Election 2008

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?

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.

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".

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.

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

So I ended up watching the Saddleback forum last night. I wasn't sure if I would or not. To me this was a rather large insult against our nation and founding fathers, a view shared by even people of very deep faith.

So what did I think? Well it wasn't bad. I liked the format, and think it would have been better without questions of faith and religion. Obama did exceptionally well. McCain was parsing his stump speech to answer the questions. This did give us a very deep insight into each candidate, and one that should be used to base our voting decisions on. Obama is a man that will listen to the question, go through a thought process and then respond. McCain is like a robot, not thinking about the question, but rather quick to answer. I don't want the later making decisions that will affect the state of our nation.

"Buy American, Vote Obama" is the new theme that the Obama campaign is rolling out in Pennsylvania this weekend. I am glad to see the return of "Buy American" in our political discussion. I remember back in the 80's people around here drove about an hour over to Indiana to buy American at a store that prided itself on selling American only products. That store? Wal-mart - the poster child of imported products.

It seems that we have really lost the pride we once had in American craftsmenship. It also seems like the Republicans love to promote this turn away from products made at home in their endless push in increase the global economy. Yeah we might save a few cents at the store, but the products aren't as good and we have become number 2 in the world when it comes to manufacturing, falling to China.

John McCain:

My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression.

McCain last month:

McCAIN: The fact is we had four years of failed policy. We were losing. We were losing the war in Iraq. The consequences of failure and defeat of the United States of America in the first major conflict since 9/11 would have had devastating impacts throughout the region and the world.

Of course Afghanistan doesn't even merit mention from McCain. More at Think Progress.

The blogosphere has been talking for days about McCain acting like he is President when it comes to the Georgia conflict. From having press conferences about the conflict, to sending a "delegation" to the embattled country, the media has acted like McCain was just doing the job of a candidate. No more. Today's Washington Post is finally taking note that McCain forgot who he really is - a candidate:

Standing behind a lectern in Michigan this week, with two trusted senators ready to do his bidding, John McCain seemed to forget for a moment that he was only running for president.

Asked about his tough rhetoric on the ongoing conflict in Georgia, McCain began: "If I may be so bold, there was another president . . ."

He caught himself and started again: "At one time, there was a president named Ronald Reagan who spoke very strongly about America's advocacy for democracy and freedom."

This has been another example of the so called "liberal media". When Obama spoke in Berlin, all the media outlets echoed the GOP talking point that "Obama was playing President". When McCain does the same, but in a situation that can have serious ramifications, the media goes silent. Perhaps now we will hear more about this.

John McCain is being sued by Jackson Browne for using Browne's song "Running on Empty" in a campaign ad without permission. This is trend among Republicans. Perhaps they need to be asked why they don't respect intellectual property rights.

CBS has decided that they want to focus on policy during their televised debate on October 15th. Who would have ever though that a Presidential debate should be about the issues, and not the rhetoric?

This is another one that should be out there. It's not as "risque" as the one I posted earlier, but it might be about as effective: