McCain Aides Comment on Palin

Dana Bash travels with the McCain campaign and reports on CNN some pretty damaging stuff.

Quoting sources within the campaign:

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," this McCain adviser said. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

A Palin associate defended her, saying that she is "not good at process questions" and that her comments on Michigan and the robocalls were answers to process questions.

The Politico reported Saturday on Palin's frustration, specifically with McCain advisers Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt. They helped decide to limit Palin's initial media contact to high-profile interviews with Charlie Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, which all McCain sources admit were highly damaging.

In response, Wallace e-mailed CNN the same quote she gave the Politico: "If people want to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most honorable thing to do is to lie there."

But two sources, one Palin associate and one McCain adviser, defended the decision to keep her media interaction limited after she was picked, both saying flatly that she was not ready and that the missteps could have been a lot worse. They insisted that she needed time to be briefed on national and international issues and on McCain's record.

"Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic," said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the "hardest" to get her "up to speed than any candidate in history."

I'm thinking that Wallace and Schmidt wish they'd had another month to prepare her for those interviews. Her lack of "fundamental understanding" is still dramatic.

CNN contributor and Republican strategist Ed Rollins said Palin was "mishandled" during the earlier part of the campaign, and as a result, "she's become a target of a lot of ridicule."

But, he said, "She definitely is going to be the most popular Republican in this country when this thing is over."

I disagree with Rollins assessment that she was "mishandled". Wallace and Schmidt weren't given much to work with and did not have enough time to get the job done. I lay the blame on McCain's late decision, not on Wallace and Schmidt for this one.

To say she is the "most popular Republican" with polls showing Palin's unfavorables outweighing her favorables, is a pretty sad comment on the state of the Republican party.

Palin Denies Accepting $150K In Designer Clothes

Excuse this drift into the minutia. When you iconize your campaign with images such as 'Joe the Plumber', this Icon becomes relevant.

If you thought that McCain's been living in a bubble when it comes to Sarah Palin it's nothing compared to the bubble surrounding Sarah Palin herself.

ORMOND BEACH, FLA. (AP) - Sarah Palin is blaming gender bias for the controversy over $150,000 worth of designer clothes, hairstyling and accessories the Republican Party provided for her, a newspaper reported Thursday.

Palin, who is John McCain's vice presidential running mate, said the clothes were not worth $150,000 and were bought for the Republican National Convention. (What, does she think we can't add up the numbers reported by the RNC?).

Most of the clothes have never left the campaign plane, she told the newspaper. (what a waste- more clothes then she can even wear)

"It's kind of painful to be criticized for something when all the facts are not out there and are not reported," Palin said.

"That whole thing is just, bad!" she said. "Oh, if people only knew how frugal we are."(Frugal? - emphasis added- Yes, tell us again how frugal $23,500 for the convention speech outfit is)

McCain was asked several questions on Thursday about the shopping spree _ and he answered each one more or less the same way: Palin needed clothes and they'll be donated to charity.

"She needed clothes at the time. They'll be donated at end of this campaign. They'll be donated to charity," McCain told reporters on his campaign bus between Florida rallies.

Asked for details on how they'll be donated, McCain said, "It works by her getting some clothes when she was made the nominee of the party and it will be donated back to charity."

Asked if he was surprised at the amount spent, McCain said, "It works that the clothes will be donated to charity. Nothing surprises me."

I guess this means that if McCain and Palin win the election, all those clothes are going to be donated, and she'll have to start all over again. Maybe McCain subconsciously admitted that they're not going to win?

I'm left wondering. Are those $5000 blazers and $1500 pumps are going to show up at a Salvation Army or Goodwill Industries store somewhere? Perhaps they'll have an auction, so that the party faithful can clamor over their spoils; donating the proceeds to the needy or homeless. Oh.. sorry.. that would turn Palin into a 'celebrity' - a 'dirty word' McCain used to attack Obama.

Well, maybe it's best we just leave the question unanswered too.
In any case, $150k at Neiman Marcus, Saks and Macy's is raising eyebrows, and questions.

Also on Thursday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a private watchdog group in Washington, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Palin, the Republican National Committee and several political operatives alleging that the purchase of clothing for Palin and her family violates Federal Election Campaign Act.

It raises another question for me. Who is paying for all those kids traveling around the country with Palin - and shouldn't they be in school? I don't recall McCain selecting the Palin FAMILY for the VP position. Is Palin paying their hotel and food costs (we know the clothes were paid for by the RNC)?

McCain and the Decline of the Republican Party

McCain spends his time at the rallies lately bashing Obama's tax cuts, carefully choosing to quote 'Joe the Plumber' when calling it 'socialism'. At the same time he proposes a 30% tax cut for corporations - from 35% to 25%. On the campaign trail, he tries to separate himself from GW Bush saying he wants to take America in a new direction, but doesn't say what that direction is. It's simply rhetoric, with nothing to back it up.

The reality is that his own plan for the economy is basically the same as the disaster that GW Bush has had for the last 8 years. Remove regulation and provide huge tax breaks for the large corporations and the generosity will 'trickle down' to the rest of us who work for a paycheck. The problem with that approach is that it assumes corporations are socially benevolent organizations. In practice, the last 8 years especially have shown that the CEOs, executives and shareholders will line their pockets with profits while continuing to cut operating expenses by shipping jobs overseas. He wants to do the same thing to health care, but we have already seen that absent regulation, health care corporations will deny services, and insurance companies will deny claims.

In the past, McCain came out against the Bush tax cuts, calling them 'irresponsible' while the country was at war. Now he wants to cut taxes on corporations even more, while continuing to wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan with a cost of over $10 BILLION a MONTH. Who is going to pay for this tax cut? All the rest of us. What has ruined our economy? People cannot continue to 'spend' money they don't have to support an economy while it is being sucked dry by military spending. The credit has been used up, the well is dry. We need to stop spending that money overseas on bullets, and instead spend it here at home on our veterans and on our infrastructure and in ways that produce positive economic results at home.

Obama's tax plan isn't 'socialism'. Taxes - all taxes- are always about 'redistributing the wealth' in one form or another. Our country has come to expect certain services from our government. To suggest that the lower and middle class have been paying too much of the cost, and that the wealthy can afford to pay a little more is what I call 'fairness', not 'socialist'.

The ideals of the Reagan era Republican Party are gone. They have been replaced with greed, power brokering, nation building, corruption and the worst kind of whisper campaigns that use fear mongering, racial prejudice and McCarthyism. Code words like 'terrorist', 'muslim', 'arab' and 'associates with' have no business in a political campaign. It's disgusting, narrow minded and reminds me of the tactics that GW Bush, Carl Rove, and Dick Cheney used to invoke the eras of McCarthy and Wallace in whipping up sentiment to support their hidden agenda of war with Iraq while suppressing their detractors.

This is a dangerous ploy that has to stop. It will divide our country and set us back 50 years. We must not allow candidates to use these tactics and simply deny the obvious truth. They must be held accountable for stoking the embers of extremism in this country. We can stop it with our voices in the press, and we MUST stop it with our votes at the polls.

Republican voter fraud

This in today's LA Times:
Voters say they were duped into registering as Republicans

YPM, a group hired by the GOP, allegedly deceived Californians who thought they were signing a petition. YPM denies any wrongdoing. Similar accusations have been leveled against the company elsewhere.

The Times randomly interviewed 46 of the hundreds of voters whose election records show they were recently re-registered as Republicans by YPM, and 37 of them -- more than 80% -- said that they were misled into making the change or that it was done without their knowledge.

FRAUD

People for the American Way have published this full page ad in the NYT about ACORN. The Republicans will be back to their old tricks again of voter suppression, and they are going to be working it hardest in those Red states that are polling purple/blue.

http://site.pfaw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ads_fraud

I disagree with one point in the ad. When people are 'warned' via anonymous flyers that if they have outstanding traffic tickets they may get arrested if they go to the polls, it could actually happen. In many states, police routinely set up roadblocks and check for registration and traffic scofflaws. All it takes is a little encouragement by local (or sometimes non-local) politicians to make sure that come election day, in certain districts, that 'routine' roadblocks just happen to be set up so that you pass through them to get to your local polling place.

This is exactly what people complained about in Florida in 2004. It is sure to happen again. I suggest that people take that 800 number that CNN published to report voter suppression/fraud activites on with them when they drive to their polling place.

Phillip Butler - Why I Will Not Vote for John McCain

I don't like to be redundant, but I'm going to publish the text here from the article linked in a previous blog post (that goes with the video clip), because I've already discovered that the original link I posted was no longer working. So in case the updated link 'goes away', here it is.
Fortunately Google cache holds a lot of web pages; it's harder to get rid of content than people think!

As published on www.military.com :

Why I Will Not Vote for John McCain

As some of you might know, John McCain is a long-time acquaintance of mine that goes way back to our time together at the U.S. Naval Academy and as Prisoners of War in Vietnam. He is a man I respect and admire in some ways. But there are a number of reasons why I will not vote for him for President of the United States.

When I was a Plebe (4th classman, or freshman) at the Naval Academy in 1957-58, I was assigned to the 17th Company for my four years there. In those days we had about 3,600 midshipmen spread among 24 companies, thus about 150 midshipmen to a company. As fortune would have it, John, a First Classman (senior) and his room mate lived directly across the hall from me and my two room mates. Believe me when I say that back then I would never in a million or more years have dreamed that the crazy guy across the hall would someday be a Senator and candidate for President!

John was a wild man. He was funny, with a quick wit and he was intelligent. But he was intent on breaking every USNA regulation in our 4 inch thick USNA Regulations book. And I believe he must have come as close to his goal as any midshipman who ever attended the Academy. John had me "coming around" to his room frequently during my plebe year. And on one occasion he took me with him to escape "over the wall" in the dead of night. He had a taxi cab waiting for us that took us to a bar some 7 miles away. John had a few beers, but forbid me to drink (watching out for me I guess) and made me drink cokes. I could tell many other midshipman stories about John that year and he unbelievably managed to graduate though he spent the majority of his first class year on restriction for the stuff he did get caught doing. In fact he barely managed to graduate, standing 5th from the bottom of his 800 man graduating class. I and many others have speculated that the main reason he did graduate was because his father was an Admiral, and also his grandfather, both U.S. Naval Academy graduates.

People often ask if I was a Prisoner of War with John McCain. My answer is always "No - John McCain was a POW with me." The reason is I was there for 8 years and John got there 2 ½ years later, so he was a POW for 5 ½ years. And we have our own seniority system, based on time as a POW.

John's treatment as a POW:

1) Was he tortured for 5 years? No. He was subjected to torture and maltreatment during his first 2 years, from September of 1967 to September of 1969. After September of 1969 the Vietnamese stopped the torture and gave us increased food and rudimentary health care. Several hundred of us were captured much earlier. I got there April 20, 1965 so my bad treatment period lasted 4 1/2 years. President Ho Chi Minh died on September 9, 1969, and the new regime that replaced him and his policies was more pragmatic. They realized we were worth a lot as bargaining chips if we were alive. And they were right because eventually Americans gave up on the war and agreed to trade our POW's for their country. A damn good trade in my opinion! But my point here is that John allows the media to make him out to be THE hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals.

2) John was badly injured when he was shot down. Both arms were broken and he had other wounds from his ejection. Unfortunately this was often the case - new POW's arriving with broken bones and serious combat injuries. Many died from their wounds. Medical care was non-existent to rudimentary. Relief from pain was almost never given and often the wounds were used as an available way to torture the POW. Because John's father was the Naval Commander in the Pacific theater, he was exploited with TV interviews while wounded. These film clips have now been widely seen. But it must be known that many POW's suffered similarly, not just John. And many were similarly exploited for political propaganda.

3) John was offered, and refused, "early release." Many of us were given this offer. It meant speaking out against your country and lying about your treatment to the press. You had to "admit" that the U.S. was criminal and that our treatment was "lenient and humane." So I, like numerous others, refused the offer. This was obviously something none of us could accept. Besides, we were bound by our service regulations, Geneva Conventions and loyalties to refuse early release until all the POW's were released, with the sick and wounded going first.

4) John was awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart for heroism and wounds in combat. This heroism has been played up in the press and in his various political campaigns. But it should be known that there were approximately 600 military POW's in Vietnam. Among all of us, decorations awarded have recently been totaled to the following: Medals of Honor - 8, Service Crosses - 42, Silver Stars - 590, Bronze Stars - 958 and Purple Hearts - 1,249. John certainly performed courageously and well. But it must be remembered that he was one hero among many - not uniquely so as his campaigns would have people believe.

John McCain served his time as a POW with great courage, loyalty and tenacity. More that 600 of us did the same. After our repatriation a census showed that 95% of us had been tortured at least once. The Vietnamese were quite democratic about it. There were many heroes in North Vietnam. I saw heroism every day there. And we motivated each other to endure and succeed far beyond what any of us thought we had in ourselves. Succeeding as a POW is a group sport, not an individual one. We all supported and encouraged each other to survive and succeed. John knows that. He was not an individual POW hero. He was a POW who surmounted the odds with the help of many comrades, as all of us did.

I furthermore believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate.

Most of us who survived that experience are now in our late 60's and 70's. Sadly, we have died and are dying off at a greater rate than our non-POW contemporaries. We experienced injuries and malnutrition that are coming home to roost. So I believe John's age (73) and survival expectation are not good for being elected to serve as our President for 4 or more years.

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

It is also disappointing to see him take on and support Bush's war in Iraq, even stating we might be there for another 100 years. For me John represents the entrenched and bankrupt policies of Washington-as-usual. The past 7 years have proven to be disastrous for our country. And I believe John's views on war, foreign policy, economics, environment, health care, education, national infrastructure and other important areas are much the same as those of the Bush administration.

I'm disappointed to see John represent himself politically in ways that are not accurate. He is not a moderate Republican. On some issues he is a maverick. But his voting record is far to the right. I fear for his nominations to our Supreme Court, and the consequent continuing loss of individual freedoms, especially regarding moral and religious issues. John is not a religious person, but he has taken every opportunity to ally himself with some really obnoxious and crazy fundamentalist ministers lately. I was also disappointed to see him cozy up to Bush because I know he hates that man. He disingenuously and famously put his arm around the guy, even after Bush had intensely disrespected him with lies and slander. So on these and many other instances, I don't see that John is the "straight talk express" he markets himself to be.

Senator John Sidney McCain, III is a remarkable man who has made enormous personal achievements. And he is a man that I am proud to call a fellow POW who "Returned With Honor." That's our POW motto. But since many of you keep asking what I think of him, I've decided to write it out. In short, I think John Sidney McCain, III is a good man, but not someone I will vote for in the upcoming election to be our President of the United States.
###



Doctor Phillip Butler is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war. He is a highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legion of Merits, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals.

After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is now a peace and justice activist with Veterans for Peace.

The Double-Talk Express

Following up on the previously stated theme of the Republican Campaign:
Lies, Exaggerations, and Misrepresentation

Tip: watch the multiple videos available on thumbnails across the bottom of the video window after viewing the 1st one. Share this with your friends - please pass the word, since the press doesn't seem to do so!






Go for it Sid, you don't need Sarah Palin to shoot you in the foot, you do a good enough job by yourself!!

Just wait Sarah, I'm sure they'll be another video out just for you !

Republican Campaign 'Facts' - Lies, Exaggeration, and Misrepresentations

If there was ever any doubt, the Republican campaign has confirmed for us all that the lies, exaggeration and misrepresentations that have been the mainstay of the current administration are also the political strategy of their candidates. The real facts just don't seem to matter anymore - just like George Bush and Dick Cheney since 9/11/2001 and the case for the war in Iraq. Facts - the Republicans have figured out how to make them irrelevant.

One interesting example is the flag waving around McCain's history as a POW. Not to take anything away from his ordeal, bravery or honor; but is it really a qualification to be Commander in Chief as the Republicans would have us believe?

Here's a very interesting perspective by another POW who knows John not only from Hanoi, but also from his years at the Naval Academy. Read the link, or watch the video.

Doctor Phillip Butler is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war. He is a highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legion of Merits, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals.

After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is now a peace and justice activist with Veterans for Peace.
Why I will Not Vote for John McCain(www.military.com)





OMG - it's a post that isn't about Sarah Palin - guess she's turning into old news.

I'm becoming a fan

What can I say, Funny or Die is a great site.
Here's one I couldn't resist:

The new Republican slogan "A change you Deserve" is stolen from the makers of Effexor,a anti-depressant. Something we will all need if McCain gets elected. I guess the slogan is true enough...

Anyway... check out this video; the disclaimers are great!

See more Adam "Ghost Panther" McKay videos at Funny or Die

I think I'll buy stock in Wyeth; the makers of Effexor!