Appearing on MSNBC’s Hardball today, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) attacked the patriotism of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), based on his alleged relationship to former Weather Underground member William Ayers and the values of Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “I’m very concerned that he may have anti-American views,” said Bachmann. “That’s what the American people are concerned about.”
She then went further, suggesting that all liberal views — held by people such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, professors, and all Americans who identify themselves as “liberals” — are “anti-American.” When host Chris Matthews, stunned by her remarks, asked Bachmann how many people in Congress hold anti-American views, she responded, “You’ll have to ask them.”
Bachmann called on the media to conduct investigations into the anti-American activities of members of Congress, similar to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s discredited House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in the 1950s. “I think people would love to see an exposé like that,” she claimed. Watch it:
Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) made similar comments at a fundraiser yesterday, saying that she loved to visit “pro-America” areas of the country — “small towns” where “hard working” people are “very patriotic.”
The Real McCain 2 reached an astonishing 4 million views last week, just as the McCain campaign was trotting out lie after lie at the Republican National Convention. Coincidence? We don’t think so. To us, this unprecedented number suggests that the public is desperately seeking the truth about John McCain—a truth the corporate press still isn’t providing—which is why we want you to join our John McCain Truth Squad and get informed about who McCain really is. Clearly, we’ve reached a critical moment to take action. We’re hearing reports of a lot of hand-wringing from people who are scared and don’t know what to do. So we came up with a way to put that nervous energy to good use! Below are five videos that present the Real McCain: an elitist out of touch with hard-working Americans; a double talker who supports a costly war in Iraq but won’t support our veterans. This is the McCain everyone should know.
The Real McCain 2: Watch as McCain’s YouTube problem became his nightmare in the video that received over 4 million views.
Imagine how differently people would regard McCain if they saw all five of these videos and learned the truth. That’s why we want you to forward this to everyone and anyone with a personal note at the top from you. Why send these videos individually when you can send them all at once? Also, get them on all the blogs and traditional news sites you can. Make sure you’re doing everything you can to educate the public about the Real McCain.
The Huffington Post | Rachel Weiner | October 19, 2008
On “Fox News Sunday,” John McCain defended his use of nasty robocalls against Obama, telling host Chris Wallace that the calls are nothing like the ones used against him in the South Carolina 2000 primary. (In fact, McCain appears to be using the same firm as that smear campaign.) Asked if, in response to bipartisan condemnation, McCain would stop the calls, he replied, “Of course not.”
WALLACE: But Senator back, if I may, back in 2000 when you were the target of robo calls, you called these hate calls and you said–
MCCAIN: They were.
WALLACE: And you said the following: “I promise you I have never and will never have anything to do with that kind of political tactic.” Now you’ve hired the same guy who did the robocalls against you to, reportedly, to do the robocalls against Obama and the Republican Senator Susan Collins, the co-chair of your campaign in Maine, has asked you to stop the robocalls. Will you do that?
MCCAIN: Of course not. These are legitimate and truthful and they are far different than the phone calls that were made about my family and about certain aspects that — things that this is — this is dramatically different and either you haven’t — didn’t see those things in 2000.
WALLACE: No, I saw them.
MCCAIN: Or you don’t know the difference between that and what is a legitimate issue, and that is Senator Obama being truthful with the American people.
We’d like to talk about the pressing issues facing our country: the woeful economy, rising unemployment, the housing crisis, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we can’t talk about them because John McCain and Sarah Palin have distracted us with the politics of hate and fear. Instead of discussing the real issues plaguing Americans, McCain and Palin have turned to fear-mongering and race-baiting, stoking the prejudices of their supporters. The situation has become so critical that we’ve teamed up with Color of Change to put an end to these dangerous mob scenes.
Things have gotten so out of control that some conservatives have come forward to denounce McCain and Palin’s hate-mongering. In an Op-Ed for The Baltimore Sun, Frank Schaeffer writes: “John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as “not one of us,” I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.” Here’s how you can take action:
Sign the open letter calling on McCain and Palin to reject the politics of hate.
By far the most successful video in the REAL McCain series, “John McCain’s YouTube Problem Just Became a Nightmare” just passed the 7 million view mark! An astonishing number, considering we only launched this video back in May. It is currently #14 on YouTube’s all-time most matched list of News and Politics videos; by comparison, Will.I.Am’s “Yes We Can” is #6, Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech is #30, and way way down at #82 is Newt Gingrich’s “Drill Here, Drill Now” lecture. (The McCain campaign’s own videos don’t even crack the top 100, though Sarah Palin’s gaffe-ridden CBS interview is down at the bottom of the list.)
Like all of our videos, “McCain’s YouTube Problem” is only as popular as you’ve made it. When the corporate press was giving McCain a free ride earlier this year, you understood the urgent need for the public to have an accurate portrayal of McCain. That’s why you took this video and ran with it, forwarding it to friends and coworkers, posting it on blogs and networking sites. You’re the ones who made it a viral sensation.
Finally, for the first time this year, a prominent media figure asked John McCain about his relationship with G. Gordon Liddy last night.
The lack of media attention to the Liddy-McCain relationship is one of the clearest double standards in recent political history. McCain and the news media have devoted an extraordinary amount of attention to Barack Obama’s ties to Bill Ayers, yet until last night, McCain hadn’t been asked a single question* about his ties to Liddy, a convicted felon who has instructed his listeners on how best to shoot law-enforcement agents. Liddy has held a fundraiser for McCain at his home and describes the Arizona senator as an “old friend”; McCain has said he is “proud” of Liddy. Read the rest of this entry »
HOW did the world’s financial system get into such a mess? It’s tempting to blame specific politicians, decisions and laws (or the lack thereof), and leave it at that.
David G. Klein
While it’s certainly true that a great number of serious, identifiable mistakes have been made, we need to broaden our thinking in order to understand what has happened.
The crisis is global in nature and its causes are more general and less country-specific than is commonly reflected in the political discourse of any single nation. Many countries — not just the United States — came to have fundamentally unsound banking systems. If Japan remains an exception, it is only because it already suffered through similar problems in the 1990s.
The current financial crisis comes from a conjunction of three major trends, common to many countries and to a wide variety of financial institutions.
The first trend was a positive one: an enormous growth in wealth that needed to be moved into investments. Before he became chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke wrote of a “global savings glut,” particularly from Asia. Furthermore, over the last 20 years, many countries have modernized their financial systems and created new channels that linked savings and investment. In Spain, Iceland, Ireland and Britain, the real estate boom was without recent precedent. Read the rest of this entry »
THE most important legislation passed by the current Congress almost certainly was the bank bailout bill. Whether it will do much good is still unclear, but there is little doubt that most Americans were not impressed, even though the bill was backed by Congressional leaders, the president and both major presidential candidates.
Multimedia
Passage of the bill appears to have pushed the approval rating for Congress to a record low, leaving Congress far less popular than President Bush, whose standing with voters is close to historic lows. It may affect several legislative races next month, in which senators and members of Congress who backed the legislation have slipped in polls.
But the bailout seems to be having no impact at all on the presidential race. Both Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama voted for it, and neither man chose to mention it in this week’s final presidential debate.
There is virtually no difference between Obama backers and McCain supporters in terms of supporting the bailout, as is shown in the accompanying chart based on the New York Times/CBS poll taken from Oct. 10 to 13. Read the rest of this entry »
With Election Day Two Weeks Away, the Candidates Are Sketching Out Who Would Serve In Their Cabinets. Advisers Say Both Favor a Bipartisan Lineup Dominated by Veterans.
(By Jahi Chikwendiu — The Washington Post) Buy Photo
(By Jahi Chikwendiu — The Washington Post)
Sunday, October 19, 2008; Page A12
The Washington Post
If he is elected to the presidency, Sen. Barack Obama and his advisers have promised to bring bipartisanship and experience to his administration.
Advisers suggest that among those who would be considered for Cabinet-level positions are two Republicans, Sens. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.).
A leading candidate for White House chief of staff is Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), the former Senate majority leader, but there could be dark horse candidates, including Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), a close Obama adviser who worked for President Clinton.
Several advisers to Obama also said the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), could be on the shortlist to become secretary of state.
Obama has already turned to veterans of the Clinton White House for guidance, tasking former chief of staff John Podesta, now head of a prominent liberal think tank, to coordinate his preliminary transition efforts. Leading the effort to decide personnel on the transition is Cassandra Q. Butts, a law school friend of Obama’s and an associate at Podesta’s Center for American Progress. Read the rest of this entry »
If Sen. Barack Obama wakes up as the president-elect on Nov. 5, he will immediately assume responsibility for fixing a shredded economy while the Bush administration is still in office. If Sen. John McCain wins the election, he will face an imminent confrontation over spending with a Democratic Congress called back into special session with the goal of passing a new economic stimulus package.
Either way, the 77-day period between Election Day and Inauguration Day, traditionally known simply as the transition, is sure to present difficult challenges to a new president buffeted by intense forces, political and economic, without any chance to recover from the long and bruising campaign.
The challenge of putting the country back on a sound financial track has altered what under the best of circumstances would have been a frenzied period spent forming a new government. Instead, Obama or McCain will be forced to assemble a new administration even as he helps shape policies to ward off further declines in the economy. Read the rest of this entry »
From the FBI to Ohio county prosecutors, GOP-connected lawmen are seeking to scare new voters.
(Editor’s note: This story was published late Thursday, before the Obama campaign counsel Bob Bauer addressed many of these same issues in a media conference call on Friday.)
As the presidential election comes to a close, the Republican Party — and its allies in law enforcement at the FBI and at county levels in Ohio — are announcing voting-related prosecutions that civil rights advocates say are intended to intimidate voters, despite prosecutorial rules that bar these disclosures before an election.
The foremost example was Thursday’s leak to the media by top FBI officials of a new investigation of ACORN, a low-income advocacy group which registered 1.3 million new voters in swing states in 2008. The Associated Press reported “senior officials” confirmed the FBI investigation, saying they “spoke on condition of anonymity because Justice Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly so close to an election.”
“The reports by unnamed sources within the FBI that they have begun an investigation of ACORN is patently inconsistent with the DOJ prosecution manual,” said Gerry Hebert, a former Justice Department Voting Section Chief who now runs the Campaign Legal Center in Washington.
“Whether they are prosecuting or not, it is clearly intimidation,” said Jeff Gamso, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio. “That is what press reports do. You intimidate people into not going to the polls and not voting.”
The FBI leak has counterparts at the county level in Ohio, raising the same voter intimidation concerns. Read the rest of this entry »
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell crossed party lines this morning to endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president, the most prominent GOP defection yet of the 2008 campaign.
Obama has courted Republicans all along, but in Powell he gets party crossover plus military credibility. Powell is a retired U.S. Army general and served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the first President Bush.
As Secretary of State under the current President Bush, Powell helped to build the case for the Iraq war, a role that hurt him with many Democrats and moderates, who had viewed him as somewhat apolitical. Powell made his endorsement today on the NBC program “Meet the Press.” Read the rest of this entry »
