What do you "stand" for, Nicholas.....this?

McCain Profile: The Keating Five

http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/mccain/articles/2007/03/01/20070301mccainbio-chapter7.html

..."After the speech, Keating walked up to McCain and told him that he, too, was a Navy flier and that he greatly respected McCain's war record. He met McCain's wife and family. The two men became friends.

Charlie Keating always took care of his friends, especially those in politics. McCain was no exception...

....When he arrived, Keating presented McCain with a laundry list of demands for the regulators.

McCain told Keating that he would attend the meeting and find out whether Keating was getting treated fairly but that was it..

The second meeting was April 9. The same four senators attended, along with Sen. Don Riegle, D-Mich. Also at the meeting were William Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp., James Cirona, president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and Michael Patriarca, director of agency functions at the FSLIC.

In an interview with The Republic, Black said the meeting was a show of force by Keating, who wanted the senators to pressure the regulators into dropping their case against Lincoln. The thrift was in trouble for violating "direct investment" rules, which prohibited S&Ls from taking large ownership positions in various ventures.

"The Senate is a really small club, like the cliche goes," Black said. "And you really did have one-twentieth of the Senate in one room, called by one guy, who was the biggest crook in the S&L debacle."

Black said the senators could have accomplished their goal "if they had simply had us show up and see this incredible room and said, 'Hi. Charles Keating asked us to meet with you. 'Bye.'"....

....But McCain made a critical error.

He had adopted the blanket defense that Keating was a constituent and that he had every right to ask his senators for help. In attending the meetings, McCain said, he simply wanted to make sure that Keating was treated like any other constituent.

Keating was no ordinary constituent to McCain.

On Oct. 8, 1989, The Arizona Republic revealed that McCain's wife and her father had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators.

The paper also reported that the McCains, sometimes accompanied by their daughter and baby-sitter, had made at least nine trips at Keating's expense, sometimes aboard the American Continental jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating's opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay.

McCain also did not pay Keating for some of the trips until years after they were taken, after he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln. Total cost: $13,433.

When the story broke, McCain did nothing to help himself.

"You're a liar," McCain said when a Republic reporter asked him about the business relationship between his wife and Keating.

"That's the spouse's involvement, you idiot," McCain said later in the same conversation. "You do understand English, don't you?"

He also belittled reporters when they asked about his wife's ties to Keating.

"It's up to you to find that out, kids."

The paper ran the story....

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10266650/

updated 11:27 a.m. ET, Sun., Dec. 4, 2005MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to corruption, and here's a headline from the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Lobbyist Jack Abramoff helped fuel conservative successes, but his dealings could lead to a powerful ethical fallout ... Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed, antitax guru Grover Norquist, members of Congress, Administration officials, and a host of lobbyists have been drawn into Senate or Justice Department investigations of Abramoff's lobbying activities. ... The Abramoff story `is breathtaking in its reach,' [Sen. John] McCain said."
Do you expect indictments?

SEN. McCAIN: Oh, sure. And lots of them. This is--this town has become very corrupt. There's no doubt about it. And we need lobbying reform. We need to have some reform of lobbying. But the system here, where so much is done in the way of policy and money, in appropriations bills where line items are put in in secret, which nobody knows about or sees until after they're voted on, is the problem. That's the problem today. So therefore, someone who wants some money or a policy change hires a lobbyist who is well connected. They go to the appropriate subcommittee or committee, appropriations, and they write in the line item. That part has to be fixed, I think, as much as anything else.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator, you said you're going to follow the money, but are you also going to investigate which legislators may have taken money and used that to influence legislation, to write into law what you're suggesting...

SEN. McCAIN: Tim...

MR. RUSSERT: ...the behavior of senators, your colleagues? Are you going to investigate them?

SEN. McCAIN: The--I will not, because I'm a chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee. This was brought to our--this whole thing started--was brought to us--attention by some disgruntled tribal council members in a small tribe in Louisiana, and we took it as far as we thought was our responsibility, which is where the money ends up. I'm not as--we are responsible for Indian affairs. We have an Ethics Committee. We have a government--we have other committees of Congress, but we also have a very active media. And believe me...

MR. RUSSERT: Does the Ethics Committee work?

SEN. McCAIN: I don't think...

MR. RUSSERT: In all honesty?

SEN. McCAIN: I don't think the Ethics Committees are working very well. The latest Cunningham scandal was uncovered by the San Diego newspaper, not by anyone here..."

Nicholas, you post like you are absolutely sure you are correct in your opinions, when the truth is closer to the idea that you do not know what you are talking about. McCain is at least as flawed and as poor a choice to vote for to be the next US president, as Obama is. That is the point....there is very little difference between the quality of the two candidates, neither is worth voting for. But you perceive and proclaim stark differences....huge positives in choosing McCain. You've swallowed the kool-ade !

Follow the Money: Obama’s "Rezko" house; Tony Rezko’s "big favor ...

...As can be seen, the house and the adjacent lot are landscaped as one property. There appears to be a wall around both properties together, enclosing the house and its side yard. There appears to be no access from the street to the property Rezko purchased except through the Obamas’ driveway. It is, in other words, the yard of the Obamas’ house.

Rather than merely purchasing a separate lot, Rezko appears to have purchased the yard of the Obama manse, and allowed them to live in the house+yard property, amounting to a gift (or loan, if you will) of considerable value.

Reportedly, since purchasing a strip of the Rezko lot for $104,500 when the deal became public, the Obamas have errected a fence on the dividing line between the two properties. That is not visibly reflected in the Google Earth picture, though.

The fence, however, can be clearly seen in this photograph.

The point that is missed here by Lifson and others looking at this Google Earth version of the Obama property and adjacent lot is that this is a fixed picture which has not changed over recent weeks or even many months, regardless of Chicago’s weather....

Sorry, Linda.... Colin Powell was only higly respected as Cheney's puppet in his recitation of lies before the entire UN Assembly in Feb, 2003....

SPIEGEL Interview with Lawrence Wilkerson: 'The Germans Share in ...

"As Colin Powell's chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson helped the former US Secretary of State make the case for the invasion of Iraq. But much of that case was based on false information. SPIEGEL spoke with Wilkerson about Germany's share of the guilt and the failures of the CIA

<script type="text/javascript"> <!-- OAS_RICH('Middle2'); // --> </script>

AP

Lawrence Wilkerson was intimately involved in preparing Powell's Security Council speech.

SPIEGEL: It was five years ago that Colin Powell gave his speech before the United Nations Security Council. How do you see that speech from the perspective of today?

Wilkerson: I can remember the whole day very well. It was a terribly cold day, and I remember leaving the UN being dead tired on my feet. I just walked around for a few minutes and thought 'that was a total failure.' His appearance at the Security Council was the first time I heard the entire speech, uninterrupted, from A to Z. The whole time I looked over at the Iraqi ambassador and I thought to myself: 'Jeez, this is all circumstantial bullshit, it will never wash.' After I had gotten some sleep and then read a few newspapers, I realized the polls were saying it had been significantly effective. I’ve had ample opportunity to spend a lot of time researching that time now at the university where I teach and I’m back to what I thought that day. But it is even worse, that morning was the lowest point of my professional life.."

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=130169
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=130169&page=1
Bush Calls Off Attack on Poison Gas Lab
Calls Off Operation to Take Out Al Qaeda-Sponsored Poison Gas Lab

By John McWethy

W A S H I N G T O N, Aug. 20 (2002)

President Bush called off a planned covert raid into northern Iraq late last week that was aimed at a small group of al Qaeda operatives who U.S. intelligence officials believed were experimenting with poison gas and deadly toxins, according to administration officials....

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0021007-8.html
President Bush October 7, 2002

...We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America....

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0030205-1.html

For Immediate Release
February 5, 2003

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Council
.. But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associated in collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants.

Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialities and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqaqi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.
Colin Powell slide 39

Slide 39

POWELL: You see a picture of this camp. ....

... Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of north east Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.

During this stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These Al Qaida affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...030206-17.html
President Bush February 6, 2003

...Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.

We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner. The network runs a poison and explosive training center in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad. The head of this network traveled to Baghdad for medical treatment and stayed for months. Nearly two dozen associates joined him there and have been operating in Baghdad for more than eight months.

The same terrorist network operating out of Iraq is responsible for the murder, the recent murder, of an American citizen, an American diplomat, Laurence Foley. The same network has plotted terrorism against France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Republic of Georgia, and Russia, and was caught producing poisons in London...

http://web.archive.org/web/200304012...?bid=3&pid=371
Capital Games By David Corn
Powell's One Good Reason To Bomb Iraq--UPDATED
02/06/2003 @ 12:12am

...But here's the first question that struck me after Powell's presentation:
why hasn't the United States bombed the so-called Zarqawi camp shown in the slide? The administration obviously knows where it is, and Powell spoke of it in the present tense.

http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=8&gl=us

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The, Feb 7, 2003 by GREG MILLER

SHOWDOWN ON IRAQ
Why not hit terrorist camp?
Lawmakers question lack of military action

By GREG MILLER Los Angeles Times

Friday, February 7, 2003

Washington -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spent a significant part of his presentation to the United Nations this week describing a terrorist camp in northern Iraq where al-Qaida affiliates are said to be training to carry out attacks with explosives and poisons.

"Why have we not taken it out?" Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) asked Powell during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. "Why have we let it sit there if it's such a dangerous plant producing these toxins?"

Powell declined to answer, saying he could not discuss the matter in open session.

"I can assure you that it is a place that has been very much in our minds. And we have been tracing individuals who have gone in there and come out of there," Powell said.

Absent an explanation from the White House, some officials suggested the administration had refrained from striking the compound in part to preserve a key piece of its case against Iraq.

"This is it, this is their compelling evidence for use of force," said one intelligence official, who asked not to be identified.

But neither Powell nor other administration officials answered the question: What is the United States doing about it?...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20030208.html

President Bush March 6, 2003

Discusses Iraq in National Press Conference

,,THE PRESIDENT: ,.Colin Powell, in an eloquent address to the United Nations, described some of the information we were at liberty of talking about. He mentioned a man named Al Zarqawi, who was in charge of the poison network. He's a man who was wounded in Afghanistan, received aid in Baghdad, ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen, USAID employee, was harbored in Iraq. There is a poison plant in Northeast Iraq. To assume that Saddam Hussein knew none of this was going on is not to really understand the nature of the Iraqi society...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040617-3.html

June 17, 2004

... THE PRESIDENT: The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden, the head of al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two.

I always said that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He was a threat because he was a sworn enemy to the United States of America, just like al Qaeda. He was a threat because he had terrorist connections -- not only al Qaeda connections, but other connections to terrorist organizations; Abu Nidal was one. He was a threat because he provided safe-haven for a terrorist like Zarqawi, who is still killing innocent inside of Iraq.

No, he was a threat, and the world is better off and America is more secure without Saddam Hussein in power. ..

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040618-1.html
June 18, 2004

President Bush Salutes Soldiers in Fort Lewis, Washington
Remarks by the President to the Military Personnel
Fort Lewis, Washington

..And we're beginning to see results of people stepping up to defend themselves. Iraqi police and Civil Defense Corps have captured several wanted terrorists, including Umar Boziani. He was a key lieutenant of this killer named Zarqawi who's ordering the suiciders inside of Iraq. By the way,
''he was the fellow who was in Baghdad at times prior to our arrival. He was operating out of Iraq. He was an Al Qaeda associate.

See, he was there before we came. He's there after we came. And we'll find him.''..

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040923-8.html
September 23, 2004

President Bush and Prime Minister Allawi Press Conference

...PRESIDENT BUSH: Imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein were still in power. This is a man who harbored terrorists -- Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, Zarqawi...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060320-7.html
March 20, 2006

THE PRESIDENT:..We also did say that Zarqawi, the man who is now wreaking havoc and killing innocent life, was in Iraq. .....but I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks on America....

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060821.html
August 21, 2006.

...Q Quick follow-up. A lot of the consequences you mentioned for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn't gone in. How do you square all of that?

THE PRESIDENT: I square it because, imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi. Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. ...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060910.html
September 10, 2006

..Q Then why in the lead-up to the war was there the constant linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's a different issue. Now, there's a question of whether or not al Qaeda -- whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11; separate and apart from that is the issue of whether or not there was a historic relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. The basis for that is probably best captured in George Tenet's testimony before the Senate intel committee in open session, where he said specifically that there was a pattern, a relationship that went back at least a decade between Iraq and al Qaeda....
..we know that Zarqawi, running a terrorist camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, after we went into 9/11 -- then fled and went to Baghdad and set up operations in Baghdad in the spring of '02..

.Zarqawi was in Baghdad after we took Afghanistan and before we went into Iraq. You had the facility up at Kermal, a poisons facility run by an Ansar al-Islam, an affiliate of al Qaeda..

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060821.html
Press Conference by the President

August 21, 2006.

the President:...... who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi. ....


http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060912-2.html
Press Gaggle Spetember 12, 2006

.....Q Well, one more, Tony, just one more. Do you believe -- does the President still believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to Zarqawi or al Qaeda before the invasion?

MR. SNOW: The President has never said that there was a direct, operational relationship between the two, and this is important. Zarqawi was in Iraq.

Q There was a link --

MR. SNOW: Well, and there was a relationship -- there was a relationship in this sense: Zarqawi was in Iraq; al Qaeda members were in Iraq; they were operating, and in some cases, operating freely from Iraq. Zarqawi, for instance, directed the assassination of an American diplomat in Amman, Jordan. But they did they have a corner office at the Mukhabarat? No. Were they getting a line item in Saddam's budget? No. There was no direct operational relationship, but there was a relationship. They were in the country, and I think you understand that the Iraqis knew they were there. That's the relationship.

Q Saddam Hussein knew they were there; that's it for the relationship?

MR. SNOW: That's pretty much it. .....


http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060915-2.html
Press Conference by the President September 15, 2006

Watch the video: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/15/bush-zarqawi-iraq/


THE PRESIDENT:....Martha.

Q Mr. President, you have said throughout the war in Iraq and building up to the war in Iraq that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi and al Qaeda. A Senate Intelligence Committee report a few weeks ago said there was no link, no relationship, and that the CIA knew this and issued a report last fall. And, yet, a month ago you were still saying there was a relationship. Why did you keep saying that? Why do you continue to say that? And do you still believe that?

THE PRESIDENT: The point I was making to Ken Herman's question was that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terror, and that Mr. Zarqawi was in Iraq. He had been wounded in Afghanistan, had come to Iraq for treatment. He had ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen in Jordan .

I never said there was an operational relationship. ....."

THE ONLY REASON TO say anything positive about Colin Powell today is because he finally publicly repudiated the ugly truth about his republican party:

his Meet the Press endorsement of Obama

Colin Powell:

I'm also troubled by, not what Sen. McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said such things as:  "Well,  you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim."  Well, the correct answer is:   he is not a Muslim.  He's a Christian.   He's always been a Christian.

But the really right answer is:  What if he is?  Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?  The answer is:  No, that's not America.  Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she can be President?

Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion:  he's a Muslim, and he might be associated with terrorists.  This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

Permalink

"Powell went on to say that he "feels strongly" about that point, and cited a photo essay he saw regarding U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan which included a photograph of a mother in Arlington National Cemetary with her head on the tombstone of her 20-year-old son, who was awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star and was killed in Iraq, and the photograph showed the headstone adorned with the "crescent and star of the Islamic faith," and his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, a Muslim-American (I believe this is the soldier to whom Powell was referring).

There has been much condemnation over the "Obama-is-a-Muslim" line of GOP attack, but almost all of it has been on the ground that the attack is factually false as applied to the Christian Obama, not on the ground that it is a reprehensible and dangerous line of attack even if it were factually true.  Powell bears much of the responsibility, and always will, for the horrific U.S. attack on Iraq (one which, just by the way, resulted in the deaths of at least hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims), but he deserves credit for using the platform he had this morning to go out of his way to make this vital point when doing so was not necessary (and perhaps not even helpful) in advancing the cause of his endorsement of Obama.

That being Muslim or Arab is a mark against someone's character is now so ingrained in our political culture that it is hardly noticed any longer.  When John McCain, at that rally in Minnesota last week, sought to chide his supporter for asserting that Obama is an "Arab," McCain did so by pointing out that, in fact, Obama is a "decent family man" -- as though that proves that he's not "an Arab because "decent family man" is the opposite of "Arab":

Later, another supporter told McCain, "I don't trust Obama...He's an Arab."

McCain stood shaking his head as she spoke, then quickly took the microphone from her.

"No, ma'am," he said. "He's a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with." '

It's debatable whether McCain actually intended to express the point that way -- whether he intended to imply that the opposite of "Arab" is "decent family man" and "citizen" -- but regardless of McCain's intent, that was how the point was expressed, and it received little attention.

A major enabling factor in convincing the population to support unnecessary and brutal wars -- and to perceive the "need" for endless expansions of federal surveillance and other police powers -- is the demonization of large groups of people both inside and out of the country.  The Right's ongoing, intense obsession with demonizing Muslims and Arabs is, for that reason, not only repulsive but also quite destructive.  The core of the Republican Party has degenerated into the unrestrained id of its worst impulses, and it was good to see Powell specifically cite (and condemn) those elements as a principal reason why he is turning away from the party he has served for so long, and instead supporting the Democratic nominee."

What happened to your party? When did it happen...what did you get out of cutting the tax rates of the top ten percent?

Here is where you were-

Jul. 18, 1938

"I know I can't compete with Mr. Roosevelt as a radio artist," said Mr. Landon, but he tried:

"During the last election there were seventeen million people who voted against the present Administration. I think if you would take a poll of these seventeen million people you would find an overwhelming majority of them believe in collective bargaining . . . social security . . . unemployment insurance. They believe in relief—relief to the needy and unemployed, but not the financing of a vast political machine under the false label of relief. They believe in a better distribution of wealth created, in raising the standard of living, and a great many other social reforms. . . .

"America has decided these issues. Regardless of what party comes into power, they will have to be carried forward be cause the majority of our people want them. But they want them to work. . . ."

How did you become so radicalized, so willing to stop using government to stem the tendency of most wealth to concentrate in the hands of the already wealthiest few?

So, Cheri, although your response to widely and deeply held concerns about the fact that blacks comprise 12 percent of the US population but less than one percent of the CEO fortune 500 "population" is as you say, "old school crap", and "give me one with conservative republican leanings, and he will have ny vote, but Obama isn't getting it."....you want the rest of us to take your opinions seriously?

Cheri, you'd vote for what Harry Belafonte accurately described Powell as, because of Powell's political orientation, until he rejected it publcly yesterday,

"There's an old saying," Belafonte said. "In the days of slavery, there were those slaves who lived on the plantation and [there] were those slaves that lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master ... exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him.

"Colin Powell's committed to come into the house of the master. When Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture."

Cheri, you inhabit a state of mind where Michael Steele and Clarence Thomas are somehow superior choices for "leaders", than Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela....but...you want the rest of us to take you seriously? After your granchildren have reached an age where they have studied history in school,

....do you expect your grandchildren wouild take your view of an "ideal" black candidate.... someone with "conservative republican leanings".... as an informed, reasonable set of criteria for voting?

Here is "your party" Cheri....but you say Obama's "followers"...you don't call them "supporters", are unaware of or do not want to talk about issues:

Here is John McCain's campaign manager, speaking last mont:

RealClearPolitics - Articles - It's Not Going to Be About the Issues

"Barack Obama says this election is not about him. It’s about the electorate and the issues that voters face every day.

But the Republicans have clearly decided to make the election about him, his inexperience, his wife, his preacher, his fame. Whatever, the election is all about Obama. If anyone needed further confirmation, John McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, has provided it. Speaking to the Washington Post editorial board, Davis said this:

"This election is not about issues... This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”

The Republicans would make that “composite view” of Obama include Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his wife Michelle’s fist bump, Obama’s middle name (Hussein). And Republican-leaning blogs are adding a dollop of Obama’s alleged Islamic roots, though he is a practicing Christian..."

Permalink

"Sept. 4, 2008 10:24 EDT

The GOP's cheerful viciousness

With last night's cheerfully vicious speeches from Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin, the Republicans did what they always do in order to win elections: they exploited raw cultural divides while mocking, belittling and demonizing Democratic leaders. Yet again, they delivered brutally effective and deeply personal blows to the Democratic presidential candidate grounded in the same manipulative and deceitful yet very potent themes they've been using for the last three decades.

Ever since Ronald Reagan's election, this is what the Republicans do every four years. They render issues irrelevant and convert campaigns into cultural wars and personality referenda. They converted our elections into tawdry reality shows long before networks realized their entertainment value. And every four years, Democrats seems shocked and paralyzed by all of this and desperately delude themselves into believing that mean-spirited "negativity" and nastiness will alienate voters, while the media swoons at the potency of these attacks....

....Biden's remarks were also all true, as far as they went. Palin's speech -- indeed, the entire GOP Convention -- was almost entirely bereft of substance and "issues." But it is that way by design.

The Republicans are well aware that they can't possibly win the election if it is even partially decided based on issues. They need and intend to win despite the fact that Americans hate their positions on the issues, and to do that, they want to ensure that a majority of Americans love and respect the strong, honorable, principled, culturally familiar all-American mavericks John McCain and Sarah Palin (even if they don't agree with them on everything) while strongly disliking that wishy-washy, snooty, foreign, exotic, self-absorbed Eastern elitist Barack Obama (even if he says the right things on issues)...."

The thing that is obvious, Cheri, is that Powell....and this has not much to do with his race...or yours...has demonstrated a higher respect for himself, and who he will associate with politically, than you have Cheri. You OWN what is described above. Why not deal with it...as Powell finally has seen fit to do. You simply deny it and dimiss it...by trying to make it a matter of race.....it isn't....it's a matter of calculated ignorance, trademarked by your Mr. Reagan.... and apologized for, by RNC chairman Ken Mehlman:

RNC Chief to Say It Was 'Wrong' to Exploit Racial Conflict for Votes

Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, this morning will tell the NAACP national convention in Milwaukee that it was "wrong." ...

 ...... McCain also endorsed that idiot George Bush and look where that got us!

Jay -

If the stakes weren't so high, this would be laughable.  Obama has zero Executive experience, and zero Economic expertise - his "Raw Deal" is nothing but pure Socialism, and if he should win, it will make the "New Deal" pale in comparison. 

How anybody in any field related to Real Estate can even contemplate voting for this guy, or any of the "Progressive" Dems who are running, is beyond me.  They're well on their way to Nationalizing the banks, and getting way too deep into government ownership of housing.

Jay -

Re, "Jeff, Bush and Paulson pushed to nationalize the banks." - You're right, they did, regrettably.  But keep in mind, the "nationalization" under their plan is temporary, in that once the markets stabilize, the banks will repurchase their shares, ending the "nationalization".

This is not what Obama & the current Dem leadership (Congressional Progressive Caucus) have in mind though - they want long-term, permanent nationalization of as much of the economy as they can get away with - Healthcare, Housing, Banking, Energy - both the oil Co's and the Utilities - and whatever else they can grab - and they say so, in writing, when you know where to look.  There's a HUGE difference in their mindsets and plans!

Mitchell and Tchaka -

This - "Obama has zero Executive experience, and zero Economic expertise"- was in response to Jay's line, "Obama has the experience and ability to serve as president and the expertise to, in very basic terms, fix our broken economy.", from the body of his post.

And Tchaka - You're slipping - here are a couple more names of recent candidates with economic and executive experience, in both the public and private sectors: Palin; Bush 43; and, Cheney.

Tchaka -

Economic experience was your choice of words, not expertise.  And to watch the Obama campaign, there is no mistaking the fact that Obama thinks he's running against Palin every bit as much as he's running against McCain - and sometimes more so.