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.

On the Brink of Country Divorce

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

In the middle of our worst economic crisis since the Depression, the McCain campaign wants to change the subject from issues to nonsense because his policies of the past 26-years cannot be defended. From the Keating 5 to the current guilt by association attack gambit, this silliness has snarky Sarah going gutter, no… make that cesspit, bringing up a shared directorship by Barack Obama with former radical Weather Underground member, William Ayers.

GOP talking point network FOX News’ attack dog Sean Hannity then went after Obama for his association with Acorn, a group bringing transparency and fairness to help inner city and low income people onto the property ladder as… the cause of the Fannie/Freddie and broader financial meltdown.

Senator McCain, I once met Patty Hearst and shared a speaker’s dais with Xaviera Hollander. Does that make me a Symbionese Liberation army sympathiser or hooker patron, happy or otherwise?

Yes, I considered the source, and it is all part of this last straw. I’ve reached the point of no return and will file divorce papers with my country if we make yet another (s)election error.

If, after 30-days of slimy, Swift-Boat attacks by the angry old man and his increasingly negative campaign aimed at dividing and destroying the country, voters are stupid enough to place another radical far-right team in the White House and bring the same global conflict, unchecked deregulation, special interests, economic disaster, ideologue Supreme Court appointees whilst perpetuating the mantra of fear, chanting U.S.A.!, placing flags on every stationary surface, declaring “Homeland security” the answer to any question and further eroding my ability to even question or write this…

I have no choice but to divorce my country.

From 27 December I can, if I choose, begin the process of becoming one of Her Majesty’s subjects, a citizen of the United Kingdom and the European Union that, despite its many flaws, cares more for her people and their rights than my own. Living abroad for 10-years, paying US taxes and voting in every election, even municipal ones, this is a step I never believed I would consider taking, especially as the son of a US immigrant.

My late-father came to his new country with a 1-way ticket, the clothes on his back, $100 in his pocket and a pregnant wife. This is a step pondered deeply and with regret for I feel I’m letting him down even though he died six years ago. He loved his adopted country with a passion and instilled in me the need to do both good and well.

In my teen years he became a citizen and I was inspired by him and US politics. A 1973 trip to Washington DC with the Close-Up program was equal parts education and inspiration. It would make politics a part of my life forever. We’d just re-elected President Nixon with a landslide victory. There was a cloud of suspicion growing around his role in a failed burglary at the Democratic National Committee HQ in the Watergate Office complex. And it would lead to his resignation in disgrace a year later.

This was before PC’s, Internet and CNN. News cycles were truly 24-hours long and you watched Uncle Walter Cronkite deliver news. During that week in Washington, we read about and met the men and women serving our country with honour. That 1973-74, 93rd Congress contained some of the most memorable people serving ‘Country First’ as more than a slogan and… a group of scoundrels who would be forced from office where today they would just lie, hide and obfuscate. The Paris Peace talks were underway to end the war in Vietnam, Roe v. Wade had just been decided, and our leaders led.

The Senate and House roll call included: Mike Mansfield, Gerald Ford, Robert Byrd, Tip O’Neill, John Anderson, Nelson Rockefeller, Edward Brooke, Ted Kennedy, Carl Albert and Phil Hart, the ‘Conscience of the Senate’ for whom a Senate office building would be named. They reached across the aisle to broker compromises and governed, even while Watergate was blowing up, from the middle ground.

Barack Obama and John McCain have been campaigning for 21- and 19-months respectively.

The fatigue of the seeming endless 3-minute campaign newscycle is exhausting. One cannot imagine the toll 24/7/366 travel takes on those in or covering the race. Party ideology though rather than forward vision guides too many decisions. While I never thought former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan and I would agree, her new book examines the polarisation and how dangerously small-minded, rude and petty our nation has become.

When I first moved abroad, there was a broader investigative and questioning foreign press (AWOL in the USA since Watergate). Watching 9-11 live on CNN.com left an indelible impression, yet the world rallied around and supported the US. If you told me we would squander that goodwill through two unilateral wars, give the UN ‘the finger,’ shred or be a non-signatory to treaties, play the game our way or ‘take our ball and go home,’ that we’d build a prison camp on Cuba, participate in torture by sending people to jails in Syria and other less strict countries and shred rights to habeas corpus and free speech via far right executive ideologue vs. the rule of law… I would say you were crazy.

Living abroad, I saw how indoctrinated by the propaganda machine we all were. The blinders we Americans wear and how fully into the myth of country/party we fell was shocking.

After the 2000 (s)Election I became angry. Before we invaded Iraq, I was so incensed, I marched in Amsterdam for the 1st time in my life. Standing there next to grandmothers, parents and students who’d also never marched before; we were stupid enough to think 21-million people in 665 cities around the globe could make a difference. When the White House dismissed us all as “a focus group” (120,000 people in Amsterdam, more than protested the placement of US Trident missiles aimed at the then Soviet Union), that was when my life changed forever and awakening those in my own country became the only goal.

We stood side-by-side with Iraqi brothers and sisters whom the media made faceless, the government called ‘enemy’ and we asked for time to allow the UN inspectors to do their work and find WMD’s, which we all now know were a lie.

I was struck by how ridiculous it all was and how deep the takeover of America had become. So I became a voice for change that angered friend and foe alike by bringing foreign press articles and asking hard questions the herd of lemming-like sheep unable to turn these into real issues because the MSM were more interested in celebrity gossip that helped entertainment divisions make money. When ‘American Idol’ attracts more voters than a Presidential election, the idiots are indeed running the asylum.

No longer willing to support fluff over substance, if my country rewards malfeasance, lies, liars and votes or otherwise places a hothead 72-year old cancer survivor and his thoroughly unprepared trophy wife VP candidate a heartbeat from the highest office in the land, I’ll have no choice but to leave it metaphorically as well as physically.

I’m hoping my country has more sense and, sadly, can no longer hesitate to act. I also worry most about those with no other option.

Here Comes The Smear

My deep, sincere apologies to The Beatles for turning the title of their wonderfully hopeful song Here Comes The Sun on its head, especially to use it in describing the only tactics left to save the sinking Republican ship SS McCain with Cap’n Palin on the bridge.

But make no mistake: The last 30 days of the campaign will see McCain, Palin and their surrogates turn into an army of Dark Knights of Evil. In fact, the Republican campaign machine admits it.

"We're looking at a very aggressive last 30 days of turning the page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans," senior adviser Greg Strimple told reporters on Thursday.

“Very aggressive” and “too risky” is politicode for lies, half-truths, innuendo and surrogate-mounted smears, racial and other.

Freddie And Bill

It’s started already.

A few days ago I received an e-mail from a Deep South conservative Republican raising again the thoroughly discredited claim that the former heads of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are now working for the Obama campaign. Apparently, it’s not enough that both Fox News and The Washington Times – hardly liberal apologists – debunked the smear weeks ago; die-hards will keep spreading the phoney news anyway.

And get this: The AP is reporting this morning that Sarah Palin accuses Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists" for his association with a former 1960s radical.

Palin is referring to Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the group the Weather Underground. The group took credit for several bombings, including non-fatal explosions at the Pentagon and the Capitol four decades ago – when Obama was about eight years old.

In remarks Saturday to GOP donors in Englewood, Colorado, Palin said Obama seems to see the US as being so imperfect that, in her words, "he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Her idiotic statements were triggered by a disjointed New York Times story on Saturday that traced Obama’s sporadic interactions with Ayers, now a respected education professor in Chicago where he worked on an education project with Obama when the candidate was a community organizer and then state senator. Palin never mentioned that Ayers denounced his past activities decades ago.

Stephen Fox, contributing editor of the New Mexico Sun News, puts it in perspective:

“I remember meeting Mark Rudd, who either blew up a building or tried to, I don't remember which. I met Angela Davis, and golly, very early one Sunday morning after one of the famous San Francisco Peace Marches to end the Vietnam War in 1967, I even saw Janis Joplin driving a yellow Porsche Convertible about 60 miles an hour through Haight-Ashbury.

"Just because 20 years ago, you befriend someone and talk intelligently with them, what does that mean, anyway? That you are learning. Does that mean you are sitting at the feet of the 9/11 bombers? Of course not, but the Republicans will use this ludicrous and deranged line of reasoning to scare the elderly as they have already done in South Florida, the undecided, the apathetic … who don't read (a newspaper) everyday.”

Shifting Undecided’s

Meanwhile, undecided voters – how can there actually be any of these still around? – are starting to trend Obama, along with the rest of the country.

Undecided voters who watched Thursday's vice presidential debate like Palin but they're not certain she's ready to lead the country, according to the findings of a new Ipsos/McClatchy poll published Sunday morning.

If they had to vote immediately after watching the debate between Palin and Biden, 52% of the 456 undecided voters who were surveyed would vote the Obama/Biden ticket, the poll found.

It also found that Palin's performance in the debate did nothing to clinch undecided votes for her running mate. Before the debate, those same undecided voters were leaning 56% to 44% for McCain. The day after the debate, the numbers tilted 52% to 48% for Obama.

No wonder the McCain-Palin campaign is starting to throw mud. It’s all they have left.

300-Plus Electoral Votes is Possible for Obama

A guest post from Denis Campbell, editor-in-chief of VadimusPost.com.

My EU media colleagues have a hard time understanding that daily national tracking polls mean little. On November 4th, voters will enter and cast ballots in 50-statewide winner-takes-all contests. There are 538 electoral votes up for grabs, this is how the race is decided and the first person to 270 votes wins. California is the biggest prize with 55, several small states including Alaska and the District of Columbia have 3 votes each and the map shows how they break down and voted in 2004.

George Bush beat John Kerry 286-252 with Ohio’s questionable 20 votes the margin of victory. The map’s mid-section was solid red in the 2004 presidential election but Barack Obama’s organisation has targeted several “red” states this year and in the map below is doing surprisingly well in a number of them. New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Montana are four that he would love to have and could win them all. The ‘New West’ independent states have chosen Democratic state governments and popular governors who are helping Obama. The South, a GOP stronghold since Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, also has a number of interesting contests in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas and Georgia. That leaves Ohio and Florida, two controversial states from 2000 and 2004 as key battlegrounds where Obama is leading in both.

Using my prognosticator cap and barring another violent swing in what has become the 3-minure media cycle, Obama could be headed to a landslide victory in a number of those states which could put his election in the bag before polls close on the West Coast of the USA.

With 1-month left, the usually cool, calm and collected Barack Obama is clearly winning out over mad-dog John McCain. Pointed, deliberate and powerful jabs and combinations to the mid-section of McCain by Obama are softening him up and trumping the kitchen sink, frenetic, Hail Mary pass downfield, gambling approach of John McCain. McCain is looking more and more like an angry, desperate old man and neither of his ‘trophy’ partners can dig him out of the hole he now finds himself in.

And it’s only going to get worse for McCain.

McCain operatives conceded Michigan, pulling advertising and staff out and now see that attacking Obama’s inexperience is not working, their candidate is running out of money and so now expect the 527 group ‘Swift Boat squads’ to throw every sleazy advert they can to attack the character of Obama and force him off his issues-based solid ground game of repeatedly tying McCain to Bush.

Here is why I am so bullish:
• A Wall Street Journal poll of “new” voters shows they support Obama over McCain by 61% - 30%.

• Add this to the hustling, organising ground game of Senator Obama using his 57-state and territory organisations, targeted add buys outspending Senator McCain 3:1, buckets full of cash on hand (and still coming in) and the Chicago kid is doing much better than either of his City’s baseball teams facing 0-2 playoff holes from which to rebound.

• Obama’s got a ground game. In July and August his funds went to building the field organisation. As a community organiser he understands and knows that nothing trumps SPIN better than face-to-face answering of questions.

• The McCain/Republican SPIN doctors that worked so smoothly in the 2000 and 2004 are stranded on a sandbar of ridiculousness. Now they just sound pathetic as they believe green is purple and will convince you they know it is and you’re an idiot for not seeing it.

• Sarah Palin is an unmitigated disaster as VP choice. The base loves her, everyone else is terrified.

I invite you to close your eyes and go back to 11 September 2001. The President is in the air unable to land because we don’t know what is going on. VP Cheney is in the secure bunker underneath the White House coordinating events. Now keep your eyes closed… and picture Sarah Palin sitting in Cheney’s chair…

Did you wake up in a cold flop sweat?

Run from the room screaming?

As the old telly advert said, “this drugs (you see a hot frying pan as an egg cracks and then begins sizzling). This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?”

The Obama team has done a good job of anticipating attacks and swatting them aside. They’ve played a solid, if not altogether boring game of moving the ball steadily downfield and, after having the gruelling Hillary Clinton primary experience, know exactly what to do to punch the ball into the end-zone.

They have attacked when needed and played a mostly patient game whereas McCain has lost his cool and looked anything but Presidential in his choices since the week before the convention. His gravy train lobbyist staff will parachute to safety, earn their 7-figure salaries peddling influence and point fingers as the Clinton team did. This failure will then have only one author, John McCain.

My final EV prediction: 325-213 to Obama.

Any questions?