This comic video from the USA is called Sarah Palin Exposed.
From British daily The Guardian:
A hawkish and occasionally combative Sarah Palin warned last night she might commit US troops to a war against Russia in defence of Georgia and Ukraine in her first interview since John McCain chose her as his running mate.
Ms Palin, very many people in Georgia and Ukraine themselves do not like the militarist, not really `defensive`, policies of their heads of state. And war with Russia might very probably mean nuclear war, with millions of American, Russian, Georgian, Ukrainian etc. etc, dead civilians.
Palin, who admitted last night she made her first trip outside North America last year, also said she was certain she was ready to step in for McCain as president, if the Republican nominee were to be incapacitated. She said repeatedly she would not hesitate to use all options in an international crisis or resort to force against Islamist extremists. …
Palin’s interview was carefully stage-managed to counter criticism that she lacks foreign policy experience and to deflect media scrutiny of her personal life. But her occasionally stilted answers and uncompromising view of the world could sit uneasily with American voters, weary of the war on Iraq and the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.
In sometimes tense exchanges, Palin demonstrated a more bellicose posture towards Russia than the Bush administration during the conflict with Georgia. She also supported military action against Islamist extremists in Pakistan even without the support of the Islamabad government.
So, under President Palin, even more bombs on Pakistani civilians who are not “Islamist extremists ” than is already happening now under Bush …
See also here.
By Phoebe Tran in the USA:
Does anyone need to be reminded what Palin’s church, the Assembly of God, believes about the end of the world, that it is coming very soon, and will be ushered in by war with Russia?
Palin’s Dangerous Saber Rattling on Russia: here.
AP: Palin’s town charged rape victims to get evidence: here.
Washington Post: Palin Links Iraq to 9/11, A View Discarded by Bush: here.
The Palin interviews: Ignorance in the service of the ultra-right: here.
Alaska women against Palin: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
1. Posted by: “Compañero” companyero@bellsouth.net
Fri Sep 12, 2008 11:01 am (PDT)
John McCain is Not an Honorable Man
SEPTEMBER 5, 2008
By Dana Douglas
Why do millions of people think McCain is so honorable? Is it
because he keeps telling us that he is? Are we just believing hype?
Let’s review, from off the top of my head.
In the 1960s, by his own account, McCain stole, fought, used
prostitutes and lied. Youth, right? Still, not honorable.
In the 1970’s, he cheated on his wife, who had suffered a terrible
disfiguring accident. Then divorced her because she wasn’t pretty
anymore. And then he married his current trophy one month after
divorcing her. No honor there.
In the 1980’s, he was a principal in the Keating Five corruption
scandal. And then, McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating
after Keating gave McCain at least $112,00 in contributions. In the
mid-1980s, McCain made at least 9 trips on Keating’s airplanes, and
3 of those were to Keating’s luxurious retreat in the Bahamas.
McCain’s wife and father-in-law also were the largest investors (at
$350,000) in a Keating shopping center; the Phoenix New Times called
it a “sweetheart deal.” Not honorable.
In the 1990’s, McCain was discovered to have Mafia ties. In 1995,
it was discovered that McCain celebrated the birthday with Joseph
“Joe Bananas” Bonano, the head of the New York Bonano crime family,
who had retired to Arizona. McCain and Bonano were also tied to
another politician, Governor Fife Symington, who has since been
kicked out of office and convicted of 7 felonies relating to fraud
and extortion. Not the acts or relationships of an honorable,
“country first” American.
In the 2000’s, McCain admitted in his book that his 2000 run for
president was “pure ambition,” and not for any “country first”
reason. Now he claims the Country first slogan and history and
smears Obama as a selfish near-traitor. Not honorable.
He said Chelsea Clinton was “so ugly” because her father was “Janet
Reno.” Not honorable.
“Bomb, Bomb Iran” was not honorable.
During the primaries, in 2007 while speaking to Baptists in South
Carolina, he suddenly claimed to have been Baptist and a member of
the North Phoenix Baptist Church for 15 years, which was not only
untrue but for thirty previous years he had claimed to be
Episcopalian. Not honorable.
And then there are a few other things, which taken together paint
the picture of a man who is not honorable:
Non-candidate McCain was against torture. Candidate McCain supports
it.
McCain claims to shun lobbyists and special interests, but his
campaign is full of lobbyists, including foreign agents who are
trying to influence him.
Old McCain was for campaign finance reform. New McCain is reported
to be in violation of campaign finance laws.
Old McCain called evangelicals like Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwel
“agents of intolerance,” and shunned them. New McCain cozies up to
them.
McCain 9/29/02: “We´re not going to get into house-to-house fighting
in Baghdad. We may have to take out buildings, but we´re not going
to have a bloodletting of trading American bodies for Iraqi bodies.”
McCain: 1/4/07: “When I voted to support this war, I knew it was
probably going to be long and hard and tough, and those that voted
for it and thought that somehow it was going to be some kind of an
easy task, then I´m sorry they were mistaken. Maybe they didn´t know
what they were voting for.”
Non-candidate McCain in 2006: ‘I would not support repeal of Roe v.
Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to
[undergo] illegal and dangerous operations.” Candidate McCain i
2007: “I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned.”
McCain 5/26/01: “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in
which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at
the expense of middle class Americans who most need tax relief.”
But candidate McCain votes to extend Bush’s tax cuts.
Non-candidate McCain says is against ethanol, saying it is nothing
but an unworkable, pork barrell, money grab by special interests.
Candidate McCain says “I support ethanol and I think it is a vital,
a vital alternative energy source not only because of our dependency
on foreign oil but its greenhouse gas reduction effects.”
On the confederate flag, McCain in South Carolina on 1/12/00:
“Personally, I see the flag as symbol of heritage.” AFTER , McCain
4/19/00: “I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the
South Carolina primary. So I chose to compromise my principles.”
In 2001, McCain and Lieberman introduce a gun control bill in
Congress. In 2007, candidate McCain says, “I strongly support the
Second Amendment and I believe the Second Amendment ought to be
preserved, which means no gun control.”
I could go on and on. On virtually every issue, non-candidate
McCain had a different position than candidate McCain. On
wiretapping, immigration reform, offshore drilling, Guantanamo,
Social Security privatization, minimum wage and more, he says one
thing before he started running for president and another while he
is running for president.
Whether the truth was what he said before or what he is saying now,
does not matter. What matters is that these are not the actions of
an honorable man. And McCain hasn’t just come lately to this
dishonorable tendency, he has at least four decades of a history of
dishonor. This is not an honorable man. And all that is cited
above is just what I know about and doesn’t even include the
suspicious things, like the fact that he changed his position on
offshore drilling within 24 hours of taking $1.6 million in campaign
contributions from the oil industry. Where there is smoke there is
fire, my friends. And there is a lot of smoke here. Dishonorable
smoke to go along with the actual fires reported above.
No doubt McCain was shot down and spent years as a POW in Vietnam.
But beyond that, he doesn’t seem very honorable. And there isn’t
even any evidence for a lot of the claims he makes about his time as
a POW. Even his fellow prisoners can’t confirm major parts of his
story.
This “honorable” and “country first” thing is just an image. The
real man is not so honorable.
http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=15531
2.
Palin/GOP Politics – from todays WSJ
Posted by: “Compañero” companyero@bellsouth.net
Fri Sep 12, 2008 2:30 pm (PDT)
WSJ Article Today
The Tilting Yard
The GOP
Loves the Heartland
To Death
By THOMAS FRANK
September 10, 2008; Page A13
It tells us something about Sarah Palin’s homage to small-town
America, delivered to an enthusiastic GOP convention last week, that
she chose to fire it up with an unsourced quotation from the
all-time champion of fake populism, the belligerent right-wing
columnist Westbrook Pegler.
“We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity
and dignity,” the vice-presidential candidate said, quoting an
anonymous “writer,” which is to say, Pegler, who must have penned
that mellifluous line when not writing his more controversial stuff.
As the New York Times pointed out in its obituary of him in 1969,
Pegler once lamented that a would-be assassin “hit the wrong man”
when gunning for Franklin Roosevelt.
There’s no evidence that Mrs. Palin shares the trademark Pegler
bloodlust — except maybe when it comes to moose and wolves.
Nevertheless, the red-state myth that Mrs. Palin reiterated for her
adoring audience owes far more to the venomous spirit of Pegler than
it does to Norman Rockwell.
Small town people, Mrs. Palin went on, are “the ones who do some of
the hardest work in America, who grow our food and run our factories
and fight our wars.” They are authentic; they are noble, and they
are her own: “I grew up with those people.”
But what really defines them in Mrs. Palin’s telling is their
enemies, the people who supposedly “look down” on them. The opposite
of the heartland is the loathsome array of snobs and fakers,
“reporters and commentators,” lobbyists and others who make up “the
Washington elite.”
Presumably the various elite Washington lobbyists who have guided
John McCain’s presidential campaign were exempt from Mrs. Palin’s
criticism. As would be former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, now a
“senior adviser” to the Dickstein Shapiro lobby firm, who hymned the
“Sarah Palin part of the party” thus: “Their kids aren’t going to go
to Ivy League schools. Their sons leave high school and join the
military to serve our country. Their husbands and wives work two
jobs to make sure the family is sustained.”
Generally speaking, though, when husbands and wives work two jobs
each it is not merely because they are virtuous but because working
one job doesn’t earn them enough to get by. The two-job workers in
Middle America aren’t spurning the Ivy League and joining the
military straight out of high school just because they’re people of
principle, although many of them are. It is because they can’t
afford to do otherwise.
Leave the fantasy land of convention rhetoric, and you will find
that small-town America, this legendary place of honesty and
sincerity and dignity, is not doing very well. If you drive west
from Kansas City, Mo., you will find towns where Main Street is
largely boarded up. You will see closed schools and hospitals. You
will hear about depleted groundwater and massive depopulation.
And eventually you will ask yourself, how did this happen? Did
Hollywood do this? Was it those “reporters and commentators” with
their fancy college degrees who wrecked Main Street, U.S.A.?
No. For decades now we have been electing people like Sarah Palin
who claimed to love and respect the folksy conservatism of small
towns, and yet who have unfailingly enacted laws to aid the small
town’s mortal enemies.
Without raising an antitrust finger they have permitted fantastic
concentration in the various industries that buy the farmer’s crops.
They have undone the New Deal system of agricultural price supports
in favor of schemes called “Freedom to Farm” and loan deficiency
payments — each reform apparently designed to secure just one thing
out of small town America: cheap commodities for the big food
processors. Richard Nixon’s Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz put the
conservative attitude toward small farmers most bluntly back in the
1970s when he warned, “Get big or get out.”
A few days ago I talked politics with Donn Teske, the president of
the Kansas Farmers Union and a former Republican. Barack Obama may
come from a big city, he admits, but the Farmers Union gives him a
100% rating for his votes in Congress. John McCain gets a 0%. “If
any farmer in the Plains States looked at McCain’s voting record on
ag issues,” Mr. Teske says, “no one would vote for him.”
Now, Mr. McCain is known for his straight talk with industrial
workers, telling them their jobs are never coming back, that the
almighty market took them away for good, and that retraining is
their only hope.
But he seems to think that small-town people can be easily played.
Just choose a running mate who knows how to skin a moose and all
will be forgiven. Drive them off the land, shutter their towns, toss
their life chances into the grinders of big agriculture . . . and
praise their values. The TV eminences will coo in appreciation of
your in-touch authenticity, and the carnival will move on.
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20 Things To Consider
Posted by: “Black” mrblackhawk09@yahoo.com
Fri Sep 12, 2008 2:31 pm (PDT)
The corporate media won’t say it and the Obama campaign isn’t saying it enough, so we’re saying it loud and clear: John McCain is a liar. And so is the woman he now shares the Republican ticket with. Yes, Sarah Palin is a liar, too. Together they are responsible for one of the most inaccurate and misleading presidential campaigns, in a business known for inaccuracy and misdirection. But even by the standards of American politics, the McCain-Palin ticket seems to be in a race with itself to set new standards of low.
This isn’t opinion, this is fact. Time and time again, on the campaign trail, in press briefings and in interviews, McCain and Palin flip-flop on the issues, propagate myths they know to be false, and flat-out lie to the American people.
Unlike the McCain campaign, we have to back up our assertions, so here is a quick, short and cited list of the top 20 lies, myths and flip-flops that have come from the McCain/ Palin ticket so far.
1. The Myth: McCain and Palin claim to be agents of change.
The Truth: In a desperate attempt to revive McCain’s “maverick” reputation, the McCain campaign is trying to co-opt Obama’s slogan. But “change” is a tough act to pull off when your record almost exactly matches the current president’s. According to a study cited by the Huffington Post, John McCain voted in keeping with the president’s positions 100 percent of the time in 2008 and 95 percent in 2007.
2. The Lie: To burnish Palin’s rep as a down-to-earth, no-nonsense fighter of government waste, the campaign keeps bringing up the state-owned jet Palin put on eBay. Today McCain stated: “You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor and sold it on eBay — made a profit.”
The Truth: As Politico points out, Palin did put the Alaska-owned plane on eBay. But she failed to sell it. Instead, the state had to go through a private broker to unload the jet and ended up losing money in the transaction. Or, the opposite of profit.
3. Flip-Flop: Offshore Drilling.
Original Position: In 1999, McCain made conservatives very unhappy by supporting a moratorium on offshore drilling.
Politically Expedient Position: McCain can’t afford to make conservatives unhappy anymore; his campaign now depends on the rapturous love of a conservative base that is still suspicious of him from when he used to take intelligent positions. So he switched his position on offshore drilling. As Dana Milbank at the Washington Post writes, McCain recently argued that “those very same ‘moratoria should be lifted’ and proposed incentives for the states ‘in the form of tangible financial rewards, if the states decide to lift those moratoriums.'”
4. The Lie: McCain and Palin have said up to 29 times and counting that Palin told Congress “‘thanks but no thanks’ on that Bridge to Nowhere.”
The Truth: Palin strongly supported the Bridge to Nowhere and campaigned on the issue while running for governor of Alaska in 2006. It should also be noted that she never actually got the chance to tell Congress “no thanks,” as Congress killed off the project, choosing instead to give a lump sum for all of Alaska’s transportation projects, money that Palin gladly accepted.
5. The Lie: McCain keeps repeating, over and over and over again, that Obama’s tax proposals will hurt the middle class.
The Truth: Obama’s tax policy cuts taxes for people in the middle-income brackets, while his plan would increase taxes only for those with a family income above $250,000 and individuals who make more than $200,000. Not exactly the middle class.
6. The Lie: McCain falsely claims he received every award from every veterans organization.
The Truth: Despite saying it again and again, McCain is flat-out lying when he claims to have received the highest award from every veterans organization. As Think Progress reports:
He received a grade of D from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and a 20 percent vote rating from the Disabled Veterans of America; Vietnam Veterans of America noted McCain had “voted against us” in 15 “key votes.”
As for the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars — with whom McCain claims to have a “perfect voting record” — both groups vigorously supported Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-Va.) GI Bill that McCain tirelessly opposed.
Given McCain’s grades at the Naval Academy, maybe he thinks 20 percent approval is actually really good.
7. Flip-Flop: Immigration Reform.
Original Position: McCain was once a proponent of an immigration plan that would combine securing the borders with a temporary worker program and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Politically Expedient Position: With his poll numbers dipping and under attack from Republican opponents during the primaries, McCain switched his position on immigration. As the AP reports, instead of supporting broad immigration reform, McCain’s first and foremost priority now is to secure the borders. All that other, less important stuff, could come … whenever. Stated McCain: “I got the message. … We will secure the borders first and then go on to other issues.”
8. The Lie: An attack ad (ironically called “Fact Check”) by the McCain campaign claimed that Factcheck.org, a nonpartisan election-accuracy watchdog, accused Obama of spreading misleading information about Sarah Palin.
The Truth: Factcheck.org did not attribute Internet rumors about Palin to the Obama campaign. The organization was in fact debunking information about Palin spread online though anonymous e-mails and Web posts.
9. The Lie: The very same attack ad seems to purposefully misquote an article in the Wall Street Journal. The ad states that the Obama campaign sent a team to Alaska to “dig dirt on Governor Palin.”
The Truth: The article actually stated they were sent to “dig into her record and background.” Also, as it turns out, the article was wrong to begin with. Obama did not send a team to Alaska to dig into anything. What are the chances McCain will pull the ad and apologize?
10. The Lie: An attack ad by the McCain campaign says Obama is “against troop funding.”
The Truth: According to Factcheck.org, Obama has only voted against one war-funding bill, “after Bush vetoed a version that contained a date for withdrawal from Iraq.”
11. The Myth: McCain echoed his wife’s dubious claim that Alaska’s proximity to Russia makes Palin qualified to tackle the complex foreign policy issues facing the next administration. When asked if Palin is up to the challenge of dealing with “an insurgent Russia,” McCain responded, “… Alaska is right next to Russia. She understands that.”
The Truth: As Steve Benen, writing for CBS News, points out:
Palin has never been to Russia. She’s never demonstrated any expertise on U.S. policy toward Russia. She doesn’t have any background in international relations at any level. But for Republicans, the fact that she’s lived in a state near Russia is somehow a qualification for national office. … It’s the dumbest argument I’ve ever heard.
12. The Lie: A McCain Web ad affixed the clever moniker “Dr. No” to Obama, claiming Obama says to energy “innovation” and to “the electric car.”
The Truth: In fact, according to Factcheck.org, “Obama proposed a $150 billion program of research into a wide variety of clean-energy technologies last year.” Also, Obama is not against the electric car. He’s against McCain’s ridiculous ploy to award a $300 million prize to the person who fixes a glitch in electric car battery technology.
13. The Lie: McCain says that Obama wants kids to learn “about sex before learning how to read.”
The Truth: McCain’s attack ad “Education,” in which he blatantly lies to try to make it look like Obama wants to educate kindergartners about sex, cites a bill that was a piece of legislation in the Illinois state senate. The bill was meant to add disease prevention to already standard Illinois state-approved sex-ed classes. That means, in cases of education in kindergarten, nothing more than child predator prevention. For McCain to exploit a bill that protects small children from deviant criminals in our society is disgusting.
14. The Lie: McCain claims Obama doesn’t think Iran is a threat.
The Truth: In a misleading attack ad titled “Tiny,” meant to make Obama look naive about foreign policy, McCain took an Obama quote out of context to make it look like he thinks Iran is a “tiny” threat. The ad does not note that Obama said Iran is “tiny” when compared to the threat that the Soviet Union once posed to the United States. Which, you know, when you think about all those nuclear warheads and that giant army, it is.
15. Flip-Flop: Windfall profits tax.
Original Position: McCain has said he would look into a windfall profits tax, a smart thing to do when gas prices are through the roof and oil companies are reporting record profits. While speaking in North Carolina on the campaign trail, McCain said:
I’d be glad to look not just at the windfall profits tax — that’s not what bothers me — but we should look at any incentives that we are giving to people, that or industries or corporations that are distorting the market.
Politically Expedient Position: Of course, McCain was singing a different tune while talking with oil industry insiders in Texas, where he made fun of Obama’s support of windfall profit taxes:
He wants a windfall profits tax on oil, to go along with the new taxes he also plans for coal and natural gas. If the plan sounds familiar, it’s because that was President Jimmy Carter’s big idea too — and a lot of good it did us.
So which is the senator for? A tax that will help the people, or a favor for your buddies in big oil? We may never know.
16. The Lie: CBS’s Katie Couric thinks Obama is using sexism against Palin.
The Truth: A misleading attack ad released by the McCain campaign titled “Lipstick” ends with CBS’s Katie Couric saying: “One of the great lessons of that campaign is the continued and accepted role of sexism in American life.” The ad implies that Couric is talking about the Obama campaign’s treatment of Palin, but in reality the quote is from before Palin joined the McCain ticket; Couric was talking about Hillary Clinton. CBS was so upset over the dishonest way that Couric’s quote was used that it forced the McCain campaign to take the ad down.
17. The Lie: McCain proposes that Obama is the cause of rising gas prices.
The Truth: This one is just absurd. There is no way that Obama is in any way responsible for rising gas prices, as McCain proposed in his attack ad, “Pump.” In fact, McCain himself has said that the energy problems we face today were “thirty years in the making.”
18. The Lie: Obama snubbed wounded troops in Germany because the press couldn’t come with him.
The Truth: Andrea Mitchell of NBC, who was part of the press corps that toured with Obama, reacted when McCain’s attack ad came out by saying: “That literally is not true. … The point is that Obama had no intention of bringing any cameras with him — I was there, I can vouch for that.” Obama’s reason for not making the visit: He was worried that it would be politicized. Before arriving in Germany, Obama had visited wounded troops while in Baghdad, without any press.
19. The Myth: McCain argues that Palin is a historic feminist pick.
The Truth: A woman has already been nominated to be a vice presidential candidate. The Democrats beat the republicans to the punch 24 years ago with Geraldine Ferraro.
That is much less important than the fact that Palin isn’t a feminist pick at all. You can’t be against so many feminist causes and be a pro-feminist pick. Now, capitulation for the far Right, that’s probably closer to the truth.
20. Flip-Flop: Super POW John McCain Changes His Tune on Torture.
Original Position: McCain’s original stance on waterboarding, straight up: “It is torture.”
Politically Expedient Position: But when push came to shove, he voted against a bill that would have set an interrogation standard forbidding waterboarding no matter what. Sometimes even an ex-POW has to look tough. Luckily, the bill still passed. Unluckily, McCain’s good buddy George W. Bush vetoed it.
Black
Choice:
McCain, Experience: Prisoner of War, Adulterer, married to an Adulteress, wife an addict, Warmongerer. Divorced, and married, in the same year. If he cared nothing for her, what should we expect? Why was he called, “McNasty”?
Union Wages, Buy More.
The Keyboard Is Mightier
Than The Sword.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy
James Madison
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6.
Hayden on the Mortal Danger of McCain-Palin – and What to Do
Posted by: “Carl Davidson” carld717@yahoo.com carld717
Sat Sep 13, 2008 8:52 pm (PDT)
Key Task: Isolate and Divide the Right
Progressives and
Antiwar Movement
Must Weigh in
Independently
By Tom Hayden
Progressives for Obama
September 13, 2008 – A principle reason for Progressives For Obama is so that we can say things that the Obama campaign cannot or will not say.
This is one of those times.
1.Sarah Palin is a mortal threat to the possibility of Obama winning. The reason is simple: if she can add a couple of points to McCain from defecting white women and the newly-energized right wing religious base without losing more independent votes, McCain pulls ahead in some key states.
The dangerous tendency of the Obama campaign and its Democratic surrogates is to not fight back, but treat Palin as a “distraction” from McCain, the economy, the issues they feel familiar with, etc.
If they assume that the Palin bubble will return to earth naturally, or that the mainstream media and Saturday Night Live will do the job for them, the Obama campaign is mistaken.
There needs to be a controlled message that treats Palin as an extension of McCain, not a bobble-head to be laughed at.
The message has to cut off independent and women’s support for McCain-Palin and, if possible, divide some of the right-wingers. Not an easy task.
Perhaps the point is that we’ve already suffered eight years under a president Bush and vice-president Cheney who were, in Palin’s words, so “wired in a way to be committed to the mission” that they could neither blink nor think.
An excellent editorial in Sunday’s NY Times makes the connection from McCain to Palin in terms that will reach independent and moderate voters. It should be quoted and widely circulated. The choice of an unqualified candidate to be a heartbeat from the presidency of a 72 year old man with four melanomas “was shockingly irresponsible”, the Times said.
I think we can see in McCain-Palin a kind of faith-based extremism that reminds us of Bush and, even more, the persona of Gen. Custer.
We have seen where righteous faith-based politics goes in the Supreme Court decisions, corruption scandals, the official lies, and the unnecessary wars of the past eight years, all carried out in the name of what both McCain and Palin now call “God’s plan.”
We should say, In the name of God, stop them!
2. The McCain-Palin foreign policy is a mortal threat from the same neoconservatives who brought us Iraq wrapped in lies. We cannot give the Republicans an advantage with their false clams of “victory in sight.” We have to emphasize the three-trillion dollar cost of the war, and we have to connect the war to the price of oil. Democratic consultants should stop compartmentalizing the economy like it was 1992 all over again.
This is apparently not the advice of the biggest Democratic heavyweights like Bill Clinton and James Carville who tend to revert to “it’s the economy, stupid.” But it’s not 1992. It’s the 9/11 era, the Iraq War era, the War on Terrorism era – and also the middle of the worse economic and energy crisis in memory. The issues are tied together. Not enough people will vote on “lunch bucket” issues if they think McCain-Palin will protect them from terrorists, but they might vote against McCain-Palin if they think they are being lied to again.
The war is not being won. That’s why Petraeus wants to keep 140,000 troops in Iraq. We are paying 100,000 Iraqis not to shoot and bomb us – for now. Iraq is a time bomb with a timer set to go off next year after the November election. It costs $324 million a day, three trillion in the long run, that could be spent on public works, health care and education now. It deepens our dependency on oil when we should be spending the money to weatherize our buildings, conserve our energy and throw ourselves into a new clean energy economy with the same focus it took to get to the moon. That’s the mission we need to be wired into…
Under McCain-Palin, the same neo-conservatives who fabricated the pretext for invading Iraq will only take us into more quagmires – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Georgia, maybe Iran – that will bleed our troops and our economy without an end in sight.
Bush-Cheney obviously are trying to scare enough voters into supporting McCain-Palin amidst a rising national security crisis. The Democrats and the media are helping them by accepting Georgia’s triggering attack on Russia as legitimate, which surely was orchestrated with the knowledge of McCain’s top foreign policy adviser, the same neo-con who directed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq from Washington lobby to actual invasion force. They further hope to bring back bin Ladin’s head from Pakistan before November. Bush-McCain may get the scalp of bin Ladin but they are on Custer’s path to Little Big Horn.
So the clear promise of McCain-Palin is there will be blood. The fact that they scoff at Obama at the mere mention of diplomacy [despite their own talking to Russia, Iran, etc] presents an opening to describe them as what they are: extremists in the tradition of Bush-Cheney for whom war seems to be a first option. McCain was there on an aircraft carrier screaming “Next stop, Baghdad!” in 2002 as if it was Vietnam in 1967. Palin says she’s wired to win the war without blinking. That’s also why McCain on two occasions this year has spoken favorably of resuming the compulsory military draft. Independents and young first-time voters should pay attention to these issues.
The peace movement which provided the platform that made Obama’s candidacy possible in 2002 cannot afford to let that advantage be squandered by Democrats this fall. The upcoming September 20 Million Doors for Peace campaign is a good way to begin spreading the word.
[ See http://www.milliondoorsforpeace.org ]
[‘Progressives for Obama’ is moving. It’s new and more secure site is http://progressivesforobama.net It’s old site is http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com Both will be functional for a while, by save the new one as a favorite, and pass the word. ]
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Posted by: “Zoltan Abraham” zsazle@yahoo.com
Sun Sep 14, 2008 5:25 am (PDT)
The McCain campaign has recently released a number of ads that are simply full of lies.
The following video posted on the Daily Kos offers a strong response:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/12/231843/400/140/593806
Here is a Planned Parenthood response to one of McCain’s ads:
The video below highlights the close connection between McCain and Bush.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/14/32612/3148/840/598183
Here is also the Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton SNL Skit
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/14/0645/19693?detail=f
And now for something completely different – If Sarah Palin could be VP, then why not Monty Python’s Michael Palin???
Please forward these videos to others to get the truth out about John McCain!
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Woodward: McCain cheered Iraq war in public, but privately feared it lost
By WASHINGTON POST
Last update: September 14, 2008 – 8:30 PM
A new book by the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward portrays John McCain as offering a rosy assessment to the public about the progress of the troop “surge” in Iraq while privately telling U.S. officials he thought they were on the brink of losing the war.
The book, “The War Within,” describes a McCain news conference after visiting the Shorja market in Baghdad in April 2007.
After touring the market, where he was protected by more than 100 soldiers, McCain said, “Things are getting better in Iraq, and I am pleased with the progress that has been made.”
McCain was later mocked in some quarters after TV crews showed the extent of his protection at the market.
According to Woodward, McCain was invited to visit with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after he publicly made the positive comments at the market.
“Rice had expected him to reiterate his optimism, but after some pleasantries, he let loose,” Woodward writes.
“We may be about to lose the second war in my lifetime,” Woodward quotes McCain as saying to Rice.
Woodward writes that McCain “launched into a full-throated critique of the State Department’s role” in the war effort.
That contrasts sharply with his public words at the time.
“We’re just getting the third of the five brigades over to Baghdad,” he told the reporters after the meeting, according to Woodward. “We are achieving some small successes already in the strategy being employed by General Petraeus and General Odierno.”
As Woodward writes: “McCain did not mention his private fear that the United States was on the brink of losing.”
McCain campaign senior adviser Mark Salter sought to clarify McCain’s position Saturday.
“Senator McCain returned from Iraq and met with Secretary Rice to discuss the concerns of U.S. officials in Iraq that the personnel the State Department had sent to Iraq were too few and too junior,” he said.
http://www.startribune.com/politics/28376814.html
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