NO DEAL / PUMA in WASHINGTON STATE

Wall Street Takes Welfare It Begrudges to Women

2008-09-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

By Mimi Abramovitz
WeNews commentator

The bailout of Wall Street is particularly galling for women on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, says Mimi Abramovitz. They've already spent the past 30 years steadily losing ground without anyone seeming to notice or care.

Editor's Note: The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women's eNews.

(WOMENSENEWS)--Today we sit and watch as the high-rolling gamblers and critics of "big government" take welfare. These are many of the same people who thought it was just fine to deprive millions of women of critical resources and let them fend for themselves.

Even before the catastrophic news out of Wall Street in recent days, women have been worried about their economic security.

Last March a Gallup poll found that in the past two years more women than men said that they worry about the economy (64 percent versus 57 percent). The same holds for health care, crime, the environment, drug use, unemployment, hunger and homelessness.

More...

More men are employed by Wall Street and more men have money invested there. That means the male anxiety meter is probably much higher now that they risk losing their jobs, pensions, portfolios and homes. But women's worries have probably shot up even more.

Women are likely to lead in the economic-anxiety gap because distressing economic events fall harder on people with less. "I don't play the stock market, but it does affect us. It affects me personally. It affects the little guy," a female dispatch supervisor of a limo company that serves investment bank employees recently told the New York Times.

The same holds for all the secretaries and housekeepers who keep investment houses clean and running.

Decades of Lost Ground

But what makes the bailout of the fat tomcats so galling is that women at the bottom of the economic ladder have lost ground during the last 30 years, with very few seeming to notice or care.

From F.D.R.'s New Deal in the 1930s to L.B.J.'s Great Society in the 1970s, the expansion of government programs for the middle class and the poor--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, public assistance, as well as health and social services--provided a modest economic backup for women who predominate among recipients.

Great Depression leaders who saw government as the solution to that economic crisis bailed out banks in exchange for tighter regulations to curb speculation. But they also created cash-assistance programs that increased women's purchasing power and protected them against economic hardship.

Those programs redistributed income downward and expanded the capacity of the federal government to kick-start the economy while cushioning consumers and workers from the vagaries of the market.

Beginning with President Carter in the mid 1970s, our leaders changed their tune, blaming economic woes on "big government." Successive administrations relaxed the rules on financial markets and cut funding for the safety net.

Benefits Didn't Trickle Down

Advocates of "less government" promised that benefits would "trickle down" to the rest of us. Instead their laissez-faire strategy weakened government benefits, one of the three interlocking pillars of economic support counted on by thousands of women from all walks of life.

The Congressional Budget Office recently reported that government spending for domestic discretionary programs fell from a high of 4.8 percent of national output, or gross domestic product, in 1978 to 3.4 percent in 2007. That equals billions of dollars in cuts. Except for rising health care costs, spending on entitlement programs--such as Social Security, unemployment insurance and public assistance--also fell from 8.5 percent of the gross domestic product in 1983 to 7 percent in 2007.

During the past eight years, war spending zoomed ahead, bringing us to the present spectacle, where we see U.S. military spending exceeding that of the rest of the world combined.

Meanwhile, Bush tax policies diverted dollars from public services and boosted corporate profits to a record high of almost 14 percent of national income while the share going to wages dropped to its lowest level since 1929. Combined with relaxed government oversight and rampant speculation the way was paved for abusive mortgage practices that turned Wall Street into one big profit bubble waiting to pop.

With these excesses as a backdrop, women saw their other two pillars of economic security weaken as well: marriage to a wage-earner and paid employment.

Falling marriage rates combined with three decades of sagging male breadwinner wages have undercut the capacity of matrimony to provide women with the financial security it once offered.

Wobbling Wages and Work

From 1979 to 2006, the real value of the median weekly wage of men 25 years and older fell steadily to $797 from $807.

The massive entry of women into the work force since World War II--one of the most significant social trends in modern U.S. history--gave them a third pillar of support. But this too is now wobbling.

As male wages stagnated many women went to work--not as a matter of choice, as headlines about women opting in and out might suggest--but just to make ends meet. Between 1970 and 2005 the proportion of married couples with two earners jumped to 62 percent from about 46 percent, Labor Department data show. The U.S Women's Bureau finds wives' contribution to family income rose to 35 percent from 26 percent.

But many of today's 68 million wage-earning women have recently suffered more job losses than men and a larger drop in wages than the general population, according to the Women's Bureau. In 2006 full-time female workers earned an average of $627 week or about $32,000 a year.

While we watch the spectacle of the government channeling untold billions of taxpayer dollars into failing Wall Street giants the three pillars of economic support for women--the safety net, marriage and wages--continue to crumble.

The public bailout of corporate America may be necessary given the risks of a collapse to the global economy. But why is it that the rich and reckless accept "welfare" for themselves while steadfastly rejecting the same for women in need? It's time to take a billion here and there to assist the women raising families on too little income to keep a roof over their heads.

Mimi Abramovitz, the Bertha Capen Reynolds Professor of Social Policy at Hunter College School of Social Work, is the author of "Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Policy From Colonial Times to the Present," the award-winning "Under Attack, Fighting Back: Women and Welfare in the U.S." and co-author of "Taxes Are A Women's Issue: Reframing the Debate." She is currently writing "Gender Obligations: The History of Low-Income Women's Activism Since 1900."

Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org.

Economists Fear Bailout Could Tighten Squeeze on Women

2008-09-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

By Allison Stevens
hington Bureau Chief

As policymakers craft a Wall Street bailout, budget experts with women's policy groups worry about the fate of public programs and hail some Democratic provisions. Some activists and pundits, meanwhile, reiterate protests against the Iraq war.

WASHINGTON (WOMENSENEWS)--Congress is working at a fevered pitch to rush through a massive $700 billion emergency spending measure to bail out the ailing banking industry and protect the economy.

Lawmakers sparred Thursday over the broad outlines of the bill, and congressional leaders hoped an agreement could be reached in time to schedule a vote on final passage before the end of the weekend.

But women are headed for financial trouble whether the bill wins passage or not, women's rights advocates say.

"It's bad news all around for women," said Vicky Lovell, director of employment and work-life programs at the Institute for Women's Policy Research, a think tank in Washington, D.C., that focuses on women's economic issues. "I don't see anybody predicting that there's a way out of this that's going to be good for consumers or taxpayers in general, or for women."

More...

The proposed $700 billion bailout introduced by the administration amounts to about $150 billion more than has been spent to date on the war in Iraq, according to the National Priorities Project, a research organization in Northampton, Mass.

As lawmakers went back and forth over the details of the banking bailout bill, Joan Entmacher, a budget expert at the National Women's Law Center in Washington, D.C., took a dim view of the overall economic prospects for women.

Bleak Forecast

If the bill does not pass, and the economy worsens, women will suffer most because they have less wealth than men and are more vulnerable in economic downturns, she said.

If Congress does clear the bill, its high cost will put a fiscal squeeze on government programs that aid low-income people, most of whom are women, she said.

Under the plan debated Thursday, the federal government would assume $700 billion in bad debts of troubled financial firms to help them keep lending spigots open to individual and business borrowers. These measures are expected to help stem layoffs and deeper losses for retirement accounts tied to credit-hungry financial markets.

The high price of the package will have a similar--but potentially more profound--effect on the budget as the war in Iraq and the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, Entmacher said.

Those big-ticket items prompted lawmakers to rein in government health care programs, she said. More likely to live longer and to live in poverty, women--especially women of color--are the main beneficiaries of these programs, Entmacher said.

Women's rights advocates were hoping for the inclusion of two provisions advocated by Democrats earlier this week: helping certain borrowers avoid foreclosure and creating a federal fund to insure money market accounts.

"Because they've been disproportionately affected by predatory lending, this could be especially important to women," Entmacher said.

Despite using credit at rates comparable to men and averaging slightly higher on credit scores--682 versus 675--women have a disproportionate share of the high-priced "sub-prime" loans, putting them at higher risk of foreclosure, according to a 2006 report by Allen Fishbein, a scholar at the Consumer Federation of America, a think tank and lobby in Washington, D.C. About one-third of female borrowers took on sub-prime mortgages compared to about one-quarter of men.

Money Market Funds

A Democratic proposal circulated earlier this week also included an insurance plan for money market funds--low-risk, low-interest reservoirs of capital that invest in safe forms of debt. The plan would be modeled on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which was created in the wake of the Great Depression to insure bank deposits.

That would be especially helpful to women, said Lovell, of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, because women tend to have less personal savings and therefore are more inclined to invest in money market accounts, which have traditionally been viewed as safe havens. Several major money markets have collapsed during the crisis and fears that others could be at risk, however, have spurred the idea of federal insurance.

It was unclear Thursday if these provisions would end up in the final bill when a deal is reached.

Lovell also noted that Democrats' push to curb executive pay at the institutions that received federal aid--initially opposed by the White House and many Republicans as excessive regulation--would affect far fewer women because they hold fewer executive positions.

The guns-and-butter debate that typically emerges in wartime when another major cost arises has yet to rear its head in Congress.

But Leslie Wolfe, president of the Center for Women Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., a research group that focuses on women's human rights, predicted the onset of such discussions. So many people are "shell shocked" by the crisis that they haven't begun to discuss issues beyond the pending legislation in Congress, she said.

Anti-War Protests Revived

But female anti-war activists and pundits who have long criticized the Iraq war mobilized this week.

Code Pink, the anti-war group led by women and based in Venice, Calif., staged protests on Wall Street Thursday, calling on the government to pay for the bailout bill with new taxes on upper-income Americans and on financial transactions.

"They continue to find money for what they need, and borrow it, but they never find money for what the people of America need," said Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans.

"Welcome to Economic Shock and Awe," Ariana Huffington, founder of the online Huffington Post Web site wrote, comparing the rush to bailout to the Bush administration's rush to war. "Even the amount of taxpayer money being bandied about--$1 trillion--is similar. Think you got your money's worth for the Iraq war? Congratulations--you're about to buy another pricey debacle."

Linda Basch, president of the National Council for Research on Women in New York, said women are especially vulnerable during economic downturns because they are more likely to be unemployed than men; as a result they have less money and face longer periods without regular income. If they do have a job they tend to make less, have fewer benefits or have part-time positions, she said.

Women are also more likely to hold minimum wage jobs, to leave the work force to shoulder caregiving responsibilities, and earn less than men in similar jobs, advocates say. Women also save less money and have smaller pensions or retirement accounts.

"We have fewer assets and fewer savings than men and therefore we are very worried about personal financial security," said Debbie Frett, head of Business and Professional Women USA, a Washington-based lobby for businesswomen.

In the last two years, more than 200,000 women have left jobs in the financial sector of the economy, but the number of men employed in such jobs has remained stable, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor. That suggests to Lovell that the bulk of those laid off in the sector have been women.

Allison Stevens is Washington bureau chief at Women's eNews.

Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org.

Thousands Go Online to Rate the Debates

2008-09-26T15:24:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON -- Free Press and the Tyndall Report are teaming up to give thousands of Americans a chance to instantly rate the media's performance during the four upcoming debates. Using the "Citizens Media Scorecard," viewers across the country will provide real-time feedback on how well the moderators' questions reflect the priorities of the nation.

More...

More than 7,000 people have already signed up to participate at www.RatetheDebates.org.

Noted media analyst Andrew Tyndall will use the online ratings to provide instant and meaningful analysis of the public's response. This information will be made available to journalists following the completion of each of the four presidential and vice presidential debates.

"We leave it to the spin-meisters to try to persuade us whether their candidate got his nose in front in the horse race," said Tyndall. "Our scorecard is an exercise in democracy. Which issues were overhyped and which were overlooked? Which leadership attributes of each candidate were addressed and which ignored? How about moderator Jim Lehrer's journalistic performance? Did he truly help us understand what is at stake in this election?"

Recent polling by Harris Interactive found that the economy and the Iraq war are the two issues Americans are most concerned about. There was widespread public outcry after the final Democratic primary debate when moderators from ABC News devoted the first 45 minutes to questions about flag pins, former pastors and personalities before raising a single question about either of those two issues.

"Debates are marquee moments in American elections," said Timothy Karr, campaign director of Free Press. "The few journalists selected to participate -- and the media narrative that follows -- will play a defining role in determining our next president. It's up to the public to hold our media -- and through them, our leaders -- accountable."

Andrew Tyndall, Timothy Karr and other Free Press experts are available for comment before and after each debate. To schedule an appearance, contact Jen Howard at (703) 517-6273 or press@freepress.net.

For more information, visit www.RatetheDebates.org.

###

Free Press is a national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media. Through education, organizing and advocacy, we promote diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, and universal access to communications. Learn more at www.freepress.net

The Tyndall Report has monitored the weekday nightly newscasts of three broadcast networks since 1987. This is Andrew Tyndall's sixth cycle keeping tabs on TV news coverage of the presidential election campaigns. Go to www.tyndallreport.com to follow each day's story rundown and search its database of almost 9,000 network news videostreams, including more than 1100 stories appearing on the network news on Campaign 2008.

This blog was hit again

2008-09-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

I was unable to make any posts to this blog since Friday,September 19. Finally this morning I have been able to post to the blog. Unfortunately now, however, the blog has been categorized as a "spam blog", which I'm trying to remove. I can't help but wonder if this is related to the paid bloggers the Obama camp has hired, and the narrowing of the polls in Washington State.

McCain Campaign Blasts the New York Times - TOM BEVAN, Real Clear Politics

2008-09-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

On a conference call with reporters just now, McCain campaign senior advisor Steve Schmidt absolutely lit in to the New York Times. Schmidt made his remarks after Rick Davis answered a question from CNN's Dana Bash about today's story in the Times regarding his former work for the Homeownership Alliance, an advocacy group of 19 member organizations which include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Schmidt said:

But let's be clear and be honest with each other about something fundamental to this race, which is this: whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization. It is pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin, and excuses Senator Obama. There's no level of public vetting with regard to Senator Obama's record, his background, his past statements. There's no level of outrage directed at his deceitful ads. This is an organization that is completely, totally, 150% in the tank for the Democratic candidate, which is their prerogative to be. But let's not be dishonest and call it something other than what it is.
Everything that is read in the New York Times that attacks this campaign should be evaluated by the American people from that perspective: that it is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside its journalistic integrity and tradition to advocate for the defeat of one candidate - in this case John McCain - and to advocate for the election of the other candidate, Barack Obama.

UPDATE: Here's audio of the entire conference call.

Obama's Social Security Whopper - factcheck.org

2008-09-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

He tells Social Security recipients their money would now be in the stock market under McCain's plan. False.

Summary

In Daytona Beach, Obama said that "if my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would've had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week." He referred to "elderly women" at risk of poverty, and said families would be scrambling to support "grandmothers and grandfathers."

That's not true. The plan proposed by President Bush and supported by McCain in 2005 would not have allowed anyone born before 1950 to invest any part of their Social Security taxes in private accounts. All current retirees would be covered by the same benefits they are now.

Obama would have been correct to say that many workers under age 58 would have had some portion of their Social Security benefits affected by the current market turmoil – if they had chosen to participate. And market drops would be a worry for those who retire in future decades. But current retirees would not have been affected.

More...

Analysis

In our "Scaring Seniors" article posted Sept. 19 we took apart a claim in an Obama-Biden ad that McCain somehow supported a 50 percent cut in Social Security benefits, which is simply false. Then, on Saturday Sept. 20, Sen. Barack Obama personally fed senior citizens another whopper, this one a highly distorted claim about the private Social Security accounts that McCain supports.

What Obama Said

In Daytona Beach, Florida, Obama said in prepared remarks released by the campaign:

Obama, Sept. 20: And I'll protect Social Security, while John McCain wants to privatize it. Without Social Security half of elderly women would be living in poverty - half. But if my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would've had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week. Millions would've watched as the market tumbled and their nest egg disappeared before their eyes. Millions of families would've been scrambling to figure out how to give their mothers and fathers, their grandmothers and grandfathers, the secure retirement that every American deserves. So I know Senator McCain is talking about a "casino culture" on Wall Street - but the fact is, he's the one who wants to gamble with your life savings.

That's untrue. All current retirees would be covered by exactly the same Social Security benefits they are now under what the Obama campaign likes to call the "Bush-McCain privatization plan," which Bush pushed for unsuccessfully in 2005.

Who Would Have Been Affected

As the White House spelled out at the time, on page 5 of the document titled "Strengthening Social Security for the 21st Century," released in February 2005:

Bush Plan: Personal retirement accounts would be phased in. To ease the transition to a personal retirement account system, participation would be phased in according to the age of the worker. In the first year of implementation, workers currently between age 40 and 54 (born 1950 through 1965 inclusive) would have the option of establishing personal retirement accounts. In the second year, workers currently between age 26 and 54 (born 1950 through 1978 inclusive) would be given the option and by the end of the third year, all workers born in 1950 or later who want to participate in personal retirement accounts would be able to do so.

Nobody born before Jan. 1, 1950 could have participated, and anyone born on that date would be 58 years old now. The earliest possible age for receiving Social Security retirement benefits is 62, for early retirement at reduced benefits. Full retirement age is currently 66, and scheduled to go up to age 67 in coming years.

It is certainly true that the stock market carries risks, as recent events remind us. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down nearly 17 percent for this year, for example, and despite gains in other years it is still barely above where it was at the start of 2000. But historically there have also been rewards for those who make diversified investments and hold for long periods. When Obama spoke, the Dow Jones average still stood 305 percent higher than it had at the start of the 1990's.

Disappearing nest eggs?

Also worth noting here:

The private accounts would have been voluntary. Anybody fearful of the stock market's risk could simply stay in the current system.
Obama's reference to "casino culture," disappearing "nest eggs" and gambling with "your life savings" are also misleading exaggerations. Only a little under one-third of any workers' total Social Security taxes could have been invested (a maximum of 4 percent of taxable wages, out of the total 12.4 percent now paid, split equally between worker and employer.)

Correction, Sept. 22: Our original story incorrectly said the rate was 15.3 percent, but this figure included Medicare taxes. We also said what would have gone into private accounts would have been just over one-fourth of Social Security taxes, but the true figure is closer to one-third.
Speculation in individual stocks would not have been permitted. Workers would have had a choice of a few, broadly diversified stock or bond funds.
While McCain has voted in favor creating private Social Security accounts in the past, and endorsed Bush's 2005 proposal (which never came to a vote in Congress), he is not making a strong push for them as part of his campaign. In fact, a search for the term "Social Security" on the McCain-Palin Web site brings up the following: "No documents were found."

Footnote: When we contacted the Obama campaign for comment, spokesman Tommy Vietor defended Obama's remarks as accurate:

Vietor: You don’t have to be retired to rely on Social Security. Millions of people who will one day retire rely on Social Security as they plan their future. Senator Obama's bottom line is absolutely true. If McCain got his way and we had private accounts . . . people who are relying on that money for their retirement would be in a very difficult situation.

We would grant Vietor a point if Obama had made any mention of workers being fearful of their future retirement (although this would apply only to those who had chosen to participate in private accounts, and not to everybody.) But Obama did not say that. Instead, he referred to "elderly women" in danger of poverty. He spoke of families "scrambling to figure out how to give their mothers and fathers, their grandmothers and grandfathers" a secure retirement – not to families worrying about their own retirement. If Obama did not mean what he said to be a reference to current retirees, he could say so clearly and amend his words.

-by Brooks Jackson

Sources

The White House, "Strengthening Social Security for the 21st Century," Feb 2005.

Dow Jones & Co. "Dow Jones Industrial Average Historical Performance" Spreadsheet accessed 20 Sep 2008.

Scaring Seniors

An Obama-Biden ad says McCain supports "cutting benefits in half" for Social Security recipients. False!

Bush Proposes Slowing Growth of Social Security Benefits for Future Retirees

Democrats call it a "cut." Compared to what?

False Attacks Over "Windfalls" to Wall Street

We find that brokers netted only 16 cents in fees to manage a $10,000 retirement account under the federal retirement system on which Bush is modeling his private Social Security accounts.

Sarah Palin on feminist issues / Great Website!

2008-09-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

Posted at Reclusive Leftist ( a great website), reposted here to share:

Governor Sarah Palin and daughter Piper at Riverbend Elementary School in Juneau.

Sarah Palin calls herself a “pro-life feminist.” Basically, that’s feminism minus abortion rights.
Obviously that puts her at odds with modern American feminism on a crucial issue. But to hear tell from the many feminist writers now publishing furious editorials, Sarah Palin isn’t just out of step on that one issue. She is, according to them, the antithesis of everything feminism means.
Really?

I thought I’d start a collection of Palin’s own statements on feminist issues. I post these for now without comment; that’ll come later. From what I can tell, the feminist writers who are attacking Palin are doing so with an astonishing disregard for the truth. I’m still trying to sort out why. More...

Sarah Palin on combining motherhood with a career: “To any critics who say a woman can’t think and work and carry a baby at the same time, I’d just like to escort that Neanderthal back to the cave.”

Sarah Palin on her ability to govern Alaska while raising children: “My answer would always be … that I’m going to do the job just as well as any male governor who had kids, you know, I think we can handle this.”

Sarah Palin on raising her children to embrace gender equality: “Because I have both boys and girls I have a greater respect for equality and making sure that gender is not an issue and that everyone is treated equally.”

Sarah Palin on being a “pro-life feminist”: “I believe in the strength and the power of women, and the potential of every human life.”

Sarah Palin on contraception and sex education: “I’m pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues. So I am not anti-contraception. But, yeah, abstinence is another alternative that should be discussed with kids. I don’t have a problem with that. That doesn’t scare me, so it’s something I would support also.”

Sarah Palin on whether she would support an abortion ban in Alaska if Roe v. Wade were overturned: “It would be up to the people of Alaska to discuss and decide how we would like our society to reflect our values.”

Sarah Palin on a woman president and endorsing McCain instead of Hillary (March 2008): “But I have to admit a little bit of guilt there for not being able to jump on Hillary’s bandwagon, because I would so love to see a woman president. I think our nation is overdue there. So, I’ve said along, ‘Heck yeah, America’s ready for a woman president.’”

Sarah Palin on being the first female governor of Alaska: “I’m the first female governor in Alaska, so that’s brought with it kind of a whole new chapter in Alaska’s life. Like my husband — up here they refer to him as the ‘first dude,’ not the first gentleman. And Todd… A whole new chapter here when Todd is asked to do things like — and he graciously complies and he has a good time doing it — hosting, as he did a couple of weeks ago down in Juneau, our capital city, the former first ladies tea party. And he does just great at things like that, as well as working in oil fields, with snow machines and in commercial fishing. That’s a dynamic here that’s of interest to others.”

Sarah Palin on Title IX, sports, and growing up with gender equality: “You know I grew up with Title IX, and sports were so big, and in my upbringing very instrumental in shaping my character and a need to compete and really to win. So because of a very athletic background and growing up in a family, a busy large family, where gender never was really an issue there. My dad expected us to be back there chopping wood and snowmachining with the rest of them, hunting and fishing and doing all those things that are quite Alaskan.”

Sarah Palin on sports, scholarships, and the beauty pageant: “Graduating high school in 1982 there weren’t a whole lot of high-school athletes, females going on to college to play sports yet. That’s what I was looking for, a scholarship in athletics. I didn’t get one, the next best thing would be the Miss America scholarship pageant where at least you had to show that you had a talent. I played the flute and was really into music so, you know I won a couple of titles there, and it paid tuition through four, five years of college. So, that was OK, it wasn’t really my thing, I was never really comfortable with it, but it paid for some college, though.”

Sarah Palin on the challenge for Hillary and other women candidates to appear “tough”: “I recognize that Hillary seems to be trying real hard to be tough, but I say, more power to her. I think she’s had to do that. It’s unfortunate that she’s had to do that, but she comes across to me as tough, capable. I can respect that in her, that she is that tough, capable and experienced and all that….I recognize that’s what she’s trying to do and I think it’s unfortunate that maybe a woman candidate feels that she has to go there. You don’t see male candidates doing that.”

Sarah Palin on dealing with the double standard applied to women candidates: “Fair or unfair—and I do think that it’s a more concentrated criticism that Hillary gets on so many fronts; I think that’s unfortunate. But fair or unfair, I think she does herself a disservice to even mention it, really. You have to plow through that and know what you’re getting into. I say this with all due respect to Hillary Clinton and to her experience and to her passion for changing the status quo. But when I hear a statement like that coming from a women candidate with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism or a sharper microscope put on her, I think, man, that doesn’t do us any good. Women in politics, women in general wanting to progress this country, I don’t think it bodes well for her, a statement like that. Because, again, fair or not fair it is there. I think it’s reality and it’s a given, people just accept that she’s going to be under a sharper microscope. So be it. Work harder, prove to yourself to an even greater degree that you’re capable, that you’re going to be the best candidate.”

Posted by Violet in Election 2008

Media is Obama's Not-So-Secret Weapon - Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard

2008-09-22T10:32:00.000-07:00

When Barack Obama announced his presidential candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, on February 10, 2007, he promised to change the practice of American politics.

This campaign must be the occasion, the vehicle, of your hopes, and your dreams. It will take your time, your energy, and your advice--to push us forward when we're doing right, and to let us know when we're not.

Obama told the crowd on that chilly day that he was running "not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation." He was particularly concerned with the way politicians run for office. He decried "the smallness of our politics" and "the chronic avoidance of tough decisions" and politicians who win by "scoring cheap political points." All of this, he said, had led voters to look away in "disillusionment and frustration."

"The time for that politics is over," Obama said.
Or maybe not.

This past week at a campaign rally, Obama told his supporters to challenge Republicans and independents skeptical of his candidacy. "I want you to argue with them and get in their face," he said.

This is the newer, tougher Obama. The avatar of a new American politics of hope is gone, replaced by a no-nonsense practitioner of the old politics. His campaign is now less the vehicle of your hopes and your dreams than a vehicle of your frustration and your anger.More...

You might think that this walking, talking contradiction would be the focus of intense media scrutiny--hypocrisy being a staple of modern political reportage--but you'd be wrong.

The media line on the new Obama is simple: It's John McCain's fault. Barack Obama would like to win the presidency the right way but McCain won't let him.

According to the press, in recent weeks, the McCain campaign has so distorted Obama's record and campaign proposals that the young senator has had no choice but to fight back with old-school tactics. "McCain's tactics are drawing the scorn of many in the media and organizations tasked with fact-checking the truthfulness of campaigns," wrote Politico's Jonathan Martin. "In recent weeks, Team McCain has been described as dishonorable, disingenuous and downright cynical."

And so while McCain's every utterance is factchecked and factchecked again in an attempt to shame him from challenging Obama too aggressively, Obama gets a pass.

Consider two examples.

On August 16, Pastor Rick Warren asked John McCain how much money someone would have to make to be considered rich. McCain didn't answer directly. "I think that rich should be defined by a home, a good job, an education and the ability to hand to our children a more prosperous and safer world than the one that we inherited," he said.

Then he made a joke: "So, I think if you are just talking about income, how about $5 million?"
The audience laughed, immediately understanding that McCain was being facetious. Just in case there were any doubts McCain started his next comment by saying "seriously," to underscore the joke. Then he made a prediction.

"I'm sure that comment will be distorted," he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

And it has been. "It should come as no surprise that John McCain believes the cutoff for the rich begins at $5 million," Barack Obama's campaign said in a statement. "It may explain why his tax plan gives a $600,000 tax cut to the richest 0.1 percent of earners." At a campaign appearance two days after McCain made the comments, Obama himself mocked McCain. "I guess if you're making $3 million a year, you're middle class," Obama said.

Some news accounts noted that McCain was joking and others even reported that McCain predicted his words would be twisted and used against him. In an August 18 article in the Los Angeles Times, Greg Miller actually did both and noted that McCain aides had made clear their boss was joking. "Even so," Miller wrote, "the remark highlighted the candidates' disparate outlooks. Analysts who study income distribution said the answers appeared to reflect shifting political calculations more than economic reality."

So Miller, writing under the headline, "Who's Rich? McCain and Obama have very different definitions," used McCain's facetious answer as if he had meant it. (Miller also speculated that Cindy McCain's family money may have shaped McCain's views of what constitutes rich.) Not only was Obama not called on his misuse of McCain's comment, reporters piled on. Is it any wonder that the line has made regular appearances in Obama speeches over the past month?

"Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans," Obama said in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. "I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a year?"

Then there are the absurd lengths to which some reporters are willing to go to protect Obama and attack McCain. Last week, the McCain campaign released an ad accusing Obama of being too close to Fannie Mae executives. In particular, it claims Obama took advice on housing and finance issues from former Fannie Mae chairman Franklin Raines. The Obama campaign protested, saying that Raines was not an adviser and had not given Obama counsel in any capacity. The McCain campaign defended the claim by citing an article that ran in the Washington Post on July 16, 2008. That article noted that Raines had "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters."

Last Friday, the Washington Post "factchecked" the McCain ad and concluded that the campaign had been "clearly exaggerating wildly" in order to link Obama to Raines and that the "latest McCain attack is particularly dubious."

Factchecker Michael Dobbs wrote that McCain's evidence that Raines had advised Obama was "pretty flimsy"--not a description that probably endeared him to Anita Huslin, the reporter who wrote the story this summer. But Dobbs did talk to Huslin. Here is his account of their conversation:

Since this has now become a campaign issue, I asked Huslin to provide the exact circumstances of the quote. She explained that she was chatting with Raines during the photo shoot, and asked "if he was engaged at all with the Democrats' quest for the White House. He said that he had gotten a couple of calls from the Obama campaign. I asked him about what, and he said 'oh, general housing, economy issues.' ('Not mortgage/foreclosure meltdown or Fannie-specific,' I asked, and he said 'no.')"

By Raines's own account, he took a couple of calls from someone on the Obama campaign, and they had some general discussions about economic issues.

Got that? Huslin stands by her reporting--that Raines had given advice to the Obama campaign about mortgage and housing policy matters--and yet the McCain campaign is faulted by the Washington Post for relying on information that comes from the Washington Post.

More amusing, though, is that in the rush to accuse the McCain campaign of lying, Dobbs glosses over a major discrepancy between the story that appeared in his paper and that of the Obama campaign. Obama spokesman Bill Burton claims that the campaign "neither sought nor received" advice from Raines "on any matter." It is possible, of course, that Raines simply made up the conversations he described to the Post reporter. But it seems more likely, given the toxicity of Raines, that the Obama campaign would simply prefer that those conversations had never taken place.

Dobbs concludes: "I have asked both Raines and the Obama people for more details on these calls and will let you know if I receive a reply."

That's reassuring, since Dobbs has already decided that the McCain campaign has been dishonest. Two things are clear with six weeks left in the presidential race. Barack Obama will practice the old-style politics that he lamented throughout the Democratic primary. And the media will give him a pass.

Hope, Change, & Lies: Orchestrated "Grassroots" Smear Campaigns & the People that Run Them - The Jawa Report

2008-09-22T09:49:00.000-07:00

Extensive research was conducted by the Jawa Report to determine the source of smears directed toward Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Those smears included false allegations that she belonged to a secessionist political party and that she has radical anti-American views.

Our research suggests that a subdivision of one of the largest public relations firms in the world most likely started and promulgated rumors about Sarah Palin that were known to be false. These rumors were spread in a surreptitious manner to avoid exposure. (Click here to read the article)

Double Indemnity - M Corrigan, SavagePolitics.com

2008-09-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

An article for those whose gut tells you not to vote for Obama and yet your loyalty holds you to the DNC’s choice. (Click here to read the article)

Dems Dilute Their Message - Purple People Vote

2008-09-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

The political ads for local and national races have started running in New Hampshire, and I had no idea how many ‘George Bush clones’ were out there. It’s a line of attack that has shown some success, but is now being overused to the point of silliness. One rep that they’re trying to paint as a ‘Bush clone’ hasn’t even been in office the last two years. If this is the strategy throughout the country, hopefully the Dems keep it up. The argument had some power when just one or two people who appeared to be ‘Bush-like’, but now that everyone with an (R) after their name is being labeled the same way the argument fades to background noise.More...

The Obama campaign has decided to reach further with its comparisons saying that Senator McCain is tied to Rush Limbaugh. This is laughably false. During the primaries as it became evident that Senator McCain was likely to win Rush Limbaugh pitch a huge fit along with Ann Coulter about how horrible a McCain nomination would be. The Limbaugh show has never been friendly to Senator McCain and when asked about his show Senator McCain stated, “I don’t listen to him very much. There’s a certain trace of masochism in my family, but not that deep.”

Does McCain Have A “Stealth Vote?” - American Sentinel

2008-09-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

The Obama campaign and its media boosters have adopted this election’s litany of defeatism. It goes like this: “If Barack Obama wins, it is because he is a charismatic leader with an enlightened vision for America; if he loses, it’s because of racism.” This is a variation on the usual Democratic theme - - if they win, it is because their candidate got the Democratic message across on the issues; if they lose, it is due to “swiftboating” by the “Republican Attack Machine.” This arrogant nonsense is par for the course in this Presidential election, but it does raise the question, does John McCain have a “stealth vote” which the opinion polls miss?

The answer to this question is, quite likely, yes, although probably not based on racism.

On the face of it, the current polling leaves little in the “undecided/other” column, but this appearance may be misleading. Polling organizations have two general methods of allocating undecideds: by “leaning” and by “forced choice.” The predominant “leaning” method is used by, for example, Rasmussen and Quinnipiac; this type asks respondents who declare themselves to be undecided whether they lean to one candidate or the other and the “leaners” are then allocated to arrive at a probable vote for each candidate. Occasionally a pollster will ask the question, “if you were forced to choose between A and B, which one?” Others do not allocate undecideds at all. Sometimes it is impossible to tell, since not all polls publish underlying data or a full statement of methodology.More...

Looking at the polls reported during the past week, it is apparent that polls which allocate undecideds are reporting much lower numbers of undecideds than those which do not. The “undecided/other” category in Rasmussen state-by-state polls is running from 3% to 5%; Survey USA and Marist are reporting slightly higher percentages. However, the “undecided/other” factor in non-allocating polls tends to be much higher.

Here are a few examples.

- - Survey USA’s latest Ohio poll reports 6% undecided and Marist reports 8%. In Florida, Survey USA and CNN/Time both report 4% undecided. In Virginia, Survey USA and FOX News both report 4% undecideds. The un-leaned National Journal results for these same states are: Ohio, 17% undecided; Florida, 12% undecided; Virginia, 11% undecided. Also in Virginia, the CNU Virginia Poll put undecideds at 13%.

- - In Alabama, Survey USA reported 2% as undecided, while a USA Polling Group (Press-Register) poll had 27% undecided. In recent Michigan polls, Rasmussen had undecideds at 3%, Marist at 5%; in contrast, EPIC-MRA (Detroit News) put undecideds at 15% and Insider Advantage had 11%.

On the whole, the poll results indicate that there is still a very substantial “undecided/other” factor in this election. One possible explanation for this is the “spiral of silence” theory, which holds that a person is less likely to voice an opinion perceived as unpopular or in the minority, due to fear of isolation or reprisal. This explanation makes sense in the context of this election, in which the mainstream press has clearly cast Barack Obama as the majority or popular choice. In addition, there have been both threats and reprisals directed against those who do not support Obama - - witness the recent hackings of Sarah Palin’s e-mail account and Bill O’Reilley’s Web site.

The undecided factor therefore is likely to include a substantial “stealth vote” in favor of McCain-Palin. This “stealth vote” is not necessarily the result of racism, as the Obama folks want to believe. To a large extent, it results from the bullying tactics advocated and used by the Obama campaign - - such as Obama’s own plea that his supporters “get in the faces” of non-supporters.

Biden UNDER the bus: This just in...;)

2008-09-21T21:11:00.000-07:00

I don't know the validy of this post, but I thought I'd share it:

(source)

Mark your calendars. The Obama/Biden ticket is about to "change." I think you all know that I get information from all sorts of places. ;) The following was in an email sent to me by a source I trust totally. They have "cred":

"On or about October 5^th, Biden will excuse himself from the ticket, citing health problems, and he will be replaced by Hillary. This is timed to occur after the VP debate on 10/2. [This will avoid Hillary having to bear an hour of unflattering side-by-side comparison to Sarah Palin.]"

For weeks now, we have all watched as Joe has demonstrated repeated symptoms of that common ailment, foot in mouth disease. We have all seen how 'sick' he has been. But now, it seems poor Joe is having heart problems - specifically 'aneurysm' - or at least that is going to be the official line. That gem comes "from excellent sources within the DNC." More...

Are YOU going to buy that line? I am so not. I am sure that Obama's VP selection committee thoroughly checked into the medical history of any would-be VP contenders. Given Joe's advanced age and all, (lol) I am thinking that his records may have comprised about 70 pages also..(And yes - after Senator McCain's records being released, does anybody REALLY believe the line that Governor Palin is a "heartbeat" away from the Presidency. Puleeeeeeeze. John McCain will outlive a lot of his dimdem opponents - trust me on this. But I digress.) So, what this latest change is, is Obama and his minions "hoping" that the American people will not look closely into more of the smoke and mirrors that IS their campaign against the American people. Yes, I did say "against."

I have to ask what Joe Biden has been promised for him to fall on his sword. Seriously though, Obama is probably doing Joe a BIG favour removing him from the Obamaland future landscape. THAT is probably better for Joe's heart....

And then we have Hillary. Can we say: "Don't do it, Hillary!!!" Anyone who has watched Hillary and Bill over the years, knows what a political animal Hillary is. When Obama and his committee (of 2 was that? lol) chose Joe instead of Hillary, I kept saying that Hillary was nowhere near shrinking off into the background...
Everything any of us think we know about Hillary, told me that Hillary was nowhere near done on the VP/Presidential trail. So now we have Obama throwing Joe under the bus, scared out of his wits of Sarah Palin. I could rehash all the shenanigans we have seen from the cynical, RACIST (yes, they ARE the racist ones!), CRIMINAL, (Logan Act just for one...)sexist, lying...( about McCain's record on Fannie Mae for just one example.) manipulating, 'in your face' - add your own adjectives - efforts to hoodwink the American public into believing a brand new dawn is upon America.

Don't you buy into this upcoming piece of theatre put on by the Obama boys and girls. I could tell you - again - everything that is wrong with this. I'll spare you, except to ask you to imagine what will happen when America's representative, sent by Obama, goes to 'chat and have tea" wth any of the despots of the planet. Halfway through pouring tea, ("will you be 'mum'?" - a Brit will get the humour there.lol) Obama yanks the rep, and replaces them with another. "Uh, uh , um, oh, let me clarify. What I really mean was..." That'll add to the American credibility worldwide. No wonder places like North Korea are thrilled at the prospect of Obama moving into the White House.

This American election season reminds me of the plot twists and turns of a soap opera. If only the consequences were not so serious. However, I have faith that Americans are smart enough to refuse to accept the cynical political manipulations being foisted upon them at a dizzying pace.

The end of the email I received has a couple of gems that I have to share with you.:

Question: Does this maneuver fall under the category of

Change! Change we can believe in!
Change we can hardly believe!
Change - because Sarah's whipping my ass!
Change - because picking that Old White Lifelong Liar Guy was a boneheaded blunder!
All of the above?
So is this the traditional "October Surprise"? I can just imagine what deals the Clintons are getting - in writing - to go along with this scam! At least her campaign debt will be paid off, - probably with a bonus. Probably Bill gets to be SecState after all. Maybe Chelsea gets to fill Hillary's Senate seat. The possibilities are mind-boggling!
But given what happens to the friends of the Clintons, - Obama should ask for a lot more Secret Service protection!
Ain't Democracy fun!?!

Oh, and just for the record? Don't bother asking me who my source is. And I don't use yahoo mail.

Stay tuned.

"And the wheels on the bus go round and round..." Sing along with me, now!

Posted by The Brat at 3:09 PM

Barack Obama-A get-rich-quick infomercial

2008-09-21T21:07:00.000-07:00

The Obama campaign’s latest email sounds like one of those too-good-to-be-true-get-rich-quick schemes. Here are the highlights.More...

This week, the economic troubles that have long been simmering on Main Street boiled over to Wall Street, putting our entire economy in danger.
Barack laid out a plan to address this crisis and offered strong, practical solutions for American families.
Here are some key elements of Barack’s plan:
A $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families with high fuel costs right now while putting $50 billion into job creation to get our economy back on track.
Families making less than $250,000 a year will get a tax cut three times larger than under John McCain’s plan and will face absolutely no tax increases.
While John McCain has voted against raising the minimum wage 19 times, Barack would raise the minimum wage and set it to rise automatically with inflation.
Invest $15 billion a year in green energy research to reduce our economy’s dependence on foreign oil and create 5 million American jobs a year.
There’s a big difference between the change we need and the Bush-McCain politics we need to leave behind.

Didn’t they get the memo that US taxpayers are now on the hook for nearly $1 trillion in bad mortgage debt? According to Obama, we need to expand the government even more.
Where will the $1000 per family to heat our homes come from? Where will the $50 billion come from to create these magical mystery jobs? How can they afford to triple a tax cut to anyone? Who is going to fork over $15 billion per year for green energy research?
And let’s not forget his promise of free health care and the global poverty tax. I don’t think there are enough patriotic rich people left in America to pay for all of his goodies.
My parents always taught me that if something sounds too goo to be true it’s a bad deal. Barack Obama’s deal for America will be downright dangerous.

Palin draws crowd of 60,000 in The Villages - AudacityOfHypocrisy.com

2008-09-21T21:05:00.000-07:00

THE VILLAGES — Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin told wildly cheering, flag-waving, chanting supporters that John McCain is “the only great man in this race” and promised Sunday he will fix the nation’s economy if voters give the GOP four more years in the White House.

“He won’t say this, so I’ll say it for him,” the Alaska governor said in an almost confidential tone at the close of her first Florida stump speech. “There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you. John McCain wore the uniform of his country for 22 years — talk about tough.”

The Villages, a vast, upscale planned community north of Orlando, has about 70,000 mostly adult residents — many of them military retirees — who vote reliably Republican in statewide races. Tens of thousands inched along roads into the picturesque town square of the complex, where they stood in sweltering heat for about four hours as local GOP officials and a country band revved up the crowd.

“Sa-Rah! Sa-Rah!” they chanted at every mention of her name, applauding loudly and waiving tiny American flags that were distributed — along with free water bottles — by local volunteers. The fire chief estimated the crowd at 60,000.

Admiring throngs mobbed the Palin family’s arrival and departure, snapping souvenir pictures. Autograph seekers thrust campaign signs, caps with the McCain-Palin logo and copies of magazines with her face on their covers, and the Palins responded warmly.

Positive Signs for the McCain Campaign

2008-09-21T21:02:00.000-07:00

1. Base united and energized with Palin pick.

2. Strong support from both Independents and Democrats.

3. Obama’s money advantage is shrinking. Party money combine with campaign money makes the money race extremely close.

4. During primaries Obama tended to poll better than he performed except in blowout situations. McCain tended to perform better over even with polls.

5. The youth vote is fickle, the senior vote is not. While no one knows who will turn out in the end, stats say the person who has consistently voted over the years will show up on election day, while first time voters don’t have a strong turn out record. More...

6. The debates are coming. Question and answer is McCain’s strong suite, and not Obama’s.

7. Volunteer efforts are improved. State volunteer info - Phone from home volunteer info.

8. Energy - Winter’s coming and as Dems stall on the energy bill, and people have to pay for heating oil, gasoline, and electricity; the ‘do everything’ approach of Republicans, already popular, will likely gain more traction as the days get shorter and colder.

9. McCain is a closer. Looking at the primaries as a guide McCain was behind almost the entire election except for election day. Obama, on the other hand, had a burst at the beginning, but had trouble closing out the race even when the numbers were decisively in his favor.

10. The VP picks. Palin brings excitement and energy, no one pays any attention to Biden except when he sticks his foot in his mouth.

Clinton Supporter Member of Dem Platform Committee Voting McCain/Palin

2008-09-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

Another strong interview from De Rothschild.

New Hampshire News Site Hits Obama for Mudslinging Politics and Dishonesty

2008-09-21T19:09:00.000-07:00

Posted at Right Werds, reposted here to share:

Are the Media finally hitting Obama for the obvious fact that he's just another Chicago-style politician? If only other Media sources would at least admit it even if they still support him. No one is saying McCain is not a typical politician, but it is disingenuous to claim Obama is of a different sort. The New Hampshire Union Leader writes on this very topic:More...

Obama in the mud: So much for honesty

When Barack Obama first began campaigning in New Hampshire in early 2007, many voters swooned. We watched him speak to retirees in Claremont one snowy February day that year. Not a single voter we talked with before he spoke planned to vote for him. Afterwards, many said they would. The word that spontaneously came from the lips of multiple attendees: sincere. They couldn't remember a politician who spoke with such sincerity, they said. And many of them had been voting since World War II.

We wonder what those same voters think of Obama's sincerity now. In the past few weeks, Obama has thrown so many false accusations against John McCain that just keeping track of them has become difficult. And these aren't innocent errors. They are deliberate distortions of the sort Obama has always said he reviles.

On Thursday, Obama said of McCain, "He has consistently opposed the sorts of common-sense regulations that might have lessened the current crisis." That's entirely untrue.

As The Washington Post pointed out in an editorial on Friday, McCain in fact has supported many new regulations of financial institutions, including some that Obama opposed. "In 2006, he pushed for stronger regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- while Mr. Obama was notably silent," The Post wrote.

Obama attacked McCain for having a top financial advisor who supported a deregulation bill a few years ago. Yet two top Obama financial advisors, with whom he met on Friday to help him form his response to the current troubles on Wall Street, supported the same bill, which was signed by President Clinton.

Also last week, Obama released a Spanish-language ad that portrayed McCain as anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic and tried to link him to immigration policies that were not his own as well as some choice Rush Limbaugh quotes that appeared to insult Mexicans.

Anyone who has followed the immigration debate knows that McCain is the most pro-immigration Republican on the national stage and that he is not in the least anti-Hispanic. To pull quotes from Rush Limbaugh, who has completely different immigration views than McCain and who opposed him on that issue for years (and still does) is completely disingenuous.

The ad is so bad that even The New York Times called it "misleading."

Obama's campaign also accused McCain of lying when McCain's campaign ran an ad saying that Obama supported sex education for kindergarteners. But the bill in question, which Obama supported in the Illinois state Senate, did indeed change state law to allow sex education for kindergarteners.

Obama has said that he won't attack John McCain's motives, only his policies. But he has repeatedly attacked McCain's motives, suggesting that he has been bought off by oil companies and lobbyists.

Obama's greatest strength as a candidate, aside from his oratorical skill, has long been his apparent sincerity and decency. Voters attracted to him think of him as that rarest of things: an honest politician. He has claimed himself that he would never engage in the sort of deceptive politicking that he says has tainted Washington for so long.

Yet here he is violating his own professed standards. This is not the Barack Obama so many voters in New Hampshire and elsewhere thought they knew. But it is the real Barack Obama. For despite his rhetoric, he is in fact campaigning so dishonestly that even The Washington Post and The New York Times have called him on it. Which means that he is in practice no different from those regular politicians against whom his entire campaign has been built. (09/20/2008)

So much for a new kind of politics.

The incredible shrinking Obama - REX MURPHY, Globe and Mail

2008-09-21T19:04:00.000-07:00

How's Barack Obama's narrative going?

Journalists used to tell stories, now they plumb narratives. Narrative is a pretentious borrowing from the abstraction-clotted world of academic criticism, where texts are interrogated, authors are dead and high-toned fatuousness is king. I'll see your postmodern and raise you a meta.

Mr. Obama's campaign, however, has renewed narrative's trendy fizz. It is the very Perrier water (or is it San Pellegrino now?) of the better campaign reportage. Take no hike up Pundit Mountain without it.More...

From the moment, the Obama surge took forceful shape, everyone - reporters, the scholars of blogland, the partisan howler monkeys of cable-news cage matches - has chattered on about Mr. Obama's narrative.
Trouble is, most of the story of the campaign isn't so much coming from the candidate himself as it is created by all those who, most in worshipful terms, have talked, written and reported on or about him. The Obama campaign is one great text generator, the grand fable of his fans.

In one sense, this is not surprising. He has a quicksilver quality. Even after two autobiographies, Mr. Obama remains something of a floating, uncrowded presence. His story (and he is so impressively self-aware as to have made the most acute comment on it) is temptingly open-ended, very much a page to be written on. He himself has written, most memorably: "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."

That is as bold a statement as it is an insightful one. Bold, because it is a remarkable confession from a presidential hopeful. Insightful, because it matches the facts. There are not many personalities so fluid or vague on which an attempt to "project" a storyline would take hold. Imagine, for example, projecting a "rewrite" of Donald Rumsfeld. There's too much of Mr. Rumsfeld already there to offer hospitality to new material.

Mr. Obama, however, has a kind of welcoming emptiness. Eager acolyte or stern observer, both find it difficult not to add, or project, the most flattering, even jubilant, fill-ins. The Obama candidacy, in its rocket-blast phase when he outsoared Hillary Clinton, drained the dictionaries of every superlative. The great "O" had them swooning in the stands. Why?

True, Oprah had passed her potent wand over him, but even the afternoon regent of a thousand therapies has stays on her sorcery. Mainly, his was very much a candidacy constructed by those who were drawn to him. If there was any meaning to that fortune-cookie poeticism that "we are the ones we have been waiting for," it was that his campaign was a feedback loop. People saw what they came to see. Mr. Obama was the slate; the crowds brought their own chalk.

This is the nature of Mr. Obama's particular kind of charisma. People project their best wishes on him, they fill in the blank of a very attractive and plausible outline. His is not, emphatically, a charisma of deeds. For what has he done, save run for president? He is an accommodating vessel - cool, smart, biracial and "unfinished." This is the Gatsby quality of him that others have noted. Like Gatsby, he is a receptacle of others' glamorous invention.

People see in him, or wish to see, the last great ideal of the American polity fulfilled, a final and full racial accommodation. That should he be elected president, America will have achieved, by his singular persona, the perfect emblematic demonstration of having exorcised at last the great stain of its racially riven origins.

Mr. Obama's charisma is, in this sense, external, something extended to the candidate. And it follows that that which is given may equally be taken away. The sparkle has, in fact, dimmed. He travels now in a lower orbit, closer to Earth - which is to say, he grows more mundane. The great word "hope" sounds less frequently now. He picks a running mate thick with the dust and rancour of many long years in Washington.

His acceptance speech in the Olympic-style stadium could not gather the inspirational energy of his earlier arias. Of late, the flash supernova of U.S. politics is seen "competing" with a second-on-the-ticket female governor of a remote state. There's more than a gap between the "audacity of hope" and "lipstick on a pig." The mouth that spoke the first phrase should not be capable of the second.

He has shrunk into a combative partisan. He crowds his own screen, leaves less space for projection. Others are not writing his narrative now - he's inscribing his own.

A candidacy that leached so much of its energy and drive from the imagination of others, Gatsby-like, is shedding its gift. The narrative stage is over. It's all tactics from here on in.

Latest State Polls / Why Ohio is still up for grabs

2008-09-21T08:23:00.000-07:00

Why Ohio is still up for grabs - James O'Toole, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

VIENNA, Ohio -- Election night, 1960. The Buckeye State is slipping into the column of Richard M. Nixon. John F. Kennedy, watching the returns in his Hyannis Port home, displayed a hand and forearm scratched and swollen from countless handshakes.
"Ohio did this to me,'' he said.

The episode, recounted in Theodore H. White seminal campaign chronicle, "The Making of the President 1960," would not be the last time that Ohio's voters frustrated a Democratic candidate.

Four years ago, Sen. John F. Kerry rolled up big early margins in Cuyahoga County and Franklin County, the counties that surround Cleveland and Columbus, and down through the Mahoning Valley, the product of one of the most effective turnout operations in the state's history.More...

"If you had told me the day before the election the kind of margins Kerry would get [in Democratic areas], I'd have been celebrating," said Jim Ruvalo, a veteran Democratic consultant and former chairman of the state Democratic Party.

But President Bush benefited from an even more potent get-out-the-vote drive elsewhere in the state. After a long night of counting, the Republican ticket was ahead, 51 percent to 49 percent, enough to deliver the state, the nation and a delayed concession speech from Mr. Kerry.

A state that has been part of the electoral vote majority for every successful Republican presidential candidate would seem ripe for a Democratic candidate this year. Its unemployment rate is 7.2 percent, well ahead of the national rate of 5.5 percent after years of losses of manufacturing jobs. The faltering economy has forced the new Democratic governor, Ted Strickland, to cut nearly $1.3 billion from the state's budget this year. Mr. Strickland led a political resurgence for his party in 2006, as Democrats captured the governor's mansion, a Senate seat and a U.S. House seat.

But Ohio is again a bellwether for the nation as the site of an extraordinarily close battle between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, one that has the potential to again determine the next occupant of the White House. Reflecting that status, both sides have poured money and candidate time into the state.

And in their no-stone-unturned competition, both hope to prevail in part by poaching votes from regions within the state that normally favor the other party.

The Mahoning Valley is one of them. With his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, Mr. McCain appeared here again this week, lavishing his attention on a working class corner of the state that's normally a reliable cache of Democratic votes.

"He's been here as many times as he's been any place in Ohio,'' former Sen. Mike DeWine, Mr. McCain's Ohio chairman, said over the din of workmen clearing away the debris from his candidate's rally Tuesday. "John McCain believes he is competitive in the Mahoning Valley. I don't think there's any place else he's been three times.''

Counting this week's appearance, Mr. McCain has spent all or part of 18 campaign days in Ohio since securing his nomination. According to his campaign, Sen. Barack Obama has visited the state eight times since he locked up the Democratic spot.

The imbalance is a little deceptive, however, since Mr. Obama campaigned in the state extensively before its March 3 primary. But it's clear that few states have had so much collective attention from the campaigns. On Thursday, hot on the heels of the opposing ticket, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. was in Youngstown, at the end of a cross-state bus tour.

Edge in polls to McCain

In the weeks since their nominating conventions wrapped up, the two campaigns have spent roughly $800,000 each on Ohio television, according to the nonpartisan Wisconsin Advertising Project. For the McCain campaign, that spending trailed only Pennsylvania and Florida. In the same period, Mr. Obama spent more only in Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Virginia.

The result, according to a variety of polls, is a state very much up for grabs less than seven weeks before the election. Here, as nationally, the McCain-Palin team bounced up in the days following the Republican National Convention. But in recent days, the numbers moved back to near even.

Just last week, a CNN/Time survey put Mr. Obama ahead, 49 percent to 47 percent. A Fox/Rasmussen survey had it the other way, 48 percent for Mr. McCain and 45 percent for the Democrat. The common denominator in almost every one of the slew of surveys this past week was that the difference between the candidates was within the polls' margins of error.

Aggregating the results, the web site Pollster.com saw a McCain lead of 47 percent to 44.6 percent. Realclearpolitics.com sees a similarly close race, with Mr. McCain up in its polling average by 1.2 percent.

Mr. Strickland, who represented a congressional district that covers part of the Mahoning Valley and the state's traditional manufacturing communities has expressed incredulity that Mr. McCain would even seek votes in the area. These communities, he argues, were battered by the trade policies of the Bush administration.

Four years ago, Mr. Kerry carried Trumbull and Mahoning counties, the sites of the unusual attention from the McCain campaign, with more than 60 percent of the vote.

The race issue

But the governor is also among a handful of Ohio Democrats who have spoken out in recent weeks expressing concern that some traditional Democrats in these and other Ohio comminutes will balk at voting for Mr. Obama because of his race.

In an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer earlier this summer, the governor referred to the racial issue as "the elephant in the room,'' that many voters and commentators would rather ignore.
"There are good people, who won't vote for Obama, because he's a black man,'' Mr. Strickland said at another point.

"Anyone who doesn't think race is an issue has their head in the sand," said Mr. Ruvalo. "Is it an issue that will be determinative? I don't know."

Mr. DeWine eagerly anticipates McCain making inroads with working-class white voters, but he dismisses the suggestion that race is the motivator.

"I think people are mistaking the race issue for other things,'' he said. "Obama is too much like John Kerry. People have a hard time relating to him. And like Kerry, he has a hard time relating to the average person, the average guy."

Of his own candidate, the former Republican senator said, "I think on some gut issues, he's much closer to where people are in the Mahoning Valley, someone along the Ohio River, someone in Parma. I think on some gut issues, he's much closer to where people are ... guns, abortion, marriage, the things commonly referred to as the social issues. I think you'll find that's true for much of the state."
Every Ohio survey, however, finds the economy as the prime issue in the race. David Leland, another former state Democratic chairman, sees that as the key to an Obama victory.

"Ohio is ground zero in terms of what's been happening to the national economy," he said. "[Mr. Obama] needs to connect with the Mahoning Valley, with southern Ohio ... on an economic message. But you do have people who have never voted for an African-American. ... That's a challenge not just for Barack but for every Ohio Democrat.''

Mr. Obama has one key asset that neither Mr. Kerry nor former Vice President Al Gore enjoyed in their close but unsuccessful attempts to capture the state's 20 electoral votes. That's the support of an incumbent governor.

Pennsylvania shares more than a border with Ohio. Among their demographic similarities are their ethnic mix, with German the most common ancestry followed by Irish. African-Americans represent about 11 percent of Ohio, just about 10 percent of Pennsylvanians. Their urban-rural proportions are an almost identical -- 77 percent to 23 percent. But their political characters are different. Republicans have traditionally been stronger in Ohio compared to the more seesaw relationship of the parties in Pennsylvania.

Democratic surge

The recent past has been tough on Ohio Republicans. The economy, opposition to the Iraq War and financial scandals battered the GOP prior to the 2006 elections, which brought major gains to the state's Democrats, Mr. Strickland's landslide victory for governor chief among them.

Mr. Strickland was firmly in the camp of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton during the primary that she won handily over Mr. Obama. By then, Mr. McCain had already wrapped up the GOP race.

Now, Mr. Strickland is lined up behind Mr. Obama. His former campaign manager, Aaron Pickrell, directs the Obama effort in the state, one that Democrats describe as potentially the most robust ground game in the state's history. Mr. Pickrell was also the political director of former Sen. John Edwards's Iowa organization, an effort that produced a strong second-place showing against Mr. Obama.

Throughout the primaries, the Obama campaign cultivated a reputation for their grass-roots prowess in states across the country. In Ohio, that's melded to the homegrown apparatus that produced for Mr. Strickland.

"I think it has an impact that we finally have a Democratic governor,'' Mr. Ruvalo said. "He has an organization; he knows how to win. We haven't had that in 16 years.''

The operation includes a network of offices across the state.

Pointing to the unprecedented turnout that the Bush campaign produced in the state's rural and exurban communities, Mr. Ruvalo said, "Democrats have learned that we can't concentrate on the same eight or 12 counties. The Obama campaign has opened offices everywhere, not that you are going to win everywhere, but you can get votes everywhere; you can hold down the margins."

Mr. DeWine dismisses the suggestion that the GOP will be out-organized in the state.

"What is true is that they have a more extensive paid organization,'' he said. "I think we have the better organization, and we've done it before. We're building on what we did four years ago and eight years ago."

The Republican campaign, in Ohio and Pennsylvania, is quarterbacked by Jon Seaton. A veteran of the White House office of political affairs, Mr. Seaton was national field director of the McCain campaign last year before the financial implosion that nearly ended the senator's White House bid. He went on to head Mr. McCain's Iowa operation before signing on as regional campaign manager for Ohio and Pennsylvania.

"We had a late start," Mr. DeWine acknowledged, "but it's kicked in hard in the last month. ... I can tell you we're ahead in phone calls from where we were four years ago. They may have more paid people but we have more Ohioans on the ground."

Post-Gazette politics editor James O'Toole can be reached at jotoole@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1562.

Conservative Female Abuse on the Political Left

2008-09-21T07:12:00.000-07:00

Posted at American Power, reposted here to share:

My good friend Gayle from Dragon Lady's Den left an insightful comment at my earlier essay, "Demon Trolling on the Political Left." It's worthy of a post:

What gets me especially is the women's groups. They believe equality is only for liberal women. The rest of us are supposed to stay in our kitchens barefoot and pregnant. But of course we should have abortions, especially if there is any evidence of a defect! The very fact that Sarah carries around, or has one of her daughters carrying around a baby she actually gave birth to knowing he had Down's Syndrome (GASP!) is just too much for them. It is a reminder that many of them have aborted perfectly healthy babies. HOW COULD SHE??? Well, to the liberal women I say "your chickens are about ready to come home to roost, sweeties. Better get used to it!" LOL!

More...

Michelle Malkin indicates that the left's campaign of political violence against Sarah Palin can be identified as "Conservative Female Abuse":

There’s something about outspoken conservative women that drives the Left mad. It’s a peculiar pathology I’ve reported on for more than 15 years, both as a witness and a target. Thus, the onset of Palin Derangement Syndrome in the media, Democrat circles, and the cesspools of the blogosphere came as no surprise. They just can’t help themselves.

Liberals hold a special animus for constituencies they deem traitors. Minorities who identify as social and economic conservatives have left the plantation and sold out their people. Women who put an “R” by their name have abandoned their ovaries and betrayed their gender. As Republican officeholders and conservative public figures who are women have grown in number and visibility, the progression of Conservative Female Abuse has worsened. The astonishing vitriol and virulent hatred directed at GOP Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is the most severe manifestation to date.

Read the whole thing for Malkin's progression of stages, from infantilization to dehumanization.

It doesn't take long to find women leftists attacking Palin, with as much venom as when she first burst on the scene upon selection as vice-presidential running mate.

Here's Kathy at Commments From Left Field:

Can someone put duct tape over this woman’s mouth? Her ill-considered, ahistorical, utterly ignorant public statements are a threat to national security.

Kathy's engraged at Palin's firm comments on standing up to Iran, comments that came in response to the Democratic Party's effort to muzzle Palin from speaking at a protest against Tehran in New York next week.

Meanwhile, yesterday Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, escalated Iran's bellicose stance toward Israel, announcing that the Israeli people themselves "are combatants at the disposal of Zionist operatives" and are enemies of Muslim states of the world.

That's extremely warlike language. Considering Khamenei called out Israel on the same day Palin issued her warning against Iran's push to launch a "second Holocaust," left-wing attacks on Palin's "lack of foreign policy experience" are looking increasingly naïve, if not malevolently ignorant.

Image Credit: Scooter's Report

Posted by Donald Douglas at 12:10 PM

2008-09-20T17:20:00.001-07:00

Barack Hussein Obama said the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.”

2008-09-20T16:58:00.000-07:00

Barack Hussein Obama said the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.”

In an interview with Nicholas Kristof, published in The New York Times, Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer, the Adhan, “with a first-class [Arabic] accent.”

The opening lines of the Adhan (Azaan) is the Shahada:

“Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that Muhammad is his prophet… ”

According to Islamic scholars, reciting the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, makes one a Muslim. This simple yet profound statement expresses a Muslim’s complete acceptance of, and total commitment to, the message of Islam.

Obama knows this from his Quranic studies — and he knows the New York Times will publish this fact and it will be seen throughout the Islamic world.

Click HERE to read the New York Times Article.

Fact Check.Org: Obama Ad Against McCain A 'Rank Misrepresentation'

2008-09-20T16:45:00.000-07:00

FactCheck.org says the new Obama-Biden ad claiming John McCain's Social Security (SS) plan would cut SS benefits in half is a "falsehood" and a "rank misrepresentation" which would scare senior citizens who rely on SS checks.

According to Fact Check in an article titled "Scaring Seniors" the "promise" ad says John McCain voted for privatizing social security and quotes him as saying he "campaigned in support of President Bush's proposal."

That is true, as shown by John McCain saying in March of 2008, "I'm totally in favor of personal savings accounts and I think they are an important opportunity for young workers. I campaigned in support of President Bush's proposal and I campaigned with him, and I did town hall meetings with him."More...

The ad implies that Bush's plan bets the whole lot of Social Security funds on unstable stocks. In fact, it would have "privatized" only a small portion of Social Security taxes that Americans could have invested in private accounts, if they chose to do so.

The "rank misrepresentation" come in when the Obama ad claims it would cut "benefits in half."

Fact check states:

Nobody now getting benefits, or even close to retirement, would have seen any reduction in benefits or cost-of-living adjustments under the plan Bush proposed in April, 2005. What Bush proposed – in addition to creating private Social Security accounts – was to hold down the growth of benefits received by those retiring in the future. He embraced a proposal for "progressive price indexing" of future benefits. This would have been a "cut" only in relation to what the current formula would produce for future retirees, assuming that taxes are increased sufficiently to keep the system going.

The "price indexing" would have tied the growth to the rate of price inflation, rather than to the growth of wages, as is the case now. Wages have historically risen faster than prices, so the current wage-indexed system pushes benefits for future retirees up faster than the rate of inflation. The "progressive" part would have held down the growth only for higher-income and middle-income workers, while allowing benefits for lower-income workers to rise in line with the current wage-based formula.

Fact Check goes on to point out the claims in the new ad attempts to use a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities written by Jason Furman, with Furman now being one of Obama's top economic advisers, then finds the report they are documenting to make their claims actually is "quite different from what the ad claims."

They end their fact checking by saying ads like the Obama-Biden as "misinform" the public and only make the job of fixing the system more difficult.

.

Posted by Susan Duclos at WakeUpAmerica, reposted here to share.

The Domino Effect—I a liberal journo no longer trust the Times to cover even international news without Obama Bias

2008-09-20T16:37:00.000-07:00

posted by H. L. Trisky at Femi Sex.com - reposted here to share:

The New York Times has exhibited so much bias this election cycle, never mind their obnoxious sexism. And now something I dreaded has happened; I’ve lost trust in their ability to cover even international news without bias. I read, but with Profound Doubt. More...

Last Tuesday, the Times ran a front page story titled: “Georgia Offers Fresh Evidence On War’s Start.”
Because this issue of Georgia is a tender one for Obama I immediately doubted the Times would not spin their story in an attempt to give Obama assist.

(Background: Obama was asleep at the wheel when the Russia/Georgia conflict erupted—vacationing in Hawaii—and his subsequent and tardy response was that both parties needed to stand down in equal measure. When it became clear how wrong Obama was on this issue, he then adjusted his stance to one that echoed McCains’s. And Palin has stated that Russia’s attack on Georgia was unprovoked; McCain is clearly sympathetic to the fledgling democracy of Georgia in this matter.)

So a story on who provoked whom in the Georgian conflict is a story that the Times has a vested interest in—discrediting Palin, is at the tip top of the Times current TO DO LIST!

Thus…With their precious Obama at stake, I very much doubted if the Times would cover this w/out spinning the story to take heat off Obama. I was certain the Times would inject so much doubt into the story that one would come away more confused than need be over the origins of this conflict. I was correct. I knew, for example the Times would not cover the problem of Russian “peacemakers” stationed in Georgia for instigatory reasons—that is they are there not to keep the peace but, rather instigate and inflame local tensions. (The Times mentioned the peacekeepers but only to showcase the Russian claim that their peacekeepers had come under attack and to defend Russian’s invasive movements into Georgia.)

The article did exactly what I expected, sowed more doubt rather than any illumination into the conflict. Example: This lead sentence of the story:

“At issue is new intelligence, inconclusive on its own, that nonetheless paints a more complicated picture of the critical last hours before war broke out.”

HuH? This alerts the reader to the gist of the story—that there is new evidence, but we plan on making it as hard to understand as we can. And don’t look for more insight before November!

And the most sorrowful part of this is that I, a liberal, faithful Times reader, now doubt the Time’s ability to cover—without bias—international news and conflicts during this pre-election season. And because the Times has so heavily invested its reputation into Obama, how in the World would they be trusted to cover his administration? Egg on one’s face is so hard to remove. As I’ve mentioned before, the Times has so much egg on its face from its paltry coverage of Bush’s war, that they are doing what they consider their dutiful penitence in working to elect Obama. But the Egg Cycle is a dangerous one. Past Sins of the press should Never be atoned for by new ones. That is the slippery slope to Times extinction.

Link to Time’s story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/world/europe/16georgia.html?_r=1&scp=1...

Clinton's bailout statement - Ben Smith, Politico

2008-09-20T16:00:00.000-07:00

Hillary puts out the kind of harsh, skeptical statement on the Bush administration's plans that Obama —embracing a bipartisan moment — did not, and offers a glimpse of how different her campaign would have been:More...

When the American people, facing a foreclosure crisis and struggling economy, turned to this administration for help, the answer was no. Now, the administration is turning to the American people for help, to rescue the credit markets and take on hundreds of billions in debt and financial obligations as a consequence of that same foreclosure crisis. The truth is, Main Street came to Washington and got little. Now Washington is coming to Main Street and asking for a lot. The American people deserve to know that this isn't a blank check. While the need to address the current crisis is clear, I will only support steps that will prevent a widening crisis, tackle the worst kinds of abuse tolerated for too long by the Bush administration, and address the root problems at work.

The proposed intervention outlined today by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would be a watershed moment for our economy. I believe that such an intervention demands that we fundamentally alter the priorities and policies of our nation under the Bush administration that allowed this crisis to take place and escalate. Corporations that will benefit must be held accountable not only to large shareholders but also to the American people. And American taxpayers deserve to know that their money will not allow for a continuation of the status quo: short-term profit at the expense of long-term viability; obscene bonuses and golden parachutes regardless of performance; reckless risk taking that have placed the markets in so much jeopardy; rewards for those who foreclose on middle-class families and sell mortgages designed to fail to turn a profit; and outsourcing of good jobs to serve short-term stock prices instead of America's long-term economic health. The prevailing dynamic of corporate America, where the sole priority was the dividend, the inflated bonus and the quarterly earnings report, must give way to a new respect for the long-term prosperity of the American worker and the well-being of the middle class.

After eight years of failed policies — and two years of an absentee administration — our only option left may be an unprecedented government intervention into the private markets. The markets must be stabilized to stave off wider turmoil. Nevertheless, the urgency of this crisis does not mean that we should offer a blank check to financial institutions or the privileged few. Nor can we simply allow the administration to use the taxpayers like a "reset button." We cannot allow Wall Street to act without oversight by a vigilant SEC and administration — and without regard for the American people, who will now have paid twice: in falling prey to a widening credit crisis, and in paying the bill to hopefully bring it to an end.

I will be examining the administration's proposal very closely to ensure that we do not approve a policy that may stabilize the markets in the short term without addressing the root problems facing middle-class families or the kinds of reckless gambling that was permitted for far too long by the administration. The Bush administration may have changed its tune once the crisis facing Main Street hit Wall Street. But we need to be sure that the American taxpayers — asked to shoulder yet more risk and responsibility — have a voice.

Early US presidential voting starts in battleground states

2008-09-20T15:49:00.000-07:00

40 million could go to polls before November 4
Florence Dziamniski, 82, is one of thousands registering to vote

Voting in the US presidential race began yesterday as the first ballots were cast in the state of Virginia, part of an unprecedented nationwide surge in early voting that is forcing Barack Obama and John McCain to recalculate their campaign strategies.

With more than six weeks before election day, Virginia is the first of 36 states to allow early voting this year, with at least a third of the electorate predicted to vote before November 4. It is a record-high number that has forced both candidates to change turnout plans, travelling schedules and the timing of advertisements.More...

Early voting is taking place in a string of key battleground states – including Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida and Minnesota – where Mr Obama and Mr McCain are tied, and where a few thousand votes could decide the outcome in each state.

The large number of states allowing early voting has rendered traditional campaign strategies obsolete. No sooner had Mr Obama and Mr McCain picked running-mates and held their conventions than they had to turn their attention to “closing messages” in many states at a time when they would usually have just begun stumping. Only 11 states permitted the practice in 2000 – part of a strategy to increase voter turnout. Democrats have pushed for it because they believe that it reduces the disenfranchisement of poor and black voters.

Iowa, a key swing state, starts early voting on Tuesday, less than three weeks after the end of the Republican convention. Ohio – allowing early ballots for the first time – opens on September 30, with Florida opening certain polling stations on October 20.

“We could have 40 million people voting before November 4,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist. “The candidates are changing their schedules and changing their media buys. It is having an unprecedented impact.”

Meanwhile, the turmoil on Wall Street and the government rescue package for the US financial markets announced by President Bush yesterday – expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars – continued to dominate the campaign. Polls this week suggest that the crisis has shifted the momentum slightly back in Mr Obama’s favour. Yet a big survey of ten battleground states showed the reality of the race: it is too close to call.

In another development, Todd Palin, the husband of John McCain’s running-mate, refused to testify in an Alaskan investigation into whether his wife abused her powers by dismissing her police chief to settle a score.

Mr McCain and Mr Obama gave speeches fleshing out how they would solve the financial crisis if elected.

Speaking in Wisconsin, Mr McCain said that the US Federal Reserve should stop bailing out failed financial institutions. He again railed against the greed of Wall Street, and criticised Mr Obama for his links to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the mortgage giants bailed out by the Government.

Mr Obama took large campaign donations from both companies and the former head of his vice-presidential vetting team, Jim Johnson, is the former head of Fannie Mae. “While Fannie and Freddie were working to keep Congress away from their house of cards, Senator Obama was taking their money,” Mr McCain said.

Mr Obama largely refrained from attacking Mr McCain, and instead asked him to work with him on legislation to help middle-class families. Yet his campaign released its own advert criticising Mr McCain’s “fundamentally wrong” economic advisers – a reference to his opponent’s blunder on Monday that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong”.

Obama Bundler Who Stormed Palin Convention Speech Welcomed at Obama’s Elite Hollywood Fundraiser

2008-09-20T11:55:00.000-07:00

Posted at Clinton Dems, reposted here to share:

Obama campaign activist Jodie Evans
I don’t normally like to quote Free Republic, but in this case facts are facts. Disgraceful.

Democrat presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois put his seal of approval on the woman who attempted to storm the stage during the acceptance speech by Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska at the Republican National Convention by welcoming her to his $28,500 per person fundraiser held in Hollywood on Tuesday night.

Less than two weeks after garnering worldwide attention by getting within feet of the stage where Palin stood before getting dragged away by security personnel, Obama bundler Jodie Evans, co-founder of the anti-American group Code Pink, was one of about 300 donors attending the high-priced fundraiser Obama held at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills that brought in approximately $8 million for the Obama campaign and the Democratic party, according to Entertainment Weekly, which published the donor list for the event. More...

Obama greeted the elite donors individually and posed for photos with them.
Days after Palin’s speech, the National Review’s Jim Geraghty suggested to Obama that he cut his ties to Evans.

Others have urged Obama to cut his ties to Evans over much more egregious behavior. Specifically her support for the terrorists in Iraq, her sympathy for Osama bin Laden, her work with state sponsors of terrorism to undermine America’s war effort, her embrace of Hugo Chavez and

Evans has been part of the Obama campaign from its beginning. She co-hosted his breakthrough Hollywood fundraiser in February 2007, the month he launched his candidacy.

Evans has contributed the maximum $4600 total to Obama’s presidential primary and general election funds. Evans is also listed by the Obama campaign as a bundler of between $50,000 and $100,000 in contributions to his campaign.

Evans and Code Pink also delivered $600,000 in cash and humanitarian aid to the families of what Code Pink called “the other side” in Fallujah, Iraq as the Marines were liberating that city from al Qaeda in Iraq in late 2004.

Evans and Code Pink will be in New York City next week where they will be calling for President Bush to be arrested at the United Nations and put on trial for being “the world’s number one war criminal.”

Barack Obama’s close embrace of Evans as one of the key members of his campaign has been virtually ignored by the media. With six weeks left in the campaign, will they inform the American people that the man who aspires to be commander-in-chief is intimately allied with someone who is working to get American soldiers killed and America defeated in the war on terror?

From the table seating arrangement published by Entertainment Weekly:
Table No. 29
Jodie Evans, Amanda Fairey, Shepard Fairey, Ellen Grinstein, Rami Kolahi, Ken Luskin, Jonathan Palevsky, Max Palevsky, Sylvie Rabineau, Frank Smith

Vote, or Risk Having Your vote Stolen

2008-09-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

Posted on September 20, 2008 by garychapelhill at the Confluence, reposted here to share:

I sincerely believe that Obama for America intends to try to steal the presidential election, just as George W. Bush did in 2000. Obama’s track record proves that he has absolutely zero integrity and an utter disregard for democratic prinicples. That is the primary reason that I do not support him and think that he would be a danger to our country, and perhaps put the final nail in the coffin of our democratic process. People like Bush and Obama want to make voters More...irrelevant. They care only about the corporate vote, which is cast not with a ballot, but EXwith a greenback.
They still need to pretend, however, that the voters actually did make the final decision. Obama can only use his shills in the media to get him close to the finish line. That provides the cover for when the “ground game” comes in and makes sure that the actual vote count is in their favor.
Republicans and Democrats have different methods for doing this. But make no mistake, both sides do it. The republicans like “vote caging”, which effectively eliminates their opposition’s voters from the rolls. The Democrats prefer to inflate their voter turnout by mainpulating and falsifying voter registration forms. This can lead to people voting “early and often” or votes from the “living impaired”, or even voting for people who do not bother to show up to vote.

In a conference call with reporters, Del. Jeffrey M. Frederick (R-Prince William), the chairman of the state party, seized on the arrests last week of three paid canvassers charged with submitting false names on voter registration forms in Hampton.
The controversy comes during one of the most aggressive efforts in a generation to register new voters, especially African Americans, in Virginia.
Convinced that there are tens of thousands of unregistered African Americans and otherwise Democratic-leaning Virginia residents, the Democrats are trying to register 151,000 new voters before the Oct. 6 deadline. A dozen other private organizations have sent canvassers into the streets to register voters. Democrats think this is their best chance of carrying the state in a presidential election since 1964.
Frederick said the criminal charges in Hampton prove that some groups are trying to register voters through fraudulent means. “Unfortunately, there appears to be a coordinated and widespread effort in Virginia to commit voter fraud,” he said.
Frederick said the state Republican Party has obtained an affidavit from a Richmond woman who contends that her Social Security number was used by someone who was trying to register to vote.

This is happening in many battleground states. Obama is attempting to “cross the finish line” by falsifying voter registration rolls, and if anyone calls him on it, he screams racism. Pretty sneaky, right? In fact, I am quite alarmed to find out that this is happening in my own county. First of all, take a look at the voter registration activity going on in my area. Within a 50 mile radius of my house, there are 263 “events” being held by Obama for America. Most of these are voter registration events.

But these events are not all run by the campaign itself. They are aided by nefarious groups such as ACORN, whose history of voter fraud has been covered here and here, from the WSJ, which actually ties ACORN to recently failed Fannie and Freddie.

Operating in at least 38 states (as well as Canada and Mexico), Acorn pushes a highly partisan agenda, and its organizers are best understood as shock troops for the AFL-CIO and even the Democratic Party. As part of the Fannie Mae reform bill, House Democrats pushed an “affordable housing trust fund” designed to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profits to subsidize Acorn, among other groups. A version of this trust fund actually passed the Republican House and will surely be on the agenda again next year.

I have been generally ambivalent about the claims of voter fraud, because I believed that this was mainly a Republican tactic. I can’t afford to be that way any longer, especially since the vote that is stolen may very well be my own. I am a resident of Durham County and this is what I read in my local paper (free registration required) this morning:

The move by RNC Chief Counsel Sean Cairncross and Communications Director Danny Diaz followed a Herald-Sun report that Durham County Board of Elections Director Mike Ashe wants state officials to check about 80 voter registration forms for possible fraud.
The forms came from a group called the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The group is more commonly known by its acronym, ACORN…

Ashe’s move this week came after elections officials discovered that ACORN workers had registered a 14-year-old, claiming the youth was born in 1989. The minimum voting age is 18.
They also knew of “less than half a dozen” people who, after receiving a formal notice from the board telling them they’d registered, got in touch with officials to say they’d never filled out a registration form, Ashe said.
In addition, election workers also noticed that ACORN-submitted registration forms so far have included up to 125 duplicate names. It appeared that ACORN registrars — who are paid and subject to a per-shift quota — were using the same names repeatedly, Ashe said.
“I got like 15 Brenda Greens,” Ashe said. “We’re starting to get enough now that the names are looking familiar.”
Similar problems tied to ACORN have been reported this summer by media outlets in New Mexico and Ohio, which like North Carolina are battlegrounds and potential swing states in this year’s presidential election.

It is important to understand that Durham Co. is a Democratic bastion in an otherwise red state. This is not an investigation that is being led by GOP operatives. There must be some serious problems if it has gotten attention of both the local paper and the county’s board of elections director. In fact it appears that the GOP only chimed in after being tipped off by the Herald-Sun.

The Obama campaign may try to distance themselves from ACORN, but Obama has a long history with the group. In fact, much of his touted “community organizing” was done on behalf of the group.

Prior to law school, Barack Obama worked as an organizer for their affiliates in New York and Chicago. He always has been an ACORN person — meeting and working with them to advance their causes. Through his membership on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago and his friendship with Teresa Heinz Kerry, Obama has helped ensure that they remain funded well.
Since he graduated from law school, Obama’s work with ACORN and the Midwest Academy has ranged from training and fundraising, to legal representation and promoting their work.

I have come to the conclusion that staying at home, or leaving the ballot blank for President could very well end up being a vote for Obama. The mere thought that this might occur is absolutely repugnant to me. Therefore I feel very strongly that I must vote for SOMEONE for President. I am in no way endorsing anybody, and honestly I’m still not sure who I intend to vote for. But I will vote for somebody, and it won’t be Obama.

Obama fails his second 3 AM call

2008-09-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

Posted at "Not Your Sweetie"- reposted here to share:

In spite of both calls coming during working hours.

He was in Hawaii eating shave ice when Russia attacked Georgia - couldn’t be bothered with a coherent statement.

He is…not doing homework on Fridays when the markets need swift measures as the LA Times reports :

- Sen. Barack Obama today met with some of his many economic advisors and made an announcement that he was not going to make an announcement about any new plan to plan plans.

Being from LA, we get the Leno take:

Obama’s inaction prompted Jay Leno in his opening monologue tonight on “The Tonight Show” to point out an essential presidential campaign unfairness, that Obama has criticized McCain’s economic plan but the Republican can’t respond because “nobody knows” what Obama’s is yet.

More...

and then back to Obama:

“Given the gravity of this situation,” Obama said with gravity, “based on conversations I’ve had with both Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke, I will refrain from presenting a …
… more detailed blueprint about how an immediate plan might be structured until I can fully review details of the plan proposed by the Treasury and Federal Reserve.”

Should we remind Barack that the lady already has one? And what to make of the media indignation that Bill Clinton praised Hillary’s plan (instead of Obama’s lack of it).

And let’s recall Obama’s outrage about being accused of not supporting something he doesn’t support. McCain’s ad was on the spot.

He is repeating his debate performances. Only now, as he’s not following Hillary, he’s less sure he should say “what he sad”. At the Swamp, one comment captures it

Yesterday Messiah
“John McCain can’t decide whether he’s Barry Goldwater or Dennis Kucinich,” he said, referencing one of the heroes of Republican politics and the populist representative from Ohio. “He’s not clear about what he thinks or what he believes.”
+++++

Todays Messiah:
“Given the gravity of this situation, based on conversations I’ve had with both Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke, I will refrain from presenting a more detailed blueprint about how an immediate plan might be structured until I can fully review details of the plan proposed by the Treasury and Federal Reserve,” Obama said.
“I think it’s critical at this point that the markets and the public have confidence that their work will be unimpeded by partisan wrangling.”

Update
In spite of this pathetic failure, Politico declares Obama winner of the day, the week, the decade and the millennium (I just skipped a bit ahead the predictable little book):

Obama’s performance today made this business week a clean sweep for the Democrats. When the Illinois senator called McCain “panicked” during a campaign stop in Florida, he was overstating the case, but this week the Democrats have defined the economic debate every single day. And though Obama has yet to lay out an especially detailed or substantive response to the economic crisis, he’s kept up an series of attacks on McCain-Palin that have taken their toll.

While a few days ago, polls were totally ignored, they are now back in the news - as they can support the preordained “win”.

Change We Can Believe In: Dodd Still In Power, Rangel Not So 'Neighborly' With His Own Taxes

2008-09-20T10:05:00.000-07:00

Is this the Change You Can Believe In, whereas Senator Obama is quick to blame Republicans for every challenge this nation faces, but is eerily silent about the acts of those in his own party?

Take for instance Senator Dodd (D-CT), the chairman of the Banking Committee who has done nothing over the past 18 months to address the 'credit crunch'. In February of 2007, Merrill Lynch, then under the of Obama supporter, Stanley Price, announced the write-off of billions of dollars due to bad mortgages. The markets took a hit, but rebounded when companies such as Lehman Brothers and Goldman-Sachs announced their companies were stable. Dodd would take no action then and would continue this pattern for the next 18 months. Today we know that Senator Dodd has received more than $10 million from Financial Firms and Industry Lobbyists since the beginning of 2007, an amount only surpassed by the Presidential candidates. Yet, despite his utter dereliction of duty he has not resigned position and Democratic leadership, including the party leader Senator Obama, has not called for his removal. In the coming days and weeks, Dodd's role as Chairman of the Banking Committee will become more important than ever; yet despite 'sweetheart' personal deals and accepting millions in campaign donations from this sector, Democratic leadership expects us to continue to trust his judgment.More...

Both parties are responsible for our countries budgetary, credit and economic challenges. While President Bush was pushing for expanded home ownership, Democrats were at his side touting the increase in home ownership in low income areas; and now that those areas at hard hit by foreclosures they want to accept no responsibility. When regulations separating the insurance, mortgage and investment industries were loosened to allow consolidated services, Democrats, including President Clinton overwhelmingly supported the move. As merger after merger creating mega-financial institutions and shrinking competition occurred throughout the 90's and 00's, Democrats and Republicans both supported those mergers. Today is an example of what occurs when regulatory policy limits competition instead of promoting competition. In the 1980's when the S&L bailout occurred (Summer 1989), there was minimal economic impact on our nation (recession was not caused by S&L, recession occurred July 1990-March 1991) because our banking system was diverse and largely regionalized. Today, our banking system has shrunk as we are paying the price of mega-financials who control large swaths of our wealth.

Senator Dodd has neglected his duties under his chairmanship and it is time that Democratic Leadership accepts responsibility and removes his chairmanship.

Meanwhile, Representative Rangel (D-NY) who has come under investigation for ethics abuses finally stepped up to the plate yesterday and paid $10,800 in back taxes, not including penalties, that he owed the federal government. First, let me state that there is something extremely disturbing that we would allow a Representative to remain in Federal Office when he has clearly worked to avoid paying taxes. The taxes were the results of unclaimed rental income on a beach house in the Dominican Republic extending back to 2004. In addition, Rangel has come under fire for use of three rent-controlled apartments in Harlem (one was used as a campaign office) and more importantly his use of Congressional stationary to raise private funds.

Rangel is currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, but in three months, Democratic Leadership has done little to progress with the investigation. In addition, Rangel is the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee which is charged with writing tax law. That’s right; a man, who has purposely avoided paying taxes, is in charge of the primary committee for writing tax law. Democratic leadership, including the party leader Senator Obama, needs to remove Rangel's chairmanship. It is disgusting that once again political power has trumped common sense.

Rangel, in a letter emailed by his campaign this week addressed his tax and ethics troubles by writing, “Last July, the Republican Party declared guerrilla war against Democrats and since then has made every effort to smear me and members of my party…My record in the Ways and Means Committee and 38 years in Congress is unassailable, so they've pried into my private life and used insinuation and half-truths to write stories that sell papers.” Yes, that’s right; the Republicans are to blame for Rangel’s attempts to avoid paying taxes, misuse of rent-controlled properties and violation of congressional ethics laws concerning private fundraising. So much for personal responsibility.

Dodd and Rangel do not deserve the positions in which they have been entrusted. If current Democratic Leadership is unwilling to police their own party members, then how are we to trust them with continuing to lead this country forward? Senator Obama is quick to talk about change, but perhaps he should first work to change the power-hungry leadership of his own political party. Perhaps he should stop placing blame at the feet of the George Bush and begin placing blame on 20 years of leadership that has deregulated certain aspects of the financial sector while over-regulating operational sides of the sector; over-regulation that forced smaller companies out of the industry and helped to create the mega-financials of today. Perhaps Obama should take responsibility for his own lack of leadership by subverting his duties as a Senator by doing nothing more than campaigning during the past 18 months.

J Brown
September 20th, 2008

McCain's Closing Argument By George Will

2008-09-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Divided government compels compromises that curb each party's excesses, especially both parties' proclivities for excessive spending when unconstrained by an institution controlled by the other party. William Niskanen, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute, notes that in the last 50 years, "government spending has increased an average of only 1.73 percent annually during periods of divided government. This number more than triples, to 5.26 percent, for periods of unified government."
By picking Palin, McCain got the country's attention. That is a perishable thing and before it dissipates, he should show the country his veto pen.

(Click here to read the full article)

‘Attack by Association’ Viewed as Fair Game by McCain Camp

2008-09-19T23:46:00.000-07:00

Don’t be shocked if you see the McCain campaign pull the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright out of mothballs in new attacks against one-time parishioner, Barack Obama.

McCain advisers say that they see “attack by association” as fair game now, arguing that Obama’s campaign has been using that technique to go after McCain. In particular, the Obama campaign has hammered McCain on the stump and in TV ads on the number of one-time lobbyists working for his campaign. (The McCain campaign is also angry about a Spanish-language TV ad that ties McCain to Rush Limbaugh on immigration, without ever saying that McCain took on Limbaugh and others to fight for comprehensive immigration reform.)More...

“They played it one way, we played it another way,” said one of McCain’s top advisers, Mark Salter. “Now we’re both going to play it the same way.”

McCain began that effort this week by linking Obama to Democrats Jim Johnson and Franklin Raines, former executives at Fannie Mae. Johnson was named to head Obama’s vice presidential search before he stepped down amid controversy. Raines is a supporter of Obama.

In April, McCain said that he did not believe that Obama shared Wright’s controversial views and said he opposed an anti-Obama advertisement that invoked his name run by the North Carolina Republican party. But he also suggested that the subject was fair play after Obama said that questions about Wright were “a legitimate political issue.”

“If he believes that,” McCain said in April, “then it will probably be a political issue.”

(Click here to read the full article)

John Gibson Highlights the Obvious that Dems have their Hands Very Dirty in the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae Collapses

2008-09-19T23:40:00.000-07:00

Click here to watch the video and read the article.

How McCain Can Win - Sean Oxendine, Next Right

2008-09-19T23:22:00.000-07:00

If we wake up the morning after election day looking at a McCain Presidency, and people talk about the “shocking” result, what were the warning signs? What should we have been looking at in order to see this coming?

I think a good way to approach this is to take a look at all of the supposed Obama advantages, and look at the evidence why they won’t play out the way that we have expected that they would

(Click here to read the full article)

FORMER HILLARY CLINTON ACTIVISTS MIGUEL D. LAUSELL AND LUCHY SECAIRA ENDORSE JOHN MCCAIN

2008-09-19T17:22:00.000-07:00

The Obama camp cannot be enjoying Clintonites shunning his messianic campaign. Here's the release from the McCain campaign:

FORMER HILLARY CLINTON ACTIVISTS MIGUEL D. LAUSELL AND LUCHY SECAIRA ENDORSE JOHN MCCAIN

As Democrats for McCain Ranks Continue to Grow, "Change Is Coming"

ARLINGTON, VA -- The McCain-Palin presidential campaign today announced the endorsement of Miguel D. Lausell, Senior Political Advisor to Hillary Clinton, and Clinton Delegate-at-Large Luchy Secaira.

"Although I supported Hillary during the primaries, I now support John McCain and Governor Palin because I am putting my country first," said Secaira, former Hillary Clinton Florida Delegate-at-Large. "They have the experience and judgment to lead America through these difficult times, and I trust them to work with Democrats to do the right thing for our country."

Lausell, who advised Senator Clinton on a variety of issues including international trade, telecommunications and Latino affairs, added, "John McCain has a long record of reforming government and working across the aisle to achieve bipartisan results. His courageous leadership is exactly what we need in the White House, and I am convinced that John McCain is the right leader at the right time for our nation."

(Click here to read the full article)

Obama Heckled By Blacks In Florida

2008-09-19T17:19:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama has a problem with Black Hecklers. (Click here to watch the video)

Race, Redistribution, and the Bully Pulpit

2008-09-19T17:16:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Obama’s history up to now could be characterized as that of a “Unifier,” as long as we remember that, in his world, there really has been only one agenda. Obama successfully worked his way into Chicago political ranks, not as an agent of change, but as a minion of Mayor Daley. During his time in the US Senate, Obama has maintained a one party mentality (that he cites a widely-accepted, politically insignificant nuclear non-proliferation treaty as reaching across party lines is laughable), rarely straying from the liberal position.

The most powerful son of ACORN has done them proud. Obama is taking his honed bullying & blackmail tactics to the ultimate national stage. ACORN is planting their teams in cities across the US to intimidate voters. Voters better watch out - lipstick on a pig may not be pretty, but lipstick on an “empty suit” is uglier still.

(Click here to read the full article)

Blocking Care for Women - Sen. Hillary Clinton & Cecile Richards, NY Times

2008-09-19T17:01:00.000-07:00

LAST month, the Bush administration launched the latest salvo in its eight-year campaign to undermine women’s rights and women’s health by placing ideology ahead of science: a proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would govern family planning. It would require that any health care entity that receives federal financing — whether it’s a physician in private practice, a hospital or a state government — certify in writing that none of its employees are required to assist in any way with medical services they find objectionable.

Laws that have been on the books for some 30 years already allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further, ensuring that all employees and volunteers for health care entities can refuse to aid in providing any treatment they object to, which could include not only abortion and sterilization but also contraception.

(Click here to read the full article)

An Interesting Bill Clinton Interview Seemingly Pro-Obama but with Weird Subtextual Bombs Obama won't be Happy about

2008-09-19T15:02:00.000-07:00

Posted at http://thejtandbearshow.com/, reposted here to share:

This is a strange interview with Bill Clinton. Watch the first 3:40:

The weird but surprisingly objective moments:

1) Obama's recent bounce in the polls is because of economic distress. Is Clinton saying without the distress Obama would still be down? That seems to be saying Obama's policies aren't that good, even though he had just said they were.

2) "I've never concealed my admiration and affection for Senator McCain. I think he's a great man." This is a different take than the Obama camp's claim that McCain has become dishonorable. Do you think Clinton is staying on the polite side in case McCain wins, so that no one can claim he went negative on McCain in case of a Hillary run?More...

3) "I think Obama/Biden will win, but I don't think you'll see it clearly, barring some unforeseen development, like something happens in the debates we don't know about." This is one of the stranger statements. He could've meant that Obama might win the debates handily or vice versa. But knowing how the Clintons operate, is there an unforeseen development they are planning to preserve the chance of a Hillary run?

4) In response to a question about whether he was surprised by the Palin bounce for the McCain Campaign? "No, she's an instinctively effective candidate. And with a compelling story. And I think it was exciting to some that she was a woman. It was exciting that she was from Alaska. It's exciting that she's sort of like the person she is. And she grew up, she came up in a political culture and a religious culture that is probably well to the right of the American center, but she basically didn't define herself in those terms. She basically said this is where I'm from and I'm not going to impose this on you. This is what I want to do that I think we can all be a part of. So, she handled herself very well. So, no, I wasn't surprised. I think that. I disagree with them on a lot of these issues and that's why I have to (side - unintelligible) for my party affiliation. I would be for Senator Obama and Senator Biden anyway. But I get why she's done so well. It (was or is - unintelligible) a mistake to underestimate her. She's got good intuitive skills that are significant." Now, if this wasn't meant to undercut Obama, then I don't know what it is. Maybe he is trying to separate himself and Hillary from the extreme liberal fringe of his party, so that when Hillary gets to run, she can't be cast as an extreme liberal. It also shows that the Clintons never took part in bashing Palin for where she came from or what she represents. This was the weirdest part of the interview.

All in all, Clinton put in a lot of "buts" after his pro-Obama statements. There are so many subtexts to his qualifications that it's hard to tell exactly what he thinks. This is no surprise coming from a masterful politician of the vague. The Obama camp won't be too happy about some of his statements, which can be seen as planting more seeds of doubt.

Update: Here is a post we just put up where two former Hillary supporters just endorsed John McCain today.

(Click here to see the video )

Obama Economic Plan 4.0 - Like Monkeys Randomly Typing - Michael Eden

2008-09-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

Excerpts:

And now, great googly-moogly, there’s already an AP story about “Obama to meet economic advisers to offer new plans.” .... Tell you what; elect me President, and I promise to keep randomly throwing darts at the economic system until some of them actually stick.

More...
AND:

A vote for Barack Obama is a vote to put the most inexperienced, the most liberal, the most radical, the most “loyalty-to-party-first” candidate - who has voted with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid over 95% of the time - we’ve ever seen run for President. And he is hip deep in the pockets of the people who caused this mess. Obama is second on the list of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign money recipients only after fellow Democrat Chris Dodd; and he is second on the list of Lehman Bros’ campaign money recipients only after fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton. And Obama has key campaign advisors - such as Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, and Jamie Gorelick- who personally made tens of millions of dollars from these very institutions.

We can not afford a Barack Obama presidency. Aside from the fact that he is massively part of the problem he is now trying to hang on others, he simply doesn’t have a clue how to navigate the nation out of a crisis such that few have seen in their lifetimes.

(Click here to read the full article)

Obama Is Stoking Racial Antagonism - Rush Limbaugh, Wall Street Journal

2008-09-19T14:49:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

I understand the rough and tumble of politics. But Barack Obama -- the supposedly postpartisan, postracial candidate of hope and change -- has gone where few modern candidates have gone before.

More...
Mr. Obama's campaign is now trafficking in prejudice of its own making. And in doing so, it is playing with political dynamite. What kind of potential president would let his campaign knowingly extract two incomplete, out-of-context lines from two radio parodies and build a framework of hate around them in order to exploit racial tensions? The segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s were famous for such vile fear-mongering.

Here's the relevant part of the Spanish-language television commercial Mr. Obama is running in Hispanic communities:

"They want us to forget the insults we've put up with . . . the intolerance . . . they made us feel marginalized in this country we love so much."

Then the commercial flashes two quotes from me: ". . . stupid and unskilled Mexicans" and "You shut your mouth or you get out!"

And then a voice says, "John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One that says lies just to get our vote . . . and another, even worse, that continues the policies of George Bush that put special interests ahead of working families. John McCain . . . more of the same old Republican tricks."

Much of the media that is uninterested in Mr. Obama's connections to unrepentant 1970s Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright have so far gone along with the attempt to tie me to Mr. McCain ....And more to the point, these sound bites are a deception, and Mr. Obama knows it.

(Click here to read the full article)

Obama Bundler And Former Advisers' Connections To Fannie Mae

2008-09-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

The ad below speaks about Jim Johnson, former Fannie Mae CEO and former adviser and bundler to Barack Obama.

Text:

ANNCR: What Obama says…

BARACK OBAMA: It would be unacceptable for executives of these institutions to earn a windfall.

ANNCR: …Is not what he does.

Meet Jim Johnson, former Fannie Mae CEO. Fannie cooked the books and Johnson made millions.

Then Obama asked him to pick his VP. And raise thousands for his campaign.

Barack Obama. More empty words.

(Click here to read the full article)

How a Massive Obam Defeat becomes a Vicotry - Tom in Paine

2008-09-19T14:40:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Not only is Obama completely unqualified to be President and on that basis alone should be defeated, but for those Democrats who have never wanted to see a Republican elected over a Democrat, they should be reminded that it was Obama who said earlier this year that the Republicans were the party of ideas. He has reversed himself on so many positions that now are aligned with Republican positions so he can pander to Republican voters in the general election ( FISA, gun control, off shore drilling) that John McCain is actually more at odds with the Republican Party than Obama. Another tid bit psychiatrists will find fascinating to study in the year to come.

A massive defeat of Obama, one of Reagan - Mondale like proportions will not only keep an unqualified and untrustworthy, and certainly undeserving candidate out of the White House, it would have the secondary, longer lasting, and immediate benefit of ridding the party of those who corrupted it in the first place and produced the coming fiasco.

(Click here to read the full article)

NWPC-WA - Nice to see they adhere to their mission!!

2008-09-19T14:07:00.000-07:00

I received this in my inbox today from NWPC-WA (copied below). Nice
to see they adhere to their mission statement of:

"The NWPC is a multi-partisan grassroots membership organization
dedicated to increasing the number of women in elected and appointed
office at all levels of government. Our mission is to identify,
mentor, educate and support women leaders in our community who
demonstrate a commitment to Reproductive Freedom and Women's Economic
and Social Equality.

We believe that when more women are at the table where decisions are
being made, it fundamentally shifts the agenda resulting in more women
and family-friendly policy."

Of course nothing matters to "feminists" other than Reproductive
Freedom! More...
________________________________________________________________

Hello, Caucus Members and Friends!

What a month it has been!

Hillary's speech at the Democratic National Convention was inspiring
as she threw her support behind the Democratic nominee, Barak Obama. I
was honored to co-author an op-ed with Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles
(D-36) about our experiences at the convention and perspective on a
unified Democratic Party.

John McCain announced his running mate on the Republican ticket,
Governor Sarah Palin. Acknowledging that his selection of Governor
Palin is a recognition of the importance of women's support and votes
in this election and of the leadership capabilities of women, the NWPC
announced it would not be supporting her candidacy. NWPC President
Lulu Flores said in a release that it is "unfortunate that their
position on issues of fundamental importance to our members preclude
us from supporting her."

Regardless, this will be a historic election that is capturing the
attention of millions worldwide and giving us all much to think
about. The September 22nd issue of Newsweek, with the cover "What
Women Want" includes this article: From Seneca Falls to...Sarah Palin?
that is worth a read (and our own Sen. Patty Murray gets a mention).

They want fairer media (the NEWSWEEK Poll found that 34 percent of
white women think the media have been too critical of Palin, and that
one quarter of Clinton supporters agree). And to see more mothers
making decisions that affect their lives. To have the chance to run
for office alongside men without being called hags or fools. And, as
Aretha Franklin might say, a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Linda Mitchell
NWPC-WA President

Obama's Limbaugh Ad Causes Stir by Larry Rother

2008-09-19T13:53:00.000-07:00

ACCURACY This advertisement is misleading. Mr. McCain’s history on the immigration issue, though complicated, is misrepresented here, as is his relationship with the nativist wing of his party and Mr. Limbaugh. With Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Mr. McCain sponsored overhaul legislation in 2006. He later backed away from his own bill for reasons still being debated, and though he now says the borders must be secured first, he has not repudiated his support for the principle. (He has tried in his own advertisements to shift the blame for the bill’s failure to Mr. Obama.) On the campaign trail, Mr. McCain has also repeatedly praised the Hispanic contribution to American life. Not one of the anti-Hispanic slights in the advertisement came from Mr. McCain’s mouth. And while Mr. McCain has mentioned the failure of the effort to overhaul immigration in one of his own Spanish-language advertisements, he has not celebrated it.

SCORECARD A Spanish-language proverb says it best: “Tell me who you walk with, and I will tell you who you are.” This is an exercise in guilt by association, meant to taint Mr. McCain with Latino voters. But in the Republican presidential debates, he took pains to separate himself from the anti-immigrant posture of candidates like Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado, and Mr. Limbaugh has often attacked Mr. McCain. So while Mr. McCain may need to explain why the Republican platform does not reflect his views on immigration, little in his record justifies this attack, which strongly implies that he holds anti-Hispanic views.
(Click here to read the full article)

What Obama’s top picks in science and foreign policy say about an O-Admin

2008-09-19T13:45:00.000-07:00

Obama has picked a science team. One may wonder what priorities an Obama administration would have, and one way to decipher those priorities is by looking at his top picks.
For example, Obama’s top foreign policy advisors are somewhat telling of his priorities
-- Susan Rice, a former Assistant secretary of state for African affairs. She has pushed hard for a tougher response to the Darfur crisis in Africa --Anthony Lake, national security advisor to Clinton. Mr. Lake is noted for his open criticism of the Clinton admin for failure to stop the genocide in Rwanda.

These headliners on his foreign policy team give us an idea of which part of the globe Mr. Obama might place heavy focus on during his admin, for better or worse.

Obama’s Science team is also somewhat telling. One pick is an expert on malaria, another is committed to improving health in the developing world and sharing western science information with the
developing world , another is an expert in crop development and former member of Monsanto’s Board of Directors (Monsanto is a leader in agricultural biotech that will aid crops in developing countries), another has argued against the privatization of commercial space flight, and another is a vocal critic of creationism (as anyone with a thinking brain should be, we say!), another a Nobel “laureate who used his prize money to defend academic freedom against the war on terror” which presumably translates into less restricted visas for foreign scientists coming into the U.S.

Now I like all the folks on the team and applaud their work. But I also know that Clinton waited until he was out of office to focus on his mission to improve global health. My question is one of balance. How much should a sitting president focus on humanitarian concerns to other countries and how much should he focus on the national interests of the U.S. And of course those are not mutually exclusive, but there will be many times when a president must put the concerns of his country above those of other countries…one reason few want the job-- hard choices must often be made to put the U.S. as the #one priority even when that is a very difficult stand to make.

What I have seen thus far of Obama is a man so internally polarized that I do not find him mentally ready to take the stands that may well need to be taken.

(Click on the title of the post to read the full article)

President Kennedy's 'Tax Fairness' vs. Obama & Biden's Neighborly Tax Patriotism

2008-09-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Tax hikes, for any bracket, are not the answer; a return to budgetary responsibility is the answer. I have seen this game before, 6 years ago in Illinois, the governor ran on a platform of fixing the states budgetary problems and initiating sweeping social reforms and expansion. 6 years later, the budget deficit has ballooned, increased fees on businesses have driven businesses and professionals out of the state, the teachers pension system was bonded (put into debt) for billions of dollars, the state has now privatized it's lottery system and government layoffs and closures hit the paper every day.More...

Senator Obama's tax proposals are nothing more than a blatant move toward the tax systems in place across much of Europe. Tax systems based upon socialism and the unfair redistribution of wealth. European tax systems were based upon the same populist rhetoric as Senator Obama proposes. If you believe that a move toward European tax systems is a right move, then why is it that their economies have always lagged behind ours?

President Kennedy understood that our nation needed a broader tax base, a tax base that would not suffer dramatic down-ticks and up-ticks as the exonomy fluctuated. Kennedy pushed for top down tax cuts, as he understood that this would spurn investment. Now I personally don't believe that this nation needs further tax cuts for anyone at this point; what we first need is a return to fiscal prioritization and fiscal responsibility.

Senator Obama, you are no Jack Kennedy!

(Click here to read the full article)

Pelosi and Reid Blew It - Andrew Cline, The American Spectator

2008-09-19T13:39:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Believe it or not, entering the final quarter of the eighth year of the George W. Bush presidency, Republicans are ascending in popularity, Politico.com reported yesterday. Half of registered voters and half of independent voters have a favorable opinion of the GOP, according to a new poll from the Pew Center for the People and the Press. Democrats hold a slight edge in favorability among registered voters (55 percent to 50 percent), but they are statistically tied with Republicans among independent voters (Republicans 50 percent, Democrats 49 percent.)

How could this happen? Anyone half-paying attention for the past eight years can rattle off the list of reasons voters are supposed to be fleeing the GOP: Iraq, Katrina, Wall Street, Abramoff, DeLay, Bridge to Nowhere, bin Laden at large, gas prices, and home mortgages. When Democratic presidential candidates dream, they dream of election years like this one.More...

And yet since August the Republicans have closed an 18 point gap with Democrats among independent voters. A new Gallup poll finds that Democrats have only a three-point edge (within the margin of error) when people are asked which party they want to control Congress.

I think the answer is pretty clear: The Democratic leadership in Congress took the golden opportunity it was given in 2006 and pissed it away on petty partisanship -- just like the Republicans who preceded them did.

(Click here to read the full article)

Campaign Lies, Media Double Standards - Stuart Taylor, National Journal

2008-09-19T11:17:00.000-07:00

Excerpts:

Some who have been admirers of John McCain think that the war hero has debased himself by using gross distortions to trash Barack Obama and his record. Others see the media fury over McCain's campaign ads as more evidence of a double standard driven by liberal bias at most major news organizations.

Both are right. Although each candidate is responsible for many distortions...Obama may have pulled even with McCain in the race to the bottom, or even ahead of him, by launching a scurrilously dishonest new Spanish-language TV ad. It misleadingly portrays McCain "and his Republican friends" as anti-immigrant bigots who say "lies just to get our vote." It also associates McCain with deceptively out-of-context quotes by Rush Limbaugh - no friend of McCain's -- about "stupid and unskilled Mexicans." Jake Tapper of ABC News provides details at http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/from-the-fact-1.html.)

More...

AND:

Consider also a fascinating Washington Post piece by Shankar Vedantam on September 15. He cites studies showing not only that "misinformation can exercise a ghostly influence on people's minds [even] after it has been debunked"--especially among those predisposed to believe it--but also that refutations sometimes backfire by increasing the number of people who believe the original misinformation.

The studies found this refutation "backfire effect" among conservatives but not liberals. Part of the explanation may be that conservatives have more- rigid views than liberals, as political scientists quoted by Vedantam suggest. And part of it may be that conservatives have more reason to distrust the usual refuters.

(Click here to read the full article)

What's the Top Electoral College State This Year? By Stuart Rothenberg

2008-09-19T11:11:00.000-07:00

Colorado flag

Excerpt:

As the presidential race has developed, those five states seem to hold the same predictive value now that they did then. Sure, there are a handful of additional states that could turn the election to either Democratic Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) or Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) -- New Hampshire, New Mexico, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina -- but the longer the list, the less it tells us about who'll win.

I've become convinced that my initial list of five states probably can be boiled down to just one -- one state that is most likely to determine who will be the next occupant of the White House. And that state is Colorado.

(Click here to read the full article)

Sen. John McCain was tortured for five years and Jewish Democrats cannot stand up to some threatening phone calls from Barack Hussein Obama's campaign.

2008-09-19T11:07:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Let me begin this little rant by saying I am a Christian who supports Israel 100%. Having cleared that up, the radical Left wing Democratic Jews are NUTS and their decision to un-invite Gov. Sarah Palin from the protest of Iran at the United Nations proves they are putting American politics before Israel's safety and the safety of America.

(Click here to read the full article)

Racism Becomes Excuse for Obama Supporters - Investor's Business Daily

2008-09-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Election '08: The supporters of the first post-racial candidate keep bringing it up. Racism is the new refuge of scoundrels. The real issue is not the color of Obama's skin, but the thickness of it.

For a time, Barack Obama was riding "the chance to make history" train, garnering huge support on that issue alone. Then came the GOP nomination of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, an outlet for disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters and hockey moms, plus a different way to make history.

Once "hope" and "change" had to be defined as more than a podium sign, and Obama had to speak on occasion without a teleprompter, avoiding the joint town hall meetings he promised John McCain, it became apparent that it was not change for the better Obama was offering.

(Click here to read the full article)
Listen to Audio Version

State Polls

2008-09-19T10:53:00.000-07:00

McCain still closing in on Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, PA, Colorado, maintaining gains in Florida, GA, VA:

2008-09-18T11:52:00.001-07:00

Will Obama Rise to the Challenge? - Susan Estrich, FOX News

2008-09-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Finally, as for the vice presidency, Obama made a safe choice that brought him basically nothing, politically speaking (sorry Joe, nothing personal), and gave some Hillary supporters one more reason to be angry. McCain made a high-risk choice that, at least at this juncture, many Democrats misread and completely mishandled, and many Republicans and many women have applauded.

Time will tell, but I’m betting that the harder liberals try to sink Palin, the more likely McCain is to win.
It may well be that in the history of this campaign, Lehman Brothers and AIG will be seen as a turning point. Obama is, finally, back on message, on the economy, dismissing the lipstick and the pigs and the rest, and focusing on what matters to voters. If he wins, it will be because the economy gets him there.

If he loses, it will be because McCain has more experience, and made better choices.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/will_obama_rise_to_challenge_o.html(Click here to read the full article)

Obama Needs to Sell Himself, Not Attack McCain - Karl Rove, WSJ

2008-09-18T11:37:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

This election is not fundamentally about Mr. McCain. It is much more about people's persistent doubts concerning Mr. Obama. The only way to reassure them is to provide a compelling, forward-looking agenda. That sounds obvious, but the Obama campaign seems to be betting on making Mr. McCain an unacceptable choice by striking at his character. Mr. McCain has absorbed many harder blows than anything the Obama campaign can throw his way.

In a revealing slip in an interview with ABC recently, Mr. Obama said, "If we're going to ask questions about who has been promulgating negative ads that are completely unrelated to the issues at hand, I think I win that contest pretty handily." That he is in fact winning the contest for the most negative campaign could well spell his defeat.

(Click here to read the full article)

Obama Proves All Too Human - Victor Davis Hanson, RealClearPolitics

2008-09-18T11:36:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

For the hope-and-change candidate, those natural readjustments now appear insincere and opportunistic -- especially given that he had to move so far from the left to get to the middle. On campaign-finance reform, FISA, NAFTA, abortion, capital punishment, guns, Iran, Iraq, the surge, and drilling offshore, Obama has fudged on his earlier positions in the normal way of savvy pragmatists -- but not in a manner befitting angelic idealists.

The new Obama probably will recover from his temporary setback in the polls. But right now his problem is that disappointed independent voters are catching on that this saintly savior is all too human.

(Click here to read the full article)

Recent Obama Ads More Negative Than Rival's, Study Says

2008-09-18T11:15:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Despite perceptions that Sen. John McCain has spent more time on the attack, Sen. Barack Obama aired more negative advertising last week than did the Arizona Republican, says a study released yesterday.

Seventy-seven percent of the Illinois Democrat's commercials were negative during the week after the Republican National Convention, compared with 56 percent of the spots run by McCain.

(Click here to read the full article)

Obama's Hesitation Blues - David Frum, The Week

2008-09-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Crisis does not bring out the best in Barack Obama. His instinct is to equivocate and temporize. We saw that tendency in August, when the Russians invaded Georgia and Obama had to work through a gamut of soft-line stances before arriving at the same position that John McCain had announced immediately.

McCain’s call for tighter standards on Wall Street point to the lesson to be learned from this crisis: The great national experiment in attempting to push the home ownership rate above 65 percent has ended in disaster. Future homebuyers will be held to higher standards of creditworthiness—and will have to put more money down. Barack Obama’s attempt to condemn “Bush-McCain” economic policy evades the need to produce specific solutions of his own.

(Click here to read the full article)

Trump endorses McCain on Larry King

2008-09-18T11:09:00.000-07:00

Donald Trump, the flamboyant New York magnate, said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” on Wednesday night that he is supporting Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for president.

Trump, never shy with his opinions, went on to say that McCain appears to be winning, and that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) should have chosen Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as his running mate.

“I know John McCain, and John McCain's a great guy, a tremendous guy,” Trump told King. “I've known him for a long time. And I'm with him, and I'm with him based on the fact that I have great knowledge of John McCain. Also, this is not the right time for tax increases. And Obama wants to increase your taxes drastically.”

Well, maybe not your taxes. But certainly The Donald’s: Obama would repeal President Bush tax cuts for households making more than $250,000.

During the Democratic primaries, Trump donated to Hillary Clinton, according to records posted by the Center for Responsive Politics. Trump donated to McCain in May, according to the records.

“I don't understand why Hillary wasn't chosen [for vice president],” Trump said. “ She was really winning. I have a friend that came to this country and was here for the last four weeks of that whole election. He said: How did she lose? She won every primary? He didn't understand it.

“The fact is, that Obama went limping across the finish line. He should have chosen Hillary, It would have been a much different race, I believe. Right now, it looks to me like McCain is probably winning.”

During the show, the two men had this exchange:

TRUMP: I'm endorsing McCain. I am basically very strongly — you have to understand: I've known him. I like him, I respect him.

KING: So you're endorsing him?

TRUMP: I think he's going to be a great president.

KING: So you're endorsing him.

TRUMP: Sure, I'll endorse him on your show.

KING: You just endorsed him.

TRUMP: I endorse him.

KING: Are you pessimistic or optimistic about this financial situation?

TRUMP: Well, I'm very pessimistic.

Beating the Battle Drum

2008-09-18T11:04:00.000-07:00

The McCain/Palin campaign isn’t rolling over and playing dead on the economy. Facing a relentless MSM message that this issue will favor Obama, the McCain/Palin people have to create a counter-message and they’re on it.

Hopefully, they’ll begin to make a case for all the connections to Obama and the Democrats that helped this sinkhole develop. Here’s a detailed description of the grubby money trail at Maggie’s Notebook.
The new ad from the campaign ratchets up the kind of rhetoric I love to hear. It warns of “massive government” and “painful taxes” all the while making the thing look like a horror movie trailor.

Obama Prevaricates In El Espanol, Tambien!

2008-09-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

Posted at TheAmericanSentinel.com, reposted here to share:

So now the Obama campaign has released an ad equating John McCain to Rush Limbaugh. Were it not for the seriousness of the business at hand, this would be hilarious. Obviously, Obama assumes that Hispanic voters are ignorant, or stupid, or both - - pretty much the same way he views us rednecks.

I guess we’ll have to brush up on our Spanish. Fortunately, hablo un poquito del Espanol, so here are some words and phrases that may come in handy.

The Spanish word meaning “to lie” or “to prevaricate” is mentir. So, for example, “nosotros mintió Obama” is translated as “Obama lied to us.”

The Spanish word for “lie” is mentira. The “a” ending is feminine in Spanish, so “the lie” is la mentira and “a lie” is una mentira. The phrase una mentira como una casa translates as “a big lie” or “a whopper.”

The word falsedad can also be translated as “lie” and carries the meaning of “falseness” or “hypocrisy.” The sentence, su declaración estaba llena de falsedades, translates as “his statement was riddled with lies.” That one should come in really handy!

McCain Endorsements

2008-09-18T10:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday it was reported by multiple organizations as well as here, that a prominent Clinton supporter and Democratic National Committee member has publicly endorsed John McCain for the presidency and last night on CNN’s “Larry King Live, another high profile figure, New York real estate magnate Donald Trump, endorsed McCain as the Politico reports.

Trump had donated to the Hilary Clinton campaign, believing after she lost the primaries Obama should have chosen her as his vice presidential running mate, told Larry King, "I know John McCain, and John McCain's a great guy, a tremendous guy,” Trump told King. “I've known him for a long time. And I'm with him, and I'm with him based on the fact that I have great knowledge of John McCain. Also, this is not the right time for tax increases. And Obama wants to increase your taxes drastically.”

Trump went on to say "I don't understand why Hillary wasn't chosen [for vice president],” Trump said. “ She was really winning. I have a friend that came to this country and was here for the last four weeks of that whole election. He said: How did she lose? She won every primary? He didn't understand it.

“The fact is, that Obama went limping across the finish line. He should have chosen Hillary, It would have been a much different race, I believe. Right now, it looks to me like McCain is probably winning.”

During the Democratic primaries, Trump donated to Hillary Clinton, according to records posted by the Center for Responsive Politics. Trump donated to McCain in May, according to the records.

King pushed Trump's statements asking if he was formally endorsing McCain and Trump confirmed he was.

As Poll Bounces Level, Obama's Advertising Becomes More Negative Than McCain's

2008-09-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

Posted at Wake Up America.com, reposted here to share:

A new study conducted by Wisconsin Advertising Project, based at the University of Wisconsin, concludes that since the end of the Republican convention, negative advertising has filled the airwaves, with 77 percent of Barack Obama's advertising being listed as negative and 56 percent of John McCain's advertising being shown as negative as reported by The Washington Post. Before the convention McCain's advertising was seen as more negative.

Despite many decrying the negative advertising and many claims about how this campaign season has been the most negative, another Rasmussen survey taken shows that only 23 percent of voters believe this to be true.

55 percent of voters believe this campaign season is no more negative than other election cycles.

Most voters (55%) say the tone of this year’s presidential campaign is about the same as in other recent election years, despite complaints from Barack Obama’s side and some in the media that John McCain has been campaigning negatively.

Only 23% say this election cycle is more negative than most, and nearly as many (20%) say it’s more positive than in recent years, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

While pundits and commentators who favor an individual candidate each sees areas of strength and the presidential debates just around the corner, the race is shaping up to be very tight and barring any unforeseen circumstance, the general consensus from impartial observers seems to be that while we see swings from week to week for one specific candidate and then the other, by election day, the race will still be tight when people go to the voting booth and pull the lever for their candidate.

Make CNN Retract

2008-09-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

Posted at mccainindependents.blogspot.com, reposted here to share:

In last nights CNN broadcast Cambell Brown, Jeffery Toobin, and others called the McCain campaign’s ad about Senator Obama’s support for a bill for ‘comprehensive sex education for kindergarteners’ a lie. One problem, they’re wrong. The text of the bill states,

"Each class or course in comprehensive sex education in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV."

They repeated the Obama campaign’s explanation that the bill was about ‘inappropriate touching’. Second problem, the bill is not about ‘inappropriate touching’. Byron York of National Review researched this bill and provides and an explantion along with the text of the bill in his article On Sex-Ed Ad, McCain is Right. However, when this article was brought up during last night’s CNN broadcast it was dismissed.

CNN didn’t do their homework and they should appologize and retract their statement that the McCain campaign lied.

Contact CNN and demand a retraction.
Cambell Brown/Election Center Feedback Form
Report an error/Headline News feedback form

Make CNN Retract

Obama and the Logan Act: the invisible scandal

2008-09-17T14:51:00.001-07:00

(Join the campaign by sending a pre-written letter to Congress by clicking here)

Text of the Logan Act
§ 953. Private correspondence with foreign governments.

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply himself, or his agent, to any foreign government, or the agents thereof, for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.

1 Stat. 613, January 30, 1799, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 953 (2004).

Ah, nothing like a major scandal about a presidential candidate to get the media swarming like killer bees, right? Apparently not if that Candidate is Barack Obama, who is clearly in violation of the above referenced law and subject to prosecution. He has tried on two separate occasions to delay the negotiations of troop withdrawals from Iraq in order to gain politically in the upcoming elections.
And in case you were wondering, the Logan Act does apply to members of Congress:

In United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp.(1936) , a case that often has been cited in Logan Act prosecutions, Justice Sutherland wrote in the majority opinion: “The President alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation. He makes treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he alone negotiates. Into the field of negotiation the Senate cannot intrude, and Congress itself is powerless to invade it.”

Here is a rundown of the major pieces of the puzzle:

Amir Taheri reports in the New York Post that Obama met with Iraqi officials and tried to stall an agreement to withdraw U.S. troops until after the election.

The McCain camp immediately responded here, asking reasonable questions.

Shortly thereafter the Obama camped nuanced the event. They claimed that Obama was merely interfering with negotiations regarding the Strategic Framework Agreement, which by my reading is still a violation of the Logan Act. Still, that places him as less of a hypocrite since the Strategic Framework Agreement does not concern bringing the troops home, but focuses on the long-term presence of military bases in Iraq.

One problem is that it isn’t true.

In fact, Obama is on the record prior to his trip to Iraq as contacting Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and arguing that he thought that “Congress should be involved in any negotiations regarding a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq. He suggested it may be better to wait until the next administration to negotiate such an agreement.” This was reported by NBC and can be tracked here.
This earlier event not only contradicts the current Obama camp nuance of the scandal but is, in itself, a violation of the Logan Act.

So where is the swarm of scandal-loving reporters? Alaska, maybe? Fact checking a McCain ad? Annointing Obama’s feet with oil? It’s safe to say those activities are taking a lot of their time, so I can understand that they haven’t gotten around to this yet. Searches on the websites of ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN turn up no stories on the issue at all, and The New York Times buries the story in a blog post critical of McCain and the economy.

It is up to you. It’s not good enough that this is being discussed on blogs and conservative talk radio. This has to get out there, and the media will not push it, will not even mention it. We need a person to person, grassroots campaign. Send emails to your mailing list buddies and ask them to pass it on. You can copy and paste our article, with or without credit, and use it if you like, or search Hot Air or Stop the ACLU for different material. The National Review Online and many conservative blogs also are covering the story. It doesn’t matter how you do it. Just join the fight to get this information out there.

Paul Zannucci
American Sentinel

Obama and the Logan Act: the invisible scandal

2008-09-17T14:51:00.000-07:00

(Join the campaign by sending a pre-written letter to Congress by clicking here)

Text of the Logan Act
§ 953. Private correspondence with foreign governments.

1 Stat. 613, January 30, 1799, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 953 (2004).

Top Clinton fundraiser backs McCain over Obama

2008-09-17T14:26:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - A top Hillary Rodham Clinton fundraiser threw her support behind Republican John McCainon Wednesday, saying he will lead the country in a centrist fashion and accusing the Democrats of becoming too extreme.

"I believe that Barack Obama, with MoveOn.org and Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean, has taken the Democratic Party — and they will continue to — too far to the left," Lynn Forester de Rothschild said. "I'm not comfortable there."

Rothschild is also a member of the Democratic National Committee's Platform Committee. She said she would be stepping down from her position on the committee but will not switch political parties.
She praised McCain for working with Democrats to pass legislation and for standing up to President Bush on the Iraq war.

"I just ask, who has Barack Obama ever stood up to? And that troubles me a lot," she said.
Rothschild also disputed Obama's argument that a McCain administration would be an extension of Bush's presidency. Democrats cite McCain's own account of having voted in support of Bush's policies 90 percent of the time.

She said the Arizona senator has broken with Bush to support funding for stem-cell research and to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

"It is the classic cheap shot. Just not true," she said.

Rothschild said she was also excited by the prospect of a woman being in the White House, even though she and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin disagree on issues. The Alaska governor opposes abortion except in the case of a threat to the mother's life. Rothschild said she supports abortion rights.

"I believe that the McCain-Palin government will be a centrist government," Rothschild said. "It's not going to be an ideological government."

Rothschild is a member of the DNC's Democrats Abroad chapter and splits her time living in London and New York. She was one of Clinton's top fundraisers, bringing in more than $100,000 for her presidential campaign. She built a multimillion-dollar telecommunications company before marrying international banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild.

Rothschild said she has not discussed her support for McCain with Clinton.
"I'm sure she is not pleased with what I'm doing today," she said. "But you know what? I have to do what I believe in."

The Problem with the Media's Palin Coverage - Robert Tracinski, TIA Daily

2008-09-17T12:44:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Gibson's substantive questions to Palin had an annoying habit of stating "well documented" facts supposedly contradicting Palin's previous statements and then inviting her to "clarify" the contradiction. Not all of Gibson's facts were accurate, but the phrasing of the question had a clear meaning: prove you're not a liar. And when Palin would give a perfectly clear answer to a question, Gibson would follow up with: "I'm still not clear..." and ask it again. His subtle message: she's evading and not answering my questions.

Again, this is only a sample. It is clear that the press wants their man Barack Obama to win--and as a result, they have obscured rather than illuminated our attempt to make an objective assessment of who Sarah Palin is, how she thinks, and what she stands for. And as I have pointed out, the worst consequence of this transparent bias may turn out to be that the press has destroyed the credibility it would need to make valid criticisms of Palin.

(Click here to read the full article)

Barack Obama and White Privilege - John Stossel, RealClearPolitics

2008-09-17T12:38:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

"I grew up in segregation," Steele told me. "So I really know what racism is. I went to segregated school. I bow to no one in my knowledge of racism, which is one of the reasons why I say white privilege is not a problem."

Steele claims, "the real problem is black irresponsibility. ... Racism is about 18th on a list of problems that black America faces."

Whites' preoccupation with guilt and compensation such as affirmative action is actually a subtle form of racism, writes Steele in his book "White Guilt". "One of the things that is clear about white privilege, and so many of the arguments for diversity that pretend to be compensatory, is that they advantage whites. They make the argument that whites can solve [black people's] problems. ... The problem with that is ... you reinforce white supremacy. ... And black dependency.

(Click here to read the full article)

What States Are Really in Play? - Richard Baehr, American Thinker

2008-09-17T12:31:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

The McCain convention bump seems to be subsiding, and the tracking polls suggest the national race is back almost dead even. Part of the recent movement may well be attributable to the financial crisis gripping Wall Street, and the fact that for not the first time, a sensible McCain statement on the economy is being distorted by Obama and his many media flacks as evidence that the Arizona Senator is out of touch....

and

Many of Obama's once-targeted red states are now safely in McCain's corner. These include Montana (3), North Dakota (3) Alaska (3), and Georgia (15). North Carolina (15), Indiana (11) and Missouri (11) do not look too promising for Obama either. Of course, if the race breaks hard for either candidate in the last month, such that the current near-deadlock in the national popular vote becomes a 5% or greater margin of victory, then some of the second tier targets may come into play. But they won't matter. If Obama opens up a 5% national lead, he will win Ohio, and Virginia and Colorado. If McCain opens up a similar sized national lead, he probably wins Michigan and Pennsylvania. Neither candidate would need any other states from the other party's column -- these would amount to gravy, allowing the winner to claim a mandate.

The race is close to a national tie in the popular vote, in the number of safe electoral college votes for each side, and in the number of tossup electoral college votes that are blue or red. We have in other words, a 50-50 race.

That situation is markedly better for John McCain than his prospects have been for most of the year. He has not won, but he is very much in the game. The debates, the fallout from the politically motivated investigation in Alaska, and the luck of the draw -- what makes news in the weeks before Election Day -- will determine the outcome of the race.

(Click here to read the full article) http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/what_states_are_really_in_play.html

Losing it - Micheal Weis, Weekly Standard

2008-09-17T02:04:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

As bellwethers of liberal demoralization about this election go, I've not yet come across anything so clanging as the following comment from Hannah Rosin, responding to the phenomenon of Sarah Palin: "One of my many depressed Obama-supporting friends suggests a tidy solution: Repeal the 19th Amendment." That would be the one that extends the franchise to women, and the point was driven home by the forum Rosin chose for relaying this morose alternative: the XX Factor feminist blog at Slate. I'll save you the trouble of searching out any black conservative's anguished recommendation that the 15th Amendment be put on hold until after John McCain is elected.

Yes, it's rather moonlight and self-pity in Democratic circles now that the prospect of an Obama administration may not be the certainty it seemed only weeks ago. "There is a growing sense of doom among Democrats I have spoken to," the Financial Times quotes a party fundraiser who formerly supported Hillary Clinton. "People are going crazy, telling the campaign 'you've got to do something'." Evidently, even congressional candidates from Obama's party have taken to distancing themselves from him and declined also to attack John McCain. Perhaps most telling of all was the banal and tepid remark from Bill Clinton, taken by Michael Crowley at The New Republic to be inspirational, that Obama would still win "pretty handily."

(Click on the title of the post to read the full article)

Obama Sidesteps Reform in Illinois - Dennis Byrne, Chicago Tribune

2008-09-17T00:48:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

For those of you who still cling to the fantasy that Barack Obama is "about change," you should note how he, or his minions, want nothing to do with reforming politics in Illinois, perhaps the most corrupt state in the Union.

"Throughout his political career, Barack Obama has fought for open and honest government," proclaims his campaign Web site. Apparently, no longer. When the Democratic presidential candidate--now his party's industrial-strength voice for our deliverance from political corruption everywhere--was asked by a reformer if he would help get his political mentor back home to get off the dime and move the most minimal of state ethics legislation toward passage, the Obama campaign sent word back that amounted to a "no."

(Click here to read the full article)

Breaking: Using the most recent state polls it's McCain 279, Obama 250

2008-09-17T00:23:00.000-07:00

By using the most recent state polls, as reported on Real Clear Politics, and giving Obama the benefit of the doubt in two states where he is tied, John McCain would win the Presidency with 279 electoral college votes to Barak Obama's 259. Real Clear shows Obama with an eight electoral vote lead when leaners are included, but they are using poll numbers in some instances that are as much as a month old.

The 279 total for McCain includes a win for him in Virginia, and a win for Obama in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. Although, the most recent state polls in those three states show a tie. I have given Obama the win in PA and Minnesota and McCain the win in VA based on historical precedent.

The biggest difference in my totals and the Real Clear numbers are the states of Colorado and New Mexico. Real Clear gives both of those states to Obama. But, the most recent polls from those two states favor McCain.

From here on out, the state polls will be far more important than the national polls. In any event, the winning trend is definitely in McCain's favor. So you can, expect the Old School media to dig in and fight even harder for Obama.

McCain kicks Obama right in the Fannie Mae

2008-09-17T00:19:00.000-07:00

Posted on "America Needs Me", Reposted here to share:

Man, facts must cause hives over at Team Obie!

They get helped a lot by “Opinionizing”, which may become my new made-up word for what has replaced journalism. Hey, they can make up stories, I can make up words.

First, Purple People Vote has a glimpse into what the MSM hopes to come of the current financial mess. So that’s how they want to play this?

OK. Next up is a clearer picture of Barack Obama’s “opening” in some of this mess:

Wow, looks like he has accomplished something in the Senate! That’s a whole lotta money grabbing when you’ve only been at work a few days in the last year and a half. If “change” means “get into bed with lobbyists at a record pace” Obama is certainly all over it.

For the millionth time, kiddies: Barack Obama hasn’t the slightest interest in bringing change to Washington or any other political system in which he’s been involved. All of his success has come from working those systems to perfection. He used Chicago political trickery to clear his way to his first victory and he’s obviously got a map to every power donor bed he needs to jump into in Washington. If he wrecks this system he loses a huge advantage.

Finally, The Patriot Room has some video and analysis of McCain laying some smack down on Obama over all of this. He even gets to trot out the celebrity elitist stuff again.

The biggest change we need in this election is an electorate that’s not jammie-walking it’s way to the polls and sleep voting. The more anyone becomes aware of the Grand Canyon between Obama’s scripted rhetoric and the few things he has actually done, the less likely he or she is to vote for him.

Fractured Fenminism

2008-09-17T00:16:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

As the National Organization for Women endorses Barack Obama, members of Democracy in Sufrage express their outrage at this endorsement…

(Click here to read the full article)

Don’t Get Mad - But Do Get Even with the DNC:

2008-09-17T00:10:00.000-07:00

From Free US Now:

We have lost 12 more people because they are not McCain supporters, but we gained 9. Again,
we did not start out this way and I never suggested we we end up Republican not now or ever.
So we are down 17 and up 9, and none of them are Republican or came to us for McCain & Palin !!

We are and always were Nobama’s. We are and always were Pro Hillary she is still our choice
but she was not and will not be the DNC’s. We are and always knew we could not and would not
support Obama and we stayed NOBAMA after June 3 . Those are the facts !

So let me tell you about Sept. 27th and what the DNC has planned! If you think they are done
stonewalling the people who are clinging - that’s right clinging to their party for dear life - let
me fill you in on how they plan on breaking your democratic hearts one more time. I have
heard it from the state party chairs them selves that the DNC has broken into the Hillary
National Delegate Google Groups to spy and find out which state leader/delegates are still
secretly holding on to Hillary and warned to come on board for Obama or loose funds to operate
in their respective states. Dean is still pulling his totalitarianism tactics in order to control us.

The 50 state party chairs were told to twist arms to get Hillary delegates to switch
to Obama or lose funding on 9/27 from Howard Dean for the '50 state strategy' and
paying for field workers in the states.

Why? Why do they need delegates at this point to swear allegiance to Obama? Why do they
spy on them and demand they leave these groups? Why do they need this total and complete
commitment almost cult-like? There are forces within the DNC that need to be met with a
greater force. At this point we only have one tool available to stop Obama in November!

If this is how the Obama Democrats run things during the campaign, what can we expect
from them when they have control over the White House, The House, The Senate and The
Supreme Court as well as what should be our fourth branch of government checks and
balances, The Media. No thanks - I will take my chances with at least the top two positions
staying out of the hands of corrupt power hungry Obamacrats who leave us no choice.

I could be wrong but I would wager 4 more years in hopes of another shot at getting Hillary.
I would gamble that this defeat may teach the DNC that we mean business and the
DNC may, in order to get back into power - give us the candidate that can and will turn this
country and yes this party around. I am willing to take that chance. I am not willing to elect
Obama- I am not willing to succumb to the DNC and give my vote and fall to this trickery. NO

There are only 2 candidates left standing and it is either Obama or the other guy. The DNC
knew this when they took away our rights - they knew we may not fall in line - they knew
we were not Lemmings who sat and followed like robots yet they tried to turn us into Obots -
well - it did not work- did it?

We know if we allow the DNC to get away with this- we will have enabled them and given
away more than we can afford to. So folks - I repeat do we really have another choice? The
other team lucks out again but only for 4 years. Sarah is quite a gal but up against Hillary she
doesn’t stand a chance and imagine what 2012 will be like when WE the Real Democrats, WE
the Puma’s, WE the People - Just say no Deal in 2008 and then WE the people run not one but

TWO WOMEN in 2012 for the Highest Office in the World!

What better way to pay back both these parties then to run two women in 2012 and the only
way to do that is to put Sarah in as VP now and Hillary in as POTUS in 2012! Free US Now

We do not have to support the Republicans or their platform - we don’t have to get in bed with
them - No we don’t - McCain the maverick is at least the least conservative of the bunch and
Sarah while very conservative is at least a woman. Can we hold our noses? I can - I will and I
hope some of you can too! I know many of you will vote down ticket - good - but be sure that
you vote out incumbents when you can and vote in a newcomer if possible - we need to throw
the bums whenever possible.

Please consider what is at stake here- take out the man who stole our party and cheated - lied
and strong armed our girl right out of her rightful place in History. Obama and the DNC must
pay. They must pay for cheating Democracy - for sexism, for racism and we must take our
country back. Make no mistake we must vote down ticket to prevent the other party from
free reign. We have to stop the Dems and teach them who the owners of this country are and
we have to get behind McCain to do it - like it or not. Thanks to the DNC who refused to listen
to the people or count our votes - let us not gift them with our vote.

This is Chicago Style Politics at its very worst. If we are going to have the same thing- let’s not
tolerate it from our own party. Let’s not be forced to become what we hate. Once we allow this
into our party we are stuck with it in both parties forever- we can not allow this to happen - not
in our America. Let’s save this party from itself so in 2012 we can rise again. Free US Now!

“Who is Mr. Obama? He has told us who he is through his record and deeds: a liberal politician who
will abandon all his principles at the drop of a hat in order to be elected. This is not new or fresh: It is
precisely the "failed policies of the past" that he brilliantly identified, but cannot surmount.”
~ Washington Times Sunday, September 14, 2008

Remember what the Rules and By-Laws Committee did in on May 31- they took Hillary votes
and delegates away from her and gave them to Obama. I would not put it past them to give him
votes that are not his whether left blank or written in for Hillary. Do you doubt it? They took
votes given to uncommitted and handed them over Obama what makes you think they would
not do that again? Do not give them that opportunity again.

PLEASE do not leave the top blank
PLEASE do not write in Hillary
PLEASE do not stay home!

You must vote and your vote must make Obama steal two votes to overcome your vote!

EDITORIAL: A debate Obama cannot win

Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency is faltering mostly because he misrepresented
himself to the American people. He promised new and authentic politics; unity and bipartisanship;
and reform of Washington. He touted his impeccable judgement — as evidenced by his early
opposition to the Iraq war and the surge. He thus set the terms of the election debate. Yet the
very terms he established are the ones he cannot win with. His record simply does not correspond
to his rhetoric.

Read the full story here:

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/14/a-debate-obama-cannot-win/print/

Ask Steve Schmidt
Steve Schmidt is senior advisor to John Mc Cain and he will take your questions Wednesday
Sept. 17th on Plains Radio- http://www.hcsfjm.com 7 pm- 8 pm Central -- Call-- 888 447 0270

Obama only talks good game on gender pay equity

11 September 2008
BY: DEROY MURDOCK

"Now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's work," Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said Aug. 28 in his convention acceptance speech. He told the crowd in Denver:
"I want my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons."

Obama's campaign website is even more specific. Under the heading "Fighting for Pay Equity," the women's issues page laments that, "Despite decades of progress, women still make only 77 cents for
every dollar a man makes. A recent study estimates it will take another 47 years for women to close
the wage gap with men at Fortune 500 corporate offices. Barack Obama believes the government
needs to take steps to better enforce the Equal Pay Act..."

Obama's commitment to federally mandated pay equity stretches from the Rockies to Wall Street and beyond. And yet it seems to have eluded his Senate office. Compensation figures for his legislative staff reveal that Obama pays women just 83 cents for every dollar his men make.

Anyone care to comment on why he pays his female staffers less and then McCain, no one reports it
even as his speech claims one thing while he does another? Read the full story including how some of his staff left his employ to work for McCain at a higher pay then go to my blog to comment:
http://freemenow.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/obama-gender-pay-inequity/

Read full story then blog:http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/378772_murdockonline12.html

Riverdaughter blog has must read:

Obama appears to use US soldiers as pawns to win the presidency

Posted on September 15, 2008 by garychapelhill
http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2008/09/15/obama-appears-to-use-us-soldiers-as-pawns-to-win-the-presidency/

Then come back to our blog and tell us what you think:
http://freemenow.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/obama-tried-to-stall-gis-iraq-withdrawl/

How Nobama?

There was a conference call last night. PUMA’s - Just say no dealers- No We Won’ters - C4m’s-
RealDems - FUN ( that’s us) and many from up to 250 some odd other groups. Everyone is all
upset about how to go about not electing Obama. We could not agree- we could not agree! We are Democrats and we have been through s much this year that to ask us now to support Republicans
openly - for some - is just the very last straw!

Many will vote McCain /Palin easily, some only kicking and screaming, some will pull the lever
Nov. 4th. but they do not know it yet and some will pull it at the very last minute but will surely
run straight home and scrub their hands till they bleed. Some will vote third party, some with leave
it blank or write in Hillary and risk the DNC counts them to Obama, some with do the unthinkable.

This is what our party has done to us! It had us in disarray last night it has us loosing a few
members but it has not taken away the one thing we all agree on. It is NOBAMA still. I honestly
believe a vote for McCain is the only solution but I will give you this- after deep soul searching I
have come to the decision that I will not use my site to openly endorse nor raise funds for McCain.
I own my vote and I will cast it in protest against Obama and for women’s rights to be treated fairly
and to be able to run for the highest office without fear of sexist attacks. I will not back away from
Sarah’s right to her choices. I will continue to offer my reasons not to support Obama and why we
need to vote to resist electing him.

As a result of last night’s conference - a new blog was started to assist folks who do want
information on ways to defeat Obama or support Mc Cain. http://hownobama.blogspot.com/

Obama & ACORN on Notice: McCain-Palin Launch Anti-Fraud Initiative

September 16, 2008 by texasdarlin

Visit our friends at Texas Darlin for this story then come back and leave some comments with us too!

Obama Issues A Directive To His Obamabots

2008-09-16T14:08:00.000-07:00

Posted by Wake up America, reposted here to share.

The Obama campaign encouraged their Obamabots to disrupt a radio show once again because of the person being interviewed on the show.

Others have covered the story, so the background from a few people discussing it.

Hot Air:

David Freddoso attempted to appear on Milt Rosenberg’s WGN radio show last night, and just as when Stanley Kurtz tried to talk on the same show, the Barack Obama campaign organized a disruption of the show. The campaign sent out an e-mail to supporters in the area sliming Freddoso as an “extreme” hate monger, a “smear merchant”, and attempted to silence him despite Rosenberg having an Obama surrogate on the show:

Americans Trust McCain on Economy, Taxes, National Security, and Leadership

2008-09-16T14:07:00.001-07:00

The latest poll numbers from Rasmussen not only show Senator McCain with a lead in the national polls, but show that he dramatically outperforms Senator Obama in the major issue groups such as the economy, taxes, national security, and leadership. McCain’s lead is in the double digits for both leadership qualities, and national security.

	McCain	Obama
Better Leader	49%	39%
Taxes Will Go Up	22%	45%
Economy	49%	45%
National Security	55%	40%
Taxes	48%	43%

Cash-poor Obama Says No To Reid - The Politico

2008-09-16T13:57:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made a personal appeal to Barack Obama: Help me grow the Democrats’ Senate majority by sharing some of the $77 million you’ve got in the bank.

Obama’s campaign said no.

In rejecting a direct request from his Senate leader, Obama has put a fine point on the financial pressures he’s feeling as the presidential race turns toward the fall.

Obama raised a record-setting $66 million in August, leaving his campaign with about $77 million in cash now. Because he has turned down public financing, he can keep raising money through Election Day. John McCain, having accepted public financing, can’t

(Click here to read the full article)

Obama's Anti-Free Speech Units at it Again in Chicago

2008-09-16T13:51:00.000-07:00

Posted on the thejtandbearshow.com, reposted here to share:

Obama's camp is at it again using Chicago style gutter politics and intimidation. Instead of allowing free speech to prevail, they prefer attacking WGN-AM in Chicago for having David Freddoso, the author of "The Case against Barack Obama."

Here's the book if you haven't heard of it:

Here is the article from the Chicago Tribune explaining what happened:

Chicago radio station WGN-AM is again coming under attack from the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama for offering airtime to a controversial author. It is the second time in recent weeks the station has been the target of an "Obama Action Wire" alert to supporters of the Illinois Democrat.

Monday night's target was David Freddoso, who the campaign said was scheduled to be on the station from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Chicago time.

"The author of the latest anti-Barack hit book is appearing on WGN Radio in the Chicagoland market tonight, and your help is urgently needed to make sure his baseless lies don't gain credibility," an e-mail sent Monday evening to Obama supporters reads.

"David Freddoso has made a career off dishonest, extreme hate mongering," the message said. "And WGN apparently thinks this card-carrying member of the right-wing smear machine needs a bigger platform for his lies and smears about Barack Obama -- on the public airwaves."

The Tribune-owned station was flooded with calls and e-mails about an hour before an Aug. 27 interview with Stanley Kurtz, a conservative writer who examined Obama's ties to former 1960s radical William Ayers.

A WGN producer said Monday night's response was about the same as when Kurtz was on the station.

You hear these attacks from Obama's smear machine all the time, calling the other side "hate mongerers, liars, sleazy, etc." However, you never hear why they think that, other than the fact that these "hateful" rightwingers have written a book against the Messiah, The One from Hope and Change, Illinois. It is sacreligious to Obama's devoted followers. Wouldn't it be more legitimate to point out exactly which lies David Freddoso has told rather than smear him and try to suppress free speech? If he is really lying, go out and say why. It's not as if Obama doesn't have a platform his views. The liberal Media are in the tank for him. They would be glad to spread his smears and attacks. He won't do it, because there is no substance behind his allegations, and it will only highlight the appeal of Freddoso's book, which is well researched. Instead, Obama and his liberal supporters favor shutting up the right, which is why they can't wait to get to the White House, so they can pass the "Fairness Doctrine." If you can't beat your opponents in the free market of ideas, you might as well suppress their speech. It is the politics of personal destruction at its worst. Then again, it shouldn't come as a surprise. It's not the only free market he wants to destroy.

Media to Voters: If you don’t vote for Obama we will tell everyone ur a racist!

2008-09-16T13:47:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

The media is mad—mad at Obama’s dipping pol #s and they are on a rampage. Their Latest target: voters who refuse to give it up for Their ONE.

In past days, A flurry of MSM articles erupted charging white voters with racism if they refuse to vote for the O-man. Here are my top five sad-sack picks for ur viewing “pleasure.”

(Click here read the full article)

Give 'em Hell, Sarah

2008-09-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Reagan and Truman forced their way into grudging acceptance and eventual recognition by the establishment through genuine and hard-earned political success, and Palin too will have to prove herself. She shows signs of sharing their humility, power of decision, and simplicity toward self-government.

In her first innings, Palin has offered a unique display of the capacity that John Adams described as the essence of a "natural aristocrat" in America: "By an aristocrat I mean every man who can command two votes--one besides his own." Here Adams was reminding us of the centrality of substantive persuasion in political life, something Republicans haven't been very good at of late. The talking heads of the establishment deprecated Palin's debut. "Sure, she gives a good speech, but . . ." They should be saying to Palin, "Welcome to the aristocracy, governor."

(Click on the title of the post to read the full article)

IS IT ANY WONDER?

2008-09-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

Posted on September 16th, 2008 by pat at Clinton Dems, reposted here to share:

Is it any wonder why we chose Hillary over Obama and why we still can not vote for Obama?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8HLL5ksl60

Down below a link to this video story at hireheels.

http://hireheels.com/blog/2008/09/15/hes-baaaack-and-so-is-my-very-first-post/

Feminism is Dead! Long Live the New Feminism!

2008-09-16T10:36:00.000-07:00

Posted on September 16, 2008 at the Confluence, reposted here to share:

From NPR

Rarely does the National Organization For Women endorse a presidential candidate. On Tuesday, the group announced it is endorsing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Kim Gandy, president of NOW, talks with Renee Montagne about why the organization is endorsing Obama.

It’s time for a New Organization for Women, don’t you think? Here’s some motivational music:

Puma PAC has started a new political party:

2008-09-16T10:31:00.000-07:00

Goodbye Howard Dean. Goodbye Barack Obama. Goodbye Nancy Pelosi. Goodbye Donna Brazile. You have not only lost the White House for the Democratic Party. Today you have brought the Democratic Party to the brink of irrelevancy altogether. John McCain has played you all like a piano.

Today we say GOODBYE to the OLD Democratic Party. The OLD Democratic Party has led us to DISASTER. John McCain and Sarah Palin will win in November by a landslide.

Puma PAC has started a new political party:

THE NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY

We have a website launching tonight. at www.thenewdemocraticparty.org

and www.ndp.org

We will be modeled on Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party. We will NOT be running candidates. We WILL be endorsing candidates.

We will be the Party for All Disaffected Democrats who are FINISHED WITH THE OLD DEMOCRATIC PARTY. We are NOT Republicans, though millions of us will vote McCain/Palin in November.

Our Platform is the Platform of the TRUE Democratic Party

Healthcare for All
Equal Rights for women, LGBT, and people of color
Reproductive Rights
Worker Protections
Envmtl Protections
Fair Immigration Policy
Help for working class college students
Good public schools

(Click on the title of the post to read the remainder )

Clinton Calls for US Commission on Russia-Georgia Conflict

2008-09-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

Hillary is so balanced in her perspective…we so need this woman!

Don’t let Obama steal another election!

2008-09-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

DATE: September 15, 2008
TO: Puma PAC
FROM: Murphy
SUBJECT: Register PROWL

Hello Puma PAC,

We have 50 days until Election Day. Right now the Obama Movement is in meltdown. The polls show a continuing decline for Obama/Biden and a continuing upward trend for McCain/Palin.

This is when we have to start worrying about desperate, last-ditch efforts by the Obama Movement to try to manipulate the outcome on November 4th. Voter fraud, perpetrated by Obama followers, through “absentee balloting” is a very real possibility.

Today the Obama Movement unveiled a nifty little internet tool that makes it VERY EASY to register to vote. (They also sneaked in a way to hold on to YOUR private information, including your Driver’s License number.)

Today, we are sending the message to the Obama Movement that Puma PAC is WATCHING. Chicago style might work where they come from, but it is NOT the way voters like things done. Puma PAC believes in free and FAIR elections. Cheating and rule-bending are UNACCEPTABLE and un-American.

Please go to this site and fill out an application to register to vote. http://www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php?source=091008emailR#

Here is the information to use when filling out the form:

Name: Barry Sotero
Address: 233 North Michigan Avenue,
City, State: Chicago IL, 60601(Obama’s Chicago campaign HQ)
Tel: 866-675-2008
Email: democraticparty@democrats.org
Last 4 digits of Social Security Number: 0061 (I made that up)

Be SURE to type Puma Democratic Party in the spot that asks for your party affiliation.
Once you’ve filled out the online form, print it out and mail it to the Obama HQ. Be sure to include some Puma PAC cash as a friendly donation and seal the form with a kiss.
The address again: Barack Obama, 233 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago IL, 60601
The second part of this PROWL is to call the Obama HQ immediately and ask the following question: When will Barack Obama stop trying to steal elections? Use this phone number: 866-675-2008.
This might seem like a game, but it IS NOT. We are trying to attract attention to our cause BEFORE it is too late.

Thank you and Good Luck,
Murphy.
……………………………………………………….
PumaPac.org www.pumapac.org

McCain to appear at Clinton conference; Obama to speak via satellite

2008-09-16T10:22:00.000-07:00

Bill Clinton just released the program for his annual Clinton Global Initiative, a New York conference that coincides with the United Nations General Assembly and typically draws an international A-list of speakers and guests.

John McCain will appear at the event in person, while Obama addresses it via satellite.
“Both United States presidential candidates will have a role in the Annual Meeting. Senator John McCain will deliver the opening remarks live at the “Integrated Solutions: water, food and energy” plenary session,” says the press release.

The event, which carries a hefty price tag for guests, includes a revival-style conclusion, at which business leaders come on stage to make pledges to charities.

This year’s attendees are expected to include, along with the two candidates, Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and the presidents of Mexico, Rwanda, Libera, and other countries. Also expected: former Vice President Al Gore, oilman T. Boone Pickens, and Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk.

Hillary Still Fighting for Equal Pay

2008-09-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

Received from NOW:

Legislation Introduced by Senator Hillary Clinton Fights for Pay Equity in the Workplace

Bush Administration Fails to Monitor Pay-Equity Enforcement

ALBANY, NY (09/15/2008; 1650)(readMedia)– NOW New York State thanks Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for calling attention to the wage gap’s impact on women in New York and around the country. As was revealed in last week’s US Government Accountability Office report, the Bush Administration has neglected to monitor pay-equity law enforcement and failed to investigate violations.
Earlier today Senator Clinton, joined by Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), New York Women’s Foundation President and CEO Ana Oliveira, Women’s Center for Education and Career Advancement Executive Director Merble Reagon, and Barnard College President Debora L.Spar, held a press conference at Barnard College. The event was a push to toughen pay discrimination laws and to erase pay inequities.
Senator Clinton explained; “This report is a call to action that we cannot afford to ignore. It is clear that while woman have long fought for equality in the workplace, the Bush Administration has turned back the clock by failing to enforce the equal pay requirements that are already on the books. I am proud to be here today with Congresswoman Maloney and these amazing advocates who are still fighting to end the pay inequities that have shortchanged women and their families for far too long. I call on my colleagues to help us enact legislation that will help level the playing field for hardworking women in New York and across the nation.”
Congresswoman Maloney added: “Equal pay is not just a women’s issue, it’s a family issue. The wage gap is particularly painful as families are struggling to buy groceries, to fill their gas tanks, and to make ends meet on stagnant wages. The GAO’s report shows that the federal government must do more, not only to enforce fair pay laws, but also to strengthen them further. I’m proud of Senator Clinton’s leadership on this issue and I look forward to working with her to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would empower women to negotiate better pay and would toughen penalties for employers who break the law.”
NOW New York State continues to admire and celebrate Senator Clinton for her ongoing leadership on women’s issues in NYS and around this country.

National Council of Churches: Far-Left and Dangerous

2008-09-16T09:53:00.000-07:00

If you attend a mainstream Christian church, this post is an alarm bell. Do you know where your tithe goes and the philosophies silently, and perhaps unknowingly, supported by them?

(Click here to read the article)

How Obama will Bankrupt America

2008-09-16T09:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday’s collapse in Wall Street has dramatically impacted how our public perceives the state of our entire economy and how they view the politics of Washington. We have had a President that has betrayed every tenet of conservatism to its very core, basically governing as if he were a card carrying Liberal. Government and spending have therefore increased to new heights, while Main Street has suffered the consequences of entrenched interests.

On the flip side, we have had a Democratic congress that, after coming into power barely two years ago, has already engendered the lowest approval ratings in the (recent) history of that collectivity. They have thus squandered and robbed the American people by increasing earmarks for unnecessary projects and have also provided an unmeasurable amount of civic and corporate welfare to individuals and entities that clearly don’t deserve it.

By all estimation, Washington is broken, and no matter how we look at it, the probability of it changing quickly enough is far ahead (if ever). But, what is quite clear is that, at this moment in our history, we simply CANNOT afford electing somebody like Barack Obama, a man who has NEVER followed through on his word to the American public. From going back against his pledge to be a part of public financing, to lying about “heading the banking committee”, when he was not even a member, to his recent attempt to negotiate with Iraqis to keep our troops in their country for a longer period of time, just so that he could have a better argument to get elected (all the while he was simultaneously telling the public that he wanted the same troops out immediately). This sort of dishonesty and untruthfulness is very dangerous in a crisis such as the one we are facing today, and Obama’s record of double dealing makes him ineligible to face this challenge.

When you add into the mix his utter inexperience on EVERY single hurdle that we face, and the fact that he has NEVER managed ANYTHING (not even a personal business), it is very clear that Obama should be far removed from the decisions that will PERSONALLY impact every single one of us.

But don’t take my word for it, let’s look very closely at what Barack Obama and his countless advisers are proposing to do with our economy, and YOU be the judge of what it means to the fate of our Country.

(Click here to read the remainder of the article)

Obama's Sub-Prime Buddies - Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman and more...

2008-09-16T09:45:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Among Obama's campaign contributors are many Lehman Brothers Executives, such as CEO Richard Fuld ($2,300), President Joseph Gregory ($4,600) and dozens of other top Lehman Executives. On June 19th, Lehman shareholders filed suit against Fuld and Gregory for the company’s exposure in the subprime market. In addition to dozens of Lehman executives are Obama's bundlers from Lehman Borthers who have raised top dollar for the campaign. Direct contributions from Lehman Brothers have exceeded $395,000 for Senator Obama.

John Rhea - (over $500,000) Co-Head of Lehman Bros. Global Investment Banking
Mark Gilbert - (over $500,000) Lehman Brothers Senior Executive
Christine Forester - (over $500,000) Lehman Brothers Senior Executive
Theodore Janulis – Bundler (over $100,000) & Lehman Brothers Head of Global Mortgages
Nadja Fidelia – Bundler (over $50,000) & Managing Director of Lehman Brothers

(Click on the title of the post to read the full article)

Rove Speaks

2008-09-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

I'm here at Claremont McKenna College where I'll be giving a talk tonight on politics and new media at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum. Last night Karl Rove was the guest of honor, speaking about the election and offering an intimate view of what a day in the life inside the White House looks like for the President of the United States.

I won't recap everything he said, but there is one thing worth mentioning. Much has been made of Rove's remark last week on Fox News Sunday about the McCain camp going over the line in terms of its negative advertising, a claim that the Obama camp and its supporters have been trumpeting all week - even going so far as to use it in a fund raising appeal from David Plouffe yesterday.

The subject of McCain's ad knocking Obama over sex education came up during the question and answer portion of the proceedings last night, and Rove responded by saying - and I'm paraphrasing here - that in his opinion the McCain camp had erred by not being specific enough in its claim.

The bill, Rove pointed out (and which you can see from Byron York's analysis here this morning), did in fact include specific language that kindergarteners be taught about sexually transmitted diseases including HIV. Rove said that he felt the McCain campaign got "too cute" in using the phrase "comprehensive sex education" which opened the door to enough ambiguity for counter charges to be hurled back at McCain. Better to just let the exact language in the bill speak for itself, Rove said.

Rove went on to say that he thought the Obama campaign was making a serious mistake in using this to try and cast McCain as a dishonorable liar, because the label is fundamentally at odds with the core of McCain's public image. By spending so much effort trying to make this charge stick, Rove said, the Obama campaign was wasting valuable time that would be better spent offering voters a reason to vote for Obama rather than a reason to vote against McCain.

Censorship in Hollywood - Andrew Breitbart, Washington Times

2008-09-16T09:39:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Matt Damon is scared. Last week his e-mail runneth over with nasty Sarah Palin rumors. And before he could get his facts straight, the "Bourne" film series star and Barack Obama supporter spread false fears in a hysterical video that immediately went viral on the Internet.

(Click on the title of the post to read the full article)

The High Cost of Racial Hype - Thomas Sowell, RealClearPolitics

2008-09-16T09:07:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

Will time and energy spent on rap music and wearing low-riding baggy pants like guys in prison-- as badges of identity-- provide as good a future for young people as learning math, computers and the English language?

Romantic self-indulgence and self-deception are things that some people can afford when they reach the point where they can afford identity angst. But millions of other people will remain mired in poverty if they believe such notions.

(Click on the title of the post to read the full article)

E-mail to Obama: dishonest TV ad, wrong audience- Jonah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times

2008-09-16T09:01:00.000-07:00

Excerpts:

After running a brilliant and historic primary battle to defeat Hillary Clinton, the Obama campaign is now in disarray. Why?

Perhaps it's because Barack Obama has never run a competitive race against a Republican. After all, Obama won his U.S. Senate seat in Illinois by running against Alan Keyes, a fire-and-brimstone, right-wing black carpetbagger from Maryland (or perhaps Mars) who had no real ties to Illinois.

and:

The tax-cuts and economy barbs are familiar boilerplate. What's new is the charge of computer illiteracy and the blatant attempt to attack McCain as too old for the job -- and that speaks volumes.

First, the ad is dishonest. McCain has been one of the Senate's leading authorities on telecom and the Internet.

In 2000, Forbes magazine called him the "Senate's savviest technologist." That same year, Slate's Jacob Weisberg gushed that McCain was the most "cybersavvy" of all the presidential candidates that year, a crop that included none other than Al Gore. Being chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Weisberg explained, "forced him to learn about the Internet early on, and young Web entrepreneurs such as Jerry Yang and Jeff Bezos fascinate him."

Weisberg, an Obama booster, now disingenuously mocks McCain as "flummoxed by that newfangled doodad, the personal computer."

One reason McCain is not versed in the mechanical details of sending e-mail and typing on a keyboard is that the North Vietnamese broke his fingers and shattered both of his arms. As Forbes, Slate and the Boston Globe reported in 2000, McCain's injuries make using a keyboard painfully laborious. He mostly relies on his wife and staff to show him e-mails and websites, though he says he's getting up to speed.

(Click on the title of the post to read the full article)

Hyped Indignation Over McCain "Lies" - David Harsanyi, RealClearPolitics

2008-09-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

And it starts with Sarah Palin's assertion that she said "thanks, but no thanks" to the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" and opposed earmarks. That is an elastic political truth.
Technically, she did stop the project after initially supporting it. She has taken earmarks -- even lobbied for them while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. As governor of Alaska, though, Palin also vetoed more than 300 wasteful projects and made an attempt to reform the process. Her record on earmarks is mixed, but by any measure, it's far superior to either of the Democratic candidates' records.

Moreover, if this Palin claim can be classified as an untruth, Obama can be called a "liar" just as easily.

Take, if you will, the foundational assertion of Obama's entire campaign: He is the candidate of post-partisan change. Obama, meanwhile, voted with fellow Democrats 96 percent of the time in Washington. And the bipartisan achievement he most often cites, an ethics reform bill, was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate.

Unanimous: "being in complete harmony or accord."

So "unity" should be referred to as a poetic truth.

(Click on the title of the post to read the full article)

On Sex-Ed Ad, McCain Is Right - Byron York, National Review Online

2008-09-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

Excerpt:

According to the press release, Senate Bill 99 required that “if a public school teaches sex education, family life education, and comprehensive health education courses, all materials and instruction must be medically and factually accurate.” The bill’s main sponsor, Sen. Carol Ronen, was quoted saying, “It teaches students about the advantages of abstinence, while also giving them the realistic information they need about the prevention of an unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.” The release contained no mention of sexual predators or inappropriate touching.

(Click on the title of the post to read the full article)