Blogs

I like Dan, but I am really glad to see Rachael get her own show. She will debut after the conventions in the 9pm slot on MSNBC.

UPDATE:

Keith Olbermann has also posted a diary about Rachael's new show over at DKos.

A brilliant post by Andrew Sullivan:

In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Exactly. How is it when these cruel measures were taken against John MccCain they were 'torture", but they aren't when used against people at Gitmo or any of our other "prisons"? Maybe some of the media will ask McCain to define torture, so we can see if he tries to distinguish between then and now.

Robert Greenwald has put out a new short showing McCain's multiple houses. How many houses does Obama own, or you and me?

Is this the truth? No. But if John McCain thinks he can go out and say the same thing about people he don't agree with when it comes to Iraq, then we have the right to wage our own baseless attacks against him.

Of course if our side does start those attacks, McCain's campaign would start crying about how we are attacking a former POW. Guess what? Our enemies don't care one way or the other if John McCain was a POW, so what will happen if he becomes President? He won't have that excuse to hide behind. So McCain and his campaign needs to stop this whole "unpatriotic" rhetoric they are using and hiding behind McCain's time as a POW. Instead come out and address the issues. If he don't like what the other side is saying then give us a good counter - not "he was a POW".

The Boston Globe questions McCain's constant chastising of Middle East adversaries by saying they don't embrace our "Judea-christian values":

At the end of a long list of reasons to be suspicious of the Iranians, McCain declared: "And they sure don't share our Judeo-Christian values."

It seemed at the time to be an odd thing to say about a Muslim country. After all, even if there were no nuclear program, no oil, and no rabble-rousing president, Iran still wouldn't have Judeo-Christian values. And it's troubling to wonder if that alone would be a reason for suspicion.

Even President Bush has resisted framing the war on terrorism as a clash of religions; his inexpert use of the word "crusade" early in the conflict set off a wave of criticism and backtracking. He's never repeated it.

This is yet another example of why John McCain is the most dangerous person to be President. His ignorance on the subject will put us into a "holy war". Somebody really needs to tell that war-monger to either learn about the world or shut the hell up.

Obama is finally hitting back on McCain's childish campaign. He told the VFW today that McCain needs to dignify his campaign and stop it with the patriotism attacks.

We suffered a server outage last night, but we are back now!

Keith Olbermann gave us another special comment tonight, this time telling John McCain to "grow up". The comment was based on McCain's latest attacks against Obama, plus an added bonus of McCain's campaign going on the defensive over the "cone of silence".

So we had the Rick Warren forum this weekend, along with the controversy surrounding it. We have that whole Georgia/Russia thing. We have a hurricane raising oil prices. We have Mussaraf stepping down. The list goes on. What is "Big Ed" talking about today? John McCain picking Dancing Queen as his favorite song. Give me a fucking break!

I'm sorry but there are so many issues surrounding the world, and to waste time on something so petty is beyond the pale. To make matters worse, someone called in to bring up the pettiness of this discussion to Ed and Ed attacked him. Ed Schultz is petty and doesn't need to be on my Sirius Satellite radio!

I also need to say this about Ed. I am an Obama supporter and have been since Edwards dropped out. He spends too much time attacking Hillary. This guy is beyond the pale. I seem to remember Ed not talking bad about Hillary until Hillary blew him off. I guess he took a woman standing up to him way too personally.

Time to move on Ed, and move on to a whole new career. Your garbage isn't selling. This is obvious by listening to other talk shows where people call in all day saying how they turn you off. We don't like you and don't want you around. Now leave!

Jake Tapper has posted a great blog entry bringing up some key points about the McCain campaign's response to McCain not being in the "cone of silence":

1) The McCain campaign's vitriol against NBC's Andrea Mitchell is odder still when you consider that the McCain campaign's blogger Michael Goldfarb was quoting her very same reporting approvingly as evidence that the Obama campaign was a bunch of whiners.

2) The McCain campaign's responses so far are entirely focused on McCain's geography and whether or not he himself could hear and see Obama being questioned.

McCain's campaign is also refusing to say whether or not he heard any of Obama's segment.

As Hurricane Fay nears landfall, oil prices are rising in fear that it could interrupt operations in the Gulf of Mexico. Kind of ironic this is happening at a time we are debating rather to allow more offshore drilling or not.

Pevez Musharraf announced today that he is resigning as President of Pakistan, instead of facing an impeachment. What happens in Pakistan now will be interesting. Will the people actually work for something, rather than against someone? The Taliban is regaining a lot of strength in the tribal areas, so what happens in Pakistan over the coming weeks will be very important.

McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, has sent a very nasty letter to NBC about the claims that McCain may have heard the questions. Sully has the fully letter. So why is the McCain campaign taking such a defensive approach to this? A general reaction to something like this would be "we won't answer such false claims", or something of the sort. By the forceful defense the McCain campaign is launching, it seems like they are trying to hide something, especially considering the fact there is a silence on this from the Obama campaign.

So is McCain trying to hide something? I think this question needs to be pursued.

Also an emailer just wrote:

You fucking LIEbrals are so stupid. I guess John McCain had a large cable running to his limo so he could watch CNN. Give it a break. Your story is week. [sic]

So we are stupid? Perhaps this emailer needs to catch up on technology. I listened to part of the forum in my car, and there wasn't a long black cable running to it. It's called satellite and on Sirius satellite radio, you can listen to CNN on channel 132.

(On a personal note - I usually don't bother with these emailers, but this total ignorance had to be shared.)

There has been a lot of talk about rather McCain may have heard the questions Saturday night when they were being asked to Barack Obama. It's pretty much all coming out of a report by CNN that when Rick Warren said McCain was in a "cone of silence", he actually wasn't. As matter of fact McCain wasn't even in the building.

Aravosis has found a statement by the McCain campaign on this, and it's really interesting:

Nicolle Wallace, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said on Sunday night that Mr. McCain had not heard the broadcast of the event while in his motorcade and heard none of the questions.

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

Forget the total audacity of the "prisoner of war" portition of the statement - anyone with common sense knows that has nothing to do about it. I want to focus on McCain's camp saying that Obama's campaign is insinuating this cheating. Here's what I found from the Obama campaign on the issue:

For their part, an Obama spokesperson told CNN’s Mike Roselli they are not pursuing whether McCain heard any of the other questions. They say they assuming McCain had the same information they did.

Sounds like the Obama campaign isn't too concerned about it, nor should they be. It's over and trying to say McCain cheated would be an understatement by any standards. He lies and cheats on a daily basis.

Now who did lie is Rick Warren, you know - a Pastor. He told the audience that McCain was in the building and in this "cone of silence" when that wasn't true. Why did this so-called Pastor decide to go out and lie to America? Perhaps this will be a lesson to Democrats to not trust preachers that believe their main place is in politics. The DNC should tell Warren that his lie to our candidate and the American people is not acceptable and the DNC will not accept any further "forums" hosted by this man. Maybe then we can forget about the insult on our nation's foundation that took place Saturday night

Another Jerome Corsi article has been found on WND, this time saying that McCain's personal fortune traces back to the mob.

McCain fortune traced to organized crime
Mob figures later implicated in Arizona savings and loan scandal
Posted: February 26, 2008
9:29 pm Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

John McCain's personal fortune traces back to organized crime in Arizona, through his father-in-law, according to a report published by a multi-news agency team called Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc.

Again, I have a PDF of the page saved in case WND decides to clean the site some.

AmericaBLOG uncovered this latest find, so the hat tip needs to go there. I wonder what the wingnuts excuse will be on these articles? I also wonder if the traditional media will report on Corsi's articles of a highly corrupt McCain?