Looks like something really bad happened to McCain’s campaign around September 8th: Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over that day and according to Pollster.com, it was all downhill from there.
With the polls swinging towards the Democrats in the national elections, you’d think that California’s Proposition 8 to amend California’s Constitution to specifically eliminate equal protection rights for gays and lesbians in California would be going down in crashing and burning. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Millions of dollars have been poured into the Pro-Prop 8 efforts here in California in an effort to get this measure passed.
If you believe in equal rights and that all loving couples should have the right to marry and enjoy the benefits and challenges that such a union offers, please consider donating to the No On 8 campaign. The right-wing has chosen to make California a battleground for the nation on this issue and we cannot let such intolerance be advanced in the name of fear.
As the Santa Cruz Sentinal puts it in their editorial against Proposition 8:
It’s not about moral teaching. It’s about equal treatment for all people under the laws of our state.
Just to give you a sense of the scare tactics these folks are using, the subheading on their web site is:
Restoring Marriage and Protecting California Children
Oh, please… I hope that none of the children they’re supposedly protecting are actually gay or lesbian. Imagine having to have this conversation with your child:
“Sorry, Son, a long time ago I was scared of people who were gay so I voted to eliminate your rights so it would be impossible for you to live a life like the one your mother and I enjoy.
I believed that men and women chose to be gay so they could enjoy being beaten, mocked, marginalized and discriminated against. Your choice to get married would have no effect on me or our lives, but I was scared of people like you. Sorry about that.”
McCain: One Way Out
Oct 13
As it happens sometimes, your best idea gets written by someone else–and most of the time better than you would have ever written it. In this case, the topic was to be McCain’s only shot at losing with some measure of dignity. Alas, Miles Mogalescu at Huffington Post beat me to it with a brilliant, prescient post about McCain’s legacy and the options he has remaining in this election.
With the Presidential election only 3 weeks away, John McCain faces a stark choice: Will he go down in history as a principled conservative who lost an election standing on his convictions? Or will he go down as an opportunist who lost while bringing out the darkest elements in American politics?
John McCain is now at a crossroads. At this historical moment, he has virtually no path to win the Presidency. The question is whether he will lose with honor or lose with disgrace. Will his legacy be like that of his Arizona Senatorial predecessor Barry Goldwater, who ran a campaign of conservative principal in a liberal year and lost in a landslide, only to see his principals come to power 16 years in the form of Ronald Reagan? Or will his legacy be like some combination of Richard Nixon, Robert Dole and George Wallace, one of a man whom, in his overweening ambition for victory, took the low road and tapped the dark forces of American politics to his own everlasting shame and dishonor?
I highly recommend that you read Miles Mogalescu’s prescription for McCain’s ailing campaign. As someone who once respected McCain, I couldn’t agree more.
With a unanimous vote of 12-0, the Republican-dominated Alaska State Legislative council voted to release its findings [pdf] regarding Governor Sarah Palin’s efforts to get her ex-brother-in-law fired and the dismissal of Department of Public Safety head, Walt Monegan. Finding number one was:
Finding Number One
For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides
“The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.”
Given that the reports recommends that no criminal charges be pursued, the question is, “What should Alaska do now?”
It seems clear to me watching from the outside that there is only one course of action for the Alaska Legislature: the Alaska Legislature must impeach Sarah Palin.
Read the rest of this entry »
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how the McCain Campaign had announced that Palin “agreed to cooperate with the Troopergate investigation” and how what was really going on was that she agreed to participate in the investigation initiated by her own complaint filed against herself at the Alaska State Personnel board. Now they have a new pile of crap they want you to believe: on Thursday, the day before Steven Branchflower is due to release the real investigative report into the Troopergate scandal, the McCain campaign has released its own “report” that “clears” Palin of any wrongdoing. The McCain campaign doesn’t just think Americans are stupid: they actually think voters are as stupid as Todd Palin.
Trying to head off a potentially embarrassing state ethics report on GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, campaign officials released their own report Thursday that clears her of any wrongdoing.
Not only that, the faux report blames Andrew Halcro, who now sarcastically admits, he was “the blogger on the grassy knoll.”
And as for the real report, TPM Muckraker is reporting that Palin’s lawyer is now complaining that the report cannot possibly be complete because Palin was never deposed.
Palin’s lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, tried to preemptively discredit the report, telling the ADN that it won’t be comprehensive because Branchflower didn’t interview Palin or her chief of staff, Mike Tibbles.
“They didn’t even try to interview the governor. You want to know why she reassigned Monegan, it would be nice to talk to her. They didn’t even try,” Van Flein said. “It’s a report that’s going to be half-done at best. And anything that’s half-done will likely be half-baked.”
What a friggin’ joke! She refuses to cooperate with the investigation and then complains she didn’t get a chance to tell her story. I hope Alaskans run a recall election for Governor up there.
I think we’ll wait for the real report.
I’ll have more about this story later, but Brian Ross of ABC News reported today that he has interviewed two former NSA linguists who claim they routinely eavesdropped on, transcribed and recorded conversations made by members of the press, the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, and the US Military as they made calls to the United States. Not terrorists. Not suspected terrorists. Just ordinary US citizens calling the United States from abroad.
Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.
ROSS: Kinne says she listened to hundreds of Americans simply calling their families …
KINNE: Personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything having anything to do with terrorism. It was just personal conversations that nobody else should have been listening to.
ROSS: President Bush has reassured Americans again and again:
GEORGE BUSH: It’s phone calls of known Al Qaeda suspects making a phone call into the United States.
KINNE: I would say that that is completely a lie — I would call it a lie — because we were definitely listening to Americans who had nothing to do with terrorism…
ROSS: Kinne says she intercepted, recorded, and transcribed conversations with the military, journalists, and Red Cross and aid workers.
What a shock! Bush and his cronies in the NSA, CIA and Justice Department lied to us about what they were really doing.
Glenn Greenwald has the first salvo that one can only hope will lead to a criminal investigation of the most corrupt, lawless Administration in history.