Some of our represenatives have declared that they WILL NOT VOTE for a bill that DOES NOT INCLUDE a public option.

We need to show them some love in the only way they understand..

 $$$

Use the Act Blue donations page to send them some scheckles to help them stand up to the coming push for them to abandon us to a mandate from hell!

Really this is enough to make you want to choke!

Or go for a nice hike on the Applacian trail...

I am rather down on the republic party for a number of reasons but this is high on the list. The comments that he makes in the end are even more chilling then the beginning but you have to be familear with the work of the "MRFF" Military Religious Freedom Foundation to understand...

Jeff Sharlett on his book "The Family" being interviewed on Real Time with Bill Maher... 

Rachel Maddow reports on C Street and Rep.Zach Wamp...

No secrets here... Nothing to see, move along. 

As recently as September 2008 CBS reported that Special Forces struck Qaeda leadership in Pakistan.

The decision faced by Holder, whether or not to appoint a Special Prosecutor on torture, is of a different gravity altogether.  A weight of evidence keeps building which indicates torture was employed on innocent men, that it didn't work, and that it didn't prevent any attacks.  And it gets worse.  Bush's own FBI Director Robert Mueller recently confirmed to the New York Times what he told Vanity Fair a year ago, that "to [his] knowledge" torture didn't prevent a single attack.  Former Legendary CIA Director William Colby has said that torture is "ineffective."

Harper's Magazine's Scott Horton nows suggests there are two Eric Holders at war with each other: Holder the good soldier who knows well the preference of his boss for prosecutions to not take place, and Holder the servant of the law who is aware that what he does now may determine what is likely to happen again.  

It is becoming clear that such an investigation, if it happens, will not stop with a few low-ranking scapegoats.   Horton notes:

"President Obama’s assurance to CIA officials who relied on the opinions of government lawyers in implementing these programs, an assurance that Holder himself repeated, would have to be worked in.  That suggests that the focus would likely be on the lawyers and policymakers who authorized use of the new techniques."

And CIA whistleblower Ray McGovern writes this week:

the buck stops - actually, in this case, it began - with President Bush. Senate Armed Services Committee leaders Carl Levin and John McCain on Dec. 11, 2008, released the executive summary of a report, approved by the full committee without dissent, concluding that Bush's Feb. 7, 2002, memorandum "opened the door to considering aggressive techniques."

What changed with Holder?  Horton writes in "The Torture Prosecution Turnaround?":

Holder began his review mindful of the clear preference of President Obama’s two key political advisers—David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel—that there be no investigation. Axelrod and Emanuel are described as uninterested in either the legal or policy merits of the issue of a criminal investigation. Their concerns turn entirely on their political analysis...Holder initially appeared prepared to satisfy their wishes.

This attitude seemed to change after Obama's speech at the CIA, when Emanual and Axelrod moved out front to say there would be no prosecutions.  According to Horton:

"In the days after Obama’s speech at the CIA, both Axelrod and Emanuel insisted that the White House had made the decision that there would be no prosecutions. According to reliable sources, that incensed Holder, who felt that the remarks had compromised the integrity both of the White House and Justice Department by suggesting that political advisers made the call on who would or would not be criminally investigated."

To make things worse for the Bush administration, evidence is emerging that they can no longer even rely on exhibit A and B of the Torture Works theory, Al Zabudaya and Kalid Shiek Mohammed, the latter of whom is still confessing to everything short of being the real Boston Strangler.  I guess if I'd been waterboarded 82 times I'd be babbling too.  The FBI Special Agent who interrogated Abu Zubayda, recently breaking a 7-year silence after reading the "torture memos," wrote in the New York Times:

"One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence...This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives."

Then there is the political risk to the Obama administration that Axelrod and Emanual have miscalculated, and that, in fact, the rest of the president's agenda is hamstrung while a growing number of Americans call for existing laws to be enforced.  What is haunting Americans could be, in Washington jargon, "sucking oxygen" out of the debate, and "moving forward" is a pipe dream until pending business is dealt with.  Spontaneous and planned rallies calling for a Special Prosecutor are growing, not diminishing.  In addition, the worse revelations may be yet to come in the horrifying saga of what happened when, as Major General Anthony Taguba says:

[a] permissive environment [was] created by implicit and explicit authorizations by senior US officials to "take the gloves off"...

President Jimmy Carter wrote that the Red Cross, Amnesty International and the Pentagon "have gathered substantial testimony of torture of children, confirmed by soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse."  In "Our Endangered Values" Carter said that the Red Cross found after visiting six U.S. prisons "107 detainees under eighteen, some as young as eight years old." And reporter Hersh, (who broke the Abu Ghraib torture scandal,) reported 800-900 Pakistani boys aged 13 to 15 in custody.

Journalist Seymour Hersh's (who broke the Abu Ghraib scandal) bombshell before the ACLU some years ago has been in a temporary slumber, as there is question as to whether the videotapes in possession of the Pentagon were among those claimed to be destroyed.  Destroyed or not, there is still the conscience of soldiers and agents who bore witness to contend with, as the reign of political terror against whistleblowers which characterized the Bush administration subsides.  Hersh said:

" Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said at the time:

"The American public needs to understand, we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges."

History is just beginning to sort out the Bush era, with stubborn facts showing a resilience that Fox News talking points cannot, and more emerging.  Today, even among Republicans, it is difficult to find those who will embrace Richard Nixon, though for a while he was every bit the perceived victim of "left-wing hate" that Bush and Cheney are now.  Incredibly, to compare Nixon to Bush-Cheney is to do a deeply flawed man a disservice.  Nixon inherited Vietnam.  He did not orchestrate from whole cloth a campaign to link Saddam with 9/11, and strenuously push to war despite the objections of his countrymen and the world.  Nixon spied on political enemies.  He did not use a tragedy to illegally spy on millions, the true numbers of which we still do not know because congress has never investigated.  

It's almost possible to feel sorry for the shifty, friendless Nixon.  It is less possible to feel so for the smirking Bush, who thought nothing of telling soldier's families that war critics were saying that their loved ones "had died in vain."    

A compilation in November2008 of other evidence of alleged incidents involving children at the time recounts:

-- Iraqi lawyer Sahar Yasiri, representing the Federation of Prisoners and Political Prisoners, said in a published interview there are more than 400,000 detainees in Iraq being held in 36 prisons and camps and that 95 percent of the 10,000 women among them have been raped. Children, he said, "suffer from torture, rape, (and) starvation" and do not know why they have been arrested. He added the children have been victims of "random" arrests "not based on any legal text."

-- Former prisoner Thaar Salman Dawod in a witness statement said, "[I saw] two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and [a U.S. soldier] was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners."

-- Iraqi TV reporter, Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz, arrested while making a documentary and thrown into Abu Ghraib for 74 days, told Mackay he saw "hundreds" of children there. Al-Baz said he heard one 12-year-old girl crying, "They have undressed me. They have poured water over me." He said he heard her whimpering daily.

-- Al-Baz also told of a 15-year-old boy "who was soaked repeatedly with hoses until he collapsed." Amnesty International said ex-detainees reported boys as young as 10 are held at Abu Ghraib.

-- German TV reporter Thomas Reutter of "Report Mainz" quoted U.S. Army Sgt. Samuel Provance that interrogation specialists "poured water" over one 16-year-old Iraqi boy, drove him throughout a cold night, "smeared him with mud" and then showed him to his father, who was also in custody. Apparently, one tactic employed by the Bush regime is to elicit confessions from adults by dragging their abused children in front of them.

-- Jonathan Steele, wrote in the British "The Guardian" that "Hundreds of children, some as young as nine, are being held in appalling conditions in Baghdad’s prisons...Sixteen-year-old Omar Ali told the "Guardian" he spent more than three years at Karkh juvenile prison sleeping with 75 boys to a cell that is just five by 10 meters, some of them on the floor. Omar told the paper guards often take boys to a separate room in the prison and rape them.

-- Raad Jamal, age 17, was taken from his Doura home by U.S. troops and turned over to the Iraqi Army’s Second regiment where Jamal said he was hung from the ceiling by ropes and beaten with electric cables.

-- Human Rights Watch (HRW) last June put the number of juveniles detained at 513. In all, HRW estimates, since 2003, the U.S. has detained 2,400 children in Iraq, some as young as ten.

-- IRIN, the humanitarian news service, last year quoted Khalid Rabia of the Iraqi NGO Prisoners’ Association for Justice(PAJ), stating that five boys between 13 and 17 accused of supporting insurgents and detained by the Iraqi army "showed signs of torture all over their bodies," such as "cigarette burns over their legs," she said.

-- One boy of 13 arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 was held in solitary for more than a year at Bagram and Guantanamo and made to stand in stress position and deprived of sleep, according to the "Catholic Worker."

Attorney General Holder is a man of conscience who now serves both President Obama and the law.  A Newsweek piece last week says he has no illusions that:

Such a decision [to appoint a Special Prosecutor] would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. "I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president's agenda," he says. "But that can't be a part of my decision."

There can be redemption for a nation which faces its past. One that does not can only become more monstrous.

Call the Office of the Attorney General, "Appoint a Special Prosecutor" at (202) 353-1555. Then email the Justice Department.

I was there...

It is not so totally hostile and vindictive now as when I went to school but it is still totally broken. It works if you want cannon fodder or minimum wage workers destined for a life of alcoholism and broken relationships.

They sit at home and watch the propaganda network and think that they know the truth... All good until you test them a little only to find out that they think what they are told by Fox News which is strictly false.

All bad.

And worse yet what passes for music coming out of the schools and cultivated by the major record companies is a shocking travesty. Nearly daily I hear a piece of music with a grevious musical error caused by the improper use of phrase libraries and samples by a "composer" who is unclear on the concept of modality.

Mr Jones on the other hand is clear, very clear in stating that we need to give these kids a hand up and actually teach them music and arts in the schools using teachers that have mastered their mediums. All to many of the remaining art and music teachers are not functinal artists they are folks who got credentialed up looking for a job.

Here is what Quincy has to say about our need for enhanced culteral leadership. 

It is not a long article, read it! 

On the way out the door it is apparent that the Bushista accelerated their normal pace of looting.

Their friends at the Fed seem to feel they owe no explanations to anyone and to insure that explanations are not forthcoming have put a 7.5w bulb in charge of the Inspector Generals office. 

I am not sure what this woman did to attain this lofty position. Maybe her family did things for the Bush family or something...

It is clear that she is not well qualified to hold a management position much less a top ranking position.

Where do you think the 9 TRILLION DOLLARS went ? 

We desperately need some Law and Order in America.

Now that I have read the recently released OLC Torture Memos I have no questions that the people who ordered the activities, enabled the activities and actually implemented the orders need to be allowed to inspect the inside of a jail cell for a long time.

In some, if not most, cases for the remainder of their lives.

I applaud the actions of the Spanish court which is beginning this process.

Mr Olbermans Special Comment on this points firmly to the path of rightousness as does Glenn Greenwalds article.

Our country allegedly loves the arts yet our corporations regularly prey on artists when they are not actively discriminating againt them.

This petition has an incredible amount of support and I have every reason to believe that the Obama administration will take measures that will enhance the lot of artists in America.

Stop by and sign the Secretary of the Arts Petition! 

I am an artist not an economist. That means that I generally suffer the slings and arrows of the monied class as we all do by and large.

Don't get me wrong, I love everybody... Uh-huh. Yep.

I woke up today and got an eyeful of a chart that really made it clear how badly we were hung out to dry by Phil Gramm and his smoldering dungheap called the Commidity Futures Modernization Act.

That is the de-regulatory legislation that has led to the collapse of the American economy by allowing for a wide variety of exotic (code word for criminal) financial instruments to be developed and sold by the Richistanis on Wall St.

I am forwarding that simple graph to so that you can have the same OMG sort of moment I had with my morning cuppa joe.

It is pretty clear to see that the minute the "Enron Loophole" was closed by Carl Levin et al the price of gas plummeted to what should be its normal level.

If you are not in sunny California you don't remember what Enron's gaming of our energy system did both to our bills and the availability of electricity and gas but it was ALL BAD.

Here is an excellent article and some background information on how we have been gouged for the past 8 years for every tank of gas that we used... 

And as it appears not a moment too soon as their economic house of cards is falling around all of us.

The looting and wrecking continues apace with the usual lack of oversight and everyone is being returned to the corporate labor pool with their craptacular 13 weeks of unenjoyment pay.

Silicon valley which never returned from the crash when the Bush Junta took power in the legal coup of 2000 is further collapsing.

I suppose that it might make a few more jobs for home wrecking crews as they clear the belongings of the newly homeless.

I simply piled mine on the curb with a free sign in 01 and they went fast enough.

I have hope for the future and am not trying as many of my peers are to second guess what Mr Obama is going to do or who he picks to work as his pinchers.  I don't think there will be any Gonzo's or Monica Goodlings among them.

In the meantime we are all hoping for a decent holiday and some war crimes trials for Cheney et al as he did manage to go on TV and admit that he authorized and helped to implement the torture program.

I guess since they are done with Slobodan at the Hague they might have some bandwidth for Bush, Cheney, Rice, Addington, Yoo, Gonzo and the rest of the bozos on that bus.

Lets have a good New YEar and turn this stinking sinking ship of state around!!! 

It has come to pass that once again the McCain folks have demonstrated that they would be dangerous to our National Security.

How did this happen ?

They fell prey to a simple exploit, social engineering.

The exploiter penetrated all layers of their security and gained direct contact with the VP candidate and conducted a phoney interview with her.

How could this take place ?

Obviously the folks running the Trash Talk Express fell for the line and passed the call onwards through who knows how many days and layers of people until it reached Palin directly.

As she is not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree she fell for it hook line and sinker.

Here is the report from MSNBC and the audio interview... 

Now remember, these are the folks who keep talking about how dangerous it is out there and they can not even handle the vetting and scheduling of their own communications.

Get Out and Vote!!!! 

McCain and Mooselini would be a disaster for our country.

I have been busy recently and have not posted much. 

We have signed up over 50 volunteers for Obama in battleground states which, IMHO, is more important then whining online.

The vote supression of the GOP is ramping up all across the US because without criminal actions they could not win an election.

Judicial Coup - 2000

Computerized Election Fraud and Vote Supression - 2004

TBD - 2008

I am going with a solid thumping for this election but you can be sure they will try every trick in the book to steal the election and the Bushistas will continue wrecking our legal system and looting the treasury right up to the end...

I did promise you a scary story here...

Sarah Palin has some very seedy associations with religious fundamentalists that because Mr Obama has stuck to talking about the issues have not been shouted from the rooftops.

They need to be because they are very dangerous and dare I say it ? 

ANTI-AMERICAN! 

Here is a story, one of many, that details some of these associations. This stuff is very well documented and if you look around you will find more of it from YouTobe videos of her getting annointed by Thomas Muthee to well researched articles on the aims of Joels Army and their ilk...

A True Halloween Horror: Sarah Palin's extensive connections to Joel's Army...

A well supported indepth examination of Sarah Palin's history with these extremist religious groups: 

Palin Movement Urges Godly To Plunder Wealth of Godless

This is a full speech so it takes a few minutes but it is definitely worth the effort! 

Very little in the way of attack, mostly substance. This is the kind of leadership our country needs! 

Here is some Straight Talk about the McCain Health Care Plan...

It is, like all Republican plans, a thinly veiled attempt to screw the middle class. That is those that still have employer coverage.

If you have that much vaunted employer coverage find someone who is paying their own or worse yet "going naked" and ask them how it is...

I am in that catagory and I will tell you. I pay a fortune for high deductable junk coverage and can not have my health care needs processed because the co-pays and non-covered services are too expensive.

I find folks who think all is well usually have a gold plated employer plan, let them suck on some overpriced COBRA while their unemployment ticks out and maybe they will change their tune, hopefully it will not be too late for the rest of us...

The McCain Plan: 

1. Pays for a New Tax Credit by Taxing Employees’ Health Benefits for the First Time in History. John McCain and Sarah Palin argue that their health care plan is budget neutral, and that it includes a new $5,000 health care tax credit to help families purchase insurance. What they don’t tell you is that to pay for their plan, they will tax the health benefits that workers receive from their employers for the first time in history. Moreover, McCain’s health care tax credits would go directly to insurance companies, while his new tax on employee health premiums would come directly out of workers’ pockets. This tax punishes those who currently have generous health insurance, and over time will result in higher taxes for tens of millions of middle-class families.

1. Forces at least 20 million people to lose employer-based coverage. By taxing employee health benefits, the McCain plan will make it more expensive for employers to provide coverage. As a result, independent analyses show that employers will drop at least 20 million people from coverage and force them to seek insurance in the individual market, where costs are higher, quality is lower, and coverage more uncertain. By moving more risk upon the shoulders of individuals, it raises insurance costs for everyone nationally. And by forcing millions into the individual market, people with pre-existing conditions from asthma to cancer will be at risk of not being able to get health insurance at all.

1. Undermines the ability of people who do have coverage to get services from cancer screenings to vaccines. The McCain plan undermines state laws that require insurance companies to cover bedrock health care services such as cancer screenings and vaccines. The plan empowers insurance companies over doctors and nurses, while making America less healthy. In fact, John McCain recently explained his intention to deregulate health insurance along the lines that the banking industry has been deregulated over the past decade.

1. Fails to take on rising health care costs. The McCain plan has no strategy to contain spiraling national health care costs. Without the aggressive investments needed to modernize our health care system, a recent analysis concluded that McCain’s plan could actually increase health care costs by $37 billion by 2010.

1. Fails to address the crisis of the uninsured. The McCain health plan does not even attempt to solve the problem of the uninsured – it barely reduces the number of uninsured individuals, and it leaves those with preexisting conditions at the greatest risk of being unable to find affordable coverage. This lack of commitment to ensuring affordable coverage for all Americans is consistent with McCain’s record, including his vote last fall against funding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that would have extended coverage to 3.8 million children.

As an adult type I am rarely serious...

BUT!

There are some folks that I do pay attention to becase they are undisputed experts on the topics they cover.

Juan Cole is one of these folks, if you want to understand the problems in the Middle East his daily blog is a must read.

Today he had some incisive commentary on the Debate (I guess you could call it that) between Carabou Barbie and Joe Biden in which Sarah Palin openly refused to answer questions and rambled around her memorized talking points.

Needless to say the moment she did not have a talking point to gurge up she was, as usual, at a total loss so you got a soccer mom/alaska energy/folksey saying to cover for her total inability to grasp anything more then the simplest of issues.

Here is Juan Cole's take on the debate. 

He understands the danger inherent in having a mental midget as a leader and how that could adversly affect an already unstable Middle East siuation.

He sums it up nicely: 

"Palin has revealed her real self in the Gibson and Couric interviews, and clearly knows nothing and offers only rubbery expressions and glib repetition, for all the world like a rasping myna bird, of a stream of memorized slogans that sound as though they were disinterred from a time capsule originally buried in William F. Buckley Jr.'s back yard several decades ago." - Juan Cole

nuff said. 

This is a bad throwback to Bush...

John McCain, while having a rocky interview with the Des Moines Register, lets on what his true aspirations were for his tenure as presidente for life.

I ALWAYS ASPIRED TO BE A DICTATOR. What he said... No Snark.

This is really a remark that makes McSame look presidential.

NOT! 

I have said at anumber of junctures that Bush will crash our countries economy like a late 60's hooptie at an east Oakland sideshow.

Well he is really getting there now... 800 point drop at the casino lots of pain to go around.

Unfortunately the Republican members of the congress insisted the regulation was bad and that oversite was quaint and antiquated.

As a result the country did not hand over their wallet to the muggers and got a cap popped in their ass.

One of my friends who has her tinfoil hat screwed on tight sent me this article which I though was an interesting analysis and overview of what is happening in the waning days of the Bush administration.

Cash for Trash and the Iran Connection 

You really have to love those folks who say they are inherently "Deregulators".

Like John McCain who says the deregulation he and his BFF Phil Gramm championed and slipped through the congress undercover of "must pass" spending bills.

It is so complicated that it makes your head hurt to try to understand it...

Here is an article by devilstower that really covers the entire mess from start to finish. 

A highly recommended read!

Three Times is Enemy Action

We really need a leader who is capable of seeing what is going on a crafting a solution that does not simply mask the symptoms.

I watched Obamas Cooper Hall speech and remembered that we have an oppertunity to elect someone who is actually intellectually qualified to hold the office of president.

Of course we could get a hocky mom who is already known for overspending and not spending wisely.

That is after McCain the ex-POW (his only qualification) conks out from one of his many ailments.  

From Mother Jones magazine...

Eight years ago, McCains financial adviser Phil Gramm, then a Republican senator chairing the Senate banking committee, slipped a 262-page bill into a gargantuan, must-pass spending measure.

Gramm's legislation, written with the help of financial industry lobbyists, essentially removed new financial products called credit default swaps from any regulation.

Credit default swaps are basically insurance policies that cover the losses on investments, and they have been at the heart of the subprime meltdown because they have enabled large financial institutions to turn risky loans into risky securities that could be packaged and sold to other institutions.

When McCain says he does not know too much about the economy and that he relies on his advisors these are the type of folks that he goes to...

We can go on with the weak intellects that have caused this 100 year financial storm or we can elect Mr Obama...

I think we need some brains here and sooner rather then later before this corrosive effect takes out our whole economy...

I’m a little confused.  Let me see if I have this straight. . . . .
 
*  If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re “exotic, different.”

*  If you grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, you’re a quintessential American story.

*  If your name is Barack, you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

*  If you name your kids Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig, you’re a maverick.

*  If you graduate from Harvard Law School, you are unstable.

*  If you attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.
 
*  If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veterans’ Affairs Committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.

*  If your total resume is local weather girl, 4  years on the city council, 6 years as the major of a town with less than 7,000 people, and 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.
 
*  If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.

*  If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.
 
*  If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

*  If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system, while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.
 
*  If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law form to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s    values don’t represent America’s.

*  If your husband is nicknamed “First Dude,” with  at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
 
OK, *much* clearer now.
 
"Think globally, act locally."

For someone who has touted themselves as a man of honor and straight talk John MacCains behavior shows us one thing. (Remind me again what the noble cause for nam was ?)

He is willing to lose his honor and credibility to win an election! 

Across the country the RWNM controlled press has hit their limit and called him out for his and Sarah Palin's serial lies.

And you know what ?

They are STILL LYING! 

Here are some examples...

New York Times - McCain campaign twisted Mr. Obama’s words

Los Angeles Times - Lies about Palin Earmarks

Seattle Times - McCain regularly stretching the truth

Washington Post - McCain wraps distortions around truth 

San Francisco Chronicle - McCain lies about Palin Earmarks 

I guess this is what you do when you have a bankrupt campaign berift of substantive ideas that is clutching for straws in a contest of ideas.

Opps, no ideas about how to fix the damage caused by the Republicans ?

Better start lying...

Get Steve Schmidt and Karl Rove on the job, maybe trick Georgia into invading its neighbor to get an international incident going.

These folks are just plain lame.

And Palin's interview... oh geeze.

I had to take the day off lest I had a medical incident that my junk insurance would not cover.

I would expect nothing less from a Republican candidate as they have never been to strong on the intellectual development of ideas and once again I was not surprised at their performance.

What will they try next? Maybe another false flag alleged terrorist attack?

It is clearly time to 86 these idiots. 

Even Karl Rove says that he is lying and went too far...

Mitt Romney: McCains statements reprehensible!

No we really don't...

The Bush regime did everything in their power to obstruct the investigation and disposed of the evidence as rapidly as possible.

In a sane world one would have to wonder what went on, did they take over the op that Able Danger uncovered ?

They certainly behaved like very guilty people.

Just look at poor Condi Rices face when she had to say "No one ever imagined they would use airplanes as weapons".

This was a terrible crime and it should be investigated and not just covered up.

I could go on but whats the point...

All I have to say is if we want more of the same we should have John Mccain as our fearless leader until he dies and leaves the football for Sarah Palin who will then use her new powers to nuke her favorite State Trooper.

This would be so much easier if he would tell the truth, but...

Why should he when he has a world class noise machine owned by GE and Rupert Murdock to back him up...

Today it comes out that he is touting Obama as requesting a Billion dollars worth of earmarks...

The truth is Obama requested 311 million last year and 0 this year...

Sarah Falin got 740 million-ish for Wasilla...

Just to keep the earmark thing in perspective all the earmarks total are LESS THEN 1% OF OUR BUDGET! 

Would anyone care to speculate what the illegal war of agression and occupation of Iraq are as a percentage of the budget ?

To make this all the more pathetic the WSJ had published the truth:

"At a rally today, Sen. McCain again asserted that Sen. Obama has requested nearly a billion in earmarks. In fact, the Illinois senator requested $311 million last year, according to the Associated Press, and none this year. In comparison, Gov. Palin has requested $750 million in her two years as governor -- which the AP says is the largest per-capita request in the nation." [Wall Street Journal, 9/9/08]

Then they tried to scrub their site and replaced that last paragraph with the lie:

"The only people 'lying' about spending are the Obama campaign. The only explanation for their hysterical attacks is that they're afraid that when John McCain and Sarah Palin are in the White House, Barack Obama's nearly $1 billion in earmark spending will stop dead in its tracks," Mr. Rogers said.

Rupert is doing a heckofa job!

Too bad they are tech-illeterate because here is a link to a screen cap of the cached copy of the article.

h/t to Paul Anderson for doing the hard work and getting the screen cap...

In most businesses filing for per diem for a night you spent at home would be a firing offense. A per diem or per day, payment is intended to cover meals and incidential expenses while away from home on business.

Well, the State of Alaska is not a business so it is legal for state employees to file an expense voucher for per diem payments when they are living in their primary residence if it is different from their primary duty station.

Of course someone who actually had a functioning set of ethics and was really working to control spending would HAVE THAT LAW CHANGED!

Not so Ms Palin.

She is a Republican so all that matters in her world is grabbing as much money as she can for herself.

To that end over the first 19 months in office she billed the state for 312 days of per diem while she was at home in many instances marking the expense voucher as "Lodging own residence" or as "Lodging wasilla residence".

I guess that money trumps ethics when you are a Republican... Until you hit the stump.

America needs to say "Thanks but no thanks" to the McCain/Palin ticket in November.

Here is a link to the Washington Post story... 

I don't care how much lipstick you smear on those two it does not make them look any better for our country.

Well, it might help John McCain a little... On second thought no, he is still a pig.

Here is a little treat on his latest try to cover up his lack of leadership...

As John McCain said in his nomination speech when the gentlewomen from Code Pink stood up and the Iraq Vet from VoteVets unfurled his "McCain Votes Against Vets" banner "Just ignore the static".

Well a million dead folks in Iraq are IMPOSSIBLE to ignore and a Presidential candidate who wants to be there for another 100 years is too dangerous to be ignored.

So here is some STATIC!

Please pass this video around as it cuts right to the core of the problem and pay CLOSE ATTENTION to what Scott Ritter has to say as this is the face of our future under McCain.

McCains choice of Sarah Palin as VP maybe verging on criminal negligence but his nonchalant attitude towards the invasion of Iran is totally UNACCEPTABLE!

This campaign is not about issues - John McCain

If it were he might as well go home to one of his 7-10 houses and give it up...

Sarah is lying when she says she refused the earmarked funds for the "Bridge to Nowhere". She worked hard to get the money, took the money and then claimed she was against it.

If she had a change of heart she should have RETURNED THE MONEY! 

The Republicans regularly put out a multitude of lies because if they didnt they would have NOTHING to run with except the failed policies of the Neo-Con run Bush/Cheney junta that has fairly well ruined our country.

Sarah says she told them "thanks but no thanks" on the bridge to nowhere but the reality is not so simple.

I take that back, it is really simple.

Palin hired Steve Silver, one of Abramoff's fellows, to get her some pork when she was Mayor of Wasilla.

Silver came through in a big way and she took the money. Steve Silver came through to the tune of 27 mil of our tax dollars which was used by the town of Wasilla, population 9780, for a variety of purposes.

Now she disclaims the deeds that she was trumpeting on a local level when it serves the Republicans "Campaign of Lies" on a national basis.

Funny how no matter where you look with the Republicans ALL ROADS LEAD TO ABRAMOFF OR ROVE!

John McCain did a fine job of covering up Abramoffs misdeeds with Greenberg Taurig, hopefully one day the lid will come off that pot and the public will see what was done...

It seems that one of Sarah Palins big accomplishments is to have the US government fund a pipeline for natural gas.

The only catch is that it won't go to what they call the lower 48. That is us, the U.S.

It will have a spur that goes to a LNG terminal for transhipment to China and then through the main run down to Alberta where it will supply gas for the creation of the worlds worst environmental disaster. 

If you want more detail see dengres excellent article on the problem.

As this is an accomplishment that is being trumpeted loudly it would behoove the lapdog media to ask: Whats in it for us ? 

Not to be too self ce4ntered but ENOUGH of the giveaways to big oil. We need our government to turn its attention to creating a solution to the energy crisis and this solution will come from the concentrated application of capitol to the alternative power industry.

Big oil will have nothing to do with the solution. THEY ARE THE PROBLEM!!!

This smoldering pile of crap from John McCain and Sarah Palin is so deep I don't even know where to start shoveling...

I am going to try a simple item per day thaat exposes one of their numerous lies in simple terms.

We can not afford 4 more years of disasterous mismanagement and the one thing certain with the McCain/Palin ticket is that the looting will proceed apace.