LOL! Yet ANOTHER example of Obama and his "judgement" in friends. If he really has a problem with McCain and Keating, he should immediately denounce John Glenn too. Unfortunately, he won't because he doesn't have the character.

[ashton]

I found the debate to be endlessly amusing. Poor Palin came across as though she was trying out for Legally Blonde III, Elle Woods Runs for VP. The winking just cracked me up but the whole package was just too much.

Katherine Harris always made me laugh for being such an air-headed loon, but Palin may just turn out to be my favorite of them all. They should get a daytime TV show together when this is all over.

[ajmccarrell]

Here are some of her extreme and myopic views:

1. No right to choose for a woman who has been brutually raped or impregnanted by her father or brother.

2. Allowing the p0lice to make a woman's insurance company pay for her rape kit.

3. Not really caring to learn anything about our political system, but wanting to lead the country and reform Washington a la Doris Day in a smart Dior outfit taking on the mean railroad in "It Happened to Jane."

4. Thinking that she knows how to deal with Russia (the cold war is over BTW) because some remote part of Russia is next to a remote part of the remotely situated Alaska.

5. Thinking that having a two or so day Eva Peron esq. "Rainbow Tour" in Manhattan qualifies her on foreign policy.

6. Thinking that the Amercian people are so stupid that they will believe unsupported innuendos designed to promote bigotry.

There are others, but these are, at the least, illustrative.

Also -- poor Carter. He is, I think, an honest and good man. I truly like his ideas and manner. He was, however, wholly ineffective as Pres. Maybe his post Presidential experience has made him rich in being effective.

In the end, Gov. Palin has made the obvious choice to place herself as a Washington outsider (which she is) who is coming to town to kick a$$ and take names. Sadly, she has offered no plan to do that. She and McCain instead rely on Gov. Palin's self-described "maverick" status. Note - it is up to her to provide the details :shrug: As an aside, Gov. Palin once again is myopic here because she is running with a total Wahington insider whose association with the Keating Five makes him the very definition of the type of reform she baselessly touts herself as wanting go against.

The thing about the rape kit is a lie for one, and secondly the Governor does not set medical policy for these sorts of things. The legislature does. Also, again, Obama has John Glenn sitting on his board of advisors. A reminder for those who do not know, the only two members acquitted in the Keating case were both Glenn and McCain. Obama's own advisor is as guilty as Obama claims McCain is. The fact of the matter is that both were cleared. Also, Franklin Raines is one of Obama's economics advisors. A reminer is that Raines was the guy who ran Fannie Mae until recently and was brought up on indictment. Yeah, I guess Obama's your man if you want repeats of the Fannie Mae Freddie Mac disasters. Another note is that Dodd and Obama were the two largest recipients of contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Yet, you would much rather focus on rape kits?! :shrug:

[ajmccarrell]

I found the debate to be endlessly amusing. Poor Palin came across as though she was trying out for Legally Blonde III, Elle Woods Runs for VP. The winking just cracked me up but the whole package was just too much.

Katherine Harris always made me laugh for being such an air-headed loon, but Palin may just turn out to be my favorite of them all. They should get a daytime TV show together when this is all over.

Hmmm. Biden making up historical events takes the cake. Ted Baxter lives! He said he and Obama asked for NATO to fill the vacuum. However, the event that he is attempting to describe, where Syria actually chased US out of Lebanon was in 1982, when Obama wasn't even in politics yet. The guy SOUNDED smart, but he was making it up as he went. According to fact check, he lied 14 times. The French and the US never chased Hezbollah out of Lebanon. The guy is a loose cannon.

[strandinthewind]

. . . None of those examples from strandinthewind are policies that she put in place as governor or mayor. Certainly not that scurillous "rape kit" lie. The Wasilla police never charged a single woman (or her insurance co.) after being raped. Some hospitals across the state were doing so, and there is no reason to believe that Sarah Palin had any clue about this . . . .

No, her police dept. did charge the insurance companies as evidenced here --

<script src="http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/js/2.0/video/evp/module.js?loc=dom&vid=/video/politics/2008/09/22/yellin.palin.rape.kit.cnn" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript>Embedded video from <a href="http://www.cnn.com/video">CNN Video</a></noscript>

Clearly she knew because the police chief was vocal about this for six months and it was a statewide issue, etc. To assert that Palin did not know that in a town of like 5,000 of which she was the mayor, is, at best, a testament to her incompetence, and, at worst, a testament to the abomination and complete idiot I think she is.

[MacMan]

Holy Man! These guys are brilliant! I missed this last Sat. Thanks for posting it!!

[ajmccarrell]

Holy Man! These guys are brilliant! I missed this last Sat. Thanks for posting it!!

I wish Ted Knight were still alive to play Biden. Leslie Nielsen might do in a pinch, though.

[strandinthewind]

Plain's baseless innuendo exposed.

Note - Palin is now attacking Obama on Rev. Wright even though McCain formerly stated he would not particiapte in. Moreover, Plain stated "I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up" -- yet she brings it up :rolleyes: Now that his campaign is tanking fast, he has to resort to this. What a hack.

Analysis: Palin's words may backfire on McCain

By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer

Mon Oct 6, 12:55 AM ET

By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and doesn't see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.

And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.

First, Palin's attack shows that her energetic debate with rival Joe Biden may be just the beginning, not the end, of a sharpened role in the battle to win the presidency.

"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain's ticket-mate echoed the line at three separate events Saturday.

"This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America," she said. "We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism."

Obama isn't above attacking McCain's character with loaded words, releasing an ad on Sunday that calls the Arizona Republican "erratic" — a hard-to miss suggestion that McCain's age, 72, might be an issue.

"Our financial system in turmoil," an announcer says in Obama's new ad. "And John McCain? Erratic in a crisis. Out of touch on the economy."

A harsh and plainly partisan judgment, certainly, but not on the level of suggesting that a fellow senator is un-American and even a friend of terrorists.

In her character attack, Palin questions Obama's association with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground. Her reference was exaggerated at best if not outright false. No evidence shows they were "pals" or even close when they worked on community boards years ago and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his career.

Obama, who was a child when the Weathermen were planting bombs, has denounced Ayers' radical views and actions.

With her criticism, Palin is taking on the running mate's traditional role of attacker, said Rich Galen, a Republican strategist.

"There appears to be a newfound sense of confidence in Sarah Palin as a candidate, given her performance the other night," Galen said. "I think that they are comfortable enough with her now that she's got the standing with the electorate to take off after Obama."

Second, Palin's incendiary charge draws media and voter attention away from the worsening economy. It also comes after McCain supported a pork-laden Wall Street bailout plan in spite of conservative anger and his own misgivings.

"It's a giant changing of the subject," said Jenny Backus, a Democratic strategist. "The problem is the messenger. If you want to start throwing fire bombs, you don't send out the fluffy bunny to do it. I think people don't take Sarah Palin seriously."

The larger purpose behind Palin's broadside is to reintroduce the question of Obama's associations. Millions of voters, many of them open to being swayed to one side or the other, are starting to pay attention to an election a month away.

For the McCain campaign, that makes Obama's ties to Ayers as well as convicted felon Antoin "Tony" Rezko and the controversial minister Jeremiah Wright ripe for renewed criticism. And Palin brings a fresh voice to the argument.

Effective character attacks have come earlier in campaigns. In June 1988, Republican George H.W. Bush criticized Democrat Michael Dukakis over the furlough granted to Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who then raped a woman and stabbed her companion. Related TV ads followed in September and October.

The Vietnam-era Swift Boat veterans who attacked Democrat John Kerry's war record started in the spring of 2004 and gained traction in late summer.

"The four weeks that are left are an eternity. There's plenty of time in the campaign," said Republican strategist Joe Gaylord. "I think it is a legitimate strategy to talk about Obama and to talk about his background and who he pals around with."

Palin's words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee "palling around" with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn't see their America?

In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers' day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.

Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as "not like us" is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

The fact is that when racism creeps into the discussion, it serves a purpose for McCain. As the fallout from Wright's sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America's promise to treat all people equally.

John McCain occasionally says he looks back on decisions with regret. He has apologized for opposing a holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr. He has apologized for refusing to call for the removal of a Confederate flag from South Carolina's Capitol.

When the 2008 campaign is over will McCain say he regrets appeals such as Palin's? ___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Douglass K. Daniel is a writer and editor with the Washington bureau of The Associated Press.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081006/ap_on_el_pr/palin_s_words_analysis

[strandinthewind]

And this one, from Fox nonetheless (emphasis supplied) :

Palin Invokes Jeremiah Wright, Continues Hit on Obama-Ayers Relationship

CLEARWATER, Fla.:

Sarah Palin isn't backing down on questioning Barack Obama's relationships -- telling voters in Florida Monday that she is curious how the Democratic presidential candidate couldn't know that William Ayers was a co-founder of the Weather Underground terrorist group.

Embodying her role as the Republican campaign's pit bull with lipstick, the vice presidential contender said one of her favorite newspapers -- The New York Times -- reported that Ayers was part of a group that launched a bombing campaign against the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.

"And then there's even more to the story," Palin told voters in Clearwater, Fla. "Barack Obama says that Ayers was just someone in the neighborhood, but that's less than truthful. His own advisers said they were quote certainly friendly. In fact Obama held one of his first meetings of his political career in Bill Ayers' living room and they worked together on various projects in Chicago."

Palin did not say the claim that Obama "pals around" with a terrorist, but did repeat a line she used over the weekend that Obama "sees America as imperfect enough to work with a domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country."

Ayers and Obama live in the same Chicago neighborhood and served on a charity board together. Ayers hosted a fundraiser for Obama when he first ran for state office in the mid-1990s.

As Palin continues to attend rallies and fund-raise in Florida, the McCain campaign is not relenting on its argument that Obama's ties to certain individuals raise legitimate questions about his capacity to lead..

"Does Barack Obama truly expect the American people to believe that he had no idea about his friends past as the infamous founder of the domestic terror group The Weather Underground or is he just lying?" asked McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds. "If Obama didn't know in 1995 about the bombings Ayers was responsible for, when did he find out -- because Obama was promoting Ayers' book in 1997, serving on boards with him until 2002, and trading e-mails and phone calls with him as recently as 2005."

The Obama campaign has responded that Obama was eight years old when Ayers was planting bombs and therefore can't be linked to his past activities. Ayers has said he never regretted his Weather Underground activities, which led to the deaths of three of his cohorts in a bomb-making accident.

On Monday, Obama said the tactic used by the McCain team signifies a losing campaign.

"I was a little surprised over the last couple of days to hear . . . Sen. McCain's campaign say that we want to turn the page on discussions about the economy and campaign, a member of Sen. McCain's campaign saying today that if we talk about the economic crisis we lose," Obama said.

"I have got news for the McCain campaign - the American people are losing right now. They are losing their jobs - they are losing their health care. They are losing their homes and their savings. I cannot imagine anything more important to talk about than the economic crisis. And the notion that we would want to brush that aside and engage in the usual political shenanigans and smear tactics that have come to characterize too many campaigns," he continued.

Ayers isn't the only character tied to Obama that Palin is reminding voters about. She also told FOX News contributor William Kristol, a columnist for The New York Times, that she doesn't know why Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. is off limits for discussion.

Wright is a retired pastor who preached at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and is credited by Obama as bringing him back to his Christian roots. After 20 years in his church, Obama denounced Wright and severed ties with Trinity United last spring after videotapes surfaced showing Wright making anti-American and anti-Semitic comments from the pulpit.

In April, McCain said he would not attack Obama for the linkage, and condemned the North Carolina Republican Party for an ad that called Obama "too extreme" because Wright was his pastor.

"Unfortunately, all I can do is, in as visible a way as possible, disassociate myself from that kind of campaigning," McCain said at the time.

But pressed in an interview by Kristol, Palin said she didn't know "why that association isn't discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country."

She continued, "To me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up."

Kristol told FOX News that Palin "seems to be enjoying" her role of taking the attack to Obama's camp.

"She's a good natural politician and she doesn't think Barack Obama should be the president," Kristol said. He added that he thinks it could be useful to discuss Obama's relationships, even though "the conventional wisdom, which is as long as the Dow is going down 450 points, it's pointless to talk about Bill Ayers or Reverend Jeremiah Wright" is incorrect.

"I don't really agree with that. I think character and judgment for a presidential choice in a time of crisis remains awfully important," he said.

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/06/palin-invokes-jeremiah-wright/

[ashton]

If I was caught on tape being spoken over by a witch doctor to keep witchcraft away, and it wasn't a Halloween stunt, I would probably be quiet about others peoples' pastors.

I am puzzled as to what they hope to accomplish with this as it is old news and everyone has heard it before. For the first time in memory, the October suprise has turned out to be moldy left-overs that people didn't buy the first time around.

[ashton]

I think what makes it the funniest is that Tina Fey really doesn't have to embellish to make it funny. I have never before seen a parody of a person that for the most part, just quotes the person directly. In this one, she does add some things; however the Couric interviews were verbatim.

[strandinthewind]

What TrueFaith77 asked for were examples of her policies as governor. None of those examples from strandinthewind are policies that she put in place as governor or mayor. Certainly not that scurillous "rape kit" lie. The Wasilla police never charged a single woman (or her insurance co.) after being raped. Some hospitals across the state were doing so, and there is no reason to believe that Sarah Palin had any clue about this. I think the lies on this subject being spread by other website are more sleazy than any purple heart lie about John Kerry.

TrueFaith77, I am aware of one thing she did as governor. She increased the tax rate that oil companies pay to extract the oil in her state. Those companies had been colluding with corrupt legislators for years, and she helped put a stop to what they were doing.

Here is a rather damning article from a mostly conservative source on her policies prior to her nomination - emphasis and commentary supplied.

SEPTEMBER 4, 2008

Focus Turns to Palin Record

Governor Pushed Conservative Agenda, but Showed Flexibility

By JIM CARLTON, MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS, ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON and LAURA

In the five days since Sen. John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate, she has been embraced by the right and pilloried by the left as a staunch conservative on social and economic issues. But a look at her record as mayor of the small town of Wasilla and as governor of Alaska shows a politician more flexible in her ideology as she has juggled the needs of governing.

Gov. Palin has supported abortion restrictions and floated the idea of pulling books she considered offensive from a local library. But she also drew the ire of the religious right by shelving calls for new abortion limits, when she worried it would distract from her bipartisan deal to push through a new gas pipeline. She forced through property-tax cuts, but also raised taxes on oil companies. She has close relations with organized labor, backing union contracts on a state pipeline. Gov. Palin throughout her career has consistently positioned herself as a reformer, a stance that led her to tangle repeatedly, in Wasilla and Juneau, with people she considered opponents, sometimes driving them from office.

Ms. Palin began her political career in the small town of Wasilla, 45 miles north of Anchorage, where she served on the city council and then as mayor. When she ran for governor in 2006, she took on in the Republican primary an incumbent who had been hammered by a string of controversial decisions. She beat him handily, and went on to defeat former Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles by a wide margin. His mantra against her: "The untested mayor of a small town."

Her term as governor began on a combative note. The state had been rocked by raids by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents of legislators' offices around the state in 2006, as part of a probe into influence-peddling by oil-field contractor VECO Corp.

The new Republican governor appeared at a news conference with the former leader of the Democratic minority in the Senate to unveil an "Ethics White Paper" calling for a clampdown on questionable dealings by lawmakers. [Hmmm - you mean like Troopergate]

"I and others were completely taken aback," recalls Lyda Green, a fellow Republican and senator from the governor's hometown in Wasilla. "It was a strange thing to do on the first day she got here, and a lot of us thought it was just kind of a slap in the face."

That set the stage for a relationship with the governor that many of her detractors feel has been a one-way street. "It's not possible to have a disagreement with Sarah Palin and then continue a friendly arrangement after that point," says Ms. Green, who serves as the state Senate president. "After that point, she doesn't see the disagreement as being on policy. She sees it as personal."

The McCain campaign has refused requests for comment from Gov. Palin, but her supporters say she has taken heat for trying to clean up state government. "It's difficult when you stand up to the status quo, because change does not come easily," says Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who was elected in 2006 on the same campaign for clean government as Ms. Palin. "But she genuinely cares about everyday Alaskans and their concerns, and that's why she's so popular."

Beyond her advocacy of reforms in Wasilla and Juneau, Ms. Palin's Republican backers say her record shows her to be a classic fiscal conservative. They note that when she first took office as mayor, city coffers were flush with revenue from a new sales tax. She took the opportunity to reduce property taxes. [Yet, they still wanted to charge for rape kits :eek: ]

She displayed some enthusiasm for taxpayer relief after becoming governor, too. She got the legislature to pass an energy-relief measure last month that will send $1,200 checks to eligible Alaskans to offset the rising cost of gasoline and other fuel in the state. Alaska's fuel costs are higher than many other states' because of its remoteness and vast size. Unlike most states, Alaska's coffers are overflowing with money from high oil prices, and there will still be plenty left in a $5 billion surplus after the state pays around $800 million to the citizens.

But Gov. Palin has also at times pushed more taxes and more spending. As governor, she essentially raised taxes on oil companies as part of a deal to help update Alaska's formula for extracting royalties off of crude production.

Her signature project as mayor was the construction of the city's new hockey rink and sports complex. Ms. Palin asked the voters for permission to issue a $15 million bond and pay for it by boosting the sales tax from 2% to 2.5%. The referendum passed by a 20-vote margin, and the city began construction. [MY GAWD- THIS LIBERAL HAS RAISED TAXES WHEN IT SUITED HER :eek: :rolleyes: ]

"Other people would talk about having a sports complex for years, and they'd still be talking about it if Sarah Palin hadn't come along and built it for them," says Donald Moore, who managed the project.

It turned out, however, that Ms. Palin's administration had fouled up the land purchase and didn't have legal title. The matter ended up in court, and the city ultimately paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest and legal fees. "Wasilla isn't broke, but that put a big dent in our reserve," says City Councilwoman Dianne Woodruff, a Palin critic. "It happened on her watch."

Consistent Embrace

Gov. Palin's views on social issues -- abortion, gay rights, her personal religious beliefs -- have gotten the greatest attention since Sen. McCain picked her last Friday. Her consistent embrace of socially conservative views has energized the religious right, even amid the news of her unmarried 17-year-old daughter's pregnancy.

She has said she would make abortion illegal in all cases, unless the life of the mother was at risk [Now Now - that's a life your are terminating by making a value judgement - in theory nature should take its course even if both die - at least if women, much less the govt., are given no choice in God's will, which is the strict anti abortion/anti choice view :shrug: ] Sen. McCain would make exceptions for rape or incest as well. Unlike Sen. McCain, she opposes stem-cell research, which involves destruction of human embryos [What about to save the life of the mother - why draw the distinction here :shrug: ]. And she supports abstinence-until-marriage programs, where teens are taught to refrain from sex until marriage and contraception is discussed only to explain its failings [like her 17 year old daughter :rolleyes: ]

"Explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support," she said in a 2006 Eagle Forum questionnaire.

Yet Gov. Palin hasn't always embraced the social conservatives' platform in office. She drew flak from pro-life groups in Alaska after she declined their request to include two abortion-related measures in a series of special sessions she called earlier this year for legislators to act on her proposal to build a gas pipeline. She said those bills would be too distracting from the pipeline measure, which she considered a higher priority and wanted passed, Ms. Green said. [that is just wanting her other agenda to pass, it does not in any way make her in any way pro choice] Many pro-lifers were furious. "If you have a chance to stand up for pro-life and you don't do it, that's an opportunity wasted," says Andrew Halcro, a conservative talk-show host in Anchorage who ran against Gov. Palin in the 2006 Republican primary.

The economic issue Gov. Palin perhaps knows best is energy. She echoes almost all Alaska politicians in favoring oil exploration not only in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but also off its shoreline and elsewhere in the country.

"We have billions and billions of barrels of oil and trillions of feet of natural gas. We have so much potential from tapping our resources here in Alaska. And we can do this with minimum environmental impact," she told an interviewer for a profile to be published this month in the conservative Newsmax magazine, which released the text online. "It's nonsense not to tap a safe domestic source of oil."

Sen. McCain opposes ANWR drilling. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal in June, Gov. Palin said that when she met with Sen. McCain at a governor's conference in Washington, they discussed energy but parted company on the issue of drilling in ANWR, which he has opposed.

"We have agreed to disagree on ANWR," she said at the time. But the governor said there were other untapped oil reserves she wanted to drill, including more fields in Prudhoe Bay and closer to the rugged Brooks Range. "We don't need to send our president to Saudi Arabia begging for oil," she said, in a slap to President George W. Bush's visits there. "We can start drilling here." [yep and even in ten years, all that oil will lessen the price of gas maybe $0.10 and it will eventually run out, leaving us in the same position as before )

In an interview with Vogue in February, Gov. Palin said her desire for independence from foreign oil is "personal." Speaking about the possible deployment of her son Track, who serves in the Army, to Iraq [HEY - I thought we went there to liberate Iraq, stop SH's immediate threat of attacking us with the nukes he had, and break up those Al-Q cells in Iraq prior to the war that W told us were there - is she saying we are there for oil] , she said, "This kid is doing everything he can to protect the safety of the United States. Are we? Are we producing a domestic, secure form of energy instead of relying on foreign sources? We need to be doing more. And we can."

Though she has said that "a changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location," Gov. Palin is among a shrinking group of politicians who are skeptical that humans are responsible for climate change -- a position sharply at odds with that of Sen. McCain, who has earned kudos from environmentalists for his support of a measure in Congress to fight global warming by imposing limits on greenhouse-gas emissions [What an idiot].

Her administration has announced its intent to file suit challenging the recent federal listing of Alaskan polar bears as a threatened species, on grounds the bear populations in the state are thriving and the listing would cripple oil and gas development along Alaska's arctic coasts. That's another contrast with Sen. McCain, who embraced the polar bear decision.

Her stance on global warming has drawn criticism from some native Alaskan groups, who say shrinking permafrost has destabilized the ground under native villages and affected subsistence hunting, fishing and farming. The governor did announce plans last year to address climate-change issues in Alaska and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions within the state.

On education, Gov. Palin has been a champion for school choice, including vouchers and home schooling. She said in a 2006 questionnaire that parents should be allowed to opt out of curricula they don't approve of. She supports teaching creationism in schools alongside evolution [Because creation is a science :rolleyes: ].

During her 2006 campaign, unlike other candidates, she did not endorse more funding for schools, saying efficiencies can always be made. She also opposed funding for a state preschool program.

Strong Stand on Health

Gov. Palin didn't make health care one of her top priorities, but where she did take a strong stand on health, it was for the free market. "Health care must be market- and business-driven, rather than restricted by government," her office said in a January statement.

Her overall approach is much like Sen. McCain's -- loosen government regulations to allow for greater competition, along with more information for patients to make good choices [Because we all know that deregulating an industry driven by greed has no significant ramifications to the common man and can only result in good things, like predatory lending for example].

Addressing the uninsured was less of an issue for Gov. Palin, much as it is less significant for Sen. McCain. She was reluctant to support a significant expansion of the state's version of the Children's Health Insurance Program, called Denali KidCare. She signed a bill that raised eligibility to allow families with incomes up to 175% of the poverty level -- stingy compared with other states.

Critics say Gov. Palin's biggest weak spot as a candidate for national office is her lack of foreign-policy or national-security experience. Defenders have cited her role during her brief governorship as overseer of the Alaska National Guard. When a CNN reporter pressed a McCain campaign spokesman to name any decisions made in that capacity, he didn't offer anything specific -- and Sen. McCain canceled an appearance on the network to protest what the campaign considered a hostile line of questioning.

Gov. Palin has told interviewers that her focus on state government has left her with little time to focus on matters abroad, and her record of public statements bears that out.

Gov. Palin's stance on the war in Iraq -- which appears to be the only such issue she has addressed at any level of detail -- seems to have wavered. In March 2007, the newly elected governor told the Alaska Business Monthly in an interview that "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place." [SHE IS WAIVING THE WHITE FLAG OF SURRENDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

Ms. Palin's record of advocating reform and duking it out with opponents dates back to her days in Wasilla, best known as the traditional starting point for the grueling Iditarod dog-sled race. A parent-teacher association activist, she won a seat on the city council in 1992, and in 1996, at the age of 32, toppled the incumbent mayor.
Within months of taking office, she fired the police chief, the finance director, the city planner and other department heads. "I do not feel I have your full support in my efforts to govern the City of Wasilla," she wrote to Irl Stambaugh, the police chief.
Mr. Stambaugh subsequently sued unsuccessfully for damages for wrongful termination. In his suit, he alleged that the mayor was punishing him for his opposition to a law that would allow residents to carry concealed weapons, as well as his efforts to limit late-night bar hours. Bars in Wasilla stay open until 5 a.m.
Mr. Stambaugh couldn't be located for comment this week.

"It wasn't that it was a corrupt little town that needed cleaning up," says Victoria Naegele, then the managing editor of the local Frontiersman newspaper. "It was a sleepy little town that had some problems."

Among those Ms. Palin tried to dismiss was library director Mary Ellen Emmons. Within days of her election, Ms. Palin approached Ms. Emmons to ask whether she would resist efforts to censor books in the library's collection.

It was general inquiry; Ms. Palin didn't ask Ms. Emmons to remove any particular books, according to the Frontiersman. "I told her clearly, I will fight anyone who tries to dictate what books can go on the library shelves," Ms. Emmons told the paper at the time.

Ms. Palin later described her inquiry as "rhetorical" and a way to get to know the city employees. [Yea Right - I mean everyone knows those pesky homos are infiltrating our way of live at every turn]

Ms. Palin ultimately allowed Ms. Emmons to keep her post [Due to Public Outrage]. Ms. Emmons, who has since left Wasilla, couldn't be reached for comment.

—Susan Davis, Louise Radnofsky and Brad Haynes contributed to this article.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122048513733097089.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

In any event, people should read this and do some research on their own. Then, they should reach their own conclusions.

[ajmccarrell]

If I was caught on tape being spoken over by a witch doctor to keep witchcraft away, and it wasn't a Halloween stunt, I would probably be quiet about others peoples' pastors.

I am puzzled as to what they hope to accomplish with this as it is old news and everyone has heard it before. For the first time in memory, the October suprise has turned out to be moldy left-overs that people didn't buy the first time around.

He wasn't a witchdoctor, he was a missionary; and for those not entirely entirely familiar, there is a huge difference between missionaries that show up on your doorstep with pamphlets and the people who have to stand up to mortar attacks in Darfur (which IS a religious war) and protect their congregations from kidnappings perpetrated by cults that practice human sacrifice. In Kenya, where the guy was from, witchcraft IS a real problem and people kill people over there in bizarre magic rituals. So, it doesn't strike me as that odd that a newcomer to this country might not know that witchcraft isn't exactly the way people play over here or that he might have included it in his prayers as a matter of habit. My old Rabbi had a hex put on him by a local witch coven, and this is Seattle not Congo, so it's not THAT far out in left field. He was just a Rabbi like any other, nothing strange about him at all. His site is http://www.torahresource.com/ His whole point was to emphasize the similarities between early Christianity and Judaism. He is a uniter, yet the local witches hate the guy. He never even said anything about them or against them specifically. His Shabbat lessons are basically (endless liturgy) reading a Torah passage, giving context and background and passing a mic around for people to express opinions on. I guess that is enough to earn the ire of the local coven. BTW there are a LOT of covens around Seattle. Witchcraft isn't exactly passe on the West Coast. It's alive, well and quite bizarre.

[strandinthewind]

. . . If I was caught on tape being spoken over by a witch doctor to keep witchcraft away, and it wasn't a Halloween stunt, I would probably be quiet about others peoples' pastors.

I know -- but everyone knows she didn't mean it :laugh:

I am puzzled as to what they hope to accomplish with this as it is old news and everyone has heard it before. For the first time in memory, the October suprise has turned out to be moldy left-overs that people didn't buy the first time around.

The answer is this. The McCain campaign is tanking in every poll, including the Ramussan poll. The McCain campaign cannot discuss the economy because McCain is equated to W on that issue. So, the McCain campaign must attack Obama and make people think he is a muslim terrorist, which is the point of the attacks no mater what the McCain campaign or anyone else may say to the contrary.

[strandinthewind]

I think what makes it the funniest is that Tina Fey really doesn't have to embellish to make it funny. I have never before seen a parody of a person that for the most part, just quotes the person directly. In this one, she does add some things; however the Couric interviews were verbatim.

I know - I honestly felt a little sorry for Palin during her horrifying performance in the Couric interview.

[ajmccarrell]

I know -- but everyone knows she didn't mean it :laugh:



The answer is this. The McCain campaign is tanking in every poll, including the Ramussan poll. The McCain campaign cannot discuss the economy because McCain is equated to W on that issue. So, the McCain campaign must attack Obama and make people think he is a muslim terrorist, which is the point of the attacks no mater what the McCain campaign or anyone else may say to the contrary.

I wish they would talk about the economy and the disaster it would be if Obama is allowed to raise taxes on businesses during a recession. I don't think anyone cares that much about Obama and his weird associates, they want to hear a plan. In the absence of McCain presenting one, they are willing to follow the pied piper to the depths of a full-scale old-style depression.
Although, they do have a point with Ayers. I mean, it's no different than if McCain was palling around with Terry Nichols. Obama KNEW that Ayers had been a terrorist before he associated with him. Obama announced his first candidacy from Ayers home, they shared the same stage in 96, and they served on several small (4 member) boards together. He's not a stranger at all. If the same revelation came to light about McCain hanging out with the guys from the My Lai Massacre, he'd never be forgiven, but because we're talking about "The Messiah" it's all okay. Saying that Ayers committed crimes when Obama was 9 is a CONDEMNATION of Obama, not a valid excuse. Tim McVeigh bombed the Murrah building when I was 15, so if he were alive and I associated with him while running for president, that should be a condemnation of me, not an excuse because I was 15.

[Musicman408]

I know - I honestly felt a little sorry for Palin during her horrifying performance in the Couric interview.

Yes, that had to be the most tragic thing ever. The SNL thing was truly hilarious.

[BombaySapphire3]

I wish they would talk about the economy and the disaster it would be if Obama is allowed to raise taxes on businesses during a recession. I don't think anyone cares that much about Obama and his weird associates, they want to hear a plan. In the absence of McCain presenting one, they are willing to follow the pied piper to the depths of a full-scale old-style depression.
Although, they do have a point with Ayers. I mean, it's no different than if McCain was palling around with Terry Nichols. Obama KNEW that Ayers had been a terrorist before he associated with him. Obama announced his first candidacy from Ayers home, they shared the same stage in 96, and they served on several small (4 member) boards together. He's not a stranger at all. If the same revelation came to light about McCain hanging out with the guys from the My Lai Massacre, he'd never be forgiven, but because we're talking about "The Messiah" it's all okay. Saying that Ayers committed crimes when Obama was 9 is a CONDEMNATION of Obama, not a valid excuse. Tim McVeigh bombed the Murrah building when I was 15, so if he were alive and I associated with him while running for president, that should be a condemnation of me, not an excuse because I was 15.
Yeah right Nichols and McVeigh were responsible for the worst homegrown terrorist attack in US History..Ayers didn't kill anyone and there is no evidence he even planted a bomb. he wasn't even convitced.:rolleyes:lame analogy.Gramps and the snowbilly are desperate it is as simple as that.

[BombaySapphire3]

I know -- but everyone knows she didn't mean it :laugh:



The answer is this. The McCain campaign is tanking in every poll, including the Ramussan poll. The McCain campaign cannot discuss the economy because McCain is equated to W on that issue. So, the McCain campaign must attack Obama and make people think he is a muslim terrorist, which is the point of the attacks no mater what the McCain campaign or anyone else may say to the contrary.

At a McCain rally on Monday when the crazy old coot brought up Obama some rube in the audience actuallly screamed out 'terrorist".I hope there aren't enough stupid rednecks left in this country to buy this bull****.I am so looking forward to McCain/Palin going down..I'm sure we'll see more of their true character as they do.

[ajmccarrell]

Yeah right Nichols and McVeigh were responsible for the worst homegrown terrorist attack in US History..Ayers didn't kill anyone and there is no evidence he even planted a bomb. he wasn't even convitced.:rolleyes:lame analogy.Gramps and the snowbilly are desperate it is as simple as that.

Ayers actually admitted it and said that he'd "wished he'd done more." He also said when asked if he thought he had done something wrong, "I don't think so. I think what we did was to respond to a situation that was unconscionable" I have a hard time believing that you find a guy acceptible that hangs out and announced his candidacy for the state senate in the house of a guy who founded a group that attacked the Pentagon. Especially one that is totally unrepentant. Seriously, if McCain was Ayers pal, you'd be all over him. There's a complete double standard here. The Weathermen, which Ayers co-founded has an extremely violent and reckless history. The fact is that they did kill people, just wiki them. They actually set off an anti-personnel bomb and set a prairie fire, started a riot as well as bombed the Pentagon. They also tried to assassinate a Supreme Court Justice. They could have easily killed someone and the weapons they used proved their intent to do just that.

If you don't like the Ayers analogy, how about David Duke? As far as anyone knows, he never personally broke any laws, but he headed up a terrorist group. So, if McCain were to have sat on two boards, held fundraisers with, and shared a stage with David Duke, he would be disqualified and would have to resign in disgrace.

Here's a list of the terrorist acts of the Weathermen Underground. Also, they hit us more than Al Queda has.

2.1 "Days of Rage"
2.2 Declaration of a State of War
2.3 Anti-personnel bomb set on window-ledge in San Francisco
2.4 Initial New York City Bombings
2.5 Greenwich Village explosion
2.6 Underground
2.7 Prairie Fire
2.8 Timothy Leary prison break

I cannot fathom how anyone can defend this. :shrug:

[ajmccarrell]

Well the nasty vile personal attacks from the McCain camp have predictably begun..Today Palin accused Obama of "paling around with terrorist" beacuse he lived next door to an anti-Vietnam war activist..Thanks Sarah you just got Obama another $100 donation to his campaign!:laugh:

Well, let's see. Obama announced his candidacy at Ayers' home, they gave speeches together, they served on two boards together, they have mutual friends, one of which (according to Obama's own book, nonetheless) stated that he'd used Ayers' connections to get ahead in Illinois politics. Yes, that sounds exactly like just passing on the subway and a loose association. :laugh:

[BombaySapphire3]

Ayers actually admitted it and said that he'd "wished he'd done more." He also said when asked if he thought he had done something wrong, "I don't think so. I think what we did was to respond to a situation that was unconscionable" I have a hard time believing that you find a guy acceptible that hangs out and announced his candidacy for the state senate in the house of a guy who founded a group that attacked the Pentagon.

I cannot fathom how anyone can defend this. :shrug:

And you voted for a President that started a war on false pretenses ??! Really how can you even say anything after that.Alot of other people in Chicago hung out with Ayers includling the mayors so BFD to me if Obama did.I also can't believe you would now support someone engaged in race baiting and fear mongering of the worst variety.

[LukeA]

Here's a list of the terrorist acts of the Weathermen Underground. Also, they hit us more than Al Queda has.

Yes, you can tell times are desperate for Republicans when you have to compare the Weathermen to Al Qaeda (3000+ deaths on American soil) in order to spin a story.

What a joke.

[ajmccarrell]

And you voted for a President that started a war on false pretenses ??! Really how can you even say anything after that.Alot of other people in Chicago hung out with Ayers includling the mayors so BFD to me if Obama did.I also can't believe you would now support someone engaged in race baiting and fear mongering of the worst variety.

Basically, Chicago is corrupt. When hasn't it been? :shrug:

Okay, watch this then:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/9596/meet-the-presidents-bill-clinton-november-9-1997

Clinton used the exact same reasons to go to war on this episode of Meet the Press that Bush iterated six years later. Given that this was 1997, according to what you are saying, that means that somehow while Bush was governor of Texas he must have lied to Bill Clinton too, 6 years earlier. Clinton must have listened to Bush over his own Secretary of State, his own National Security Advisor, over all of the foreign policy experts under his employ, just to listen to the then governor of Texas. Bush must have lied to the Russians, British and French 6 years before starting the war too. That position that "Bush lied" has been disproven to the point of ridiculousness. How can anyone watch Bill Clinton say the exact same thing as Bush six years earlier and still maintain that Bush lied? Yours is a common, but not a defendable position, it's just one that sounds great on a bumper sticker. Unfortunately, what goes on bumper stickers often passes for truth. Goebbles would be proud of American politics. We repeat lies (such as the one that "Bush lied") that they sound like the truth despite overwhelming facts that contradict popular opinion.

Give me an example of McCain race baiting. He hasn't done it. What I do see are Obama surrogates using race as an excuse in case he loses. Do a google search and you'll see a ton of articles on the subject. McCain has not mentioned his race once.

[ajmccarrell]

Yes, you can tell times are desperate for Republicans when you have to compare the Weathermen to Al Qaeda (3000+ deaths on American soil) in order to spin a story.

What a joke.

I guess planting bombs, starting fires, attempted assassinations, and riots are what you like to watch for laughs. :D Who needs The Office when you have Bernadine Dohrn and her band of roving comedians? :shrug: Let's all laugh so hard we wet ourselves to execution videos. Here's one you can have a good laugh at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxoiZdBSi-g&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tydLf6n2x4

[LukeA]

I'm sorry, do you want to address the comparison you made, or not?

Or is this just another "2008 Midwest Floods were worse than Katrina" load of BS?

[ajmccarrell]

I'm sorry, do you want to address the comparison you made, or not?

Or is this just another "2008 Midwest Floods were worse than Katrina" load of BS?

I did respond, you might want to reread what I posted. You might have missed it, since I've posted a few times since then. I've also made a few comparisons today, so I don't know which one you are specifically referring to: comparing the Weather Underground to Al Queda or Obama's Ayers connection to McVeigh or Duke. Either way I responded. You may want to watch the videos I posted. The images do most of the response I need. My point was that the Weather Undergound hit us more frequently than Al Queda has, which is true. The death toll is much less, the Weather Underground were sometimes incompetent and mostly killed themselves in botched attacks.

[LukeA]

Basically, Chicago is corrupt. When hasn't it been? :shrug:



Ditto Arizona & Alaska. Especially Arizona.

[ajmccarrell]

Ditto Arizona & Alaska. Especially Arizona.

Based on what?

You had the Keating 5 case 20 years ago for Arizona, which was not limited to Arizona anyway. McCain and Glenn were cleared.
I can't think of any major corruption cases, terrorists getting involved in politics, gangsters or mobs in Alaska. Face it, Chicago has had a long and storied history of gangs, corruption, murder, vice and graft. Everyone knows it too. One funny fact is that the Chicago murder rate on any given month is more than the death toll of the war in Iraq.

http://machiasprivateer.blogspot.com/2005/01/chicago-vs-iraq-murder-rates.html

[LukeA]

I did respond, you might want to reread what I posted. You might have missed it, since I've posted a few times since then. I've also made a few comparisons today, so I don't know which one you are specifically referring to: comparing the Weather Underground to Al Queda or Obama's Ayers connection to McVeigh or Duke. Either way I responded. You may want to watch the videos I posted. The images do most of the response I need. My point was that the Weather Undergound hit us more frequently than Al Queda has, which is true. The death toll is much less, the Weather Underground were sometimes incompetent and mostly killed themselves in botched attacks.

I am completely aware of Weather Underground, and its participants... and you'd have to be a f'ing partisan moron (a stretch, I'm sure) to honestly, truthfully (to yourself) think it even begins to compare to Al Qaeda.

[LukeA]

Based on what?


AZScam, for one.

Don Bolles, and the Hensley family legacy of their involvement with the mafia in Arizona.

Arizona is a treasure trove of McCain scandals.

[ajmccarrell]

I am completely aware of Weather Underground, and its participants... and you'd have to be a f'ing partisan moron (a stretch, I'm sure) to honestly, truthfully (to yourself) think it even begins to compare to Al Qaeda.

I reported your post. I don't mind people attacking positions or saying my position was stupid, but attacking me was over a line and I won't tolerate it or allow it to escalate anymore.

The comparison is this: The Weathermen and Al Qaeda are both terrorist organizations that resort to violence to further their agenda. They have no formal country, no formal relations, to negotiation procedures or anything else a civilised society would have before going to war. They had no international mandate or anything else. Yet, they repeatedly bombed civilian targets with the clear intent of killing people. To me, it doesn't matter how many people they ended up killing, the problem is the same: these people are/were terrorists. Just because they didn't kill as many people as Al Qaeda doesn't mean it's okay for a Presidential nominee to go around and use their connections to further his political career. Such a connection is vastly worse than corruption, it is amoral ad mercenary. It's not like Ayers became a terrorist later on after Obama stopped hanging out with him. Obama associated with him knowing full well what he and Bernadine Dohrn were.

[ajmccarrell]

AZScam, for one.

Don Bolles, and the Hensley family legacy of their involvement with the mafia in Arizona.

Arizona is a treasure trove of McCain scandals.

Azscam has nothing to do with McCain and it is in no way compirable to stuff like Al Capone and the rampant ACORN voter fraud that plagues and/or plagued Chicago. I cannot find anything on a credible site that indicates that the Hensley family is in any way connected to the mafia. They are all really far left sites and if there was any truth to it, Keith Olberman or the NY Times would have been all over it and they haven't been. I would have heard about it in the Mainstream Press by now.

[strandinthewind]

At a McCain rally on Monday when the crazy old coot brought up Obama some rube in the audience actuallly screamed out 'terrorist".I hope there aren't enough stupid rednecks left in this country to buy this bull****.I am so looking forward to McCain/Palin going down..I'm sure we'll see more of their true character as they do.


If McCain had half of the honor he had in, say, February 08 - he would have corrected that person. But, that would stifle the utterly false innuendo that Obama is a Muslim terrorist - that is the sole message of McCain and his campaign in this current shell game. Pathetic.

[strandinthewind]

Ditto Arizona & Alaska. Especially Arizona.

Well, if you (generally) want to talk corruption, you need look no further than the current administration. W and Cheney are the most corrupt people ever to lead this country, and that is saying a mouthful. They will not be happy until the leave the White House in fames behind them as long as the pokets of their cronies are full.

In this election, McCain chose to shed his independence from these crooks and instead consciously closely aligned himself with them by:

1. voting with them 95% of the time last year;

2. taking on the exact agenda of the RNC, and;

3. selecting Pain to play to the far religious right, prior to that despised McCain.

McCain cannot now have it both ways.

McCain was their's when they covered him with praise and now he has to be their's now that they cover him with shame. It wasn't like he did not know what he was doing with W and that ilk :shrug:

Also, McCain clearly had culpability in the Keating Five. He took hundreds of thousands from Keating. His wife and father and law invested hundreds of thousands with Keating. He took extravagant trips with Keating and failed to pay for them until he was made to do so. Finally, his transition from the House to the Senate is mostly responsible for his non-conviction. The Senate Ethics Committee did not pursue, for lack of jurisdiction, any possible ethics breaches in McCain's delayed reimbursements to Keating for trips at the latter's expense, because they occurred while McCain was in the House http://graphics.boston.com/news/politics/campaign2000/news/Pluck_leaks_helped_senator_to_overcome_S_L_scandal+.shtml

In the end and again, I think accepting what are clearly bribes and having your family openly invest with a crook (which everyone knew he was at the time) is not even in the same league as being neighbors with Ayers and being in a board meeting a few time a year with Ayers. I freely admit Obama was an idiot for associating in any way with Ayers (though he apparently is part of Chicago society) - but come on - that hardly makes Obama a terrorist.

[ajmccarrell]

If McCain had half of the honor he had in, say, February 08 - he would have corrected that person. But, that would stifle the utterly false innuendo that Obama is a Muslim terrorist - that is the sole message of McCain and his campaign in this current shell game. Pathetic.

No one in the McCain camp has said that he is a Muslim terrorist. Can you cite a specific example? No, I didn't think so. Obama does hang out with terrorists however. You might find some of the videos I posted earlier quite amusing.

I guess you also didn't catch Anderson Cooper 360 last night, where he uncovered that Obama, through a charity, funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to one of Bill Ayers' educational outfits. But, I mean, why believe the news, I mean Obama says he just lives in the same neighborhood as this guy. I mean, this isn't Fox, this is CNN, aka "The Communist News Network" and even they can see Obama for what he is; a sleazy Chicago politician who sold his soul to the radicals of his party to get where he is. The guy is wearing a neon sign that screams, "corrupt" and everyone is so blinded by Bush hatred that they can't see this guy for what he really is.

[ajmccarrell]

Well, if you (generally) want to talk corruption, you need look no further than the current administration. W and Cheney are the most corrupt people ever to lead this country, and that is saying a mouthful. They will not be happy until the leave the White House in fames behind them as long as the pokets of their cronies are full.

In this election, McCain chose to shed his independence from these crooks and instead consciously closely aligned himself with them by:

1. voting with them 95% of the time last year;

2. taking on the exact agenda of the RNC, and;

3. selecting Pain to play to the far religious right, prior to that despised McCain.

McCain cannot now have it both ways.

McCain was their's when they covered him with praise and now he has to be their's now that they cover him with shame. It wasn't like he did not know what he was doing with W and that ilk :shrug:

Also, McCain clearly had culpability in the Keating Five. He took hundreds of thousands from Keating. His wife and father and law invested hundreds of thousands with Keating. He took extravagant trips with Keating and failed to pay for them until he was made to do so. Finally, his transition from the House to the Senate is mostly responsible for his non-conviction. The Senate Ethics Committee did not pursue, for lack of jurisdiction, any possible ethics breaches in McCain's delayed reimbursements to Keating for trips at the latter's expense, because they occurred while McCain was in the House http://graphics.boston.com/news/politics/campaign2000/news/Pluck_leaks_helped_senator_to_overcome_S_L_scandal+.shtml

In the end and again, I think accepting what are clearly bribes and having your family openly invest with a crook (which everyone knew he was at the time) is not even in the same league as being neighbors with Ayers and being in a board meeting a few time a year with Ayers. I freely admit Obama was an idiot for associating in any way with Ayers (though he apparently is part of Chicago society) - but come on - that hardly makes Obama a terrorist.


Like I mentioned before, Obama funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Ayers through his position as the chairman of a charity. He announced his candidacy at Ayers' home. They sat on two boards together for 11 years. They were still speaking up until Obama ran for President. If you ask Obama, they just passed a few times on an L train.

Also, I hate to state the obvious, Bush and Cheney are not on the ticket this election. :lol:

If Obama really has a problem with the Keating deal, he should ask John Glenn to resign from his campaign, as he was one of the five too. However, again, both Glenn and McCain were cleared. McCain actually passed McCain-Feingold to ensure nothing like that could happen again.

Obama also voted with Bush and Cheney 60% of the time. Check yer facts there Strandy! :)

[strandinthewind]

Here is a scathing article on McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal:

The story of "the Keating Five" has become a scandal rivaling Teapot Dome and Watergate

By Tom Fitzpatrick

published: November 29, 1989

You're John McCain, a fallen hero who wanted to become president so desperately that you sold yourself to Charlie Keating, the wealthy con man who bears such an incredible resemblance to The Joker.

Obviously, Keating thought you could make it to the White House, too.

He poured $112,000 into your political campaigns. He became your friend. He threw fund raisers in your honor. He even made a sweet shopping-center investment deal for your wife, Cindy. Your father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was cut in on the deal, too.

Nothing was too good for you. Why not? Keating saw you as a prime investment that would pay off in the future.

So he flew you and your family around the country in his private jets. Time after time, he put you up for serene, private vacations at his vast, palatial spa in the Bahamas. All of this was so grand. You were protected from what Thomas Hardy refers to as "the madding crowd." It was almost as though you were already staying at a presidential retreat.

Like the old song, that now seems "Long ago and far away."

Since Keating's collapse, you find yourself doing obscene things to save yourself from the Senate Ethics Committee's investigation. As a matter of course, you engage in backbiting behavior that will turn you into an outcast in the Senate if you do survive.

They say that if you put five lobsters into a pot and give them a chance to escape, none will be able to do so before you light the fire. Each time a lobster tries to climb over the top, his fellow lobsters will pull him back down. It is the way of lobsters and threatened United States senators.

And, of course, that's the way it is with the Keating Five. You are all battling to save your own hides. So you, McCain, leak to reporters about who did Keating's bidding in pressuring federal regulators to change the rules for Lincoln Savings and Loan.

When the reporters fail to print your tips quickly enough--as in the case of your tip on Michigan Senator Donald Riegle--you call them back and remind them how important it is to get that information in the newspapers.

The story of "the Keating Five" has become a scandal rivaling Teapot Dome and Watergate. The outcome will be decided, not in a courtroom, but probably on national television.

Those who survive will be the sociopaths who can tell a lie with the most sincere, straight face. You are especially adept at this.

Last Friday night, on The John McLaughlin Show, which features well-known Washington journalists, the subject of the Keating Five was discussed. Panelist Jack Germond suggested that three of the Keating Five were probably already through in politics.

So you spend your days desperately trying to make sure you will be one of the survivors. You keep volunteering to go on radio and television stations to protest your innocence. Last week you made ABC's Nightline.

Not long before that you somehow managed to get James Kilpatrick, the national columnist, to write a favorable paragraph about you. Last Sunday morning, you made it to national television again; this time on ABC's This Week With David Brinkley. You smiled at the panel with your usual studied insouciance. Sitting next to you was Senator John Glenn of Ohio.

Brinkley, Sam Donaldson, and George Will were the interrogators.

It was a sobering scene. There you sat with Glenn, both sweating before the cameras, waiting to answer questions: two badly tarnished American icons.

No one forgets that Glenn was the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth. You won't let anyone forget that you were a prisoner of war. But you have played that tune too long. By now your constant reminders about your war record make you seem like a modern version of Arthur Miller's tragic failure Willy Loman.

Clearly, both you and Glenn sold your fame for Charles Keating's money.

It was a Faustian bargain. It was also a bad joke on the rest of us and a disaster for many old people who lost their life's savings to Keating.

The money was never really Keating's to give. But he never would have got his hands on it if you and the rest of the Keating Five didn't halt the government takeover for two long years while Keating's people continued their looting.

And now, the tab for the Savings and Loan heist must be paid from taxpayer pockets.

On Sunday, Senators Dennis DeConcini, Alan Cranston, and Riegle refused offers to appear on the Brinkley show. What must we make of that?

You, the closest of them to Keating and the deepest in his debt, have chosen the path of the hard sell. You may even make it out of the pot, but to many, your protestations of innocence taste like gall.

You are determined to bluff your way. You will stick to your story that you were acting to help a constituent and intended to do nothing improper. The very fact you attended the meeting makes you guilty, just as every man who entered the Brinks vault went to prison.

You insist that an accounting firm Keating hired told you Lincoln was sound. Alan Greenspan, who Keating also hired, wrote a report saying it was sound. Why shouldn't you believe the people Keating hired? You were, after all, fellow employees.

Perhaps you might silence your own conscience about all this someday.

Just keep telling everyone that it was your wife's money invested in that shopping center with Keating and that you knew nothing about it.

Keep saying that cynical newspaper people don't understand that every move you make has always been for the enrichment of Arizona . . . the education of our Native Americans on the reservations . . . for the love of the elderly in Sun City and Green Valley.

Keep telling them that it wasn't that you were bought off but that Charlie Keating got special help only because he was one of the biggest employers in the state.

Just keep sitting there and staring into the camera and denying that Keating bought you for money and jet plane trips and vacations.

So what if he gave you $112,000? Just keep smiling at the cameras and saying you did nothing wrong.

Maybe the voters will understand you took those tiring trips to Charlie's place in the Bahamas in their behalf. Certainly, they can understand you wanted to take your family along. A senator deserves to travel on private jets, removed from the awful crush of public transportation.

You sought out a master criminal like Keating and became his friend. Now you've discarded him. It shouldn't be surprising that you are now in the process of selling out your senatorial accomplices.

You're John McCain, clearly the guiltiest, most culpable and reprehensible of the Keating Five. But you know the power of television and you realize this is the only way you can possibly save your political career.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1989-11-29/news/mccain-the-most-reprehensible-of-the-keating-five/1

[ajmccarrell]

Here is a scathing article on McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal:

The story of "the Keating Five" has become a scandal rivaling Teapot Dome and Watergate

By Tom Fitzpatrick

published: November 29, 1989

You're John McCain, a fallen hero who wanted to become president so desperately that you sold yourself to Charlie Keating, the wealthy con man who bears such an incredible resemblance to The Joker.

Obviously, Keating thought you could make it to the White House, too.

He poured $112,000 into your political campaigns. He became your friend. He threw fund raisers in your honor. He even made a sweet shopping-center investment deal for your wife, Cindy. Your father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was cut in on the deal, too.

Nothing was too good for you. Why not? Keating saw you as a prime investment that would pay off in the future.

So he flew you and your family around the country in his private jets. Time after time, he put you up for serene, private vacations at his vast, palatial spa in the Bahamas. All of this was so grand. You were protected from what Thomas Hardy refers to as "the madding crowd." It was almost as though you were already staying at a presidential retreat.

Like the old song, that now seems "Long ago and far away."

Since Keating's collapse, you find yourself doing obscene things to save yourself from the Senate Ethics Committee's investigation. As a matter of course, you engage in backbiting behavior that will turn you into an outcast in the Senate if you do survive.

They say that if you put five lobsters into a pot and give them a chance to escape, none will be able to do so before you light the fire. Each time a lobster tries to climb over the top, his fellow lobsters will pull him back down. It is the way of lobsters and threatened United States senators.

And, of course, that's the way it is with the Keating Five. You are all battling to save your own hides. So you, McCain, leak to reporters about who did Keating's bidding in pressuring federal regulators to change the rules for Lincoln Savings and Loan.

When the reporters fail to print your tips quickly enough--as in the case of your tip on Michigan Senator Donald Riegle--you call them back and remind them how important it is to get that information in the newspapers.

The story of "the Keating Five" has become a scandal rivaling Teapot Dome and Watergate. The outcome will be decided, not in a courtroom, but probably on national television.

Those who survive will be the sociopaths who can tell a lie with the most sincere, straight face. You are especially adept at this.

Last Friday night, on The John McLaughlin Show, which features well-known Washington journalists, the subject of the Keating Five was discussed. Panelist Jack Germond suggested that three of the Keating Five were probably already through in politics.

So you spend your days desperately trying to make sure you will be one of the survivors. You keep volunteering to go on radio and television stations to protest your innocence. Last week you made ABC's Nightline.

Not long before that you somehow managed to get James Kilpatrick, the national columnist, to write a favorable paragraph about you. Last Sunday morning, you made it to national television again; this time on ABC's This Week With David Brinkley. You smiled at the panel with your usual studied insouciance. Sitting next to you was Senator John Glenn of Ohio.

Brinkley, Sam Donaldson, and George Will were the interrogators.

It was a sobering scene. There you sat with Glenn, both sweating before the cameras, waiting to answer questions: two badly tarnished American icons.

No one forgets that Glenn was the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth. You won't let anyone forget that you were a prisoner of war. But you have played that tune too long. By now your constant reminders about your war record make you seem like a modern version of Arthur Miller's tragic failure Willy Loman.

Clearly, both you and Glenn sold your fame for Charles Keating's money.

It was a Faustian bargain. It was also a bad joke on the rest of us and a disaster for many old people who lost their life's savings to Keating.

The money was never really Keating's to give. But he never would have got his hands on it if you and the rest of the Keating Five didn't halt the government takeover for two long years while Keating's people continued their looting.

And now, the tab for the Savings and Loan heist must be paid from taxpayer pockets.

On Sunday, Senators Dennis DeConcini, Alan Cranston, and Riegle refused offers to appear on the Brinkley show. What must we make of that?

You, the closest of them to Keating and the deepest in his debt, have chosen the path of the hard sell. You may even make it out of the pot, but to many, your protestations of innocence taste like gall.

You are determined to bluff your way. You will stick to your story that you were acting to help a constituent and intended to do nothing improper. The very fact you attended the meeting makes you guilty, just as every man who entered the Brinks vault went to prison.

You insist that an accounting firm Keating hired told you Lincoln was sound. Alan Greenspan, who Keating also hired, wrote a report saying it was sound. Why shouldn't you believe the people Keating hired? You were, after all, fellow employees.

Perhaps you might silence your own conscience about all this someday.

Just keep telling everyone that it was your wife's money invested in that shopping center with Keating and that you knew nothing about it.

Keep saying that cynical newspaper people don't understand that every move you make has always been for the enrichment of Arizona . . . the education of our Native Americans on the reservations . . . for the love of the elderly in Sun City and Green Valley.

Keep telling them that it wasn't that you were bought off but that Charlie Keating got special help only because he was one of the biggest employers in the state.

Just keep sitting there and staring into the camera and denying that Keating bought you for money and jet plane trips and vacations.

So what if he gave you $112,000? Just keep smiling at the cameras and saying you did nothing wrong.

Maybe the voters will understand you took those tiring trips to Charlie's place in the Bahamas in their behalf. Certainly, they can understand you wanted to take your family along. A senator deserves to travel on private jets, removed from the awful crush of public transportation.

You sought out a master criminal like Keating and became his friend. Now you've discarded him. It shouldn't be surprising that you are now in the process of selling out your senatorial accomplices.

You're John McCain, clearly the guiltiest, most culpable and reprehensible of the Keating Five. But you know the power of television and you realize this is the only way you can possibly save your political career.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1989-11-29/news/mccain-the-most-reprehensible-of-the-keating-five/1

This is an opinion piece, not objective journalism. There is a difference. :lol:

Also, if you saw the McCain documentary on CNN, this guy has since changed his tune.

Besides, how can you really compare bombing the capital, trying to assassinate a Supreme Court justice, multiple bombings, riots and arson with something that the guy was eventually acquitted of? Also, in case you forgot, it was a democratic congress that acquitted McCain. This piece was also written before his acquittal, which means this guy jumped the gun. Also, Ayers and Obama were still chummy until 2 years ago. This "news" here is 20 years old now.

[TrueFaith77]

I found the debate to be endlessly amusing. Poor Palin came across as though she was trying out for Legally Blonde III, Elle Woods Runs for VP. The winking just cracked me up but the whole package was just too much.

Katherine Harris always made me laugh for being such an air-headed loon, but Palin may just turn out to be my favorite of them all. They should get a daytime TV show together when this is all over.

Wait a second. . . . who WOULDN'T vote for Elle Woods?

[ajmccarrell]

Wait a second. . . . who WOULDN'T vote for Elle Woods?

I think that analogy holds. Elle Woods was able to get into Harvard, yet she didn't come off as that smart. Whereas Biden came off as smart, but he made up a bunch of stuff and talked out his rear to do it. It's easy to sound smart if no one will check your facts. Ted Baxter lives!

[GoS]

No one in the McCain camp has said that he is a Muslim terrorist. Can you cite a specific example? No, I didn't think so. Obama does hang out with terrorists however.

Three things.
A) Welcome back, we missed you!!:laugh:

B) He said innuendo, as in implicitly suggesting it. That, and other similar ideas, is what they are playing to when they say "Country First" and whatever else they feel like saying to suggest that Obama is not like everyone else.

C) Obama and Ayers are not the closest of friends and have not seen each other in years. You make it sound like Obama calls him at the end of the day to talk about what happened that day.

[ajmccarrell]

Three things.
A) Welcome back, we missed you!!:laugh:

B) He said innuendo, as in implicitly suggesting it. That, and other similar ideas, is what they are playing to when they say "Country First" and whatever else they feel like saying to suggest that Obama is not like everyone else.

C) Obama and Ayers are not the closest of friends and have not seen each other in years. You make it sound like Obama calls him at the end of the day to talk about what happened that day.

As far A) THANKS!!! :)

As for B) I think that point of view is quite a stretch. The overarching message of the RNC was that Obama was putting his own ambitions before his country, which has nothing to do with what color he is. For C), the point is that Obama is trying very hard to downplay this association, despite that they were once very much involved. I think Obama has moved to the national stage and Ayers was more of a local guy, so he's not part of his current career. Clearly Obama is embarrassed about the association, but I don't think he's being honest. I completely understand that Ayers is unavoidable, as was someone like Falwell for a Republican. However, it seems that he could put a lot of questions to rest by just saying that. He could say something like, "Sure, I was involved with Bill Ayers. It was nearly impossible to work in the Chicago community because he was involved in almost everything." But instead of that, Obama is acting like he's got something to hide and he makes it sound like they once ate at the same McDonald's and that's it.

[GypsySorcerer]

^^^It says we're f*cked if McCain is elected.

[ajmccarrell]

First off, there were quite a few timeline errors just in the first four paragraphs. Also, McCain acknowledges that he was an asshole before being captured, he's written about most of it. No surprises there. At the RNC he said that he always put himself first before his capture.

Where was this published anyway?

[GoS]

First off, there were quite a few timeline errors just in the first four paragraphs. Also, McCain acknowledges that he was an asshole before being captured, he's written about most of it. No surprises there. At the RNC he said that he always put himself first before his capture.

Where was this published anyway?

I don't know, but whoever did should be sued. That is a llllllllllllllllllllllllong article!!!

[ajmccarrell]

I don't know, but whoever did should be sued. That is a llllllllllllllllllllllllong article!!!

A lot of this stuff in here has been debunked, like the "****" remark, or it is completely unsubstantiated. Supposedly two reporters overheard the remark, but they have never written anything about it. I spent about an hour looking for it when I first heard it and all I could find were articles that reference the incident, but no one has anything other than second hand knowledge or hearsay about it. None of this stuff appears in even MSNBC, the Obama house organ. There's just material about them hearing it, that's it. This is basically a compilation of nasty rumors without the benefit of a fact-checker or editor. I check snopes on some of this stuff and a lot of it just plain isn't true.

[BombaySapphire3]

Basically, Chicago is corrupt. When hasn't it been? :shrug:

Okay, watch this then:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/9596/meet-the-presidents-bill-clinton-november-9-1997

Clinton used the exact same reasons to go to war on this episode of Meet the Press that Bush iterated six years later. Given that this was 1997, according to what you are saying, that means that somehow while Bush was governor of Texas he must have lied to Bill Clinton too, 6 years earlier. Clinton must have listened to Bush over his own Secretary of State, his own National Security Advisor, over all of the foreign policy experts under his employ, just to listen to the then governor of Texas. Bush must have lied to the Russians, British and French 6 years before starting the war too. That position that "Bush lied" has been disproven to the point of ridiculousness. How can anyone watch Bill Clinton say the exact same thing as Bush six years earlier and still maintain that Bush lied? Yours is a common, but not a defendable position, it's just one that sounds great on a bumper sticker. Unfortunately, what goes on bumper stickers often passes for truth. Goebbles would be proud of American politics. We repeat lies (such as the one that "Bush lied") that they sound like the truth despite overwhelming facts that contradict popular opinion.

Give me an example of McCain race baiting. He hasn't done it. What I do see are Obama surrogates using race as an excuse in case he loses. Do a google search and you'll see a ton of articles on the subject. McCain has not mentioned his race once.

The simple act of allowing some redneck to yell out "terrorist" when McCain mentioned Obama at his rally and not even bothering to respond is implicitly race baiting..Why does Palin keep repeating terrorist and Obama interminably if they were not trying to get people to make that connection ..please it's all too clear what they are attempting to do ..just despicable.What I did say was that Bush started the Iraqi war on false pretenses we know that to be a fact and I never knew that Clinton starting the Iraqi war!.What a revelation. Now excuse me while I go water my orange grass with dry water.

[ajmccarrell]

The simple act of allowing some redneck to yell out "terrorist" when McCain mentioned Obama at his rally and not even bothering to respond is implicitly race baiting..Why does Palin keep repeating terrorist and Obama interinminably if they were not trying to get people to make that connection ..please it's all too clear what they are attempting to do ..just despicable.What I did say was that Bush started the Iraqi war on false pretenses we know that to be a fact and I never knew that Clinton starting the Iraqi war!.What a revelation. Now excuse me while I go water my orange grass with dry water.

I think McCain was too nice for too long. A redneck shouting terrorist at Obama is just some guy exercising his right to speak. So what?! Fact is, Obama has had extensive connections to real terrorists (William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn) that he is downplaying and not telling the truth about. Not ALL terrorists are Muslim or even Arab. How about Adam Gadhan? He's a white guy, but he happens to be a Muslim terrorist. McCain and Palin never mentioned Obama's race. If you think it's implied, it is in the mind of the beholder.

You completely missed what I said about Clinton. The "false pretenses" were clearly iterated by Clinton as well. So, either both are lying, or both were mistaken. Either way, you cannot solely lay it at the feet of Bush without doing the same for Clinton. You definately did not watch the video I posted a link to. It's Tim Russert interviewing Clinton for Meet the Press back in 1997, where Clinton clearly states that "we know Iraq has weapons of mass destruction". It was obviously not "manufactured" by Bush if Clinton said the same thing six years earlier. Maybe you take the Marty McFly Doc Brown theory that they transported Bush back in time to impersonate Clinton, so it can only be Bush that propogated the faulty intelligence? Maybe there's an explanation that this is Meet the Press from an alternate dimension. I guess anything to hate Bush despite those darn stubborn facts. This is getting ridiculous.

[TrueFaith77]

C) Obama and Ayers are not the closest of friends and have not seen each other in years. You make it sound like Obama calls him at the end of the day to talk about what happened that day.

I am not a Republican, though I don't see why it would matter to anyone if I were (my parents are... and I love them). That said, the Ayers/Obama connection is highly significant.

As I understand: Ayers appointed Obama to diseminate money he (Ayers) received for use by the CAC -- a Chicago Community education initiative. Also as has been reported (I can cite Dick Morris on last night's Hannity & Colmes): Those iniatives served the purpose of not encouraging education in math, science. . . the three R's (Reading, wRiting, and 'Rithmitic), but rather encouraged political and community activism.

To me -- and I could be wrong -- that translates as indoctrination of inner city (poor or minority) youth, establishing an electoral base for the Democratic Party and an army of Democratic Party volunteers. I construct this scenario based on the Ayers-Obama relationship because 1. it is consistent with Ayers' admitted Communist beliefs and 2. because Ayers either chose or approved of Obama's role in the CAC -- which Obama either agreed with (1.) or was taking advantage of for personal political advancement. It is, after all, Chicago.

This where the media fears to tread. And I mean ALL THE MEDIA. Even the McCain Campaign. Because if the above is true, as has been reported, THEN, all of Obama's proposed initiatives as President must be put under new scrutiny.

I cite as one, Obama's proposed expansion of Bush's Faith-Based Initiatives. In this expansion, Obama requires that for faith-based organizations to receive funding for for specific programs, those programs must not have any overt religious component nor can religious preference be made in hiring for said programs. In other words, Obama's supposed expansion of Faith-Based Initiatives is actually a way for Obama to transfer public funds (taxes) to partisan, SECULAR activities.

It was to the above referenced expansion of Faith-Based Initiatives that Jesse Jackson was referring in his now infamous, live mic incident:

"See, Barack's been talking down to black people on this faith-based -- I want to cut his (DELETED) off. Barack, he's talking down to black people."

Indeed, as I understand the proposal, Obama is talking down to black people, to Christians, to all religious Americans, to all taxpayers. Yet, the expansion of Faith-Based Initiatives is consistent with Obama's methods of shoring up political power, indoctrinating the electorate, and establishing secular influence of the government that can be traced back to his relationship in Chicago with Ayers.

NOW, some people may agree with these programs and support them. That's fine. It's just best that Obama honestly propose them -- i.e., not talk down to people -- and that people honestly defend his proposals.

For me: as a Liberal who supports sometimes "liberal" or "progressive" and even "radical" ideas and policies, I find this reprehensible. I believe in redistribution of wealth because, unlike Obama who espouses the cliche that if you work hard you will have access to the American dream, I believe that wealth is not distributed equitably in this country. I believe that racism does indeed make the system unfair. And, consequently, I believe that the government can -- and should -- play a role in evening out the balance, in ways both fiscal, by redistributing wealth from those who benefit from an unfair system (like myself) directly to underprivileged people, and intellectual, by providing access to ALL citizens to education and information, with a radical emphasis on imagination and individual thought.

And don't even get me started on the bail-out. . .

[GoS]

I am not a Republican, though I don't see why it would matter to anyone if I were (my parents are... and I love them). That said, the Ayers/Obama connection is highly significant.

I don't think that should be an issue either (if I have joked about being a Republican I never meant to offend only to poke fun at how bad politics are these days).

If what you said in the rest of you post is true, then I think that it should be looked into. I have read several different account of the relationship from a variety of sources and can't find anything that would prove/disprove the issues you raised. I am not an expert on Dick Morris, but after a quick glance at his resumé and hearing that he is commonly on Fox News:laugh:, I don't know how reliable this is.

I don't think there is a shortage of scandals, mis-spent money, or abuse of things for political gain that we can link to McCain as close or closer than this Ayers thing goes to Obama.

[Musicman408]

Alright, I'm sure most of us know it's on tonight. Who's watching, and what is our reaction??

I'm hoping Obama kills this. :nod:

[ajmccarrell]

I am not a Republican, though I don't see why it would matter to anyone if I were (my parents are... and I love them). That said, the Ayers/Obama connection is highly significant.

As I understand: Ayers appointed Obama to diseminate money he (Ayers) received for use by the CAC -- a Chicago Community education initiative. Also as has been reported (I can cite Dick Morris on last night's Hannity & Colmes): Those iniatives served the purpose of not encouraging education in math, science. . . the three R's (Reading, wRiting, and 'Rithmitic), but rather encouraged political and community activism.

To me -- and I could be wrong -- that translates as indoctrination of inner city (poor or minority) youth, establishing an electoral base for the Democratic Party and an army of Democratic Party volunteers. I construct this scenario based on the Ayers-Obama relationship because 1. it is consistent with Ayers' admitted Communist beliefs and 2. because Ayers either chose or approved of Obama's role in the CAC -- which Obama either agreed with (1.) or was taking advantage of for personal political advancement. It is, after all, Chicago.

This where the media fears to tread. And I mean ALL THE MEDIA. Even the McCain Campaign. Because if the above is true, as has been reported, THEN, all of Obama's proposed initiatives as President must be put under new scrutiny.

I cite as one, Obama's proposed expansion of Bush's Faith-Based Initiatives. In this expansion, Obama requires that for faith-based organizations to receive funding for for specific programs, those programs must not have any overt religious component nor can religious preference be made in hiring for said programs. In other words, Obama's supposed expansion of Faith-Based Initiatives is actually a way for Obama to transfer public funds (taxes) to partisan, SECULAR activities.

It was to the above referenced expansion of Faith-Based Initiatives that Jesse Jackson was referring in his now infamous, live mic incident:

"See, Barack's been talking down to black people on this faith-based -- I want to cut his (DELETED) off. Barack, he's talking down to black people."

Indeed, as I understand the proposal, Obama is talking down to black people, to Christians, to all religious Americans, to all taxpayers. Yet, the expansion of Faith-Based Initiatives is consistent with Obama's methods of shoring up political power, indoctrinating the electorate, and establishing secular influence of the government that can be traced back to his relationship in Chicago with Ayers.

NOW, some people may agree with these programs and support them. That's fine. It's just best that Obama honestly propose them -- i.e., not talk down to people -- and that people honestly defend his proposals.

For me: as a Liberal who supports sometimes "liberal" or "progressive" and even "radical" ideas and policies, I find this reprehensible. I believe in redistribution of wealth because, unlike Obama who espouses the cliche that if you work hard you will have access to the American dream, I believe that wealth is not distributed equitably in this country. I believe that racism does indeed make the system unfair. And, consequently, I believe that the government can -- and should -- play a role in evening out the balance, in ways both fiscal, by redistributing wealth from those who benefit from an unfair system (like myself) directly to underprivileged people, and intellectual, by providing access to ALL citizens to education and information, with a radical emphasis on imagination and individual thought.

And don't even get me started on the bail-out. . .

Fantastic analysis and I am apalled that even McCain isn't looking at this further, the only place I disagree with you here is that I still believe that hard work will ultimately bring you success in this country. It's just you have to make sure what you're working on is something that is a well trodden path to success. One example is an old friend of mine who installs windows. Working really hard at installing windows will only get you so far. After a while, you still need an education in something that pays well to succeed. People who don't succeed usually work really hard at the wrong thing. I'm not speaking tritely here, I was actually homeless twice until I figured out what I was doing wasn't working.

[BombaySapphire3]

I don't think there is a shortage of scandals, mis-spent money, or abuse of things for political gain that we can link to McCain as close or closer than this Ayers thing goes to Obama.

So far the smear tactics have had little impact anyway..McCain is terrible on the economy. As the market is in free fall so will his campaign go...good riddance.

[ajmccarrell]

Unfortunately, Obama is only as good as his teleprompter. This is McCain's domain, but he's been fumbling around lately so much I don't really have any high hopes for anything. Unfortunately, the sound bytes from debates do little to slake the thirst of my curiosity for specifics. Neither candidate is particularly good at them. I'd REALLY like McCain to hammer on the real economic consequences of his tax hike for the rich and tax cut for the poor. I was listening to an economist earlier, who also echoed my own thoughts, that since 40% of the 95% that Obama mentioned do not pay taxes already, that the whole model is too top heavy and would lead to cost push inflation and rising prices that far outweigh any tax savings seen. Plus, the deficit would likely increase because of the steep drop in business activity after such a hike. I'm not sure why more people don't get this. :shrug:

[ajmccarrell]

So far the smear tactics have had little impact anyway..McCain is terrible on the economy. As the market is in free fall so will his campaign go...good riddance.

So far, Arthur Laffer, Paul Krugman, Ben Stein, Walter Williams, and Stephen Moore would disagree with you. All of them are unanimous in saying that Obama's tax cut and hike plans would cause massive cost push inflation, which would lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and ultimately depression. Believe me, this can get much worse. If he actually enacts what he plans on doing, it will make today seem like the good ol' days. I'd be happy to take some time and go through the mathematic models if you would like.

Oh yeah, this morning also McCain is up four points in the CBS and Gallup polls from yesterday. He back to being within .2% of the margin of error. It's far from over.

[ashton]

I doubt that many will be watching the debates. They get rather old after the first two. People's minds are pretty much made up at this point.

I will skip it. If I later have the desire to hear some old man babbling the same old lines that I have heard repeatedly, I will just look for an Archie Bunker re-run.

[ajmccarrell]

I doubt that many will be watching the debates. They get rather old after the first two. People's minds are pretty much made up at this point.

I will skip it. If I later have the desire to hear some old man babbling the same old lines that I have heard repeatedly, I will just look for an Archie Bunker re-run.

What will you do with your evening? :lol:

[slowdancer]

During the first debate, McCain never looked at Obama and did not refer to him by his first name. On the other hand, Obama kept calling McCain John and looked at him when he spoke to him. I wondered while watching if McCain would treat heads of state the same way, especially if he didn't agree with them. Obama showed the older man respect, but McCain's behaviour was borish. Obama shows he is in command of his emotions which makes him look more presidential compared to McCain's uptight and disdainful performance. Obama thinks and then acts, while McCain looks as if anything might set that famous temper of his off.

On the issues, McCain says he isn't a Washington insider and yet he has been there for 26 years. He is for the bailout but doesn't want to regulate anything, hence the financial crisis. If he and Palin are so against big government, where was McCain while Congress gave the current administration carte blanche to do what ever they wanted: increasing the national debt, invading a country that did not attack us, and on and on. We all know the rest. McCain and his party have weakened America. I'm hoping that Obama will be tough with McCain tonight, linking him over and over to the failed policies of the Bush/Cheney administration. Also McCain has never supported a woman's right to choose.

Obama will make the difference if elected, like the Kennedys and Martin Luther King did back in the 60s. McCain still wants to win the war in Vietnam and he sees "victory" in Iraq as a way to salvage our honor. He sees every thing in black or white. He thinks with his gut, like Bush does and his choice of Palin was purely political and an insult to intelligent men and women everywhere. She is all style and no substance.

McCain can't talk about his record because it puts him in bed with Bush, so he and Palin have to resort to character assassination and they have already started. But Obama is better than these two hacks and he needs to be aggressive and hit back hard tonight, especially going after McCain and his connection to the Keating Five
debacle.

Didn't mean to write all this, but I feel there is so much at stake and we need a young and energetic leader who is full of promise and hope. And we need a seasoned statesman like Biden by his side.

[GoS]

So far, Arthur Laffer, Paul Krugman, Ben Stein, Walter Williams, and Stephen Moore would disagree with you. All of them are unanimous in saying that Obama's tax cut and hike plans would cause massive cost push inflation, which would lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and ultimately depression. Believe me, this can get much worse. If he actually enacts what he plans on doing, it will make today seem like the good ol' days. I'd be happy to take some time and go through the mathematic models if you would like.

Oh yeah, this morning also McCain is up four points in the CBS and Gallup polls from yesterday. He back to being within .2% of the margin of error. It's far from over.

But come on, can you actually trust any of these polls? I don't.

[ajmccarrell]

During the first debate, McCain never looked at Obama and did not refer to him by his first name. On the other hand, Obama kept calling McCain John and looked at him when he spoke to him. I wondered while watching if McCain would treat heads of state the same way, especially if he didn't agree with them. Obama showed the older man respect, but McCain's behaviour was borish. Obama shows he is in command of his emotions which makes him look more presidential compared to McCain's uptight and disdainful performance. Obama thinks and then acts, while McCain looks as if anything might set that famous temper of his off.

On the issues, McCain says he isn't a Washington insider and yet he has been there for 26 years. He is for the bailout but doesn't want to regulate anything, hence the financial crisis. If he and Palin are so against big government, where was McCain while Congress gave the current administration carte blanche to do what ever they wanted: increasing the national debt, invading a country that did not attack us, and on and on. We all know the rest. McCain and his party have weakened America. I'm hoping that Obama will be tough with McCain tonight, linking him over and over to the failed policies of the Bush/Cheney administration. Also McCain has never supported a woman's right to choose.

Obama will make the difference if elected, like the Kennedys and Martin Luther King did back in the 60s. McCain still wants to win the war in Vietnam and he sees "victory" in Iraq as a way to salvage our honor. He sees every thing in black or white. He thinks with his gut, like Bush does and his choice of Palin was purely political and an insult to intelligent men and women everywhere. She is all style and no substance.

McCain can't talk about his record because it puts him in bed with Bush, so he and Palin have to resort to character assassination and they have already started. But Obama is better than these two hacks and he needs to be aggressive and hit back hard tonight, especially going after McCain and his connection to the Keating Five
debacle.

Didn't mean to write all this, but I feel there is so much at stake and we need a young and energetic leader who is full of promise and hope. And we need a seasoned statesman like Biden by his side.

Biden made up the facts as he went and related events that did not happen, skewed events that did happen and put Obama in the Senate 20 years before he actually got there. He was caught lying by fact check 14 times. Ted Baxter lives.

The economy at this point is largely Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Bush, Clinton and the collective congresses from the last 20 years fault; the congressional black caucus is especially at fault, as they are on tape pushing Franklin Raines into making bad loans. It is also Ben Bernanke's fault for encouraging this sort of lending by trying to artificially inflate housing prices by lowering interest rates, but most of all it is the fault of the lenders and borrowers who made horrendous business decisions to lend to people who bought more house than they could afford and the bidding war that ensued until the market could no longer sustain the artificially inflated prices.

McCain actually called for tighter regulation 12 times in the last few years. The idea that he lobbied for deregulation of mortgages is an outright lie. Both Dodd and Obama actually took the most money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama has also consulted Raines and one other executive in his campaign. It is true Raines has no official capacity, however Obama is calling one of the guys who caused this mess for advice. That should send chills down anyone's spine.

[Richard B]

This is a good debate to watch as the questions will be pulled from undecided, random voters. They will also ask questions from internet submissions.
So there is no agenda, no topics for either candidate to really rehearse for.

[slowdancer]

This from the David Byrne Journal:

"Last night was the Biden/Palin debate. I listened in, but only a bit. Palin tries to throw out key phrases and push the buttons the voters want to hear (lower taxes, less government, economic security) while Biden gives hard evidence. Her platitudes are mostly lies, as is the Republican style. They often rightly assume that no one will actually check or call them on their bull****. Sadly, their technique of lying till people think it’s true often works — a pathetic reflection of the American voter. I sort of wish the Democrats would take off the kid gloves and call these people on their bull****. I mean, the Republican policies and the Bush administration facilitated the credit-banking mess, the attendant economic decline, oil-friendly energy policies, the huge debt the US is saddled with, and the expenditure of billions a week on an endless illegal war. The McCain camp has appropriated the Obama “change” mantra, but their behavior says more of the same."

[ajmccarrell]

But come on, can you actually trust any of these polls? I don't.

Somewhat. Watching the polls change are a good indicator of the country's mood, but they do not accurately reflect the actual makeup of voting habits, since there are too many variables. The young vote tends to reply enthusiastically, but they tend not to actually vote. Conservatives view pollsters with general hostility. They are not accurate, they tend to swing left by about an average of 3 points or so; more still if the poll was conducted during the day.

[Richard B]

This from the David Byrne Journal:

"Last night was the Biden/Palin debate. I listened in, but only a bit. Palin tries to throw out key phrases and push the buttons the voters want to hear (lower taxes, less government, economic security) while Biden gives hard evidence. Her platitudes are mostly lies, as is the Republican style. They often rightly assume that no one will actually check or call them on their bull****. Sadly, their technique of lying till people think it’s true often works — a pathetic reflection of the American voter. I sort of wish the Democrats would take off the kid gloves and call these people on their bull****. I mean, the Republican policies and the Bush administration facilitated the credit-banking mess, the attendant economic decline, oil-friendly energy policies, the huge debt the US is saddled with, and the expenditure of billions a week on an endless illegal war. The McCain camp has appropriated the Obama “change” mantra, but their behavior says more of the same."

Can we please keep David Byrne out of this?

[ajmccarrell]

This from the David Byrne Journal:

"Last night was the Biden/Palin debate. I listened in, but only a bit. Palin tries to throw out key phrases and push the buttons the voters want to hear (lower taxes, less government, economic security) while Biden gives hard evidence. Her platitudes are mostly lies, as is the Republican style. They often rightly assume that no one will actually check or call them on their bull****. Sadly, their technique of lying till people think it’s true often works — a pathetic reflection of the American voter. I sort of wish the Democrats would take off the kid gloves and call these people on their bull****. I mean, the Republican policies and the Bush administration facilitated the credit-banking mess, the attendant economic decline, oil-friendly energy policies, the huge debt the US is saddled with, and the expenditure of billions a week on an endless illegal war. The McCain camp has appropriated the Obama “change” mantra, but their behavior says more of the same."

Biden was quite short on facts. He lied and they just sounded like facts because he has a Sam Waterston like quality that you can believe just about anything he says. Here are some fact checks for Biden:

1. TAX VOTE: Biden said McCain voted “the exact same way” as Obama to increase taxes on Americans earning just $42,000, but McCain DID NOT VOTE THAT WAY.

2. AHMEDINIJAD MEETING: Joe Biden lied when he said that Barack Obama never said that he would sit down unconditionally with Mahmoud Ahmedinijad of Iran. Barack Obama did say specifically, and Joe Biden attacked him for it.

3. OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING: Biden said, “Drill we must.” But Biden has opposed offshore drilling and even compared offshore drilling to “raping” the Outer Continental Shelf.”

4. TROOP FUNDING: Joe Biden lied when he indicated that John McCain and Barack Obama voted the same way against funding the troops in the field. John McCain opposed a bill that included a timeline, that the President of the United States had already said he would veto regardless of it’s passage.

5. OPPOSING CLEAN COAL: Biden says he’s always been for clean coal, but he just told a voter that he is against clean coal and any new coal plants in America and has a record of voting against clean coal and coal in the U.S. Senate.

6. ALERNATIVE ENERGY VOTES: According to FactCheck.org, Biden is exaggerating and overstating John McCain’s record voting for alternative energy when he says he voted against it 23 times.

7. HEALTH INSURANCE: Biden falsely said McCain will raise taxes on people's health insurance coverage -- they get a tax credit to offset any tax hike. Independent fact checkers have confirmed this attack is false

8. OIL TAXES: Biden falsely said Palin supported a windfall profits tax in Alaska -- she reformed the state tax and revenue system, it's not a windfall profits tax. In addition, the Alaska State Constitution gives Alaska residents the right to collect revenues from the sales of oil.

9. AFGHANISTAN / GEN. MCKIERNAN COMMENTS: Biden said that top military commander in Iraq said the principles of the surge could not be applied to Afghanistan, but the commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force Gen. David D. McKiernan said that there were principles of the surge strategy, including working with tribes, that could be applied in Afghanistan.

10. REGULATION: Biden falsely said McCain weakened regulation -- he actually called for more regulation on Fannie and Freddie.

11. IRAQ: When Joe Biden lied when he said that John McCain was “dead wrong on Iraq”, because Joe Biden shared the same vote to authorize the war and differed on the surge strategy where they John McCain has been proven right.

12. TAX INCREASES: Biden said Americans earning less than $250,000 wouldn’t see higher taxes, but the Obama-Biden tax plan would raise taxes on individuals making $200,000 or more, which would pass the taxes on by way of higher prices.

13. BAILOUT: Biden said the economic rescue legislation matches the four principles that Obama laid out, but in reality it doesn’t meet two of the four principles that Obama outlined on Sept. 19, which were that it include an emergency economic stimulus package, and that it be part of “part of a globally coordinated effort with our partners in the G-20.”

14. REAGAN TAX RATES: Biden is wrong in saying that under Obama, Americans won't pay any more in taxes then they did under Reagan.

15. Biden said that the US and France routed Hezbollah out of Lebanon and that Obama and he called for Nato to fill in the GAP. The incident Biden was speaking of was when Syria routed the US out of Lebanon and killed the entire troop contingent. The event happened in 1983 and Obama would not appear in the senate for another 20 years.

[strandinthewind]

1. Why should the taxpayers have to shell out a per diem for Palin to choose to stay in her own home about an hour away from the official residence - the Gov. Mansion?

2. Why should the state pay for Palin to take her kids on official events to the tune of $43,490. What was the specific busines purpose for having her kids there. If it was a perk, go ahead and say it. In fact, I would not object to it. But, don't BS about it.

Palin is the gift that just keeps on giving:

State reviewing per diem payments to Palin

By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE, Associated Press Writer

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's practice of charging the state when she stays in her home must be reviewed to determine if she should pay taxes on the payments, state Finance Director Kim Garnero said Tuesday.

Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, released two years' worth of tax returns last week that did not list the per diem payments she received since becoming Alaska governor in December 2006. She collected nearly $17,000 during that period for 312 nights spent in her Wasilla home about an hour's drive from Anchorage, according to state travel records.

Palin has relied on the state's calculation of her taxable income, reported in her annual income statements known as W-2s, said Roger Olsen, a Washington, D.C., tax lawyer asked by the Palins to review their tax returns before they were made public last week.

"The income tax aspects of fringe benefits are complex and highly technical, and not subject to second-guessing by laymen," Olsen wrote in a three-page letter outlining his review of the returns.

Palin listed 157 days spent in Anchorage during 2007 on her travel forms. Garnero said Palin's work place as governor is considered to be Juneau, so she filed for the per diem payments — most times the full $60 a day — when she worked in her Anchorage office and stayed at her Wasilla home.

But state officials consider changing an employee's work station when they spend most of their time in another area, she said. That review will occur for Palin, Garnero said, which may require Palin to report future per diem payments as income.

"That's something we need to confer with the governor's office on," said Garnero, who said she was not aware of the number of days Palin spent working in Anchorage.

State rules for employees who receive a large amount of per diem payments are difficult to apply to Palin because she has no supervisor monitoring how long she works at another state office, Garnero said.

A typical work year for most employees is 260 days, but Garnero said the governor's staff told her Tuesday that her work year is considered 365 days because she is on call around the clock. That would mean Palin spent about 43 percent of last year working in Anchorage, and would allow the governor to continue receiving per diem payments that aren't taxed when she stays at her home, Garnero said.

The state review will not consider whether Palin should report past per diem payments as income. "In the past, we've gone prospective. We've never gone retroactive" when reviewing per diem paid to state employees, Garnero said.

The final decision likely will be made by the Internal Revenue Service, said Allen Bingham, an Anchorage accountant and member of the Alaska Society of Certified Public Accountants' taxation committee. IRS officials could determine that Palin owes taxes on past and future per diem payments, he said.

Bingham said Palin's situation is unusual because she claimed such a large number of days working away from Juneau, something that would typically raise red flags when considering whether the per diem should be considered income.

"It's certainly one of those things that some of us have raised our eyebrows about," he said.

The IRS likely also will want details about $43,490 the state paid Palin over 20 months for family travel, including commercial airline tickets the state bought for some of her children to join the governor. Bingham said taxpayers must show a specific business purpose for the state reimbursement, some actual work or duty performed for the expense.

"I guess I'm surprised that the state is paying for the kids. I don't know what the state business purpose is here," Bingham said.

Palin's returns showed that she and her husband underpaid their estimated taxes with an April extension and likely will owe interest. The per diem payments and family travel expenses were not included as income in those returns.

During the two tax years for which Palin released her returns, she claimed four dependent children. She gave birth this year to a fifth child. The family travel was a legitimate paid expense because Palin's husband and children represented the state at events, said Maria Comella, a campaign spokeswoman.

"The only time the children's travel was reimbursed was when they were traveling as part of an official event," she said.

Olsen, who worked in the Reagan administration's Department of Justice's tax division as an assistant attorney general, noted in his review of Palin's tax returns that her per diem payments were handled correctly by state officials as non-taxable because the governor's place of business was considered to be Juneau.

"No special consideration was ever given to Governor Palin, notwithstanding that she was the governor of Alaska," Olsen wrote.

Olsen said state law allows the governor's relatives to receive payment for travel costs "when conducting official state business." But his review did not address what state business was performed by Palin's children.

"Such payments for family members traveling on state business would not properly be included as taxable income on Governor Palin's federal tax returns," Olsen wrote.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081007/ap_on_el_pr/palin_tax_returns

[estranged4life]

I TRIED to watch it, but I grew bored listening to the same answers I have heard to the same questions pre-debate.

[strandinthewind]

I TRIED to watch it, but I grew bored listening to the same answers I have heard to the same questions pre-debate.

I know -- it's like watching Titanic again - THE BOAT SINKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mad4stevie]

I know -- it's like watching Titanic again - THE BOAT SINKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes! I am soooo exhausted by all the same bull sh*t.

Say something different, already! Stop pointing fingers and step up and tell us what the hell you expect to do for us, dammit! If McCain is going to keep saying "my friends" over and over again, I am going to turn this thing off!

Both sound a bit nervous and bumbling, which is interesting since both are said to excel in this format.

[Ledge Moderators]

The political discussions are very popular and rightly so, but based on requests from some posters, we thought it might be easier to navigate Chit Chat if all the political threads were combined in one place. That will make it easy for the participants to find them and easy for those who don't want to participate to skip them.

Put all your posts about McCain, Obama, Biden, Palin and Company in this thread. We'll make it a sticky, so you can always find it right at the top of Chit Chat.

After the elections, when the discussions will probably decrease significantly, we'll unstick.

[estranged4life]

I know -- it's like watching Titanic again - THE BOAT SINKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the length of this debate will be WAY TOO LONG. Almost as painful as watching William Shatner's "Shakespearan Theatre"...:sorry:

:D

Gee, If I was on the Titanic and had the choice between jumping into the icy Atlantic or listening to the same answers from both candidates, I think a nice ice-cube swim would be my choice.

[strandinthewind]

Yes! I am soooo exhausted by all the same bull sh*t.

Say something different, already! Stop pointing fingers and step up and tell us what the hell you expect to do for us, dammit!

Both sound a bit nervous and bumbling, which is interesting since both are said to excel in this format.

McCain looks like he ate too much at the buffet - his coat is too tight and his tie is hanging below his scrotal sac, which, at his age . . . . :laugh:

Speaking of age, he appears to be breathing in an eratic manner at times.

Obama is giving his same ole same ole.

Many assume I am so pro Obama. I am not. I think he is a bad choice for the D's and I do not really like him. But, I'll take him over four more years of W, which is exactly was McCain is selling no matter what he or anyone else says.

[strandinthewind]

The political discussions are very popular and rightly so, but based on requests from some posters, we thought it might be easier to navigate Chit Chat if all the political threads were combined in one place. That will make it easy for the participants to find them and easy for those who don't want to participate to skip them.

Put all your posts about McCain, Obama, Biden, Palin and Company in this thread. We'll make it a sticky, so you can always find it right at the top of Chit Chat.

After the elections, when the discussions will probably decrease significantly, we'll unstick.

That's a good idea -- can you combine, say, the last 15 threads into one -- that way, there will be reference in the, albeit large, thread. Otherwise people are just going to keep posting in the other, non-consolidated threads.

[Musicman408]

McCain looks like he ate too much at the buffet - his coat is too tight and his tie is hanging below his scrotal sac, which, at his age . . . . :laugh:

Speaking of age, he appears to be breathing in an eratic manner at times.

Obama is giving his same ole same ole.

Many assume I am so pro Obama. I am not. I think he is a bad choice for the D's. But, I'll take him over four more years of W, which is exactly was McCain is selling no matter what he or anyone else says.

During the primaries, I was a fervant supporter of Hillary Clinton, as evidenced by this button. :nod:

[estranged4life]

I wished the 2 ol' guys from the Muppet Show would appear and harrass McCain & Obama

Wait a minute, is Obama serious? American's make a 'quality' automobile so we can stop purchasing "From Japan"? America TAUGHT the Japanese quality CONTROL during the 1920's...They mastered it. Hello???

The American worker couldnt even build a quality TOASTER at this point, but then again when all the J-O-B-S were shipped to Mexico (aka US South) thanks to B--- C----- and his NAFTA bill, it is hard to have QUALITY in this country for even a toaster manufacturer.

[Mad4stevie]

McCain looks like he ate too much at the buffet - his coat is too tight and his tie is hanging below his scrotal sac, which, at his age . . . . :laugh:

Speaking of age, he appears to be breathing in an eratic manner at times.

Obama is giving his same ole same ole.

Many assume I am so pro Obama. I am not. I think he is a bad choice for the D's and I do not really like him. But, I'll take him over four more years of W, which is exactly was McCain is selling no matter what he or anyone else says.

The way McCain staggers around is uncomfortable to watch; granted much is due to his injuries during Vietnam, which obviously are life-long, but it certainly can be distracting to watch him walk around like a robot.

Is that the first time he used the "nailing jello to the wall" comment?

[Mad4stevie]

"The straight talk express lost a wheel" :laugh::laugh::laugh:

That sounded like a previously planned comment.

God, if I hear about the "94 times he voted" . . . I do not like any of those stats because they are ALL spin. On both sides.

[strandinthewind]

The way McCain staggers around is uncomfortable to watch; granted much is due to his injuries during Vietnam, which obviously are life-long, but it certainly can be distracting to watch him walk around like a robot.

It is. But, I have seen him move before. So, I think it is more than that. But, who knows. I am sure he is rather shaky after the last few days, to say the least :laugh:

Is that the first time he used the "nailing jello to the wall" comment?

I am unsure, but I liked it.

I also liked Obama's "straight talk express lost a wheel"

At least there are some zingers.

I love how McCain says fixing Social Security is easy to fix and then offers no plan whatsoever. Ditto for Medicare, other than form a Commissioner :rolleyes:

[estranged4life]

I can't stand to watch Obama...

He looks TOO similar to my older brother. All he is missing lighter skin, a bong in one hand, a 24 pack of Coor's in the other - and of course the ever popular word "F**k" used every other word.

[strandinthewind]

Where does McCain get the notion that nuclear fuel is clean? It results in reactive waste that is a bitch to store as it takes like 25,000 years to become safe.

[Mad4stevie]

Where does McCain get the notion that nuclear fuel is clean? It results in reactive waste that is a bitch to store as it takes like 25,000 years to become safe.

Yeah, no kidding!!

[strandinthewind]

Yeah, no kidding!!

Much less if some terrorist (Muslim or American) gets the notion to infiltrate it and use it as a weapon, which could deatroy thousands of miles of America if done properly - See Chernobyl (Four hundred times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima).

Also, how anyone can support McCain's health plan is way beyond me. I mean it works great for the young, but try and pay for health insurance when you go over 40 or 50.

Plus and again, deregulating the health care industry is just insane - the health insurers already let greed corrupt any altruistic intent.

[Mad4stevie]

It is. But, I have seen him move before. So, I think it is more than that. But, who knows. I am sure he is rather shaky after the last few days, to say the least :laugh:



I am unsure, but I liked it.

I also liked Obama's "straight talk express lost a wheel"

At least there are some zingers.

I love how McCain says fixing Social Security is easy to fix and then offers no plan whatsoever. Ditto for Medicare, other than form a Commissioner :rolleyes:

Yeah - McCain sounds like he is practicing some anxious breathing as you have already noted. I can't figure out if his legs or hips are the problem, or his arm and shoulders.

Oh, and I thought it was interesting to plug Warren Buffet as the "possible" Secretary of the Treasury. :laugh:

[GypsySorcerer]

McCain looks like he ate too much at the buffet - his coat is too tight and his tie is hanging below his scrotal sac, which, at his age . . . . :laugh:

Speaking of age, he appears to be breathing in an eratic manner at times.

Obama is giving his same ole same ole.

Many assume I am so pro Obama. I am not. I think he is a bad choice for the D's and I do not really like him. But, I'll take him over four more years of W, which is exactly was McCain is selling no matter what he or anyone else says.

I thought the same thing about McCain's suit. It doesn't fit him at all.

I am with you on Obama. He is a bit of a deer in the headlights, but like you say, he's better than McCain.

[strandinthewind]

. . . . Oh, and I thought it was interesting to plug Warren Buffet as the "possible" Secretary of the Treasury. :laugh:

I don't think he'd take it. If I had like $50 billion, I sure as hell wouldn't want that BS :laugh:

[estranged4life]

I never understood the health care issue, If American Indian tribes can offer 'free health care' for their tribal members why doesnt THOSE geniuses in DC use a similar program? The tax-payers are providing the tribes with the money for coverage, shouldnt be hard to do for everyone else.

[Mad4stevie]

Much less if some terrorist (Muslim or American) gets the notion to infiltrate it and use it as a weapon, which could deatroy thousands of miles of America if done properly - See Chernobyl (Four hundred times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima).

Also, how anyone can support McCain's health plan is way beyond me. I mean it works great for the young, but try and pay for health insurance when you go over 40 or 50.

Plus and again, deregulating the health care industry is just insane - the health insurers already let greed corrupt any altruistic intent.

Yes. What I want to see is the ability to get in to see a specialist without waiting 6 months to get an appointment! I paid out of pocket for my health insurance when I was in private practice, and it was ridiculous. I have herniated discs from a car accident that need routine care and medication, and my first party medical benefits from car insurance were long surpassed, so I had to have the medical. Spending nearly $400 a month was cheaper than paying for prescriptions out of pocket. :shocked: I don't know how some people afford meds without insurance.

[Mad4stevie]

I don't think he'd take it. If I had like $50 billion, I sure as hell wouldn't want that BS :laugh:

That is exactly what I was thinking! I would buy my own island and escape from this BS completely!! :thumbsup:

[Richard B]

I never understood the health care issue, If American Indian tribes can offer 'free health care' for their tribal members why doesnt THOSE geniuses in DC use a similar program? The tax-payers are providing the tribes with the money for coverage, shouldnt be hard to do for everyone else.

That's because it is easier to support 2 million people than 298 million.

[strandinthewind]

Yes. What I want to see is the ability to get in to see a specialist without waiting 6 months to get an appointment! I paid out of pocket for my health insurance when I was in private practice, and it was ridiculous. I have herniated discs from a car accident that need routine care and medication, and my first party medical benefits from car insurance were long surpassed, so I had to have the medical. Spending nearly $400 a month was cheaper than paying for prescriptions out of pocket. :shocked: I don't know how some people afford meds without insurance.

I know - and you were young (I mean younger ;) ) then. How is McCain's $5,000 tax deal going to help you when the wages to get there will be taxed and you have to pay like $400 a month and you have not spent one dime on a deductible or anything not covered, a list that I can assure you will grow once deregulation hits. Moreover, when you hit 40 or 50, I suggest that amount will double and, without consistent regulations, the insurers can exclude any ailment they want. Finally, if you get a cheaper policy that does not cover much when you are younger and less sick so to speak, good luck changing companies when you get to 50 or so.

[Mad4stevie]

II am with you on Obama. He is a bit of a deer in the headlights, but like you say, he's better than McCain.

Biden certainly didn't help the "deer in the headlights" perspective when he said he would be very involved in decisions made by Obama - that he was going to be "in the room with him when the big decisions are made", as if he needed to hold his hand or something. :rolleyes:

[estranged4life]

That's because it is easier to support 2 million people than 298 million.

more than 2 million American Indians in this country...There's probably that many in Oklahoma alone.

[Mad4stevie]

The gloves are off!!!

"Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran" AGAIN

"I will get Osama, I know how to get him, I promise to do it" - well WTF have you been waiting for??

Even though McCain isn't a lawyer, he sounds like one after all these years in Washington. They are both so full of it - trying to speak with confidence but not really saying anything.

[estranged4life]

^^^
Isnt that a Beach Boys song? My bad, that would be "Barbara Ann"

[strandinthewind]

more than 2 million American Indians in this country...There's probably that many in Oklahoma alone.

Yea - Although I like Richard (:wavey: ) -- his argument is a little misleading. The wealth and budget of the U.S. and state governments combined more than compensates to equality or more the difference in the economy of scale between the two.

But, I am not really for socialized medicine in the US because the US Govt. could fu*k up a wet dream.

As for McCain saying he was not gung ho on Iraq, give me a break. He could not wait to get there and did everything he could to make sure we went. He, a former POW who was tortured, deliberately sent our troops to Iraq when he damn well knew we did not have to go. So much for his experience. Then, he asserts or implies all is forgiven because the surge worked. That is like thanking your rapist for calling an ambulance on his way out.

[strandinthewind]

. . . "I will get Osama, I know how to get him, I promise to do it" - well WTF have you been waiting for??

For McCain, it was the promise of glory in Iraq.

Notice how McCain has not mentioned his vote and cheerleading for Iraq.

[estranged4life]

^^^
I betcha if the US used the amount of $$$$ used to support World War III, Oops, uh "The War on Terror" - that EVERYONE would have coverage by now.

As for finding and capturing 'terrorists', I will use the words my dear ol' Mom said, "These idiots couldnt find their balls with both hands".

[strandinthewind]

Biden certainly didn't help the "deer in the headlights" perspective when he said he would be very involved in decisions made by Obama - that he was going to be "in the room with him when the big decisions are made", as if he needed to hold his hand or something. :rolleyes:

I was interested in that line by Biden.

Clearly, Cheney's expansion of the VP slot is not contained in the US Constitution as Palin, in further confirmation of her inane mind, asserted.

But, Biden's assertion was not in the Const. either.

All the Const. really talks about is the VP becoming President should the President become unable to serve and acting as the presiding officer of the U.S. Senate.

So, while they are both wrong, Palin's view is more against the Const. because it seeks to expand exact lang. Nothing in the Const. speaks to the VP being in the room with the Pres. Personally, I think Biden said it as way of reassuring people that he would lend his vast experience to the neophyte Obama.

As an aside, I would have LOVED to have seen Hillary debate Palin. It would be like watching a biker chick go after a blond haired, mindless, Tri Delt :laugh:

[estranged4life]

^^^Please refrain insulting biker chicks by comparing 'em to Hideous Clinton :lol:

[strandinthewind]

^^^Please refrain insulting biker chicks by comparing 'em to Hideous Clinton :lol:

I always said Hillary might be a little better looking in tight black leather :eek:

:laugh: :laugh:

Note -- I love bikes and those who have them.

[Richard B]

more than 2 million American Indians in this country...There's probably that many in Oklahoma alone.

Going off the 1990 Census of US Native American population (30 largest tribes) (http://www.americanwest.com/pages/indrank.htm).
But the point is not about the exact figure of the population, but of the massive difference as to why it does not work as simply as you asked originally.

[Richard B]

Both of these guys are frightening. I'm not sure I want to be responsible for putting either in office. Obama has quite the stutter.

[estranged4life]

I always said Hillary might be a little better looking in tight black leather :eek:

<div align=center><img src="http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb32/spendykendy/barack_obama_hilary_clinton.jpg"></div>

[estranged4life]

Going off the 1990 Census of US Native American population (30 largest tribes) (http://www.americanwest.com/pages/indrank.htm).

sarcastic with my 2 million amount in Oklahoma, Everyone wants to be 'Injun' to get the medical coverage these days (Which shows how much faith us 'half-breeds' have in the US govt. - Ya know, the same one that stoled our lands :rolleyes: )

[Musicman408]

Alright, so who do you all think won this thing?

I don't know, it all seemed kind of flat to me..... But I guess I give the nod to Obama. :nod:

[strandinthewind]

1. It seemed like Cindy McCain totally snubbed Michelle Obama when they walked past each other.

2. Michelle Obama is talking intently to people in the audience and Cindy McCain did not do that, which was odd.

Note - there could have been moments when Cindy McCain did that just did not read. But, the Obama's appear to be staying longer, while the McCains appear to have left.

That's odd to me.

In the end, there was no clear winner to me.

I will say though, that McCain needs better schtick on the war in Iraq because people ain't buying what he's been a sellin'

[Richard B]

sarcastic with my 2 million amount in Oklahoma, Everyone wants to be 'Injun' to get the medical coverage these days (Which shows how much faith us 'half-breeds' have in the US govt. - Ya know, the same one that stoled our lands :rolleyes: )

Got it! If I remember correctly, I believe you're Native American and have spoken for their causes before, so just respecting that.

[Mad4stevie]

I was interested in that line by Biden.

Clearly, Cheney's expansion of the VP slot is not contained in the US Constitution as Palin, in further confirmation of her inane mind, asserted.

But, Biden's assertion was not in the Const. either.

All the Const. really talks about is the VP becoming President should the President become unable to serve and acting as the presiding officer of the U.S. Senate.

So, while they are both wrong, Palin's view is more against the Const. because it seeks to expand exact lang. Nothing in the Const. speaks to the VP being in the room with the Pres. Personally, I think Biden said it as way of reassuring people that he would lend his vast experience to the neophyte Obama.

As an aside, I would have LOVED to have seen Hillary debate Palin. It would be like watching a biker chick go after a blond haired, mindless, Tri Delt :laugh:

Yeah. I had to back up the Tivo when Biden said the VP role in the Executive Branch was located in Article I to make sure I heard that right. :laugh: Lord, the man doesn't even know where his job description is located! :laugh::laugh:

Oh a Hillary v. Palin would be an unbelieveable situation to watch. Pay-per-view, anyone???

[strandinthewind]

Both of these guys are frightening. I'm not sure I want to be responsible for putting either in office. Obama has quite the stutter.

I agree - that is why I earlier equated voting for Obama to pissing on a spark plug to get the R's out of office, which is my goal no matter how repugnant the D candidate is.

[estranged4life]

^^^
Yep. Me big pale-faced honky-assed Irish/Cherokee...Me not drink 'em fire - water that pale faced soldiers bring 'em.

How!!!

[Richard B]

1. It seemed like Cindy McCain totally snubbed Michelle Obama when they walked past each other.

2. Michelle Obama is talking intently to people in the audience and Cindy McCain did not do that, which was odd.

I saw Cindy shaking hands with people, but probably doesn't have much to say. hehe

I also think think for supposedly undecided voters, there were quite a few Dems in the house! Did you see that camera shot of Obama yaking it up, as a Leo will do, and the guy on his left was glaring at him, with his arms crossed. And I do mean glaring. LOL.

[Richard B]

^^^
Yep. Me big pale-faced honky-assed Irish/Cherokee...Me not drink 'em fire - water that pale faced soldiers bring 'em.

How!!!

ROFL


_____________________

[estranged4life]

Oh a Hillary v. Palin would be an unbelieveable situation to watch. Pay-per-view, anyone???

if we're talking "Steel cage", "Hell in a Cell", "Texas tornado match", "Falls count anywhere"...

[Richard B]

I agree - that is why I earlier equated voting for Obama to pissing on a spark plug to get the R's out of office, which is my goal no matter how repugnant the D candidate is.

I hear ya! There is a good chance of it without my help though. I think 8 years for any Dem or Rep is long enough.

Let's give at least 4 years to a fresh perspective. If he sucks, well, back to Rep.

[Mad4stevie]

In the end, there was no clear winner to me.

I will say though, that McCain needs better schtick on the war in Iraq because people ain't buying what he's been a sellin'

Agree. Totally.

[strandinthewind]

Yeah. I had to back up the Tivo when Biden said the VP role in the Executive Branch was located in Article I to make sure I heard that right. :laugh: Lord, the man doesn't even know where his job description is located! :laugh::laugh:

I know -- but, to be fair, I can assure you neither did Palin :laugh:

Oh a Hillary v. Palin would be an unbelieveable situation to watch. Pay-per-view, anyone???

I might have been like Sherri Shepherd getting her black bit*h on Elisabeth Hasselback today on The View -- at about 6:00


<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_pSsxCHtiCQ&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_pSsxCHtiCQ&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Elisabeth routinely looks like an idiot on that show and she still has Hannity's brown on her nose :eek: I mean she says something and everyone says it is untrue and she, a la Hannity, just keeps saying it :rolleyes: I truly wonder if she gets compensation from the RNC or Fox. (which are the same in my mind :cool: )

[strandinthewind]

I saw Cindy shaking hands with people, but probably doesn't have much to say. hehe

I would hae loved it if she had handed some random black person he coat to hold :eek:

Just joking - but she seemed aloof and they were out of there fast.

I also think think for supposedly undecided voters, there were quite a few Dems in the house! Did you see that camera shot of Obama yaking it up, as a Leo will do, and the guy on his left was glaring at him, with his arms crossed. And I do mean glaring. LOL.

Obama ain't missing a photo op -- I am rather surprised he did not have someone hand him a baby :laugh:

And - the glaring guy was something to see :eek: :laugh:

[estranged4life]

Couldnt resist this...

My love, Baseball combined with politics - Brought to you by Upper Deck:

http://sports.upperdeck.com/baseball/presidentialpredictor/

Obama is a White Sox fan...NO!!!!

McCain in a Cubs jersey...NO!!!


I taste the vile in my mouth now...BARFFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

[ajmccarrell]

I had pretty darn low expectations for McCain and I thought he would look really angry and lash out a lot at Obama. I was quite surprised. I think he handily won the debate. He engaged people right off the bat. Obama looked lost at first. He was so used to preaching at people that he didn't get off his stool for the first quarter of it anyway. McCain was right there in the audience and looking people in the eye. Obama seemed distant for the most part, like he was waiting for a large crowd to show up and like he didn't know what to do with himself. He seemed to get more comfortable as he went on. I am so used to Republicans being polite and I was cheering on my couch any time McCain called Obama on the carpet for something. He didn't resort to bringing up Bill Ayers or anything and was able to just use Obama against Obama without having to ditch into the gutter. I thought he took on Obama directly, yet basically politely. He sounded more inspirational, which is something McCain doesn't usually do. I won't be surprised if he doesn't end up tying out with Obama again after the polling rolls in after a few days.

[strandinthewind]

Well, the flash polls are in from CNN

Obama readily wins the major ones, including, quite suprisingly, the ability to lead, by like 20 points :eek:

This means Obama is getting the D's, the I's, and the R's to get those numbers.

McCain needed to hit this one out of the ball park. He did not do that.

Interstingly, I was outside a minute ago, and these 20 somethings were all joking about how McCain looked like their grandfather which they clearly associated with being out of touch. I must admit, the contrast of Obama's fresh face juxtapositioned with McCain's face reminded be of the Bush I - Clinton debates in the early 90's.

I mean 28% to like 67% likeable to Obama's favor.

McCain must do something drastic or he will lose and bad.

On edit - here is the fact check site

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/category/fact-check/

most damning is to McCain:
Fact Check: Did McCain intervene on behalf of Charles Keating?
Posted: 06:01 PM ET

Monday the Obama campaigned rolled out a Web site and online documentary about Sen. McCain and Charles Keating.
The Statement: The campaign for Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama on Monday, Oct. 6, unveiled a Web site noting that Republican opponent Sen. John McCain played a key role in the Senate's "Keating Five" scandal of the 1980s. "McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry — actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers," the site says.

Get the facts!


The Facts: Keating was sentenced to prison and required to pay more than $1 billion in civil penalties after being convicted on fraud, racketeering and conspiracy charges centered around his running of Lincoln Savings and Loan, which he bought in 1984. On April 14, 1989, Lincoln was seized by the government at an eventual taxpayer cost of $3.4 billion, then the most expensive thrift bailout in history. Lincoln and Keating became national symbols of the savings-and-loans collapse of the '80s — much as lending firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have symbolized the current financial meltdown.

McCain had been friends with Keating since the early '80s — their families vacationed together several times, according to previous CNN reporting. Keating was an early financial supporter of McCain's political career and donated to his campaigns repeatedly over the years. Keating's first company, American Continental, was headquartered in Arizona, the state McCain represents. McCain became one of the so-called "Keating Five" — five U.S. senators investigated over accusations they tried to interfere in a federal investigation of Keating's role in the savings-and-loan's collapse.

In January 1985, while in the U.S. House, McCain co-sponsored a resolution that would have delayed the effective date of proposed government limits "on direct investment in real estate, service corporations, and equity securities by federally insured savings and loan associations." He was one of the early sponsors, although a majority of Congress eventually signed on to sponsor it. The legislation would have impacted Keating's business, but would have regulated the entire industry, not specifically Lincoln Savings and Loan.

McCain also wrote several letters to government regulators and other officials regarding the issue. One, dated Jan. 30, 1985, to White House chief of staff James Baker, called the proposed regulations "unwise," saying the effort "flys (sic) in the face of our recent efforts to remove the hand of government from the affairs of private enterprise."

On April 9, 1987, McCain and the other senators attended a meeting with federal regulators investigating Keating. McCain has since said he regrets doing so. "He asked me to help him," he said during an October 2002 interview with Chicago's WGN-AM radio station. "I said I wouldn't do certain things. He called me a wimp. I threw him out of my office, but I still went to a meeting with four other senators with a group of regulators."

McCain testified that he never asked for anything inappropriate during the meeting, and the Senate ethics committee found that, after regulators said the firm was being investigated not just for insolvency, but on criminal grounds, McCain took no further action on Keating's behalf. In the end, the committee recommended McCain and Sen. John Glenn be dropped from the probe — although McCain was rebuked by the Senate for using "poor judgment" in his relationship with the millionaire banker.

The Verdict: True. McCain did push to delay regulations that would have cracked down on savings-and-loans practices and intervened on Keating's behalf, although he was cleared of wrongdoing in the "Keating Five" case.

[ajmccarrell]

Well, the flash polls are in from CNN

Obama readily wins the major ones, including, quite suprisingly, the ability to lead, by like 20 points :eek:

This means Obama is getting the D's, the I's, and the R's to get those numbers.

McCain needed to hit this one out of the ball park. He did not do that.

Interstingly, I was outside a minute ago, and these 20 somethings were all joking about how McCain looked like their grandfather which they clearly associated with being out of touch. I must admit, the contrast of Obama's fresh face juxtapositioned with McCain's face reminded be of the Bush I - Clinton debates in the early 90's.

I mean 28% to like 67% likeable to Obama's favor.

McCain must do something drastic or he will lose and bad.

On edit - here is the fact check site

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/category/fact-check/

most damning is to McCain:
Fact Check: Did McCain intervene on behalf of Charles Keating?
Posted: 06:01 PM ET

Monday the Obama campaigned rolled out a Web site and online documentary about Sen. McCain and Charles Keating.
The Statement: The campaign for Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama on Monday, Oct. 6, unveiled a Web site noting that Republican opponent Sen. John McCain played a key role in the Senate's "Keating Five" scandal of the 1980s. "McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry — actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers," the site says.

Get the facts!


The Facts: Keating was sentenced to prison and required to pay more than $1 billion in civil penalties after being convicted on fraud, racketeering and conspiracy charges centered around his running of Lincoln Savings and Loan, which he bought in 1984. On April 14, 1989, Lincoln was seized by the government at an eventual taxpayer cost of $3.4 billion, then the most expensive thrift bailout in history. Lincoln and Keating became national symbols of the savings-and-loans collapse of the '80s — much as lending firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have symbolized the current financial meltdown.

McCain had been friends with Keating since the early '80s — their families vacationed together several times, according to previous CNN reporting. Keating was an early financial supporter of McCain's political career and donated to his campaigns repeatedly over the years. Keating's first company, American Continental, was headquartered in Arizona, the state McCain represents. McCain became one of the so-called "Keating Five" — five U.S. senators investigated over accusations they tried to interfere in a federal investigation of Keating's role in the savings-and-loan's collapse.

In January 1985, while in the U.S. House, McCain co-sponsored a resolution that would have delayed the effective date of proposed government limits "on direct investment in real estate, service corporations, and equity securities by federally insured savings and loan associations." He was one of the early sponsors, although a majority of Congress eventually signed on to sponsor it. The legislation would have impacted Keating's business, but would have regulated the entire industry, not specifically Lincoln Savings and Loan.

McCain also wrote several letters to government regulators and other officials regarding the issue. One, dated Jan. 30, 1985, to White House chief of staff James Baker, called the proposed regulations "unwise," saying the effort "flys (sic) in the face of our recent efforts to remove the hand of government from the affairs of private enterprise."

On April 9, 1987, McCain and the other senators attended a meeting with federal regulators investigating Keating. McCain has since said he regrets doing so. "He asked me to help him," he said during an October 2002 interview with Chicago's WGN-AM radio station. "I said I wouldn't do certain things. He called me a wimp. I threw him out of my office, but I still went to a meeting with four other senators with a group of regulators."

McCain testified that he never asked for anything inappropriate during the meeting, and the Senate ethics committee found that, after regulators said the firm was being investigated not just for insolvency, but on criminal grounds, McCain took no further action on Keating's behalf. In the end, the committee recommended McCain and Sen. John Glenn be dropped from the probe — although McCain was rebuked by the Senate for using "poor judgment" in his relationship with the millionaire banker.

The Verdict: True. McCain did push to delay regulations that would have cracked down on savings-and-loans practices and intervened on Keating's behalf, although he was cleared of wrongdoing in the "Keating Five" case.

All that does is say who CNN's audience is. I don't know a Republican who watches CNN, much less doesn't call it the "Communist News Network." If you flip to Fox, they have McCain winning by 81% last I saw. If you went to MSNBC, you might see 100% for Obama, as I doubt ANY conservative watches that station anymore. Basically, these polls are meaningless because they only poll the person who would be watching that station. CNN and MSNBC swing left, Fox swings right. So, we won't really know anything for a few days until the Rasmussen polls start rolling in with post debate data.

[strandinthewind]

Fact check: Obama, McCain twist records

By JIM KUHNHENN and CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writers

Republican John McCain expressed incredulity in the presidential debate Tuesday that Democrat Barack Obama would tip off the enemy by saying publicly that he'd attack al-Qaida in Pakistan under certain conditions. "Remarkable," McCain said during the presidential debate, meaning remarkably irresponsible.

Lost in his withering criticism: McCain took the same position as Obama, a year ago, when he said, "Sure. We have to," when asked if he'd go after Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Both candidates stretched facts, sometimes past the breaking point, as they addressed the financial crisis and misrepresented each other's position on health care during their second presidential debate.

One of the night's sharpest exchanges was over what should be done if the U.S. knew the whereabouts of bin Laden and his terrorists in sovereign Pakistan, and Pakistani officials were unable or unwilling to strike. Obama repeated that he'd attack across the border in that instance.

"Sen. Obama likes to talk loudly,' McCain said in response. "In fact, he said he wants to announce that he's going to attack Pakistan. Remarkable."

McCain went on: "I'm not going to telegraph my punches, which is what Sen. Obama did. And I'm going to act responsibly, as I have acted responsibly throughout my military career and throughout my career in the United States Senate."

In an October 2007 interview with Military Times, however, McCain's position was indistinguishable from Obama's.

Asked if "you'd go get him" if U.S. forces had a fix on bin Laden in Pakistan, McCain said: "Sure. Sure. We have to, and I'm sure that after the initial flurry, that whoever our friends are, wherever he is, would be relieved because, as I mentioned to you before, he's still very effective in the world, very, very effective."

McCain broadened that threat to say he'd target the Taliban operating in Pakistan, too: "I think that if we knew of al-Qaida — more specifically Taliban, it's mainly Taliban that are operating in these places — that we have to do what's necessary. We don't have to advertise it. We don't have to embarrass or humiliate the Pakistani government."

Also in the debate:

OBAMA: Said McCain's proposal to give people a tax credit in exchange for treating employers' health insurance contributions as taxable wages amounts to "what one hand giveth, the other hand taketh away."

THE FACTS: Obama's suggestion that McCain's health care plan is a wash for families is misleading. McCain offers families a $5,000 tax credit to help them buy health insurance. The corresponding increase in taxable wages would result in a much smaller cost than the value of the tax credit, at least at first. Over time, the value of the tax credit may diminish as premiums rise. However, the Tax Policy Center estimates that McCain's plan would increase the federal deficit by $1.3 trillion over 10 years — mainly because it would lead to less tax revenue coming in, meaning it is a true tax break overall.

___

McCAIN: Said he would provide a $5,000 refundable tax credit for families to buy health insurance "rather than mandates or fines for small businesses as Sen. Obama's plan calls for."

THE FACTS: Obama's health care plan does not impose mandates or fines on small business. He would provide small businesses with a refundable tax credit of up to 50 percent on health premiums paid on behalf of their employees. Also, large employers that do not offer meaningful coverage or contribute to the cost of coverage would be required to pay a percentage of payroll toward the costs of a public insurance plan. But small businesses would be exempt from that requirement.

___

OBAMA: "Actually I'm cutting more than I'm spending so that it will be a net spending cut."

THE FACTS: Obama has many ambitious plans to spend more taxpayer dollars on a variety of federal programs, including clean energy technologies and job training. He's said he'll cut pork-barrel programs and the costs of the war in Iraq to pay for it — as well as raise taxes on the wealthy — but the specifics of his new spending plans greatly outweigh the few spending cuts he's identified.

___

McCAIN: Said one way out of the financial crisis is to "stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us."

THE FACTS: Although he didn't spell it out, he was referring — as he has in the past — to purchases of oil from countries hostile to the U.S. The figure is inflated and misleading. The U.S. is not spending nearly that much on oil imports and roughly one-third of what it does spend goes to friendly countries such as Canada, Mexico and Britain.

___

OBAMA: Blamed some of the problem of terrorism in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region on Bush administration policy in Pakistan, saying "We can't coddle, as we did, a dictator, give him billions of dollars and then he's making peace treaties with the Taliban and militants."

THE FACTS: Obama oversimplifies ex-President Pervez Musharraf's approach to making peace deals. In fact, the U.S.-backed Musharraf focused more heavily on military action, launching blistering attacks on the militants at times and negotiating peace deals with them at others. Obama also ignores the fact that Pakistan's newly elected civilian government, also U.S.-supported, is seeking the same kind of peace deals and has stepped back from heavy-handed tactics that were pursued by the Musharraf government.

___

McCAIN: Said Obama had voted for tax increases "94 times."

THE FACTS: This inflated count, heard before, includes repetitive votes as well as votes to cut taxes for the middle class while raising them on the rich. An analysis by factcheck.org found that 23 of the votes were for measures that would have produced no tax increase at all, seven were in favor of measures that would have lowered taxes for many, 11 would have increased taxes on only those making more than $1 million a year.

___

OBAMA: "I believe this is a final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years, strongly promoted by President Bush and supported by Sen. McCain, that essentially said that we should strip away regulations, consumer protections, let the market run wild, and prosperity would rain down on all of us."

THE FACTS: McCain has indeed favored less regulation over the years but supported tighter rules and accountability on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years before the start of a financial crisis prompted in part by those giant mortgage underwriters. Obama was not a leader in that unsuccessful effort. Some of the current problems can be traced to legislation passed in 1999 that lifted many regulations over the financial industry. That deregulation was championed by then-Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, a McCain supporter, but also by President Clinton, who signed the legislation, and by former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, now a top Obama economic adviser.

___

MCAIN: "Oil drilling offshore now is vital so we can bridge the gap between imported oil ... and it will reduce the price of a barrel of oil. ... We've got to drill offshore and do it now."

THE FACTS: The government estimates that opening the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and eastern Gulf of Mexico to drilling "will not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030." Even then, it would only increase domestic oil production by 3 percent.

___

Associated Press writers Tom Raum, Andrew Taylor, Kevin Freking, Anne Gearan, H. Josef Hebert and Christopher Wills contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081008/ap_on_el_pr/debate_fact_check

[BombaySapphire3]

McCain looks like he ate too much at the buffet - his coat is too tight and his tie is hanging below his scrotal sac, which, at his age . . . . :laugh:

Speaking of age, he appears to be breathing in an eratic manner at times.

Obama is giving his same ole same ole.

Many assume I am so pro Obama. I am not. I think he is a bad choice for the D's and I do not really like him. But, I'll take him over four more years of W, which is exactly was McCain is selling no matter what he or anyone else says.

Naturally I disagree with you as I always have about Obama..I still think he was our best choice.And to yourself and others that scoffed at me and underestimated when I first mentioned this a couple years back and said he was unelectable etc . look where he is now.You left out another reason why you are voting for Obama..in this last debate McCain truly looked like he had one foot in the grave and another on a bananna peel .If by some slim chance he does win you know what that would mean.

[ajmccarrell]

Thought this was funny....

[ajmccarrell]

Some of the pre-debate polls are coming out, which the RCP average for Obama is up 4.7. Several polls are within the margin of error again. So, the race started to tighten up again before the debate, so we may see a complete tie again before the next debate. Quite strange! :confused:

[Musicman408]

Some of the pre-debate polls are coming out, which the RCP average for Obama is up 4.7. Several polls are within the margin of error again. So, the race started to tighten up again before the debate, so we may see a complete tie again before the next debate. Quite strange! :confused:

If you look at CNN's national poll of polls, which averages a whole bunch, I'm thinking 8 national polls, shows Obama up by 7 or 8, and that is pre debate.

On the electoral side, there is no way McCain can win if Obama wins either Ohio of Florida.....Obama is up handily in both. :nod:

[GoS]

All that does is say who CNN's audience is. I don't know a Republican who watches CNN, much less doesn't call it the "Communist News Network." If you flip to Fox, they have McCain winning by 81% last I saw. If you went to MSNBC, you might see 100% for Obama, as I doubt ANY conservative watches that station anymore. Basically, these polls are meaningless because they only poll the person who would be watching that station. CNN and MSNBC swing left, Fox swings right. So, we won't really know anything for a few days until the Rasmussen polls start rolling in with post debate data.


Think that you are overstating the CNN thing there. I have had many debates and haven't heard that term before. In fact, we, both Republicans and Democrats, generally accept anything from CNN above Fixed Noise or MSNBC.

[GoS]

Since this has been made a sticky, I assume I should post this here.

On the subject of Obama and Ayers, CNN fact checker says:

Fact Check: Is Obama 'palling around with terrorists'?
Posted: 09:00 AM ET

The Statement: Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin said Saturday, October 4, that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is "someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Watch: Is Obama a terrorist's pal?

Get the facts!


The Facts: In making the charge at a fund-raising event in Englewood, Colorado, and a rally in Carson, California, Palin was referring at least in part to William Ayers, a 1960s radical. In both appearances, Palin cited a front-page article in Saturday's New York Times detailing the working relationship between Obama and Ayers.

In the 1960s, Ayers was a founding member of the radical Weather Underground group that carried out a string of bombings of federal buildings, including the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, in protest against the Vietnam War. The now-defunct group was labeled a "domestic terrorist group" by the FBI, and Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn — also a Weather Underground member — spent 10 years as fugitives in the 1970s. Federal charges against them were dropped due to FBI misconduct in gathering evidence against them, and they resurfaced in 1980. Both Ayers and Dohrn ultimately became university professors in Chicago, with Ayers, 63, now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Obama's Chicago home is in the same neighborhood where Ayers and Dohrn live. Beginning in 1995, Ayers and Obama worked with the non-profit Chicago Annenberg Challenge on a huge school improvement project. The Annenberg Challenge was for cities to compete for $50 million grants to improve public education. Ayers fought to bring the grant to Chicago, and Obama was recruited onto the board. Also from 1999 through 2001 both were board members on the Woods Fund, a charitable foundation that gave money to various causes, including the Trinity United Church that Obama attended and Northwestern University Law Schools' Children and Family Justice Center, where Dohrn worked.

CNN's review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told CNN that after meeting Obama through the Annenberg project, Ayers hosted a campaign event for him that same year when then-Illinois state Sen. Alice Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced the young community organizer as her chosen successor. LaBolt also said the two have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Obama came to the U.S. Senate in 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they encountered each other on the street in their Hyde Park neighborhood.

The extent of Obama's relationship with Ayers came up during the Democratic presidential primaries earlier this year, and Obama explained it by saying, "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood … the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago — when I was 8 years old — somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense."

The McCain campaign did not respond Saturday to a request for elaboration on Palin's use of the plural "terrorists."

Verdict: False. There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now "palling around," or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.

[ajmccarrell]

Since this has been made a sticky, I assume I should post this here.

On the subject of Obama and Ayers, CNN fact checker says:

Fact Check: Is Obama 'palling around with terrorists'?
Posted: 09:00 AM ET

The Statement: Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin said Saturday, October 4, that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is "someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Watch: Is Obama a terrorist's pal?

Get the facts!


The Facts: In making the charge at a fund-raising event in Englewood, Colorado, and a rally in Carson, California, Palin was referring at least in part to William Ayers, a 1960s radical. In both appearances, Palin cited a front-page article in Saturday's New York Times detailing the working relationship between Obama and Ayers.

In the 1960s, Ayers was a founding member of the radical Weather Underground group that carried out a string of bombings of federal buildings, including the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, in protest against the Vietnam War. The now-defunct group was labeled a "domestic terrorist group" by the FBI, and Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn — also a Weather Underground member — spent 10 years as fugitives in the 1970s. Federal charges against them were dropped due to FBI misconduct in gathering evidence against them, and they resurfaced in 1980. Both Ayers and Dohrn ultimately became university professors in Chicago, with Ayers, 63, now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Obama's Chicago home is in the same neighborhood where Ayers and Dohrn live. Beginning in 1995, Ayers and Obama worked with the non-profit Chicago Annenberg Challenge on a huge school improvement project. The Annenberg Challenge was for cities to compete for $50 million grants to improve public education. Ayers fought to bring the grant to Chicago, and Obama was recruited onto the board. Also from 1999 through 2001 both were board members on the Woods Fund, a charitable foundation that gave money to various causes, including the Trinity United Church that Obama attended and Northwestern University Law Schools' Children and Family Justice Center, where Dohrn worked.

CNN's review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told CNN that after meeting Obama through the Annenberg project, Ayers hosted a campaign event for him that same year when then-Illinois state Sen. Alice Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced the young community organizer as her chosen successor. LaBolt also said the two have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Obama came to the U.S. Senate in 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they encountered each other on the street in their Hyde Park neighborhood.

The extent of Obama's relationship with Ayers came up during the Democratic presidential primaries earlier this year, and Obama explained it by saying, "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood … the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago — when I was 8 years old — somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense."

The McCain campaign did not respond Saturday to a request for elaboration on Palin's use of the plural "terrorists."

Verdict: False. There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now "palling around," or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.

The verdict can only be false if Ayers is not a terrorist. If he underwent some sort of magical conversion somehow, as someone like Mandella did, I may agree. However, he has made statements in the last few years stating that he wished he had done more. Secondly, he was not ever acquitted, the wiretaps were thrown out. So, it depends on if you follow the adage "once a terrorist, always a terrorist". I do, and I think a lot of people if they knew exactly what this guy was responsible for would also agree.

"Palling around" is definately an overstatement. However, Obama has not been honest about his associations. No one is alleging that Obama agreed with Ayers on anything. Ayers is totally unavoidable in Chicago politics, so I understand some association is inevitable. The problem I have is that he didn't try to minimize his contact, or clarify his association. The way he explains the relationship is as if they once drank in the same bar, whereas it was more than that. In the same situation with regards to his political coming out, I would have insisted that it not take place in Ayers home and I would have made some effort to distance myself from Ayers. It does not appear that Obama ever made the effort to distance himself from Ayers early on in his career. Given that Ayers attacked his own country, the appearance is that Obama sold his soul out to advance his career.

[ajmccarrell]

The Obama Ayers timeline:

1981-1983 William Ayers and Barack Obama meet at Columbia, introduced by Frank Marshall Davis

1987 William Ayers links up with Barack Obama in Chicago

1988 Ayers solicits Khalid Al-Mansour to raise money for Obama’s Harvard law School education

1989 Tom Ayers and William Ayers get Obama a summer job at Sidley & Austin (where he meets Michelle Obama); Ayers’ wife Bernadine Dohrn also worked at Sidley at about the same time as Barack and Michelle.

1993 Ayers places Obama on Woods Foundation

1995 Ayers makes Obama Chairman of Annenberg Challenge

1995 Ayers hosts a coffee klatch for Obama’s political debut (Obama falsely claims this is when he met Ayers)

2007-2008 The structure of Obama’s presidential campaign increasingly comes to resemble an Ayers-designed national “community organizer matrix” straight out of Maoist theory. This is not merely a presidential “campaign.” Obama’s organization is the first installment of an ongoing movement being paid for with tax-exempt contributions to his campaign, approaching half a billion dollars.

2008 Obama In response to ABC News, Obama tells a national TV audience he was “six years old” when Ayers bombed federal buildings, and they are only casual neighborhood acquaintances. A lie.

[GoS]

The Obama Ayers timeline:

1981-1983 William Ayers and Barack Obama meet at Columbia, introduced by Frank Marshall Davis

1987 William Ayers links up with Barack Obama in Chicago

1988 Ayers solicits Khalid Al-Mansour to raise money for Obama’s Harvard law School education

1989 Tom Ayers and William Ayers get Obama a summer job at Sidley & Austin (where he meets Michelle Obama); Ayers’ wife Bernadine Dohrn also worked at Sidley at about the same time as Barack and Michelle.

1993 Ayers places Obama on Woods Foundation

1995 Ayers makes Obama Chairman of Annenberg Challenge

1995 Ayers hosts a coffee klatch for Obama’s political debut (Obama falsely claims this is when he met Ayers)

2007-2008 The structure of Obama’s presidential campaign increasingly comes to resemble an Ayers-designed national “community organizer matrix” straight out of Maoist theory. This is not merely a presidential “campaign.” Obama’s organization is the first installment of an ongoing movement being paid for with tax-exempt contributions to his campaign, approaching half a billion dollars.

2008 Obama In response to ABC News, Obama tells a national TV audience he was “six years old” when Ayers bombed federal buildings, and they are only casual neighborhood acquaintances. A lie.

Okay, so Mr. Ayers realizes that Obama is a good person and tries to help him out. Ayers cannot be 100% psycho-crazy-terrorist, he is a distinguished profesor at a university. That means that he is trusted to teach kids, as well as respected. I think that if Obama made Ayers his campaign manager or something, than yes this would be and issue. Let me spell this out for you: There is no conspiracy! Obama is not a socialist/communist/Maoist/Marxist. Never has been, never will be.

[ashton]

When people provide numbered lists that are clearly talking points that they certainly didn't think of themselves, it would seem logical that they would identify the source of their canned response. Perhaps they know better, however and this would be the equivalent of asking Polly why she wants a cracker. Polly likely doesn't really know.

[AliceLover]

Michelle Obama spoke at my school today and she did a great job. I love the things I am hearing about the Obama campaign and I think I know which way ill be voting.

[GoS]

Michelle Obama spoke at my school today and she did a great job. I love the things I am hearing about the Obama campaign and I think I know which way ill be voting.

LUCKY! She came and spoke at your school? That's awesome! I would love to get to see her speak, especially at my school. What was it like?

In the spring, we contacted the Clinton and Obama campaigns to see if they wanted to have anything to do with us. We were doing a big unit on energy and basically came up with energy plans for a city or the country, the competition was in full swing, and our (PA) primaries were very close, so we thought they might like to do something. The Clinton campaign paid no attention to us, but we had several contacts inside the Obama campaign and almost got something. He was planning his big trip in our area and we almost got him to add our school, but it ended up falling through. There was a positive, though, they gave us three tickets to the rally where Obama got endorsed by Bob Casey!

[GoS]

On a separate note, I have an idea.

Since the economy, politicians, politics in general, TV, movies, music, modern literature, and the environment are going down the tubes, why don't we take major action. To save all of these things, I propose that we suspend the constitution (even the Bill of Rights), the elections, the democratic government, basically all laws and regulations (including Habeas Corpus and the Geneva Convention) and replace it with a monarch. This person would re-write all of the laws and stuff and have complete control (think 1984). Then, he would tell us what to watch (and whether or not to enjoy it), who to vote for, what is right, where/when to spend our money and how much, who could write and who can't, who is guilty and innocent (so we wouldn't have to worry about OJ, take 2), if global warming is real or not, what cars to by, where to work, etc., etc., etc. Wouldn't that just be amazing?

Just an idea.

Or, for a challenge, why don't we try to think of something that isn't going down the tubes. All I've got is LB's solo career.

[ajmccarrell]

Okay, so Mr. Ayers realizes that Obama is a good person and tries to help him out. Ayers cannot be 100% psycho-crazy-terrorist, he is a distinguished profesor at a university. That means that he is trusted to teach kids, as well as respected. I think that if Obama made Ayers his campaign manager or something, than yes this would be and issue. Let me spell this out for you: There is no conspiracy! Obama is not a socialist/communist/Maoist/Marxist. Never has been, never will be.

I'm not suggesting a conspiracy. Obama is just dishonest about his relationship with Ayers, period. Did you look at the educational program that Obama gave Ayers $50,000,000.00 for? You might change your mind on what Obama's philosophy is. I do agree that he's not a socialist, communist, maoist, or marxist, he is a classic fascist. A fascist is someone who uses the government to establish populist equality. That is Obama pure and simple.

[ajmccarrell]

When people provide numbered lists that are clearly talking points that they certainly didn't think of themselves, it would seem logical that they would identify the source of their canned response. Perhaps they know better, however and this would be the equivalent of asking Polly why she wants a cracker. Polly likely doesn't really know.

Uh, actually I did post that myself. I gleaned the information from several articles and summarized it.

[ashton]

Uh, actually I did post that myself. I gleaned the information from several articles and summarized it.

Uh, that would be a complete lie. A simple google shows your summary on numerous sites. Miraculously, they all use the exact same words.

Thank you for today's stolen thoughts.

[strandinthewind]

His point in this opt ed is THE point that "that one" (I mean really - why not just sing "BLACK MAN BLACK MAN, where have you gone to a la

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nrYCrdJyaDg&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nrYCrdJyaDg&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

:rolleyes: ) ought to make.

Commentary: Why Ayers case is risky for McCain-Palin

By Roland Martin

CNN Contributor

Editor's Note: A nationally syndicated columnist and Chicago-based radio host, Roland Martin has said he will vote for Barack Obama in November. He is the author of "Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith" and "Speak, Brother! A Black Man's View of America." Visit his Web site for more information.

(CNN) -- During the Democratic primaries, I wrote a column for CNN.com about how easy it is for any candidate to tar and feather another about their associations with less-than-acceptable figures.

Sen. Hillary Clinton tried to blast Sen. Barack Obama for unsolicited comments made by Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, and folks like Fox News' Sean Hannity were happy to run with it, saying it was evidence that the junior senator from Illinois was unfit to be president.

But critics like Hannity never bothered to raise the issue of former Republican vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp praising Farrakhan for his focus on self-help. Not only that, nearly everyone in the media was afraid to bring up the fact that Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell had high praise for Farrakhan when Rendell was mayor of Philadelphia, even as the Muslim leader sat just 20 feet away!

Again, blasting one person's associations can come back to bite you.

We now see Gov. Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign trying to stir the pot by invoking William Ayers, a 1960s radical who was a major figure in the Weather Underground, a group that bombed the Pentagon and committed other unspeakable acts of terrorism against their own country.

Palin has been hammering home the point on the campaign trail that Obama and Ayers were friends, "palling around" the Windy City, even though the Weather Underground committed these crimes when Obama was just a child. And never mind the fact that Ayers and Obama were involved in a multimillion-dollar education grant that was funded by a right-wing Republican, media magnate Walter Annenberg. Do you hear any of them castigating this late Republican pillar?

The McCain camp, along with their right-wing media comrades, want to convince you that Obama should not have decided to serve with Ayers, who was named the Citizen of the Year in Chicago in 1987 for his education work, and who is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Now, if someone was seen as an acceptable figure by business, political and education figures, many of whom support both Democrats and Republicans, should Obama be faulted for sitting on a board with the guy?

So, let's use that same logic and apply it to McCain.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., a Democrat from Chicago who serves as one of the national co-chairs for Obama, told me on The Tom Joyner Morning Show that if we are to use the association tag as evidence of a candidate being unfit for president, what about McCain serving and working alongside people with virulent bigoted pasts like Sens. Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd?

Do we have evidence that these individuals committed specific acts against African-Americans during Jim Crow? No. But we do know that their hateful words, and willingness to uphold laws that were absolutely anti-American, did not represent the best of this nation.

Thurmond ran for president as a Dixiecrat in 1948 with a platform of maintaining segregation. Based on Helms' policies, he didn't see blacks as full Americans.

Bombing the Pentagon is horrible and indefensible. But declaring yourself a patriot while you speak such hateful and venomous words against your own countrymen, who just happen to be black, and then trying to oppress them, is just as indefensible.

So, did McCain work with them? Did he not speak with them? Should McCain have declared that he would not work alongside these men because of their past? Should the self-described maverick who believes in integrity and character have taken the honorable stance of resigning from the Senate to protest these hateful characters serving in the U.S. Senate?

No. And this is why this association argument is so weak and impotent.

For goodness' sakes, Byrd was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan, a domestic terrorist organization!

Now, if Ayers was involved in these despicable acts today -- or Byrd and his late Senate colleagues -- then it is fair game.

But no candidate should have to be held responsible for the actions of someone else that took place years ago.

I fundamentally believe that this is nothing but a smokescreen and effort to ignore the real issues we face. Nobody should care about any of this when they are losing their jobs and having their homes foreclosed and finding themselves unable to afford to send their kids to college and to get access to health care.

What I find to be more deplorable is to hear McCain advisers say they want to turn the page to anything but the issue number one -- the economy.

If that kind of talk is coming from the camp of a guy who wants to be president, then that is something to be afraid of -- not a candidate's association with Ayers, or Thurmond, Helms or Byrd.

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

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/07/martin.townhall/index.html?iref=newssearch

[strandinthewind]

. . . And to yourself and others that scoffed at me and underestimated when I first mentioned this a couple years back and said he was unelectable etc . look where he is now.You left out another reason why you are voting for Obama..in this last debate McCain truly looked like he had one foot in the grave and another on a bananna peel .If by some slim chance he does win you know what that would mean.

I never scoffed :p

But, had the exoomy not chosen this exact time to tank, Obama would not be in the significant lead he has now. So, there was a little luck involced and it likely would have gone to Hillary as well. Also, if Hillary had gotten the nomination, McCain almost certainly would not have chosen Palin, who was chosen for her "ability: to attract some women pissed off at Hillary not getting the nomination.

[ajmccarrell]

I never scoffed :p

But, had the exoomy not chosen this exact time to tank, Obama would not be in the significant lead he has now. So, there was a little luck involced and it likely would have gone to Hillary as well. Also, if Hillary had gotten the nomination, McCain almost certainly would not have chosen Palin, who was chosen for her "ability: to attract some women pissed off at Hillary not getting the nomination.

The thing about Obama is that he's never been elected on his own merits and because his opponent wasn't on the ballot. The first race he ran, he won because he got his opponent thrown off the ballot, the second time was because his opponent dropped out and was replaced by Alan "The Joke" Keyes, this time he's running against Bush, who is also not on the ballot.

Also, the "that one" remark isn't racist. It's kinda pathetic that people are calling it that. Clearly he meant candidate if you look at the previous sentence. But, if you want to pull out the over-used race card, keep doing it, it just makes Obama look like a whiner.

[GypsySorcerer]

It's obvious that the "That one" remark had racial overtones. I mean, the McCain campaign has been making thinly veiled references, but basically their message is "Do you want that black Muslim extremist as President?"

And did anyone notice how patronizing McCain was to the young black man who asked about Fannie and Freddie? "You've probably never heard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before." :rolleyes:

[vermicious knid]

As long as we're reading minds, it was obvious that when Barack Obama said "we've got to solve this problem short term", he was using the word "short" as a despicable slur against amputees. And when he said "You've got cross-border attacks against U.S. troops". the "cross" was meant as a meanspirited jab at crossdressers and all GLBT Americans. I mean, it was obvious.


:rolleyes: x infinity.

[strandinthewind]

It's obvious that the "That one" remark had racial overtones. I mean, the McCain campaign has been making thinly veiled references, but basically their message is "Do you want that black Muslim extremist as President?"

And did anyone notice how patronizing McCain was to the young black man who asked about Fannie and Freddie? "You've probably never heard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before." :rolleyes:

These campaigns are keen on innuendo - all of them. Every single black person I heard talking about the debate today and some white people took "that one" to be a racial jab. That is too much coicidence for me no matter the sentence stuture. Also, notice McCain said "that one" but then said "me" instead of "this one" to refer to himself, which would have been the consistent phrasing :shrug: At best, it should how culturally ignorant, out of touch and completely unaware McCain is. But, IMO, it was intentional and played into the hands of Palin, who is implying in no uncertain terms that Obama is a Black Muslim Extremist/Terrorist.

Here is the exchange - judge for yourselves (emphasis supplied) :

There was an energy bill on the floor of the Senate loaded down with goodies, billions for the oil companies. And it was sponsored by Bush and Cheney. You know who voted for it? You might never know. That one," McCain said, gesturing toward his rival. "You know who voted against it? Me.

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/GgVKTcXuqno&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/GgVKTcXuqno&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

"That one" might have worked if McCain had said "You know [which Senator] voted for it?" "that one" -- but he instead used the term "who," which does not really go with "that one" as evidenced by McCain's use of me in reference to himself instead of "this one" :shrug:

In the end, McCain's assertion or implication in tying Obama to W and Cheney was incorrect, to wit:

The Return of the Oil Slick

McCain recycled a misleading claim from Sen. Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign,
charging Obama with voting to give “billions” to oil companies:

McCain: By the way, my friends, I know you grow a little weary with this back-and-forth. It was an energy bill on the floor of the Senate loaded down with goodies, billions for the oil companies, and it was sponsored by Bush and Cheney. You know who voted for it? You might never know. That one. You know who voted against it? Me.

McCain is referring to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which Obama did in fact vote for. Clinton raised this same charge against Obama during the Democratic primaries. It was misleading then and it’s equally misleading now.

In fact, according to a Congressional Research Service report, more tax breaks were taken away from oil companies than were given. Overall, the act resulted in a small net tax increase on the oil industry:

Congressional Research Service: The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT05, P.L. 109-58) included several oil and gas tax incentives, providing about $2.6 billion of tax cuts for the oil and gas industry. In addition, EPACT05 provided for $2.9 billion of tax increases on the oil and gas industry, for a net tax increase on the industry of nearly $300 million over 11 years.

As we said last year, the bill did contain $14.3 billion in tax breaks, but most of those went to electric utilities, and nuclear, and also to alternative fuels research
and subsidies for energy-efficient cars, homes and buildings – not to the oil industry.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_debate_no_2.html



As for that kid, he was asking a question about the economy. I guess gramps thought that did not include Fannie and Freddie - at least Phil Gramm was paid another $100,000 to think that :rolleyes:

In the end, all people have had tangential bad associations in their lives. The minute someone throws that stone, the minute their own past will come to haunt them. Again, McCain and his family being completely in bed with Keating is far worse than Obama being on a board with Ayers, who committed no crime while on that board. McCain was very lucky to get the reprimand of "poor judgement" from the Senate and damn lucky the he paid up the reimbursement for the plane rides or the House would found him guilty, which he was. I mean he "suddenly" realized he should have paid for all that private air travel :rolleyes: