mccain campaign

Sarah Palin’s History Of Violence Induced Rhetoric

Way before Sarah Palin ever put out her “locked and loaded” ads, her rhetoric helped increase violence. Here’s a reminder in an article from November 8, 2008:

The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.

The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.

But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.

The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.

Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"

This report came out when George Bush was still President, so it wasn’t “Obama’s Secret Service”, but rather the findings of the Secret Service under the former President. It really is troubling that a person who aspires to be a leader of this nation refuses to take any responsibility for the effects of her rhetoric. Palin is quick to claim her first amendment rights, but with those rights come responsibility. You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater without legal repercussion just the same way you can’t insinuate violence should be taken against our leaders or any other person. Sarah Palin needs to quickly realize that or she needs to get off the national stage.

Science

So How Will The GOP’s Campaign Pan Out This Year?

The GOP has already been saying that they will run on repealing healthcare. Let’s look at the things that will already be enacted at that time.

NO DISCRIMINATION AGAINST CHILDREN WITH PRE?EXISTING CONDITIONS — Prohibits new health plans in all markets plus grandfathered group health plans from denying coverage to children with pre?existing conditions. Effective 6 months after enactment.

So will Republicans campaign to let these children go without coverage? I don’t know how well that will work. They are so worried about stopping abortion, yet once the child is out of the uterus they are on their own? Yes – try to argue that one Republicans.

IMMEDIATE HELP FOR THE UNINSURED UNTIL EXCHANGE IS AVAILABLE (INTERIM HIGH?RISK POOL) — Provides immediate access to affordable insurance for Americans who are uninsured because of a preexisting condition — through a temporary subsidized high?risk pool. Effective 90 days after enactment.

A high risk pool – the very same thing that the GOP’s 2008 presidential candidate campaigned on. Are the Republicans going to get rid of one of the cornerstones of the McCain campaign? Will they be able to face the people this will affect and tell them “sorry – you’re out of luck”?

EXTENDS COVERAGE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE UP TO 26TH BIRTHDAY THROUGH PARENTS’ INSURANCE — Requires new health plans and certain grandfathered plans to allow young people up to their 26th birthday to remain on their parents’ insurance policy, at the parents’ choice. Effective 6 months after enactment.

Politics

Gee – Ya Think Joe?

Joe the Plumber has finally seen the light:

Joe, also known as Sam Wurzelbacher, told an audience in Pennsylvania this week that McCain "is no public servant."

"McCain was trying to use me," Wurzelbacher said, according to public radio correspondent Scott Detrow. "I happened to be the face of middle Americans. It was a ploy.”

"I don’t owe him s—," Wurzelbacher continued. "He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it.”

In fact, Wurzelbacher's dislike for McCain is so strong that he no longer supports Sarah Palin simply because Palin will campaign for McCain's re-election.

It only took 1 1/2 years for Joe to realize that he was nothing but a sock puppet for the McCain campaign. I guess that beats having to take that pesky plumbing test to become a true plumber.

Holy Schmidt!

Steve Schmidt, a former top advisor for the McCain Campaign, is going to urge the GOP to get behind gay marriage:

"I'm confident American public opinion will continue to move on the question toward majority support, and sooner or later the Republican Party will catch up to it," Schmidt plans to say according to excerpts provided to ABC News.

Schmidt's push for Republicans to endorse same-sex marriage comes as his party is grappling with a string of gay rights victories in Iowa, Vermont, and Washington, D.C.

I wonder what Schmidt’s mentor, Karl Rove, will have to say about this.

A Conservative Gets It

Patrick Ruffini writing at The Next Right:

It could have been like any other of the hundreds of pieces I had seen in the last few months touting Joe's latest exploits. Joe the Plumber -- a one or two day campaign gimmick -- has become a poster boy for conservatism. To say that the McCain campaign milked Joe Wurzelbacher's story and then some would be the understatement of the century. Now, conservatives are making him a foreign war correspondent and he is sure to be feted at CPAC -- so I'm sure to get a certain amount of grief for what I'm writing now.

If you want to get a sense of how unserious and ungrounded most Americans think the Republican Party is, look no further than how conservatives elevate Joe the Plumber as a spokesman. The movement has become so gimmick-driven that Wurzelbacher will be a conservative hero long after people have forgotten what his legitimate policy beef with Obama was.

Joe the Plumber is a gimmick – period. The conservatives keep touting him out like some poster child for their movement, while rest of America views him as a joke. But like everything else with the Republican Party, they expect the American people to drink their Kool aide and idolize Joe. Again – the Republican Party is banking on America being a nation of idiots. When you bank against America you will lose, and if the Republicans want to regain any ground in our nation they need to realize that. Using gimmicks like Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal and Joe the Plumber won’t do it.

UBS Bank To Pay $780 Million To IRS

The employer of Phil Gramm, the very man who championed to get rid of banking regulations and served as an economic adviser to the McCain Campaign, has been busted:

UBS AG, Switzerland’s largest bank, will pay $780 million to avoid U.S. prosecution and settle regulatory claims that it helped thousands of wealthy Americans use Swiss bank accounts to avoid paying taxes.

UBS agreed to resolve claims by the U.S. Justice Department that the bank helped U.S. citizens hide accounts from the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. government said in statements released today. Prosecutors won’t pursue criminal charges if UBS makes promised reforms while paying $400 million in tax-related payments. The bank must also disgorge $380 million under accords with prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The agreement resolves SEC claims that it acted as an unregistered broker-dealer and investment adviser to thousands of U.S. citizens who held accounts directly or in the names of others. UBS spokesman Mark Arena wasn’t available for comment.

I bet they aren’t too happy at UBS about this. Perhaps Gramm will call them a company of “whiners”.

Busting The Center-right Nation Myth

Finally someone on the other side gets it:

Thus Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, in Outlook last week: The United States "is indeed, as conservatives have been insisting in recent days, a center-right country." On election night, former Bush guru Karl Rove opined on Fox News, "Barack Obama understands this is a center-right country, and he smartly and wisely ran a campaign that emphasized it." And it's not just conservative pundits and operatives singing this song. Take Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, who wrote an Oct. 27 cover essay entitled "America the Conservative," which argued that Obama will have to "govern a center-right nation" that "is more instinctively conservative than it is liberal."

The Dangers Of Sarah

This is what we have been warning about on the left; that Sarah Palin's increasingly dangerous rhetoric was putting Obama at danger. Well it looks like the Secret Service also agrees with us:

The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.

The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.

But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.

The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.

This also goes hand in hand with Palin being a dumb ass. Anyone with a shred of common sense would know that such a dangerous tone could lead to dangers against their opponent. Palin is too dense to figure that out. She is a danger to this nation, and if the Republicans want her to run in 2012 they better think about what might happen then. If she decides to go on the same attack paths as she did this year then the Secret Service might actually have to take action. I got a feeling the brain trust in the GOP also feels the same way, which is why we are seeing this increase in leaks about the real Sarah Palin. They want to destroy her before 2012 so they don't have to take this very dangerous risk.

Juicy Information Time

Now that the election is over we start getting a bigger look into the inner workings of the McCain campaign:

Randy Scheunemann, a senior foreign policy adviser to John McCain, was fired from the Arizona senator's campaign last week for what one aide called "trashing" the campaign staff, three senior McCain advisers tell CNN.

One of the aides tells CNN that campaign manager Rick Davis fired Scheunemann after determining that he had been in direct contact with journalists spreading "disinformation" about campaign aides, including Nicolle Wallace and other officials.

"He was positioning himself with Palin at the expense of John McCain's campaign message," said one of the aides.

In contrast, what bad news did we ever hear from the Obama campaign? What "leaked information" from campaign insiders bad talking the campaign did we hear? The answer is none - something that might be a first in presidential politics.

The Real Warning About Palin

This week we had another example emerge of why a V.P. Sarah Palin would be detrimental to the future of our nation.

Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.

So questioning Palin is a violation of freedom of speech. Glenn Greenwald has torn this statement apart. Perhaps Palin should read what a constitutional attorney has to say about it. Perhaps she should ask another constitutional attorney - Barack Obama.

But here is why this statement is so dangerous. If McCain/Palin wins on Tuesday there is an enormous chance that Palin could end up taking over the top office. If this is her judicial thinking, can you imagine the kind of justices she would appoint? This lady is a risk to the very fabric of our democracy - an ideologue with no understanding of the corner stone of our nation.

This statement was so bad that even a McCain spokesman had trouble spinning it:

TIghtening Race?

That's what the McCain campaign wants us to believe, but here is a reality check.

With 2 days to go, the race is still opening more for Obama. We just need to get everyone out to vote and then we can have a total blowout, which will serve as a denunciation of conservatism overall. Make sure to get out and vote Tuesday and check with family, friends and neighbors. If they need a ride, offer them one.

We Need A Criminal Investigation Of The AP

Not really, but if this happened to John McCain the right would be screaming for just that:

Barack Obama's aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.

Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as "Aunti Zeituni" in Obama's memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judge who denied her asylum request, a person familiar with the matter told the AP late Friday. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss Onyango's case.

Information about the deportation case was disclosed and confirmed by two separate sources, one of them a federal law enforcement official. The information they made available is known to officials in the federal government, but the AP could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved in its release.

Obama has already denied knowing her status and we have no reason to not believe him. But the most important part here is that federal employees violated the law to disclose this information. John Conyers is pissed about it and already firing off a letter to Chertoff. Hopefully this will lead to an investigation. Again - this is the proper way to handle it. The right always goes after the media when there is a leak, but on this story they are circling the wagons around the media. Fucking hypocrites to the end.

Joe the Plumber Did Not Speak To Me

I was just reading this about McCain's day yesterday and it really pissed me off:

“So my friends, all the efforts we made in trying to make sure Americans understood that Sen. Obama wants to raise your taxes and he wants to increase your spending by $1 trillion, was the man who spoke for small businesses all over America Joe the Plumber,” McCain said.

(emphasis added)

What small business does Joe own? He doesn't and he even lied about the income of the company he dreamed he could buy. Hell this guy couldn't even finish up his apprenticeship to become an actual plumber!

I am a small business owner and have looked very carefully at the tax programs. Barack Obama will benefit me, John McCain will add to the increased pain I have experienced over the last eight years. So Joe does not speak for me, nor any other small business owner I know. He's nothing but a tool of the McCain campaign.

Sarah The Scapegoat

Roger Simon, someone very sympathetic towards the McCain campaign, has an interesting item up at the Politico:

John McCain's campaign is looking for a scapegoat. It is looking for someone to blame if McCain loses on Tuesday.

And it has decided on Sarah Palin.

In recent days, a McCain “adviser” told Dana Bash of CNN: “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone.”

Imagine not taking advice from the geniuses at the McCain campaign. What could Palin be thinking?

Also, a “top McCain adviser” told Mike Allen of Politico that Palin is “a whack job.”

Yes Sarah Palin has been a total disaster for John McCain and most likely will cost him this election, but he can't blame just Sarah. McCain is the one who made the pick. He is the one who has defended her at every bend. I don't care what report says "his advisers made him pick her", John McCain is in charge of his campaign. Making decisions is the very job he is trying for, and his first presidential level decision turned out to be a total failure. John McCain has no one to blame but John McCain, but the spin on this will be very interesting.

McCain's Own Doing Now Leading To His Battle With The Ohio GOP

Today's Washington Times has an article talking about a battle going on between the Ohio GOP and John McCain:

In Ohio, long-boiling friction between the McCain campaign and the state Republican Party on a variety of issues reached a new intensity over a complicated local gambling question. The state Republican Party's central committee had voted to oppose a proposed state constitutional amendment to permit a casino in Clinton County. The state party included its "vote no" view on the "slate card" of recommendations it sends to early voters.

The McCain campaign unilaterally removed that recommendation from the mailer, overriding Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett and threatening to block funds to pay for the printing and distribution. Mr. McCain favors legalized gambling, and his campaign did not want to appear to support it some states and oppose it in others.

The state party worked with the opponents of the amendment to send another mailing, using the pictures of U.S. Sen. George V. Voinovich, Ohio House Speaker Jon Husted and Mr. Bennett, along with their words of opposition on the gambling question.

"Why in the world would anyone want to amend the Constitution of Ohio and put a monopoly in for one individual to build one casino in the state of Ohio?" Mr. Voinovich asks in his statement.

Joe Sudbay brings up the fact that McCain has serious ties to the gambling industry, which could be his reason for breaking with the Ohio GOP. That is most likely only part of the reason though.