John McCain may have invented the Blackberry, but it was his campaign that distributed it... complete with really juicy names! Holy Paris Hilton's bedazzled phone!
The myth was born, the myth was hyped by the mainstream media, the myth met Katie Couric and Tina Fey, and the myth was shattered. The unkindest cut of all comes from Fox News, where Carl Cameron reveals behind-the-scenes details about Ms. Palin, including her diva-like behavior, temper tantrums, and the fact that she didn't know Africa is a continent, not a country, let alone which countries are in NAFTA ... the ... North ... American ... Free Trade Agreement. Shep Smith, at the anchor desk, asks the obvious question: "how could they end up with a running mate who doesn't know that Africa is a continent and they don't know that in advance?" Watch:
And then there's the new twist in Wardrobe-gate ... no, not the extra $40 grand for close for the First Dude. This one involves a towel:
At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said.
Newsweek also reports she dove into the William Ayers attacks without authorization from the campaign, and that Schmidt vetoed her request to speak during McCain's concession in Arizona Tuesday night.
Palin has pushed back against attempts to blame her for McCain's defeat, including in an interview with CNN"s Dana Bash:
BASH: One more question about the election that just ended yesterday. If you look at some of the polls and you talk to people who are really crunching the numbers and specifically who voted what way and who was swayed one way or the other. Independent voters, suburban voters, some of the people -- women. People who the campaign thought you would be able to help, actually looked at your presence on the ticket and said, I'm going to vote the other way. What do you make of that?
PALIN: Well, you know, I don't think anybody should give Sarah Palin that much credit that I would trump an economic, woeful time in this nation that occurred about two months ago that my presence on the ticket would trump the economic crisis that America found itself in a couple of months ago and attribute John McCain's loss to me.
But now having said that, if I cost John McCain even one vote, I am sorry about that because John McCain, I believe, is the American hero. I had believed that it was his time. He being so full of courage and wisdom and experience. That valor that he just embodies. I believe he would have been the best pick. But that is not the Americans' choice at this time.
But it's just not working. Exit polls show she was, along with George W. Bush and the crappy economy, a serious drag on the ticket:
But among the things that will dog her into 2012, if her political celebrity lasts that long, is the association between her rallies and a particularly vitriolic kind of hate, with a strong racial tinge, that are now linked forever in history. Also from the Newsweek web piece:
The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied. Michelle Obama was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. "Why would they try to make people hate us?" Michelle asked a top campaign aide.
(CNN Analysis) ... Some 74% of companies said that eliminating the tax exclusion would have a "strong negative impact on their workforce," according to a September survey by the American Benefits Council.
Estimates vary, but the Tax Policy Center estimates that 20 million people would lose their employer-based coverage by 2018. Roughly the same number would gain insurance through other means. But, overall, McCain's plan would do little to reduce the number of uninsured.
Also of concern, experts say, is the fact that the $5,000 tax credit would be indexed to inflation. As a result, it would not keep up with the swiftly rising cost of health care, which was soaring as much as 13% a year in the middle of this decade.
McCain advisers counter these concerns. Changing the tax treatment wouldn't hurt the employer-sponsored system and would allow more of the uninsured to buy their own coverage, they say. Also, his advisers say a McCain administration would keep an eye on the credit to make sure it didn't lag behind the cost of coverage, while also working to lower the rate of medical inflation.
Younger, healthier workers likely wouldn't abandon their company-sponsored plans, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's senior economic policy adviser.
"Why would they leave?" said Holtz-Eakin. "What they are getting from their employer is way better than what they could get with the credit."
Was that in the talking points???
Well, at least he's being honest, because if McCain healthcare were to ever become law, most Americans would be screwed.
The wheels continue to fly off the McCain-Palin straight talk express... Politico's Mike Allen reports:
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, on a “demoralized” McCain campaign: “Palin is going to be the most vivid chapter of the McCain campaign's post-mortem. … Those loyal to McCain believe they have been unfairly blamed for over-handling Palin. They say they did the best they could with what they got.”
***In convo with Playbook, a top McCain adviser one-ups the priceless “diva” description, calling her “a whack job.”
One McCain aide describes Sarah Palin as "going rogue," and going off script, perhaps on purpuse, on everything from her $150,000 wardrobe to whether the campaign should have pulled out of Michigan. Meanwhile...
A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.
And this anonymous tipster goes further:
"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," this McCain adviser said. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.
"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."
Not ever her own family??? Oh, those small town values!
A damning assessment from former Bush adviser David Frum (of "Axis of Evil" fame,) in today's Washington Post:
... McCain's awful campaign is having awful consequences down the ballot. I spoke a little while ago to a senior Republican House member. "There is not a safe Republican seat in the country," he warned. "I don't mean that we're going to lose all of them. But we could lose any of them."
In the Senate, things look, if possible, even worse.
The themes and messages that are galvanizing the crowds for Palin are bleeding Sens. John Sununu in New Hampshire, Gordon Smith in Oregon, Norm Coleman in Minnesota and Susan Collins in Maine. The Palin approach might have been expected to work better in more traditionally conservative states such as Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, but they have not worked well enough to compensate for the weak Republican economic message at a moment of global financial crisis. Result: the certain loss of John Warner's Senate seat in Virginia, the probable loss of Elizabeth Dole's in North Carolina, an unexpectedly tough fight for Saxby Chambliss's in Georgia -- and an apparent GOP surrender in Colorado, where it looks as if the National Republican Senatorial Committee has already pulled its ads from the air.
The fundraising challenge only makes things worse. The Republican senatorial and congressional committees have badly underperformed compared with their Democratic counterparts -- and the Republican National Committee, which has done well, is directing its money toward the presidential campaign, rather than to local races. (It was RNC funds, not McCain '08 money, that paid the now-famous $150,000 for Palin's campaign wardrobe, for example.) This is a huge mistake.
In these last days before the vote, Republicans need to face some strategic realities. Our resources are limited, and our message is failing. We cannot fight on all fronts. We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first. ...
The title of the piece is "Sorry, Senator. Let's salvage what we can. Wow.
Should John McCain have to spend the next ten years or more answering the question, "should you apologize to America for the Ashley Todd hoax?" I'll bet Al Sharpton is asking himself that question with no small amount of irony tonight. Todd, of course, is the Pittsburgh, PA McCain campaign college Republican volunteer who made up a story about being attacked, robbed, and sexually abused by a "6 foot 4 black man" at an ATM, and then having a backwards (mirror, anyone?) "B" carved into her face with a knife. The right bought the story hook, line and sinker, and between Matt Drudge (and his pals at Politico), talk radio and Fox News, it became a winger sensation, while threatening to touch off new racial tensions in the process.
Like the McCain-Palin rallies, it was ugly, and focused on "us" versus "them," in which "they" are alien, scary, and "not white." And like much that emanates from Camp McCain, the story was a complete and total hoax, for which Ms. Todd now faces legal jeopardy.
Brawley, you'll recall, was the New York City teenager who in November, 1987, claimed that she was abducted for four days, repeatedly raped and smeared with feces by a band of white men, including a cop named Daniel Pagones. The incident happened when I first moved back to New York (from Denver, Colorado) on my break from college. Like Al Sharpton, I believed Tawanna Brawley, so I'll forgive John McCain believing Ms. Todd. (Even 20 years later, Brawley's family still believes her story, and by the way, I've interviewed one of her attorneys, who does too.) But like Sharpton, McCain did more than believe. Not only did the Senator and presidential candidate call the young woman, his campaign in Pennsylvania actively pushed the story around to reporters, ramping up the spectacle of ogrish, black Obama supporters on the rampage, looking for young, white women to ravage, by supplying -- not passing on, but supplying -- the media with the lie that the "B" on Ms. Todd's face stood for Barack. If that reminds you of the bad old days of false rape accusations, followed by the lynchings of black men, you're where I am. But there have been other outrages that ended short of lynching.
Ironically, Ms. Todd's hoax comes almost 19 years to the day after a Boston man, Charles Stuart, shot his pregnant wife to death in their car and told police a black guy did it.
And who can forget Susan Smith, the North Carolina woman who in 1994 drowned her two adorable children by leaving them strapped into her sinking car, and then blamed the ubiquitous black carjacker?
But back to the McCain campaign. Per TPM, it turns out only two entities had custody of the now famous photos of Ms. Todd's alleged injuries:
The photographer who took the photos of Ashley Todd's self-inflicted injuries, only gave copies of the digital photos to the Pittsburgh police, and to her employers, the College Republicans.
This means there is no way the College Republicans and the McCain campaign was not involved in pushing this story, because Matt Drudge was up with the photo before the Pittsburgh Press even had access to them.
Mr. (Dan) Garcia took the widely published picture of Ms. Todd with her injuries. He said he took several photographs with a digital camera to document what had happened. He said he only gave copies of the photos to police and Ms. Todd's employer, the College Republicans. One photo appeared on The Drudge Report on Thursday, setting off a storm of media attention.
Which means that the College Republicans, who are working on behalf of the McCain campaign, passed the story to Drudge. The rest, as we say, was history. The level of involvement that has been revealed regarding the McCain campaign puts the lie to the notion that they were simply hapless dupes, wanting to believe a young would-be victim. They were active participants in this hoax, and I return to my original question: should John McCain have to spend the next decade answering for that, as Rev. Sharpton did with Tawanna Brawley? After all, had police behaved in this case they way they did in the Stuart and Smith cases, hundreds of black men might have been rousted across Pittsburgh, some even harassed, because of this young woman's story. Some crazed Palinite might have decided to take matters into his own hands, and hurt somebody out of racial animus and a quest for revenge. This incident put lives in danger, though thanks to the professionalism and skepticism of the Pittsburgh police, it was quickly exposed as a hoax. And it added one last sickening chapter to the sorry end of John McCain's political career. (CNN gets kudos for ignoring it, too.) I'll let Fox News honcho Ron Moody sum it up for me:
"If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."
Another 'killer' McCain suppoter ... Plus: our most embarrassing Americans
Courtesy of the Politico by way of the HuffPo but really from the Scranton Times Tribune. Timeline of a McCain-Palin rally near Scranton:
1:56 p.m.
Gov. Palin, accompanied by her husband, Todd, walked onstage to a rousing reception by the Riverfront Sports crowd as the theme from "Rocky" played.
After acknowledging "Hockey moms, soccer moms, baseball moms," Gov. Palin introduced Lee Greenwood. Mr. Greenwood noted that the wrong song was playing. He then asked everyone to put their hands on their hearts and help him sing the National Anthem.
The sound crew then cued up the song the crowd expected Greenwood to perform, and he burst into his hit "God Bless the U.S.A."
1:40 p.m.
The press pool has arrived at Riverfront Sports. Gov. Palin should arrive shortly.
1:25 p.m.
Chris Hackett addressed the increasingly feisty crowd as they await the arrival of Gov. Palin.
Each time the Republican candidate for the seat in the 10th Congressional District mentioned Barack Obama the crowd booed loudly.
One man screamed "kill him!"
Well, that's nice. Brave New Films has a compilation of more embarassing McCaniacs and their greatest hits.
Of course, to be fair, there are many different kinds of McCain-Palin supporters, who can be found all around the country...
There's the racist Pennsylvania monkey guy:
The uninformed Ohioans of Strongville (featuring the pushy, bad hair lady):
And of course, the "o little crowd of Bethlehem (PA)":
Um... you guys do realize that people besides your family members are gonna see this ... right...?
The Jed Report chronicles the stream of defections from Team McCain. And the list includes a shocker: one of the the absolute GOP sycophants at RedState. My personal favorite:
Republican Mickey Edwards, formerly a congressman from Oklahoma, distances himself from McCain, saying "today, thanks to a campaign apparently managed by Moe, Curly, and Larry, he comes across as erratic (Obama's word, but it fits), impulsive, befuddled, and ill-tempered, and apparently unable to utter any words other than 'surge' and 'earmarks.'" Edwards also plays the blame game very explicitly: "If Obama gets a big win, it will be McCain himself, and the Three Stooges calling the shots at his headquarters who will deserve whatever blame is attached for transforming a viable and energetic Obama campaign into a steamroller grinding the Republican Party into the ground."
Erick Erickson, "editor in chief" of RedState.com, is giving up on McCain: "With only a few weeks left until election day, let's be blunt: McCain-Palin '08 does not seem to be making headway against the polling." He suggests that McCain needs to choose between himself and senate/house Republicans, and suggests that his readers focus on downballot races: "The Republican numbers in the House and Senate can be salvaged, but in the next few weeks there must be a realistic assessment from the McCain campaign regarding winning his own race versus helping Congressional Republicans mitigate their losses."
McCain's erratic campaign has a father: 38-year-old Karl Rovite Steve Schmidt. (Apparently, he's the one who picked Sarah Palin.) If this is who John McCain takes advice from (and Palin is who he agreed to run with, and to present to the country as ready to be president,) can we trust John McCain's judgment on anything?
McCain should take no credit for the bailout bill, before its time...
Is it just me, or has John McCain lost it? He's suspending his campaign ... he's not suspending his campaign ... he won't debate ... he will debate ... he's headed back to Capitol Hill to lead House Republicans to pass the $700 Bush bailout bill ... but he's also dining at a posh hotel restaurant while the work is being done ... he won't phone it in ... but he conducted his "leadership" on the phone ... he takes all the credit for the bailout bill, until it doesn't pass, in which case it's Barack Obama's fault ... (but of course, this is no time for partisanship. although that, too, is Obama's fault...)
It's exhausting just keeping up with the stunts, twists, turns, backtracks and utter, careening craziness of the McCain campaign. Can you imagine the hot mess he'd be as president???
"To a certain extent, I think John gets hurt by [the bailout bill's failure]," said Ed Rollins, a CNN contributor who worked on former Gov. Mike Huckabee's primary campaign earlier this cycle. "He obviously, at the end of the day, said he was for it. But more important than that, he said he was the one who would bring them to the table and to a certain extent he will be viewed now as not being able to do that."
And when it comes to McCain's "leadership," apparently it had better be bi-partisan, because it sure doesn't extend to his own party:
Rollins added, "McCain is our nominee and [congressional Republicans] will do everything they can to help him, but they are not going to go over the cliff for him. They did that for Bush, and they thought that this measure was just too dramatic for their constituencies."
The GOP strategist spoke to the Huffington Post just an hour after the House failed to pass the $250 billion bailout package by a margin of 205 to 228. Republicans in that body were quick to cast blame on Speaker Nancy Pelosi for giving a "partisan" speech earlier on Monday -- a doubtful assertion given the benign text of Pelosi's remarks. When it came to McCain's leadership qualities, however, Rollins argued that the last week has left much to be desired.
"I think the reality is, he made a big show coming in and at the end of the day it really wasn't realistic for him," he said.
Damn. Well who can this guy lead? Joe Lieberman? Hell, even Lindsey Graham is getting worn out!
I don't blame John McCain for not rounding up enough Republican votes to get this bailout bill through the House of Representatives--he's not a member of the House, he's never held a leadership position and therefore doesn't know how to whip votes and finally--well, uh--there is one tried and true method for getting members of Congress to vote aye and McCain opposes it: a sweetener, like say, funding for a bridge in their districts. That is one reason why we have earmarks. McCain is opposed to giving away baubles for the greater good.
I do blame McCain for his puerile histrionics and for dragging this issue--which should have been above partisanship--into presidential politics. Let's make no mistake about it: his various gimmicks had absolutely nothing to do with the substance of the issue.He doesn't know all that much about the substance of the issue. The gimmicks were a failed attempt to make it seem as if he had powers, and knowledge, he didn't have. Clearly, he was in a more difficult position than Obama--the populist conservative wing of House Republicans was unwilling to take responsibility for the fruits of the deregulation that they promoted--and that might have required a more aggressive effort to move votes on his part, but the flailing about only confused Republicans (was he for, was he against?) and made matters worse.
Geez. I sure wish we had someone in the campaign who would bring some calm, sober leadership to this messy situation...
Barack Obama told a crowd in Westminster, Colo., not to panic at the House of Representatives' failure to pass the Bush administration's $700 billion bailout bill.
"It's important for the American public and for the markets to stay calm,” Obama said, “because things are never smooth in Congress, and to understand that it will get done.”
Ah... that's more like it. I feel calmer already. Right Richard Holbrooke?
The latest veteran to slam John McCain's dishonest and dishonerable advert attacking Barack Obama for canceling a visit to Ramstein medical base in Germany in deference to the Pentagon would know what she's talking about. Per Jonathan Martin at Politico:
VoteVets, the pro-Democrat group of retired military personnel, counters McCain's Black Hawk down statement with some outrage from Col. Katherine Scheirman (Ret.), the retired Chief of Medical Operations for United States Air Force in Europe Headquarters at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.
Dr. Katherine Scheirman, who was Chief of Medical Operations during Operation Iraqi Freedom, said in a statement:
"John McCain's new ad is dishonest and shameful, and I say that as the former Chief of Medical Operations. Senators Hagel and Reed confirmed to Bob Schieffer yesterday that Senator Obama visited the Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad as a part of their CODEL, with no media present.
"In Germany, Senator Obama made the right decision to respect wounded troops, and the doctors and nurses doing crucial and time-sensitive work, by not making a visit that was characterized as a campaign event by the Pentagon. Senator Obama should be thanked for putting our military above politics. And, I would hope that John McCain would think in those same terms, the next time he is put in a similar situation.
"Senator Obama has voted for the troops when John McCain has not, most recently on the new GI Bill. I am happy that Senator Obama puts the welfare of our troops above politics."
Dr. Katherine Scheirman, MD, MHA, CPE, FACPE, is a Senior Advisor to VoteVets.org, and has twenty years experience in the Department of Defense medical system. She retired from the Air Force in 2006 with the rank of Colonel. During her time in the military, she was assigned to a number of duties where she saw 'first hand' the shortcomings of the DOD medical system and its effect on troops. Most recently, she was at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, which saw the majority of those injured during the war in Iraq.
Martin notes that the Obama camp doesn't plan to go up with a counter-ad, surprisingly, unless the McCain team makes a serious TV buy. For now, Camp McCain is happy to let the media and Youtube disseminate their low blow message for free.
The McCain ad has already taken a beating from another prominent veteran: Chuck Hagel, and from other veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
McCain may feel that his new strategy will stand him in better stead with the truly nasty elements of the right which he needs to energize, but he also risks exposing the fault lines between himself and many veterans, who question his commitment to their issues, including healthcare, education, and the ever festering Vietnam MIA saga. |
Why did John McCain cancel his big, Obama-upending trip to Louisiana the other day? Was it ... because Bobby Jindall doesn't want to be seen with Mac and Cheese? ... maybe ... or, was it because of the weather ...? Maybe ... or was it the oil spill...
(The Politico) So why exactly did Sen. John McCain cancel an event yesterday on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana?
According to the McCain campaign, the event was canceled over weather concerns.
However, that explanation is not sitting well with Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who claims McCain canceled the event because of a nearby oil spill that dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Mississippi.
“Look up ‘irony’ in the dictionary and you will find a description of this turn of events. Having to cancel your big oil drilling photo op because of a massive oil spill is like canceling a crime safety photo op because the house next door just got robbed," said Menendez.
"In selling his absurd coastline drilling plan to the American people, Sen. McCain has time and again pointed to advanced technology that would supposedly eliminate the threat of massive oil spills. As he can now personally attest, even with the most modern technology, we can’t prevent massive oil spills like the one currently devastating the Mississippi, just as we couldn’t prevent 7.7 million gallons of oil spills after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This is the type of straight talk about oil drilling the American people deserve to hear.”
Whatchou talkin' bout Willis? I didn't hear the McCain-hating mainstream media talk about any "oil spill" ...
On Wednesday, a 600-foot tanker and a barge loaded with fuel oil collided near New Orleans, breaking the barge in half. While there were injuries, more than 419,000 gallons of thick oil spilled from the barge, forming a slick 12 miles long.
