The Alaskan Anchor Around McCain’s Neck

John McCain’s blunder, also known as his veep running mate, Sarah Palin, is dragging the Old Geezer down, quite possibly permanently. The Alaska governor hasn’t travelled well (as the wine folk say) and the more Americans have come to know her the less they see to like.

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll found 59% of respondents now consider Sarah Palin unfit to serve as vice-president. That’s not good news with the election just six days away.

“In a possible indication that the choice of Ms. Palin has hurt Mr. McCain’s image, voters said that they had much more confidence in Mr. Obama to pick qualified people to serve in his administration than they did in Mr. McCain.

“The survey suggested that the historic candidacy of Mr. Obama, who would be the first African-American president if elected, has changed some perceptions of race in America. Nearly two-thirds of those polled said that white and black people have an equal chance of getting ahead in today’s society, up from the half who said that they thought so in July. And while 14 percent still said that most people they know would not vote for a black presidential candidate, a question pollsters often ask to try to gauge bias, the number has dropped considerably since the campaign began. “

You know, he might just smash his way through the racist vote and actually win this thing.

 

McCain Scores New Endorsement – al Qaeda’s

McCain may not “pal around” with them but he’s the president of choice for al-Qaeda.

The story surfaced a couple of days ago that a password-protected web site known as a vehicle for the Islamist terrorists has openly endorsed John McCain as their choice for the next president of the USA.

Why McCain? Because George w. Bush has been the best thing that every happened to al-Qaeda and McCain is the candidate most likely to repeat every Bush blunder. They need each other, it’s as simple as that.

Nicholas Kristoff of The New York Times notes that the al-Qaeda endorsement of McCain comes as no surprise to the experts:

“…the endorsement of Mr. McCain by a Qaeda-affiliated Web site isn’t a surprise to security specialists. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, and Josephy Nye, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have both suggested that Al Qaeda prefers Mr. McCain and might even try to use terror attacks in the coming days to tip the election to him.

“From their perspective, a continuation of Bush policies is best for recruiting,” said Professor Nye, adding that Mr. McCain is far more likely to continue those policies.

An American president who keeps troops in Iraq indefinitely, fulminates about Islamic terrorism, inclines toward military solutions and antagonizes other nations is an excellent recruiting tool. In contrast, an African-American president with a Muslim grandfather and a penchant for building bridges rather than blowing them up would give Al Qaeda recruiters fits.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/opinion/26kristof.html?em

 

David Frum Urges Republicans to Throw In the Towel on McCain

Republican pundit David Frum is urging fellow Repugs to shift their efforts, and their money, from what he considers an already lost presidential campaign and use them instead to fight a rearguard Congressional defence.

David, son of Barbara, wrote in the Washington Post, that McCain, “is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him.”

“The very same campaign strategy that has belatedly mobilized the Republican core has alienated and offended the great national middle, which was the only place where the 2008 election could have been won.

“I could pile up the poll numbers here, but frankly . . . it’s too depressing. You have to go back to the Watergate era to see numbers quite so horrible for the GOP.

McCain’s awful campaign is having awful consequences down the ballot. I spoke a little while ago to a senior Republican House member. “There is not a safe Republican seat in the country,” he warned. “I don’t mean that we’re going to lose all of them. But we could lose any of them.”

Frum argues that Republicans should shift “every available dollar” to the senatorial campaign. For some reason he can’t bring himself to say those dollars ought to be shifted from the presidential campaign. He also argues that Republicans should hammer home the message that the Dems are probably going to take the White House and voters can’t take the risk of also handing congress to a bunch of liberals.

 

McCain and Palin Go For the Throat – Each Other’s

The giveaway was the morning after the vice-presidential debate when Sarah Palin let slip that she had learned of the McCain campaign’s decision to pull out of Michigan when she read it that morning in a newspaper. To quell any doubts, she then proceeded to criticize McCain’s decision and said she and Todd could have worked the state if McCain wasn’t up to it.

It was obvious that McCain hadn’t consulted Palin about the Michigan decision. He hadn’t even informed her. She had to find out about it from a newspaper well after his campaign had announced it to the press. Her response put McCain’s wisdom, even courage into question. Ouch, ouch, ouch and ouch.

Since then, Palin hasn’t minced any words about what she sees as McCain’s weakness in going after Obama. She has repeatedly criticized McCain’s refusal to go after the Reverend Wright issue.

Now, as reported by Canadian Press, it’s come to open warfare among McCain’s and Palin’s insiders:

“The tattered remains of their ticket were everywhere Sunday, with both McCain and Palin insiders publicly on the attack to hold the other side responsible for their candidate’s woes on the campaign trail.

“She is a diva – she takes no advice from anyone,” an unnamed McCain adviser told CNN over the weekend.

“She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else … also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”

It was their decision to limit Palin’s media contact to interviews with ABC’s Charlie Gibson and a series of chats with CBS’s Katie Couric parcelled out over several cringe-worthy days. They proved to be disastrous for both the Alaska governor personally and McCain’s campaign.Wallace sent an emailed response to several news organizations over the weekend: “If people want to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most honourable thing to do is to lie there,” she wrote.

In recent weeks, Palin has publicly parted ways with the McCain campaign on various fronts, leading many to speculate she is attempting to distinguish herself from the flailing Arizona senator and forge her own identity in preparation for a run for the White House in 2012.”

 

Your Daily Giggle

McCains Brain – video powered by Metacafe

 

Obama Had Better Get Ready to Kick Back Hard

Just a couple of weeks left before the American elections and John McCain is running hard to narrow his Democratic opponent’s considerable lead.

The McCain campaign seems to be out of ideas, nothing appears to be getting traction, and so their last-ditch effort may be to fall back on smear, the deliberate exploitation of outright lies and treacherous distortions, to make gullible American voters fearful and distrusting of Obama.

There’s a pretty good analysis of this in Talking Points Memo:

“…McCain’s final strategy relies on two pillars. The first is aggressively playing to voters’ fears of electing a black president. Make no mistake: not just his campaign in a general sense, but McCain himself and his top handful of advisers, are banking on the residual racism in a changing America to get them over the finish line. The second is an aggressive use of innuendo to convince casual voters that Obama is in league with Islamic terrorists bent on killing Americans.
Many people have asked whether enough Americans really care any more about the cultural convulsions of the 1960s. The answer? It doesn’t matter. For the McCain campaign, Bill Ayers has nothing to do with 60s radicalism. Ayers is nothing more than a tool that permits McCain, Palin and all their surrogates to use the noun “terrorist” in polite company in the same sentence as “Obama,” over and over and over again. It allows them to cobble together a ‘respectable’ version of those Obama smear emails they can push in commercials and robocalls and surrogate talking points every hour of every day.

Stripped down to its components McCain’s message to voters is this: “Don’t forget. He’s definitely black. And he may be a terrorist.” That’s the message. The nuts and bolts is a concerted effort to keep Democrats from voting — through intimidation, by striking new voters from the rolls, which is going to happen to lots of them, clogging polling stations to create delays that keep late day (predominantly) Obama voters from voting altogether. Smears in the air and voter suppression on the ground.

Many people say, well … all this stuff just hasn’t worked. But the truth is that the really corrupt and vicious part of McCain’s effort only comes now because it’s only in the last couple weeks that you can pull stuff that the press won’t get to call you on before election day — after which it doesn’t matter. Will it take Obama down? So far McCain’s gutter campaign has hurt him more than helped. But there’s no reason to be sure it will continue that way.”

Obama has one advantage that will let him fight back – money and lots of it. He’ll need it to wage a last-ditch media campaign of his own that just might bury McCain in his own trash.

 

Powell: Obama, "Transformational "- McCain, "Over the Top"

Retired 4-star general, former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama as president of the United States.

From The New York Times:

Powell, “endorsed Senator Barack Obama for president on Sunday morning as a candidate who was reaching out in a “more diverse and inclusive way across our society” and offering a “calm, patient, intellectual, steady approach” to the nation’s problems.”

While Powell has been a friend and advisor to McCain for decades, he criticized the McCain campaign’s attempts to smear Obama for his passing acquaintance with William Ayers. “I thought that was over the top,” Mr. Powell told reporters. “It was beyond just good political fighting back and forth.”

Powell added that McCain would simply be a new face pasted on the “orthodoxy of the Republican agenda.”

I suspect we’re beginning to see the Republican Party undergo a healthy re-alignment with the moderates – Powell, Chuck Hagel, even the Chicago Tribune, rejecting the neo-conservative movement of Bush/Cheney now embraced by John McCain. Sounds like they want their party back. They’re drawing a line in the sand, telling the neo-cons that they would prefer to back a Dem than allow their party to languish in the far right of extremism. I wonder when progressive Conservatives will catch on.

 

The Republican Spectacle

To Americans who watched last night’s third and final McCain/Obama debate, it seems the Illionois senator made it 3-0 over “Crash” McCain.

From what I saw of it, McCain was certainly at his best for a while until he lapsed back into default mode – frantic anger. The double whammy for McCain is that, when you get angry and you’re that old, you come away looking like the scary old man who sits in his rocker on the porch yelling at the kids playing in the street. McCain’s age really makes him look like an Old Geezer, furious but really wobbly, or, as Obama would call him, “erratic.”

Republican pundits who were able to overlook the Geezer factor may have been right when they claimed that McCain won the debate on points but that’s sort of like saying, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”

McCain was clearly out to provoke an “angry black man” response from Obama. A racist ploy? Hell yes. But it didn’t work. Obama didn’t go for it and, in that, showed himself presidential while McCain showed himself the Old Geezer that he is.

Another thing that became apparent in the second debate and was utterly proven last night is that McCain isn’t up to a 90-minute intellectual battle. He’s fair enough for the first 30-minutes. After that he runs out of steam and reverts to default, angry old man mode. He just gets so wound up that he loses it.

I think last night reinforced a lot of minds that were already in Obama’s camp or leaning that way. As for the Arizona senator it was sad to watch a man who has served his country all his life squander his integrity and debase his character only to come up empty-handed.

I think the White House is Obama’s barring the race factor rearing its ugly head on November 4 to derail America’s best hope for the future.

 

McCain’s Worst Nightmare

Do you recognize this guy? Before the month is out you will. He’s McCain buddy, former Republican senator Phil Gramm of Texas.

Phil, you might remember, was McCain campaign economic advisor until, early in the housing bubble collapse, he shot his mouth off about how America had become “a nation of whiners.” That left McCain no choice but to jettison Gramm from his official post. However Gramm still often accompanies McCain on the campaign trail and remains an “unofficial” advisor on financial and economic matters.

McCain may soon come to rue the day he didn’t just sling Gramm off the bus when he had the chance for, you see, Gramm’s dirty fingerprints have been all over the Enron scandal and, much worse, the Wall Street meltdown.

Before the Dems regained control of the Senate, Phil had luxuriated in the chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee. He used that position to pull off some of the most outrageous deregulation legislation to ever afflict America. One bill cleared the way for Enron to run roughshod over the state of California. Gramm’s wife was on the Enron board when the company collapsed.

The best dodge, however, came in the form of two bills that deregulated essential aspects of the banking, securities and insurance industries and allowed the unregulated trade in Credit Default Swaps, the unfunded insurance policies that brought down Wall Street.

Gramm directly links McCain to the US meltdown and makes Palin’s contention of Obama “palling around” with terrorists look stupidly hilarious. I suspect the American voter is going to become a lot more familiar with Phil Gramm before November 4 rolls around.

Best Phil Gramm quote: referring to Ed Whiteacre who retired as CEO of AT&T with a $158-million parachute as, “… probably the most exploited worker in American history.” Can you just feel the burn?

p.s. Like our own Furious Leader, Harper, Gramm is also an economist, only he holds a PhD.

 

McCain Opens the Wrong End of a Can of Whupass!

McCain/Palin are running scared. They can’t run on the issues because they’re squarely on the opposite side of the electorate. That “maverick” BS has worn gossamer thin. McCain can’t shake his Republican/Wall Street connections. After two years of free ride as the Great American Hero, people are beginning to put the spotlight on Johnny and what really happened and it looks like he’s been patting himself on the back way too much.

So what are the Geezer and the Hairdo going to come up with? They decided to scrape the very bottom of their barrel and go for the last resort of all reprobates and degenerates – smear politics.

They’re going to try to link Obama with a 60’s radical – because that’s about all they’ve got. Now they’ll have to lie through their teeth and resort to sleazy innuendo to make something out of absolutely nothing – but when there’s no integrity, they’ll literally stoop to anything. Next up with be a rehash of Obama’s minister. Anything, they’re scared out of their wits.

Witless? Oh indeed. You see it’s McCain who has the real skeletons in his closet and they’re just the kind of skeletons you don’t want anyone looking at right now. There’s the bones of Charles Keating, the Lincoln Savings & Loan swindler that McCain carried water for back in the day when mom & pop life savings were getting – is “stolen” too strong a word? Nah.

Then there’s McCain’s close buddy and campaign economic advisor Phil Gramm, who did more than any other American to facilitate the Wall Street collapse by using his authority as then Senate Banking chairman to introduce and push through a bill allowing totally unregulated Credit Default Swaps, the 60 Trillion dollar scam that derailed everything.

McCain’s the one who can’t stand up to scrutiny and, fortunately, Obama is hitting back, reviving the record of McCain-Keating for starters. He’s got a month’s worth of revelations and trips down McCain’s Memory Lane to fill the rest of the campaign and it’s all killer stuff.

So, John, bring it on. You’ve already abandoned Michigan. Then you abandoned the issues. All you’ve got left is smear and that’s a game that you can only lose.