GETTING TO KNOW YOU

The plan

http://www.slate.com/id/2198856/
As one McCain aide put it: "We either get Hillary's voters and we win, or we don't. It's not a mystery." . . . [read on]

How’s that working for ya?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/30/144854/735
[USAT] There is also wide uncertainty about whether [Palin is] qualified to be president. In the poll, taken Friday, 39% say she is ready to serve as president if needed, 33% say she isn't and 29% have no opinion.

That's the lowest vote of confidence in a running mate since the elder George Bush chose then-Indiana senator Dan Quayle to join his ticket in 1988. . . .

Among Democratic women — including those who may be disappointed that New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton did not win the Democratic nomination — 9% say Palin makes them more likely to support McCain, 15% less likely.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003844485
From Rasmussen: Some 38% of men said they were more likely to vote for McCain now, but only 32% of women. By a narrow 41% to 35% margin, men said she was not ready to be president -- but women soundly rejected her, 48% to 25%.

Only 9% of Obama supporters said they might be more likely to vote for McCain. . . .

And by a 29/44 margin, men and women together, they do not believe that she is ready to be President.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/30/worst_pick_ever.html
[Del Ali, the president of Research 2000] Sarah Palin will wow cultural conservatives in areas where they may not have come out to vote before the selection. This is right out of Karl Rove's strategy of getting more of your own to show up and vote. . . .

In fact, as Palin's cultural views become better known -- she oppose abortion in all cases and opposes the use of birth control pills and condoms even among married couples -- she will undoubtedly scare the hell out of the soccer moms and 98% of Hillary voters. In fact, many of these women may feel insulted by this choice in that McCain and the GOP think they are stupid and would bypass their own interest (reproductive and economic) to vote for the ticket due to gender and anger that Hillary was not the nominee.

In my estimation as a pollster and analyst, while historic for the GOP in selecting their first woman on a national ticket, this choice may be the worst selection by a major party nominee for President in modern times.

More assessments of her qualifications

Presidential scholars: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/13001.html
Presidential scholars say she appears to be the least experienced, least credentialed person to join a major-party ticket in the modern era. . . .

The people who know her best: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/30/1296/05455
[Fairbanks] She has never publicly demonstrated the kind of interest, much less expertise, in federal issues and foreign affairs that should mark a candidate for the second-highest office in the land. . . . Most people would acknowledge that, regardless of her charm and good intentions, Palin is not ready for the top job.

[Anchorage] "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? said [State Senate President Lyda Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla]. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

Dermot Cole, a longtime columnist for Alaska's second largest newspaper, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, called McCain's choice of Palin "reckless" and questioned her credentials. "Sarah Palin's chief qualification for being elected governor was that she was not Frank Murkowski," Cole said of her enormously unpopular predecessor, who lost favor with Alaskans in part because of unpopular budget cuts. "She was not elected because she was a conservative. She was not elected because of her grasp of issues or because of her track record as the mayor of Wasilla."

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014477.php
Mike Doogan, a former columnist now serving as a Democrat in the state legislature: "John McCain looked all over the United States to find the single Republican who is qualified to be, as the saying goes, a heartbeat away from the presidency, and he came up with Sarah Palin. Really? ... [L]et's be honest here. Her resume is as thin as the meat in a vending machine sandwich.... The long and short of it is this: We're not sure she's a competent governor of Alaska. And yet McCain, who is no spring chicken, has decided she's the best choice to replace him as president if he should win and then fall afoul of the Grim Reaper. Sarah Palin? Really?"

The Anchorage Daily News' Gregg Erickson: "[Palin] tends to oversimplify complex issues, has had difficulty delegating authority, and clearly has some difficulty distinguishing the line between her public responsibilities and private wishes.... It is clear that she has not paid much attention to the nitty-gritty unglamorous work of government, of gaining consensus, and making difficult compromises. She seems to be of the view that politics should be all rather simple. That often appeals to the wider public, but frustrates those who see themselves as laboring in the less glamorous parts of the vineyard."

[Steve Benen] Erickson's description kind of makes Palin sound like George W. Bush, doesn't it?

From the Right: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014478.php
Charles Krauthammer: "The Palin selection completely undercuts the argument about Obama's inexperience and readiness to lead . . .”

Ramesh Ponnuru called it "tokenism," adding, "Can anyone say with a straight face that Palin would have gotten picked if she were a man?"

David Frum: "The longer I think about it, the less well this selection sits with me. And I increasingly doubt that it will prove good politics. The Palin choice looks cynical.... It's a wild gamble, undertaken by our oldest ever first-time candidate for president in hopes of changing the board of this election campaign. Maybe it will work. But maybe (and at least as likely) it will reinforce a theme that I'd be pounding home if I were the Obama campaign: that it's John McCain for all his white hair who represents the risky choice, while it is Barack Obama who offers cautious, steady, predictable governance.... If it were your decision, and you were putting your country first, would you put an untested small-town mayor a heartbeat away from the presidency?"

Kathryn Jean Lopez: "As much as I loathe Obama-Biden, I can't in good conscience vote for a McCain-Palin ticket. Palin has absolutely no experience in foreign affairs. Considering both McCain's advanced age and the state of the world today, it is essential that the veep be exceedingly qualified to assume the office of president. I simply don't have any confidence in Palin's ability to deal effectively with Iran, Russia, China, etc." [Update: Lopez was quoting an email, not expressing her actual views. My apologies.]

Mark Halperin: "On the face of it, McCain has failed the ultimate test that any presidential candidate must face in picking a running mate: selecting someone who is unambiguously qualified to be president."

Other newspaper editorials and pundits: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/30/12216/4556

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/31/74321/7385

McCain’s decision-making

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/30/7368/15830
[LAT] Though John McCain clearly concluded that Palin could attract female voters and grab his campaign some Barack Obama-style media buzz, he also is taking a risk that in elevating a largely unknown figure, he undermines the central theme of his candidacy that he puts "country first," above political calculations. . . .

For a candidate known to possess a quick temper and an unpredictable political streak, the decision raises questions about how McCain would lead -- whether his decisions would flow from careful deliberations or gut checks in which short-term considerations or feelings outweigh the long view.

"Americans like risk-takers, but they also want to know that in times of crisis, you're going to be calm," said Matthew Dowd, who was a senior campaign strategist for President Bush but is neutral in the McCain-Obama race. . . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014480.php
[Steve Benen] A top "loyal Bushie" told the Politico's Mike Allen that McCain's decision is "disrespectful to the office of the presidency." That's actually a pretty good way of characterizing it. . . .

[Andrew Sullivan] "Palin isn't the issue here. McCain's judgment is. It's completely off the wall. Is there something wrong with him?"

That may sound like a flippant question, but it deserves a serious answer. Is there something wrong with him? Might this be evidence of some kind of impulse problem, as reflected in his shoot-first, think-second approach to foreign policy?

When I think about the respect that John McCain had worked so hard to develop, the stature he'd taken years to cultivate, and the reputation he'd built his career on, it's breathtaking to see him throw it all away. If there's a more complete collapse in modern political times, from hero to clown, I can't think of it.

We're poised to learn a great deal about Sarah Palin, but we've just learned even more about John McCain. He's fundamentally unsuited for the presidency.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/killing_the_brand.php
[Matt Yglesias] What you see with the Palin pick, from a political strategy point of view, is I think the McCain campaign’s focus on winning the news cycle taken to a myopic and senseless extreme. The case for Palin in news cycle terms, is pretty good:

1. Crazy pick utterly stomps on the Democratic Convention as a news story.
2. Choosing a woman gives the tired PUMA story new legs.
3. Crazy pick confuses Democratic oppo research and gets into Obama OODA loop.
4. Palin is a hard-right conservative who the base loves so no dissonance.

Crazy pick fits “maverick” image. But when you think about points two and four more seriously, the pick doesn’t make sense. There really are self-identified Democrats who seem resistant to Barack Obama. But there’s very little evidence that their resistance is driven by their ovaries. It’s actually a disproportionately male group. Instead, Obama-skeptical Democrats are older, hawkish, and perhaps not buying Obama as an economic populist. Is going with a young, transparently underqualifed woman with orthodox economic views really such a great way to reach these people? In fact, it’s a terrible way. And the other three Palin virtues, from a news cycle POV, all depend on the fact that it would be crazy to pick Sarah Palin.

Which leaves you, basically, with the fact that this is a crazy pick. In particular, it goes against the image McCain is trying to paint of himself as the serious, sober-minded choice in difficult times. This is not a “country first” pick, it’s an “I have a personal beef with Mitt Romney” pick. Nor does a VP whose most noteworthy quality is that she’s less corrupt than other Alaska Republicans do anything to distance McCain from Bushism — we’ve now gone from one alleged maverick who agrees with Bush about everything to two alleged mavericks who agree with Bush about everything. And that’s all really the best case scenario — normally VP choices don’t make much of a difference politically, but a VP candidate with no experience dealing with the national media who the candidate himself has barely spoken to risks an Eagelton Scenario. Nobody’s going to care in two months about the good coverage on the morning of August 29, but they might care about some horrific gaffe or skeleton in the closet.

Most fundamentally, I think this pick violates the contemporary understanding of the role of the Vice Presidency. With the exception of the four Bush-Quayle years, ever since 1977 we’ve had a POTUS-VPOTUS team that features a charismatic outsider at the top of the ticket (Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush II) backed by a seasoned Washington hand (Mondale, Bush I, Gore, Cheney) with “charismatic outsiderishness” generally being an asset, but an asset whose value is enhanced by showing some humility and good sense by bringing a veteran on board. McCain is reaching back to an outdated model of casually made choices. It’s hardly a crippling blow to the campaign, as such, but over time it’s going to seem increasingly dissonant — it looks and feels wrong, not at all like what we’ve come to expect from a Vice President.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12997.html
6 things the Palin pick says about McCain . . . [read on]

“McCain’s sexist pick”

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=mccains_sexist_vp_pick
[Ann Friedman] John McCain's decision to pick Sarah Palin as his running mate is the perfect end to several weeks in which we saw Republicans make weak claims that theirs is the party of women's rights.

Last month, Bill Kristol was predicting that McCain would choose Palin because "Republicans are much more open to strong women." (He also decried the "horrible sexism and misogyny" Hillary Clinton faced in the Democratic primary, but somehow failed to mention his own comment during the primary that, "white women are a problem, that's, you know -- we all live with that.") As recently as last week he was railing against the "Democrats' glass ceiling." And today, FOX News was already crowing, "Looks like the glass ceiling hasn't been broken by Hillary Clinton, but by Senator McCain."

Palin's addition to the ticket takes Republican faux-feminism to a whole new level. As Adam Serwer pointed out on TAPPED, this is in fact a condescending move by the GOP. It plays to the assumption that disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters did not care about her politics -- only her gender. In picking Palin, Republicans are lending credence to the sexist assumption that women voters are too stupid to investigate or care about the issues, and merely want to vote for someone who looks like them. As Serwer noted, it's akin to choosing Alan Keyes in an attempt to compete with Obama for votes from black Americans. . . . [read on]

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014475.php

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/the_sexism_of_the_palin_pick.php

Palin’s Buchananite background, and the Jewish vote

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/29/231114/892

Buchanan and women: http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/palins-buddy-pat-buchanan-on-women.html

Badly vetted

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211777.php

http://hatthief.blogspot.com/2008/08/vetting-sarah-palin-irl-stambaugh-walt.html

How a college sophomore helped make Palin VP

http://www.slate.com/id/2198949/

Some contrary views. Will attacks against Palin backfire? Will she benefit from the tyranny of low expectations?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211597.php

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/30/smart_tactical_pick.html

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjAzMTY0NmQ2NDBkYWNjMDE0NmQ4NDdmOTc2YWU0YzQ

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/cynical.html

The popular press gives her a pass (so far)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/maverick-mom-by-digby-im-back-now.html
[Digby] * CBS' Schieffer asserted Palin was "against earmarks" and "bridge to nowhere" without noting her earmark requests, previous reported support for bridge

* AP falsely suggests Palin supports benefits for same-sex partners of state employees

* Media affix "maverick" label to Palin as well

* Fox News host set up false contrast between Palin and Biden, both of whom have sons going to Iraq

* Fox News graphic falsely claimed "Obama campaign disse[d] Palin for small town origins"

* With morning announcement of Palin pick comes morning sexism on cable news

* Mitchell falsely claimed McCain has not set a "threshold" for his VP to be "ready to step in on a moment's notice"

* Forbes.com claimed Palin "oppos[es]" earmarks -- but her administration said it requested them this year

* WSJ reported that Palin "highlighted her opposition" to "that bridge to nowhere" -- but not her previous reported support for it

Other news stories: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/30/17746/1987
Surprise? First Two National Polls Find Palin Gains LESS Support from Women

McCain hits campaign trail with risky VP pick

John McCain met running mate Sarah Palin just once

Pure genius or John McCain’s mad gamble? Sarah Palin choice stuns US

Palin on Ron Paul: "Right On!'

Sarah Palin: McCain's Insult to Women

Sarah Palin: Is she ready to lead?

My Palin prediction: She'll blow foreign policy

McCain's VP pick helps fundraising, draws scorn

Sarah Palin, Wrong Woman for the Job

Local Expert Weighs in on McCain's VP Choice

Roe and Griswold: according to the GOP platform, contraception is murder

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/we-know-mccain-palin-and-gop-will.html
[Joe Sudbay] Here's are a couple questions for any reporter who has access to the GOP ticket: Do John McCain and Sarah Palin want to reverse Griswold v. Connecticut? Do John McCain and Sarah Palin want to prohibit any forms of contraception? Do John McCain and Sarah Palin think "the pill" is a abortificant?

The kind of people they are

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/08/rnc_mulls_limbaugh_abortion_ja.html
Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh boosted Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's pro-life position and mocked Barack Obama on his radio show yesterday with a make-believe riff in which Obama asked Palin "When you found out your baby would be born with Down syndrome, did you consider killing it before or after the due date?"

Limbaugh's "humor" caught the fancy of the Republican National Committee, which, in an internal e-mail, proposed using the bit in a YouTube clip.

The e-mail, which was sent to RNC Communications Director Danny Diaz, and mistakenly to a Tribune reporter, was titled "wow...good YouTube potential..."

Two candidates who think it’s kinda funny to call your political opponent a “bitch”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/30/81444/5625

More: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/palin_took_heat_for_giggling_a.php

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/sarah_palin_feminist.php
[Matt Yglesias] All the women I know think it’s hilarious to express your political disagreements with female legislators by using the term “bitch” and mocking their physical appearance . . .

Don’t talk to me about experience. She ran for the PTA!

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/mccain-impressed-by-palins-courageous.html

On personality and policy. Eventually, this race is going to get back to the question of governance. Let’s look at how Palin governed

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/sarah_palin_and_taxes.html
[Kevin Drum] So here's an interesting thing about Alaska governor Sarah Palin: she's a tax raiser. Last September she proposed a new state tax plan called ACES, and by November she had successfully pushed it through the Alaska legislature in a special session. ACES had two goals. First, it replaced a year-old plan called PPT that was mired in corruption and was widely distrusted. No problem there. Second, it was designed to increase revenue. PPT had raised revenues by $1 billion, but that was still less than everyone expected. So Palin's plan increased that by another $700 million.

But it gets even more interesting. ACES, of course, is a tax on the oil industry . . . [read on]

More: http://cliffschecter.firedoglake.com/2008/08/30/sarah-palin-bad-news-for-mccain-good-news-for-alaskas-gop/

Protestors rounded up in the Twin Cities in advance of the Republican convention

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/30/police_raids/index.html

http://cliffschecter.firedoglake.com/2008/08/30/more-protesters-arrested-in-the-twin-cities/

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/30/inside-an-rnc-raid/

http://rncprotests.notlong.com

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/30/rnc-stasi-sweeps-a-bob-fletcher-special/

BREAKING NEWS: Cindy McCain is “offended” by attacks on her husband

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/08/cindy-mccain-te.html

What McCain will do with the CIA (thanks to Mark Kleiman for the link)

http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/08/why-cia-veterans-are-scared-of-mccain.html

Trouble with the Iraq troop withdrawal agreement

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq31-2008aug31,0,1340700.story

Fundamentally unserious

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211591.php
Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush's advisers assert that many Americans may have forgotten that. So they want Congress to say so and "acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans." . . .

Sunday talk show line-ups

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/30/AR2008083001996.html
FOX NEWS SUNDAY: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

THIS WEEK (ABC): Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Cindy McCain, wife of John McCain.

FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.); senior McCain campaign adviser Carly Fiorina and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R).

MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.

LATE EDITION (CNN): Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.); Boehner; Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.); Pawlenty; South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R); Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R); McCain campaign adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer; Obama adviser Anita Dunn; FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison; former GOP candidate Fred Thompson and ex-Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle.

Bonus item: the GOP ticket as sitcom

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/29/141112/083
HE is an ex-POW turned multimillionaire. He has power, wealth, and more houses than most people have ties. But can anything -- or anyone -- calm his savage temper, and teach him to love again?

SHE's a young creationist who knows little about politics and is in trouble with the law. He'll take her in -- but can he teach her the ways of Washington before she embarrasses him at the big Telecom Ball?

Find out this fall on Dharma and Methuselah . . . [read on]

More: http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_08_24_archive.html#7550028405876136717

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

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- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:03 AM

 
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

McCain rolls the dice, big time. One thing the selection of Sarah Palin shows is that he believed he had to do something dramatic to change the dynamic of this election. So he picked a fundie Christian, creationist, pro-ANWR drilling, “Feminist for Life,” NRA member, ex-beauty queen.

(And, p.s. – she needs a voice coach.)

I’m not one for predictions, but I predict that within a month this will be viewed as a disastrous choice. I even think it is possible that before this is all over she will have to step down (“for family reasons,” no doubt) and be replaced with someone else. Either way, McCain just lost this election

Who is Sarah Palin?

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/who_is_sarah_palin.php

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/29/183255/841

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/29/palintology/

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/08/fun_facts_to_know_and_tell.php

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014465.php

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/29/211138/562

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/08/palindrone.html

Reaction from Obama

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_campaign_someone_with_ze_1.php
"Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies -- that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same."

Reactions from the punditry

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014471.php

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/more_reaction_to_palin.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/29/palin_points/index.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/29/163828/859

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/29/163944/641

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/29/104243/090

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/30/65920/3910

Reactions from the Republicans

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/gop_strategists_mixed_reviews.php
[Marc Ambinder] A few I spoke with or e-mailed were optimistic, using phrases like "brilliant" and "game-changing." One GOP strategist who has worked with Palin says she's coated with Teflon -- "attack at your peril." She "renews McCain's maverick credentials." One person close to Romney said she "looks like a real reformer. She's done what Obama's talked about."

A few are cautiously optimistic that it'll turn out OK, but most of the strategists and consultants I've spoken to, e-mailed with, or read/watched are struggling with it. They expect her to have a good week... and then to crash and burn when she hits the campaign trail as scrutiny catches up with her.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/08/29/palin_pick_leaves_bruised_feel.html
[Anne Kornblut] Though it was high in shock value, the Palin pick left bruised feelings among the short-list contenders who were not picked -- and infuriated some Republican officials who privately said McCain had gone out on a limb, unnecessarily, without laying the groundwork for such an unknown. Two senior Republican officials close to Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty said they had both been rudely strung along and now "feel manipulated."

"They now know that they were used as decoys, well after McCain had decided not to pick them," one Republican involved in the process said.

Palin’s ALREADY embroiled in a scandal and under investigation in her home state, and while the particulars of the case are rather sordid and muddled, the FACT of her lying about them is a bad introduction to the country. Do you want a VP candidate whose main line for the next two months is “I believe that in the end I will be exonerated”?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211310.php
[Josh Marshall] Gov. Palin is embroiled in her own trooper-gate scandal up in Alaska. In short, she's accused of using her pull as governor to get her ex-brother-in-law fired as a state trooper. The brother-in-law is embroiled in an ugly divorce and custody with Palin's sister. And after his boss wouldn't fire the brother-in-law, she fired the boss. Palin originally insisted there was nothing to the story. More recently, she was forced to admit the one of her top deputies had pushed to get the guy fired.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/ak_gov_says_staffer_pressed_for_troopers_firing.php
[Kate Klonick] In today's conference, Palin said that state troopers had taped a phone call from Frank Bailey, Palin's director of boards and commissions whom she appointed last August, in which Bailey inquired about having Wooten fired.

At the press conference today, Palin distanced herself from Bailey's actions claiming that he acted alone, but the recordings suggest that he was acting at her instigation. . . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211483.php
[Josh Marshall] This is a perilous story for Palin and McCain. I flagged some of the details earlier in the day. But this is the kind of story, the kind of investigation, where it is highly unlikely that Palin hasn't made public false statements about her involvement in what happened. I think that's generous. As always in cases like this, the question is whether anyone can prove it. There are a couple investigations -- one under the auspices of the state legislature and another of the state Attorney General, which she either supported or 'requested'. That latter investigation already surfaced taped phone calls that forced Palin walk back her original denials and admit that her aides had pressed for the firings, just without her knowledge.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211524.php
[Josh Marshall] The Post's James Grimaldi got an exclusive interview with Walter Monegan, the canned Alaska Public Safety Commissioner at the center of Palin trooper-gate scandal. And he basically says Palin is lying in her assertion that while some of her aides contacting Monegan about firing her brother-in-law, that she herself did not.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/08/exclusive_chief_fired_by_palin.html
The July firing of Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan by Gov. Sarah Palin, who was announced as John McCain's running mate on Friday, has unearthed a stream of soap-opera-like details about Palin, her husband, her family and top state appointees. The controversy has also cut against Palin's reputation for holding an ethical line and standing up to colleagues in the Republican Party over matters of principle.

Monegan, 57, a respected former chief of the Anchorage Police Department, said in an interview with The Washington Post's James V. Grimaldi on Friday that the governor repeatedly brought up the topic of her ex-brother-in-law, Michael Wooten, after Monegan became the state's commissioner of public safety in December 2006. Palin's husband, Todd, met with Monegan and presented a dossier of information about Wooten, who was going through a bitter custody battle with Palin's sister, Molly. Monegan also said Sarah Palin sent him e-mails on the subject, but Monegan declined to disclose them, saying he planned to give them to a legislative investigator looking into the matter.

Palin initially denied that she or anyone in her administration had ever pressured Monegan to fire the trooper, but this summer acknowledged more than a half a dozen contacts over the matter, including one phone call from a Palin administration official to a state police lieutenant. The call was recorded and was released by Palin's office this month. Todd Palin told a television reporter in Alaska that he did meet with Monegan, but said he was just "informing" Monegan about the issue, not exerting pressure.

"She never directly asked me to fire him," Monegan said.

But he said Todd Palin told him Wooten "shouldn't be a trooper. I've tried to explain to him, you can't head hunt like this. What you need to do is back off, because if the trooper does make a mistake, and it is a terminable offense, it can look like political interference.

"I think he's emotionally committed in trying to see that his former brother-in-law is punished."

The allegation against Palin, "undercuts one of the points they are making that she is an ethical reformer," said Democratic state Sen. Hollis French, who is managing a $100,000 investigation into the firing of Walter Monegan.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/palins_post-scandal_appointee_served_just_two_weeks.php
[Kate Klonick] It looks like there's even more muck than meets the eye in Trooper-Gate.

After the allegedly improper firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) appointed former Kenai Police Chief Chuck Kopp to the post.

Kopp served just two weeks this summer as the head of law enforcement in Alaska, resigning on July 25, after a past complaint of sexual harassment and a subsequent letter of reprimand surfaced in news reports.

But Palin made sure he had a soft fall for grace, giving him a $10,000 severance package for just two weeks served.

More: http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/08/gov_lsos_rak.php

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/palin_probe_could_mean_election.php

http://www.adn.com/monegan/story/492964.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5687512&page=1
Palin is likely to be deposed soon in the case, according to State Sen. Hollis French, who leads the state Senate's Legislative Counsel Committee.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211443.php
[Josh Marshall] Now we've learned she's invoked the Alaska version of executive privilege to withhold emails dealing with the case. . . .

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/30/mccain-campaign-sending-investigators-to-alaska-to-check-into-palins-troopergate-did-these-idiots-not-vet-her/
McCain Campaign Sending Investigators to Alaska to Check Into Palin’s Troopergate: Did these idiots not vet her? . . . [read on!]

On “experience.” It hardly needs to be said, but how can they EVER raise the issue about Obama again?

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/yet_more_palin.html
[Kevin Drum] I'm just stunned by the cynicism of the whole thing. I'm sure Palin is a fine person, loving mother, devoted wife, learning her way as governor, and so forth. But a heartbeat away from the presidency? Someone with virtually no serious political experience, and no serious experience of any other kind to make up for it? She's going to shake up Washington?

I don't know how she'll do on the stump or in the debates. Maybe she'll be great. Who knows? But a potential leader of the free world? You gotta be kidding.

http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2008/08/28/mccains-veep-speculation-hits-frenzy/
[Aug 28] McCain spokesman Ben Porritt offered, “McCain is going to pick a VP based on merit; a proven leader with sound judgment and well rounded experience that will give the public confidence that he/she is able to step in and govern at a moment’s notice.”

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_08_24_archive.html#4860173845081457854
[Atrios] Republican on MSNBC is arguing that Palin has much more experience than Joe Biden because all he did was run committees in the Senate.

By this logic Palin has much more experience than John McCain.

[NB: But . . . but . . . he was a P.O.W.!]

Now, if you have any concerns about Palin’s lack of experience, senior McCain advisor Charlie Black wants to reassure you (and I am NOT making this up)

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/top-mccain-aide-says-mccain-wont-die.html
[NYT] Mr. McCain’s advisers said Friday that Mr. McCain was well aware that Ms. Palin would be criticized for her lack of foreign policy experience, but that he viewed her as exceptionally talented and intelligent and that he felt she would be able to be educated quickly.

“She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long,” said Charlie Black. . .

Who said it?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014472.php
"I think he's going to make an intensely political choice, not a governing choice . . . He's going to view this through the prism of a candidate, not through the prism of president; that is to say, he's going to pick somebody that he thinks will on the margin help him . . . He's not going to be thinking big and broad about the responsibilities of president." . . .

"With all due respect again to Governor --- . . . a governor for three years, . . . able but undistinguished. . . . was mayor of the 105th largest city in America."

"So if he were to pick Governor ---, it would be an intensely political choice where he said, `You know what? I'm really not, first and foremost, concerned with, is this person capable of being president of the United States."

Ron Fournier, asshole

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080829/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_veepstakes_analysis
[AP] Analysis: Palin's age, inexperience rival Obama's

Palin on EYE-RAQ

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/sarah_palin_on_iraq.html
“The GOP agenda to ramp up domestic supplies of energy is the only way that we're going to become energy independent, the only way that we are going to become a more secure nation — and I say this, of course, looking at the situation we are in right now, at war, not knowing what the plan is to ever end the war that we're engaged in, understanding that Americans are seeking solutions, and they are seeking resolution in this war effort, so energy supplies, being able to produce and supply domestically, is going to be a big part of that.”

Hear it: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/29/plan-mccain-iraq-plan/

Separated at birth? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R84a7njTd0

On “The Surge”

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/29/palin_iraq/index.html
In an interview with Alaska Business Monthly shortly after she took office in 2007, Palin was asked about the upcoming surge. She said she hadn't thought about it. "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq," she said.

Her foreign policy experience

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211284.php
Fox: Alaska is Next to Russia!

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014467.php

On Big Oil and Big Mining

http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/08/29/palin-oil-champ/

http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2008/08/sarah-palin-mcc.html

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/29/sarah-palin-maverick-for-mining-interests/
According to the Alaska TV news station KTUU where Gov. Palin “appeared occasionally as a television sportscaster,” Palin was so determined to defeat a Clean Water ballot measure this summer that she broke the law to oppose it . . .

On ANWR drilling

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/hear_sarah_palin_talk_about_wi.php

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/palin_could_prompt_mccain_flip.php

On global warming

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/29/palin-globalwarming-manmade/
In an interview released today by Newsmax, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) — Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) newly minted running mate — was asked for her “take on global warming and how is it affecting our country.” “A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location,” Palin said, adding, “I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.”

More: http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/sarah-palin-wants-to-let-polar-bears.html

On creationism and church/state

http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2008/08/first-look-at-sarah-palins-religious.html

http://scienceblogs.com/afarensis/2006/10/27/intelligent_design_and_the_ala/

Feminist for Life

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/29/sarah_pahlin_and_feminists_for/

Buchananite, wingnut

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7830

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/29/231114/892

Her career as mayor

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/08/is_that_what_you_call_compassionate_conservatism.php
[Glenn Thrush] Palin, who portrays herself as a fiscal conservative, racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt as mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla — that amounts to $3,000 per resident. She argues that the debt was needed to fund improvements.

She doesn’t know what the VP does!

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7818
[Palin] "[A]s for that V.P. talk all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the V.P. does every day?”

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/29/105643/646

Hillary supporters? Palin calls her a whiner

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7818

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/flashback_palin_said_she_didnt.php

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014470.php

The women’s vote?

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/08/palindrone.html
[Joe Klein] Does the McCain campaign actually think that Hillary supporters will be lured to the ticket by a militant pro-lifer who also believes in the teaching of intelligent design?

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/29/184242/851
"Someone should stand up and say: 'I know Senator Clinton. Senator Clinton is a friend of mine. And Sarah Palin is no Hillary Rodham Clinton.'"

Someone did: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/08/29/palin_pick_leaves_bruised_feel.html
"I know Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton," Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in a phone interview with NBC.

More: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211543.php

The Ted Stevens (R-AK) connection

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/29/141257/329

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/palin_ad_starring_ted_stevens.php
[Greg Sargent] This morning, an ad from Sarah Palin's 2006 gubernatorial campaign featuring an endorsement from scandal-plagued Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was available on Palin's campaign Web site. . . .

. . . but now the Stevens ad has already been scrubbed. The link is no longer on her campaign site.

Luckily, the ad featuring Stevens and Palin is still available for your viewing pleasure! [Watch]

“The bridge to nowhere”

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014466.php

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014468.php

The pipeline to nowhere

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/08/doesnt_sound_like_reform_to_me.php
[Mark Kleiman] If Sarah Palin is such a free-marketeer, why is Alaska paying $500 million in subsidies to TransCanada to build a pipeline without even getting a guarantee that the pipeline will be built? And how does it look to have TransCanada lobbyist (pardon me, "former lobbyist") as her chief adviser on the transaction?

On earmarks

http://mediamatters.org/items/200808290024

Alaska, hotbed of corruption

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014464.php

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/poll_two_major_republican_incu.php

Kudos to my wife, who instantly recognized this as a last-second choice, insufficiently vetted and made for all the wrong reasons. And she’s dead right. Read this

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/08/how-palin-came.html
ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg reports: It wasn't until Sunday night that John McCain, after meeting with his four top advisers, finally decided he could not tap independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to be his running mate. One adviser, tasked with taking the temperature of the conservative base, had strongly made the case to McCain that it would be a disaster for the party and that the base would revolt. McCain concluded he could not go that route.

[NB: VERY reluctantly, I am sure]

The next day, McCain studied the three men at the top of his shortlist: Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. All had different strengths and negatives, but McCain was not satisfied. None of them had what McCain believed he needed to do -- and would have done -- with Lieberman. . . .

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's name was in the mix as an unconventional choice for months, but she had not been considered a front-runner.

[NB: McCain had only met her ONCE.]

So, over the next few days, with McCain continuing to believe he needed someone who had more of a maverick streak than his other choices, lawyers reviewed her vetting information. They kept their activities from even some in McCain's most senior inner circle. . . .

[NB: There, THAT tells you exactly what was going on. They knew those advisors would object, and they kept them out of the loop.]

The campaign secretly flew Palin into Dayton last night. She and McCain met privately for a couple of hours. McCain concluded she would "shake up the system" and was "a maverick," qualities he believed Lieberman would have brought to the ticket. But she also would appeal to conservatives -- which Lieberman most certainly would not have done.

After their meeting, McCain concluded he was comfortable with his choice. He notified Pawlenty this morning that he was going in a different direction.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/08/29/1307122.aspx
MCCAIN MET PALIN ONCE BEFORE YESTERDAY? [read on]

More: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/clarification_needed.php

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/29/104243/090
[Kos] John McCain clearly wanted Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman, but he was afraid to buck his party's choice ideologues. So then they looked at Mittens, but having a baker's dozen homes wasn't looking so hot. So he figured that with Pawlenty, he might make a play for Minnesota, but that got shot down over the last week as it become increasingly obvious that Biden would wipe the floor with him in their debate.

Throw in Obama's ground-shifting speech last night, and it was clear that McCain had to throw a hail mary to just remain in the game, much less be competitive. . . [read on]

People say that the VP choice, and how it is made, is the first “presidential” decision a candidate makes, and tells you about their manner and approach to decision-making. I think we just had something confirmed about McCain that we’ve suspected for a while

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211369.php
[Josh Marshall] What does this say about John McCain's judgment? Steadiness in key decision-making moments?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211538.php
[David Frum, GOP strategist] "It's a wild gamble, undertaken by our oldest ever first-time candidate for president in hopes of changing the board of this election campaign. Maybe it will work. But maybe (and at least as likely) it will reinforce a theme that I'd be pounding home if I were the Obama campaign: that it's John McCain for all his white hair who represents the risky choice, while it is Barack Obama who offers cautious, steady, predictable governance."

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/a-harriet-miers.html
A Harriet Miers Moment?

[Andrew Sullivan] Could this be McCain's Miers moment? Some readers think so: the point at which people suddenly realize that McCain is actually less interested in governing than in politics. And willing to let personal liking and respect for utterly unqualified people trump the sober responsibilities of running a country at war, a climate in flux, an economy in trouble, and an empire close to imploding.

One more thing: this was a bit of a F-U pick, a personal, totally idiosyncratic, gut-level, aggressive piece of opportunism. Yes he can! And yes, it does underline his maverick, out-of-the-box brand. It makes me like his empathy for gutsy young women, even former beauty queens (is there footage of her contest out there?). But it also makes me less comfortable with the idea of him as commander in chief. It seems a less steady choice than Biden.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/29/104611/395
[Trapper John] We're told that McCain really wanted to pick his old friend Joe Lieberman to run with him, but that Karl Rove and the rest of the elite Republican politburo nixed the idea, and told McCain that he had to take a conservative. And as he has at every step of his campaign, the one-time "maverick" sold out to the venal, icy core of the Republican leadership, and acquiesced by selecting Palin. Palin is really a Republican after Rove's heart

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/29/152756/456
[DemfromCT] Can we please stop hearing from the media about how brilliant Karl Rove and Steve Schmidt are? . . .

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014460.php

Useful facts

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7827
McCain's Been Running Longer Than Palin's Been Governing . . .

One thing we’re going to discover is the extent of intense lobbying for Palin behind the scenes by the neo-con establishment. The first mention I heard of Palin was from Bill Kristol, back in June. His fellow panelists on Fox News gawked at him, almost laughing, when he came out with this name

http://mediamatters.org/items/200806290001
[June 29] KRISTOL: Psychoanalyzing Bill Clinton is a tough role, a tough task. I think Hillary Clinton was gracious. She's put behind her the horrible sexism and misogyny the Democratic primary voters demonstrated, which I'm appalled by, personally. Never would have happened in the Republican Party. You know, we're -- Republicans are much more open to strong women. And that's why McCain's going to put Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, on the ticket as vice president.

WALLACE: Is that your prediction?

KRISTOL: That's my -- I'm moving from [Louisiana Gov. Bobby] Jindal to Palin. I'm being even bolder. She's fantastic, yeah. You know, she was the point guard on the Alaska state championship high school basketball team in 1982. She could take Obama one-on-one on the court. Be fantastic.

Anyway, I do think -- I actually think Sarah Palin would be a great vice presidential pick, and it would be interesting to actually -- to have a woman on the Republican ticket after Hillary Clinton has come so close and failed on the Democratic side.

JUAN WILLIAMS (National Public Radio correspondent and Fox News contributor): Well, I think -- how about Colin Powell on the McCain ticket? Don't you think that would be a winner?

KRISTOL: No, no, no.

WILLIAMS: No?

KRISTOL: That's, again, misogynist thinking. You're not --

WILLIAMS: Misogynist thinking.

KRISTOL: I think you've got to go for the gold here with Sarah Palin.

More: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/30/kristol-ball-palin/

38 million

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/38_million.php
[Eric Kleefeld] That's the estimate of how many people watched Obama's acceptance speech last night, according to Nielsen -- and that doesn't include people who watched on PBS or C-Span.

That's more Americans than watched the Olympics opening ceremony, the season finale of American Idol, or the Oscars.

Bouncing higher

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obamas_convention_bounce_grows_1.php
Gallup: 49/41

Remember how McCain was going to give Obama a run for his money over the Latino vote?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/29/14437/4859
In The Southwest, Obama Leads By 45

As predicted, the McCain campaign is now having to expend extra money for ads in red states they used to take for granted

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/source_mccain_significantly_ex.php

Bonus item: Weirdest interview ever

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/3597/only-in-alaska

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

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- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:37 AM

 
THE WOW FACTOR

We learned three important things last night during Obama's magnificent, historic speech. One is that Barack Obama isn’t going to cede the national security issue to McCain – there is an argument to be had over the DIRECTION of leadership and the MEANING of patriotism, and Obama is ready for that fight.

The second is that McCain better find a way to cut himself off from Bush in a complete and unambiguous way – because the Dems are going to hit him with “more of the same,” “the past and not the future,” and the burden of discredited Bush/Cheney policies from now until the election.

The third is that any pipedream the GOP might have had that they could pry off disaffected Hillary voters in any significant numbers is fading fast. They can put a woman in as VP if they want, but it won’t help them there.

Obama, and the Dems generally, looked and acted like winners already. Gore and Kerry looked reinvigorated – if they’d given speeches like these when they ran, they’d have won. The Dems have found the formula, it seems, and they finally, finally have the wind at their backs

Video: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211161.php

Text: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/the_full_text_of_obamas_speech.php

Winners

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/08/where_did_these_speeches_come_from.php

The McCain camp “responds”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0808/McCains_response.html?showall
"Tonight, Americans witnessed a misleading speech that was so fundamentally at odds with the meager record of Barack Obama. When the temple comes down, the fireworks end, and the words are over, the facts remain: Senator Obama still has no record of bipartisanship, still opposes offshore drilling, still voted to raise taxes on those making just $42,000 per year, and still voted against funds for American troops in harm's way. The fact remains: Barack Obama is still not ready to be president."

Watch this: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211147.php

Other reactions: the Right is apoplectic

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211150.php
Alex Castellanos' response on CNN. To understand the significance, you've got to know a bit about who Castellanos is -- a longtime, street-fighting Republican political consultant . . . In that context, Castellanos' response was very telling. He made no attempt to put the speech in any positive context for McCain. Midway through this clip he sounds like an Obama surrogate. And he concludes by saying that "whoever didn't get picked for Republican VP today may be a lucky Republican."

Across the spectrum: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/28/what_a_speech.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/29/74242/7095

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/29/2202/19858

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/28/235634/066
[Pat Buchanan] Called it the best convention speech ever.

A sampling from the progressive blogosphere

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211131.php

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obamas_speech_heavy_in_specifi.php

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014456.php

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2008/aug/29/barackobama.democrats2008

“The election of our lives”

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/28/the_election_of_our_lives/

Ron Fournier’s AP embarrasses itself

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211131.php
[Charles Babington, AP] Barack Obama, whose campaign theme is "change we can believe in," promised Thursday to "spell out exactly what that change would mean."

But instead of dwelling on specifics, he laced the crowning speech of his long campaign with the type of rhetorical flourishes that Republicans mock and the attacks on John McCain that Democrats cheer. . . .

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i1hZ6MCY9bP_GOk_4ueYvwwlZ1_QD92RM6303
[Jim Drinkard, AP] Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination Thursday night with a lofty vision for the nation's future that is far easier to articulate than to accomplish. . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/28/234732/092
[Kos] Babington wrote piece before Obama's speech was finished
Obama's speech ended just shy of 11 p.m. ET. Babington's attack piece was posted at: Aug 28, 11:26 PM EDT

The piece is 603 words. So we are to believe, that Babington watched the speech, gave it due consideration, wrote it, turned it in, had it go through editing, had it go through copyediting, and had it posted online -- all in 26 minutes?

[Keith Olbermann] Mr. Babington got the length of the speech wrong by at least 7 minutes. And this is analysis that will be printed in many, many newspapers, hundreds of them around the country. It is analysis that strikes me as having born no resemblance to the speech you and I just watch. None whatsoever. And for it to be distributed by the lone national news organization in terms of wire copy to newspapers around the country and websites is a remarkable failure of that news organization.

Charles Babington. Find. New. Work.

Warch: http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/ap-keeps-up-its-attack-on-obama.html

The rest of the press

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/29/early-morning-swimhttpfiredoglakecomwp-adminpost-newphp/

Bouncing

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/28/185342/440

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7786

Looking back: MLK’s speech 45 years ago

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/28/43413/1802

Looking back: JFK’s outdoor acceptance speech in 1960

http://www.juancole.com/2008/08/1960-democratic-convention-and-kennedys.html

Here’s a game to play at home

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/28/154540/353
Barack Obama is to John McCain as _____ is to ________. [read on]

Bush may not speak at the Republican convention after all. They say it’s to stay in DC and watch over hurricane damage (they’ve learned from Katrina, it seems) – but I can’t help feeling the McCain people have seriously rethought the benefits of having him there

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/28/bush_rnc_speech/index.html

George? George Who?

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003843971
[Greg Mitchell] The cover story in this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine considers George Bush and what it terms "His Final Days," with his view of his legacy - and John McCain - in the forefront. It's written by Peter Baker, the former Washington Post reporter now with the Times.

It opens with a scene from this past May when an uneasy Bush and McCain met for "14 seconds of ritual" on a tarmac for a press photo op. "That was May," Baker writes. "As of late this month, the president and the would-be successor from his own party have not spoken since."

Later Baker reveals: "McCain has not called the president for advice." . . . .

Bush aides "seethed" when McCain called conditions in post-Katrina New Orleans "disgraceful" this past April and "grievances nursed by both sides have only grown from there," Baker observes.

He describes Bush as feeling he needs McCain to win to validate his legacy, while McCain finds himself "saddled" with Bush baggage. John Weaver, McCain's former chief strategist, tells Baker, "I'm sure McCain is thinking, Is Bush going to beat me twice?"

Baker also reveals: "One former Bush aide who spends his days publicly bashing Barack Obama sat down for lunch with me recently and before the appetizers even arrived lamented that the Democrat will probably crush McCain. He ruefully called Obama one of the three three most talented political figures of his lifetime," along with JFK and Reagan. Karl Rove this summer told friends of his "exasperation" with the McCain team's "dysfunctional organization and sclerotic message," as Baker puts it. "And the president himself, according to friends and prominent Republicans, privately rails about what he considers McCain's undisciplined approach to the campaign and grouses about McCain's efforts to distance himself from the administration."

What the Republicans say when they aren’t on camera

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/harry-reid-on-john-mccain-i-just-think.html
[AP] "I just think he doesn't have the temperament to be president," Reid told Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston during the taping of "Face to Face," in Denver on Wednesday. . . .

"I've served with the man 26 years," Reid said. "Do I have the ability to speak with experience about someone who has abused everyone he's dealt with? Someone who does not have the temperament to be president. . . What am I supposed to do? Walk around talking about what a great guy he is? I don't believe that. .... "

"There isn't a Republican serving in the Senate that's happy he's the nominee. Now, they're all supporting him, but I'll tell you they have told me. I've had Republican senators tell me they don't think they'll vote for him," Reid said.

When Ralston asked if Reid thought it would be "dangerous" to let McCain be president, Reid answered: "Well, if you said it, I wouldn't correct you."

Rove deeply involved with McCain’s VP choice, and pushing hard for Romney (and NOT Lieberman)

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/rove-heavily-involved-in-mccains-vp.html

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/3295/did-rove-trick-novak-again

McCain plays Mister Nice Guy (for 24 hours) – unfortunately, it won’t last

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/new_mccain_ad_congratulates_ob.php

Mr. Straight Talk learns to talk in sound bites

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1836909,00.html
What do you want voters to know coming out of the Republican Convention — about you, about your candidacy?
I'm prepared to be President of the United States, and I'll put my country first.

There's a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both about putting country first but also about honor. I wonder if you could define honor for us?
Read it in my books.

I've read your books.
No, I'm not going to define it.

But honor in politics?
I defined it in five books. Read my books.

[Your] campaign today is more disciplined, more traditional, more aggressive. From your point of view, why the change?
I will do as much as we possibly can do to provide as much access to the press as possible.

But beyond the press, sir, just in terms of ...
I think we're running a fine campaign, and this is where we are.

Do you miss the old way of doing it?
I don't know what you're talking about. . . . [read on!]

All P.O.W., all the time

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/new_ad_from_south_carolina_gop.php

P.O.W. bingo: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/mccain-pow-bingo-by-batocchio-even-if.html

John McCain on labor

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/28/10251/5215

John McCain on Social Security

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/the_common_sense_standard.php

McCain advisor says people don’t need health coverage, because they can always go to emergency rooms. And the McCain gang scrambles to disassociate themselves

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210979.php
[Dallas Morning News] But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American - even illegal aliens - as uninsured. . . . So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211040.php
[Josh Marshall] We've yet to have the McCain campaign return our calls about campaign advisor John Goodman's suggestion that everyone in the USA actually does have health care insurance in the form of access to emergency rooms where no one in need of immediate medical care can be turned away. But they're now telling TNR's Jon Cohn that he's actually not a McCain advisor.

Really? . . .

More: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_advisor_emergency_room.php

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/211076.php

The weather for Obama’s outdoor speech couldn’t have been more perfect. For next week’s Republican convention? Not so much

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/rove_on_hurricanes_in_august_t.php
Check out this Karl Rove quote buried in a Fox News article about the threat Hurricane Gustav poses to the GOP's convention plans . . .

BREAKING NEWS: Fearful of meeting and partying during a disastrous hurricane (sound familiar?), the GOP may POSTPONE their convention

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/28/gop_convention/index.html

A tale of two campaigns

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/28/202036/524
[CNN] Thousands stood in the warm temperatures in Denver, Colorado, on Thursday to wait in lines that are nearly six miles long, according to local police.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/28/mccain_still_trying_to_find_spectators.html
According to the Dayton Daily News, Sen. John McCain is still giving away tickets to his Friday rally where he will unveil his running mate. He's having trouble filling a 10,000 seat arena.

The Bush gang is running out of options to keep Miers and Bolten from testifying before Congress

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/white_house_scraping_the_botto.php

Afghanistan learns from Iraq

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/08/28/BL2008082801665.html

Cheney’s pals at KBR face a major lawsuit

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/kbr_sued_for_human_trafficking.php

More: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/halliburton-sued-for-forcing-nepalese-workers-to-iraq-911831.html

Bookmark this link: it’ll be a great little tool come election night

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/28/11302/7714

Bonus item: Meet the PUMAs

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7793

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:00 AM

 
SETTING THE STAGE

Three great speeches: one of which you probably didn’t hear

Clinton: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/27/bill-clinton-democratic-c_n_121941.html

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=08&year=2008&base_name=bill_clinton_gives_the_money_q
"Everything I learned in my eight years as President and n the work I've done since, in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job...My fellow Democrats, I say to you, Barack Obama is ready to lead America and restore American leadership in the world. Ready to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Barack Obama is ready to be president."

Biden: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/27/joe-biden-democratic-conv_n_121938.html

Kerry: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210916.php
[Josh Marshall] Bill's and Biden's speeches were great, each in their own way. Democrats had the night they'd been waiting for tonight. But you probably didn't see John Kerry's speech because most of the networks cut away to feature they're yakkers. As I said earlier, in its own way, I think it was the best speech of the convention, certainly the best speech I've even seen John Kerry give. . . .

Text: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/08/27/remarks_of_john_f_kerry_to_the_democratic_national_convention/

You can imagine them chucking around the McCain campaign table: “Do you think they’ll let us get away with this one? Oh, hell, let’s try.” So, will the press call them out for the most purely deceitful ad of the campaign season so far?

Watch: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/new_mccain_ad_badly_distorts_o.php
[Greg Sargent] The ad's narrator says: "Obama says Iran is a 'tiny' country. 'Doesn't pose a serious threat.' Terrorism? Destroying Israel? Those aren't serious threats?"

[What Obama actually said] "Strong countries and strong Presidents talk to their adversaries. That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao. I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela -- these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet."

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/what-mccain-dis.html
[Andrew Sullivan] What does McCain disagree with in that? And do yourself a favor. Read the quote and then watch the ad. Now think about what it says about McCain that he would lie this blatantly for power.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014431.php
[Steve Benen] I'll give the McCain campaign credit for one thing: these guys are among the most accomplished liars in a generation. Sure, some shameless charlatans have come and gone over the last few decades, but when it comes to genuine, almost pathological, dishonesty, the McCain campaign is setting the bar very high (or low, depending on one's perspective).

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/lying.html
[Kevin Drum] I swear, it's like watching Anakin Skywalker turn into Darth Vader in Star Wars. It's not as if McCain hasn't always been brazenly opportunistic, but the depth of his flat-out lying is becoming pathological.

The ad only gets a little bit of press critique

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/08/from-the-fact-c.html
[Jake Tapper, ABC] We, in the media, have given a lot of airtime to the TV ads of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., this week, starring, as they do, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

There's been evidence emerging that McCain's campaign isn't really running these ads anywhere, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group.

"These were basically video press releases," CMAG’s Evan Tracey tells the Wall Street Journal.

OK, so that's kind of dishonest of the McCain campaign.

Today's new McCain ad -- "Tiny," which you can watch HERE -- crosses a new line into dishonesty . . .

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gYpS6G-fl1u-yS2zifc0FsveuPGwD92QLKQO0
[AP] ANALYSIS: The ad is misleading because it states that Obama said Iran is "tiny" and "doesn't pose a serious threat" without noting that Obama was comparing the threat Iran poses today to the Soviet Union, the nuclear-armed adversary of the U.S. during the Cold War.

Free media

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014429.php
[Steve Benen] Just about every day, the McCain campaign releases a new "ad," which is released to the media along with a vague promise that the commercial will air somewhere, at some point. Cable networks, predictably, run the ad over and over again, for free, as part of their coverage of the campaign. This has been especially true this week, with a series of McCain campaign "ads" featuring Hillary Clinton.

The WSJ's Aaron Rutkoff noted that this is part of a well-executed scam that the news networks keep falling for. . . .

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/08/26/our-gullible-media.aspx
[Jason Zengerle] Eve asks whether the McCain campaign will release a new Hillary ad every day this week. Of course it will--so long as we in the media keep linking to the ads and doing news segments about them on TV. I'd love to know from our readers in these "key battleground states" where the ads are supposed to air whether they've actually seen any of them on TV, other than the times they've seen reports about them on CNN and Fox and MSNBC.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/youtube.html
[Kevin Drum] I'll go a little further. The majority of these "YouTube ads" are designed solely to get media attention, not to be seriously used as part of the campaign. If they were podcasts, or blog posts, or flyers, or email blasts, the media would ignore them if their purpose were so transparent. I mean, who cares about a flyer produced in small quantities and handed out only to the media?

But if it's video, it's news! . . .

More: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/help_marc_ambinder_with_his_conundrum.php

Tom Brokaw, a generally sensible person, buys into the P.O.W. myth

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210890.php

This is what happens when you have a campaign debate about foreign policy that gets stuck in buzzwords like “experience,” or “leadership,” or “who spent time in a P.O.W. camp,” and not over WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY THINK SHOULD BE DONE

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/08/27/british_foreign_secretary_deri.html
Sen. John McCain has repeatedly proclaimed that it is time to kick Russia out of the "Group of Eight" organization of industrial powers, even before Russia's recent conflict with Georgia. But the idea has not been embraced by many foreign policy experts, who tend to view it as needlessly provocative.

Today, the top diplomat of one of the U.S.'s closest allies, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, weighed in, calling the notion "knee-jerk," though he did not mention McCain's name. . . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210765.php
[Andrew Sullivan] The op-ed in today's WSJ by the McCain duo of Lieberman and Graham is far more important for this election, it seems to me, than parsing the dynamics of the Clinton-Obama marriage. What they are laying out in very clear terms is the agenda of a McCain presidency. The agenda is war and the threat of war - including what would be an end to cooperation with Russia on securing loose nuclear materials and sharing terror intelligence, in favor of a new cold war in defense of ... Moldova and Azerbaijan. I'm sure McCain would like to have his Russian cooperation, while demonizing and attacking them on the world stage, but in the actual world, he cannot. Putin and Medvedev are not agreeable figures, and I do not mean in any way to excuse their bullying. But this is global politics, guys, and these are the cold, hard choices facing American policy makers.

And in this telling op-ed Lieberman and Graham simply do not even confront them. It's all about a moral posture, with no practical grappling with the consequences. It's the mindset that gave you the Iraq war - but multiplied.

John McCain is making it quite clear what his foreign policy will be like: tilting sharply away from the greater realism of Bush's second term toward the abstract moralism, fear-mongering and aggression of the first. Not just four more years - but four more years like Bush's first term. If the Democrats cannot adequately warn Americans of the dangers of a hotheaded temperament and uber-neo-con mindset in the White House for another four years, they deserve to lose. If Americans decide they want a president who will be more aggressive and less diplomatic than the current one, then they should at least brace for the consequences - for their economy and their security.

In my view, the fear card has only one truly compelling target in this election: McCain.

[Josh Marshall] He puts it very well. This danger has actually got me to thinking that should McCain win in November, the likely strong Democratic majorities in Congress will need to begin making a concerted effort to rein in the war powers of the president to keep the country safe between 2009 and 2013 -- far more than most of us might normally be comfortable with. I know that sounds hyperbolic. It's not. And people need to understand this. For better or worse, the reality of the danger for the security of the country that is posed by a McCain presidency is not coming through. So the Democratic Congress would likely be the only bulwark against the gambit of his advisors and his own instability. What McCain is pushing for is much more stark than most Democrats, let alone independents and moderate Republicans understand. Hopefully, we won't need to face these choices.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/round_and_round_we_go_2.php
[Matt Yglesias] Part of the perverse logic of conservative foreign policy founded on a bizarre combination of hysteria and hubris is that there’s this kind of quicksand phenomenon where the worse things get, the more you need to keep flailing. I think that’s the best way in which to understand this miasma of strategic confusion from Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham. As expected, it’s riddled with contradictions. Russia is simultaneously powerful enough to mount “a challenge to the political order and values at the heart of the continent” (i.e., Europe) but also so pathetic that an approach to Russia based on hollow sloganeering about “solidarity with the people of Georgia” will be sufficient to turn back the challenge. They call vaguely for “an alliance can frustrate these designs and diminish our dependence on the foreign oil that is responsible for the higher energy prices here at home” but propose no concrete steps to reduce oil dependence. And their only tangible policy proposal is a bunch of missile defense nonsense . . . [read on]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/27/9502/98148
[Smintheus] In a bold leap forward in his nationalistic rhetoric, John McCain yesterday warned the World to get off America's lawn. Addressing the American Legion Convention in Phoenix, McCain complained about Barack Obama's Berlin speech of last month. Obama had declared that by working together the nations of the world could more effectively address international terrorism and other problems we face in common. You'd have thought that was pretty uncontroversial, but you wouldn't have reckoned with John McCain's slick presidential team. It decided that what Americans want to see is more confrontation with the rest of the globe, in the guise of "leadership". It turns out that America also wants to be reminded yet again that McCain was once a POW.

From McCain's speech:

“My opponent had the chance to express such confidence in America, when he delivered a much anticipated address in Berlin. He was the picture of confidence, in some ways. But confidence in oneself and confidence in one's country are not the same. And in that speech, Senator Obama left an important point unclear. He suggested that the end of the Cold War proved that there was, "no challenge too great for a world that stands as one." Now I missed a few years of the Cold War, as the guest of one of our adversaries, but as I recall the world was deeply divided during the Cold War -- between the side of freedom and the side of tyranny. The Cold War ended not because the world stood "as one," but because the great democracies came together, bound together by sustained and decisive American leadership. . . .” [read on]

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014435.php

The lameness of ducks

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/08/27/BL2008082701604.html
[Dan Froomkin] This is what it's come to. On Monday, President Bush issued a statement very sternly calling on Russian leaders not to recognize the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries.

Within hours, the Russians went ahead and did it anyway.

So on Tuesday, out came another statement, in which Bush very sternly told the Russian leaders they shouldn't have.

What explains Bush's manifest lack of leverage? Russia, fat on oil profits, is clearly intent on reasserting its sphere of influence, and an act of provocation by Georgia gave them just the excuse they were looking for. But there's something almost personal about the way Russia is flouting Bush's warnings. Is it because of all those times Bush poked the bear? Or is it because our military is otherwise occupied? Is it because Bush has squandered America's moral authority? Or is just because he's a lame duck? Maybe it's on account of Bush's demeaning nickname for Vladimir Putin. Take your pick. . . . [read on]

So, Barack’s stage set features Greek columns. How presumptuous, how arrogant, how . . . . oh . . . . never mind

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/bush_hearts_greek_columns.php
[Greg Sargent] You've no doubt heard about the GOP's valient efforts to make an issue today out of this Reuters story reporting that Obama will make his Thursday speech before a reproduction of "an elaborately columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple."

The Republican National Committee blasted the news out to reporters under the title "audacity watch." Lots of wingers have been chortling about this, too. We assume the idea, if you can call it that, is to suggest Obama believes he's a Greek god or something like that . . .

Bush, 2004: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0808/Bushs_2004_temple.html

McCain, 2008: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/columns.php

More: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210775.php
[Josh Marshall] [T]he Obama backdrop actually looks like -- whether intended or not, I don't know -- the Lincoln Memorial. (Remember, they're both Illinoisians.) Perhaps because Obama's speech is on the 45th anniversary of King's 'I Have A Dream' speech.

Convention bounce, no convention bounce? Does it matter?

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7773

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/27/125641/634

Behind the polls: the Obama camp explains how they’re going to win

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/27/151537/420

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/barack_mccains_margin_among_in.php

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2008/aug/28/barackobama.democrats2008

Reader Bryan W. says McCain will definitely pick a woman as VP. One of these?

Fiorina? Palin? http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/31/mccain-veep-talk-turns-female-candidates/

Whitman? http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/mccainwhitman_buzz_in_denver.php

Hutchison? http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5967502.html

Why it probably won’t be Lieberman, much as McCain wants to pick him

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/28/rove_tried_to_kill_lieberman_pick.html
Republican strategist Karl Rove "called Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) late last week and urged him to contact Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to withdraw his name from vice presidential consideration," according to Politico.

Lieberman dismissed the request. . .

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/27/novak_lieberman_warns_mccain_against_picking_him.html
Robert Novak, who retired after being diagnosed with a brain tumor, is back writing occasional columns throughout the election season.

"Reports of strong support within John McCain's presidential campaign for Independent Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman as the Republican candidate for vice president are not a fairy tale. Influential McCain backers, plus McCain himself, would pick the pro-choice liberal from Connecticut if they thought they could get away with it."

"But they can't get away with it -- and this has been made clear to McCain by none other than Joe Lieberman himself." . . .

[NB: Lest there be any remaining doubt that Novak is and has always been a mouthpiece for Rove.]

Quote of the day

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/27/richards-a-woman-voting-for-john-mccain-would-be-like-a-chicken-voting-for-colonel-sanders/
[Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood] “A woman voting for John McCain would be like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.”

More: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/mccain_and_ledbetter.html

A serious split in the Republican party over the platform. Can they be unified again? Will lingering bitterness cause some groups to stay home and not support McCain? Does this show his weakness in appealing to members of his own party? These are the questions I am SURE the press will focus on next week, right?

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/disunity-for-mccain-gop-platform.html

Bonus item: The silliness of the Obama/Ayers “link”

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_camp_to_mccain_camp_um_y.php

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:30 AM

 
CONTROLLING THE NARRATIVE

Hillary’s speech was just terrific: pitch-perfect in every way. Let’s start with the lead

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/election_2008_/2008/08/hrc_gets_it.php
“I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me, or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him?

Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids?

Were you in it for that young boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage?

Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?” . . . [read on]

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/hillary_im_a_proud_supporter_o.php
“No way. No how. No McCain. . .”

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/hillary_clinton_followup.html
"It's fitting that John McCain and George Bush will be meeting in the Twin Cities next week, because it's getting pretty hard to tell them apart." . . .

More: http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/26/224240/324

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/hillary_were_you_in_this_campa.php

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/hillary-night-by-digby-clinton-did.html

Watch: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210676.php

Full text: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/08/remarks_as_prepared_for_delive.php

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210639.php
[Josh Marshall] That was quite a speech. . . .

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/3057/blog-pappu-626b
[Sridhar Pappu] It was Clinton at her best . . .

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/26/231457/026
[Todd Beeton] I don't think "hit it out of the park" begins to describe the speech. . . .

More reactions: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/26/hillary-clinton-speech-ra_n_121655.html

Obama responds: http://www.washingtonindependent.com/3080/blog-pappu-826d
After leaving the house party [in Billings, Montana], Senator Obama called and talked for several minutes with Senator Hillary Clinton saying how grateful he was for her support, that she gave a terrific speech and that all those he watched with in Billings, MT were moved by her video and introduction from Chelsea. Also said he loved her line “No way, no how, no McCain.”

Senator Obama also called and spoke with President Bill Clinton for several minutes saying Senator Clinton could not have been better and made the case for change. Obama said he knew how proud he must have been watching as he was last night watching Michelle speak and how grateful he was for their support.

McCain responds: http://www.washingtonindependent.com/3067/mccain-camp-responds-to-clinton
“Senator Clinton ran her presidential campaign making clear that Barack Obama is not prepared to lead as commander in chief. Nowhere tonight did she alter that assessment. Nowhere tonight did she say that Barack Obama is ready to lead. Millions of Hillary Clinton supporters and millions of Americans remain concerned about whether Barack Obama is ready to be President.”

The right sings its tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RkEzhFWnXk
“A shockingly minimal endorsement”

http://instaputz.blogspot.com/2008/08/this-has-been-another.html
“I don't think they'll be even a small bounce from her speech, good as it was. . . .”

Ron Fournier continues to use the AP as part of the McCain spin machine – and newspapers are starting to drop them

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080827/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_convention_analysis
[R.F.] For one evening, their political world was perfect. Or so it seemed. . . .

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/27/fourniercation-under-contrived-keyboarding/

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/26/22352/7383

Not a lot of great speeches leading up to Clinton’s, but some good lines

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/warners_keynote.php
[Mark Warner] People always ask me, "What's your biggest criticism of President Bush?" I'm sure you all have your own. Here's mine: It's not just the policy differences. It's the fact that this president never tapped into our greatest resources - the character and resolve of the American people. He never asked us to step up.

Think about it: After September 11, if there was a call from the President to get us off foreign oil, to stop funding the very terrorists who had just attacked us, every American would have said, "How can I do my part?" This administration failed to believe in what we can achieve as a nation, when all of us work together.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/26/bob-casey-calls-mccain-bu_n_121640.html
Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey harshly criticized John McCain during his address to the Democratic Convention. Casey noted that while McCain casts himself as a "maverick," he has voted with Bush 90 percent of the time. Casey then said, " That's not a maverick, that's a sidekick."

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/in_a_convention_fairly_devoid.php
[Kathleen Sebelius] "For John McCain , there's no place like home, or a home, or a home." . . .

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/26/warner_and_schweitzer/index.html
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, on the other hand, revved the crowd up to a frenzy in the speech right before Clinton's. It was an upper Plains version of call-and-response. "Can we afford four more years of the same?" Schweitzer asked. "No!" the crowd roared. "Is the time for change now?" "Yes!" "Are we going to declare our energy independence and change the world? Who's going to lead us there as the next president of the United States? Now let's go win this election," Schweitzer yelled, exhorting people to stand up from their seats.

He walked off the stage to a huge ovation . . .

Watch: http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_08_24_archive.html#1284944887994606245

Why Night 1 worked

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210470.php
[Josh Marshall] Kos agrees with Sullivan that Night 1 of the DNC was not the night for a sustained attack against John McCain. Like Sullivan, Kos's argument is that people are already persuaded that Bush was a disaster and McCain is four more years of Bush. The problem is convincing people that Obama and his wife are an acceptable/trustable alternative -- knocking back the damage created by McCain's sustained attack on Obama's Americanness, patriotism, etc.

Notwithstanding what I said last night, I think this is a very good point. And in many respects that is an apt description of the strategic challenge facing Obama. If people can be convinced that Obama meets a threshold level of trustworthiness and experience for the job, McCain's finished. . . .

But the Republican spin machine will never let others control the narrative – facts be damned. Now they are trying to say that Michelle Obama’s “I Love America” speech just wasn’t good enough, despite all evidence to the contrary

http://mediamatters.org/items/200808260008
During Fox News' August 25 coverage of the Democratic National Convention, anchor Megyn Kelly asked Fox News contributor Howard Wolfson about Michelle Obama's convention speech, "Do you think that, you know, her saying that she loves America, that she loves this country, is going to do it for those who questioned her patriotism?" Kelly noted that during the speech Obama stated, "The world as it is just won't do," then Kelly said: "If you replace 'world' with 'country', you are back to the same debate, arguably, that you have been having about Michelle Obama's feelings about the country. Did she give her critics any fodder with that comment?" . . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210568.php
[More from Fox News] Last night there was some criticism of Michelle Obama for not saying more about our men and women in uniform, those fighting on the ground for us in Iraq. . . .

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/devaluing-family-by-digby-this-is-of.html
[Karl Rove] I don’t think she did too well on saying I love America. That wasn’t adequate enough because, look, people are gonna hear that, and then those that have paid attention to her earlier comments are gonna try and square those two off.

Orwellian

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/whoops_top_republican_admits_t.php
[Eric Kleefeld] Wow -- a leading Republican appears to have just inadvertently admitted that the GOP's spin machine set up to counter Barack Obama during the convention is a propaganda machine spewing nothing but lies.

The GOPer in question is Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams, who accidentally made the admission when describing the GOP's war room in Denver set up to hammer Obama during convention week.

Wadhams described the GOP's outfit thusly to the Denver Post: "Just consider this the Ministry of Truth."

Um, as anybody who has ever read George Orwell knows, the Ministry of Truth exists to disseminate false propaganda about how great the ruling regime is, continuously rewriting both history and the present-day facts in order to maintain total control over the population. . . .

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014416.php

Don’t – upset – the – narrative (it makes the press very nervous)

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/reinventing_john_mccain.html
[Eric Alterman] Discussing McCain's success in the Republican primaries, Brokaw attributed it to the candidate's "indomitable will," and opined that McCain won by simply being "the most authentic...he wasn't trying to reinvent himself."

This is not only wrong, but diametrically, screamingly wrong. It's not a difficult point — McCain won the primaries specifically by reversing himself on taxes, immigration, the religious right, and virtually every other issue important to the hard right. These policies were not only blazingly visible — Mitt Romney and others called him on it loudly during the Republican debates — but obviously destructive, as the last eight years have proven.

And yet, here is Brokaw saying of the candidate who by far has done the most to change his positions that McCain was "the most authentic...he wasn't trying to reinvent himself."

[Kevin Drum] It is indeed a vast mystery. It's not just that McCain has changed a lot of his positions, it's the fact that he's so plainly changed them purely for the sake of political expediency. "Learning his lesson" on immigration in front of CPAC. Knuckling under to the Club for Growth on tax cut inanity. Demonstrating his right-wing bona fides to the Wall Street Journal editorial page by quietly watering down his energy plan into near uselessness. Embracing Jerry Falwell on the stage at Liberty University. ("Are you going into crazy base world?" asked Jon Stewart at the time. "I'm afraid so," McCain answered, in a rare display of naked honesty.)

McCain has been desperately pandering to the GOP base for the past two years, and he's been doing it perfectly publicly and with only the thinnest veneer of explanation. But I guess it's indelicate to mention it for some reason. After all, haven't I heard somewhere that he spent a few years as a POW during the Vietnam War?

The press’s incredibly lazy coverage: most of the stories could have been shipped in fresh from the word processors – they’re premanufactured narratives looking for a hook (an isolated interview, a nonfalsifiable “feeling” or “impression,” a word or facial expression out of place)

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_08_24_archive.html#7358898453350042368
[Atrios] Just continuing something I've mentioned before, it is really true that there really is no reason for even a small fraction of the press to be here, assuming the purpose of them being here is to inform the public about what's going on at the convention. . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/26/19101/8218
[BarbinMD] Today it took a whole team of Associated Press hacks to write their concern article du jour about trouble at the Democratic convention. We learn that:

Democrats bickered among themselves...

As strains between Obama and some former Hillary Clinton supporters persisted...

Some Democratic activists, meanwhile, voiced concern...

More: http://mediamatters.org/columns/200808260005

A lifelong Republican congressman yesterday explained at the Dem Convention why he is supporting Obama over McCain. Have you heard anything about it?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210488.php

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014414.php

Let’s play, “imagine”: Imagine if Barack Obama was having trouble carrying his home state of Illinois. Think you would have heard about it (non-stop, ad nauseam)?

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_08_24_archive.html#8617682248626998996

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/mccain-has-to-campaign-in-arizona.html

A respectful and civil campaign? Would McCain have the gall to announce his VP before or during Obama’s Thursday night speech?

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/some_in_mccain_camp_ponder_thu.php

More on the foiled Obama assassination plot

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/report_three_suspects_arrested.php
[Newsweek] he FBI and the Secret Service are deeply involved in the investigation, although no federal charges have been filed to date. The official added that it was unclear at present how real the plot was; further investigation could prove that it was an empty threat, or that the suspects were flakes or loudmouths. . . .

Wednesday evening, the FBI confirmed the identity of one of the suspects: Tharin Robert Gartrell. A source familiar with the investigation said that Gartrell and the other two suspects were believed to be white supremacists. . . . [read on]

More: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/27/plot/index.html

It’s what they do: McCain keeps hitting Obama on not loving his country enough

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_hits_obama_for_saying_w.php
[Greg Sargent] John McCain is cranking up his attacks on Obama's internationalist approach to foreign policy by giving a speech today that hits Obama for not giving America enough credit for winning the Cold War -- which according to McCain reveals that Obama has confidence in himself but not in his country. . .

Obama is not going to sit back and be swift-boated without a fight

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_campaign_developing_agre.php
[Greg Sargent] In stark contrast to John Kerry's 2004 campaign, the Obama team has developed a very aggressive response to the growing Swift-Boating apparatus that is targeting the Illinois Senator -- but crucially, the Obama camp is striving to keep the counterattack as low key as possible.

The approach, which is taking shape daily in response to the attacks, contrasts most obviously with Kerry's in its aggressiveness. But it's also different from Kerry's approach in another, equally important way. The Obama campaign is doing whatever it can to keep the return fire from spilling into the national media, whereas Kerry, when he did finally respond, did try to win the argument with the Swift-Boaters on a national level. . . . [read on]

More: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_ad_responding_to_ayers_s.php

They won’t stop (until we stop them)

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/another_swiftboating_ad_to_sli.php
[Eric Kleefeld] In another sign that the Obama campaign wasn't just crying wolf in its warnings about the coming Swift-Boat attacks, the pro-war group Vets for Freedom is sinking over a million dollars into a new ad that hammers Barack Obama for his Iraq stance and his purported refusal to acknowledge the service of American troops. . . .

It’s 3 a.m. and your President is gonked out on Ambien . . .

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Politics/story?id=4919842

Is anybody besides the TPM crowd paying attention to Randy Scheunemann?

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/scheunemann_lobbied_against_bi.php
[Zachary Roth] We knew Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's top foreign policy adviser, was into guns. After all, in 1997 he was arrested for having a shotgun and several rounds of ammunition in his car on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. And in addition to his extensive lobbying work on behalf of former Soviet bloc countries, he's also a longtime lobbyist for gun-rights groups. But it now looks like, for Scheunemann, doing the bidding of the gun lobby takes precedence over efforts to combat terrorism.

Newsweek reports that, according to registration documents filed by Scheuenemann's lobbying firm, Orion Strategies, Scheunemann lobbied on behalf of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) against a bill that aims to close a gun-control loophole that inhibits the government from stopping people on terrorist watch-lists from buying guns. . . .

It’s a well-established Republican method: accuse your opponent of what you are yourself doing. Here’s the latest example: the campaign that can’t stop talking about the Vietnam P.O.W. years and Bill Ayers’ Weatherman past, accuses the Dems of being “stuck in the Sixties”

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/26/republican.reax/index.html

Bush and McCain: more of the same. Don’t believe me, let McCain’s words speak for themselves

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/john-mccain-on-his-unparalleled.html

The anger thing

http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2008/08/26/obama-adviser-touts-his-even-temper/
Former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig, a senior national security adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, said that he has never seen Obama lose his temper, even in situations of "exceptional stress."

By comparison, Obama's GOP rival John McCain is known for "losing it." Danzig said McCain is known for forming an opinion or a decision quickly and then "digs in." McCain's volatile temper is well known to Beltway insiders . . .

Don’t these celebrity candidates just make you sick?

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/08/celebrity_candidates.html
[Ana Marie Cox] John McCain was on the Tonight Show last night for the thirteenth time.

A little bird points out who else has been on the couch with Leno that many times: "Pamela Anderson, Dr. Phil, Larry the Cable Guy, Simon Cowell, Jennifer Love Hewitt." Schwarzenegger has been on twelve times; Obama has been on once. . . .

Whether they had an affair or not, this relationship demands scrutiny

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/did_mccain_lean_on_fcc_commiss.php
[Zachary Roth] Remember that New York Times story from February that didn't quite deliver the goods about John McCain's entanglement with the lobbyist Vicki Iseman? Well, there was one strand to the Times' reporting that was lost amid the unproven allegations of a sexual relationship. But the Times' own earlier reporting from 2000, as well as what TPMmuckraker has learned, suggests it deserves some attention.

Towards the end of the February story, the Times wrote about McCain's assistance to Iseman's client, Lowell Paxson, who ran the media company Paxson Communications . . . [read on]

The problem with demographically defined politics is that people keep evading the stereotypes

http://thedemocraticdaily.com/2008/08/25/photo-of-the-day-rednecks-for-obama/
“We hunt, fish, drink beer and support Barrack Obama,” said Tony Viessman, a 74-year old former Hillary Clinton supporter from Rolla, Mo. He and his buddy Les Spencer co-founded “Rednecks for Obama,” a grassroots organization that announced itself outside the Pepsi Center with a huge “Rednecks for Obama” sign. How big is the organization?

“You’re looking at it,” said Mr. Viessman, who drinks Miller Lite and Bud Lite, drives a GMC pick-up truck (“gray so I can hide in the woods”) and owns about 10 guns. . . .

When a reporter turns to leave, Mr. Viessman reiterates that while he likes Bud and Miller, he doesn’t care if Mr. Obama might not.

“I don’t care about his beer, I care about his intelligence,” he said.

Holding Obama honest (thanks to Ahmad S. for the links)

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=2105
[Naomi Klein] What will the people who helped win his historic victory ask of Obama now? I hope that we, that you, will demand that he earn the incredible trust that he has been given, because the hard truth is this: Obama may have the energy and the anger and the networks of the antiwar vote, but he does not have a plan to get us out of Iraq. What he has is a plan to downsize the occupation of Iraq, not to end it. He may have the very real rage at the income inequality that has opened up in this country and around the world, but I am sad to say that he does not have a real plan to close that gap. And he may have the incredible, inspiring idealism of young environmentalists who are terrified about the future of this planet, but he does not have a green agenda that is a match to our climate crisis. . . . [read on]

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5492
[Stephen Zunes] One of the most important differences between Obama and the soon-to-be Republican presidential nominee John McCain is that Obama had the wisdom and courage to oppose the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Obama and his supporters had been arguing correctly that judgment in foreign policy is far more important than experience; this was a key and likely decisive argument in the Illinois senator’s campaign against Senator Hillary Clinton, who had joined McCain in backing the Iraq war resolution.

However, in choosing Biden who, like the forthcoming Republican nominee, has more experience in international affairs but notoriously poor judgment, Obama is essentially saying that this critical difference between the two prospective presidential candidates doesn’t really matter. This decision thereby negates one of his biggest advantages in the general election. Of particular concern is the possibility that the pick of an establishment figure from the hawkish wing of the party indicates the kind of foreign policy appointments Obama will make as president. . . . [read on]

In other news . . .

It’s clear that progress on achieving political stability and reconciliation in Iraq has been almost nonexistent

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/maliki_and_the_sunnis.html
[Kevin Drum] I've written before about this, but today Shawn Brimley and Colin Kahl tell us yet again that Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite government in Baghdad is refusing to incorporate former Sunni militiamen into Iraq's security forces — and that this may soon lead to a renewed outbreak of insurgency. . . . [read on]

Judge says Miers and Bolten must testify

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/judge_denies_stay_bolten_and_m.php
A district court judge denied Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten's request for a stay on their Congressional testimony pending the appeal of the recent decision in HJC v. Harriet Miers et al. The decision means that Miers will have to appear in response to the House Judiciary Committee's subpoena for testimony. . . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/26/15552/5034

After all this, is there any credibility in such excuses?

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/fbi_on_phone_records_seizure_i.php
[Kate Klonick] The FBI is finally coughing up more details on their illegal phone records demands, following FBI Dir. Robert Mueller's apology two-weeks ago to the Washington Post and the New York Times.

The Washington Times has an interview with FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni, who says there was a "miscommunication" when an "exigent letter" -- which allows FBI agents to gather information without regular judicial oversight -- was sent to obtain Times and Post reporters' phone calls. . . .

The media, interviewing a blogger, who writes about the media . . . etc.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/26/17101/8563/450/575166

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/whats-story-by-dday-katie-couric-puts.html

Fox News does it again

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210620.php
[Josh Marshall] Why did the Democrats let Fox News be in charge of the camera feeds for all the news networks?

Can't get my head around that one.

At the moment, Fox News has cut away from Mark Warner's keynote address to show Sean Hannity and Rudy Giuliani talking about Bill Ayers.

[NB: They also cut away from Warner just in time to run a commercial break featuring a McCain ad hitting Obama. Think they didn’t manipulate that timing?]

Jon Stewart on Fox “News”

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014420.php

Bonus item: There are no coincidences

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/2980/james-carville-is-wearing-pumas
Spencer Ackerman just phoned in from Denver to say he saw James Carville by the CNN grill wearing a brand new pair of Pumas. . . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:20 AM

 
DARKNESS AND LIGHT

A grim reality

http://cbs4denver.com/investigates/assisination.plot.obama.2.802827.html
Denver's U.S. attorney is expected to speak on Tuesday afternoon about the arrests of four people suspected in a possible plot to shoot Barack Obama at his Thursday night acceptance speech in Denver. All are being held on either drug or weapons charges.

One of those suspects spoke exclusively to CBS4 investigative reporter Brian Maass from inside the Denver City Jail late Monday night and said his friends had discussed killing Obama.

"So your friends were saying threatening things about Obama?" Maass asked.

"Yeah," Nathan Johnson replied.

"It sounded like they didn't want him to be president?"

"Yeah," Johnson said.

Maass reported earlier Monday that one of the suspects told authorities they were "going to shoot Obama from a high vantage point using a ... rifle ... sighted at 750 yards."

Law enforcement sources told Maass that one of the suspects "was directly asked if they had come to Denver to kill Obama. He responded in the affirmative." . . .

[NB: Let me make a point here. I think it has been apparent to everyone from the start the special risk that Obama was running in this campaign, Secret Service protection or no. It is, in fact, a tremendously courageous thing to do. So when we see ads about what a trivial, superficial “celebrity” Obama is trying to be, or how shallow his sense of duty is to the nation, let’s keep this in mind.]

A lot of complaints that the first day of the convention didn’t feature either (a) more attacks against McCain or (b) a more detailed laundry list of policy proposals. Instead, it went shamelessly for the heart-strings. And you know what? It worked

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/us/politics/26dems.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/25/AR2008082503171.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014410.php
[Steve Benen] By most measures, Michelle Obama was under quite a bit of pressure last night to deliver a great speech. She's been the target of some pretty vicious right-wing smears; polls suggest public perceptions of her aren't entirely positive, and she was, in effect, headlining the opening night of the Democratic National Convention. Michelle Obama isn't a candidate, she's never public office, and she's not necessarily accustomed to delivering a nationally-televised address in prime-time.

And yet, Michelle Obama not only delivered, she flourished. . . [read on]

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/25/michelle_obama/index.html
[Alex Koppelman] So, obviously, the key question coming in to the first night of the Democratic Convention was how Michelle Obama would do in her big speech. And I'm genuinely interested to know -- what did you all think? Did you like the speech? Did she do what she needed to do politically? Will it have an effect on the race?

As for my take, well, I thought she was great, that what she said was exactly what she needed to say, and that she delivered it extremely well. Some people would sound rehearsed giving a speech like this one, but Obama sounded authentic and utterly sincere. And, importantly, she seemed warm and likable. . . .

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/08/oh_my_god.php
[Mark Kleiman] I'm about the least sentimental person I know, but I choked up listening to Michelle Obama's speech . . .

It’s not unanimous: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/michelle_obama.html
[Kevin Drum] That said, my initial reaction to Michelle Obama's speech was that it was fine, but a little artificial sounding. But everyone else seems to think it was a home run. Do they really know? Are they just saying that out of partisan loyalty? Are they saying it because everyone else is saying it? Or was it genuinely a home run?

I dunno. I'm afraid I'm autistic on this particular wavelength. What did you all think?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2008/aug/26/michelleobama.democrats2008
[Michael Tomasky] Usually it's a blessing from the Lord himself when a political speech is shorter than you'd anticipated, but Michelle Obama's 21-minute address to the convention on Monday night was one of those rare speeches that would have done well to be a little bit longer.

I'll say another thing one rarely says about such speeches: I think it could have used more schmaltz. Her task tonight was to tell white Americans that her family is normal and patriotic. Don't get me wrong. It's appalling that this was her task. It infuriates me that stupid and dishonest right-wing apparatchiks jump up and down creating controversy around this accomplished and serious and polished and, incidentally, obviously quite normally American woman. And it infuriates me that stupid yakkers on cable television, needing to fill time, pick up these stupid right-wing tropes.

But that's how it works, and that's what she needed to do, and I think she could have done it a little more cloyingly. I know, cloying is bad. But in a circumstance like Monday night, cloying could be good. In politics, it rarely hurts to be obvious and shameless. . . .

Ted Kennedy’s speech

Watch: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/teddy_kennedy.php

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/the_wayward_press_/2008/08/walter_mears_the_aps_resident_ghoul.php
[Mark Kleiman] Ted Kennedy is dying. Tonight was almost certainly his last major public appearance. To. Walter Mears of the the Associated Press, that seemed like a good time to do a hit-piece. The article mentions not a single one of Kennedy's accomplishments.

Truly a disgusting performance, and one more reason to call for personnel changes in the AP political operation.

All the DNC speeches, downloadable in HD

http://www.demconvention.com/speeches/

Crocodile tears

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/2884/mccain-on-the-tonight-show-nobody-likes-negative-ads
Leno: Let me ask you about these negative ads. I have to admit, I — everything seemed kind of OK until about a month ago. And then there was Paris Hilton, and the other thing with the houses. Anyone makes one little slip and you see something. But the American people, with the dollar where it is and with fuel prices, it just seems so ridiculous. Yet, these negative ads seem to work.

McCain: Look, we all don’t like negative ads. I thought the ads we put up were an attempt to be humorous — and I thought they were very funny — and also differentiate between Sen. Obama. I think that the tone of this campaign is very rough, I think we all agree.

McCain calls Obama “honorable,” at just the moment when his surrogates launch an ad trying to link Obama with an “unrepentant terrorist.” It’s pretty transparent that the more vicious and deceitful his campaign, the more highminded Mr. M. tries to sound

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_its_honorable_to_want_t.php
"This is a tough presidential campaign we're in," McCain said. "I have a very honorable opponent. There are stark differences between us."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210262.php
[Josh Marshall] McCain pledges to oppose swift-boating in April; McCain endorses swift-boating in August. . . .

More: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_its_honorable_to_launch.php

The Ayers ad – a predictable dynamic

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/group_plunks_down_nearly_3_mil.php
The other day, the independent Swift-Boating outfit American Issues Project vowed to plunk down a cool $2.8 million on a slimy and vicious ad tying Obama to former Weatherman Bill Ayers. . . .

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_ad_hits_back_at_weatherm.php
"With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the sixties, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers?" the spot says, suggesting that McCain himself is behind the Ayers spot. "McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers' crimes, committed when Obama was just eight years old." . . .

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_campaign_launches_direc.php
The McCain campaign has just seized on Obama's response to the third-party Ayers spot to launch a direct attack on Obama's ties to the former Weatherman. . . .

From McCain spokesperson Brian Rogers:

"The fact that Barack Obama chose to launch his political career at the home of an unrepentant terrorist raises more questions about Senator Obama's judgment than any TV ad ever could. And the fact that he's launching his own Convention by defending his long association with a man who says he didn't bomb enough U.S. targets tells us more about Barack Obama than any of tonight's speeches will."

They may or may not succeed, but the Obama team is not taking the latest round of Swift Boating lying down

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12816.html
Sen. Barack Obama has launched an all-out effort to block a Republican billionaire’s efforts to tie him to domestic and foreign terrorists in a wave of negative television ads.

Obama’s campaign has written the Department of Justice demanding a criminal investigation of the “American Issues Project,” the vehicle through which Dallas investor Harold Simmons is financing the advertisements. The Obama campaign — and tens of thousands of supporters — also is pressuring television networks and affiliates to reject the ads. The effort has met with some success: CNN and Fox News are not airing the attacks. . . .

The project is “a knowing and willful attempt to violate the strictures of federal election law,” Obama general counsel Bob Bauer wrote to Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Keeney last week in a letter provided to Politico. Bauer argued that by advocating Obama’s defeat, the ad should be subject to the contribution limits of federal campaign law, not the anything-goes regime of issue advocacy.

Bauer’s letter called on the Justice Department to open “an investigation of the American Issues Project; its officers and directors; and its anonymous donors, whoever they may be.” . . .

The letter calls the ad’s attempt to link Obama to terrorism “an appalling lie, a disgraceful smear of the lowest kind on the senator’s patriotism and commitment to the rule of law.”

Another new RNC ad: using Hillary’s very unhelpful quote

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/new_gop_ad_was_hillary_right_a.php
[Greg Sargent] "Senator McCain will bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign," Hillary says in the primary footage aired in the ad. "I will bring a lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will bring a speech he gave in 2002."

"Now Americans must ask ourselves, Should we elect the most inexperienced presidential candidate of our times?" the ad's narrator continues. "Or was she right?"

When Hillary said this stuff it was widely predicted -- accurately, it turns out -- that it would be used against Obama. The RNC, apparently, held off on using this particular footage until the start of the Dem convention, in the belief that they will be effective in sowing more division.

Nice one

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/25/quote_of_the_day.html
"I'm Hillary Clinton and I do not approve that message."

-- Sen. Hillary Clinton, quoted by Time, objecting to the use of video clips of her criticizing Sen. Barack Obama in a new advertisement for Sen. John McCain.

Hillary supporter shills for McCain

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/25/134021/893

One little problem: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014405.php
[Steve Benen] At a Denver press conference this afternoon organized by Republicans, Bartoschevich, who claims to be a pro-choice Democrat, was asked about her concerns about reproductive rights under another pro-life Republican president.

"Going back to 1999, John McCain did an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle saying that overturning Roe v. Wade would not make any sense, because then women would have to have illegal abortions," Bartoschevich said.

This is surprisingly helpful. I've wondered why a pro-choice Democrat who cares about women's rights would even consider a conservative Republican with an abysmal record on women's rights. It turns out, the answer is pretty straightforward: she's terribly confused.

McCain did, in fact, say in 1999, that he "would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade." It was a reversal from his previous position, and soon after, McCain reversed right back, denounced Roe, vowed to overturn it, and assured voters he would lead an exclusively pro-life administration, arguably slightly to the right of Bush/Cheney. . . . [read on]

The latest ad from Obama – pretty funny

Watch: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/new_obama_ad_hits_mccain_but_w.php

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210258.php
[JB] I think this ad is good, not great, but good. It answers an attack about Obama's character with charges against McCain's policies. Yes, it pushes back. That is the good part. But it doesn't fight fire with fire. . . .

The debate of the moment: how to attack McCain, and how hard to do it

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210305.php
[Josh Marshall] David Kurtz just interviewed Paul Begala down on the convention floor. And he put it exactly right. This isn't about answering their attacks. It's about the Democrats making the McCain folks answer their attacks. So far, I'm not seeing it. . . .

More: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210203.php

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7729

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/08/false_opposition_boosting_obama_v_knocking_mccain.php

McCain still hammering on the P.O.W. issue. I have a feeling that the Republican National Conference agenda always planned to feature wall-to-wall bathos over McCain’s heroism, and they’re looking for an excuse to cover themselves: those darn mean Democrats made us do it!

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_powpowpows_yet_again_th.php

[NB: By the way, on the Leno show, in answer to a jokey question about how many houses he owns, McCain not only suddenly turned ultra-serious about his P.O.W. experience, he then ADDED a non-sequitur about his wife’s father’s military service.]

We hardly need to pile on more evidence of McCain’s profound hypocrisy, but look at what he told John Kerry in 2004

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014397.php
[Steve Benen] Yglesias reminded me of a point that often goes overlooked: "[O]nce upon a time McCain was criticizing John Kerry for talking too much about Vietnam, saying he essentially invited the swift boat attacks by doing so."

Quite right. In fact, it seems almost comical in hindsight, but four years ago, McCain chastised Kerry for reminding voters about his decorated service in Vietnam, saying the message is "clearly a tactical or strategic move," adding, "I'm sick and tired of re-fighting the Vietnam War."

I guess McCain got over his disgust, because he seems to talk about little else now.

More: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/mccain_candidates_shouldnt_talk_about_their_vietnam_service.php

McCain’s VP dilemmas

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/26/75713/2205

How pathetic is this?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/transcendental-photo-op-of-our-time-my.html
[Dover Bitch] How hard is John McCain trying to keep Georgia in the news? He's sending his wife, Cindy, there for a photo op with president Mikheil Saakashvili. . . [read on]

80%

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/25/80-percent-says-united-states-is-on-the-wrong-track/
A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds, “Eight in 10 say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the USA, and even more rate the economy as ‘only fair’ or poor. Seven in 10 say it’s getting worse.”

Focus groups and polls: why it’s pretty dangerous to take people’s stated preferences at face value

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/the_details.php

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2008/aug/25/barackobama.uselections2008

It’s not a “time horizon,” it’s not an “aspirational timeline,” it’s not a “timeline” – it’s a DEADLINE

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/maliki_bush_admin_clash_on_pullout.php
"There is actually an agreement concluded between the two parties over the definite date, which is 2011, to end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil," Maliki said.

[AFP] On Friday, the chief Iraqi negotiator Mohammed al-Haj Hammoud told AFP that the security pact had been finalized by both sides and had already won Bush's approval -- drawing a swift White House denial. . . [read on]

O-U-T http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014404.php

Cheney linked to the Ted Stevens (R-AK) scandal – but the DOJ didn’t look into it

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/cheney_link_to_stevens_case.php

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/why_didnt_doj_name_cheney_in_s.php

The CIA denies Ron Suskind’s claim that they were involved in forging Iraq documents. (I love CIA denials: they’re just like the Cretan’s paradox.) But even their denial raises doubts

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/its_richer_vs_cia_on_suskind_c.php

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/suskind_source_backs_cia_denia.php

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/007883.html

Bonus item: The silly season: do we really need an article on Joe Biden’s HAIR?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12760.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:06 AM

 
DON’T MAKE US DO IT!

Mark Halperin, in the tire swing

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/210025.php
[KB] [O]n the ABC roundtable today Mark Halperin made the point (obviously whispered to him by McCain folks) that the houses flap of last week will end up being "worse" for Obama because it "opened the door" to Rezko, Ayers, Wright. But even Cokie Roberts and George S. seemed puzzled saying that the Houses story relates to the economy while the other stories are about past associations. Halperin seemed to be saying that the aggressiveness with which the Obama people drove the Houses story was a mistake because it woke a sleeping giant. He seemed to be arguing that Obama shouldn't be too aggressive because then McCain will go after him . . .

[Josh Marshall] It's like a comic parody of the mentality I described a few days ago. Don't get in McCain's face because it'll just be so much worse for you if you. By God, just keep your head down and try to muddle through! If you're nice maybe he won't hit you.

Is the Limbaugh, Drudge, McCain IV really so deep in Halperin's arm that he thinks the McCain camp feels like it needs an opening to get into the Obama/Terrrorist/Scary Black Man menagerie? They were holding back on Rezko? Really?

Late Update: Wow, we've got the video coming shortly. And I have to say, far worse than KB describes. It's a very tough standard, but I think this may be the stupidest thing Halperin has ever said. . . [watch]

Shorter Halperin: If you're a Democrat, you really just better take it. Because the more you fight back, the worse it's gonna be for you. . . .

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/24/halperin-obama-houses-worst/
To their credit, some of Halperin’s fellow panelists questioned his logic. “I’m having a little trouble following your argument,” host George Stephanopoulos said. . . .

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/on_the_tire_swing.php
[Matt Yglesias] Not only is this silly in a first-order sense, the underlying premises that a door needs to be opened for McCain to deploy those kind of attacks is bizarre. . . . [Y]ou’d have to be extraordinarily naive to believe that the McCain campaign was genuinely just not going to mention any of this stuff until Mean Ol’ Barack came along to make fun of the idea of being so rich that you can’t keep track of your mansions. And whatever you may say about Halperin, he’s not a naive guy.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/barn_doors.html
[Kevin Drum] It really does make you wonder what planet Halperin is living on. Last month McCain hired Karl Rove protege Steve Schmidt, and since then he's run ads mocking Obama's celebrity, charged (repeatedly) that Obama puts his career ahead of his country, pretended that Obama had refused to visit wounded soldiers unless the press was along, run an ad saying that Obama was responsible for high gas prices, and conspicuously declined to comment on Jerome Corsi's bestselling claim that Obama is really a secret Muslim. . . . Halperin can look at McCain's actual campaign and see what kind of campaign he's running. It's been sunk in the gutter for weeks now.

Anyway, as Halperin is certainly well aware, McCain and his cheering section are beavering away on all this stuff anyway. Over at National Review, for example Stanley Kurtz has been hard at work badgering the University of Illinois to give him access to the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Why? Because his heart is turning somersaults over the possibility that something in the archives will show that Obama had a conversation or three with radical leftist Bill Ayers during the period when both served on the board of CAC in the mid-90s. Do you think Kurtz was waiting for a "door to be opened"? Or Jerome Corsi? Or Steve Schmidt? Please.

More: http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/24/mark-halperin-mccain-forgetting-how-many-houses-he-owns-is-bad-for-obama/

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/everything-helps-mccain-by-batocchio.html

Yep, the Repubs are digging deep to try to uncover some, any connection between Obama and Bill Ayers

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/08/university_to_release_obama_re.php

More of the same sort of nonsense: Stop your attack ads, Democrats – or else we’ll have to play . . . the P.O.W. card!

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/08/24/1288482.aspx
[Kelly O’Donnell] Advisors say if Obama gets "nastier" on that issue that opens the door for them. Advisors say the "Rezko deal stinks to the high heavens." They will be prepared to show McCain's "home" in Hanoi by using images of his cell. They claim they have not overused the POW element and insist they have "underused it." . . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014394.php
[Steve Benen] There's no indication that McCain aides were kidding.

In case there were any doubts about McCain excessively exploiting his service, even the NYT's Maureen Dowd is calling McCain out: "McCain is now in danger of exceeding his credit limit on the equivalent of an American Express black card. His campaign is cheapening his greatest strength -- and making a mockery of his already dubious claim that he's reticent to talk about his P.O.W. experience -- by flashing the P.O.W. card to rebut any criticism, no matter how unrelated."

Given that the campaign apparently believes it's been "underusing" the story, I suppose we can expect this to get considerably worse. . . .

I don’t need to emphasize here how absurd it is to suggest that McCain and his people haven’t already been playing the P.O.W. card at every opportunity. In fact, he did it again TODAY:

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_himself_invokes_pow_pas.php
[Greg Sargent] McCain slipped a reference to his war captivity into an interview McCain did with CBS that's airing today. He appeared to be referring to Joe Biden's crack yesterday that McCain has trouble considering people's kitchen table issues because he has to decide which of his own seven kitchen tables to use...

"I am grateful for the fact that I have a wonderful life," McCain said. "I spent some years without a kitchen table, without a chair” . . .

But the "McCain-as-POW" currency the McCain camp is printing at such a furious rate -- and throwing wads of at every controversy that comes along -- is now losing value faster than the German Mark after World War I. . . .

And the press is getting sick of it

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7705

The Democratic dilemma (thanks to Ben R. for the link)

http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/08/mccain-obama-and-inherent-advantage-of.html
[Robert Reich] We’ve been here before: The Republican attack machine at full throttle, spewing lies in best-selling books, on Fox News, on talk radio. The mainstream media reporting on the controversy, thereby giving it more air time and squeezing out the Democrats’ affirmative message. Followed by accusations by Democrats that Republicans are playing unfairly. Responded to by smiling shrugs and winks from Republicans, who say Democrats can’t take the heat or can’t enjoy a joke or are out of touch with average Americans who are concerned about whatever it is the Republicans are lying about. This ignites a furious debate among Democrats about how negative they should go against the Republican. “If we use their tactics, we’ll lose the moral high ground,” say the Democratic doves. “If we don’t, we’ll lose the war,” say the Democratic hawks. The debate is never fully resolved. The Democrats sort of fight back but don’t have the heart to do to Republicans what Republicans do to them. And so it goes.

The underlying problem is that Democrats care about means as well as ends, while Republicans care almost exclusively about ends and will use any means to get there. The paradox lies deeper. For most Democrats, the means are part of the ends. We want an electoral process that eschews the lying and cheating we’ve witnessed since Richard Nixon’s dirty tricks. If we use their tactics, we undermine our own goal, violating one of the very things that distinguishes us from them. Yet if we don’t stoop to their level, how can we prevail in a system that allows – even rewards – such lying and cheating? . . . [read on]

I agree with Frank Rich: we need a serious, honest discussion about who can be entrusted with the safety and future of the nation

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/opinion/24rich.html
What we have learned this summer is this: McCain’s trigger-happy temperament and reactionary policies offer worse than no change. He is an unstable bridge back not just to Bush policies but to an increasingly distant 20th-century America that is still fighting Red China in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in the cold war. As the country tries to navigate the fast-moving changes of the 21st century, McCain would put America on hold. . . .

Is a man who is just discovering the Internet qualified to lead a restoration of America’s economic and educational infrastructures? Is the leader of a virtually all-white political party America’s best salesman and moral avatar in the age of globalization? Does a bellicose Vietnam veteran who rushed to hitch his star to the self-immolating overreaches of Ahmad Chalabi, Pervez Musharraf and Mikheil Saakashvili have the judgment to keep America safe? . . .

We hear almost daily about reasons why the public is uneasy about an Obama presidency, but other things make them uneasy about a McCain presidency – why aren’t we hearing about that?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/old-school-by-dover-bitch-over-at-his.html

Yesterday we asked about how McCain’s tax cut proposal would benefit . . . the McCains. Turns out, the numbers have been crunched

http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/06/19/analyzing-the-candidates/
$373,429

“A Tale of Two Books”

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/24/a-tale-of-two-books/

The kind of people they are

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auG9qsZpL6o

I haven’t used the expression “concern trolls” here, but it’s a useful term in the lefty blogosphere: political opponents who express oh-so-serious concern about a decision you have made because it weakens your prospects. There is no good reason why they would give actually helpful advice – they’re in business to cut your heart out. So there is always another agenda at work. Here’s the latest, mentioned yesterday and continuing to grow: Republican concerns about how shabbily Hillary Clinton has been treated by Obama, and how picking her would have made for a far more formidable Democratic ticket

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/24/131955/488
[Rudy Giuliani] "You almost have to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid [Clinton] as the vice presidential pick of the party."

And now a new McCain ad: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/new_mccain_ad_hits_obama_for_n.php
ANNCR: She won millions of votes.

But isn't on his ticket.

Why?

For speaking the truth.

On his plans:

HILLARY CLINTON: "You never hear the specifics."

ANNCR: On the Rezko scandal:

HILLARY CLINTON: "We still don't have a lot of answers about Senator Obama."

ANNCR: On his attacks:

HILLARY CLINTON: "Senator Obama's campaign has become increasingly negative."

ANNCR: The truth hurt.

And Obama didn't like it.

Clinton responds: "Hillary Clinton's support of Barack Obama is clear. She has said repeatedly that Barack Obama and she share a commitment to changing the direction of the country, getting us out of Iraq, and expanding access to health care. John McCain doesn't. It's interesting how those remarks didn't make it into his ad."

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/selfparody_watch.html
[Kevin Drum] This is just bizarre. Has any presidential candidate ever before run an ad mocking his opponent for not choosing a particular running mate? I think the folks running McCain's war room are getting cabin fever or something. . . . [read on]

More: http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/mccain_dont_forget_about_disun.php

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/25/putting-the-rat-in-erratum/

A bit anticlimactic, given how much agita this issue caused during the Clinton/Obama nomination fight, but quietly the decision has been made to give the Michigan and Florida delegations full voting rights at the convention

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/24/michigan_florida/index.html

Hate to ruin a surprise, but it looks as if Ted Kennedy will give an address at the DNC tonight

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/25/05353/0702
In a development that is sure to bring the house down . . .

What will happen, during or just after the Democratic Convention, to drive it off the front pages and minimize any Obama bounce? Formal announcement of a withdrawal plan from Iraq? Action against Iran? Tough measures against Russia? Watch for something – it’s the way they play the game

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/there-will-be-no-honeymoon-by-dover.html
[August 2, 2004] SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT: I don't think anybody who has any fairness or is in their right mind would think that the president or the secretary of Homeland Security would raise an alert level and scare people for political reasons.

The state of the Senate races: Dems headed for 56, maybe more

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/24/93518/6482

Bonus item: I guess this is pretty much established as fact, but just in case there are any lingering doubts. The White Paper calling for war with Iraq was drafted BEFORE the intelligence report that supposedly justified it (thanks to Juan Cole for the link)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB254/index.htm

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:49 AM

 
KEEP UP THE FIGHT

In this world of political spin and image management, every now and then simple realities reveal deeper truths about candidates. Two things we’ve learned about Joe Biden (D-DE): He rides the train home to Delaware, 80 minutes, every night, to be with his family; and after more than three decades of service he is one of the poorest Senators. Does simple personal decency matter any more – or will Biden become one more victim of the Rovean slime machine? I’m afraid we know the answer to that question already

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_08_17_archive.html#8437992539454697296

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/biden-ranked-poorest-senator-mccain.html

The Obama, Biden statements at Springfield

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_hails_bidens_character_f.php

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/biden_links_his_own_adversity.php

The problems this poses now for McCain’s VP options

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/23/103423/102/88/573510

Of course, the McCain folks instantly release footage of Biden criticizing Obama during the primaries. OK, fine. And I assume then that they won’t mind (and that the press will give it equal coverage) if they pick Mitt Romney – who was MUCH tougher on McCain – and we do the same thing.

But isn’t it a GOOD thing – a sign of confidence and strength – to select a VP you know will challenge you? Wasn’t an older hand, and someone with a network of bipartisan connections in Congress, JUST what Obama was being urged to select? But then, when he does it is viewed as an indication of his inadequacy and a compromise to his “change” theme. Well, as we know, EVERYTHING that can be spun one way can always be spun the opposite way

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/23/42459/2411/478/567026

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/23/134633/147

The Rashomon effect: everyone sees in Biden what their predispositions tell them to see

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/24/45726/6618

Here’s the other clip we keep seeing non-stop: Biden saying “I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country would be better off.” Pretty devastating, eh?

It seems to me that Biden has a simple and much more devastating response: “Yes, I said that in 2005, and when I said it, I meant it. But something has happened to my friend John McCain. I hardly recognize him any more. He has reversed himself on issue after issue to bring himself in alignment with conservative orthodoxy. He has shackled himself to some of the worst policies of the Bush administration. He has gone on bended knee to the people he called "agents of intolerance" on the religious right to ask for their support. And he has turned his campaign over to the Rove gang who have destroyed civil political discourse in our system – the very same people who, in 2000, portrayed him as ‘mentally unstable’ and as the father of an illegitimate black daughter. For the sake of winning the Presidency, he has sold out the very principles that made me and many others in the Senate, from both parties, admire and trust him. It makes me very sad.”

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/mccain_campaign_turns_bidens_w.php

CNN, within minutes of Biden’s speech, labeled him an “attack dog.” Well, that’s always been part of the VP candidate’s role. And you know what? Biden’s going to be very, very good at it

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/23/biden-as-vp-getcha-popcorn/

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/23/9734/57141

More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080823/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_analysis

Wait til you get to know JILL Biden

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/wait-til-america-gets-to_b_120703.html

The networks seem to be working very hard to keep the Hillary resentment theme percolating. After weeks of knowing that she wasn’t going to be chosen as VP, suddenly it is an unbearable insult to her and her supporters that she wasn’t vetted and considered more closely. I expect to see some serious mischief at the convention – but I hope I’m wrong

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/23/clinton-praises-biden-pick/
[Hillary] "In naming my colleague and friend Senator Joe Biden to be the Vice Presidential nominee, Senator Obama has continued in the best traditions for the Vice Presidency by selecting an exceptionally strong, experienced leader and devoted public servant. Senator Biden will be a purposeful and dynamic Vice President who will help Senator Obama both win the Presidency and govern this great country,"

Oh, and the conservatives, who are oh-so-concerned about gender equity and fairness to Hillary, are doing what they can to stir the pot too

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/08/kristol_the_democrats_glass_ce.asp

Metalepsis!

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_08_17_archive.html#2737166424612364255
[Atrios] Most Useful Campaign '08 Metalepsis

“Riding the tire swing”

As in: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209927.php
[Josh Marshall] “Ron Fournier riding hard on the tire swing”

Where the “tire swing” image started: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209567.php

Yes, Ron Fournier, riding the tire swing – here is a particularly nasty piece of work, released almost immediately after Obama’s announcement

http://news.yahoo.com/story/ap/20080823/ap_on_el_ge/veepstakes_analysis
[Ron Fournier] Analysis: Biden pick shows lack of confidence

The candidate of change went with the status quo.

In picking Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate, Barack Obama sought to shore up his weakness — inexperience in office and on foreign policy — rather than underscore his strength as a new-generation candidate defying political conventions. . . .

So, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t the head of the AP Washington bureau entitled to write an analysis piece?

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/23/action-tell-ap-to-remove-ron-fournier-from-the-presidential-beat/
[Jane Hamsher] As recently as last year, Ron Fournier considered working for the McCain campaign. Instead he took a job as Washington bureau chief for the AP, but it looks like he's still working for McCain. . . .

Ron Fournier must be taken off the Presidential beat. He's got an obvious conflict-of-interest. . . . [read on]

Action alert: http://pol.moveon.org/emails/ap_fournier.html

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/the_wayward_press_/2008/08/action_item.php

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014385.php

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/23/11217/1320

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200807220006

http://mediamatters.org/items/200804140006

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/why-does-ap-have-mcfournier-even.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/leader-of-pack-by-digby-it-looks-like.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/14/aps-ron-fournier-to-karl_n_112696.html
Rove exchanged e-mails about Pat Tillman with Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier, under the subject line "H-E-R-O." In response to Mr. Fournier's e-mail, Mr. Rove asked, "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this," to which Mr. Fournier replied, "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight."

More helpful analysis from the AP

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/23/145149/897
[AP] "Biden pick draws Democratic praise, GOP criticism."

[Jonathan Singer] What is newsworthy, however, and what the AP buries well below the lede -- way down in the ninth graf, and only in a passing manner even then -- is the fact that Republicans are actually praising the Biden pick, a story that cuts against the grain, one that doesn't merely fall into the normal and expected course of events in a political campaign.

Sen. Chuck Hagel: U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel issued the following statement today following Senator Barack Obama's selection of Senator Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic Vice Presidential nominee: "Joe Biden is the right partner for Barack Obama. His many years of distinguished service to America, his seasoned judgment and his vast experience in foreign policy and national security will match up well with the unique challenges of the 21st Century. An Obama-Biden ticket is a very impressive and strong team. Biden's selection is good news for Obama and America," Hagel said.

Sen. Richard Lugar: Tbilisi, Georgia - U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar made the following statement today en route to Tbilisi. "I congratulate Senator Barack Obama on his selection of my friend, Senator Joe Biden, to be his vice-presidential running mate. I have enjoyed for many years the opportunity to work with Joe Biden to bring strong bipartisan support to United States foreign policy..."

Sen. Arlen Specter: Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter, a Republican who serves on the Judiciary Committee with Biden and often rides Amtrak with him to Washington, also offered praise. "No one on the Democratic side knows more about foreign policy than Sen. Biden," Specter said. "He's been an articulate spokesman on the subject. He also knows about domestic policy. He's been a leader on crime control."

A completely unbiased press, doing its job, would never allow McCain to run for President:

1. Without a full disclosure of his, and his wife’s, income:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209981.php

2. Without a full release of his medical records, including his recurrent cancer:
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7688

3. Without answering this question:
http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/23/about-that-household-staff-richie/
How Many of McCain’s Household Staff Are Undocumented?

Sunday talk show line-ups

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/television/sunday_show_preview_92419.asp
NBC Meet The Press: Caroline Kennedy, Co-chair, Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Speaker of the House, 2008 Democratic National Convention Speaker, Gwen Ifill, Moderator, PBS's "Washington Week", Correspondent, PBS's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer", Jon Meacham, Editor, Newsweek magazine and Chuck Todd, Political Director, NBC News

CBS Face The Nation: Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) and Gov. Ed Rendell (D), Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D) and The Washington Post's Dan Balz.

ABC This Week: David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a roundtable with ABC News' Mark Halperin, Donna Brazile, Cokie Roberts, and George Will.

CNN Late Edition: Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), Gov. Janet Napolitano (D-AZ), Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), Majority Whip, Terry McAuliffe, Clinton campaign chairman; former DNC chairman, Howard Kurtz, host, CNN's "Reliable Sources" and media reporter, The Washington Post, Gloria Borger, CNN senior political analyst, Byron Pitts, national correspondent, CBS, Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post, John Dickerson, Slate.com, Keli Goff, political analyst; author, "Party Crashing: How the Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence" and Debra Saunders, columnist, San Francisco Chronicle

Bonus item: I’ve tended to stay away from Mo Do recently. But when she gets it right, you can’t deny her

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/opinion/24dowd.html
[Maureen Dowd] My mom did not approve of men who cheated on their wives. She called them “long-tailed rats.”

During the 2000 race, she listened to news reports about John McCain confessing to dalliances that caused his first marriage to fall apart after he came back from his stint as a P.O.W. in Vietnam.

I figured, given her stringent moral standards, that her great affection for McCain would be dimmed.

“So,” I asked her, “what do you think of that?”

“A man who lives in a box for five years can do whatever he wants,” she replied matter-of-factly.

I was startled, but it brought home to me what a powerful get-out-of-jail-free card McCain had earned by not getting out of jail free. . . .

So it’s hard to believe that John McCain is now in danger of exceeding his credit limit on the equivalent of an American Express black card. His campaign is cheapening his greatest strength — and making a mockery of his already dubious claim that he’s reticent to talk about his P.O.W. experience — by flashing the P.O.W. card to rebut any criticism, no matter how unrelated. . . [read on]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:40 AM

 
PLACE YOUR BETS

Sure looks like Biden. The official announcement may be out by the time you read this. (I’m trying to decide whether to drive over to Springfield to see them.)

And the GOP is prepping their attacks (of course, they’d be doing the same whoever the choice was)

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/08/gop-eyes-obama.html
ABC News' Teddy Davis, Arnab Datta, and Rigel Anderson Report: The GOP is planning to step up its attacks on Barack Obama's war funding record if the presumptive Democratic nominee taps Joe Biden to be his running mate.

"Our argument will be that the Biden pick only underscores how inexperienced Barack Obama knows he is," a Republican official told ABC News, previewing the GOP's possible line of attack. "Obama's vote against funding our troops was an example of inexperience and poor judgment. The fact that his more experienced running mate made the right call highlights Obama's mistake."

"Whereas to date that vote hasn't gotten a lot of attention," the Republican official added, "now it will." . . .

More: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209898.php

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/republicans_begin_to_spread_bi.php

There’ll be a lot more of this in the next few days, but here are some initial pros and cons on the Biden decision

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/23/2230/85631

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/23/3055/82772

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/biden_safe_pick_on_paper_but_s.php

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/an_outside_the_comfort_zone_pi.php

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2008/aug/23/barackobama.joebiden

More: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/23/early_reactions_to_obamas_pick.html

The Bush announcement of an Iraq timetable should make it impossible now for McCain to smash Obama for advocating one (not that he’ll stop trying). “Bush’s timetable of 2011 is victory but Obama’s timetable of 2010 is cowardly surrender” just doesn’t have that resonance. Or is McCain going to start saying he wants to keep troops in Iraq even longer than Bush does?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/08/22/BL2008082201762.html
[Dan Froomkin] In agreeing to pull U.S. combat troops out of Iraqi cities by June, and from the rest of the country by 2011, President Bush has apparently consented to precisely the kind of timetable that, when Democrats called for one, he dismissed as "setting a date for failure." Bush can call it an "aspirational goal" until he turns blue, but a timetable is exactly what it is, thank you very much. . . [read on]

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/laurinmanning/gG5YXc
[Obama] "I am glad that the Administration has finally shifted to accepting a timetable for the removal of our combat troops from Iraq. Success in Iraq depends on an Iraqi government that is reconciling its differences and taking responsibility for its future, and a timetable is the best way to press the Iraqis to do just that. I welcome the growing convergence around this pragmatic and responsible position. . . .”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/22/43339/7621
[Georgia10] How will McCain reconcile that with his position on Iraq? Just when the Secretary of State is negotiating the terms of wrapping up our presence there--and certainly, the Iraqi government appears to want it wrap up as quickly as possible--McCain is bizarrely calling for more troops to be deployed to that county, and is demanding a "greater military commitment" to Iraq . . . [read on]

McCain’s “all in” persona – why it should worry us

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/mccain-crisis

Here’s another Iraq development that means trouble

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/the_war_in_iraq_/2008/08/how_can_you_say_i_am_not_betrayed.php
[Mark Kleiman] The second development — perhaps not coincidental, and certainly much grimmer — is that the Maliki government has decided to double-cross the Sunni insurgents who double-crossed their jihadist buddies by taking U.S. money and changing sides. (Apparently hundreds of them are marked for arrest in Diyala alone.)

The original double-cross was called the "Anbar Awakening," later broadened to "Sunni Awakening." I suppose the new policy could be called — using the veterinarian's euphemism — "putting the Sunnis to sleep."

Now strategically this might be the worst blunder Maliki could have made — the possible trigger of a real civil war . . . [read on]

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/world/middleeast/22sunni.html

Today’s parlor game: let’s make excuses for why McCain couldn’t tell how many houses he owns

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/08/robin-leach-on.html
Robin Leach isn’t your usual political pundit. But the former champagne-toasting host of the TV hit of the mid-'80s to mid-'90s, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," may be more qualified than most to opine on John McCain's now-infamous inability to remember how many homes he owns.

In an early morning phone call Friday from his fabulous crib in Las Vegas, Leach told The Times that he isn’t really surprised at McCain's odd memory lapse given the complex lives that the super-rich lead.

"He probably was confused as to which homes are in his name, his wife's name, or corporate names," Leach explained in his familiar, deep British baritone. "In his attempt to be honest, he put his foot in his mouth." . . .

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/22/leave-john-mccains-houses-alooooooooone/
[Power Line] I can relate, though. For example, if a reporter asked me how many ties I own, there's no way I could answer. Just like McCain, I'd tell him he has to ask my wife. Likewise if someone wants to know how many Wii games my kids have. . . .

The truth is that McCain isn't out of touch with "ordinary people" because he's rich, he's out of touch with his own domestic arrangements because he cares little about material things, and for many years has devoted his extraordinary energies not to enjoying his wife's money, but to serving the American people

Profiles in courage: hiding behind his wife?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/22/124010/246
Rove: Remember the indignation that Senator Obama had when he said, 'They're attacking my wife. I'm never going to attack Cindy McCain.' Well, the issue is what does Mrs. McCain own? These homes are not Senator McCain's. They're Senator McCain's and Mrs. McCain's, bought with Mrs. McCain's money. So he's now done what he said was abso... I mean, he was horrified. There's going to be an article out, an interview with him out here this month, that's next month, where he just says, 'Don't ever attack my wife.' Well, he's now attacking John McCain's wife.

Press coverage: the good, the bad, and the ugly

The good: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/08/the_modern_gop.html
[WP] Sen. John McCain's inability to recall the number of homes he owns during an interview yesterday jeopardized his campaign's carefully constructed strategy to frame Democratic rival Barack Obama as an out-of-touch elitist . . .

The bad and the ugly: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/21/mccain-media-rich/
The Washington Post’s Paul Kane called it a “manufactured flap,” and not “a huge deal” because “at this point in his national political career McCain is not going to be transformed into a super rich elitist. He’s just not, the voters won’t buy it.”

Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic: “[T]he word ‘John McCain’ means a lot of different things, but rich isn’t one of them.”

Howard Kurtz, Washington Post: The “assumption” that “McCain’s personal wealth makes him insensitive to the struggling economy…is highly debatable.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/us/politics/22memo.html
[NYT] Barack Obama and John McCain ripped into each other on Thursday over how many houses, fireplaces and even wine cellars they own, using allusions to net worth to deride each other while portraying themselves as able helmsmen for a faltering economy.

With both candidates convinced that financially pinched voters might hold the electoral key in November — especially in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania — Senators Obama and McCain are taking new, vivid steps to empathize with struggling middle-class and working-class Americans, a tricky task given their own personal wealth. . . .

[NB: See? They’re both the same. Thanks, New York Times.]

The “media shield”

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/22/mccains-media-shield-sets-the-standard-lets-see-them-apply-it-to-obama/
[Scarecrow] Pundits and reporters who have looked into McCain's eyes and seen his soul have designed a rule for shielding McCain from criticism. The shield works like this:

If the reporter thinks a criticism contradicts their own preconceived notion of McCain's character, the criticism is dismissed out of hand, because "its just not McCain."

We've seen reporters use this rule to shield McCain from any criticism of his "honor" or his "mavericity," notwithstanding McCain's increasingly dishonest campaign and his consistent cheerleading for Bush's policies. Now we see the rule used to shield McCain from questions about his ability to empathize with ordinary Americans. . . . [read on]

“Out of Touch.” A tough new ad on McCain’s houses and “country club economics”

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/another_obama_ad_slams_mccain.php

Even Fox News mocks him

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/007-goldenmansion-featuring-and-mocking.html

Just for fun – help John McCain count his houses (thanks to Michael W. for the link)

http://utube.smashits.com/video/dhuMgUkiVOY/Help-John-McCain-Count-His-Houses-.html

Let’s make it eleven: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/how_many_houses_does_mccain_ow.php

McCain runs a new “celebrity” ad in response – and presents an unintentionally hilarious gaffe in the process

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/new_mccain_ad_celebrities_dont.php
McCain is up with yet another "celeb" sneer spot, and absurdly, this one makes the direct suggestion that Obama is rich. "Celebrities don't have to worry about family budgets," the spot says. "But we sure do."

[NB: We? WE????!!???]

Who’s out of touch? Who?

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/08/22/for_mccain_a_cappuccino_run_wi.html
For the second day in a row, Sen. John McCain wanted his morning cup of Joe.

So he gathered his staff, his drivers and his Secret Service agents. He alerted the media to stand by. The bomb sniffing dog was woken up. He put on his sunglasses and baseball cap and headed out.

The six-car caravan (two silver minivans, two tan SUVs and two white 15-passenger vans for the press) left his cabin retreat at just before eight in the morning. Eleven minutes later, the caravan pulled into the parking lot of a Safeway, where a sign proclaimed the presence of a Starbucks.

Cindy McCain, clad in a light pink shirt, khaki shorts and flip flops, paced in front of the Safeway, talking on her phone for a few minutes, her hair pulled into a pony tail. A bit later, she went inside the Safeway and emerged with a coffee cup in hand. A staffer was seen coming out of the Safeway with two cups of coffee and some drycleaning.

The motorcade pulled out after about 20 minutes and headed back to the cabin. . . .

Looks like the press is finally getting fed up with the “I was a P.O.W.” excuse

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/pundits_and_writers_start_hitt.php

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/22/115233/089

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/22/111814/070

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/08/in_his_house_there_are_many_ma.html

The kind of people they are

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209645.php
[Josh Marshall] About four years ago I described what I called the Republicans' 'bitch slap' theory of electoral politics. Stuff like the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry and McCain's Celeb/P Diddy assault on Obama aren't really about the attacks themselves. In themselves, they're often too cartoonish to be believed in any literal sense. What they're about is smacking the other guy around and making him take it. There's no better way to demonstrate someone's lack of toughness or strength than to attack them and show they are either unwilling or unable to defend themselves -- thus the rough slang I used above. That not only makes the other guy look weak. It also transforms him into an object of contempt, which together are politically fatal. It's this meta-message of weakness that resonates far beyond the literal claims. And it's this that Democrats so often seem to miss -- explaining the factual inaccuracies of the claims, demanding that the attacks stop, all the while reinforcing the intended message of the attacks in the first place.

You can even catch a hint of the mentality in the McCain camp's huffing and puffing Thursday afternoon. The new and somewhat improbable line from the McCain camp is that they've actually been doing their best to go easy on Obama, to hold back the stuff that would really make him suffer. But now that Obama's gone ahead and raised McCain's inability to remember how many houses, now he's really gonna get it with a super-mean Rezko ad and maybe even Reverend Wright. "He's opened the door to this," a McCain official told Marc Ambinder, in a campaign version of the wife-beater's "You brought this on yourself!" As if McCain and his Rove lieutenants paid much mind to closed doors.

In effect, the devastating Rezko ad McCain says it never wanted to have to run is pretty weak. Which is pretty much what you'd expect for an ad put together in three or four hours by a campaign shell-shocked by a media firestorm they couldn't put out by screaming POW, POW, POW. . . . [read on]

Look – fact-checking!

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/22/1887/35720
[Newsweek] [McCain’s] TV spot gives an oversimplified and misleading account of how Obama bought his own $1.6 million house in Chicago. ... It says Rezko "purchased part of the property [Obama] couldn't afford." Rezko's wife did buy an adjoining tract but later sold the land at a profit. Obama paid market price for his home. . .

We find McCain's ad is careless with the facts and could easily leave a false impression. . . .

McCain drops the ad: http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/mccain-drops-rezko

McCain’s disastrous goof in Colorado isn’t going away

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/22/14043/8394

The expectations game returns: the McCain campaign predicts a massive “bounce” for Obama from the Dem convention, and says anything less will be a complete failure. Thanks, guys

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/22/convention_bounce/index.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014379.php

More: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_campaign_raises_expecta.php
[Greg Sargent] More interesting, though, is the way it seeks to hike expectations for the media coverage . . .

[NB: Well, now we really are in the postmodern hall of mirrors. By predicting that the media coverage will be glowing (coupled with ongoing complaints that the media is “too easy” on Obama), they want to actually make the media coverage less so – then will point to the fact that it was as a sign that Obama “failed.”

Don’t miss this one

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082202354.html
[Michael Kinsley] With so much going their way in this election, the biggest challenge the Democrats face is simple: The Republicans just play the game of presidential politics so much better. They play it with genius, courage, creativity and utter ruthlessness.

Most amazing among the principles of the Republican Way of War is: Don't waste much time and energy probing the enemy's weaknesses. Go directly to his biggest strength. Four years ago, it was easy to imagine any number of ways the GOP might go after John Kerry. You would not have guessed -- or at least I would not have guessed -- that they could successfully attack his service in Vietnam. Especially when the Republican candidate, George W. Bush, not only had avoided Vietnam by joining the National Guard but had avoided much of the National Guard by skipping the meetings and then had grown up to start an unpopular war that even four years ago seemed to have been going on forever.

A lesser party might have said, "You know what? Let's just leave the whole military-record thing alone." But not the Republicans. They conjured up the Swift boat campaign and managed to turn Kerry's military service into a negative. As is usually the case, the media helped. . . . [read on]

The Repub convention: read these quotes from their pow-wow in 2004. I think you’ll hear almost word for word the same things this year

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/22/memo-to-democrats-dont-forget-the-2004-republican-national-convention/

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/22/122345/845

Nevertheless, the GOP is in trouble. Deep trouble

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014378.php
[Steve Benen] The Senate Democratic leadership is asking, "How close can we get to 60 seats?" The Senate Republican leadership is asking, "Why isn't anyone giving us money?" . . . [read on]

More: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/top_republican_to_fellow_goper.php

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/poll_as_conventions_approach_d.php
[Greg Sargent] All the daily blocking and tackling over things like McCain's number-of-houses gaffe can easily lead you to forget the larger context in which this campaign is playing out. A new Pew poll offers a bracing reminder, laying out in detail just how dramatic the Democrats' generic advantage over the GOP in party identification and image is is right now.

The poll finds that among registered voters, the Democratic Party has a 13-point lead in party affiliation (51%-38%) when independent "leaners" are included. Our handy Election Central calculator tells us that means that more than half of registered voters self-identify with the Democratic Party. That seems striking.

The "image" numbers are also good for the Dems. Fifty-seven percent say they view the Democratic Party favorably, while 37% view it unfavorably. By contrast, only 43% view the GOP favorably, while a plurality of 49% rate it unfavorably. That's another big advantage for Obama. . . .

The Obama camp calls Hans von Spakovsky’s hiring by the Civil Rights Commission “unbelievable”

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_camp_responds_to_spakovs.php

Comparing McCain's and Obama’s tax policies

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/opinion/22krugman.html
[Paul Krugman] Mr. McCain wants to preserve almost all the Bush tax cuts, and add to them by cutting taxes on corporations. Mr. Obama wants to roll back the high-end Bush tax cuts — the cuts in tax rates on the top two income brackets and the cuts in tax rates on income from dividends and capital gains — and use some of that money to reduce taxes lower down the scale.

According to estimates prepared by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, those Obama tax increases would fall overwhelmingly on people with incomes of more than $200,000 a year. Are such people rich? Well, maybe not: some of those Mr. Obama proposes taxing are only denizens of lower Richistan, although the really big tax increases would fall on upper Richistan. But one thing’s for sure: Mr. Obama isn’t planning to raise taxes on the middle class, by any reasonable definition — even that of the Bush administration. . . [read on]

More: http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/08/22/mccains-proposed-cuts-insufficient/

McCain on “the moment of conception.” It’s a ridiculous, insincere, unsustainable position for a lot of reasons – it would ban many forms of contraception as murder, it makes all embryonic stem cell research an abomination, etc. But it got big applause at Saddleback, so I guess it was a smart move, eh?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/20/72521/1731

Bonus item: A few years ago, CNN had a regular feature, “Inside the Blogs” – PBD was even featured there once. But it was always a strange concept: watching reporters on tv, looking at computer screens, reading blog content to the audience

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0504/11/ip.01.html
[April 11, 2005] CAL CHAMBERLAIN, CNN BLOG REPORTER: So, over at the progressive blog digest at pbd.blogspot.com. He's got a wrap-up of all the DeLay news from today, and he's got a bunch of links to a bunch of different blogs talking about it . . .

That past came to mind during the breathless Obama VP watch on television, focused around when, oh when, he would send out the text message announcing his choice

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/triumph_of_new_media_over_old.php
Wolf Blitzer on the Situation Room begging viewers to stay tuned so CNN can bring them coverage of a text message.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:57 AM

 
BRINGING A GUN TO A KNIFE FIGHT

Now, THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12685.html
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

"I think — I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. . . .

Watch Obama: http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/obama-knee-caps-mccain-over-house-gaffe.html
“But then there was another interview – this is yesterday, same day – where somebody asked John McCain, how many houses do you have? And he said, I’m not sure. I’ll have to check with my staff. True quote. I’m not sure. I’ll have to check with my staff. So they asked his staff, and he said, at least four. At least four. Now, think about that. I guess if you think that being rich means you’ve got to make $5 million and if you don’t know how many houses you have, then it’s not surprising that you might think the economy was fundamentally strong.”

Watch VP candidate Tim Kaine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhmtZZWJjjI&eurl
"I understand that Sen. McCain was asked yesterday this question, 'how many houses do you own?,' and he couldn't answer that question. He couldn’t count high enough apparently to even know how many houses he owns”

Watch Obama’s new ad: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/new_obama_ad_hits_mccain_on_nu.php

How many houses DOES he have?

Four? http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209558.php

Seven? http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/635/

Eight? http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/21/17327/4229

Ten? http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209511.php

[NB: How many houses? No man can say*]

More: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209488.php

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/two_become_one.php

“Let’s say nine” (don’t miss this one)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209622.php

You know how we always try to be fair. And it is, to be fair, very hard to keep the number of houses one owns straight once you get above a certain number. For example, take McCain’s “rustic cabin” at Sedona . . .

http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0808/In_Sedona_during_Dem_convo_McCain_to_film_spots_take_day_trips_.html?showall
My colleague Lisa Lerer, travelling with McCain, sends word that the candidate is now at his cabin in Sedona . . .

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/03/mccain.bbq/
[CNN] Instead of appealing for votes on the campaign trail, Sen. John McCain spent the weekend playing host at his rustic Arizona home . . . .

Uh-huh: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209536.php
[Josh Marshall] You start to see one of the reasons why there are so many different estimates of how many houses the McCain's own when you look closer at the Sedona multi-home estate.

On the one hand, the AP reports that "includes four single-family homes and is worth nearly $1.8 million." . . . Here you can see an aerial view of the estate, which is on from 15 to 20 acres of land . . .

A multimedia extravaganza

A Google Earth tour of McCain’s houses: http://www.jedreport.com/2008/06/the-mccain-resi.html

Photos: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209500.php

Homemade video: McCain hosts reporters at the Sedona “cabin” http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209567.php

Wanna buy one? http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209657.php
Former home of Sen John & Cindy McCain. Situated on over 2.5 acres. Totally remodeled in Old World style complete w/7 bedrooms in main house & 6 bedrooms in guest houses. Hardwood & travertine floors throughout. Master suite has huge walk-in w/private cantera stone patio w/spa and fplc. Gourmet kitchen has travertine floors, granite counters, commercial SS appliances w/large catering room/butlers pantry off kitchen. 2 guest houses. His/her dressing cabana. Finest entertaining backyard in the Valley - 3 ramadas (2 w/full bar set-up), BBQ, play house, cantera stone decking, pavillion, spa and large lap/play pool. 7 car detached garage...

WAIT! It gets even better

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccains_bought_second_beach_ho.php
[Greg Sargent] Here's a fun little find that is likely to give Dems more ammo to blast away at John McCain's number-of-houses gaffe.

It turns out that a few months ago, a McCain family corporation closed on a second multi-million-dollar beach condo in the same building in exclusive Coronado, California -- at around the same time that John McCain offered his somewhat tone-deaf observation that struggling homeowners were "working at second jobs" and "skipping a vacation" in order to make mortgage payments on time. . . .

Here’s an old story, we had it here before. But now it takes on a new light

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/28/mccains-failed-to-pay-tax_n_109785.html
[June 28] Newsweek is set to publish a highly embarrassing report on Sen. John McCain, revealing that the McCains have failed to pay taxes on their beach-front condo in La Jolla, California, for the last four years and are currently in default . . .

Still more . . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209623.php
[Politico] The McCains increased their budget for household employees from $184,000 in 2006 to $273,000 in 2007, according to John McCain's tax returns.

The additional cash supports an "increase in the number of employees," the McCain aide told Politico. The aide did not answer a question about whether the growing staff stemmed from addition of new properties to the family's real estate portfolio.

The Dems are having a FIELD DAY

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/21/122444/424
[Politico] Barack Obama's campaign, moving rapidly to exploit what they see as a major opportunity, is deploying high-profile surrogates in 16 states across the country today to highlight John McCain's uncertainty yesterday about how many houses he owns, the Democrat's campaign tells Politico.

Governors, members of Congress and state legislators will hold conference calls and press conferences in front of homes to draw attention to the issue. . . .

More: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/dems_open_major_populist_offen.php

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_unleashes_broad_populist.php

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/22/65912/9320

Here’s the best part – the BEST part. How does the McCain camp respond to this undeniably factual critique?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/21/153513/551
[TPM] The McCain campaign is road-testing a new argument . . . The houses gaffe doesn't matter because ... he was a POW!

"This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison," spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post. . . [read on]

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16635.html
[Steve Benen] There seems to be a pattern here. . . . [read on]

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/mccains-housing-gaffe-doesnt-matter.html
[John Aravosis] McCain may be overusing the POW card . . .

[NB: Ya think?]

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/noun-verb-and-pow-by-digby-huffpo.html
[Digby] At some point even the somnambulent press corps is going to start rolling their eyes.

You can tell it has them rattled. Is this the best they can do in response?

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_campaign_response_obama.php
"Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses? . . .

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7649
"We're delighted to have a real estate debate with Barack Obama," said spokesman Brian Rogers, adding that the press should focus on Obama's house. "It's a frickin' mansion."

More: http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/08/9330_mccain_camp_responds_houses.html

Rattled? Off their game? Oh, yeah

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209618.php
McCain's latest response: They're not my homes! They're Cindy's!

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014359.php
[Kevin Drum] You can almost smell the flop sweat, can't you?

The McCain campaign now says, “all bets are off – now we’re going to use all that Rezko stuff and Wright stuff and Ayers stuff we’ve been holding back.” As if, AS IF they needed any excuse to get vicious when they had to

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/mccain_prepares_rezko_ad_wrigh.php

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/gloves-are-off-for-good-by-digby-it.html

Rezko: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2008/aug/21/johnmccain.barackobama

Ayers: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/rightwing_group_to_slime_obama.php

Yes, I believe they were OH SO reluctant to play the Rezko card. So reluctant that they had oppo research just sitting there ready to use and an ad up and running within hours

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/new_mccain_ad_its_obama_who_ha.php

I’ll call your Rezko, and raise you a Keating

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/21/185928/267

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/mccain-made-charles-keating-part-of-his.html

“Senator Hothead.” McCain’s temperament problem returns

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/dnc-slams-mccain-as

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16630.html

There really is nothing McCain won’t sell out

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/20/224644/860
[John McCain to George W. Bush, in 2000] “In other words your position is you believe there’s an exemption for rape, incest, and life of the mother, but you want the platform that you’re supposed to be leading to have no exemption...

It doesn’t have the exemptions in it and you know that very well...

Read the platform. It has no exceptions...”

[John McCain in 2007] Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told ABC News Saturday that he still wants to change the GOP's abortion platform to explicitly recognize exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.

[John McCain, now – doing EXACTLY what he criticized Bush for doing] But now that he is the presumptive Republican nominee, the McCain camp is making it clear that he has no plans to push for changes to the platform.

McCain's decision to leave the platform untouched follows a warning from a prominent social conservative.

"If he were to change the party platform," to account for exceptions such as rape, incest or risk to the mother's life, "I think that would be political suicide," Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council, told ABC News . . .

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/john_mccain_moderate_/2008/08/mccain_folds_again.php
[Mark Kleiman] Add this to the list of questions reporters ought to ask McCain: "The Republican Platform calls for an absolute ban on abortion, with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother. You used to be in favor of changing that language. Has your stance changed? Do you support the platform you're running on?

The common touch

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/21/162111/573
[2006] McCain responded by saying immigrants were taking jobs nobody else wanted. He offered anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona.

Shouts of protest rose from the crowd, with some accepting McCain’s job offer.

“I’ll take it!” one man shouted.

McCain insisted none of them would do such menial labor for a complete season. “You can’t do it, my friends.”

Some in the crowd said they didn’t appreciate McCain questioning their work ethic. . . . [read on]

More lobbyist trouble

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/sacbee-more-than-60-current-or-former.html
[Sacramento Bee] More than 60 present and former telecom lobbyists work for McCain's campaign as staffers and volunteers, some in high-echelon posts while on leave from their firms.

I agree, John, this is a BRILLIANT election strategy. Please stick with it

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/mccain_ill_be_so_different_from_bush_that_ill_continue_all_his_policies.php
[Politico] “I don’t have any need to show that I’m different than President Bush,” McCain said when asked if he’d take any steps after being elected to demonstrate where he’d diverge from his predecessor. . . . [read on]

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16631.html

Rich boyz hang together?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/22/11918/9667
[Mark Halperin] Two Republicans close to the situation say McCain has apparently settled on Mitt Romney as his running mate.

[Kos] Mittens has what, three houses? Talk about a reinforcing pick . . .

Judging the source: http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_08_17_archive.html#4460473218925041590
[Atrios] Mark Halperin . . . had a post suggesting Obama would pick Dick Lugar as Veep. The post is now gone. Deleted.

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/denver_ill_confess_both.php
[Marc Ambinder] [I]f it is Mitt Romney, and if Barack Obama has indeed chosen Sen. Joe Biden, as Time also insinuates (and as a report, one that I have a better feeling about), note, then, that both Obama and McCain would seem to have settled on the consensus Washington choice.

Two MORE Obama attack ads

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_hits_mccain_with_two_new.php

But here’s the bigger story

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209574.php
[Josh Marshall] But let's not forget that there's an even bigger story today in the presidential race -- at least in terms of substance and possibly politically too, at least over time. John McCain has staked his whole campaign on opposing Barack Obama's call for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. His very support of the notion, to McCain, illustrates his naivete and unfitness for the job of commander-in-chief. And yet today, the US and Iraq have agreed on a "timetable", using that very word, for leaving Iraq. Reality, the Bush administration and the Iraqi government have jointly endorsed Obama's position and left McCain a relic. Once the fun of the house story settles down from a boil to a simmer, the Obama camp must pivot off this development.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2008-08-21-rice-meeting_N.htm
[AP] Iraq and the U.S. have reached preliminary agreement to withdraw American forces from Iraqi cities by next June, six years into the increasingly unpopular war . . .

Rice spoke optimistically of completing a deal but stressed that it still needs top-level Iraqi approval.

"We think it's a good agreement," she said. "We recognize that the government still has to review this agreement ... and we'll await that process, and then it obviously has to go to the Council of Representatives." She was referring to the Iraqi parliament; the Bush administration does not plan to submit the deal to Congress for approval. . . .

"We have agreed that some goals, some aspirational timetables for how that might unfold, are well worth having in such an agreement," Rice told reporters . . .

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_08_17_archive.html#8364154614556960099
[Atrios] I guess an "aspirational timetable" is somehow different than an actual one. Or something.

http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2008/08/21/withdrawalonthewaymaybe/
[Spencer Ackerman] After years of telling the country that setting a date for withdrawal from Iraq would lead to total disaster -- "I believe setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East, and send a signal that America will not keep its commitment," said George W. Bush on May 1, 2007 -- an out-of-options Bush may be about to capitulate to a 2011 withdrawal of combat troops . . .

The question, if the [WSJ] is right, becomes whether John McCain remains the outlier from a consensus on withdrawal. His position is untenable: either he sticks with what he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars earlier this week -- "The great difference — the great difference [with Obama] — is that I intend to win" in Iraq -- and rejects the negotiated timeline; or, like Bush, he suddenly embraces what he's always said would be a disaster, thereby conceding that Obama was right all along. . . .

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/armistice-by-dday-not-exactly-three.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/08/21/BL2008082101782.html

I like this idea very much: if Obama really wants to make a big splash with his VP announcement, announce a couple of Cabinet officers as well

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2008/aug/21/barackobama.hillaryclinton

Debate formats and schedules announced

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/21/115919/498

It’s what they do: Bush hack and enemy of voter rights Hans von Spakovsky (remember him?) is secretly hired by the Civil Rights Commission to PROTECT voters’ rights

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/civil_rights_commission_hires.php
[Kate Klonick] At a July 28th meeting where the commissioners approved the hiring of the "special assistants," the new hires identities were kept confidential. According to the transcript of the meeting, when one of the commissioners asked for more information on the identity of who was being hired, the question was never answered. . . .

Too slanderous even for Fox News

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/even_fox_news_refuses_to_run_s.php
[Eric Kleefeld] How bad does a wingnut ad attacking Obama have to be for Fox News to refuse to run it?

The Associated Press reports that Fox News is declining to run the new ad from the "American Issues Project," a new right-wing swift-boating operation, connecting Obama to former 1960s radical William Ayers. . . . [read on]

Fox News, gotta love ‘em

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/21/12558/3572
"Polls Show McCain Holding Obama to Narrow Lead"

Bonus item: “Citizen Kane”

http://www.filmsite.org/citi.html
* Narrator of Newsreel: Legendary was Xanadu where Kubla Khan decreed his stately pleasure dome. Today, almost as legendary is Florida's Xanadu, world's largest private pleasure ground. Here, on the deserts of the Gulf Coast, a private mountain was commissioned and successfully built. One hundred thousand trees, twenty thousand tons of marble are the ingredients of Xanadu's mountain. Contents of Xanadu's palace: paintings, pictures, statues, the very stones of many another palace - a collection of everything so big it can never be catalogued or appraised, enough for ten museums - the loot of the world. . . . Since the pyramids, Xanadu is the costliest monument a man has built to himself. . . . Cost: No man can say.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:47 AM

 
CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM

McCain uses the oldest line in the books, “No I’m not questioning his patriotism, I’m questioning his judgment” – and then takes the opportunity to REPEAT the slander. This is why you can’t respond to GOP attacks with simple denials – I thought the Obama team understood that

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_im_questioning_obamas_p.php
“Yesterday, Senator Obama got a little testy on this issue. He said that I am questioning his patriotism. Let me be clear: I am not questioning his patriotism; I am questioning his judgment. Senator Obama has made it clear that he values withdrawal from Iraq above victory in Iraq, even today with victory in sight. Over and over again, he has advocated unconditional withdrawal -- regardless of the facts on the ground. And he voted against funding for troops in combat . . .”

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16621.html
[Steve Benen] McCain has to realize how disingenuous this is. McCain and his campaign have been going after Obama’s patriotism, rather blatantly, for quite a while now. It’s ugly and pathetic, and I’m not surprised McCain would prefer to deny it publicly, but that doesn’t change the reality.

This is pretty well-tread ground, but let’s quickly review some of the evidence . . . [read on]

Obama famously said, quoting “The Untouchables”: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” But is he doing that? Maybe he’s starting to . . .

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/20/wake_up_obama_camp/
[Theda Skocpol] The last month has been excruciating for Obama supporters, watching him and his campaign squander so many hopes and resources on an utterly wimpy campaign. For me, the last straw was yesterday -- in the VFW speech when supposedly Obama was gettting tough against McCain's character assassination strategy -- to watch him speak like a soporific college professor, repeating McCain's charges at length, flattering McCain as honorable and patriotic, and then, finally, sort of begging McCain to take it back! . . . [read on]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209350.php
[Josh Marshall] Don't ever demand someone stop attacking you. Doesn't work. Don't do it. Sounds weak. Sounds pathetic. And a lot else.

Look at John McCain attacking my patriotism. It's sad what he's become. He'll do anything to get elected. Attack my patriotism. Change all his positions. Get in bed with the same people he used to say were the worst thing in politics. He'll do anything to get elected ...

Or

Look at John McCain. He knows people are fed up with the politics he and George Bush support. So instead of saying what he's for all he can think of to do is silly stuff like attacking my patriotism.

I'm not a message person so I'm sure a real one could come up with much better. But the point is. Don't demand or beg or please or even ask. It's silly and weak and achieves nothing. McCain's weakness is that he's abandoned everything he always said he believed in, just to be president. Against Bush/Rove attacks? Now they run his campaign? Reform? Now he's for all of President Bush's economic policies. It's the mix of flip-flops and moral failures that made his one time admirer diagnose him with a "severe character defect."

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_08_17_archive.html#8682212629191522213
[Atrios] Josh is right that Democrats look bad when they say "stop being mean to me!!!" But that's largely because they lack the knowledge and infrastructure to choreograph and perform The Grand Hissy Fit that the Republicans have perfected over the years.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080820/ap_on_el_pr/candidates_patriotism;_ylt=AoF_VcEZXljPothQGJzzcCPZn414
The political landscape is littered with Democrats whose campaigns have been hurt by questions about their patriotism. Barack Obama wants to avoid the same fate. . . . [read on]

Going on offense

On McCain, Reed, and Abramoff: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_ad_links_mccain_to_reed.php

On McCain and taxes: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_obama_ads_trade_blows_o.php

On McCain’s “judgment”: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_campaign_mccain_is_a_rec.php
[Greg Sargent] In an apparent effort to regain the offensive, the Obama campaign launched a broad attack on McCain today, portraying him as reckless on foreign policy, a hot-head who's too willing to use force and not willing enough to apprise himself of facts on the ground before urging military action. . . . [read on]

More: http://thepage.time.com/2008/08/20/judgment-and-patriotism/

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/20/182219/807

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209395.php
[Josh Marshall] Will the McCain as trigger-happy hothead work? I suggest a different calculus. Is it true? I would suggest that it definitely is, both in personal temperament and policy prescriptions. And I believe that is the better metric, both practically speaking and morally.

Morally, the case is pretty straightforward. McCain really is a hothead. Everyone seems to agree that's true on an interpersonal level. But I don't really care about that. I don't care who he swears at. But over his time in the senate and now as would-be president, he's shown a tendency always to jump to the most confrontational and military-based responses to foreign events, often to almost ridiculous levels. And I think because of that temperament, he's fallen in with and become a useful tool of the DC neoconservatives who view acting crazy and getting people killed as a matter of principle.

I've watched the Bush presidency very closely. I've watched McCain closely for the last decade or so. And I either know or know a decent amount about a lot of the people advising him on foreign policy. And in terms of the physical safety and future of my wife and two sons, let alone the country, I would much prefer four more years of the Bush presidency to a McCain presidency.

Running as a pundit

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/the_pundit_presidency.php
[Matt Yglesias] Max Bergmann had the excellent insight that perhaps the key to understanding John McCain’s hysteria-based foreign policy is that it reflects the mindset of a television pundit. And this, after all, is really what McCain has been. He’s not interested in the nitty-gritty of domestic policy that Senators actually have influence over. . . . Instead, he spends a ton of time going on television and talking. Max mentions that “one of the first things McCain did after 9-11 was go on just about every TV program - where he incidentally called for attacking about four countries” and consistently over the years gone on TV and “sounded the alarm, ratcheted up the rhetoric and often called for military action - with almost no regards to the practical implications of such an approach.” Thus he can, for example, go on TV and call casually for a land invasion of Serbia knowing he’ll never be held accountable for any problems since the Clinton administration won’t do it, and then just forget about the whole thing in later years when the more responsible approach turns out to have been okay.

Along these lines, David Ignatius has a great column tagging McCain for his irresponsible actions over the years that have worsened the situation in Georgia. As Ignatius points out, McCain has, literally for years, been calibrating his statements on Russia and Georgia with an eye to generating (in his own words) “good zingers.” Which is fine, if a bit annoying, for a TV commentator. But McCain is actually a public official, and public officials normally try to be cautious in their statements about delicate situations lest rash words and rash promises lead, say, to a war. . .

If the Dems were willing to run a campaign like the Republicans, this clip would be running wall-to-wall, where McCain apparently calls for reinstituting the draft. Is it fair? Is it really his position? That wouldn’t matter – he would be on the defensive, trying to explain himself

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16624.html
For those of you who can’t watch clips online, a woman in the audience told the presumptive Republican nominee, “Senator McCain I truly hope you get the opportunity to chase Bin Laden right to the gates of hell and push him in as you stated on your forum. . . . If we don’t reenact the draft I don’t think we will have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.”

McCain, without hesitation, responded, “Ma’am, let me say that I don’t disagree with anything you said . . .”

More: http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/does_mccain_favor_a_draft_nope.php

We’ve already reviewed the problems for the McCain campaign in having a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government shaping their response to the Russia/Georgia conflict. So, now they want to change the subject

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_campaign_to_slam_obama.php
[Greg Sargent] The McCain campaign is likely going to try to make an issue today over this report in the New York Sun saying that a foreign policy adviser to Obama provided advice to the Syrian government last month . . .

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/smearing_dan_kurtzer.php
[Matt Yglesias] Dan Kurtzer is one of the people unofficially advising Barack Obama on Middle East policy. And why not? He’s got the kind of record you’re looking for in an adviser. He’s a longtime career foreign service officer who rose to hold such posts as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, Ambassador to Egypt, and Ambassador to Israel. Obviously, that background doesn’t give him the sort of deep grounding in national strategy that John McCain garnered going on TV a lot to spread hysteria and spout nonsense. Which probably explains why the McCain campaign’s latest “say anything” gambit is a bizarre attack on Kurtzer.

Kurtzer, you see, in addition to being commissioner of the short-lived Israel Baseball League went to Syria recently where he urged the Syrian government to move expeditiously toward making peace with Israel. This, the McCain campaign would like is to believe, is practically treason. Or something. . . . [read on]

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16623.html
[Steve Benen] Indeed, it appears that Rudy Giuliani will help lead the outraged mob, which will denounce “an Obama campaign Middle East adviser” traveling to Damascus “for meetings with Syrian officials.”

If the McCain gang really wants to go down this road, let them. It’ll give the Obama campaign an opportunity to remind everyone how ridiculous McCain’s policy towards Syria has been.

There are two possible approaches here. The McCain campaign could try to argue that Obama is trying to conduct diplomacy before getting elected. This, of course, would be ridiculous — Obama didn’t send Kurtzer, Kurtzer doesn’t represent Obama, and Kurtzer isn’t engaged in diplomatic work. If that’s the charge, it’s just rather silly.

It’s more likely, though, that the McCain campaign will insist that Obama and his advisors support diplomacy with a state sponsor of terror. I actually hope they do make this argument. . . . [read on]

To the gates of hell

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/john_mccain_/2008/08/to_the_gates_of_hell_but_not_to_pakistan.php
[Mark Kleiman] Matt Duss has the goods on the aging bloviator he calls StraightTalk McSurge: McCain continues to insist that he'll pursue Osama bin Laden "to the gates of Hell" while also criticizing Barack Obama as "inexperienced" because Barack Obama recommended that US forces pursue Osama bin Laden into Pakistan, which is where Osama bin Laden actually is. . . .

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/mccain_and_the_gates_of_hates.php
[Matt Yglesias] Matt Duss wonders why McCain won’t follow bin Laden into Pakistan where, unlike the gates of hell, he actually is. I, for one, would just settle for McCain getting some priorities straight. The point of the gates of hell line, after all, is to underscore how seriously McCain takes the al-Qaeda issue. But he’s also absolutely committed to an undefined goal of victory in Iraq. And he’s also absolutely committed to halting the Iranian nuclear program. And now he’s also absolutely committed to rolling back Russian influence. In the real world, you can’t accomplish anything unless you’re prepared to focus and set priorities.

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/cato-asks-whether-mccains-hot-rhetoric.html
[CATO] Exalting terrorism - as John McCain does with his “gates of hell” talk - is precisely the wrong thing for a national leader to do. The country will be made more secure by deflating the world image of Osama bin Laden and making his movement less attractive. Our leaders must withdraw rhetorical power from terrorists by controlling their tongues.

More: http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/08/20/to-the-gates-of-hell-just-not-into-pakistan/

McCain really stepped in it big time, pissing off Democrats and Republicans alike in the pivotal battleground state of Colorado – and now needs others to explain that he didn’t say what he actually said

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/20/mccain-romney-colorado-compact/
[McCain on the 1922 Colorado River compact, which governs the allocation of the river’s water among seven states] “So the compact that is in effect, obviously, needs to be renegotiated over time amongst the interested parties” . . .

[McCain surrogate, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney] “Senator McCain has no interest in reopening the compact,” Romney said.

More: http://www.samefacts.com/archives/john_mccain_/2008/08/waterrustlerinchief.php

Should we be going after McCain’s “cross in the sand story”? A debate

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209200.php
[From a Republican] You didn't get this from me, but use it as you will. Is it just me -- as a Republican knowing how we've played this game before -- or should there be genuine puzzlement why Obama isn't unleashing Democratic veterans (Jim Webb, Jack Reed, John Kerry, BOB Kerrey perhaps, etc. Some Democratic generals, whatever) to go after McCain on this "cross in the dirt" stuff? I mean, if there was one issue tailor-made for "Swift-Boat" payback, I can't think of anything else.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209244.php
[JB] Although your Republican friend suggests going after McCain for the sand in the cross story, denying this claim is impossible and turns quickly into a he said - she said issue. A surrogate may question its validity, but I think that puts us in shrill Ann Coulter territory and will make some people wonder why we are picking on him for his most vulnerable period when he was a hero. . . . [read on]

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/lying_in_politics_/2008/08/mccains_saddleback_deception.php
[Mark Kleiman] I agree with Megan about both the ethics and the tactics of asking whether the cross-in-the-dirt incident really happened. Let's drop that one, folks. . . [read on]

The press seems to be slowly, slowly coming to a realization about who John McCain really is

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16616.html
Two weeks ago, it seemed Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter had just about had it with John McCain. The columnist said he’s “misread McCain,” who, it turns out, is “a surprisingly immature politician” who may not be “ready to lead.” Alter’s piece concluded that McCain had “mortgaged his precious personal honor.”

But underlying Alter’s argument is that McCain is still a good guy who’s been led astray by irresponsible advisors who’ve led him astray. McCain’s ugly campaign is “out of sync with the real guy,” Alter said.

In his new column, Alter takes McCain to task for “making stuff up about Barack Obama,” and this time, Alter doesn’t make excuses for the Republican nominee. . . .

“For about a month, McCain’s campaign has been resorting to charges that are patently false. When Obama traveled abroad in July, to positive reviews, McCain decided he had to make attack ads that went far beyond the norm. In the past, plainly deceptive ads were the province of the Republican National Committee or the Democratic National Committee or independent committees free to fling mud that didn’t bear the fingerprints of candidates. But not this time. These smears come directly from the candidate. . . .”

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/brooks_mccain_is_an_unprincipled_sellout.php
[Matt Yglesias] [David] Brooks has historically been a big McCain fan. Back during the 2000 campaign, he was one of the relatively small number of decidedly conservative journalists to fall for McMania. And while lots of writers have gushed with praise for McCain over the years, Brooks was something more like an important ideologist of McCainism, someone who both praised McCain and also helped shape the higher rationale for his political ambitions. McCain, Brooks thought, was an ideal political vessel for ideas that Brooks thought were important. Brooks thought, in other words, that McCain was substantially different from and better than your average politician.

Brooks’ column from yesterday, meanwhile, is about how Brooks no longer thinks that’s true. It argues that McCain, like everyone else, turns out to be happy to put his personal ambition ahead of his ideals and principles. And it argues that McCain doesn’t have any special qualities whereby his ambition is best served through honorable methods. He’s a typical pol pulling the typical stuff. Now if you’re a conservative, as Brooks is, you’re still going to look at the situation and decide that in a Presidential election you should vote for the conservative candidate — typical pol though he may be. But the main theme of McCain campaign is that he isn’t like that that he “puts country first” as witnessed by his wartime service — we’re supposed to believe that he’s a much, much, much better and more elevated kind of political leader than your average politician. And Brooks is saying that’s not true. He’s not saying it the way I would say it, but I think it’s all the more valuable for coming from a conservative McCain fan and for being written with the “more in sadness than in anger” tone you would expect from a conservative McCain fan.

How to get disinvited to a McCain campaign conference call

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0808/Cutting_off_the_JTA.html
Ron Kampeas, the Washington, D.C. of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, compared an Obama advisor's trip to Syria -- the subject of the call -- to Giuliani's and McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann's paid work on behalf of Georgia (in Scheunemann's case) and Venezuela's Citgo and the Saudi government (in the case of Giuliani's law firm).

"You're making an issue of him taking a hotel room?" Kampeas asked -- and then dropped off the call mid-sentence.

"I think they cut me off," he said in an email just now. . . .

Why the latest Swift Boat attack failed

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/former-clinton
[Howard Wolfson] “The Obama Nation” contains no real revelation or new criticism about Senator Obama. ”Unfit for Command” purported that Senator Kerry did not deserve his medals and was not really a war hero. This was a big, easily understood attack which went to the very heart of Senator Kerry’s candidacy. In contrast, “The Obama Nation” contends that Senator Obama is a liberal. A Republican calls a Democrat a liberal? This is news? Who cares?....

In 2008 the Obama war room, progressive organizations like Media Matters and the progressive blogosphere attacked Corsi’s work aggressively, pointing out the many errors in “The Obama Nation” and Corsi’s own history of inflammatory comments quickly and effectively. The media, which all too often covered the claims of Corsi and his allies uncritically in 04, have focused instead on reporting the inaccuracy of his charges in 08. . . . [read on]

They won’t stop: http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/swiftboat-lawyer
[Laura McGann] Jason Hancock at our sister site Iowa Independent has a great revolving-door catch today. Hancock reports that two all-stars in attack dog campaigning are on board at American Future Fund -- a conservative advocacy group running ads in tight Congressional races across the country. . . . [read on]

Looks like McCain will turn over writing the GOP platform to the hard right and theocrats to placate them, then proceed to ignore it as if it has nothing to do with him

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16617.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/culture-o-life-by-digby-fanatics-abc.html

Theocracy watch: then and now

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/evangelical-leader-james-dobson-on.html
[John Aravosis] Seems Dobson had some choice words only a few years ago about John McCain's adultery. I guess the latest version of the Bible must have repealed the admonitions against adultery, or else Dobson wouldn't be now wooing McCain.

"The Senator," Dobson said, "is being touted by the media as a man of principle, yet he was involved with other women while married to his first wife, and was implicated in the so-called Keating scandal with four other senators. He was eventually reprimanded by the Congress for the 'appearance of impropriety.' The Senator reportedly has a violent temper and can be extremely confrontational and profane when angry. These red flags about Senator McCain's character are reminiscent of the man who now occupies the White House."

And this is what Dobson had to say just last year. . .

"Speaking as a private individual, I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances," Focus on the Family founder James Dobson told the Christian radio show Jerry Johnson Live in January.

Is McCain’s floater about pro-choice Ridge and Lieberman, who the religious right REALLY hate, meant to soften them up to accept Romney, who they only hate a little bit?

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/20/behind_mccains_pro-choice_veep_bluff.html

Joe Lieberman to speak at the GOP convention – will the Dems make him pay a price for it?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16620.html

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7622

Against what I said here yesterday: why Obama supporters SHOULD be worried about the latest polls

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/why-people-should-be-worried-about.html

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/on_those_national_polls.php

Obama’s structural advantages

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=its_his_party_08
[Dana Goldstein and Ezra Klein] Barack Obama has been proving himself the most party-focused presidential candidate in recent history--possibly ever. Paradoxically, although Obama's success has been more dependent on personal charisma than any recent nominee's has, he's been leveraging that charisma to build a broader Democratic infrastructure less dependent on the presidential nominee.

This should be no surprise. Though Obama himself is a newcomer to Washington, the upper echelons of his Senate and campaign staff are populated almost exclusively by experienced Democratic Party operatives. Continuity with the established party infrastructure is a defining characteristic of the Obama campaign. When Hillary Clinton conceded the nomination, Obama's first major staff change was not the incorporation of a former Clinton operative meant to heal the divisions of the primary, nor the elevation of a national-security graybeard meant to reassure general-election voters of Obama's commander-in-chief credentials. Rather, it was to install Paul Tewes, the skilled organizer who served as the architect of Obama's crucial victory in Iowa, at the DNC to head up the committee's election-year efforts. A few weeks later, it was announced that the DNC would cease accepting contributions from lobbyists or political action committees.

Then it came out that much of the DNC was moving to Chicago. In the months that have followed, the Obama campaign has announced plans for training camps that will turn out thousands of new organizers dedicated to electing Democrats, and has signaled that it will spend millions in blood-red states where Democrats haven't seriously invested in building party infrastructure for decades. The campaign has constructed a fundraising machine based around small-donors that promises to end the age-old competition for dollars between different wings of the Democratic establishment, enabling the creation of a unified electoral strategy. It has argued that "real change" requires the sort of legislative successes that only a strong congressional party can produce. In short, the candidate running on his exhaustion with traditional party politics has directed his campaign to build a new kind of Democratic Party--one that may put to shame anything that came before it. . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/19/AR2008081903186.html
This is Triple O -- Obama's online operation.

Five years ago, Howard Dean's online-fueled campaign cemented the Internet's role as a political force. Exactly how big a force no one was quite sure. But this year's primary season, spanning six months, proved that online buzz and activity can translate to offline, on-the-ground results. Indeed, the Web has been crucial to how Obama raises money, communicates his message and, most important, recruits, energizes and turns out his supporters.

With less than three months to go before the election, Triple O is the envy of strategists in both parties, redefining the role that an online team can play within a campaign.

"Theirs is an operation that everyone will be studying for campaigns to come," says Peter Daou, who was Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Internet director.

Adds Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum, an online hub of how politics and technology intersect: "Obama's success online is as much about how our society has changed, how our media ecology has changed, just in the past four years." . . . [read on]

What’s going on here?

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/hillary_backers_in_pennsylvani.php
[Scranton Times] A brother of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and local Democrats who backed her unsuccessful presidential campaign socialized privately Monday with a top surrogate of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

The private gathering featured Carly Fiorina, Mr. McCain's top economic adviser, and took place at the Dunmore home of political consultant Jamie Brazil, a longtime friend of Mrs. Clinton's family who has signed on as paid national director of Mr. McCain's Citizens for McCain Coalition. . . .

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/20/tony_tony_tony/index.html

“Voting machines can never be trusted” (thanks to Colleen V. for the link)

http://www.alternet.org/democracy/94895/

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/20/ohio_voting/index.html

How the White House press corps gets co-opted

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/20/abramowitz/index.html
[Washington Post's White House reporter, Michael Abramowitz] One of the things you find in covering the White House is that many of the staff are extremely friendly and dedicated, and it's fun to get to know some of them. The truth is reporters tend to hang out with the people in the [White House] press office . . . [read on]

Bonus item: Is it possible for the Republicans to run a campaign without resorting to this? (Don’t answer – it’s a rhetorical question)

http://mediamatters.org/items/200808200009
[Rush Limbaugh] “[Y]ou can't hit the girl, and you can't -- you can't criticize the little black man-child. You just can't do it, 'cause it's just not right, It's not fair. He's such a victim."

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:53 AM

 
DON’T WORRY (YET)

For all my friends fretting that Obama isn’t winning by more than he is: first of all, you’re buying a media line that serves THEIR interests. If Obama has a big lead, they say it can’t last. If he has a small lead, they say it should be larger. If the race is tightening, they get breathless. For reasons discussed here before, they WANT the election to stay close, and they jiggle their generous and tough coverage to keep it that way.

But all of Obama’s structural advantages remain. He’s just had a pretty lousy month, including a week’s vacation, in which McCain has had free rein to release lying and insulting ads that were endlessly recycled (for free) by television – and Obama STILL HAS A LEAD. While McCain may have succeeded in raising some doubts about Obama’s experience, and pulling his poll percentages down, McCain’s own numbers stay steady in the 42-43% range. He’s not increasing his own appeal.

And from all I can tell, the three big game-changers to come (the VP choices, the conventions, and the debates) are all likely to work in Obama’s favor. Could he lose? Of course. You can’t be totally confident when you’re running against people who will do and say ANYTHING to win. But nothing has happened to make me think that the fundamentals of this campaign have changed

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209193.php
[MR] I think we'll look back on August as when Obama won the election. August was when John McCain had the chance to define Obama and so cement a negative view of him that he could never recover. Now his time is almost up, the conventions are about to begin and we get into the full swing of the campaign. And what did McCain get out of his month? The Gallup tracking poll barely budged; most polls show Obama still with a modest lead, only slightly less than where he started a month or so ago. Obama's negatives are up somewhat -- no surprise after the pummeling he took -- but hardly up to critical levels. Unlike with Kerry, no single message has stuck -- he's a flipflopper! No, he's a scary leftist! No he's an empty celebrity! With no single negative image, the effect is likely to diffuse over time, especially with a successful Democratic convention . . . [read on]

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/a_socratic_dialogue_about_the_1.php
[Marc Ambinder] A Socratic Dialogue About The State Of The McCain Campaign

Crane: I'm getting worried. I know you told me not to worry, but I really can't help it.

Schmidt: What worries you?

Crane: I just think we had a lucky coupla months. I worry what's going to happen when people who don't look like our candidate...you know... younger people... start to pay attention.

Schmidt: We've righted the ship. We've closed the gap. We've succeeded in making this race about Obama. We've browbeat the press into a bit of submission. We're so good, in fact, that our advance guys are driving people nuts by insisting on their own backgrounds and even their own stage catwalks. It's all good now.

Crane: And we're still behind. . . [read on]

The conventions: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/19/convention_bounces/index.html
[Alex Koppelman] Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com published a short, sidebar analysis in the latest issue of the New Republic showing that in recent decades the candidate with the larger post-convention poll bounce invariably wins the national popular vote. . . . [read on]

The ground game: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/obamas-big-bet-power-of-ground-game-by.html
[Dday] Over the past few days, a fair number of high-profile progressive bloggers have been, to put it mildly, flipping out about Barack Obama's campaign style and his chances in November. Josh Marshall thinks there need to be consistent lines of attack against McCain. John Aravosis thinks Team Obama is in a bubble and this is feeling like the Democratic campaigns of the past. Matt Stoller thinks it's time for message testing to find the attack that'll work on McCain.

All of these are very smart people who want Obama to win - some of them were his staunchest supporters in the primary - and see it slipping away. I think they all make points which are valid to varying degrees. But they are failing to totally account for the X factor of the election, an X factor which is going virtually unmentioned throughout the blogosphere - the historic ground effort that the Obama campaign is banking on to win. It is not without peril, but it is a very new thing, and I think we have to understand it if we want to understand the twists and turns of this election. . . . [read on]

A contrary view

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209170.php
[Josh Marshall] There's been a lot of chatter about the state of the race over the last week or two. Some fretting on the part of some Obama supporters; some McCain supporters thinking for the first time that he might have a shot at winning this thing. There's been some movement in the polls in McCain's favor in various key swing states and nationwide. But it's mainly a matter of cutting into Obama's lead.

Small shifts in polling numbers are very difficult to make sense of in August.

So I want to set that all aside and take stock of where the campaign seems to be in terms of each campaign's message. On this front, McCain's message is pretty clear and essentially twofold: 1) Obama is, in so many words, a frivolous phony, someone who really doesn't have any business running for president. 2) McCain is a strong leader who can defend the country. There are all sorts of sub- and secondary themes -- Obama's an outsider, questionably American, etc. But all the nitty gritty points are subservient to those two interlocking messages.

From Obama, honestly, I don't sense a really clear message. . . . [read on]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209184.php
[CD] Just read your latest blog post, and am afraid to admit that I feel the same way as you. The only thing that has given me comfort recently --and I'm not able to find the quote exactly, so I'm paraphrasing -- was Plouffe saying "people need to understand much of the electorate decides very late in the game. In other words, I'm not concerned with polls." That makes me think they're hedging their bets, biding their time, etc. until the convention. That's my hope.

But my feeling is far less enthusiastic now. What's really bothered me has been McCain's celebrity ads, or rather, Obama's lack of vigilance in refuting the claims in these ads. The ads are working. How do I know? Because they're working on me. I'm a huge Obama supporter, and he's the first candidate I've given significant money to, and his lack of push back on the celebrity issue has planted the seed in my mind: "is he really so arrogant to think he doesn't need to refute these claims?" I'd like to see some conviction, some insult taken by Obama at these attacks. He is the outsider, he is the change candidate, and he does have more work to do to introduce himself to the voters. . . . [read on]

Going on the attack

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209184.php
[JT] I think the essence of Obama's campaign needs to be "John McCain will do anything to get elected." . . . [read on]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2008/aug/20/barackobama.johnmccain
[James Vega] John McCain says this election is about character – and he's right. . . . [read on]

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/us/politics/20ads.html

On the war

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PRESIDENTIAL_CAMPAIGN?SITE=MAHYC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Obama issued a sharp retort, questioning McCain's sincerity in support of Iraqi sovereignty - one of the Bush administration's goals in the war McCain heavily promoted in the months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

"It is hard to understand how Sen. McCain can at once proclaim his support for the sovereign government of Iraq, and then stubbornly defy their expressed support for a timeline to remove our combat brigades from their country," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

"John McCain is intent on spending $10 billion a month on an open-ended war, while Barack Obama thinks we should bring this war to a responsible end and invest in our pressing needs here at home."

McCain insists U.S. troop withdrawals be dependent on conditions on the ground in Iraq. Obama, with agreement of the Baghdad government, says American forces should be gone in 2010.

Obama, who has been put on the defensive by a series of attacks on his character, experience and readiness for the presidency, has been responding to the McCain accusations blow for blow.

The rich guy

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16604.html
Rev. Rick Warren asked Barack Obama and John McCain the same two-word question at Saturday night’s at Saddleback Church: “Define rich.” . . . [read on]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209199.php
[Josh Marshall] A friend of mine just wrote in arguing, essentially, that the McCain character narrative is unstoppable. You can change the terms of the debate. But there's no way you're going to change people's minds about Mccain, warrior, tough guy, maverick, going to protect your family no matter what. My answer would be, with some people, especially a lot of them in DC but certainly elsewhere too, that's right. With others I'm not so sure. . . . [read on]

The tough new DNC ad: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/19/17728/9908

Obama: “Don’t question my patriotism”

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16605.html

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/speaking_to_veterans_obama_dir.php

More: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/obama-returns-fire-on-mccain-in-vfw-speech/

Endless Obama VP speculation

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/19/a_few_more_veep_rumors.html

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7616

McCain’s VP dilemma: he doesn’t want a dialectic – he wants a buddy who is safely within his comfort zone. That indicates Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge. The problem is, his right flank is telling him “no way,” because those guys are pro-choice. Will the “maverick” go his own way on this one?

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/is-mccain

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16612.html

More: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12619.html
“McCain views this as the one decision that he has total, utter, nonnegotiable control over,” one campaign official said.

Did McCain just lose Colorado?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/19/9502/84665

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16608.html

Drill here, drill now!

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16607.html
[Steve Benen] McCain gets his oil rig photo-op, says coastal drilling will ’solve our problem’ . . .

Our god is bigger than your god

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16609.html
[Steve Benen] At Saturday night’s event at Saddleback Church, John McCain told the largely evangelical audience a version of history that the religious right likes to believe: “Our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian values and principles.”

That is, to put it mildly, historically dubious — the nation was founded on the secular principles, as part of the separation of church and state — but it’s nevertheless a phrase McCain seems to be especially fond of lately. . . . [read on]

More: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/08/19/mccains_judeo_christian_values_reference_puzzles/

I think it should be possible to infer from a close reading of McCain’s Saddleback answers whether he had the questions in advance. Here’s an indication that he did

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/mccain-may-have-inadvertently-proven.html

Another Saddleback lie

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16603.html

McCain “doesn’t like to talk about being a P.O.W.” Puh-LEAZE

http://mediamatters.org/items/200808190006

The “cross in the dirt story” – more and more evidence that McCain’s making it up

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/209139.php

CNN’s Jack Cafferty lays into McCain, big time

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/18/cafferty.mccain/index.html
Sen. John McCain takes weekends off and limits his campaign events to one a day. He made an exception for the religious forum on Saturday at Saddleback Church in Southern California.

I think he made a big mistake. When he was invited last spring to attend a discussion of the role of faith in his life with Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, McCain didn't bother to show up. Now I know why.

It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current president . . . . [read on]

What game are the Clintons playing? Having secured a very generous arrangement at the convention, they’re STILL saying nice things about McCain. Why?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/19/bill-clinton-praises-mcca_n_119781.html

While nobody’s watching . . .

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/antiregulation_cheney_aide_is.php
F. Chase Hutto III, a senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney with a long history of promoting anti-environmental regulation policy, is a top choice for a post at the Energy Department, the Washington Post reports today. . . .

Perfect!

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/influence/2008/08/harriet-miers-n.html
Former White House chief counsel Harriet Miers is now a lobbyist for the Embassy of Pakistan and the Pakistan Peoples Party. . . .

Bonus item: we love Rachel Maddow

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/19/161133/955/1005/570567

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16614.html

[NB: I also love that NBC did this immediately AFTER the McCain campaign complained that their coverage was too tough on McCain. In your face!]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:42 AM

 
A QUESTION OF CHARACTER

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2008/aug/19/johnmccain.uselections2008
[Michael Tomasky] When Republicans imagine attacks, they think in terms of character; when Democrats imagine attacks, they think in terms of policy and record. Read that again. It's the key to presidential campaigns. . . . [read on]

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7590
[James Vega] McCain's actions in recent weeks have provided compelling evidence for three genuinely disturbing propositions about his character, core values and integrity.

1. That John McCain has become desperate to win this election and is willing to sacrifice his deepest principles and his personal honor in order to do it.

2. That the John McCain we see today is only a pale, diminished shadow of the man he once was in his early years.

3. That John McCain is allowing men he once despised and held in complete contempt to manipulate him and tell him what to do - to literally put words in his mouth and tell him what to say.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014327.php
[Kevin Drum] Just to give a few examples:

* McCain is old and gets confused occasionally.
* McCain is running an ugly, smear-based campaign.
* McCain has a legendarily short fuse.
* McCain is annoyingly self-righteous.
* McCain's straight talk has evaporated in the face of his need to win evangelical votes.

Does this sound like commander-in-chief material? I think not. With solid repetition, these can all be made into fairly devastating attacks that have the added benefit of (a) being true, and (b) sounding true. So use them early and often. That's my campaign blogging advice for the day.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2008/aug/18/johnmccain.uselections2008
[Michael Tomasky] John McCain is a liar and flip-flopper and panderer and bully and whiner. And it seems to be working . . . [read on]

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/believe-your-eyes-by-digby-kevin-is.html

McCain’s “cone of silence” lie. A lot of non-denial denials, and a telltale invocation of the “P.O.W.” defense (“how can you accuse a former P.O.W. of cheating?”). It’s a simple question, yes or no: Did he or any of his advisors hear the questions in advance – and did he get any coaching?

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/fake-cone-of-silence-controvery-grows.html

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/john_mccain_/2008/08/mccain_campaigns_nondenial_denial_and_mccains_character.php

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/18/nyt-backs-up-nbc-mccain-w_n_119476.html

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16593.html

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/lying_in_politics_/2008/08/mccains_saddleback_deception.php
John Sargent, commenting on Megan's post, nails it:

1. McCain promised to be in the cone of silence. He broke that promise.

2. When asked about the cone of silence by Rick Warren, the pastor of the church whose debate he was attending, McCain lied about having broken his promise to be in the cone of silence.

3. When exposed as having broken his promise to be in the cone of silence and lying about it on national television, McCain's campaign insisted he could not have cheated because he is a war hero, notwithstanding the fact that he had just been caught breaking a promise and lying about it on national television to man of faith in his own church.

4. Whether he cheated or not, it is a fact that McCain had the opportunity to cheat.

McCain’s “cross in the sand” lie: it’s obvious that he only started adding this story thirty years after the event – and a ton of evidence that it’s a fabrication

http://www.jedreport.com/2008/08/the-evidence-th.html

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16591.html

More: http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/politicalinsider/2008/08/reactions-to-the-mccainsolzhen.html

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/mccain-camp-denies

McCain’s Ralph Reed/Abramoff lie

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/18/someones_not_telling_the_truth.html
[Taegan Goddard] Someone's Not Telling the Truth

Two different stories on the invitation Ralph Reed sent out to supporters inviting them to a fundraiser for Sen. John McCain.

McCain campaign: "A McCain campaign aide tells ABC News that Reed sent out an email solicitation on his own encouraging people to support Senator McCain, but was not invited to the fundraiser. Another McCain aide said Reed has nothing to do with the campaign, hadn't donated to it, and was not acting on the campaign's behalf in the solicitation e-mail."

Ralph Reed: "Reed told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he sent the e-mail at the request of the campaign and was given boilerplate language to use."

McCain’s “great” Saddleback performance. How tough is it to recite simplistic, rehearsed, applause lines to an audience that wants unambiguous truisms, not nuance?

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/18/mccains-bushlike-moral-infantilism/
Q: At what point is a baby entitled to human rights?
A: At the moment of conception. . . .

Q: Does evil exist and if so, should we ignore it, negotiate with it, contain it, or defeat it?
A: Defeat it. . . .

Q: What is worth dying for and what is worth committing American lives for?
A: Freedom. . . .

More: http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_08_17_archive.html#1841822241366784116
[Atrios] Believe what you want, but the important question for politicians is how such things get translated into... policy. And when McCain says he believes life begins at conception (cheer!) it's pretty meaningless unless he's asked to explain how that would be translated into policy. Are blastocysts entitled to child support? Do all late periods need to be reported to the Ministry of Health? And, of course, my favorite: Are those who implant multiple embryos during IVF treatments, knowing full well that most will die, guilty of negligent manslaughter?

McCain: Dead wrong on the economy

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/18/opinion/18krugman.html
[Paul Krugman] By rights, John McCain should be getting hammered on economics.

After all, Mr. McCain proposes continuing the policies of a president who’s had a truly dismal economic record — job growth under the current administration has been the slowest in 60 years, even slower than job growth under the first President Bush. And the public blames the White House, giving Mr. Bush spectacularly low ratings on his handling of the economy.

Meanwhile, The Times reports that, according to associates, Mr. McCain still “dials up” Phil Gramm, the former senator who resigned as co-chairman of the campaign after calling America a “nation of whiners” and dismissing the country’s economic woes as nothing more than a “mental recession.” And Mr. Gramm is still considered a top pick for Treasury secretary.

So Mr. McCain would seem to offer a target a mile wide: a die-hard supporter of failed economic policies who takes his advice from people completely out of touch with the lives of working Americans. . . . [read on]

Obama responds: http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/obama-to-mccain
"Mr. McCain, let me explain to you, the economic disaster is happening right now." . . . [read on]

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/obama-fights-back-blame-economic-woes.html

McCain: “Proud” of his campaign’s lobbyist link with Georgia

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_aggressively_defends_sc.php

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/same_as_it_ever_was.php

“McCain takes credit for a bill he fought against (again)”

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16597.html

McCain’s vicious, dishonest campaign – he really doesn’t want to have to do it. Really

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/opinion/19brooks.html

McCain’s VP: Aug 29th is the day, Ohio is the place, apparently

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/why-does-mccain-need

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12619.html

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/mccain_preannounces_the_announ.php

Obama’s VP: Will it be Biden? And what do we think about that?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208939.php

http://openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7577

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/19/1202/76728

Expect this line if Biden is the choice: Having been pressured to bring an experienced hand on board, Obama will then be criticized for it because this doesn’t represent “change”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/18/202044/501

McCain again calls Obama a traitor

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208891.php
[Josh Marshall] John McCain is now again charging Obama with what amounts to soft treason -- wanting to lose the war in Iraq in order to make himself president. The lack of any consistent lines of attack against McCain is becoming palpable.

More: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_obama_wants_to_lose_in.php
McCain: Obama Wants To Lose In Iraq Because Of His "Ambition"

Obama campaign responds: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_campaign_mccain_is_defyi.php
"All his bluster, distortions and negative attacks notwithstanding, it is hard to understand how Senator McCain can at once proclaim his support for the sovereign government of Iraq, and then stubbornly defy their expressed support for a timeline to remove our combat brigades from their country. The difference in this race is that John McCain is intent on spending $10 billion a month on an open-ended war, while Barack Obama thinks we should bring this war to a responsible end and invest in our pressing needs here at home."

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/18/evan-bayh-got-the-memo-on-how-to-define-mccain/
[Evan Bayh] "We aren't all Georgians now," Bayh said, referring to a comment McCain made earlier in the week. "If we were Georgians and the Russians were invading our country and killing our people, we'd be in a state of war. And clearly, that's not what we want. And John, sometimes, he's a good person, but he's a little bit given to this kind of bellicose rhetoric, which has a tendency to inflame conflicts rather than to diffuse them, and that's what you want in a president.

“I think Barack Obama has consistently demonstrated superior judgment to Senator McCain on a whole host of national security issues," Bayh added. "Whether to go into Iraq or not: Barack Obama was correct. How to get out of Iraq: The Iraqis embrace Barack Obama's position - even George Bush is coming around.

"He was right about Afghanistan; finally, John McCain is coming around on that. He was right about engaging Iran; George Bush has come around on that. And he was right about Georgia. Months ago, he was calling for this conflict to be diffused. Instead, the president and John McCain are so obsessed with Iraq, we dropped the ball. If we'd listened to Senator Obama and his judgment, perhaps we wouldn't be here today." . . .

"He's strong. He's cool. He's smart. That's what we need in these difficult times."

More: http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/does-mccain-really

Is it time for Obama to get tougher with McCain?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208897.php
[AG] McCain's first reaction to the Georgia crises was to urge action that would commit the United States to war with Russia (by having Georgia immediately admitted to NATO). Obama needs to point out that, in this test for whether McCain is ready to be commander in chief, McCain grossly overreacted. Indeed, several days later, after McCain had time to cool down, he retracted his statements, saying that military intervention should not be considered. McCain fundamentally does not understand the purpose of NATO. Obama needs be repeating this series of events like a broken record. McCain overracted, and then changed his mind 3 days later. A President has no such luxury. McCain is no match for the calm and calculated actions of a player like Putin. Words such as "confused," "hot headed," "overreacting" and "indecisive" need to become synonymous with the Obama campaign's portrayal of McCain. Don't just answer back with Celebrity ads. Don't whine that McCain had previous exposure to Warren's questions. Drive the debate into his territory.

McCain is playing his Georgia actions as a victory in every speech, and unless unanswered, it will become common wisdom. We keep waiting for Obama to do what we were promised he'd do: take McCain down at the knees on his one point of perceived strength. It is so much harder to do this after the narrative continues to harden.

More: http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/lack-of-any-consistent-lines-of-attack.html

Mary Matalin, GOP political operative turned book publisher, was proud to be associated with Jerome Corsi’s trash. Then it occurred to her that this made the book look like partisan agitprop, not “research,” as she claimed. So now she’s distancing herself from it. Even the pliant press smells a rat here

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/little-mary-quite-contrary-by-digby-so.html

http://mediamatters.org/items/200808180004

Former Bush WH staffers are now populating the major news networks and newspapers. Sure, it’s happened the other way (Stephanopoulos, Moyers) – but never on this scale

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16598.html

Interesting new study: where Americans get their news

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/gasbag-audience-by-digby-pew-has.html

Bonus item: Beyond ridiculous – Gingrich goes on Fox News to say Obama’s “tire inflation” story is another sop to Big Oil. Huh?

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/18/gingrich-tires-big-oil/

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:18 AM

 
HE WAS A P.O.W., YOU KNOW

Meet the McCain you don’t know

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/opinion/17rich.html
[Frank Rich] [T]he public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is. . . .

What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.

With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.

McCain never called for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired and didn’t start criticizing the war plan until late August 2003, nearly four months after “Mission Accomplished.” By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain laughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn’t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras.

McCain long ago embraced the right’s agents of intolerance, even spending months courting the Rev. John Hagee, whose fringe views about Roman Catholics and the Holocaust were known to anyone who can use the Internet. (Once the McCain campaign discovered YouTube, it ditched Hagee.) On Monday McCain is scheduled to appear at an Atlanta fund-raiser being promoted by Ralph Reed, who is not only the former aide de camp to one of the agents of intolerance McCain once vilified (Pat Robertson) but is also the former Abramoff acolyte showcased in McCain’s own Senate investigation of Indian casino lobbying.

Though the McCain campaign announced a new no-lobbyists policy three months after The Washington Post’s February report that lobbyists were “essentially running” the whole operation, the fact remains that McCain’s top officials and fund-raisers have past financial ties to nearly every domestic and foreign flashpoint, from Fannie Mae to Blackwater to Ahmad Chalabi to the government of Georgia. No sooner does McCain flip-flop on oil drilling than a bevy of Hess Oil family members and executives, not to mention a lowly Hess office manager and his wife, each give a maximum $28,500 to the Republican Party. . . .

Most Americans still don’t know, as Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail “McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries’ names wrong, forgets things he’s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused.” Most Americans still don’t know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press’s previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express.

More “straight talk”

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16584.html
[Steve Benen] At last night’s forum at Saddleback Church, the Rev. Rick Warren asked a nearly identical set of questions to Barack Obama and John McCain, but one of the more memorable inquiries was just two words: “Define rich.” . . .

I want to republish his response in full, because I think it offers a peek at McCain’s way of thinking.

“Some of the richest people I’ve ever known in my life are the most unhappy. I think that rich is — should be defined by a home, a good job and education and the ability to hand to our children a more prosperous and safer world than the one that we inherited. I don’t want to take any money from the rich. I want everybody to get rich. I don’t believe in class warfare or redistribution of the wealth. But I can tell you for example there are small businessmen and women who are working 16 hours a day, seven days a week that some people would classify as, quote, ‘rich,’ my friends, who want to raise their taxes and raise their payroll taxes. Let’s have — keep taxes low. Let’s give every family in America a $7,000 tax credit for every child they have. Let’s give them a $5,000 refundable tax credit to go out and get the health insurance of their choice. Let’s not have the government take over the health care system in America.

“So I think if you’re just talking about income, how about $5 million. But seriously, I don’t think you can — I don’t think, seriously that — the point is that I’m trying to make here seriously — and I’m sure that comment will be distorted, but the point is — the point is — the point is that we want to keep people’s taxes low and increase revenues. And my friend, it was not taxes that mattered in America in the last several years. It was spending. Spending got completely out of control. We spent money in a way that mortgaged our kids futures. My friends, we spent $3 million of your money to study the DNA of bears in Montana. Now I don’t know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal issue, but the point is — but the point is it was $3 million of your money. It was your money.

“And you know, we laugh about it, but we cry and we should cry because the Congress is supposed to be careful stewards of your tax dollars. so what did they just do in the middle of an energy crisis when in California we are paying $4 a gallon for gas, went on vacation for five weeks. I guarantee you, two things they never miss, a pay raise and a vacation. And we should stop that and call them back and not raise your taxes. We should not and cannot raise taxes in tough economic times. So it doesn’t matter really what my definition of rich is because I don’t want to raise anybody’s taxes.”

McCain’s real foreign policy

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/17/131556/977
[Smintheus] John McCain's foreign 'policy' problem is that he doesn't really have a policy. What he has are several tics, or gut reactions, that keep getting played out on the world stage. When you look at the sum of what he advocates, it amounts to a vague, incoherent, contradictory, self-defeating mish mash of reactions against things McCain doesn't like. . . . [read on]

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16587.html
[NYT] Senator John McCain arrived late at his Senate office on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just after the first plane hit the World Trade Center. “This is war,” he murmured to his aides. . . .

Within hours, Mr. McCain, the Vietnam War hero and famed straight talker of the 2000 Republican primary, had taken on a new role: the leading advocate of taking the American retaliation against Al Qaeda far beyond Afghanistan. In a marathon of television and radio appearances, Mr. McCain recited a short list of other countries said to support terrorism, invariably including Iraq, Iran and Syria.

“There is a system out there or network, and that network is going to have to be attacked,” Mr. McCain said the next morning on ABC News. “It isn’t just Afghanistan,” he added, on MSNBC. “I don’t think if you got bin Laden tomorrow that the threat has disappeared,” he said on CBS, pointing toward other countries in the Middle East.

Within a month he made clear his priority. “Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN . . .

[Steve Benen] Just to clarify, by October 2001, McCain was already a cheerleader for invading Iraq. This was his reflexive response to the terrorism perpetrated by al Qaeda.

It’s an anecdote that reminds us of so many questions surrounding McCain, including his temperament, his judgment, and his “hothead” personality.

“He has the personality of a fighter pilot: when somebody stings you, you want to strike out,” said retired Gen. John H. Johns, a former friend and supporter of Mr. McCain who turned against him over the Iraq war. “Just like the American people, his reaction was: show me somebody to hit.” . . . [read on]

They’re lying (again)

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_08_17_archive.html#239571108561566747
[NYT] Interviewed Sunday on CNN, Mr. Warren seemed surprised to learn that Mr. McCain was not in the building during the Obama interview. A spokeswoman for Mr. McCain said he was en route to the church.

Nicolle Wallace, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said on Sunday night that Mr. McCain had not heard the broadcast of the event while in his motorcade and heard none of the questions. “The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12594.html
Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) campaign manager Rick Davis asked Sunday for a meeting with Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, to protest what the campaign called signs that the network is "abandoning non-partisan coverage of the presidential race."

Davis made the request Sunday in a letter that is part of an aggressive effort by McCain to counter news coverage he considers critical.

In this case, the campaign is objecting to a statement by NBC's Andrea Mitchell on "Meet the Press" questioning whether McCain might have gotten a heads-up on some of the questions that were asked of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who was the first candidate to be interviewed Saturday night by Pastor Rick Warren at a presidential forum on faith.

Warren told the audience that McCain was being held in "a cone of silence" so he wouldn't hear the questions, which were similar for both candidates. . . .

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/john-mccain-wasnt-really-in-cone-of.html
John McCain wasn't really in a "cone of silence" last night during Obama's questioning as Pastor Rick Warren stated
[Joe Sudbay] I have to say, watching that thing last night, I thought John McCain was pretty quick with his answer to the first question about the three wisest people to whom he'd turn to for advice. Very quick actually. So quick, I remember thinking that it seemed like he knew that question in advance. . . .[read on]

McCain is probably making up this story, or cribbing it from Alexander Solzhenitsyn – does anybody care?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/if-nose-grows-in-forest.html
[Dday] Last night, John McCain, he of the Pinocchio problem, retold the story for the Saddleback Church congregants about his time in the Hanoi Hilton (John McCain is very reluctant to talk about his POW experience), when a guard loosened his ropes and, later, on Christmas, drew a cross in the sand, in solidarity with McCain the prisoner, a simple expression of faith. The crowd loved it.

McCain has been telling this story since at least 1999 . . . [read on]

More: http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/politicalinsider/2008/08/is-mccain-now-copying-solzheni.html

Pundits say

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/election_central_sunday_roundu_28.php
Some on-air pundits say McCain was the winner last night when both men appeared at the Saddleback megachurch in Orange County, California. ABC's George Stephanopoulos said that McCain "solidified his ties to the evangelical community," while Jake Tapper said that McCain "won over this crowd" with tales about his POW captivity -- you know, the topic we keep hearing McCain is reluctant to discuss.

Yes, VERY reluctant

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/18/macro/
[McCain] "I am always reluctant to talk about my POW experience...make sure you quote me on that again"

[Attaturk] Nothing becomes a "hero" more than reluctance to be called one. McCain has managed to sell this theme, but he hardly lives it.

Whenever he gets called out or accused of being less than forthright this comes out via his press flack:

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous”

Well, that's a fine line of logic isn't it?

But it is all part of a pattern.

When called out for a factual error in something so trivial, yet memorable as using dominant pro football teams of an era to patronize he uses the POW card.

He uses the POW Card to push his Cuba policy.

He uses the POW Card to get a forty year old dig in at hippies.

He has used the POW card to say he isn't a racist, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

He has used the POW card to excuse years of voting against issues supporting veterans.

He just used the POW experience again to apparently plagiarize Solzhenitsyn (classy, the guy just died). But then again, how dare I accuse John McCain of this, he was a war hero. Only Democrats with three purple hearts, a bronze star and a silver star, and who actually had to kill a man in personal combat are worthy of being called deceitful or wimps.

And the most shallow of McCain surrogates on cable (and is there any other kind?) even excuse cheating on your wife through the POW experience.

When will the press notice?

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/brandnewday/archives/2008/03/new_mccain_ad_r.html
[David Kiley] GOP Presidential candidate John McCain has kicked off a new campaign ad meant to assert his credentials over the Democrats while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama tangle over whether Obama should have walked out of church.

This ad from McCain follows a familiar pattern, and uses familiar images, especially the time-worn video of a captive McCain being questioned by North Vietnamese. He gives his name rank and serial number.

I have lost track of the number of times McCain has used this video in ads. . . .

Big ideas

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/17/jindal-stumped-when-asked-to-new-big-ideas-that-mccain-is-proposing/
[Faiz] This morning on NBC’s Meet the Press, host David Gregory asserted that the Republican Party “used to be the party of big ideas.” Gregory then asked his guest Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), “What’s the big idea Senator McCain is campaigning on?” Jindal responded, “I think there’s several,” but couldn’t provide an answer. Gregory asked again, “Where are the new big ideas of the Republican Party that John McCain is, is championing?” And again Jindal couldn’t provide an answer . . .

Jindal is just the latest McCain surrogate to be stumped when asked to defend McCain’s policies. Earlier this month, former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) couldn’t name a single McCain accomplishment on energy in his long congressional career. Similarly, Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) recently drew a blank when asked to name a major economic policy that Bush and McCain do not agree on.

The only kind of campaign they know how to run

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/chutzpah-by-digby-from-raw-story-real.html
[Raw Story] The Real Truth About Obama Inc., a group formed by anti-abortion activists, is trying to establish a Web site and air radio ads. But the group's attorney says his clients fear they will be prosecuted for breaking federal rules that restrict fundraising and advertising by political action committees, or PACs.

The Richmond-based group argues it is not a PAC because it would be talking about an issue, not advocating Obama's defeat or election. . . .

The Real Truth About Obama wants to post ads on its Web site and on the Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity talk shows in key states during the "electioneering communication" blackout period 60 days before the general election. The ad features an "Obama-like voice" saying he would make taxpayers pay for all abortions, ensure minors' abortions are concealed from their parents, appoint more liberal Supreme Court justices and legalize the late-term procedure that abortion opponents call "partial-birth" abortion. . . [read on]

[Digby] The good news is that John McCain will undoubtedly vociferously disavow any official association with this group. He will do nothing to stop it, but it's important that we all know that he doesn't personally believe in negative advertising. He is, after all, a man of deep integrity.

*Disclaimer: nothing in this post should be construed as impugning the character of John McCain's whose service in Vietnam still holds us in awe.

Fighting back

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5isOFwdbq0tsqatW6vJpkDRTI1gMgD92K872G0
"McCain says 'Here's my plan, I'm going to drill here, drill now which is something he only came up with two months ago when he started looking at polling," Obama said of McCain's energy policy.

The GOP hopeful has become a vocal proponent of offshore oil drilling as a way to ease U.S. dependence on foreign oil and has criticized Obama for failing to embrace it as a way to help bring down oil prices. Obama noted that McCain had long opposed lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling.

The Illinois senator also criticized McCain's advisers as "the same old folks that brought you George W. Bush. The same team." He noted many had been lobbyists in Washington before McCain asked them to sever all lobbying ties.

Obama added, "They say this other guy is unpatriotic, or this guy likes French people. That's what they said about Kerry," referring to the 2004 Democratic nominee who lost narrowly to Bush. "They try to make it out like Democrats aren't tough enough, aren't macho enough. It's the same strategy."

Debates: what they teach us, what they don’t

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/debating-debating-by-digby-harold.html

More: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200809/fallows-debates

I don’t think so, but it’s fun to imagine

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/17/193932/068
AP: Democrats Have A "Realistic Shot" At 60 In The Senate

[Todd Beeton] Those "solid" 5 are:

Mark Warner in Virginia
Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire
Tom Udall in New Mexico
Mark Udall in Colorado
Road to 60 candidate Mark Begich in Alaska

The 3-5 "realistic shots" according to USA Today (and general CW):

Jeff Merkley in Oregon
Road to 60 candidate Ronnie Musgrove in Mississippi
Al Franken in Minnesota
Road to 60 candidate Kay Hagan in North Carolina
Tom Allen in Maine

Bonus item: Jerome Corsi’s impeccable credibility

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/mccain-campaign-has-ties-to-al-qaeda-so.html
McCain campaign has ties to Al Qaeda, so says Mary Matalin's buddy . . .





http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/sean-hannitys-buddy-says-mccains-wealth.html
Sean Hannity's buddy says McCain's wealth comes from organized crime . . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:26 AM

 
IN THE LONG RUN

Further expansion of the national security state

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/16/132354/286
[WP] The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years. . . . [read on]

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/08/16/fisa-redux-the-slippery-slope-becomes-a-mine-shaft/
The Slippery Slope Becomes A Mine Shaft . . . [read on]

Finally!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/16/AR2008081601967.html
Federal prosecutors have sent target letters to six Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a September shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, indicating a high likelihood the Justice Department will seek to indict at least some of the men . . .

Obama to send Biden to Georgia

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/joe_biden_to_visit_georgia_thi.php

Doh!

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16579.html
If Republican hacks are going to go on national television to attack Barack Obama for supporting a U.N. Security Council resolution on Russia’s aggression towards Georgia, they probably ought to know that John McCain supports the same U.N. Security Council resolution on Russia’s aggression towards Georgia. . . . [read on]

McCain says he hasn’t missed any “crucial votes” while campaigning

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16577.html

Jerome Corsi’s anti-Obama screed, summarized in one sentence

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014310.php
[Tim Rutten] The Democratic candidate is a deceitful jihadist drug addict who, if elected, plans to impose a black supremacist, socialist regime.

[NB: There, now you won’t have to read it.]

The press, on the whole, seems to be doing its job (this time)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003839465
[Greg Mitchell] Four years ago this month, with E&P’s Joe Strupp, I explored in a number of articles the belated or conflicted media response to the “swiftboating” of Sen. John Kerry, then the Democratic nominee for president. The mainstream press gave the charges-- carried in ads, in books and articles, and in major TV appearances -- a free ride for a spell, then a respectful airing mixed with critique, before in many cases finally attempting to shoot them down as overwhelmingly exaggerated or false. This delay, along with Kerry’s own reluctance to face the matter squarely, quite possibly cost the Democrat the White House.

Now, this month, a bestselling anti-Obama book -- by a co-author of the most prominent “swiftboat” anti-Kerry book in 2004 -- has predictably been published (by Mary Matalin's imprint) and has gained immediate and wide attention in the mainstream. But this time, in many cases, the media response has been a "swift" kick to its credibility. . . . .

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/mainstreaming-crazy-by-digby-jerome.html

http://mediamatters.org/items/200808160001
Appearing on the August 16 edition of C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Jerome Corsi, author of The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality (Threshold Editions, August 2008), asserted that, if Sen. Barack Obama were elected president and someone were to write a book critical of him or to publish "a cartoon like The New Yorker," "Obama might just have to create a department of hate crimes and put them in jail." . . . [read on]

And what does the McCain campaign say about this crap? (in addition to, “Have a sense of humor”)?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014310.php
[WP] Brian Rogers, a McCain spokesman, declined to comment on the book. Aides said the Republican campaign has no intention of coming to Obama's defense on every attack they have no control over.

Hmmm. I never thought about this aspect of Obama giving his acceptance speech in a football stadium

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/16/many_will_still_cast_vote_for_clinton.html
[Taegan Goddard] According to Politico, half of House Democrats attending the Democratic National Convention are likely to cast their vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton.

It's now becoming clear that Sen. Barack Obama's campaign moved his nomination speech to Invesco Field so that he could pack the stadium with true Obama supporters rather than face a convention hall with nearly half the delegates being only reluctant supporters.

Yesterday we had a piece based on June fundraising numbers – which were pretty good for McCain and the GOP. July tells a very different story, however . . .

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/16/obama_crushes_mccain_in_july_fundraising.html
[Taegan Goddard] Sen. Barack Obama raised more than $51 million in July, the AP reports. His campaign began August with $65.8 million on hand and has had more than 2 million donors.

In contrast, Sen. John McCain raised $27 million in July and had just $21.4 million in cash on hand. He has had approximately 600,000 donors.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/election_central_saturday_round_145.php
[Eric Kleefeld] The Democratic National Committee has announced that they raised $27.7 million for the month of July, just edging out the RNC's $26 million, the first time this whole cycle that the usually-underfunded DNC has outdone the RNC. . . .

More: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_raises_over_51_million_i.php

Obama is losing! Obama is losing!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/opinion/17rich.html
[Frank Rich] As I went on vacation at the end of July, Barack Obama was leading John McCain by three to four percentage points in national polls. When I returned last week he still was. But lo and behold, a whole new plot twist had rolled off the bloviation assembly line in those intervening two weeks: Obama had lost the election!

The poor guy should be winning in a landslide against the despised party of Bush-Cheney, and he’s not. He should be passing the 50 percent mark in polls, and he’s not. He’s been done in by that ad with Britney and Paris and by a new international crisis that allows McCain to again flex his Manchurian Candidate military cred. Let the neocons identify a new battleground for igniting World War III, whether Baghdad or Tehran or Moscow, and McCain gets with the program as if Angela Lansbury has just dealt him the Queen of Hearts.

Obama has also been defeated by racism (again). He can’t connect and “close the deal” with ordinary Americans too doltish to comprehend a multicultural biography that includes what Cokie Roberts of ABC News has damned as the “foreign, exotic place” of Hawaii. As The Economist sums up the received wisdom, “lunch-pail Ohio Democrats” find Obama’s ideas of change “airy-fairy” and are all asking, “Who on earth is this guy?”

It seems almost churlish to look at some actual facts. . . . [read on!]

The Obama “machine”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503098.html
[David Broder] The Obama people believe that McCain has squandered an opportunity to make a positive case for his own election in the many months since he secured the votes for the Republican nomination. David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, argues that McCain is already feeling a backlash to his "negative attacks" and that the resulting skepticism may undercut any potential benefit he derives from the debates this fall.

But the Obama folks are not leaving it to chance. Plouffe said that "turnout is the big variable," and the campaign is devoting an unusually large budget to register scads of new voters and bring them to the polls. "That's how we win the Floridas and Ohios," he said, mentioning two states that went narrowly for George W. Bush. "And that's how we get competitive in the Indianas and Virginias," two of six or seven states that long have been Republican -- but are targets this year.

"That's why I pay more attention to the registration figures than to the polls I see at this time of year," Plouffe said. "The polls will change, but we know we need 200,000 new voters to be competitive in Georgia, and now is when we have to get them."

That mind-set -- take care of business and don't worry about irrelevancies -- is what struck me in talking to Obama's team in the primary states. . . . [read on]

McCain and Obama make their cases at Saddleback Church

Background: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16580.html

Liveblogging the event, long version: http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/16/20139/5403
http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/16/205933/785
http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/16/22654/1130
MSNBC just made an interesting point: McCain did not mention God or Jesus once in the entire debate. . . .

Short version: http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/16/drunkblogging-the-obama-mccain-faith-smackdown/
http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/16/the-obama-mccain-faith-smackdown-part-ii/
http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/16/the-obama-mccain-faith-smackdown-part-iii/

The audience response: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/i-love-you-more-by-digby-saddleback.html
[Digby] The Saddleback congregation applauded Obama very nicely. But as I hear this (California!) evangelical audience cheering McCain far more wildly for everything from offshore drilling to gay marriage to taxes and clapping for every tired old stump line like it's the first time he's said them, I really have to wonder whether this "outreach" is going to add up to anything.

I know it's a small sample, but as Warren points out, social conservatism is not just about religion, it's a “worldview" and McCain is the one who shares it, not Obama.

Who “won”? http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/thoughts_on_rick_warrens_forum.php

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16583.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014320.php

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/08/16/1270330.aspx
[Chuck Todd] Obama spent more time trying to impress Warren (or to put another away) not offend Warren while McCain seemingly ignored Warren and decided he was talking to folks watching on TV. The McCain way of handling this forum is usually the winning way. Obama may have had more authentic moments but McCain was impressively on message.

This was a mistake Obama made a few times during the primary season. On one hand, it can make a moderator feel good when their subject actually tries to answer every question and take into account their opinions on a particular topic. And Obama's supporters will email me tonight and say this is what they love about him.

Theocracy watch: I have mixed feelings about this religious vetting – but perhaps at least it will put an end to the “Obama is the antichrist” idiocy (No, I know it won’t)

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/cnn-asks-if-obama-is-anti-christ.html

Sunday talk show line-ups

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/16/AR2008081602061.html
THIS WEEK (ABC): Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) and former senator Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.).

FACE THE NATION (CBS): Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) and Indiana Gov. Evan Bayh (D).

MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Rice; Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D).

LATE EDITION (CNN): Gates; Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.); Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.); New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D).

Bonus item: McCain uses his POW years as an excuse for EVERYTHING – even his lousy taste in music

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/more-pinocchio-mccain-by-dday-this-is.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:22 AM

 
THE POLITICS OF STUPIDITY

McCain says – he really says this – about Russia/Georgia: "My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208660.php
[Josh Marshall] Let's run-down the list. Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, followed by the US expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait. Collapse of Yugoslavia and subsequent wars of aggression between successor states. US invasion of Afghanistan. US invasion of Iraq. There are a slew of other examples of serious international crises over last 16-18 years.

One of the great threats we face is the personal sense of grandiosity of the lead foreign hands who shape the course of our role in the world. Not national grandiosity, but personal grandiosity. Because if you're a foreign policy hand or political leader your own quest for greatness is constrained by whether or not you live in times of grand historical events.

There's a lot of this nonsense floating around today by pampered commentators who want to find a new world historical conflict to write bracing commentary about before we're done with the one from last week. But John McCain might be president in six months. And whether it's his own shaky judgment, temperament or just the desire to find a campaign issue, this loose cannon is a real threat to this country.

Watch: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/15/115621/064
[BarbinMD] Given that McCain has been using the situation in Georgia to pretend he's the president (speaking of presumptuous), it's not surprising that he wants to present this as the biggest crisis ever. And he's right, assuming you forget the Gulf War, and Somalia, and the Rwandan Genocide, and the earlier war in Georgia, and the breakup of Yugoslavia and all the wars that spawned, and 9/11, and Afghanistan, and Iraq and North Korean nuclear testing, and the war in Lebanon, and Darfur -- then this is the first serious international crisis since the end of the Cold War.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16564.html
[Steve Benen] Once in a while, the depth of John McCain’s foreign policy confusion stops being funny, and starts getting scary. . . .

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014302.php

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/tomorrows-cause-by-digby-kevin-says-im.html

McCain’s premature ascendency. It all reminds me of Alexander Haig taking power after Reagan was shot: “I’m in charge here”

http://greatmomentsinhistory.tumblr.com/post/42410919/im-in-charge-here

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/14/AR2008081403332.html
"We talk about how there's only one president at a time, so the idea that you would send your own emissaries and really interfere with the process is remarkable," said Lawrence Korb, a Reagan Defense Department official who now acts as an informal adviser to the Obama campaign. "It's very risky and can send mixed messages to foreign governments. . . . They accused Obama of being presumptuous, but he didn't do anything close to this."

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16563.html
[Steve Benen] [A]fter weeks of palaver about Barack Obama being “presumptuous,” John McCain has taken this week to play Pretend President, in large part because he felt like the conflict in Georgia gave him a good excuse to do so.

In this case, it goes well beyond referring to himself as the president, and includes near-constant direct discussions with a foreign head of state during a military conflict, and dispatching campaign surrogates to a war zone. . . .

More: http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/15/preznit-mccain-look-whos-presumptuous-now/

Cozying up to Saakashvili – it comes at a price

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208651.php
[Josh Marshall] It seems Georgian President Saakashvili's tear of international showboating continues unabated. . . .

I know there are a lot of people out there whose sense of personal grandiosity wants to puff this guy up into some sort of world historical figure. But he's trouble. And to our great national misfortune the same cabal responsible for scheming the US into Iraq is working hand and glove with him to pull this country into deeper misfortune.

On misreading Saakashvili AND Putin: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/saakashvili_the_pure.php

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/08/15/BL2008081501684.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/14/AR2008081401360.html

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/galloway/story/48286.html

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/georgia_/2008/08/georgia_on_my_mind.php

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=2050

We know Randy Scheunemann likes to shoot from the hip – but we didn’t know this

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_adviser_was_arrested.php
[Andrew Tilghman] As if helping to plan the Iraq war wasn't troubling enough, now we learn that Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's top foreign policy adviser, has been personally arrested at the Capitol for carrying an illegal weapon. . . .

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/behind_the_scenes_scheunemann.php
[Andrew Tilghman] There's been a lot of talk this week about how Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's top foreign policy adviser, spent years as a lobbyist for the Georgia government.

So let's take a look at what Scheuneman was actually doing in that role . . . [read on]

It must have been horrible being a prisoner of war – but that doesn’t excuse everything else John McCain does. Here, the pastor who performed Jenna Bush’s marriage calls out McCain for his disgusting crack about having his wife participate in a topless “beauty contest.” Watch what happens next

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_camps_defense_against_s.php
[Eric Kleefeld] The McCain campaign has offered a novel defense against critics who hit him for offering up his wife Cindy as a contestant at a topless biker beauty pageant: He was a POW!

This whole mess started when Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, who is heading up an independent group of pro-Obama pastors -- and, by the way, officiated at Jenna Bush's wedding -- criticized McCain's remarks at the Sturgis rally: "My personal opinion, and based on my opinion of the Christian faith, that's not the type of expression a presidential candidate or anyone following the Christian faith ought to make."

The Wall St. Journal reports that McCain spokesman Brian Rogers fired back by saying that Americans "know that John McCain's faith and character were tested and forged in ways few can fathom."

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16571.html

More righteous condemnation: aimed at Edwards, but broad enough to take in McCain too

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/evangelical-leader-rick-warren-id-have.html
[RICK] WARREN: John Edwards and others like him have lost the trust of America because they lied, and fundamentally beneath every affair it’s dishonesty, its deceit, its deception. They’re lying to God. They’re lying to themselves. They’re lying to their wives and they’re lying to the public. How do you trust someone who’s constantly lying? You can’t. That’s why it is a myth to say their personal life doesn’t matter. It does matter -- all of leadership is built on credibility.

TAPPER: Would you have compunctions about voting for someone who had cheated on his wife?

WARREN: Absolutely I would. Absolutely I would. Because if you can’t keep your faith to your most sacred vow – “’til death do us part” -- how in the world can I trust you to lead my family? My government? My nation?...Absolutely I would.

More: http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/jenna-bushs-wedding-pastor-rips-mccains.html

Today Obama and McCain will appear at Rick Warren’s “faith and character” event. I don’t follow these things, but apparently Warren (“A Purpose-Driven Life”) is an improvement on the hateful theology of Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, et al. Let’s see how this goes

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/15/obama-mccain-and-rick-warren-calculations-at-the-intersection-of-faith-and-power/

Who is Warren? http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050912/kaminer

The Republicans can’t run ads that say, “Our policy is this, and their policy is that, and here’s why ours is better.” They have to run ads that say, “If the other guy is elected, the economy will collapse, you’ll lose your job, the government will steal all your money, and scary people will blow up your family”

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/15/mccain-ad-says-obama-will-cause-economic-disaster/
McCain ad says Obama will cause 'economic disaster' . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16562.html
[Steve Benen] It must be rather frustrating for the McCain campaign to have so few honest arguments to make. I can sympathize — if I worked for McCain, I’m not sure what I’d do to sell this clunker of a campaign to the public, either.

Looking at the McCain gang’s latest ad, it’s painfully obvious that this team has decided the only way to win is to deceive as many voters as possible. . . .

Watch: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/new_mccain_ad_celebrity_obama.php

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/new_mccain_ad_maybe_the_applau.php

A couple of days ago, McCain said that critics of his vicious attack ads should just “relax” (what, relax and enjoy it?). Now he adds, you just need a sense of humor – because calling your opponent a traitor and a puffed-up fraud is really, you know, kind of funny

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_on_swiftboating_book_go.php
[Greg Sargent] The Obama campaign, eager to make it known that it's responding forcefully to the new Swift-Boating book by Jerome Corsi, is jumping on a John McCain moment today where he appeared to sidestep an opportunity to condemn the book and its multiple falsehoods about Barack Obama.

Asked by a reporter today to comment on the book, McCain said: "Gotta keep your sense of humor," before his aides whisked him away.

That prompted Obama spokesperson Tommy Vietor to launch approximately a dozen tactical nukes in McCain's direction:

"The old John McCain used to boast about honorable politics, while the new John McCain finds Roveian smears funny. Honor is not a laughing matter. What does John McCain think is funny about an intolerant smear artist who called Pope John Paul II senile and claims the government lied about 9/11? McCain has said he wants to run an honorable campaign, but his belief that these smears are funny makes people question whether he now approves of the same reprehensible politics used to smear his own character eight years ago."

The point that bears repeating here is that in 2004, McCain did condemn the Swift-Boating of John Kerry, which Corsi also had a big role in. Also, McCain has claimed he wants the current campaign to be "civil."

But McCain has looked the other way when his own surrogates have questioned Obama's patriotism and American-ness, and his campaign has even endorsed these attacks. And now the same tactics that McCain condemned in 2004 are apparently just some gag that we should all have a good laugh over.

McCain campaign advisers, too, are declining to condemn the Corsi book. This morning, we asked the McCain camp if Corsi's tactics have a place in a campaign McCain himself says he hopes will remain "civil." No answer yet.

More: http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/mccain-declines-to

How Jerome Corsi sees himself

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/15/corsi_interview/index.html
[Alex Koppelman] Yes, bestselling conservative author Jerome Corsi may be considered a crackpot -- or worse -- for some of his work. Like, oh, his theory that the earth spontaneously generates oil that just seeps up into the crust, making it a renewable resource. Or his insistence that there's a hidden plot under way to merge the United States with Canada and Mexico in a "North American Union," replacing the dollar with a new currency called (cue scary music) the amero. Or for his hatchet jobs on -- gee, what a coincidence -- the last two Democratic nominees for president, John Kerry and Barack Obama.

But the way Corsi sees it, he's just doing his job.

"My job as an investigative reporter is to pursue issues that I think are true or merit investigation, and report the findings as I find them," Corsi told Salon in an interview Friday morning. "Rather than worry about a politically correct investigation that might win favor with politically correct groups [that are] considered respectable, my aim is pursuing the truth of the investigations, wherever they lead me."

In the case of "The Obama Nation," his new hit job on Obama, those investigations led Corsi to report that Obama is secretly a Muslim, that he may still use drugs, that he's a radical black nationalist and that he's somehow trying to interfere with Kenyan politics (presumably in his spare time while campaigning for president here). The book has already been aggressively debunked by media organizations, liberal think tanks and the Obama campaign. Corsi, though, says he's performing a valuable service. . . .

So far, the mainstream media isn’t buying it: http://mediamatters.org/items/200808150015

McCain loves the sound of Harleys, but hasn’t done anything to preserve their manufacturing jobs in this country

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_unveils_buy_american_vot.php
“Buy American. Vote Obama”

Why McCain should be worried about the upcoming debates

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/httpwwwtheatlanticcomdoc200809.php

McCain has now reversed himself to get aligned on every single issue that is of concern to the religious right – there isn’t an inch of distance or independence left

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/15/12551/5917

That’s why I think, in the end, he WON’T choose a pro-choice VP, as much as he might want to

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16567.html

A revealing way to put it

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16570.html
[Steve Benen] John McCain’s pandering on taxes has been one of the more embarrassing aspects of his campaign, as evidenced by his appearance at the Aspen Institute, when he admitted that he’d been pushed into a corner on Social Security and taxes, saying, “I have to be against tax increases, as you know.” . . . [read on]

The silly season: I wager you will never see John McCain with HIS shirt off

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_campaign_attacks_obama.php

The politics of stupidity

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16568.html
[Steve Benen] Way back in April, which seems like a surprisingly long time ago, Atrios had a prediction: “This election is going to be much much stupider than the last time. Last time much of the stupid was at least nominally about serious issues, this time it’s just all about the stupid.”

The last four months have made this prediction look pretty good. . . . [read on]

Yes, STUPID

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16560.html
[Steve Benen] In late June, the McCain campaign was aggressively pushing the line that John McCain has taken political risks by working with Dems on important issues. Pressed for a recent example to bolster the claim, a campaign spokesperson said, “It’s fairly significant that Senator McCain worked on the immigration reform legislation while he was pursing the nomination of his party,” adding that he “reached across the aisle despite a heated primary campaign.”

And this week, as the McCain campaign began to push the line that Barack Obama doesn’t put “country first,” the same team relied on the same example. Newsweek’s Howard Fineman reported:

I asked McCain’s closest advisor and friend, Mark Salter, for an example of a time when Obama did not “put the country first.” His answer: the Senate maneuvering of immigration legislation.

In his view, Obama did big labor’s bidding by helping to kill the chances for a grand compromise on immigration reform.

“His campaign came before his country,” Salter told me in an e-mail.

In other words, if you weren’t for McCain’s deal, you didn’t put the country first.

Fineman’s right to find Salter’s argument foolish, but the argument is actually even worse than Fineman suggests: McCain wasn’t for McCain’s deal, which suggests McCain didn’t put country first, either.

To follow Salter’s logic, “putting country first” means supporting the compromise immigration package. As it happens, Obama did support the legislation, but disagreed with McCain on a vote on a specific amendment, which apparently means Obama doesn’t really love America. Or something. It’s hard to tell with these guys.

But let’s not lose sight of what McCain did here. To his credit, McCain took a risk working with Dems on a comprehensive immigration reform measure during the Republican primaries. His efforts failed — McCain couldn’t get his bill through the Senate, and his poll numbers tanked when GOP voters learned of his efforts.

But what happened next? McCain said, over and over again, that he disapproves of his own legislation. He conceded in a nationally televised debate that he wouldn’t even vote for his own bill.

Really, REALLY stupid

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/15/peggy-noonan-these-candidates-suck-because-i-cant-tell-where-theyre-from/
[Peggy Noonan] The lack of placeness with both candidates contributes to a sense of their disjointedness, their floatingness. . . [huh?]

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16566.html

Money matters: Obama is vastly outraising McCain – but the RNC is outraising the DNC. Overall the Repubs have more cash

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/15/rnc-reports-26-million-in-june-nearly-equaling-mccain/

Another stupid Republican, denying he said what he said

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/gopers_spokesperson_my_boss_wo.php
[Eric Kleefeld] A spokesman for Congressman Bill Sali is disputing a quote now going around the blogs, in which the Idaho Republican reportedly said that there are up to 40 barrels of crude oil in every tree. Needless to say, such a claim would be scientifically erroneous.

"I wasn't there," spokesman Wayne Hoffman told Election Central, "but I can assure you he didn't say there's 40 barrels of oil in a tree."

It's been noted that Sali said something virtually identical in 2006, when he was quoted by the Spokane Spokesman-Review saying that "Forty percent of the mass of every tree in the forest is crude oil."

Hoffman told us that the 2006 quote was "out of context." . . .

The Justice Department says that its illegal hiring policies were a tort, not a crime. Okay, let’s treat them that way

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/class_action_suit_against_doj.php
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and embattled former White House liaison Monica Goodling are among those newly named as defendants in a private class-action lawsuit against the DOJ. . . .

Bonus item: Baracky II – don’t miss it!

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/baracky-is-back-with

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:13 AM

 
ANOTHER PRESIDENT

I don’t see how the people who lied to push the US into war with Iraq have much credibility now on Russia and Georgia – but I guess in this game no amount of being wrong can ever put you out of business (thanks to Ahmad S. for some of these links)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208452.php
[Josh Marshall] I think in our own lives we all know the type who heads off into some new and exciting scheme, with high hopes and little forethought. And when things don't pan out or come crashing down at their feet, rather than take stock of the situation or reevaluate their own shiftless practices, they're off to some new ambitious plan or get-rich-quick scheme as if the last gambit had never happened. . . [read on]

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5462
[Michael Klare] In commenting on the war in the Caucasus, most American analysts have tended to see it as a throwback to the past: as a continuation of a centuries-old blood feud between Russians and Georgians, or, at best, as part of the unfinished business of the Cold War. Many have spoken of Russia’s desire to erase the national “humiliation” it experienced with the collapse of the Soviet Union 16 years ago, or to restore its historic “sphere of influence” over the lands to its South. But the conflict is more about the future than the past. It stems from an intense geopolitical contest over the flow of Caspian Sea energy to markets in the West. . . . [read on]

More: http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1377/1/

It’s not a popular position here, but take a closer look at the “victim,” Georgia

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/14/georgia_on_our_mind/

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/14/georgia_background_to_war/

Why you don’t want a paid lobbyist for one of the belligerents setting your foreign policy

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/after_signing_new_lobbying_con.php

McCain’s “incompetence and stupidity”

http://www.jedreport.com/2008/08/mccains-confusi.html
[Jed Lewison] After days of blasting Russian's for their belligerence in Georgia, now John McCain seems to be suggesting he doesn't know who is to blame for the crisis there. Here's his exact words on the subject yesterday:

We, we will decide in subsequent days as whether degree of provocation and whe-- who was right and who was wrong.

More: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/13/i_wonder_whos_kissinger_now/

Erk!

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208592.php
[WP] Standing behind a lectern in Michigan this week, with two trusted senators ready to do his bidding, John McCain seemed to forget for a moment that he was only running for president.

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

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

[Josh Marshall] I am curious how this interlude in the campaign ends up playing. McCain's stance on this issue shows him to be close to certifiable -- not only on specific policy points but also in what I guess I would call affect. But it's not lost on me that people without much background on what actually happened might think this shows him at his strongest, best, etc. On the other hand, he really has gone considerably beyond what's ever been considered appropriate or acceptable for a presidential candidate. He's worked at fairly evident cross-purposes with the president of his own party. He's been in several times a day phone contact with one of the key players in the drama. He's dispatching his own faux diplomatic delegations to the scene. Probably it's all too much inside baseball to register with anyone who's not already watching closely and decided. But who knows?

Obama doesn’t support the troops, huh? Well then why are they supporting him with contributions? (Six to one!) But this doesn’t fit the narrative, so don’t expect to hear a lot about it. McCain’s the war hero, so of course the troops support him – facts be damned

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/08/troops-deployed-abroad-give-61.html

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16555.html

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/14/why-dont-the-troops-support-the-troops-2/

It looks as if the Obama team has learned the lessons of 2004: they are pushing back, hard, against the latest Swift Boat attacks

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_campaign_mapping_out_agg.php
[Greg Sargent] In stark contrast with the Kerry campaign in 2004, the Obama campaign is mapping out an aggressive counter-attack against the new Swift-Boat-Vet style book targeting Obama -- including plans to dig more deeply into the author's past statements, plans for increased surrogate action against the book, and stepped up pressure on high-level media executives to let the Obama team have air time to rebut the charges. . . .

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/14/obama_responds_to_corsi/index.html
[Alex Koppelman] Barack Obama's campaign will be sending out to reporters a 39-page book mocking Jerome Corsi, featuring blurbs calling Corsi's error-filled new anti-Obama book "trash" and "poisonous," which aims to deliver two messages to the political world.

One, Corsi's book isn't worth the paper it's printed on, and two -- maybe more important -- unlike John Kerry four years ago, Obama isn't just going to sit back and take it while things get out of hand.

"We are clear-eyed about the sort of media age we live in," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor told me. "These things are always going to get attention ... it's part of [the right-wing] media strategy." . . .

Obama's H.Q. isn't really worried that Corsi's book will convert readers -- the bulk sales to conservative groups that fueled the book's rise on the bestseller list make it clear that Corsi is preaching to the choir. What aides do worry about is the phony charges in the book -- like Obama's alleged secret Muslim ties, or a hidden drug habit -- might make their way into the media echo chamber without a response. . . . [read on]

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16558.html

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16552.html

Here’s how it’s done

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/obamas-swiftboat

http://mediamatters.org/items/200808040005

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/de-swifting-by-dday-obama-campaign-has.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/14/obama-campaign-punches-ba_n_119031.html

Corsi’s unerring investigative instincts: his companion work promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/anti-obama-author-on-911-conspiracy/
“Every day we learn something new that completely undercuts Corsi’s credibility,” said Tommy Vietor, an Obama spokesman, in light of Mr. Corsi’s remarks about 9/11.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/14/AR2008081403057.html
[Eugene Robinson] Here come the goons, right on schedule.

The "author," and I use the term loosely, whose vicious lies damaged John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign has crawled back out from under his rock to spew vicious lies about Barack Obama. Right-wing radio talk-show hosts are dutifully transmitting this concocted venom. This presidential campaign has officially gotten ugly. . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/14/183414/051
What a Surprise: Jerome Corsi Promoting Book On White Supremacist Radio Show . . .

The woman behind the book: GOP operative and propagandist Mary Matalin

http://www.slate.com/id/2197432/
It "was not designed to be, and does not set out to be, a political book," Matalin sniffed to Jim Rutenberg and Julie Bosman of the New York Times. Rather, it is "a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that." Corsi holds a doctorate in government from Harvard University, and the book's cover highlights Corsi's academic credential with the byline "Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.d."

[NB: Rule number one – NEVER trust a book authored by someone who lists their doctorate next to their name.]

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/us/politics/13book.html
“The goal is to defeat Obama,” Mr. Corsi said in a telephone interview. “I don’t want Obama to be in office.”

Meanwhile . . .

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/anti-obama-book-gets-front-page-of-post.html
[John Aravosis] Isn't it interesting that both the NYT and the Washington Post put the latest anti-Obama book on their front pages, and Larry King did a show about it, while none of them gave such prominent attention to the lead anti-McCain book that Cliff Shecter published a few months ago. . . .

More: http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/13/obama-nation-vs-the-real-mccain-a-study-in-contrasts/

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/08/getting_on_offense.php

Obama’s great ad: “The Same Old Washington Games”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208485.php

This is the kind of great YouTube ad that shows the genius of ordinary people

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/brilliant-anti-mccain-ad.html

New ad hits McCain for his role in costing Ohio jobs

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/new_obama_ad_keeps_hitting_mcc.php

AFL/CIO ad on Social Security

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/big_union_drops_tough_mailer_h.php
"McCain's worth over $100 million," reads the mailer, which we obtained in advance of its public release. "He owns 10 houses...he flies around on a $12.6 million corporate jet...he walks around in $520 Italian loafers."

"If John McCain lost his social security, he'd get by just fine," the mailer continues. "Would you?"

This is the 73rd anniversary of Social Security. How much longer will it be around?

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/social_security_and_the_candidates.php

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/14/153010/252

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/happy-anniversary-by-dday-following-on.html

Well, THAT didn’t take long. Remember Phil Gramm’s “mental recession” and “nation of whiners” comments? Remember when he was banished from the campaign? (All of a month ago?) Well, guess what?

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/08/14/phil-gramm-attends-mccain-campaign-briefing/

Part of a pattern: after THEY approached Abramoff buddy Ralph Reed to host a campaign fundraiser, the McCain campaign is now saying Reed has nothing to do with it

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/mccain-now-claiming-ralph-reed-not.html

http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/14/mccains-cronies-playing-unrepentant-footsie-with-ralph-reed/

McCain looks upon Pennsylvania with lust in his heart – if he could pick a VP who could snatch this from the Democratic column, he would be a lot closer to winning. But will he pick a pro-choice candidate who will infuriate the Religious Right to do it?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16557.html

They hate Romney too: http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/new-gop-group-social-conservatives.html

Obama’s VP pick: his head vs. his heart?

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/08/14/obama_leaning_towards_more_experienced_pick.html

More: http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7516

Why Obama will win. I keep harping on the “ground game,” but this is what Rove brought to the Bush campaign, and what helped him gain record turnouts of his base. McCain doesn’t have anything like that. Does he think that sheer enthusiasm (or fear of Obama) will achieve turnout for him? That’s not the way it happens.

By the way, granted I live in Illinois – but I haven’t seen a single yard sign or bumper sticker for McCain yet. Not one

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/obamas-ohio-edge
David Axelrod didn't write Ohio's voting laws, but they seem tailor-made for Sen. Barack Obama's campaign. For one crucial week in October, Ohioans can register to vote and then cast their vote immediately -- all in one act. . . .

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/obama-youtubes-the
The Obama campaign just released a new YouTube video to recruit volunteers in Michigan, a left-leaning swing state where McCain retains very high favorable ratings. The video is filled with unglamorous scenes of daily campaign life. Young staffers collect voter registration cards by hand, approach strangers with clipboards and talk about why they're donating their time to the campaign. "It's the little things that matter," explains one unnamed volunteer. . . .

The Obama/Clinton convention agreement – from all accounts, reached rather amicably

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16554.html

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/a_little_bit_more_exposition.php

More: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_and_hillary_reach_deal_o.php

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/its_official_obama_camp_encour.php

The McCain campaign should pay Mark Penn for doing their work for them

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_recycling_hillarys_old.php

Dark mysteries: why Bill Kristol predicted that Colin Powell would endorse Obama. Apparently, it’s all part of a right-wing effort to discredit and marginalize Powell

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014298.php

It look as if the FEC is not going to punish McCain for his campaign finance shenanigans

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208520.php

Why McCain’s tech ignorance matters

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/13/john_mccain_technology/

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7518

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208591.php

The current Electoral College numbers

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/14/12144/8738

Republicans, running scared

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/14/114749/028

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/gop-senator-running

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/15/73745/5346

CNN adds five more members to the “best political team on television.” And guess which way they tilt?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16551.html

Bonus item: Credit where credit belongs

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/35_issues_35_nights_on_cbs_new.php
[Marc Ambinder] Well, here's an idea: how about... covering the issues?

But...but.. everyone's inner TV producer says... to do justice to an issue would take, oh, four minutes or more, and there are so many issues... and the broadcast is only 22 minutes, and we can't possibly spend that much time on it.

To which the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric responds:... how about 35 separate segments on issues, each six minutes to eight minutes long? . . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:39 AM

 
ONE COUNTRY, TWO FOREIGN POLICIES

In conflicts like that between Russia and Georgia, just because one country is bad doesn’t make the other one good. McCain’s radical tilt toward Georgia leads predictably to problems

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208356.php
[Josh Marshall] Wouldn't want to think we've got ourselves tied up with a loose canon in the President of Georgia.

President Saakashvili today told Georgians that the US military was moving in to take over control of the country's air and seaports -- which would be a pretty big deal since much of the country still appears to be an active war zone.

And about five minutes later the Pentagon said he didn't know what he was talking about. . . .

John McCain says he's talking to Saakashvili every day. What's he telling him? Is he confusing the situation?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208313.php
[Josh Marshall] It seems like John McCain's foreign policy freelancing may be further complicating the situation in Georgia. And President Saakashvili seems reasonably to be asking whether he shouldn't be getting more for having McCain top foreign policy advisor on his payroll for all these years.

This morning Saakashvili told CNN: "Yesterday, I heard Sen. McCain say, 'We are all Georgians now,'" Saakashvili said on CNN's American Morning. "Well, very nice, you know, very cheering for us to hear that, but OK, it's time to pass from this. From words to deeds."

Isn't John McCain just a presidential candidate? Not actually president? Is he really supposed to be running his own freelance foreign policy as part of his campaign?

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/saakashvili_calls_mccains_bluff.php
[Matt Yglesias] Saakashvili Calls McCain’s Bluff . . .

[I]t looks like Mikhail Saakashvili thought it meant something when John McCain proclaimed America and Georgia to be identical . . . People sometimes mock the idea of “diplomatic language” but, obviously, when it comes to national security you need to choose your words carefully.

More: http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/13/bushrice-georgia-debacle-demostrates-mccains-recklessness/

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/presumptuous-maverick-by-digby-yglesias.html

It’s like when blood revives Voldemort

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208391.php
[Josh Marshall] I will grant him this, Sen. McCain becomes markedly more animated and focused when he's talking about the Tsarist Empire and the Cold War. And I can see that Mark Halperin at ABC News is getting with the program when he cheers McCain's ability to use the Georgian crisis as an opportunity to "distance himself from the more accommodationist Bush Administration."

I think Halperin does us all a service by signaling that the Bush administration will seem "accomodationist" in comparison to a potential McCain administration. At several points in his statements over the last few days McCain has said that he "doesn't think" we're headed back to the Cold War. But listen to the tone of his voice and tell me if it doesn't sound like the one President Bush used to employ when he'd say, circa 2002-2003, that we were taking every step possible to avoid war with Iraq.

The suspicious role of Randy Scheunemann

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_talked_with_georgia_pres.php
Randy Scheunemann earned about $70,000 serving as Sen. John McCain's top foreign policy adviser between the January 2007 and May 15, 2008.

During the same period, the government of Georgia paid his firm $290,000 in lobbying fees.

Today's Washington Post reports a stark illustration of the conflict of interest that Scheunemann faced while advising McCain on foreign policy matters related to the former Soviet Republic and also working for the Georgia embassy. . . .

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/12/AR2008081202932.html

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MCCAIN_LOBBYIST?SITE=ININS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16545.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/13/123258/040

McCain 101: accuse your opponent of politicizing an issue, while you do just the same

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/mccain-this-is-no
[Matthew DeLong] During a press conference this afternoon in Birmingham, Mich., Sen. John McCain repeatedly said the conflict between Georgia and Russia should not be used for political gain. One such statement came in response to a question about comments made by Sen. Barack Obama's adviser, Susan Rice, who said McCain's aggressive statements may have worsened the situation. . . . [read on]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208358.php
[Josh Marshall] This is quite hilarious. Sen. McCain has just announced that he's sending his own delegation to Georgia (Sens. Lieberman and Graham) and now he's insisting that it's not a time for politics and partisanship.

More: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_announces_that_lieberma.php

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16548.html

In McCain’s fairy tale world

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/13/mccain-21-century/
“In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations. . . .”

What does Russia want?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-goals13-2008aug13,0,5075122.story

What recent events begin to make clear. The ruin of American military and economic strength caused by the Bush gang’s reaction to 9/11, along with the decline in American authority and prestige caused by Bush/Cheney’s arrogance, has made China, Russia, and the EU increasingly assertive. Their economies are booming, the weak dollar is allowing them to buy up US properties at will, the ballooning Bush deficit has made us dependent on their willingness to buy US debt, and the US's continuing entanglement in the Iraq/Afghanistan morass has made it incapable of military assertiveness anywhere else in the world. Are we watching the end of the American Century?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/12/AR2008081202826.html

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/were-number-2.html

McCain’s Abramoff connection

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16539.html
[Steve Benen] When news broke this week that John McCain would attend a fundraiser in Atlanta that Ralph Reed is helping host, it raised a few eyebrows. After all, McCain helped expose the Jack Abramoff scandal, and Reed was Abramoff’s business partner. Indeed, as part of the investigation, we learned that Reed and Abramoff teamed up on a money laundering scheme.

Public Citizen’s Craig Holman responded to the news by saying, “[Reed] was involved in money laundering and McCain’s investigation uncovered it. This is a mistake by the McCain campaign. I would be very surprised if he doesn’t cancel this event.”

No such luck . . .

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/mccain-invited-abramoff-business.html
[John Aravosis] McCain isn't just holding a fundraiser with Jack Abramoff's discredit business partner, according to the business partner, Ralph Reed, Reed was invited to be part of the McCain 2008 team. That adds a whole new level to this story. McCain sought Reed out, knowing full well of Reed's involvement with the Abramoff scandal. . .

More: http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/mccain-fund-raiser

The ubiquitous Mr. Scheunemann comes up in this context too

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208423.php
[Josh Marshall] Let me see if I can explain this simply.

When Sen. McCain was doing his highly circumscribed senate investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Jack's then-firm, Greenberg Traurig, hired sometimes McCain foreign policy advisor and most-times lobbyist Randy Scheunemann "for advice on handling the Senate investigation."

This was while Scheunemann was also lobbying for the government of Georgia.

McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers told the Times "he believed that Mr. Scheunemann was hired because he had worked in Congress for more than a decade and had experience with investigations, and not because of any ties he had to Mr. McCain."

Despite his promises to the contrary McCain’s campaign and his surrogates continually question Obama’s patriotism. And what does McCain say about that?

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/mccain-and-lieberman-call-obama-un.html
McCain and Lieberman call Obama un-American. . .

More: http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/republicans-attack-obamas-patriotism.html

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/ignoring-mccains-own-pledge-his.html

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/mccain-what-negative
[Matthew DeLong] This is pretty incredible. In an interview with NPR's Renee Montagne aired today, Sen. John McCain indicated he does not believe he is running a negative campaign -- and urged people who don't see the humor in some of his attack ads to "relax." . . .

The press struggles with whether to call McCain out on this hypocrisy or not

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccain_campaigns_doubletalk_on.php
[Greg Sargent] In what is emerging as a clear pattern, high-profile McCain surrogates have been questioning Barack Obama's patriotism and his roots in American culture, without drawing any objection from the McCain campaign -- even though McCain campaign advisers have explicitly said that attacks on Obama's patriotism are off-limits.

In some cases the McCain campaign itself has endorsed its surrogates attacks, such as yesterday, when Joe Lieberman made the incendiary charge that Obama hasn't always put his country first.

Yet at the same time, the national political press and punditry have largely ignored the glaring disconnect between the words of McCain surrogates and the McCain campaign's professed high-mindedness, declining to point out the contradiction or to hold the McCain campaign accountable for his surrogates' attacks.

This odd media passivity towards McCain on this sensitive topic stands in stark contrast to coverage of the Democratic primary, when objectionable quotes from Obama and Hillary surrogates were met with aggressive coverage that forced the Democratic campaigns to either own or disown their surrogates' comments.

The latest prominent McCain surrogate to question Obama's patriotism was Lieberman, who said yesterday that the election posed a clear choice "between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not."

The McCain campaign actually sent Lieberman's quote out to its national press list, an explicit endorsement of Lieberman's claim. This contrasts sharply with what senior McCain adviser Charlie Black said last month: "We don't want to talk about his patriotism and character. We concede that he's a patriot and person of good character." . . . [read on]

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/pundit_mccain_wouldnt_approve.php
[Greg Sargent] Wow, such perfect timing! . . . [A]long comes a perfect example of this from Newsweek's Howard Fineman on MSNBC. Fineman was talking about Joe Lieberman's claim that Obama hasn't always put his country first. . . .

Fineman said that while Lieberman's quote was clearly questionable, McCain himself wouldn't sanction it. "I still don't think if you said to McCain flat out, 'Do you approve of that kind of message,' that he would necessarily agree with it or support it," Fineman said.

But Howard, the McCain campaign itself blasted Lieberman's quote out to its press list, which constitutes an official McCain campaign endorsement of the quote. Isn't McCain responsible for his own campaign's message? And besides, if McCain doesn't agree with Lieberman, why hasn't he said so yet?

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/08/a_severe_character_defect.php
[Mark Kleiman] Since the days of Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon, Republicans have run filthy political campaigns for the same reason Putin invaded Georgia and is now breaking the cease-fire: because they're confident they can get away with it and pay no price they care about.

As long as the press plays the game of "X charged ... but Y denied" with respect to false charges (Kerry was a coward whose decorations were based on fabricated evidence, Barack Obama refused to visit wounded soldiers because he couldn't bring cameras along) and true ones (McCain's budget math is fraudulent and his tax plan would take money from the middle class and give it to the rich) alike, the side more shameless about lies and slanders has a huge structural advantage.

What seems to be different this year is that important figures in the mainstream press are no longer willing to play by those rules. McCain's lie about Obama's visit with the troops, at once so damaging and so obviously false — known to be so by every reporter who covered the trip — seems to have broken the ice, with even Andrea Mitchell driven to protest.

A key figure here is Joe Klein, who is increasingly willing to break the conventions of one-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other-hand reportage and just say, "This is a lie and the guy telling it is a bad person." Klein's latest column covers two topics: the anti-Obama screed by Joe Corsi of Swiftboat infamy, published by Mary Matalin and leading the best-seller lists due to bulk sales and the wingnut promotion machine, and the Joe Lieberman line, endorsed by McCain, that Obama does not "put America first."

Klein's column is a well-written yelp of anger and disgust, and deserves to be read in full. But here's the nut:

There is no excuse for what the McCain campaign is doing on the "putting America first" front. There is no way to balance it, or explain it other than as evidence of a severe character defect on the part of the candidate who allows it to be used.

More: http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/08/scholarship.html

The latest agitprop from Swift Boater and filth merchant Jerome Corsi

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/tomorrows_swiftboating_of_obam.php
[Greg Sargent] Jerome Corsi, the writer of "Unfit for Command," which provided the basis for the Swift-Boat-Vets attack on John Kerry, is out with a new book that has the same lofty goals, but this time, the target is Barack Obama.

Today's New York Times has a run-down on the book, and the paper reports that Corsi is planning to work with some conservative groups to run Swift-Boat style ads against Obama, and the wingnut noise machine is already going full throttle, with talk-show hosts promoting the heck out of it. The chief editor of the publishing house behind the book is GOP operative Mary Matalin.

The Times piece offers a glimpse of several of the specific lies in the book that will no doubt be used on the Illinois Senator when the Swift-Boating gears up. Here's a quick rundown of the lowlights . . . [read on]

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16538.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/08/13/new_obama_book/index.html

Who is Corsi? http://mediamatters.org/items/200408060010

The climate of Republican politics today – why do these two stories go together in my mind?

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/gop_house_candidate_dem_oppone.php
At a debate in New Mexico for the open GOP-held Second District late last week, Republican nominee Ed Tinsley accused his Dem opponent Harry Teague of wanting to cut the throats of American troops in Iraq . . . "How can I call my two nephews over there right now ... and tell them I'm running against a guy that will cut your throat . . .”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/us/14arkansas.html
Bill Gwatney, the chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party, was shot in his office in Little Rock Wednesday morning and died a few hours later, police officials said. . . .

The officials said a single gunman fired three shots at Mr. Gwatney, a former state legislator, in the party’s headquarters a few blocks from the state Capitol and then drove away. . . .

The suspect, driving a Chevrolet pickup truck, was chased south for about 25 miles by police officers and was shot after he was stopped, said Lt. Terry Hastings of the Little Rock Police Department. The suspect was airlifted to a hospital and later died of his wounds.

The suspect was described as a white male in his 50s. About ten people were present in the party headquarters during the shooting. “The suspect turned and ran out the door,” Lieutenant Hastings said.

Obama on McCainomics

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/new_obama_ad_hammers_mccain_bl.php

McCain’s campaign for idiots

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16546.html
[Steve Benen] We talked earlier about the Obama campaign’s new TV ad, which notes, among other things, the fact that John McCain voted with George W. Bush 95% of the time last year. Soon after, the McCain campaign responded by — I kid you not — telling reporters, “In the Senate, Barack Obama has voted in lockstep with President George W. Bush nearly half the time.”

I generally find McCain campaign talking points more annoying than amusing, but this is hysterical.

Let’s consider some of the reasons this is an unusually dumb thing to say . . .

Probably not true, but wow – just wow – if it is

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/13/17231/6257
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell will endorse Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention, Weekly Standard Publisher Bill Kristol told FOX News exclusively on Thursday. . . .

More: http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/colin-powell-to-endorse-obama.html

A new front in the war over voter registration

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/13/12543/4690

Bonus item: I promise not to turn this dept regularly into Rush Limbaugh territory – you couldn’t stomach it and neither could I. But I faced a decision yesterday whether to go with his stupid Olympics comments or these, about the Edwards affair. So here’s the OTHER Limbaugh outrage of the moment

http://mediamatters.org/items/200808120009
On the August 12 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh said of former Sen. John Edwards' recent disclosure of an extramarital affair: "I've got a theory about the motivations. Well, I don't know that I could -- I don't know that I can put this one on the air." Discussing his "theory," Limbaugh said, "We know -- we've been told that Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards. That's part of the puff pieces on them that we've seen. Ergo, if Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards, is it likely that she thinks she knows better than he does what his speeches ought to contain and what kind of things he ought to be doing strategy-wise in the campaign? If she is smarter than he is, could it have been her decision to keep going with the campaign? In other words, could it be that she doesn't shut up? Now, that's as far as I'm going to go." Limbaugh later added, "It just seems to me that Edwards might be attracted to a woman whose mouth did something other than talk." . . . [read on]

[NB: Yes, you read that right. He blames Edwards’ affair on a devoted wife and mother who never did anyone any wrong, a woman who is dying of cancer, a woman of evident decency – because he says she’s a brainiac who wouldn’t give her husband oral gratification. This is so sick and twisted, so beyond the pale of human decency. It’s the worst thing I’ve heard since his comment that Abu Ghraib was just a bunch of “fraternity pranks.” What a sick bastard.]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

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- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:46 AM

 
THE RETURN OF THE COLD WARRIORS

The press is mightily impressed with McCain’s “tough talk” on Russia. Obama’s “it’s a complicated world” response is widely panned. Because one thing we’ve learned from Bush and Cheney is that nuance is for wimps and suckers. Read this:

http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/2008/08/mccain_clueless.html

Watch: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208137.php

More: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208141.php
[Josh Marshall] The people that are pulling McCain's strings are the people who want to push us into a new Cold War with the Russians . . .

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208233.php
[Josh Marshall] As things unfold, keep an eye on the fact that the truly fanatic Bush hardliners -- folks like John Bolton and the cadre of neoconservatives who run with him who've spent the last few years suffering what amounts to felony assault at the hands of reality -- have largely lost faith in the Bush administration (he's gone too soft, in their eyes) and are now looking to McCain as their savior. . .

“We are all Georgians now.” Oh, really? And what does that MEAN, exactly?

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/am_i_a_georgian.php
[Matt Yglesias] Common sense indicates that, no, I am not a Georgian. But John McCain says “today we are all Georgians.” But does he mean it? Suppose Russia was bombing Atlanta and threatening to advance to Savannah. In solidarity with Georgia (the state) Americans from all fifty states would band together and fight the Russians off. Now I don’t think we should go to war with Russia. And I hope John McCain doesn’t think we should go to war with Russia. But insofar as he doesn’t mean that we should go to war with Russia on Georgia’s behalf, what’s the meaning of the claim that “we are all Georgians”?

On one level, it’s empty political sloganeering. But on another level it’s not empty — it’s downright irresponsible, and an example of the sort of irresponsible behavior that got us into this. But this stuff isn’t a game — Putin, Shakashvili, the Ossetes and the Abkhaz are all playing for keeps. We shouldn’t imply guarantees that we don’t intend to keep, which means the public statements of our officials have to be driven by realistic assessments of the situation and of American interests not by mawkish sentimentality.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/12/161159/016

Watch: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208155.php

[NB: Nice deal – your guy, Scheunemann, is a paid lobbyist for the Georgians. You put a suck-up line in your speech, then the head of Georgia picks it up and praises you for it, and – voila! – you look like a hero on the international stage.]

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/12/AR2008081202932.html

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208229.php

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208124.php

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/mccains_top_foreign_policy_adv.php

How badly did the Bush gang screw up the situation in Georgia?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/08/12/BL2008081201518.html
[Dan Froomkin] There doesn't seem to be much President Bush can do about the Russian invasion of Georgia at this point. Except maybe feel guilty about his role in provoking it. . . . [read on]

More: http://www.samefacts.com/archives/georgia_/2008/08/unbefckinglievable.php

Before this is all over, Willie Horton and “Call me” will look like child’s play

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/08/todays-campaign.html
[Jake Tepper, ABC] How many young white women professing adoration for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, can you count in this anti-Obama web video that the campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, was sending out yesterday?

One...two...three...four...sure are a lot of young white women in this thing....

Why do you think they put so many young white women professing their love for Obama in what is clearly an anti-Obama video? What would possibly be negative about young white women liking Sen. Obama? . . . [read on]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/208044.php
[KD]