McCain as Racist

In a new low even for John McCain, his campaign has a new ad out which features Barack Obama in conjunction with celebrity starlets Britney Speers and Paris Hilton. Portraying a black man with over-sexed young white women sends a very specific message in our historical culture. You just can't trust the black guy!

This is a very similar tactic, one that was used to great effect, to that which hit former Congressman Harold Ford (D-TN) in 2006. Of course, it should be considering that McCain hired the political operative responsible for that disgrace. No doubt he though this sewer rat would help him run the honorable campaign that he promised.

For a good look at this issue over all, see TPM here.

In a week, McCain has solidified himself as a liar, a coward, and now a racist. He is keeping busy, no?

30 July 2008

31 July 2008 addition: See this for follow up analysis.

McCain, Obama, & the Press

John McCain, in tried and true Republican fashion, likes to whine about the press. His line is that the media is liberal, that it ignores him, and that it focuses a grand spotlight on his oponent, Barack Obama. This Republican line of attack has been proven false over and over again, but it is truly galling in McCain's case. McCain himself has long taken public pride in his relations with the press, going to far as to call the media his "political base."

While it is true that Obama is getting press coverage in total number of pieces and in total "air time" beyond anything that has ever before been seen in American politics, it is also true that Obama's campaign is historic and different in a way that has never before been seen in the modern era. Anyone who doesn't think that Obama "deserves" this attention doesn't understand in even the most limited fashion what drives the media. On the flip side, McCain's sad story that he is being ignored is false. The level of coverage that he is receiving is comparable to candidates for president going back to Reagan. It only pales in comparison to that of Obama, but so would that of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and all of their challengers.

What is also interesting is the total amount of press that each candidate receives that is viewed as negative toward that candidate. Here, it is Obama that comes out behind by coming out ahead. IA greater percentage of pieces about Obama are negative towards him than are pieces about McCain negative towards the Republican. Right now, if anything, I would say that there is a bias against Obama and towards McCain. Let's take a look at some examples.

Last week, McCain, in speaking with CBS News, flubbed an answer regarding the surge in Iraq, his signature issue. He outright got the facts wrong about the timeline of events there and indeed what the very nature of the surge entailed. He was not called out by CBS News anchor Katie Couric for his mistake, not even close. Rather, the interview was edited to entirely omit McCain's incorrect answer, substituting his answer to a former question in its place, and covering for this by using a cutaway photo over his voice to disguise the cut. This was an outright fabrication of events to favor McCain, to protect him from his own amazing lack of knowledge about events in Iraq. While it may take events of this nature to extremes, it is not alone.

In a piece by ABC News' George Stephanoppulos, the reporter repeated over and over the fact that Obama had positions now in common with McCain on Afghanistan, with Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki on the time table for American troop withdrawal from Iraq, and with the Bush Administration on engagement with Iran. He did so, however, in a way that made it seem that it was Obama that had changed his views, rather than having these others conform theirs to beliefs that Obama had long maintained. This served to diminish Obama regardless of the conclusions drawn by Stephanoppolus about its political fallout. It may have been intentional, it may have been sloppy, or it may have been both. With Stephanoppolus, one never knows.

Finally, I once again note that the McCain campaign released an ad upon Obama's return from his overseas trip that was simply a pack of lies. However, did the press actually do its job and report McCain's misinformation? No, or rather only MSNBC pointed out the factual issues with the ad. Again, the media covers for McCain.

Eventually, I hope that McCain's promise to run an honorable campaign, when he so clearly is not, combined with his continued misstatements on the issues of the day, will overcome the media's favoritism towards the Republican. We shall see.

29 July 2008

Fox News is Bush's Direct Link

The political world has long known that Fox News is really only "news" in name, being a propoganda arm for Conservative causes championed by its owner Rupert Murdoch in fact. Now, a former Press Secretary for President George W. Bush has come out an point-blank said that stories from the White House were fed directly to Fox News, knowing that the network would run with them with little or no changes. Ah, our First Amendment at its finest!

29 July 2008

McCain Called Out for Lying

In my last post, I noted that John McCain had put forward a new ad that made craven, deceitful claims about Barack Obama. The independant political watchdog group FactCheck.org seems to agree. You can find their full report here.

29 July 2008

McCain: Dishonorable Lying Coward

I think that his new ad says it all. As Josh Marshall at TPM sees it:

At this point I think it's clear that honor really doesn't mean much to McCain. When things get tough, as it is in this election campaign, there's no limit to what he'll do.

How's he doing, Joe?

26 July 2008

McCain: Obama Shouldn't Travel

As you listen to McCain and his surrogates vilify Barack Obama for his astoundingly successful trip overseas this week, remember these words from none other than John McCain himself.

Flanked by fellow Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, McCain noted they'd undertaken their week long fact-finding tour of Iraq, Jordan, Israel, England and France as members of Congress's Armed Services committee -- not as some sort of campaign foreign road show. Perhaps, but discussing international affairs with foreign leaders and enhancing McCain's presidential hopes aren't mutually exclusive. Still, McCain acted the apt pupil. "I wish every senator, every senator would make this same trip," McCain said, noting several of the first-hand educational experiences he'd gotten. "They'd be better informed."

Time, 21 March 2008

26 July 2008

Obama, Berlin, & His "Presidential Gap"

Earlier this week, Senator Barack Obama gave a speech in Berlin, Germany during his overseas tour, which is now concluding in Great Britain. German officials estimated the crowd that assembled to hear Obama speak at 200,000. That same day, Senator John McCain -- in what I can only assume was an attempt to give a freebee to O'brien, Leno, and Letterman -- had lunch at a German restaurant in Pennsylvania.

You can find initial analysis of Obama's speech here. Both video and text of the speech can be found here.

Many in the German crowd in Berlin were waiving American flags. The world does not, by and large, dislike Americans. The world has, however, come to despise our government... and rightly so. Our allies yearn to once again respect the United States, to find America in a justified role of leadership. This should not surprise us since we, too, here at home yearn for this same thing.

I have my doubts about how big a bump in the polls this overseas trip of Obama's will give him in the short run. It will surely help him some right now. However, I think it will prove its true worth down the road.

This presidential race really isn't between Obama and McCain. If it were, Obama would have already won handily. The mood of the country is for change and the Republican brand is stone cold. I predict handy pick-ups in both the House and the Senate for the Democrats in November as a result. However, the race for the presidency is much more convoluted than it is for any member of Congress. While I think that Americans want to choose change -- to choose Obama -- many are also reticent to "leap before they look." Hillary Clinton set this up as the "Commander in Chief Test" during the primary campaign. While I think we tend to forget that the president is specifically set up in the Constitution as the civilian head of the military, having someone with a "military bearing" as president seems important to us as voters. While one can argue whether or not John McCain has any qualifications greater than -- or even close to equal to -- Obama's in terms of his foreign policy ability, the one thing that his military service has confered upon him is this military bearing.

Now, how I believe that Obama's overseas travel will help him is that it will slowly change the narative in the media regarding his having met the "Commander in Chief Test." Right now, it is always framed as a question and it is presented as a given that McCain has done so -- in no small part due to Clinton, damn her. As the media comes around to the fact that Obama is indeed ready for the world stage -- and as McCain's continued flubs about the facts of foreign policy become harder for the media to ignore -- Obama as Commander in Chief will be presented as a given rather than as a question to be answered. At that point, the polls will rise and hopefully at just the right time.

McCain, on the other hand, is a bomb ready to go off again and again. The question isn't if or even when. The question is whether the media will stop covering for him.

26 July 2008

Sports at its Best

My best friend recently sent along a link to an ESPN clip regarding a high school basketball program in New York. It's worth a look.

21 July 2008

McCain's Link to the Bush Library Scandal

Andrew Tilghman at TPMMuckraker has a story today regarding how one top McCain advisor has deep ties to the unfolding scandal regarding the funding for the future Bush presidential library.

Before last week, we'd never heard of Worldwide Strategic Partners and Stephen Payne, the (former) Homeland Security adviser who was caught on video soliciting big donations for the future George W. Bush Presidential Library fund while offering to arrange access to top White House officials.

But Randy Schuenemann, Sen. John McCain's top foreign policy adviser, has known him -- and been working with his business associates -- for years.

So not only is Schuenemann completely bonkers on foreign policy, but he's corrupt to boot. Nice.

For deeper insight into all of the players involved, follow the above link.

21 July 2008

Following Obama, Part II

Yesterday, I posted how both President Bush and Senator McCain have been modifying their foreign policy stands to align more closely with those previously held by Senator Obama. Today, I have two links that follow on this topic.

The first is a post on TPM by Josh Marshall. The second is an interview with former security adviser Richard Clarke.

18 July 2008

Phil Gramm: A Star is Porn

Top John McCain economic guru Phil Gramm -- and I use "economics" and "Phil Gramm" in the same sentence purely for comedic effect -- had an interesting investment opportunity back in the 1970s, one he jumped on. From TheNation.com:

While the destruction Gramm has caused is felt across the country, little is known about the seedy business schemes that preceded his political career. Before Gramm joined the Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed to call for the defunding of the NEA, before he attacked an opponent for taking money from a gay rights group, and before he was interviewed by the white supremacist Southern Partisan magazine, Gramm was an avidly active investor in soft-core pornography movies.

Gramm's journey into porn began in 1973, when his brother-in-law, George Caton, rushed to tell him about an exciting low-budget soft-core production called "Truck Stop Women." A promo poster for the film boasted of its buxom stars: "No Rig Was Too Big For Them To Handle." Caton, who was in charge of fundraising for the production, asked Gramm to become an investor. To entice his brother-in-law, Caton showed him scenes of Playboy Playmate of the year Claudia Jennings displaying her bare essentials (she is naked throughout much of the film).

These scenes "really got Phil titillated," Caton told journalist John Judis in 1995. Gramm enthusiastically cut Caton a check for $15,000. Because the film was oversold, however, Caton returned his brother-in-law's money, offering him an investment opportunity in an upcoming feature.

The following year, Gramm sent Caton a check for $15,000, this time to finance the production of "Beauty Queens," a soft-core flick about pageant judges having sex with contestants. But at the last moment, the director of "Beauty Queens," Mark Lester, decided to shelve his production to make the sequel to his "Tricia's Wedding," a comedy starring the drag queen troupe, The Cockettes.

Gramm contributed at least $7500 towards the sequel, a satire of the Nixon White House called "White House Madness" that featured the crazed president wandering around the White House in the nude. Gramm never saw that money again. Shot in ten days on a soundstage crudely modeled after the Oval Office, "White House Madness" tanked at the box office.

Out-freakin-standing!

17 July 2008

Foreign Policy: Obama Leads, Bush & McCain Follow

It is pushed in the media that John McCain is the foreign policy guy in this presidential race. This is in spite of the fact that he makes constant mistakes in this field. I'm not talking policy here for that can be debated. I'm talking about still referring to Czechoslovakia, a country that hasn't existed for well over a decade, in the present tense and -- much more troubling -- continually not knowing the differences between Sunni and Shia Islam. The "foreign policy guy" should know better. Obama does.

Today, however, let's talk policy. For months and months, Barrack Obama has been saying two things. First, we need to engage Iran diplomatically, knowing that we can't rely solely on the threat of violence to bring about our goals for this important nation in the Middle East. Second, our focus in the so-called war on terror needs to be in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not in Iraq. He has taken heat from the political right for both stances. President Bush compared Obama to a Nazi appeaser for his stand on perspective diplomatic contacts with Iran and did so in Israel no less. (One can always count on our president to show little tact and less class.) While McCain has hammered Obama on the Iranian issue as well, his chief focus has been on Iraq, his only real issue in this presidential election. Not only has McCain ignored the war in Afghanistan, he's said that it must take a back seat to our interests in Iraq. Now, however, both men seem to be coming around... to Obama's way of thinking. Political hacks would call Bush and McCain "flip-floppers." I'll just say that they've finally seen the light.

On the 15th, it was announced that President Bush would send an envoy to Iran to discuss issues related to its nuclear arms program, among other topics. This was in spite of the fact that the White House had always before said that it would never meet with Iranian officials unless they outright abandoned any nuclear ambitions. Now, it's going one step further, with speculation that the US will actually open a diplomatic section in Iran, one step short of a formal embassy. Mr. Bush, meet Mr. Obama... welcome to a year ago!

McCain has called for a "surge" -- his favorite word -- of troops in Afghanistan, three brigades worth in fact. However, he has no place from which they are to come... unless he's advocating a draft, of course! He doesn't want them to come from Iraq. We have no troops in the US to send. You do the math. Regardless, he's basically copying Obama's position now. That's change we can believe in!

Hopefully, this trend won't end here. This demonstrates that even Bush and McCain cannot be wrong all of the time. They just need to follow Obama more to be right.

17 July 2008

Bush Access for Library Cash

It would appear that Bush and his folks have been selling access to Administration officials, including the presdident, in return for donations to his future presidential library. What a surprise?!?

The original story can be found here. The President's half-hearted denial via Dana Perino can be found here. Info on Bush's long history with the lobbyist, Stephen Payne, can be found here. Note that Payne lobbyed for Pakistan after 9-11. Once again, with the Bush Administration it is always a case of the fox guarding the henhouse. This fits because then Fox News can guard the fox!

15 July 2008

Again, We Torture

New reports from the Red Cross that America is in the torture business.

11 July 2008

McCain and the Recession

Just days after finally, tepidly admitting that yes, the US is indeed in a recession after all, comes this gem from top McCain economic advisor Phil Gramm: The recession is all in your head!

From The Washington Times:

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. "We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."

"We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline" despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

The campaign, sensing that this may not actually be the way to go during and election year where the economy is actually issue number one, is already frantically distancing McCain from these views. However, can one really distance one's self from one's own hand-selected economic guru on such matters? Time will tell. No doubt, the press will do what it can to help McCain. After all, it would be too much work to actually look at McCain's public record, where they would find that the candidate has his own history of noting that our economic woes are "psychological."

10 July 2008

FISA Update

In an update to my previous post, President Bush has now signed the new FISA bill into law.

10 July 2008

FISA: Our Dark Day

Yesterday, the Senate overwhelmingly passed President Bush's new FISA bill. This follows the House essentially passing the same bill last month, basically clearing the way for Bush to sign the bill into law.

This bill includes immunity for telecommunication companies from civil prosecution for their complicity in breaking the law via illegal wiretapping for the White House. Bush's absolute resolve for this section of the bill made clear that he values these corporations -- and the safety of himself and his staff from prosecution -- far more than he does the welfare of the American people. This immunity will make it much harder for citizens to seek information -- indeed perhaps make it impossible -- on what information was collected about them and to seek redress for private information illegally collected. It is a horrid umbrella of protection for those who do not deserve it and should never have seen the light of day. Be this as it may, it is not this provision that is the true horror in this bill.

The bill that Bush will sign into law will absolutely gut the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. In direct violation of the Constitution, it will allow communications by American citizens to be monitored and recorded by the government without proper judicial oversight or revue. It is a sweeping expansion of executive branch power, one that shrinks the protections afforded Americans by our Constitution and weakens America as a nation. When this bill is signed into law, far more damage will have been done by the terrorists -- and now by our own government -- to the nation than was done on 9-11. Our very way of life will have changed. And barely anyone will have noticed.

How did this come about? Could Bush, in his wildest dreams, have envisioned in November 2008 that the incoming Democratic Congress would help him cover up his crimes? And make no mistake, that is exactly what happened yesterday and exactly what the Democrats intended. They want this "mess" to go away. They violated their oaths to do so, Democrats and Republicans alike. For almost two years now, Congressional Democrats have proven themselves to be spineless, conniving lap dogs. "Politician" truly is a dirty word.

To my great sadness, Barrack Obama voted for the measure. He called it an imperfect compromise. "Capitulation," was the correct word, although he certainly compromised his own ideals with this vote. Hillary Clinton, it should be noted, voted against the bill. Shame on you, Obama!

And lest we let John McCain off the hook, he supported the measure... but not with his vote. No, McCain could not even be bothered to return to the Senate to vote on the bill. This was a cowardly act on his part indeed.

The media deserves condemnation as well, as it almost always does. Americans will hear little about this. Unless you take it upon yourself to keep up-to-date on such matters, you might very well have never even have known that this vote was taking place or exactly what the bill entailed. Indeed, I believe the FISA vote in the Senate was about the fifth story on last night's CBS evening news! This is what passes for "journalism" in American today?!?

America lost yesterday. Rather, it might be said that we forfeited the match by our own actions. Our government failed us, our press failed us, and we as citizens failed ourselves. We may one day reclaim the fundamental protections that we have lost, although I think this unlikely anytime soon. Those with power, especially power illegally held, are most loath to give it up. Indeed, if history is any guide, this wound will not be healed in my lifetime. It was a dark day indeed.

10 July 2008

My New Hero

Story from TPM regarding the late -- though still somehow evil -- Jesse Helms. As quoted from The News & Observer:

L.F. Eason III gave up the only job he'd ever had rather than lower a flag to honor former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms.

Eason, a 29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday, as called for in a directive to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley.

When a superior ordered the lab to follow the directive, Eason decided to retire rather than pay tribute to Helms. After several hours' delay, one of Eason's employees hung the flags at half-staff.

...

In a string of e-mail messages with his superiors, Eason was told he could either lower the flags or retire effective immediately.

Though he's only 51, Eason chose to retire, although he pleaded several times to be allowed to stay at the lab. Eason, who had worked for the Agriculture Department since graduating from college, was paid $65,235 a year as the laboratory manager.

9 July 2008

Cheney Steamrolls EPA

After denying for months (e.g. lying) that the White House put pressure on the EPA to change findings released to the public on greenhouse gasses, a former EPA administrator has come forward, implicating the Vice President directly in such actions. Notes the AP:

"The Council on Environmental Quality and the office of the vice president were seeking deletions to the CDC testimony (concerning) ... any discussions of the human health consequences of climate change," Burnett has told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

. . . The letter by Burnett for the first time suggests that Cheney's office was deeply involved in downplaying the impacts of climate change as related to public health and welfare, Senate investigators believe.

Cheney's office also objected last January over congressional testimony by Administrator Johnson that "greenhouse gas emissions harm the environment."

An official in Cheney's office "called to tell me that his office wanted the language changed" with references to climate change harming the environment deleted, Burnett said. Nevertheless, the phrase was left in Johnson's testimony.

You can view Burnett's letter here.

8 July 2008

McCain: My Financing Laws are for Sissies!

John McCain is using the same tactics of other politicians before him -- the same tactics he once derided -- to get around the campaign financing laws he himself once championed. I'd like to say that McSame has turned a corner, but all of these corners just keep bringing him back around the same block.

8 July 2008

McCain & His Lobbyists

TPM Muckraker has put together a handy chart to keep track of "Maverick" McCain's ties to lobbyists. No need for Six Degrees of Separation here. For John McCain, all lobbyists seem to be Kevin Bacon!

6 July 2008