Open Warfare At Camp McCain: The Schmidt’s vs. The Davis’s

Open warfare has broken out between John McCain’s campaign management with one faction backing Steve Schmidt, the Karl Rove protégé who came on board in July, and the other standing behind Rick Davis, McCain’s long-time campaign manager.

According to two independent sources working inside the campaign, it was Schmidt and his faction who directed last week’s disastrous foray into the politics of smear and hate, causing a near-collapse in support for McCain among independents and undecided voters as well as what passes for the right wing’s intelligentsia who write Op-Ed’s for Very Serious Newspapers.

By week’s end, Davis almost reasserted control over the campaign and its message.

On Sunday, Sen. Lindsay Graham said McCain would trot out a new economic policy message on Monday, which was Davis’ doing. By Monday morning, Schmidt had the campaign announce no such rollout was planned, asserting that the candidate would continue to push its already-announced plans to get the economy back on track. Then, Tuesday morning with Davis back in charge for a moment – surprise! – McCain shows up in Blue Bell PA, a Philadelphia suburb, to give a speech touted by campaign flacks as unveiling a “new economic proposal.”

But not quite. The new initiative is simply a sliced-and-diced rehash of a previously-announced program to have Treasury buy up mortgages at face value from banks and then renegotiate them with homeowners based on the current value of the property along with a few other pandering goodies aimed at seniors but which would have no real impact on their financial well-being.

Capping off the most bizarre 48 hours in McCain bizarre campaign history, economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin actually had the audacity to tell reporters accompanying the campaign that the plan was always for the candidate to unveil the proposal today. I guess Holtz-Eakin forgot to tell McCain over the weekend, or on Monday to the spokespeople who pooh-poohed the idea that a new economic plan was forthcoming.

D’oh!

“No Adults Are In Charge”

“Between the infighting and the lack of direction and no consistent message, it’s obvious no adults are in charge,” a long-time friend who has been one of my sources inside the McCain campaign since the primaries complains bitterly. “Given what’s happened with the financial collapse, I’m not sure we could ever win this thing. But Schmidt and Davis aren’t helping.”

“It looks as if we’re going down in a hail of bullets, except it’ll be two sides of the operation firing at each other,” he sighs resignedly. Unabashedly mixing metaphors, he concludes, “All we need is a guy in a toga standing in the middle of the room playing a fiddle while the campaign burns.”

Out in one of the few still-disputed swing states, another long-time contact inside the McCain operation says the disarray is affecting day-to-day work.

“I get contradictory e-mails and text messages all day long,” she says. “I can’t direct workers or volunteers when Alexandria (VA, where McCain’s campaign is based) can’t set a direction and stick to it for more than a few hours.”

I ask her why she thinks this is happening; after all, Republican presidential campaigns have a reputation of being smooth running, well-oiled machines going all the way back to Nixon in 1968.

“Because the internal numbers are worse than the public polls, the horse race stuff that cable news loves,” she explains ruefully. “Much worse.

“They’re grasping at anything.”

Empire’s End

What I’ve been hearing from McCain sources for the past month reminds me of what I read in The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire in school about 100 lifetimes ago. Apparently, it’s dawned on others, as well.

My friend Pete in Florida, a Viet Nam vet and as rabid an anti-Republican as he is a rabid Cubs fan, sent an e-mail yesterday morning observing, “I find myself wondering what the ancient Romans thought when they finally realized their Empire was collapsing around them and the (remaining) choices weren’t going to save their ass. It must have made for very interesting dinner conversations.

“As for me, I’m outtahere,” he continues, reminding me that he and his dazzling Brazilian girlfriend plan to move to Sao Paulo if McCain is elected. “At least I have an exit strategy, which makes me 50 times smarter than every Republican on this planet.”

So it has come down to this: The McCainiacs are fighting over whether to smarm the opposition or shovel out recycled, already-discredited proposals to an unsuspecting public while calling them “new.” It reads like the last days of somebody’s empire, alright.

It didn’t have to come to this. I’m just old enough to remember an era when House and Senate leaders from both parties squabbled like angry over legislation during the day before meeting every Thursday for a cordial evening of Scotch, Texas beef and poker at the White House with Lyndon Johnson. Between dinner and “G’night, boys,” deals were cut and everyone went home friends.

“When I was a young Senate staffer, the place was inhabited by real leaders who actually cared about the nation they served,” Florida Pete, who classifies himself as a recovering Republican, writes. “Today, ‘they’ only care about their ideology and their ability to secure money. We are being sold out by our own narrow-mindedness, stupidity, greed and gods.”

It sounds as if the McCain campaign is being sold out by the same forces.

American Dream Kills Six, Nearly Seven, In One Day

The Karthik Rajaram family was living the American dream in Sorrento Pointe, a gated community in the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains 23 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

Yet late last week, the dream came crashing in on them. Beset with financial worries after not finding work for months on end and seeing his future evaporate, Rajaram shot and killed his wife, three children and mother-in-law before turning the gun on himself.

As police were announcing the murder-suicide to reporters, Keith Olbermann was telling viewers about Annie Yoke who was about to be removed from her foreclosed Ohio home by Sheriff deputies. So distraught at what had become of her life, she shot herself in the chest. Deputies found her lying bleeding but alive on the floor when they arrived to evict her. She is 90 years old.

At least six people dead and one attempted suicide in a single afternoon as a direct result of Bush-McCain economic policies that ruined the American economy – to say nothing of destroying countless families’ hopes for living the American dream.

"It is critical to step up and realise we are in some pretty troubling times,'' the deputy police chief told the Los Angeles Times.

Welcome to the United States in 2008.

Country Be Damned

Amidst the despair and dismay gripping much of the nation, reports coming from the Treasury Dept. say that yesterday’s meeting between Secretary Hank Paulson and a dozen CEOs of troubled banks turned acrimonious when the bankers balked at giving up their seven and eight-figure bonuses and severance packages in exchange for a government capital infusion.

These already-wealthy men who, with help from the Republican hierarchy, caused the dire financial crisis gripping the world would rather let the nation get flushed down the toilet than sacrifice a bonus. Of course, their salaries wouldn’t be touched; they’ll still earn millions annually. But Congress attached a few strings to the $700-billion it authorized to bail out the Titans of Terrible – among them, foregoing their Midas-sized bonuses and severance packages that will enable their grandchildren’s grandchildren to live more than comfortably.

In effect, they are yelling, “Nation be damned, I want my bonus!”

Life is tough at the top. But it’s not nearly as tough as it is for people in the middle, to say nothing about those farther down.

Middle income investors have withdrawn more than $81-billion from stock mutual funds since the beginning of the year, with nearly 40% coming in the last six weeks, according to AMG Data Services, an industry research firm.

“It is a lack of faith in America,” Pat Emard, 65, of Aptos, Calif., told The New York Times. Recently retired, now she worries she may have to go back to work. “People have lost faith in our government.”

“It’s very hard to have much faith in what the government is doing when they change it every day,” Jane Snow, a 73-year old retired Chicago school teacher says. “As you read more and more about how we got into this situation, you have less and less faith of how we’re going to get out of it.”

Clearly, people such as Jane Snow are living on a very different planet than that occupied by the CEOs who spent Monday whining about giving up their bonus.

Bogelheads

To get a sense of how people are coping, I went to Bogelheads.com, a discussion board formed by followers of John Bogel, founder of Vanguard Funds. One of the boards asks people how they are coping with financial stress.

“More meds,” declares Linda.

Judsen is more laid back, writing “Mind over matter is how I do it. If I don't mind it don't matter.”

Tall Grass explains, “I get out in the open air and chase hawks with my Remote-Control airplanes ... never catch 'em, they fly better than I do.”

And Jane writes that she maintains her equilibrium by “Venting all my fear, anger, frustration and guilt here on this site instead of bringing it home to my family!” Too bad Karthik Rajaram didn’t know about the bogelhead site; it might have saved his family.

Meanwhile, John McCain is sounding more like a Bobble Head doll than a bogelhead. On Sunday, he said he would announce a major new financial plan on Monday. By Monday, a campaign flack said no such initiative was in the works. But McCain did use a town hall appearance in North Carolina to talk about his once-abandoned, now-resuscitated plan to do something about mortgages. But unlike previous town hall meetings, McCain scampered off before taking any questions.

While McCain babbled nonsense, Barack Obama was laying out a detailed, seven point economic recovery plan to a Toledo audience. Crucially, he said it should be enacted now, not in 99 days when he would take office if elected. His Senate staff is preparing a piece of legislation based on his ideas.

After yesterday’s market rally, some of the bogelheads may feel better. But the market slid again this morning and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman notes ominously, “we haven’t yet seen anything like a return to normality in credit markets. TED spread is down but still at nosebleed levels; three-month T-bills at 0.48%, showing that flight to safety remains strong.”

Jane Snow, the retired school teacher, is still worried. “You don’t go through life thinking the bank I do business with could go belly up tomorrow. This is a new feeling people are living with.”

Paul Krugman Wins Nobel Prize For Economics

Paul Krugman, the New York Times Op-Ed columnist, has won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited Krugman today “for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity.”

Non-academics best know him for being a frequent guest on the PBS NewsHour, and both Countdown and The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. His observations on the economy, the financial crisis and Henry Paulson's stop-and-start approach to staving off a collapse of the global financial system appear several times every day at his blog at http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/ and he is the author of Conscience of a Liberal.

He was awarded the prize, and its $1.4-million honorarium, for explaining why worldwide trade is dominated by a few countries that are similar to each other, and why some countries might import the same kinds of goods that it exports.

Hello, Pot? This Is Kettle Calling!

Abuse of power. Violations of ethical standards. Using an official position to pursue personal interests. Cover ups. Failing to co-operate with an investigation.

Oh, yes: Lying.

After eight years of Congress letting George Bush and Dick Cheney get away with all of these high crimes and misdemeanors, it took a heavily Republican-dominated committee of the heavily Republican-dominated Alaska state legislature to call out a Republican senior government official for malfeasance.

Put bluntly, the Legislative Council nails Gov. Sarah Palin for abusing her office, authority and state employees to settle a personal score with a former relative.

She is the pot who spent all of last week calling the kettle black.

Sarah, the GOP’s “everywoman,” turns out to be a cheap political weasler.

She is the phoney “hockey mom” earning a six figure salary who holds a wooden cross of goodness and light high above her head yet turns out to be nothing more than a craven idol, a garden gnome being carted around the real world by pranksters.

The supposed ally of a “Joe Sixpack” who’s trying to survive financially after a disastrous Republican president ruined the economy is worse than the Wizard of Oz in cheap pumps, hiding behind a curtain of false sanctimony. At least the Wizard of Oz tried doing some good; all Palin did this week was promote fear and hate mongering.

Set aside the $35,000 sun tanning bed she installed in the governor’s igloo; forget about charging the state $19,000 for days when she was living in her own home; forget about her whining that she couldn’t always use a state airplane when she wanted to go somewhere; forget about her not remembering the name of a single newspaper she reads; forget about claiming she fired the cook at the governor’s mansion when all she did was change the job title and assign the cook’s salary – but not her duties – to a different department; forget about her lack of knowledge, understanding or even curiosity about the world; forget about her attending five universities in six years; forget about her countless gaffes uttered during interviews; forget about her suspicious connections to a group that demands Alaska secede from the Union.

Forget about all of that.

All you need to know about Sarah Palin is that she is a mean, vindictive, political climber who abuses her public trust regularly, sending the little mister and her official staff out in her name to get someone fired that she doesn’t like.

Not even during the heyday of the Cook County IL Democratic machine with all of its tentacles reaching onto every street corner in the city and no civil service anywhere would the original Mayor Daley (father of the current Mayor Daley) ever try pulling a stunt like this. I know: I lived in Chicago during the last seven years of the life, times and mayorship of the beloved and all-powerful “Hizzoner.”

Sarah Palin is the “Peter Principle” come to life.

Worse, with the documented evidence of abusing her office, violating the law, using her office to pursue personal interests, engaging in cover ups, failing to co-operate with investigators and lying, she is Dick Cheney in drag.

Poor, Poor Sarah

- Guest post by Denis Campbell, editor-in-chief of VadimusPost.com

I feel like a Cheshire cat who swallowed a big-haired ‘g’ dropping canary whole ‘dontchaknow,’ gives me energy and sustenance without leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Saturday Night Live’s writers are feverishly re-working tonight’s Palin sketch having been handed today’s gift, Sarah Palin was found guilt of abusing the powers of her office in violation of state law by an Alaskan legislative committee when she fired public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan for not firing her State Trooper ex-brother-in-law. The sun shines brighter in Wales and birds sing more beautifully this morning because the lipsticked pit bull finally got caught going “a bridge too far.” Enough twisted metaphors for one paragraph?

I was thinking back to Spiro Agnew, the last Vice President from this party to resign in disgrace. He was investigated by the U.S. attorney in Baltimore for allegedly receiving payoffs from engineers seeking contracts when Agnew was Baltimore county executive and governor of Maryland .

Agnew asserted his innocence, then resigned the Vice Presidency eight months ahead of his boss, Richard Nixon, in 1973. He pleaded nolo contendere, or ‘no contest,’ to a single charge he had failed to report $29,500 of income received in 1967. He was fined $10,000 and placed on three years’ probation. After his resignation he started a successful business career as an international broker.

That seems quaint and honourable compared to destroying a man’s career and opening the state of Alaska to criminal and civil cases that will ensure that former Walt Monegan becomes a very rich man and earns big bucks on the speaking circuit for his troubles.

So the MSM will spend this weekend finally doing their job and digging deeply into Ms. Palin’s questionable tenure as Governor. This is a gift to them because the major networks have been cowed into submission for weeks by McCain campaign attacks of sexism in their coverage. Their gloves now come off and there is nowhere Governor Palin can now go without being hounded by the press to answer all the charges.

I’m halfway through the book written about her Vice Presidential idol, Dick Cheney, subject of the book Angler by Pulitzer Prize Winning author Barton Gellman and can see his fingerprints already all over the predicted McCain/Republican response. “We fully support Governor Palin and will appeal this decision all the way to the Supreme Court. This is a partisan witch hunt. My friends, Sarah Palin is a dedicated public servant persecuted and abused by Democratic demagogues. Who is Barack Obama, why are you not focused on that? The MSM is in the tank for Obama. Obama’s team influenced this.” and the list will go on and on and on.

And the there is the whole secessionist movement where she pals around with terrorists… scary.





The GOP (that’s their new brand hoping we’re dumb enough not to know that those initials stand for the Republican Party) will completely fracture itself live over the next week as moderate Republicans fighting to stay in office try to wipe the stain of BCMP (Bush, Cheney, McCain & Palin) onto flaming wood to distance themselves from the top of this fiasco of ticket.

The word ‘Republican’ will be further eliminated from even more adverts and flyers as the down-ticket races for Senate and House arrange deck chairs on this Titanic and pray nothing else bad hits in the last 24-days of the campaign. And the whacked out far right will fill arenas rushing to defend their poor, poor Sarah, the GOP’s money and celebrity machine.

And this is all so deserving of a woman who snidely and smilingly incited such racial hatred on the campaign trail. See, no one notices this stuff in Alaska . Walt must be very happy she was selected to come under the national spotlight. Is benefits would have run out and been stuck. Now McCain and Co. are sick this morning knowing that the vetting process is exposed as a complete sham.

Like I said, I’m grinning from ear-to-ear because it couldn’t happen to a nicer pit bull and her pals. Now if she and Cindy McCain could also be charged by the Secret Service for inciting crowds against a protectee, I will dance all weekend.

Paul Krugman Sees The Future And Is Terrified

Here are the two most-recent entries at Paul Krugman’s "Conscience of a Liberal" blog at the New York Times. They are realistic, terrifying and I hope he is wrong.

Failure of leadership, part LXXIV
October 10 2008, 2:27pm
Bloomberg reports:

Finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven nations signaled reluctance to adopt a coordinated effort to shore up banks, risking a deeper crisis of confidence after this week’s crash in global stock markets.

Do these people have any idea how much is at risk?
___________________

Not about the financial crisis
October 10, 2008, 1:43 pm
The (financial) crisis isn’t the only scary thing going on. Something very ugly is taking shape on the political scene: as McCain’s chances fade, the crowds at his rallies are, by all accounts, increasingly gripped by insane rage. It’s not just a mob phenomenon — it’s visible in the right-wing media, and to some extent in the speeches of McCain and Palin.

We’ve seen this before. One thing that has been sort of written out of the mainstream history of politics is the sheer insanity of the attacks on the Clintons — they were drug smugglers, they murdered Vince Foster (and lots of other people), they were in league with foreign powers. And this stuff didn’t just show up in fringe publications — it was discussed in Congress, given props by the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, and so on.

What it came down to was that a significant fraction of the American population, backed by a lot of money and political influence, simply does not consider government by liberals (even very moderate liberals) legitimate. Ronald Reagan was supposed to have settled that once and for all.

What happens when Obama is elected? It will be even worse than it was in the Clinton years. For sure there will be crazy accusations, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some violence.

The next few years are going to be very, very tough.

Good Grief! I Have More Foreign Policy Experience Than Sarah Palin!

Mother Jones has unearthed official Alaska government records documenting Sarah Palin’s foreign policy experience over the 19 months she’s been governor. Including the time when she met 10 foreign exchange students, attending a reception at the Italian embassy in Washington and a 15 minute taping of a video message shown at a trade fair in China, as governor she spent 12 hours either talking to or meeting with people who could be loosely called a “foreign leader.” (See box below)

I’ve never been in government and am not a politician but it turns out I have more experience meeting with foreign leaders – and real ones, at that – than does a candidate for Vice President of the United States. It happened during a period when I was supporting my writing by working in business and I have the vanity photos hanging in my office to prove it.

May 1989 – Hosted a three hour dinner in Minneapolis with Boris Yeltsen, including a half-hour one-on-one meeting with the soon-to-be President of Russia in his limo en route to the dinner venue.

Nov. 1989 – Held a two hour long meeting with Lech Walesca, about to become president of Poland, in his office in Gdansk to discuss building American business investment interest in Poland.

Jan. 1992 – With two other people, participated in a one hour meeting with Canada’s Minister of Foreign Trade on China-Canada trade issues.

Feb. 1992 – Held a half day meeting in Johannesburg with Nelson Mandella and the head of economic development for the African National Congress on building Canada-South Africa business ties as a precursor to a conference in Toronto.

April 1992 – Attended a two hour dinner in Toronto for leaders of South African businesses and senior officials of the ANC.

April 1993 – With three other people, attended a one hour meeting in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People with Zhu Rongji, then Senior Vice Premier for economic modernization who went on to become Premier.

April 1993 – Attended a two hour lunch in Beijing with China’s Minister of Foreign Trade with six other people including Canada’s Ambassador to China.

May 1993 – Attended a three hour private dinner in Toronto with Zhu Rongji.

June 1993 – Attended a two hour negotiating meeting with Zhu Rongji in Beijing’s Jong Non Hi compound.

Sept 1993 – Attended a two hour private meeting with Chnia’s Foreign Trade minister, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and six Canadian executives.

My total experience in foreign affairs and trade: 21 hours. Number of heads of foreign government met: 8. Sarah Palin experience: 12 hours, including the meeting with high school students in Alaska on a foreign exchange program. Number of heads of foreign government Palin met: 5, all during a two day whirlwind tour of New York during the opening of the UN General Assembly.

Why wasn’t I picked to be someone’s vice presidential candidate?

Meanwhile, CNN checked out Palin’s claim that, because Alaska is close to Russia, she’s the nation’s first line of defence in the event “Putin rears his head.”


_______________________________________________________

Sarah Palin’s 12 Hours Of “Foreign Policy” Experience

Jan 19, 2007 – Palin meets with Fentie for 30 minutes, with Lloyd for 30 minutes, and with Bell for 30 minutes. She does not attend the PNWER dinner hosted that night by the Canadian government for Alaskan officials and business leaders.

Feb 24, 2007 – In Washington, DC, for a National Governors Assn. meeting, Palin attends a reception at the Italian embassy. She stays for 30 minutes before leaving for a dinner hosted by the Republican Governors Assn.

Mar 10, 2007 – Palin hosts the annual Fur & Ice reception in Fairbanks for about 30 diplomats and international tourism representatives. A Palin news release issued before the event noted, "Governor Sarah Palin will welcome members of Alaska's diplomatic corps to Fairbanks to view the ice carvings of Ice Alaska's 2007 World Ice Art Championship." Following the afternoon reception, Palin attends the NCAA rifle championships.

Mar 19, 2007 – Palin meets with 10 foreign exchange students.

April, 3, 2007 – Palin spends 15 minutes filming a short video message for a trade show in China.

April 4, 2007 – In Juneau, Palin meets with British Columbia's premier Gordon Campbell and several of his aides for about 90 minutes.

April 16, 2007 – Palin meets with Taiwanese officials for an hour.

May 15, 2007 – Palin holds a "brief courtesy" meeting with Martin Uden, then the head of the British consulate in San Francisco. The calendar notes, "He'll be visiting Juneau today off of one of the Cruise Ships."

July 23-26, 2007 – Palin visits Kuwait to meet with members of the Alaska National Guard. (After Palin was selected as McCain's running mate, her aides, referring to this trip, said she travelled to Ireland, Germany, Kuwait and Iraq. But on this visit, she did not go beyond the Kuwaiti-Iraq border and her “visit” to Ireland consisted of a refuelling stop.)

Aug 27, 2007 – David Akov, Israeli consul general for the Pacific Northwest, pays a 30-minute "courtesy call" on Palin.

Sept 12, 2007 – Palin holds a 15-minute-long "courtesy" meeting with Hideo Fujita, the new chief of Japan's consulate in Anchorage.

Sept 13, 2007 – Palin holds a 15-minute long "courtesy" meeting with Peng Keyu, the head of the Chinese consulate in San Francisco.

Oct 15, 2007 – Palin meets Iceland's president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, for 30 minutes. Grimsson is in Alaska to attend the Arctic Energy Summit Technology Conference. (After she became McCain's running mate, she was asked if she had ever met with a world leader. She said, no — forgetting this meeting.)

Jan 4, 2008 – Palin holds a 10-minute-long phone conversation with Canadian Minister of Industry Jim Prentice. Her calendar also refers to "Canadian officials phone calls" that day.

Jan 21, 2008 – Palin is schedule for a brief "stop by" visit with Joe Balash, a Palin aide, and Brian Mason, a member of the legislative assembly of Alberta, Canada. The calendar says, "Balash Office would like a picture w/GOV."

March 8, 2008 – Palin welcomes guests to the 2008 Fur & Ice reception for the diplomatic corps. Diplomats from the Philippines, South Korea, the Slovak Republic, South Africa, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Poland, Finland, Germany, and Egypt attend. Her calendar lists no separate meetings with any of them.

May 22, 2008 – At 7:15 am, Palin calls Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie; for ten minutes they discuss news that her administration will ask the state legislature to award a license for a 1,715-mile-long natural gas pipeline to TransCanada. (Her administration has turned down bids from other conglomerates, including ConocoPhillips.) Later, she has a five-minute-long phone call with Canadian Minister of Industry Jim Prentice.

Aug 11-12, 2008 – Palin attends a reception and delivers welcoming remarks for the 8th Conference of Arctic Parliamentarians which includes delegates from Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States. This year, it holds panels on human health in the Arctic region, Arctic marine policy, adaptation to climate change, and energy resources in the Arctic. After welcoming the delegates, Palin leaves to attend a "dedication and blessing ceremony" for a cultural and visitors center in Fairbanks.
Data: Mother Jones

I'll be entertaining offers from presidential candidates until the Red Sox playoff game begins at 8.40 this evening. After that, please don't interrupt me as I'll be busy with Red Sox nation.

"You Can’t Trust A Black Man, How Can You Vote For One?" Radio Spots Planned

In the 1960s, Presidential campaigns played “dirty tricks” on each other but they were usually limited to things such as sending 100 pizza’s to the opponent’s campaign office in a small town where there might not be 100 residents let alone 100 volunteers to pay the bill.

Dick Tuck, dubbed “the Democrat’s pixie” by reporters, was the master of political pranks.

After the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, Tuck hired an elderly woman who put on a large Nixon button and embraced the candidate in front of TV cameras. She said, "Don't worry, son! He beat you last night, but you'll get him next time."

Tuck's most famous prank against Richard Nixon was dubbed "the Chinatown Caper." During a Los Angeles campaign stop, Nixon visited Chinatown where a backdrop of children holding "welcome" signs in English and Chinese was waiting. As Nixon spoke, an elder from the community whispered that one of the signs in Chinese said, "What about the Hughes loan?" The sign referred to a $205,000 loan Howard Hughes gave Nixon's brother, Donald. On camera, Nixon grabbed a sign and ripped it up.

Tuck is credited with waving a train out of the station while Nixon was still speaking on the rear platform. In the 1968 presidential campaign, Tuck utilized Nixon's own campaign slogan against him, hiring a very pregnant and very young African-American woman to wander around a Nixon rally in a predominantly white area, wearing a T-shirt that said, "Nixon's the One!"

So why this meandering stroll back through what seems like quaint American political history? Because dirty tricks are taking a very dirty turn. Today, they come in the form of caging voter rolls, name calling, guilt by innuendo and lying about not just an opponent’s record but your own. What George Bush supporters did to John McCain in 2000, McCain plans to do to Obama over the next three weeks.

Enter McCain

Sarah Palin rolled out the first phase of the lies and innuendo campaign over the weekend with McCain joining in this week as they try cloaking Barack Obama with the activities of a man who committed foul acts when Obama was eight. But as I wrote yesterday in Ayers & Keating: One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other, (http://thepoliticalcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2008/10/ayers-keating-one-of-these-things-is.html) it is a tough stretch to link a 40-year old event with someone who was a child at the time to today’s presidential campaign.

Polls are showing the Ayers attack on Obama is having a negligible effect.

So, now comes word that several right wingnut 527 groups supporting John McCain are preparing a series of quick hit, lie-and-duck, sleazy tricks in the waning days of the campaign.

Three independent sources report that at least one such shadowy 527 group is planning a radio campaign on the weekend before the election that will ask, "You can’t trust a black man, how can you vote for one?" It is such a blatant appeal to racism, the ad will be scheduled to air only in a few southern radio markets on Nov. 1 or Nov. 2, just before the election.

But the strategy is almost evil in its simplicity. The plan is to air the 30-second spot just enough times to be heard by a large number of white voters but, more importantly, to be picked up by the mainstream media as a news story where widespread coverage is anticipated. Thus, it is hoped that the impact of the message will bleed nationwide, far beyond the handful of cities where it originally airs.

Meanwhile, with the ad originating with a supposedly unaffiliated 527 group, the McCain campaign will be in a position to shout “Shame on them!” while puffing its chest to demand that their “supporters” pull the advertising.

“Desperate times require desperate measures,” an official inside the McCain campaign tells me while denying any personal knowledge of a last minute, race baiting, ad buy. Well, I didn’t expect he would say “Yeah, sure, we know about it and hope it works.” Admitting knowing such an attack was coming would buy him 18 months in Danbury, the minimum security federal prison, because 527 groups are, by law, barred from having any contact with a campaign.

Voter Suppression By GOP

Meanwhile, the Republican Party itself is actively engaging in voter suppression.

AlterNet reports this morning that Republicans in key swing states – including Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Missouri – are using Social Security data to verify voter registration information from established and potential voters. The Social Security information, which is know to be filled with errors, is being used to purge "tens of thousands" of voters already on voter rolls, the New York Times reports, along with rejecting numerous new voter registration applications.

Of 7.7-million inquiries by states to the Social Security Administration to verify voter applications in 2008, nearly 2.4 million resulted in "non matches," according to the agency. So, on Monday, it wrote to election officials in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio, urging them to "review their procedures" and citing the likelihood of numerous errors.

Voting rights attorneys maintain that the "name-matching" process not only violates the National Voter Registration Act on accepting or removing voter’s names, but also creates a new basis to challenge presidential results if the vote count is close on November 4.

Just what the country needs: Another Florida recount.

The fact is with the McCain-Palin poll numbers sliding off the edge of a cliff, the campaign has nothing left to pull from its bag of tricks other than dirty ones. Somewhere, Dick Puck must be weeping.

A hat tip to Pete

100 Days Left. Hallelujia!

- by Denis Campbell, editor of VadimusPost.com

2,822 page days have turned in the Administration of George W. Bush. Today there are only 100 left until 20 January 2009 when either Barack Obama or John McCain will become the 44th President of the United States. We mostly focus on the 1st hundred days of an Administration or new term. In your case sir, we’ll just count you down.

Last Christmas, a prized gift was the His Days Are Numbered: George W. Bush Countdown Calendar written by Alex Goulder, a wonderful desktop calendar with a factoid each and every day for 386 days. As we have:

• Sabre rattled with Iran,
• Talked tough with nuclear Russia,
• Watched an unprecedented global financial meltdown and
• Seen your staff rats desert this sinking ship like the Titanic.

I keep sitting here yelling “Go Clock!!!” hoping and praying we get to the end of this calendar without bankrupting the world, plunging it into WWIIII over Israel v Palestine, nuking Iran, invading Pakistan or picking a real fight with Russia.

When he first appeared as the petulant man-child watching HIS inaugural parade alone, in the bitter cold, protesting crowds kept blocks away at bay with tear gas wafting towards the reviewing stand, one could perhaps feel the tiniest bit sorry for George Walker Bush, newly appointed Commander-in-Chief and 43rd President (after a 5-4 Supreme Court decision to stop counting ballots in Florida and handed him the title).

We snickered at the quaint way in which he mangled the English language, reminding us of that lovable 1970’s comedian Norm Crosby whose aphorisms were quite witty and magically, beautifully badly constructed.

Bush was not so talented.

Everyone had their favourite Bushism… “we need to let these doctors show their love for these women” was mine, from the opening of the Michael Moore film Sicko, describing… gynaecologists. It was mostly harmless stuff until it became deadly serious. Websites offered a virtual encyclopaedia of them.

He seemed to be flying without a net at first and delegated almost every decision to two men, Karl Rove – dubbed Bush’s Brain – on the political side and Vice President Dick Cheney, the Dark Lord and most powerful man in Washington. He remains the most powerful Vice President ever to hold the office.

Little did we know the things that would be done in the name of ‘freedom’ just 9-short months later when the Twin Towers were felled and the Pentagon was attacked. Little did we know things such as the massive rights crimping Patriot Act would be rushed to print in only 39-days and a massive pork filled bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security would be formed with unprecedented powers.

We were taught to fear and question everyone different from us. The new mantra was be afraid, be vigilant, terrorists are everywhere… there… there… over there!

Our nation was whipped into a hyper-patriotic war/revenge fury by this Administration largely because, as sociologist Desmond Morris wrote in his 1970 book Manwatching, A Field Guide to Human Behaviour, that “what makes the major contribution to the savageries of war is the powerful human inclination to co-operate or starve. We hunted together in packs to track large animals and assure mutual survival. All a modern dictator has to do is convert this natural cooperation to excessively patriotic. He can then easily persuade them to kill strangers, not as an act of brutality, but as laudable acts of companion protection. If our ancestors had not become so innately cooperative, it might be much more difficult to raise an army and send it into war.” W would love it, it has lots of pictures.

Under W‘s leadership this ‘cooperation’ would lead to:

• Launching two wars,
• Invading a country under false pretences,
• Suspending habeas corpus,
• Torturing people,
• Using ‘extraordinary’ renditions to send those we thought were involved in terrorism to places with more lax torture laws to get answers,
• Building a prison camp to hold so-called “enemy combatants in complete isolation, without trial for seven years and even those ordered released by our own courts remain behind bars,
• Watching the largest single financial meltdown since the Great Depression,
• Seeing the Unitary Executive grow in unprecedented power as executive orders were how this president bypassed the legislative branch and
• Enabling government agencies to be staffed with executives from the industries they were supposed to (wink, wink) regulate and oversee.

We are a very bitterly divided electorate. While the election night maps used red and blue for decades, those colours became the deeply polarising colours of our land. We’ve not come very far since 2000 as divisiveness and ballot integrity remain key issues 8-years later.

With 100 days until handing over the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to the new occupant, the legacy thing isn’t looking so good for W. He is the most ill-informed, lacking in intellectual curiosity President we’ve ever had and it shows. What’s his library going to house? A comic book collection? Baseball cards? Sports memorabilia?

He is already the least travelled and most vacationed President in the history of this office.

Please do us one last favour Mr. Bush and take one last 100-day vacation now please?

Your nation thanks you.

Spiro Agnew And Sarah Palin

It seems fitting that on this day in 1973, the third worst vice president in American history – after Dick Cheney and Aaron Burr – resigned under federal indictment. Spiro T. Agnew pleaded “no contest” to one count of federal tax evasion. The Senate approved Nixon’s appointment of Gerry Ford as Vice President, clearing the way for Tricky Dick’s own resignation not long after under the shadow of his Watergate crimes.

Agnew’s crude, alliterative attacks on anti-Viet Nam war protestors and the news media paved the way for the McCain-Palin smears we’re seeing today.

Fake Candidate Paris Discusses Campaign With Fake President Sheen

After the McCain campaign ran an ad calling Barack Obama a “celebrity” and included a photo of Paris Hilton in the spot for reasons that still don’t make sense, Hilton responded with her own ad announcing her candidacy for president. It received wide play on YouTube and bits of it appeared on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report as well as MSNBC and other cable news networks.

It seems that the professional celebrity is serious about her fake candidacy, seeking out advice on the presidency from fake TV president Martin Sheen. The website FunnyOrDie.com managed to capture their conversation on film.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Lipsticked Pit Bulls, Orange Jumpsuit Better Idea

- Guest post by Denis Campbell, editor-in-chief of VadimusPost.com

When the circus act of Sarah Palin and Cindy McCain whipped up crowds into a seething frenzy; where was the US Secret Service? That is the group designated to protect all four candidates (and the President and Vice President) from threats. When the McPalin gals incited hatred and anger with their indignation, mock or otherwise and someone clearly yelled “Kill Him” (about Senator Obama) the other day, the Secret Service needs to investigate.

This is serious. And they now are.

The Service has a lot of powers including the ability to arrest and prosecute those whose actions threaten to harm to a protectee. Mrs. Palin and Mrs. McCain in orange prison jumpsuits would make an important statement that while one does have free speech in the USA, there is a line and these ladies (a term used very loosely) crossed it deliberately.

“Oh come on Denis!,” you say. That’s just lefty BS. Why such a big fuss?

Because, not so long ago Prime Minster Yitzak Rabin of Israel was assassinated by an opposition party inspired dissident student. His actions to bring peace with the Palestinians included giving away land in Gaza and the hard right wingers in the Knesset made highly inflammatory and emotional speeches that inspired a young man to take the Prime Minister’s life.

That’s the big deal.

There are enough whack jobs and wing nuts out there (just view some of the comments from time to time here) to keep the Secret Service busy for years. They don’t need the candidates themselves causing more trouble.

John McCain may want you to focus on fear, Wiliam Ayers, Barack Obama’s middle name or any one of a dozen thoroughly disproven theories from his Muslim background, to not being born in Hawaii, to his kooky pastor to any lie they can think of.

Inciting riotous crowds though crosses the line. Having campaign in-state chairs uttering Muslim slurs or full-uniform sheriff’s opening in full uniform or leafleting black neighbourhoods with scare tactic notices that those with outstanding warrants had better get them taken care of before election day… all harkens back to Jim Crow law times. (The sheriff of Lee County is now under Federal investigation for violations of the Hatch Act prohibiting public service or military personnel to appear in uniform in a partisan way. He could lose his job and/or go to prison for his act or both.)

Vice Presidential candidates are supposed to be pit bulls, there to jab at the opposition candidate. Inciting violence though is a bridge too far. Karl Rove schooled Republicans laugh and think you are stupid.

The whole world is watching though and looking with bated breath to see if we, for once, are going to do the right thing or fall back into another four-year cycle of fear and anger.

I watched Joe Biden’s speech yesterday and there was controlled anger and passion as well as much common sense in what he had to say. He talked about the need for intellectual honesty in McCain’s arguments…

“This election is about dignity and respect. Simply if you have to cut it all aside, cut through everything, it’s about fairness. It’s about how to reclaim the greatness of this country.”

John McCain’s campaign has reached a very difficult place. If they wanted to be intellectually honest, they really only have three choices…

1. They can deny that we’re in trouble and say ‘things are pretty good, we just need a little fine tuning.’ That’s one intellectually honest position they could argue from their perspective.

2. They could explain why the policies of the past 8-years are not a problem, why there is some other reason that has caused us to get in this God-awful deep hole we’ve been dug into both at home and abroad. Or

3. They could be intellectually honest and acknowledge that the economic decision we face today is the final verdict of a failed economic philosophy and we need a wholesale change. Total change!

In my view, those are the only three intellectually honest options that can be chosen.

But there’s one other option… The one they have chosen is to appeal to fear with the veiled question, ‘who is the real Barack Obama.’ Ladies and gentlemen, to have a Vice Presidential candidate raise the most outrageous inferences, the ones that John McCain’s campaign is condoning is simply wrong!”

Aside from writing here, the Huffington Post and the BBC, I meet a lot of people in the pubs, cafes and High Street stores of England and Wales. They are genuinely afraid of what a McCain Presidency will mean because they are convinced it means four more years of Bush policies. We need that wholesale change Joe Biden spoke of and we need it now.

My colleague Sharon Kyle at LA Progressive warned today of complacency and we must fight together for 26-more days for truth and stop the smears before they gain traction. Otherwise we face 12-years of a grumpy old man and quirky Sarah Palin in charge.

Send her racist lil’ ole self back to Alaska, please.

Ayers & Keating: One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

Dust off your SAT skills, boys and girls. Here’s today’s quiz:

Question: OBAMA : AYERS as McCAIN :
a) PALIN b) GRAMM c) KEATING d) BUSH

If you picked c) Keating, you would be right – but mostly wrong.

Going on attack this week, Sarah Palin dusted off the old story about Obama’s association with Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers. In response, the Democrats are talking about McCain’s involvement with Charles Keating and the savings and loan scandal.

The media picked up on the symmetry of Obama’s approach — one old fact deserves another —but reporters are missing the point. By mentioning Ayers and Keating in one breath, like this AP headline, Campaigns Do Battle Over Ayers, Keating, the media falsely implies that both men are chapters from history books, both irrelevant factoids dredged up by campaigners in order to damage their opponents.

The simple fact is that Keating matters and Ayers doesn’t. One of these things is not like the other.

On Saturday, The New York Times delved into the relationship between Obama and Ayers, finding that “the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers.”

A Past Renounced

Obama was eight when Ayers engaged in his infamous acts of terrorism; by the time the two met in 1995, Ayers had long since renounced his past and was working as a highly respected educator in Chicago.

Since earning a doctorate in education at Columbia in 1987, Ayers has been a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, authored or edited 15 books, and is an advocate of school reform.

“He’s done a lot of good in this city and nationally,” Mayor Richard M. Daley told an interviewer this week, explaining that he has long consulted Ayers on school issues.

To put another way, there is no connection whatsoever between Ayers’ wrongdoing and Obama, who was eight at the time. The Senator not involved in any way.

The logic behind the GOP argument is tenuous. Obama “is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” So, the Obama-Ayers connection reflects on the Illinois senator’s “character” because, McCain and Palin assert, the association lends Obama’s credibility to Ayers’ past sins or because Obama, the responsible, patriotic politician, ought to have shunned Ayers based on his past.

This is preposterous.

The Ayers that Obama met and worked with isn’t the same person as the 1960s radical that the McCain campaign recalls so vividly. People change. The world isn’t black and white. Pick your cliché. Obama didn’t work with Ayers to reform education because he hates America and thinks it’s “imperfect.” They worked together to improve the education of children.

In fact, Obama was willing to work with someone who didn’t have a squeaky clean past toward a goal of getting something good accomplished; in this case, for Chicago school children.

Keating’s Crime Connects McCain

The Times explained the Keating scandal last February.

During Mr. McCain’s four years in the House, Mr. Keating, his family and his business associates contributed heavily to his political campaigns. The banker gave Mr. McCain free rides on his private jet, a violation of Congressional ethics rules. They vacationed together in the Bahamas. And in 1986, the year Mr. McCain was elected to the Senate, his wife joined Mr. Keating in investing in an Arizona shopping mall.

Mr. Keating had taken over the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association and used its federally insured deposits to gamble on risky real estate and other investments. He pressed Mr. McCain and other lawmakers to help hold back federal banking regulators.

For years, Mr. McCain complied. At Mr. Keating’s request, he wrote several letters to regulators, introduced legislation and helped secure a Keating nominee to a banking regulatory board.

By early 1987, though, the thrift was careering toward disaster. Mr. McCain agreed to join several senators, eventually known as the Keating Five, for two private meetings with regulators to urge them to ease up. “Why didn’t I fully grasp the unusual appearance of such a meeting?” Mr. McCain later lamented in his memoir.

When Lincoln went bankrupt in 1989 — one of the biggest collapses of the savings and loan crisis, costing taxpayers $3.4 billion — the Keating Five became infamous. The scandal sent Mr. Keating to prison and ended the careers of three senators, who were rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee in 1991 for intervening. Mr. McCain, who had been a less aggressive advocate for Mr. Keating than the others, was reprimanded only for “poor judgment” and was re-elected the next year.

McCain’s experience with the Keating affair is significant, relevant and important for two reasons. First, McCain was directly involved at the time the crime was occurring. Second, it reveals his attitude on how the banking industry should be governed.

A few weeks ago, Bill Press at The Hill explained it succinctly:

McCain co-sponsored legislation relaxing regulations on savings and loans and allowing them to gamble investor funds on certain highly risky financial ventures. Sound familiar?

For his role in aiding Keating, McCain received only a reprimand for “poor judgment” from the Senate Ethics Committee. But, ever since, the “Keating Five” has been the symbol of how much influence money can buy in Washington. And McCain, having learned nothing from the experience, then turned around and repeated the same tricks on Wall Street.

In 2000, McCain supported legislation authored by Sen. Phil Gramm that forbade federal agencies from regulating financial derivatives that greased the skids for passing along risky mortgage-backed securities to investors. Today we’re suffering the consequences.

Gramm’s legislation was the key. Without it, AIG could never have veered from the solid ground of life insurance onto the shaky ground of sub-prime mortgages. And John McCain championed that legislation.

Chalk And Cheese

Obama-Ayers is irrelevant because Obama wasn’t involved in any wrongdoing; McCain-Keating means a lot because McCain was heavily involved in wrong-doing, was reprimanded by the Senate for it, and because it is a living, breathing example of the dangers inherent in his deregulatory economic philosophy.

So Keating and Ayers are not equal issues. Apples and oranges. Chalk and cheese.

There’s old adage that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The moral of the Keating scandal is that McCain is guilty of repeating history, a mortal political sin. Having seen firsthand the harm of de-regulation, if McCain truly was a “maverick” and a “regulator” as he now claims to be, he could have actually sounded warning bells this time around. He didn’t because he was one of its biggest supporters. As a result, this is simply a lie woven into a stump speech.

Obama’s sin is working sporadically 10 years ago with a man who, while Obama was a child, engaged in substantial wrongdoing.

One of these things is not like the other. In fact, they are not analogous and implying that they are is simply and totally wrong.

AP Exclusive: Documents Say Detainee Near Insanity

My note: Welcome to another chapter in the gothic horror story, George Bush's America.

AP Exclusive: Documents Say Detainee Near Insanity
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

(10-08) 03:52 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) - A U.S. military officer warned Pentagon officials that an American detainee was being driven nearly insane by months of punishing isolation and sensory deprivation in a U.S. military brig, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

While the treatment of prisoners at detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq have long been the subject of human rights complaints and court scrutiny, the documents shed new light on how two American citizens and a legal U.S. resident were treated in military jails inside the United States.

The Bush administration ordered the men to be held in military jails as "enemy combatants" for years of interrogations without criminal charges, which would not have been allowed in civilian jails.

The men were interrogated by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, repeatedly denied access to attorneys and mail from home and contact with anyone other than guards and their interrogators. They were deprived of natural light for months and for years were forbidden even minor distractions such as a soccer ball or a dictionary.

"I will continue to do what I can to help this individual maintain his sanity, but in my opinion we're working with borrowed time," an unidentified Navy brig official wrote of prisoner Yaser Esam Hamdi in 2002. "I would like to have some form of an incentive program in place to reward him for his continued good behavior, but more so, to keep him from whacking out on me."

Yale Law School's Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic received the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by two attorneys Jonathan Freiman and Tahlia Townsend, representing another detainee, Jose Padilla. The Lowenstein group and the American Civil Liberties Union said the papers were evidence that the Bush administration violated the 5th Amendment's protections against cruel treatment. The U.S. military was ordered to treat the American prisoners the same way prisoners at Guantanamo were treated, according to the documents.

However, the Guantanamo jail was created by the Bush administration specifically to avoid allowing detainees any constitutional rights. Administration lawyers contended the Constitution did not apply outside the country.

"These documents are the first clear confirmation of what we've suspected all along, that the brig was run as a prison beyond the law. There was an effort to create a Gitmo inside the United States," Jonathan Hafetz of the ACLU's National Security Project in New York said, using the slang word for the U.S. naval facility in Cuba.

The 91 pages of e-mails and documents produced by U.S. Fleet Forces Command, which runs the military brigs in Norfolk, Va., and Charleston, S.C., detail daily decisions made about the treatment of Hamdi and Padilla, then both American citizens, and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a legal resident. All were designated as by the White House as "illegal enemy combatants."

The paperwork show uniformed officials at the military brigs growing increasingly uncomfortable and then alarmed that they were being directed to handle their prisoners under the rules that governed Guantanamo.

The authors and recipients of the e-mails are censored from the documents. They appear to be going to either military or Pentagon legal counsel and policy offices.

The documents show that some officials at the Charleston brig were deeply skeptical about the mandate that Guantanamo rules should apply in the United States, a decision made by the defense secretary's office, according to the documents.

"You have every right to question the 'lash-up' between GTMO and Charleston — it was the first thing I ask (sic) about a year ago when I checked on board," wrote one official to another in 2006. "In a nutshell, they gave the Charleston detainee mission to (Joint Forces Command) who promptly gave it to (Fleet Forces Command) with a 'lots of luck' and nothing else."

An officer was still raising alarms about Hamdi's mental state after 14 months of jail with no contact with lawyers, his family or even other prisoners.

"I told him the last thing that I wanted to have happen was to send him anywhere from here as a 'basket case,' of use to no one, to include himself," the officer wrote in an e-mail to undisclosed government officials in June 2003. "I fear the rubber band is nearing its breaking point here and not totally confident I can keep his head in the game much longer."

The frustrated officer wrote that he had "to have the ability to exercise some discretion when I believe it best for the health and welfare of those assigned to my facility ... Know ... we are to remain consistent with the procedures that were/are in place at Camp X-Ray" a reference to the Guantanamo jail. He pointed out that imposing those conditions in the brig had a far harsher effect on his prisoners because they had no contact with any other detainees, which was allowed at Guantanamo.

Scores of pages of once-secret legal opinions regarding detainee rights and treatment have been released under the Freedom of Information Act. At least two apparently crucial memos about enemy combatant treatment inside the U.S. have yet to be made public.

Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, shipped to Guantanamo and then moved to the U.S. after his citizenship was discovered. He was held and interrogated for three years without charges. The Supreme Court in 2004 rejected the government's attempt to hold him indefinitely without charge. He was released to Saudi Arabia on the condition he give up his U.S. citizenship.

Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was a legal resident studying for a master's degree in Illinois when he was arrested in December 2001 by the FBI as a material witness to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He was charged with credit card fraud in 2002. A month before his trial in 2003, President Bush declared him an enemy combatant and al-Marri was transferred to the consolidated naval brig in Charleston. There he was held in isolation for 16 months, denied shoes and socks for two years, and was not allowed any contact with his family for five years. He remains in the military brig but is appealing his detention to the Supreme Court.

Padilla was arrested in 2002 under suspicion he was collaborating with al-Qaida to build a radioactive or "dirty" bomb. He was held as an enemy combatant for more than three years. He was held totally incommunicado for 21 months. His mother was only allowed to see Padilla after she agreed not to alert the media to the visit, according to the documents.

The government dropped the dirty bomb charges and Padilla's case was moved to civilian court where in 2007 he was convicted of supporting terrorism in Kosovo, Bosnia and Chechnya.

New Video Documents McCain’s Volatile Temper

Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films just released a four minute snapshot of people who know him – including countless Republicans – saying McCain’s temper and short fuse is of genuine concern to them should he be elected. John Hinz, the former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, bluntly states, “Do I trust him with the (nuclear) button? No.”



Anyone affected by or who is familiar with PTSD recognize all of the symptoms of someone suffering from it: Short fuse, easily angered, physical confrontation. It's understandable because he was a POW for several years. But being understanding of his deep-rooted and apparently untreated emotional problem does not mean this man is fit to be president.

Greenwald encourages people viewing the video to email the link on to others.

The Debates: Obama-Biden 3, McCain-Palin 0

You know a campaign realizes it’s in serious trouble and falling behind rapidly when its candidate fares so poorly in a debate that senior aides blame the moderator.

Acknowledging that the night failed to shift public focus on the economy or inflict serious damage on Obama, one of McCain’s key economic advisers, Douglas “John Invented The Blackberry” Holtz-Eakin, accused Tom Brokaw of “hijacking” the debate. This bit of rhetorical huffing was greeted with deserved guffaws of disbelief by the press corps gathered in the spin room: The McCain campaign pushed hard for the town hall format – early on, McCain wanted to do 10 of them with Obama – it wanted Brokaw, NBC’s liaison to the McCain campaign, as moderator and the tight rules Brokaw followed were agreed to by both campaigns months ago.

The town hall format is supposed to be McCain forte. But he was clearly uncomfortable, jumping up from his high chair to march menacingly towards the audience when it was his turn, and his words rambled everywhere in search of an answer.

As his discomfort became palpable, at one point McCain referred dismissively to Obama as "that one" with a flip of his hand – a snide reference close enough to “that darky boy” to make some women sitting in the audience behind McCain visibly wince. Watching at home, I almost did a spit take when he said it. McCain might as well have said, “Ol’ Black Joe over there …”

Well, Obama already has more than 90% of the African-American vote so I assume McCain figured that offending another five percent of that particular voting bloc won’t make much difference.

Never has the age gap between the two men been as obvious. For example, when McCain was asked how the economic crisis would affect the three top priorities of his administration, he seemed unable to remember what they were and jotted a note before answering.

McCain was left so nonplussed by the experience that he refused to shake Obama’s hand at the end of the debate, exiting the Crewe Center so quickly I thought his Grampers needed changing. Meanwhile, Barack and Michelle hung around shaking hands, taking photos and chatting with the audience for more than 20 minutes.

A National Thumbs-Down On McCain

The post-debate snap polls, which provide important insight into how each candidate fared, say that that Obama scored a clear victory in the second debate.

• NBC gathered a group of undecided Pennsylvanians who gave Obama a 60%-40% edge in the debate.
• At CBS, its snap poll gave Obama a 39%-25% edge over McCain.
• Greenberg Quinlan Rosner had a focus group of undecideds leaning to Obama by a healthy margin of 42% to 24%.
• A CNN focus group of undecided voters in Ohio had the margin at an even wider spread: Obama 54% to McCain's 30%.
• In Washington State, SurveyUSA interviewed 741 debate watchers where 54% thought Obama was the "clear winner" compared with McCain's 29%.

Even Fox’s focus group had voters leaning towards Obama, mostly because of his firm statement that health care was a “right of every American.” McCain called it a responsibility, and went into a disjointed, rambling explanation of why that left people in the studio audience with confused looks on their faces as the camera followed McCain around.

Obama had a number of brilliant moments that connected with the audience – live and on television – but what might be looked back on as the moment he won the election came at the very end. The last question was “What don’t you know and how will you learn it?”



"Not Today!"

This morning, I phone my two McCain campaign contacts. One, who works in a swing state, did not answer her phone and the source at McCain headquarters gave me a sharp, “Not today” before hanging up.

But people on the Obama team are much more talkative.

“It was supposed to be McCain’s night,” I’m told, “and he never got out in front. Not in his style, not in his substance, not in his answers.

“He reminded me of my grandfather in his later years. My Granpa Joe was hanging out in his childhood a lot by then and although he’d answer a question, what he said was connected to what he was asked by only a loose thread.”

Lies, More Lies And Damned Lies

As the evening grew on, McCain ended up falling back on his old habit of lying.

On the economic crisis, McCain said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were among "the real catalysts, really the match that lit this fire." But data from the Federal Reserve show that the majority of the subprime loans that triggered the crisis weren't issued by Fannie and Freddie, but by private lending institutions.

McCain said Obama and "his cronies and his friends in Washington that went out and made all these risky loans." He was referring to two former heads of Fannie Mae: Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson. The McCain campaign has referred to Raines as an Obama adviser which Raines has denied repeatedly, and everyone from Fox News to FactCheck agree. Johnson briefly headed Obama's vice-presidential vetting team before resigning when some loans he obtained became controversial.

McCain, moreover, has his own ties to the mortgage industry. His campaign manager, Rick Davis, is a co-owner of a lobbying firm that was on a $15,000-a-month retainer from Freddie Mac from 2005 through August.

McCain repeated a claim that Obama's tax plan would raise taxes on small businesses. But some time ago, the non-partisan Factcheck.org project at the University of Pennsylvania concluded that the "statement is simply not true."

On Iraq, McCain repeated his assertion that last year's surge of 30,000 additional U.S. troops has been a success. But that goes well beyond what U.S. officials are saying. A nearly completed top-level intelligence report warns that ethnic and sectarian tensions remain unresolved and could explode in renewed bloodletting.

McCain also said he wouldn't withdraw U.S. forces until they achieved victory in Iraq. Army Gen. David Petraeus has said that he doesn't believe that the war is one in which victory can be declared.

McCain said that U.S. troops had to be withdrawn in humiliation from Somalia in 1993 after a peacekeeping operation to deliver humanitarian aid turned into a peacemaking operation. He failed to mention, however, that he sponsored a Senate resolution demanding an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Somalia after 29 U.S. troops were killed and 170 wounded in the battle that gave rise to the book and movie Blackhawk Down. The resolution failed.

On energy, McCain said drilling offshore for oil was necessary. Experts have said it will take a decade before oil could be pumped out.

Is Recovery Possible?

All that remains now is to see how the McCain camp tries to recover in the 26 or 27 days until the election. Given its hate-filled stump rhetoric the past four days, my guess is Palin and Friends will return to calling Obama a terrorist lover (Obama=bin Laden), a dark man with a dark past (hint hint), someone who can’t be trusted (he might steal your car or rape your daughter).

But how can the country be expected to trust McCain, a man who twice now came across as the old coot who lives at the far end of the alley and yells at people who walk past his house?

Political Spots We Should See – But Probably Won’t

Denver ad agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners teamed up with MJZ director Craig Gillespie for a series of "behind the scenes" spoofs aimed to question Republican campaign strategy with a smirk. For now the spots are primarily available on YouTube but let’s hopes that's just the beginning

Maverick Maverick Maverick


Clear It First With Karl


Gas Drilling


Gag Palin

McCain, Palin, Tacitly Approve Assassination

Earlier today, I wrote that the McCain campaign plans to turn ugly, pock-marked and nasty. "We're going to 'Willie Horton' Obama," I was told by a campaign insider.

But this is more than nasty: The campaign is becoming dangerous.

Twice yesterday and again today, when McCain was giving a speech and asked the rhetorical question, "Who is Obama?" someone in the crowd shouted back "terrorist" followed by someone else yelling "kill him," to hearty and approving applause. The same threats echoed during Palin speeches since Sunday, as well. The videos are all over YouTube.

Neither McCain nor Palin stopped their speech to lecture the audience about offensive, inappropriate and illegal comments. Why not?

Threatening the life of a presidential candidate is a federal offense and with so many police and Secret Service agents present, why wasn't anyone arrested? When a crazy woman like Ann Coulter recommended that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should be shot, people rose in outrage but right wingnuts laughed it off, saying Democrats don't have a sense of humour. Some joke!

When McCain and Palin use silence to give tacit approval to suggestions from supporters that their opponent should be shot, then they are tacitly signalling that it'd be alright for someone to take a pot shot.

Are we supposed to laugh it all off? I've lived through enough political assassinations, and attempted assassinations, for one lifetime, thank you.

This is starting to remind me of Hitler's rallies during the last days of the Weimer Republic in Germany during the 1930s. There, politicians and ordinary people alike were killed after supporters took up their leader's call to action.

God help us all.

Chimes of Freedom Flashing

If you read my previous piece, We’re Going To ‘Willie Horton’ Obama, you know why this song written by The Byrds and sung by Bruce Springsteen is so appropriate today. A hat tip to www.euddoggwyn.blogspot.com for posting the video and bringing it to my attention.

“We’re Going To ‘Willie Horton’ Obama”

I couldn’t believe my ears.

First, on Sunday, a McCain campaign spokesman told reporters that if they didn’t “turn the page on the economy, we lose.” Now, my source at McCain headquarters is laying out Straight Talkin’ John’s hideous strategy for the last 28 days of the campaign.

“We’re going to ‘Willie Horton’ Obama,” he told me early this morning by phone. “It could work.”

For those too young or too old to remember the Michael Dukakis-George H. W. Bush campaign in 1988, the Democrat emerged from his convention with a 17% Gallup Poll lead. Perhaps the main reason his lead dissipated was an outrageous TV ad linking Governor Dukakis to a prisoner who committed rape during a weekend furlough. The commercial included an threatening photo of an ominous looking Willie Horton, an African-American convict.

“Wait,” I reply. “What happened to all of those statements by McCain preserved on YouTube of McCain (www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbcuqfaroe4) insisting he would only run a clean campaign? No negative ads. No ‘Willie Horton’ smears?” Even his wife Cindy is captured telling a TV interviewer their side won’t engage in negative attacks.

There is a long pause on the line.

“John said that before (Steve) Schmidt grabbed running the campaign away from Rick Davis,” comes what I realize is a self-evident answer. Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé and veteran of Bush 43’s 2004 campaign, took over as McCain’s campaign director in July at the insistence of GOP bigwigs.

“Schmidt had Palin test drive the line this weekend and overnight internals showed it went over big with the base,” is the explanation. “The question is will it have the same impact on independents and undecideds?”

Palin’s attack line tries linking Obama to William Ayers, a 1960s-era member of the radical group Weather Underground. Ayers, now a respected education teacher, denounced his own involvement in the organization decades ago and, in the 1990s, served briefly on a charity board with Obama.

She used the “Obama’s palin’ around with terrorists” line again on Monday, nearly causing Keith Olbermann’s head to explode (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#27057346) as he tore her a new one in a Special Comment segment Monday night.

That the hate-and-smear campaign might work seems to be the only criteria used by the McCain campaign.

“No one knew that Dukakis had nothing to do with Willie Horton,” my contact inside the McCain campaign tells me, “or that the state’s policy of granting weekend passes to prisoners nearing the end of their term was established by the parole board, not the governor’s office,” my source tells me. “But it cost him the election.”

In an article this morning at Truthout.org, political columnist Norman Solomon cautions Democrats that it might just work.

Young trial lawyers are taught that if the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts and the law are against you, pound the table.

“All we have left is pounding the table,” the McCain staffer, a lawyer by trade, confesses.