DebateGate

Totally proof positive that Republicans are full of hate and rage and will boo their own man if he refuses to endorse their Hannity-infused lies, distortions and Utter Bullshit.

More and more, I'm convinced more and more that McCain is out to lose this race and drag down the hate-filled, bigoted evangelicals with him into oblivion.

McCain Faces Backlash Over Rabid Crowds

John McCain was booed by his own supporters during a rally on Friday after he described Barack Obama as a "decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."

McCain was responding to a town hall attendee who claimed he was concerned about raising a child under a president who "cohorts with domestic terrorists such as [Bill] Ayers." Despite the fact that McCain and his campaign have repeatedly used Ayers to hammer Obama in recent days, the Arizona Senator tried to calm the man.

"[Senator Obama] is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared about as President of the United States," he said, before adding: "If I didn't think I would be one heck of a better president I wouldn't be running."

The crowd groaned with disapproval.

Later, McCain was again pressed about Obama's "other-ness" and again he refused to play ball. "I don't trust Obama," a woman said. "I have read about him. He's an Arab."

"No, ma'am," McCain said several times, shaking his head in disagreement. "He's a decent, family man, [a] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about."

At another point, McCain declared, "If you want a fight, we will fight. But we will be respectful. I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments." Supporters booed then also. "I don't mean that has to reduce your ferocity," McCain responded. "I just mean to say you have to be respectful."

The episode reflected the intensity of the anger that many McCain-Palin supporters have for Obama -- anger that was stoked, in large part, by McCain itself. It also underscored just how difficult a situation McCain has walked himself into. Hours before he attempted to calm nerves, the Senator's campaign sent out a statement to reporters defending the remarks of its crowd members.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/10/mccain-defends-his-rabid_n_133710.html

Hoover vs. Roosevelt?

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, October 10, 2008; A19

Hope vs. fear, new vs. old: Barack Obama and John McCain have placed their bets. These are the terms on which the 2008 presidential campaign will be decided.

That's why it's unfair for political bystanders to attack Obama and McCain for offering few specifics as to how they'd fix an ailing economy. And it's foolish to ask them to jettison their campaign promises in order to pay homage to the God of Balanced Budgets.

Each campaign has given voters ample notice about the inclinations, temperaments, habits, philosophical leanings and advisers they would bring to the White House. That's enough.

Piles of prescriptions would be useless because this crisis is moving so fast. New ideas could become obsolete in a few days -- or require substantial redrafting on the run, as happened with McCain's sketchy mortgage purchase plan floated during Tuesday's debate.

In this financial catastrophe, last week's unthinkable idea quickly becomes this week's imperative. The Bush administration is wisely contemplating following the lead of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in having government take ownership shares in many banks to get them more cash and allow them to lend again.

If Obama had suggested such a thing, he would have been condemned as a socialist and the administration might well have had to shelve a necessary idea. Better that the candidates acknowledge that they are powerless until after Nov. 4.

As for cutting back on their programs because the government is spending and lending so much to save the economy, the candidates should just say no to the deficit carpers.

Yes, the federal government faces a huge deficit, bloated during eight years in which many of those now crying out for fiscal responsibility put up little resistance when the administration started two wars and cut taxes at the same time. Where were these deficit hawks then?

The time to balance budgets is when the economy is humming. Now, the government is obligated not only to prop up the economy but also to bring back long-term growth. That will require transformative investments in infrastructure, health care, education and new green technologies.

If you think the number of Americans without health insurance is too high now, wait until this recession really kicks in. Few investments would help businesses more than offloading a share of their health-care costs to the government. It's social justice with an economic kick.

In fact, if these various bailout plans work, the government should get much of its money back during an economic recovery. If they don't work, balancing the budget will be the least of our problems. The short-term costs of healing the economy should be considered apart from the rest of the budget. We should create a separate Economic Recovery Authority to handle the outflow and (we hope) inflow of cash from various bailout plans.

Obama and McCain are giving us a clear sense of who they are and how they would lead. It would seem that Obama has been studying the 1932 campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The key to Roosevelt's victory was not a big program but a jaunty sense of optimism in the midst of despair that led to his signature inaugural line -- "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Less famously, Roosevelt declared in his acceptance speech that "this is no time for fear, for reaction or for timidity."

In recent days, Obama has painted himself as calm, pragmatic, open and hopeful. He seemed to be channeling FDR when he told a crowd in Indianapolis on Wednesday: "This isn't a time for fear or for panic. This is a time for resolve and steady leadership."

As for McCain, his campaign is trying to sow fear and panic about Obama. That's exactly what Herbert Hoover tried to do with Roosevelt. Days before the 1932 election, Hoover attacked Roosevelt's "inchoate New Deal." He predicted it would "crack the timbers of the Constitution" and warned voters to beware of the "glitter of promise."

Hoover stopped short of declaring Roosevelt a celebrity. But Donald A. Ritchie reports in his excellent 2007 book, "Electing FDR," that Hoover saw Roosevelt as "his weakest and most vulnerable" foe and "did not respect him as a political rival." McCain conveys unmistakably that he feels the same way about "that one" running against him.

It's too early to predict that the 2008 campaign will turn out like the one in 1932. But history suggests that in American elections, the candidate who underestimates his opponent often loses, and hope almost always beats fear.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/09/AR2008100902331_pf.html

October 10, 2008
Letter
Prosecuting Weathermen

To the Editor:

Re “Politics of Attack” (editorial, Oct. and “Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths” (front page, Oct. 4):

As the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s (I was then chief of the criminal division in the Eastern District of Michigan and took over the Weathermen prosecution in 1972), I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child.

Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen.

Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago.

I do take issue with the statement in your news article that the Weathermen indictment was dismissed because of “prosecutorial misconduct.” It was dismissed because of illegal activities, including wiretaps, break-ins and mail interceptions, initiated by John N. Mitchell, attorney general at that time, and W. Mark Felt, an F.B.I. assistant director.

William C. Ibershof

Mill Valley, Calif., Oct. 8, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinion/l10ayers.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

I remember how you guys all took all kinds of umbrage at anyone daring to have the audacity to even suggest that Bush and/or anyone working for him would ever be listening to ANYONE other than a terrorist in the middle of the desert as he holds a bomb in his hand as he talks to his American supporter.

Now we know, Bush gave power to a bunch of knuckle headed fratboys who abused their power that he had no right to give them in the first place.

Bush Lied.  How long till it comes out that the rest of that statement comes out?*




ABC Report: NSA ‘Routinely’ Listened In On Americans’ Phone Calls, Passed Around ‘Salacious’ Bits

bushpoint.jpgEver since President Bush confirmed the existence of a National Security Administration wiretapping program in late 2005, he has insisted it is aimed only at terrorists’ calls and protects Americans’ civil liberties:

    – If somebody from al Qaeda is calling you, we’d like to know why. … In the meantime, this program is conscious of people’s civil liberties, as am I. This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America — and I repeat: limited. [1/1/06]

    – This is a — I repeat to you, even though you hear words, “domestic spying,” these are not phone calls within the United States. It’s a phone call of an al Qaeda, known al Qaeda suspect, making a phone call into the United States. I’m mindful of your civil liberties. [1/23/06]

    – People who analyze the program fully understand that America’s civil liberties are well protected. There is a constant check to make sure that our civil liberties of our citizens are treated with respect. [2/28/08]

However, ABC News reports that the NSA frequently listened to and transcribed the private phone calls of Americans abroad, according to two former military intercept operators. These conversations included those of American soldiers stationed in Iraq and American aid workers abroad, such as Doctors Without Borders:

    [Former Navy Arab linguist David Murfee] Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of “cuts” that were available on each operator’s computer.

    “Hey, check this out,” Faulk says he would be told, “there’s good phone sex or there’s some pillow talk, pull up this call, it’s really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, ‘Wow, this was crazy’,” Faulk told ABC News. […]

    “We knew they were working for these aid organizations,” [former Army Reserves Arab linguist Adrienne] Kinne told ABC News. “They were identified in our systems as ‘belongs to the International Red Cross’ and all these other organizations. And yet, instead of blocking these phone numbers we continued to collect on them,” she told ABC News.

Kinne called Bush’s assurances that the U.S. was only tracking phone calls of a “known al Qaeda suspect” “completely a lie.” Click here to watch ABC’s report.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/09/wiretapping-whistleblowers/







*The full statement is usually "Bush Lied, People Died".

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/10/05/vp_debate_pushed_undecided_voters_to_obama.html

VP Debate Pushed Undecided Voters to Obama
An Ipsos/McClatchy poll found that Gov. Sarah Palin's performance in last week's vice presidential debate actually hurt her running mate, Sen. John McCain, among undecided voters.

Before the debate, undecided voters were leaning 56% to 44% for McCain. The day after the debate, the numbers tilted 52% to 48% for Sen. Barack Obama.

Said pollster Clifford Young: "It's suggesting an overall tendency of undecideds toward Obama, so it is significant. We're catching an underlying trend that's going on."

The poll also found that Sen. Joe Biden won the debate, 54% to 46%.

Let the blaming of "anyone else but the GOP president" begin.

You know?  I just so absolutely disgusted with how the right is trying to spin and massage and validate and obfuscate for Sarah Palin and her absolute lack of any justifiable answers to most of the questions that she was asked by Katie Couric on CBS.

It has absolutely gotten to the ridiculous extremes of asking those of us who acknowledge reality and, at first, politely stated that Palin may want to find other ways to occupy her time back in Alaska as governor of that state rather than attempting to fake it till she makes it as a VP candidate. 

With all due respect to those here, it came as an absolute shock to my senses when those on the right not only didn't acknowledge that Palin has a stark lack of ability to speak sensibly on most of the subjects Couric asked her about but then went on to try and proclaim any number of excuses for her blatant lack of ability.

The FACT that she knows less about the major subjects of our time in the nation as a whole totally obliterates the comparison of "experience" between she and Barack Obama as far as a simple resume' is concerned.  Yes, her resume' shows she is Governor of a large land mass with less of a population than Chicago and yes, she was a mayor of a small town in Alaska and all that, on its face, does give the appearance that maybe she is qualified to run as a candidate for the VP.

(Aside:  Regardless of how the VP candidate is viewed in regards to the campaign of the person running first on the ticket for the presidency, the person running second should also be put through the paces to make sure that person would make a competent president in the event of the loss of the person in the presidency.  We can give them a pass on some things but they should have, at the very least, a passing grade for presidency.)

Barack Obama is a Senator from Illinois who, yes, has spent most of his time in that office, effectively running for the presidency.  Prior to being a US Senator, he was a state Senator, so his resume' is not so stinky.  He's been around.  If you, for fun's sake converted their two resume's into weights based on just the two each jobs, I would say they come out VERY close.

But, as any of those of us who have conducted interviews, a candidate for a job might have a resume' that sparkles but when they come before you and you get to meet that person and figuratively kick the tires, that is where the judgment comes in.  There are differences that come through after you meet them that you can't detect through their resume'.  Often times, that person with the sparkler can turn out to be a real dumbass not have the full set of tools we're looking for in this position.

The one particularly bad answer that Palin offered to Couric follows.  I have included the question as well.

     COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? … Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

    PALIN: Ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions.

Normally, I would try to say something along the lines of "Now, to me, it appears that Palin has missed the mark on this one or got confused or something" but knowing all the other totally blown opportunities that Palin was given in the interview and having heard her unbelievably snarky speech at the convention, I'm not inclined to give the slightest benefit of the doubt.

While checking her notecards a couple of times, the woman gives an answer to what can only be a totally different question.  My friends, the bailout has absolutely nothing to do with health care reform.  It has nothing to do with reining in spending.  It has nothing to to with reducing taxes.  The question asked why not bailout Main Street rather than Wall Street.

Baffling with bullshit is a time-honored tradition in Washington.  We've all seen.  Talk for a minute or two about the subject but never make a statement; but, on the whole, the baffling bullshit should be tied to the subject at hand.

The woman is woefully uninformed.  That's all there is to it.

What I have found particularly frightening and stupefying to say the least, is how some of you (some I even respect and a couple I highly respect) have refused to acknowledge this basic fact.  Particularly distressing is how you've literally embraced her utter ignorance on basic questions.  Going so far as to say that she's "like us" or she's "folksy" or "rough around the edges".  It is seriously unbelievable to me.

When Bush was running against Gore in 2000, it was often stated that Bush was "like us" by many folk.  My reply to those folk was always along the lines of, "When I hear him answer a question, it usually sounds like something I would say in answer to said question and I had no idea or only a vague understanding of the subject.  And I know I'm not qualified to be president, so I don't want that bastard in there either."  Sadly, as most of us now know (but some again won't even acknowledge), Bush was not qualified to be president of these United States.

When I hear Palin answer questions, I have a similar thought run through my head: "I know I'm still not qualified to run for the presidency but I think I know more than her about these subjects!  So, that means I, for damned sure, don't want her in the White House for anything other than taking a guided tour."

Friends, I'm begging you in all seriousness, acknowledge the mistakes that McCain and his campaign have made with this woman and let her go back to Alaska.  If you can't vote for Obama, at least stay home or vote for Bob Barr or do as I did in 2004 and write in who you think should be the president.