Obama tightens margin in Missouri vote count

Barack Obama has tightened the margin in Missouri, between his votes and those for John McCain.

However, McCain still leads in the state. The latest news on the ballot count, from "The Kansas City Star":

The Kansas City Election Board certified its final results Monday.

Barack Obama picked up 491 votes from provisionals and other adjustments in the city; John McCain picked up 123 votes (from unofficial returns released election night.) That's a net gain for Obama of 368 votes in Kansas City.
Overall, the Missouri Secretary of State says Obama trails McCain by 4,716 votes as of 2:30 p.m. Monday.

(UPDATE: The margin moved back to 4,780 at 3:15.)
Final certifications are due with the SoS Tuesday, although the state has until early December to certify its final totals.
Incidentally, Kansas City reported 23,344 absentee ballots this year -- more than double the absentees in 2004.

WHY THE MEDIA HAVEN'T CALLED MISSOURI
From fivethirtyeight.com:

Why The Networks Haven't Called Missouri

From turnout guru Michael McDonald, who is in a position to know:
As someone who works in the quarantine room on election night at Edison Media Research, I can tell you that we will not make a call if a race has the potential to be in a recount situation. In a close race, we review the recount procedures and consider what we believe to be the outstanding absentee and provisional ballots before we are willing to make a call. It is not the job of the media to prejudge the election process when there is a possibility for recount procedures to take place. Think: Florida 2000.
If the Obama campaign makes a formal statement that they concede Missouri, then I would expect the media would call the election outcome. My guess is that they will wait until the results are certified to make a decision if they will request a recount. As we have seen in Minnesota, there can be human errors lurking in the results reported to date.
The big picture: the Obama campaign has every right to a recount if they want one, and the networks aren't presuming to make that judgment for them. There is also a small but tangible chance of a material human error in the vote tabulation.

Unofficial New York City returns; 4 of 5 boroughs for Obama

In some cases, the results are coming in late (Missouri's presidential vote, most notably). In the case of New York City, we are still waiting for complete official returns.
On a blog at "The New York Times" Jonathan P. Hicks reports that the Bronx chose Barack Obama, with 88 percent favoring, 85 percent in Manhattan, 79 percent in Brooklyn and 74 percent in Queens. In Staten Island 52 percent of voters chose John McCain.

A Democrat in Staten Island
In a big break from tradition, Staten Island chose a Democrat for Congress, Michael McMahon, a City Councilor. This was the first time that a Democrat won a Congressional seat in that borough in almost 30 years. He defeated the Republican nominee Robert Straniere with 61 percent of the vote.
From Tom Wrobleski's entry in "The Staten Island Advance":

Once in office, he said he wants to ensure that ordinary Americans get a boost from the $700 billion federal bailout package.

He also said he would look to secure a spot on the House Transportation Committee, an assignment he spoke of frequently during the campaign.

Veteran GOP leader Guy Molinari attributed the Republicans' loss of the seat to local party leaders, criticizing their selection of Straniere. "That seat was given away," he said.

An urgent call to friends to the left of us: consider a McCain set of appointments to the Supreme Court or the federal courts

We have been hearing how this is the most important election, and so on. Well, we also heard that in the last two. We need some qualification for this claim. We have it in the Supreme Court. The Court has voted very narrowly on abortion issues recently, by a 5-4 margin. And with J.P. Stevens at 88 and Ruth Bader Ginsburg at 75, both could likely leave the court under the next president.

If there is any reason to get a leftist to put Green, anti-electoral, or other anti-vote-for-the-Democrats impulses on hold this year, it is the issue of who will be president, and thus able to select replacements for Stevens or Ginsburg. Friends don't let friends siphon votes from the Dem, a la Nader in '00.
Sure, the Democrats are imperfect, and tied to corporate interests, but consider the following.

We easily face an over-turning of Roe v. Wade.
But this is not the only issue. Republicans like to spur Democrats and progressives as supporting activist judiciary decisions. This is the idea that adopting a loose interpretation of the Constitution allows for passing decisions that please progressives, e.g., the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments provide for personal autonomy, and therefore provide for the right to decide to opt to have an abortion. This kind of interpretation and justice is what undergirds Brown v. Board of Topeka, Kansas.
Yet, while they [Republicans/conservatives] target us for loose interpretations of the Constitution, they opt for the same, when it suits their ideological interests.

And, we progressives should be calling attention to the conservatives' own philosophy: activist conservativism. This allows for activist court rulings that further a conservative agenda.
What have been the goals of activist conservativism?
As Jeffrey Rosen wrote in "McJustice": Liberals' long-feared judicial apocalypse is nigh," the latest hard copy issue of "The New Republic,"

So let's assume that McCain gets to appoint at least one activist conservative to the bench. How would America and the law be transformed? The most significant effect of a McCain Court could come in areas pitting the Court against federal regulations passed by Congress. Before the crash of 2008, the previous two most serious depressions in U.S. history--in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--triggered populist economic regulations by Congress and the states to protect citizens from the excesses of industrial capitalism. In both eras, conservative Supreme Court majorities struck down those regulations--from minimum-wage laws to parts of the New Deal--as an affront to property rights and limits on federal power. This triggered a political backlash from Americans convinced that the decisions were bad for the country.
So let's assume that McCain gets to appoint at least one activist conservative to the bench. How would America and the law be transformed? The most significant effect of a McCain Court could come in areas pitting the Court against federal regulations passed by Congress. Before the crash of 2008, the previous two most serious depressions in U.S. history--in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--triggered populist economic regulations by Congress and the states to protect citizens from the excesses of industrial capitalism. In both eras, conservative Supreme Court majorities struck down those regulations--from minimum-wage laws to parts of the New Deal--as an affront to property rights and limits on federal power. This triggered a political backlash from Americans convinced that the decisions were bad for the country.

The Times in October 29's edition, called attention to the conservative majority of judge on the appeals and circuit courts, due to Bush, Bush I, Reagan.

See Charlie Savage's article, "Appeals Courts Pushed to Right by Bush Choices," in "The New York Times," October 29, 2008.

"After a group of doctors challenged a South Dakota law forcing them to inform women that abortions “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being” — using exactly that language — President Bush’s appointees to the federal appeals courts took control,"

A federal trial judge, stating that whether a fetus is human life is a matter of debate, had blocked the state from enforcing the 2005 law as a likely violation of doctors’ First Amendment rights. And an appeals court panel had upheld the injunction.

But this past June, the full United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit voted 7 to 4 to overrule those decisions and allow the statute to take immediate effect. The majority argued that it is objectively true that human life begins at conception, and that the state can force doctors to say so.

Mr. Bush had appointed six of the seven judges in the conservative majority. His administration has transformed the nation’s federal appeals courts, advancing a conservative legal revolution that began nearly three decades ago under President Ronald Reagan.

Due to the power of the appeals courts, they have inveighed on issues, before cases reached the Supreme Court. . . . . Bush openly pandered to the ideological judicial conservative organization, the Federalist Society:

On Oct. 6, Mr. Bush pointed with pride to his record at a conference sponsored by the Cincinnati chapter of the Federalist Society, the elite network for the conservative legal movement. He noted that he had appointed more than a third of the federal judiciary expected to be serving when he leaves office, a lifetime-tenured force that will influence society for decades and that represents one of his most enduring accomplishments. While a two-term president typically leaves his stamp on the appeals courts — Bill Clinton appointed 65 judges, Mr. Bush 61 — Mr. Bush’s judges were among the youngest ever nominated and are poised to have an unusually strong impact.

They have arrived at a time when the appeals courts, which decide tens of thousands of cases a year, are increasingly getting the last word. While the Supreme Court gets far more attention, in recent terms it has reviewed only about 75 cases a year — half what it considered a generation ago. And Mr. Bush’s appointees have found allies in like-minded judges named by Mr. Bush’s father and Reagan.

The article also gives you names of people that might end up on the Supreme Court, should John McCain reach the presidency.

So, listen, leftists, I would have preferred Kucinich and so on and so on . . . but consider how much worse America could be with a 1 or 2 liberal Supreme Court or a more solidly Republican judiciary.

FLASH: Michelle will fill in for Barack Obama

Michelle Obama will fill in for husband Barack Obama on the campaign trail while he is tending to his convalescing maternal grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham. --link to Guardian of the U.K.


Photo: Obama with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, at his high school graduation; released by his campaign, October 21, 2008.

Barack Obama is withdrawing from active campaigning for 36 hours, beginning late Wednesday, continuing into Friday. He will visit his grandmother in Hawaii. On Friday Michelle Obama will substitute for him, at campaign appearances in Akron and Columbus, Ohio.

OUT OF COLORADO: In matters pertaining to the John McCain campaign, his campaign has confirmed reports that the campaign will withdraw from Colorado. Real Clear Politics reports (in its aggregation of polls), as of October 21, PM, Obama leads in that state by 5.4 percentage points.
As Obama has reminded us, we cannot be sanguine about the Democratic momentum, and races have narrowed toward election day.
Nonetheless, a Democratic presidential victory in Colorado would be highly significant.

This would be the first Democratic victory in Colorado --in a two-way race-- since 1964.

The McCain campaign already conceded Michigan at the beginning of this month, and has withdrawn campaign operations from that state.

McCain, Palin and the GOP's class war

As I wrote yesterday, This election, should John McCain lose, will result in a big shake-up and a long moment of self-reflection for the Republicans. They will need to loosen their strong ties to the cultural conservative right. As David Brooks noted, the Republicans have lost the affinities of many voters in affluent areas along the two ocean coasts. (See his column, "The Class War Before Palin.")
Columnists hypothesized earlier this year that McCain stood to lose the support of the anti-immigrant crowd. The Republican ticket this year stands to lose the support of many moderate thinking Republicans this year. The Sarah Palin selection sealed indecision that these moderates would have about the ticket. The Colin Powell endorsement of Barack Obama will finalize the flight of moderate Republicans from the party's ticket this year.
The Republicans/ conservatives will need to reconcile the six-pack crowd with the multiple homes crowd within their ranks.
At the close of last week, John Heilemann wrote in New York Magazine of how the McCain/Palin campaign is opening up tensions within the GOP and the conservatives:

The Right’s Class War: The prospect of a McCain loss has the Republican Party angrily turning on itself. Can the eggheads and the Joe Six-Packs get along?
For a man who has just been, in his eyes, excommunicated from both a magazine and a movement founded by his father half a century ago, Chris Buckley, son of the sainted William F., is doing a creditable job of keeping his upper lip stiff. “I’m still sort of getting my apostate act down,” Buckley says with a chuckle when I phone him a few days after the unpleasantness unfolded. “I’m reading Apostasy for Dummies.” The apostasy in question is, of course, his endorsement of Barack Obama, which provoked such a torrent of outrage and abuse from the right that Buckley felt it only proper to offer to quit his column at National Review—an offer that was taken up, to his great surprise, “rather briskly,” as he puts it. “I guess it shows, be careful to whom you tender your resignation, because they just might accept it!”
Buckley’s good humor does nothing to conceal his melancholy and bewilderment at this turn of events. “I was really quite amazed by the reaction, and I think it shows just how bloody calcified the political discourse has become, and tribalist, and snarling,” he tells me. “I want to say that it’s a tempest in a teapot, but there seems to be something going on here, and maybe this has accidentally tapped into it.”
If the Buckley affair were an isolated incident, such talk would be easy to dismiss as self-flattery—but it isn’t. With the prospect of defeat for John McCain growing more likely every day, the GOP destined to see its numbers reduced in both the House and Senate, and the Republican brand debased to the point of bankruptcy, the conservative intelligentsia is factionalized and feuding, criminating and recriminating, in a way that few of its members can recall in their political lifetimes. Populists attack Establishmentarians. Neocons assail theocons. And virtually everyone has something harsh to say about the party’s standard-bearer. Election Day may still be two weeks away, but already the idea-merchants of the right have formed a circular firing squad.
When the weapons of choice shift from pistols to Uzis after November 4, the ensuing massacre will be for Democrats a source of political opportunity, not to mention endless entertainment. But for Republicans it will be a necessary passage toward either the revival or reinvention of conservatism. Nobody serious on the right doubts that the overhaul is at once required and bound to be arduous—but it may take longer and prove even bloodier than anyone now imagines.
To get a sense of the struggle ahead, a good place to start is with Sarah Palin, who has been the flashpoint for the most severe intra-conservative contretemps so far. In the weeks since her selection as McCain’s running mate, a startling assortment of name-brand pundits on the right—Kathleen Parker, George Will, David Frum, David Brooks—have pronounced themselves displeased with the pick. Brooks went so far as to declaim that Palin “represents a fatal cancer to the Republican Party.” Buckley, for his part, tells me that McCain’s vice-presidential choice was roughly 60 percent of the reason that he decided to endorse Obama. “I will readily confess that I was one of many who swooned the day after the announcement,” he says. “But it’s kind of like dating a supermodel. There comes a moment, unfortunately, where they start talking.”
Yet Palin retains the fierce loyalty of a cadre of more populist, grassrootsy voices in the right-wing punditocracy who have denounced the main-line-conservative criticisms of Palin as the snooty, disloyal, and craven attempts of faux Republicans to curry favor with the ascendant liberal elite. “They … believe as intellectuals,” writes one pro-Palin opinionator, Victor Davis Hanson, “that the similarly astute Obamians may on occasion inspire, or admire them as the like-minded who cultivate the life of the mind—in contrast to the ‘cancer’ Sarah Palin, who, with her husband Todd, could hardly discuss Proust with them or could offer little if any sophisticated table talk other than the proper chokes on shotguns or optimum RPMs on snow-machines.”
Not surprisingly, Sarracuda’s foes on the right dismiss the counter-backlash more or less out of hand. When I ask Frum about the apparent class overtones of the anti-anti-Palin argument, he deems it a mere “rhetorical trope.” What he hears instead is the sound of defeatism. “The people who defend her have already given up any serious thought of Republicans’ wielding governmental power anytime soon,” Frum says. “They have already moved to a position of pure cultural symbolic opposition to a new majority. The people who criticize her do so because we have some hope that we could be in contention in 2012, and there’s some risk that she could be the party’s nominee, and she’d probably lose—and even if by some miracle she won, she’d be a terrible president.”

Read the remainder of Heileman's column, in Power Grid in New York Magazine.

IMMEDIATE ANALYSIS: On Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama

Gov. Colin Powell's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama was mainly a rejection of the Palinization of the Republican Party.

For too many years, and with increasing intensity, we have been seeing the cultural conservatives becoming a more powerful, more incluential figure in the Republican Party. With the choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as Vice President, Sen. John McCain made it clear that he was tilting his hand toward the cultural conservative side of the party.

This saga has been a tragedy for Sen. John McCain. Here is the fellow that Independents, and even many Democrats, cited as a Republican that they felt very comfortable with. This was the Republican that people in the middle raised in contradistinction against the cultural conservatives.

This trip down the cultural conservative road marks McCain's following Buchanan in the path from the Republican Party of Richard Nixon.
Gen. Colin Powell (ret.), in his endorsement of Obama, did not reject John McCain as much as he rejected Sarah Palin, McCain's choice of Palin, and the low-road travelers of the Republican political machine. While Powell did upbraid McCain's reaction to the economic crisis as unwise, the majority of his indictment of McCain's candidacy dealt with the unclean direction of the McCain campaign and many Republicans.

Why did McCain choose Palin? He was grasping for the cultural conservative voters. But Palin embodies the cultural conservatives in a way that brings up too many embarrassing or unsettling hallmarks of cultural conservatives: her insistence of no quarter for abortions, even in the case of rape or incest (see her interview with Katie Couric), her belief that people shared the planet with dinosaurs (suggesting a literal reading of the Bible), her super-patriotism about God granting us fossil fuels.
Moreover, the selection must have tremendously offended the many Republican women that could have added strength to the ticket. Imagine the strength and wisdom that Condoleeza Rice or Kay Bailey Hutchinson could have added to the ticket.
The selection of Palin raises additional concerns about McCain. What is his conception of the role of the Vice President? However anyone wants to dress up the position, it is an understudy position. The understudy is someone hired to be ready to perform, should an actor be indisposed. The Vice President immediately steps in, in the event of the death or the temporary incapacity of the President. Now, we know that McCain's first choice actually was Sen. Joe Lieberman. Lieberman, despite plenty of mythology to the contrary, has a solid voting record on most issues, other than military policy. What was his reason for choosing Lieberman? Was it leadership qualities, personality? Was it related to whatever assumed demographic coattails a Lieberman role was presumed to bring along?
The VP pick is usually read as giving hints about the management or policy course that a candidate would take as president. Yet, the contrasts between Lieberman and Palin couldn't be more stark. Lieberman is a liberal; he would be useful for hoisting along moderates and some liberals to vote for McCain. Palin, as a conservative, is useful for shoring up McCain's conservative credentials and making conservatives a little bit more likely to forget about McCain's positions on immigration and campaign financing. The Vice President is supposed to, most of us would believe, carry on the ideological and leadership tendencies of the president. Just how would McCain govern, should he get elected? Along liberal lines, as the initial Lieberman choice suggests? -or as a hard-core, true-blue conservative Republican, as the Palin choice would suggest to us? The ideological direction of this latter choice is the direction that is turning off moderate Republicans, as Gen. Powell pointed out in his own view of the party's direction. This is not the Party of Teddy Roosevelt; this is the Party of Goldwater (recall his contempt for the United States' east coast, and his openly wondering if "just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea"). (With Palin we get that eastphobia redux, with her paranoid, blaming snipe against "East Coast politicians.")

This election, should McCain lose, will result in a big shake-up and a long moment of self-reflection for the Republicans. They will need to loosen their strong ties to the cultural conservative right. As David Brooks noted, the Republicans have lost the affinities of many voters in affluent areas along the two ocean coasts. (See his column, "The Class War Before Palin.")
Columnists hypothesized earlier this year that McCain stood to lose the support of the anti-immigrant crowd. The Republican ticket this year stands to lose the support of many moderate thinking Republicans this year. The Palin selection sealed indecision that these moderates would have about the ticket. This Powell endorsement of Obama will finalize the flight of moderate Republicans from the party's ticket this year.
(Of course, EVEN MORE DAMAGING, we should note that this endorsement, with all of the weight of Powell's gravitas, will give further encouragement to Independents to also join the rush to Obama.)

McCain's quixiotic mortgage plan

John McCain's $300 billion mortgage buyout plan to buy out bad mortgages is rewarding bad lending decisions. This is bailing out banks that made bad loans. This is bad borrowing/loan-paying plains by borrowers.
This plan is making economic conservatives uncomfortable with McCain's economic plans.

Toronto's "Globe and Mail" wrote the following on McCain's plan:

as several observers pointed out, by the time the next president is inaugurated in late January, 2009, much or even most of that money is likely to have been dispersed. The next Congress would have to authorize new funds.

Another question: Why would a Republican administration reward people who foolishly entered into mortgages they can't afford by giving them ones they can, paid for by those who bought or rented responsibly?

The mere thought of it appalls conservative analysts.

“This is a really bad idea,” said Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. “This is a rip-off of taxpayers to rescue people who were imprudent.”

We wonder if McCain's mortgage buy-out plan might make some conservatives sit it out, or go with Bob Barr, who is consistent with his principles.

Obama substantively responds to McCain's jabs and Palin's Ayers smears

Barack Obama has substantively responded to McCain's jabs and Sarah Palin's William Ayers smears.
Obama delivered a nice line against McCain's jabs about [the myth of] how America does really not know about him, noting that McCain isn't willing to make this attack to his face.
In his interview with ABC News' Charlie Gibson, Obama said:

Well, I am surprised that, you know, we've been seeing some pretty over-the-top attacks coming out of the McCain campaign over the last several days that he wasn't willing to say it to my face . . . .
[And to the Ayers smear charge: ]
<< EXCLUSIVE TRANSCRIPT OF FINAL MINUTE OF GIBSON'S INTERVIEW OF OBAMA >>
Why don't we clear it up right now. I'll repeat again what I've said many times.
This is a guy who engaged in some despicable acts forty years ago, when I was eight years old. By the time I met him, 15 years ago, he was a college professor of education at the University of Illinois. And we served on a school reform board together --a board, by the way, that was funded by Walter Annenberg, who had been an ambassador and close friend of Ronald Reagan's. So, I have talked to him about school reform issues, and the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign that he is an adviser of mine, that I've palled around with a terrorist- All these statements are simply made to try to score cheap political points. Look, I can handle these attacks for the remaining four weeks, but it certainly is not serving our democracy right now. We need to be having a debate about how we're gonna yank ourselves out of a very difficult situation. And that's what I'm going to spend my time talking about.

As Obama says, there it is. Let's let go of the subject. Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have thoroughly researched the Ayers connection, and there isn't anything new or earth-shaking.
BUT, we're still waiting and wondering: when will a journalist from ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, MSNBC or any other major broadcast media outlet interview John McCain about G. Gordon Liddy or John Singlaub (of the USCWF / WACL) or interview Sarah Palin about Joe Vogler (the founder of the secessionist AIP)?

Defying conventional wisdom: Young Military Families Supporting Obama

While "The Military Times" readers, older service-members, or retired service-members support Senator John McCain in greater numbers,
a "Huffington Post" article by Diane Tucker reports that Senator Barack Obama has an edge among younger military service families, going against teh conventional wisdom of McCain support across all sections of the military community.
Here is the opening excerpt from Tucker's article,

QUANTICO, Va. -- One of the largest U.S. marine bases in the world is located in Quantico, a tidy town with scant election fanfare. Everyone who lives here just assumes Republicans have a lock on the military vote. And so when Obama signs began to appear, tongues began to wag.

"At first I was worried about how my neighbors would view it," said former marine corporal Dawn Jennings, 31, who bravely put an Obama sign in the center of her front yard. Jennings told OffTheBus that Quantico is the "kind of place where they'll ask you to remove an Obama bumper sticker from your car."

Barack Obama is promising to make college affordable for all Americans, and this appeals to Jennings. "I can't imagine telling my two kids, "No college for you, because I voted for McCain." She emailed all of her military friends, encouraging them to register two new voters. "It's time to take a stand," said the marine vet. "I want us to be like Michigan -- I'd love to see John McCain quit campaigning in Virginia, too."

Jennings isn't the only Obama supporter in Quantico -- not by a long shot -- and this should raise a red flag for the McCain camp. In hotly contested states with large military populations, these voters can make an impact because they turn out to vote in higher percentages (79/64) than the general public, according to a Rand study.

Surprising endorsements for Obama; McCain as Senator Hothead

We've got billionaires endorsing Sen. Barack Obama. And the Hannity/ Limbaugh types claim that he wants to institute Marxism or socialism?

*Here's news of Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett's endorsement of Obama.
*In the Sunday New York Times Magazine, we've got Edgar Bronfman, Sr. (of Seagram's, the soda distillery) voting for Obama, "I'd vote for Mickey Mouse before I voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin."

And Esquire magazine, a men's magazine, that is surviving, in its own niche, neither Maxim nor G.Q., it is breaking tradition and is endorsing a presidential candidate. And who might that candidate be?

**
And then there are some people that we sort of associate with the Republican camp:
*Elizabeth Murdoch, the daughter of Rupert Murdoch, the major shareholder of the News Corporation, which owns Fox TV and that virtual GOP organ, Fox News.
*Kathleen Hensley Portalski, half-sister or John McCain's wife, Cindy Hensley McCain. (Oh yeah, Cindy McCain tried to erase Kathleen from her life by saying that she grew up as an only child.

**********
MCCAIN AS SENATOR HOTHEAD; VOICES FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE AISLE CHIME IN
Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films, now with its viral videos coming from "Brave New PAC" has produced a 4 min 21 video, "John McCain's Rage." It is encouraging viewers and McCain opponents to share the video.
See the video at the upper right of this page or at this address.
From Brave New Films, a few days after the October 7, 2008 debate,

John McCain's Rage

During last night's debate, John McCain said we need "a cool hand at the tiller," but McCain has proven to be a loose cannon. He has accosted his Congressional colleagues on both sides of the aisle on everything from the federal budget to diplomatic relations. He is known for hurling profanities rather than settling disagreements calmly. His belligerence is legendary. Even conservative Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi has said, "He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

When someone earns the nickname "Senator Hothead," the public ought to call his character into question. McCain's propensity to explode undermines his abilities as a rational decision maker, particularly on national security issues -- which could prove disastrous considering our country is already involved in two wars.

McCain's temper is critical to his decision-making abilities, and his character must be discussed. As Drew Westen writes, "The political brain is an emotional brain. It is not a dispassionate calculating machine, objectively searching for the right facts, figures and policies to make a reasoned decision." That why it's so crucial people know the real Senator Hothead.

McCain's USCWF & its ugly flyer ridiculing critics of Reagn's Bitburg visit

Maybe the growing press circulation of John McCain's board membership in John Singlaub's extremist organization is why McCain was silent on William Ayers during Tuesday night's debate.
[From my post mid-way through the debate]:
From MyDD, 10/7/08, 6:16 PM:
John McCain was a member of the U.S. Council of World Freedom from 1981 to 1986. He was a board member for part of that time.
Ronald Reagan was rightly criticized for making a memorial 1985 pilgrimage to the Bitburg cemetery during a trip to Germany. Who was buried at Bitburg? SS Nazis soldiers were buried there. This visit was inappropriate. Reagan's excuse for the visit was expressing reconciliation with Germany. One can reconcile with Germany without making this kind of visit.

From MyDD:
It's been covered today by the Associated Press that John McCain sat on the Board of the World Freedom, many of whose members were staunchly anti-Semitic. What they did not know, however, was the kind of Jew-bashing material they produced in defense of Ronald Reagan's visit to Bitburg, Germany, the burial site of the infamous SS.

McCain's CWF issued this mean, hurtful flyer, as revealed by Talking Points Memo. It defended Reagan's trip to Bitburg, and it criticized opponents of the visit as "misguided souls" who were "wallowing in self-pity."

McCain reportedly was still associating with the group a few months later: A States News Service article from October 15, 1985, found via Nexis, confirms that McCain was on hand at a Council awards dinner.

McCain told the AP that he resigned the group’s advisory board in 1984, and eventually asked to have his name removed from the letterhead. But the State News Service article places him at a group dinner a year later.

---from this blog.

The ugly spirit of the flier demonstrates why critics of the USCWF label it as anti-Semitic. (The "Washington Post" has more background on the flier's author, William Goldborough.)
Where is the shame and outrage for McCain's association with this group?

Economics and tonight's debate ... liveblogging

McCain?: he is merely offering the same Gilded Age, late nineteenth century inflexible orthodoxy, of no regulation. This is not reform, this is not change; this is a commitment to the kind of policies that got the economy into the current crisis.
No, this is not a matter of isolated corruption (contrary to McSame's claims tonight).

No, this is not the time to make solitary scapegoats, as New York's "Daily News" did today, spotlighting Richard Fuld, former Lehman Brothers CEO. This is not a matter of one man's errors. This is a systemic crisis. The deregulation mentality needs to be reversed. Obama properly targeted McCain for supporting the deregulatory trend that led to this financial crisis.

ECONOMISTS FOR OBAMA
Obama is creaming McCain tonight. Obama is speaking to the crisis. McCain is just mouthing the same cliches of traditional free market economics. No analysis of the contemporary economic crisis.
No wonder economists are supporting Barack Obama over John McCain by a two-to-one margin. (See the site, "Economists for Obama.")
The list of major economists supporting Obama --these are the early supporters. This is a list of economists/supporters as of June 3, 2008.

BUFFET FOR OBAMA?
Yep, Warren Buffett --that's not Jimmy "Margaritaville" Buffett. Buffett, the famed Berkshire Hathaway investor, is supporting Obama.
(See the news about Buffett's May 19 endorsement.)
So, don't believe the right wing radio delusional hype. Obama is not a socialist; he will not institute socialism. Why would Wall Street people such as Buffet supporting Obama if he were a socialist?!
Recall Buffett's statement, "Obama could run a business."

Democrats to raise McCain associations to Keating and others

From Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic Monthly:

Democrats To Raise McCain Associations To Keating, Others

05 Oct 2008 06:40 pm
Democratic surrogates say they've been given the go-ahead from the Obama campaign to mention John McCain's associations with S&L kingpin Charles Keating and other historically tarnished creatures when asked about Obama's connection to ex-Weatherman William Ayers.

A senior Democrat who has had contact with Obama's high command points to Democratic strategist Paul Begala's comments on this morning's Meet the Press.

Begala noted that McCain once "sat on the board of a very right wing organization," the U.S. Council for World Freedom, led by a retired Army Maj. General named John Singlaub. The Anti-Defamation League allegedly called the CWF's parent organization a gathering place for racists and anti-Semites.

Said Begala: "Now, that's not John McCain. I don't think he is that. But, but, you know, the problem is that a lot of people know John McCain's record better than Governor Palin, and he does not want to play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face."

Other potential negative associations for McCain are his long-time South Carolina consultant, Richard Quinn, a publisher of a Southern heritage magazine, and John Hagee, a pastor whose endorsement McCain solicited and later rejected.

OBAMA PREPARED FOR MCCAIN TO GET DIRTY: {from Ron Chusid at Liberal Values}
**Check out Obama camp's video at right.}**
With McCain on the wrong side of the issues and trailing badly in the polls, he is prepared to go even more negative in the hopes of pulling out a victory in November. This will include raising Obama’s ties to Ayers and Rezko even though these smears have previously been debunked.

Having learned from seeing such attacks used against John Kerry, Obama is responding by launching a preemptive attack with this ad:

“Three quarters of a million jobs lost this year. Our financial system in turmoil. And John McCain? Erratic in a crisis. Out of touch on the economy. No wonder his campaign wants to change the subject.

“Turn the page on the financial crisis by launching dishonorable, dishonest ‘assaults’ against Barack Obama. Struggling families can’t turn the page on this economy, and we can’t afford another president who is this out of touch.”

In addition to the ad, Obama has given surrogates an ok to go after McCain for his association to Charles Keating and involvement in the Keating 5 Scandal. Marc Ambinder notes other associations which might be harmful to McCain:

A senior Democrat who has had contact with Obama’s high command points to Democratic strategist Paul Begala’s comments on this morning’s Meet the Press.

Begala noted that McCain once “sat on the board of a very right wing organization,” the U.S. Council for World Freedom, led by a retired Army Maj. General named John Singlaub. The Anti-Defamation League allegedly called the CWF’s parent organization a gathering place for racists and anti-Semites.

Said Begala: “Now, that’s not John McCain. I don’t think he is that. But, but, you know, the problem is that a lot of people know John McCain’s record better than Governor Palin, and he does not want to play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face.”

Other potential negative associations for McCain are his long-time South Carolina consultant, Richard Quinn, a publisher of a Southern heritage magazine, and John Hagee, a pastor whose endorsement McCain solicited and later rejected.

Obama is also counterattacking on the stump:

Sen. Barack Obama on Sunday charged that Sen. John McCain’s campaign is launching “Swift boat-style attacks” on him instead of addressing the country’s problems.

“Sen. McCain and his operatives are gambling that they can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance. They’d rather try to tear our campaign down than lift this country up,” Obama said at an event in Asheville, North Carolina.

“That’s what you do when you’re out of touch, out of ideas, and running out of time,” he said.

The comments come a day after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain’s running mate, claimed that Obama associated “with terrorists who targeted our own country.”

In return the Republicans are searching out yet more associations to use to smear Obama. Nate Silver compares this strategy to that of a football team which must resort to desperate measures despite the fact that odds are against them working:

It is a sad denouement for what was one to be a high-minded campaign focused around themes of honor and reform (themes that were resuscitated briefly during the Republican Convention), possibly accompanied by McCain’s taking a one-term pledge. It is also, however, Mr. McCain’s strategists would seem to have concluded, their only remaining hope.

I am not here to dispute that this is McCain’s best strategy — in the same way that an onside kick is a team’s best strategy when it trails late in the game with no timeouts left. But like the onside kick, it is fairly unlikely to work.

The problem for McCain is that resorting to this type of attack further damages the impression that McCain is different from other Republicans. Just as dirty attacks from Hillary Clinton backfired and helped Obama win the nomination, such dirty attacks from McCain will further demonstrate to voters that change is needed in politics, leading more independents to back Obama. Even Hillary Clinton was careful about using attacks based upon Rezko and Ayers, leaving much of this to the media. If less offensive attacks by Clinton backfired against her, there is a far greater chance that these attacks will harm McCain more than they will harm Obama.

Having announced to the media that this is his strategy will make it even more likely to succeed, and raises further questions as to the competence of McCain’s campaign. In recent years Republicans have been incompetent at governing but highly skilled at launching Swift Boat attacks. Currently McCain appears to be incompetent at both matters of public policy as well as at launching Republican smears despite turning to Karl Rove staffers.
AND THERE'S MORE {from daily KOS}

From The Coors Connection by Russ Bellant

When the Reagan Administration began organizing the Nicaraguan Contras in 1981, allied but nominally private groups were formed to build support for the Contra plans.

One of those groups, formed shortly after the first Reagan inauguration, was the US Council for World Freedom, headed by Major General John Singlaub. The USCWF quickly became the US branch of the World Anti-Communist League. The USCWF began building support for the Reagan policy of aiding not only the Nicaraguan Contras but RENAMO and UNITA in southern Africa and rightist Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan. Singlaub informed CIA director William Casey and NSC staff of his actions and operated with their consent if not under their direct influence.

One of the early USCWF financial backers was Joe Coors, according to two former USCWF treasurers. Coors shared Reagan's enthusiasm for the Contras despite early indications of the unsavory background of certain Contra leaders and reliable reports of Contra acts of brutality. The Contras were originally known as the 15th of September Legion. Their earliest training came from Argentinean military intelligence, which ran death squads in that country and sponsored a Latin American conference of death squad leaders in 1980. That death squad network was also the Latin American branch on WACL. In 1982, Argentinean intelligence worked with Moon's Unification Church and fugitive Nazi Klaus Barbie to establish a Nazi-style state in Bolivia.

Honestly, if they try to hang Ayers around Obama, McCain, true or not, has a history of associating with ultra-right wing racists and paranoid fascist freaks.

UPDATE: Some have raised a point, one eloquently, on my comments regarding knowing McCain is racist, knowing the same part of the country etc. I just want to emphasize I know the type. I am not implicating everyone. I just know the type who would not be appalled by any of the following, (courtesy of FeastOr)

"I hate the gooks, I will hate them as long as I live."
"At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt."
"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father."
"As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it."
"..... Now, tell me, where's that fantastic gorilla?"

NYT's silence on McCain's Ayers: G. Gordon Liddy, John Singlaub

Yesterday "The New York Times" gave front page coverage to Barack Obama's association with 1960s radical William Ayers.
(This is a shaky accusation. As Obama this Times story says, "[T]he two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.'")
Yet, the Times story did not reveal anything new, neither did the Wall Street Journal in a similar editorial last week, as "The Washington Monthly" online edition noted yesterday.
So, to stress the point again: Obama had no friendship with Ayers. Unfortunately, the net effect in the last 24 hours has been to lend renewed credence to this smear story. Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin has cited the story in an effort to link Obama to Ayers and Ayers' radical Weatherman politics.

Why doesn't "The New York Times" give attention to the truly friendly relationship with the disgusting right-wing extremist G. Gordon Liddy?
To refresh your memory, Liddy was a burglar in the Watergate scandal, breaking into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's office.
John McCain has appeared on Liddy's radio show and has expressed friendly comments to him.
These points are succinctly addressed by Cenk Uygur of Young Turks [a daily youtube Internet TV show], discussing McCain’s association with Liddy.
Back to Liddy, MediaMatters issued the equivalent of an online press release yesterday:

“Liddy has acknowledged preparing to kill someone during the Ellsberg break-in "if necessary"; plotting to murder journalist Jack Anderson; plotting with a "gangland figure" to murder Howard Hunt to stop him from cooperating with investigators; plotting to firebomb the Brookings Institution; and plotting to kidnap "leftist guerillas" at the 1972 Republican National Convention -- a plan he outlined to the Nixon administration using terminology borrowed from the Nazis.”

MediaMatters went on to appeal readers to send letters asking "The New York Times" to give attention to McCain's relationship with Liddy.

Back in 1994, in the milieu of the early 1990s far-right Militiamen opposition to the federal government (remember, the people that feared "black helicopters"?), Liddy fed into the anti-federal-government hate with the following comment after the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas: "Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. ... Kill the sons of bitches." --courtesy of Steve Chapman of "The Chicago Tribune"
But let's get to the core of the McCain-Liddy relationship, clearly deeper than that between Obama and Ayers, again citing Chapman's column:

How close are McCain and Liddy? At least as close as Obama and Ayers appear to be. In 1998, Liddy's home was the site of a McCain fundraiser. Over the years, he has made at least four contributions totaling $5,000 to the senator's campaigns -- including $1,000 this year.

Last November, McCain went on his radio show. Liddy greeted him as "an old friend," and McCain sounded like one. "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family," he gushed. "It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."

Which principles would those be? The ones that told Liddy it was fine to break into the office of the Democratic National Committee to plant bugs and photograph documents? The ones that made him propose to kidnap anti-war activists so they couldn't disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention? The ones that inspired him to plan the murder (never carried out) of an unfriendly newspaper columnist?

A DEMOCRATIC RAPID RESPONSE ON MCCAIN'S EXTREMIST ASSOCIATIONS
Let's be frank: When pushed in a corner, with presidential candidates having bad policies and weak poll ratings, the Republican campaign machines routinely pull an October smear. Ayles did this in 1988 with the Willie Horton smear against Michael Dukakis.
We cannot afford to let the Republicans off the hook with the Ayers smear. The Democrats' rapid response to the McCain campaign's use of Ayers should involve close scrutiny of McCain's associations with politically disreputable people.
On "Meet the Press" Paul Begala gave us a tip to more extremist association trouble for McCain,

And I think Governor Palin here is making a strategic mistake [in citing Ayers]. This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for the McCain campaign. You know, you can go back, I have written a book about McCain, I had a dozen researchers go through him, I didn’t even put this in the book. But John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization, it was the U.S. Council for World Freedom, it was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran contra scandal. It was an ultra conservative, right-wing group. The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981 when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League – the parent organization – which ADL said “has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.”

Now, that's not John McCain, I don't think he is that. But you know, the problem is that a lot of people know John McCain’s record better than Governor Palin. And he does not want to play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face.

The Republicans will use the Ayers connection in crucial swing states. Expect powerful, late October television ads in select states. Bloggers and viral video makers at YouTube should broadcast the McCain connections to Liddy, the U.S. Council for Freedom and John K. Singlaub. McCain sat on the board of the U.S. Council for World Freedom as indicated at this site. (The U.S. Council for World Freedom was the U.S. affiliate of the World Anti-Communist League. The Council was founded by John Singlaub, who was an army general, highly decorated for his actions in World War II. He was famous for his public criticism of President Jimmy Carter's 1977 proposal to gradually withdraw 32,000 U.S. troops from South Korea. Carter dismissed Singlaub from duty for his public opposition to the withdrawal proposal.)
"Time" magazine reported on October 27, 1986 that the Council supplied funds for the Contras. (The Contras waged a civil war against the Sandanista government of Nicaragua throughout the 1980s.)
Now, as Begala counseled, I am not suggesting that McCain is of the same stripe as those with whom he associated. Yet there are questions that progressives and journalists should ask: How else did the Council (or "USCWF" for short) support military and civilian efforts at destabilizing governments in the 1980s? Were illegal or unethical actions being planned or discussed at the Council when McCain present for those meetings? Did McCain oppose or otherwise respond to unethical plans of action? As these questions bear on McCain's attitude toward policy and his possible knowledge of illegal or unethical doings, this are substantive questions to pose, as contrasted the the sheer guilt-by-association quality of the Ayers canard.
As Singlaub was the founder and one-time president of the Council, it is plausible that the organization took stands or actions encouraging destabilization of governments during meetings at which McCain attended. He is on record as supporting the low intensity warfare in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s.
He spoke publicly on his desire to actively wage an anti-Communist crusade:

"I am convinced that our struggle with Communism is not a spectator sport. as a result of that view, we have opted for the court of action which calls for the provision of support and assistance to those who are actively resisting the Soviet supported intrusion into Africa, Asia and North America. The geographic regions of WACL must not only provide support to the freedom fighters who are engaged in combat in their own region, but they must develop plans of action to support the resistance movements in other regions of the world."

Furthermore, we should ask, what are the range of actions that McCain suggests his proposed League of Democracies take? Is this League putting a euphemism on more government destabilization in the mold of the Contras and the Iraq invasion?

Again, why don't "The New York Times" or other major media outlets give attention to McCain and his connections to Liddy, USCWF and Singlaub? If Ayers is reappearing in the news, it is only fair that the Liddy and USCWF/Singlaub connections receive media attention. If Palin, Karl Rove, and company are exploiting the Ayers issue, then Democrats ought to at least publicize McCain's controversial political affiliations.

Now there are Palin critics on the right; Will doubts McCain too

You know things are getting bad for the McCain/Palin ticket when the pundits on the right are criticizing Sarah Palin's candidacy, or even calling for her to step down. This candidacy is becoming the most troublesome vice-presidential nomination since Democrat George McGovern's nomination of Thomas Eagleton in the 1972 election campaign.

Last week conservative columnist Kathleen Parker argued ("Palin Problem: She’s out of her league") that Palin should drop out of the race. She suggested that Palin cite personal reasons (namely, tending to her baby) in her withdrawal statement, and she closed by saying that she should "Do it for your country."

Now, George Will has joined the critics. See "George Will: Palin Is Not Qualified." He cited Palin's performance with Katie Couric "a disaster." The conservative columnist has also slammed McCain's handling of the financial crisis as "unpresidential."

This is a relief: even conservatives are seeing that this ticket is unpresidential and unprepared.

McCain's brazen hypocrisy on gambling, lobbyists

As I noted last week, McCain undertook a ruthless personal vendetta against lobbyist Jack Abramoff. McCain's Senate office produced a 373 page report on Abramoff's supposed misdeeds.

His targeting Abramoff is rank hypocrisy and rather disinenguous. Just look at Sunday, September 28's New York Times article by Jo Becker and Don Van Natta, Jr., "For McCain and Team, a Host of Ties to Gambling." McCain targeted Abramoff, for other things, allegedly stealing from Native American casinos. Gallingly, McCain (a two-time chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee) himself had thick, intertwined relations with Native American gaming outfits and associated lobbyists. He and his lobbyist allies benefited from the Native Americans. Rick Davis,' McCain's chief strategist, walked away with $100,000 from a tribe in the Abramoff organization.

As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America’s casinos, helping to transform the once-sleepy Indian gambling business into a $26-billion-a-year behemoth with 423 casinos across the country. He has won praise as a champion of economic development and self-governance on reservations.

And, McCain has been swayed by [gambling] special interests, contrary to the maverick myth he and champions in the media have propagated:

Mr. McCain portrays himself as a Washington maverick unswayed by special interests, referring recently to lobbyists as “birds of prey.” Yet in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors.

When rules being considered by Congress threatened a California tribe’s planned casino in 2005, Mr. McCain helped spare the tribe. Its lobbyist, who had no prior experience in the gambling industry, had a nearly 20-year friendship with Mr. McCain.

And McCain was selective in his investigation. He kept it focused on Abramoff, yet as the Times article reports, he announced that he would not investigate members of Congress, "whom Mr. Abramoff had lavished with tribal donations and golf outings to Scotland."

We are still awaiting greater press and web attention to journalist Gary S. Chafetz's book on Abramoff, McCain, "Perfect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff."

TOP TEN GAMBLING INDUSTRY DONORS TO JOHN MCCAIN
The same issue of the Times reported that McCain received nearly $500,000 from gambling interests since 1990.
As reported in the New York Times, September 28, 2008:

The following is a list of the top ten highest campaign contributors to Senator John McCain since 1992 in the gambling industry, based on analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

1. MGM Mirage
$108,450

2. Mashantucket Pequot Tribe
$56,950

3. Wynn Resorts
$39,800

4. Las Vegas Sands
$32,500

5. International Game Technology
$19,450

6. Harrah's Entertainment
$14,000

7. Station Casinos
$13,800

8. Mandalay Resort Group
$10,000

9. (tie) Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona
$8,000

Stockbridge-Munsee Community
$8,000

THE DNC'S AD REPONSE
The Democratic National Committee, along with the Barack Obama campaign, issued a 42-second video in the late night hours prior to the newsstand deliver of the Times.
The DNC press release, via the Huffington Post:

The Democratic National Committee today released a new web video highlighting John McCain's history of stacking the deck in favor of his favorite gambling industry lobbyists. The video comes on the heels of a new report outlining McCain's pattern of using his position as the chairman of a key Senate committee to tip the scales in favor of casino lobbyists with connections to his family and campaigns -- even if it meant reversing long held positions.

The video, called "Betting on McCain," shows McCain stacking the deck in favor of friends and former campaign aides who lobbied for the casinos with business before McCain's committee. In return, those casino lobbyists organized gambling trips to casinos for McCain (whose reputation as a high roller is well known), steered hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign, and at least 40 of them went to work for or are helping raise money for McCain's current campaign.

Obama passes the Commander-in-Chief test

Ilana Goldenberg, writing last night in Democracy Arsenal, argued that Sen. Barack Obama passed the "Commander in Chief test.
(Did anyone notice how John McCain lacked the manners of a gentleman during the debate? He laughed during Barack Obama's answers. Inherently signs of immaturity and limited self-confidence.)

Debate Wrap Up: Obama Passes Commander in Chief Test
Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

So what came out of this debate that John McCain tried to evade? The pressure was on McCain to win and win big. But he didn’t do that. Not at all. Obama won on key issues demonstrating that our foreign policy is more than just about the surge. McCain frequently reverted back to clichés calling his opponent naïve and lacking judgment. But those accusations weren’t actually substantiated by what happened. Obama actually looked more presidential while McCain often sounded condescending or angry.

Moreover, McCain also failed to show how he would be any different than George Bush on any of the key issues: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. It was just more of the same.

1. On Iran McCain continues to try and change the fact that his own advisor Henry Kissinger came out in favor of the Obama approach.

2. On spending McCain promised to cut earmarks of $18 billion and cure our budgetary woes through cutting spending. Unfortunately, his policies including $120 billion a year in Iraq and $175 billion on growing the military dwarf that.

3. On Iraq. McCain continues to obsess about the surge but misses the broader point of strategy over tactics and the need to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan where the greatest threat is from.

4. McCain called Pakistan a failed state prior to 1998. That would have been pretty disturbing if it were true considering Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

5. On Afghanistan and Pakistan it is clear that John McCain has a long record of completely ignoring the war in Afghanistan and the Al Qaeda safehaven in Pakistan that our intelligence community and military leaders believe presents the greatest direct danger to the United States.

6. On Russia McCain touted the wisdom of his own reckless response – a response criticized by five secretaries of state including Henry Kissinger, Jim Baker and Colin Powell.

7. McCain repeatedly claimed that he could work effectively with our allies. But has a long history of alienating them and won’t even talk with Spain

8. McCain had issues with a number of foreign leaders names stumbling over Ahmadinejad’s name and calling the Pakistani President Asif Ali Zadari by the wrong name

Projected McCain claims in debate

Democracy Arsenal predicted 10claims that John McCain would make in the September 26 debate at Ole Miss (the University of Mississippi).
THE SHORT VERSION OF THE DEMOCRACY ARSENAL PREDICTIONS:
10 Claims John McCain will make in tonight's debate
Posted by Max Bergmann

Here are ten claims to watch for from John McCain tonight:

Claim 1: McCain will say his foreign policy is different from that of George W. Bush. Reality: On the critical issues, ranging from advocating the invasion of Iraq only days after 9/11 to declaring premature victory in Afghanistan, to saber rattling on Iran and refusing to use tough diplomacy, John McCain's policies are in lock step with those of George W. Bush.

Claim 2: John McCain will tout his judgment, saying he hates war. Reality: John McCain has taken a dangerously aggressive approach to foreign policy advocating attacking six different countries in the last eight years. Moreover, McCain retains many of the same Neocon advisors who pushed for the war in Iraq in the first place.

Claim 3: McCain will say he has long been a critic of the war in Iraq. Reality: McCain was an early supporter of the Iraq War, linking Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction. He supported the Rumsfeld strategy of going with a minimal number of troops and said the war would be "easy." He continued to argue for staying the course until 2006.

Claim 4: McCain will take credit for the "surge" and argue that the troop increase is responsible for the entire decline in violence and that as a result we have succeeded. Reality: Military leaders have acknowledged that there were numerous reasons for the reduction in violence including the Anbar Awakening and political engagement with Muqtada al-Sadr. In fact, McCain confused the sequence of events in Iraq arguing that the troop increase caused the Anbar Awakening, even though the Anbar Awakening came first. Moreover, General Petraeus has warned that it is too early to declare victory as John McCain and his allies are doing.

Claim 5: McCain will say he wants to send more troops to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Reality: McCain has continued to make Iraq the number one priority and has not explained how he will keep large troop levels in Iraq while meeting the requirements in Afghanistan and elsewhere laid out by military commander and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He has shown little interest in Afghanistan saying we can just "muddle through" in 2003 and declaring victory in 2005. In fact, McCain had no policy on Afghanistan until July 15, 2008 and Afghanistan did not come up once in all of the major speeches during the Republican National Convention. Meanwhile, Barack Obama and progressives have been sounding the alarm for years.

Claim 6: McCain will say he will get Osama Bin Laden and go after Al Qaeda. Reality: John McCain was a strong early supporter of the Iraq war - a war that resulted in assets and focus being pulled away from the hunt for Bin Laden and Afghanistan. While Obama has supported going after high-value targets in al Qaeda's safe haven in Pakistan, McCain has criticized Obama for a position that has now become official U.S. policy.

Claim 7: McCain will cite his response to the crisis in Georgia as evidence of good judgment. Reality: McCain recklessly issued bellicose statements without waiting for all the facts, while Barack Obama, other world leaders, and even President Bush took a more measured approach. McCain then went on to claim that "we are all Georgians." In fact, McCain has had a dangerous policy towards Russia for some time, proposing to kick them out of the G8 - a policy that would preclude any cooperation on critical issues such as nonproliferation.

Claim 8: McCain will say that talking to Iran is weak and naive. Reality: There is a bipartisan consensus on the need to talk to Iran. Five secretaries of state including Henry Kissinger and Jim Baker all agreed recently that we have to talk to them directly. Obama's plan calls for tough direct diplomacy in combination with sanctions and other pressures. McCain's plan of refusing to talk is the same policy that George Bush pursued until very recently - a policy that has failed and that if continued will one day force the U.S. to make a no-win decision between attacking Iran or allowing it to attain a nuclear weapons capability.

Claim 9: McCain will say he can work effectively with our allies. Reality: John McCain has a long history of belligerence and heated rhetoric towards our allies. In the run up to the Iraq War he called France and Germany "vacuous and posturing" and referred to them as our "adversaries." Recently he said he might not meet with Spain's Prime Minister and on top of that he is quite unpopular internationally.

Claim 10: McCain will say he will cut wasteful defense spending. Reality: McCain has been all over the map on defense spending. His plan to add about 200,000 ground troops to the military would cost $25 billion a year. Meanwhile, in his budget plan released in July he promised to cut $160 billion from the budget by opposing the Future Combat System, yet he now criticizes Obama's promise to cut spending on that same program. See the data after the jump.

Will he debate? / disingenous suspension of campaign

The empty debate stand
--an awful sight, we have seen it too much in the last quarter century.

Yet, with the change of leadership must months away, and the election a mere 40 days away, Sen. John McCain has bailed out of this week's debate.

Tonight's news has, as its lead story, news of a tentative bipartisan deal on the financial crisis. And, as Sen. Barack Obama has noted, people are able to both vote on the urgent legislation and fly down to Mississippi for a debate. (The trip is only about two and a half or three hours, John.) Yet, McCain still ***has not*** committed to participating in tomorrow night's debate at the University of Mississippi.

Even Mike Huckabee said that McCain made "a huge mistake" by bowing out of the debate.

UPDATE: WHAT SUSPENSION OF CAMPAIGNING?
This so-called suspension of campaign is clearly a weasling out of tomorrow's debate. As noted on Open Left, John McCain hasn't suspended campaigning. Look at how he has made stops on all the major television networks tonight.
And of course, notice how the neo-Rovean-Rick Davis-led McCain campaign continues to run television ads. Is that suspension of campaigning John?

FLASH: Letterman mocks McCain's temporary bailing out of campaign

Matt Drudge [ugh] revealed: {{See my take below, earlier today, on McCain's campaign suspension.}}

EXCLUSIVE: LETTERMAN MOCKS MCCAIN CANCELLATION
Wed Sep 24 2008 17:41:58 ET

David Letterman tells audience that McCain called him today to tell him he had to rush back to DC to deal with the economy.

Then in the middle of the taping Dave got word that McCain was, in fact just down the street being interviewed by Katie Couric. Dave even cut over to the live video of the interview, and said, "Hey Senator, can I give you a ride home?"

Earlier in the show, Dave kept saying, "You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves." And he joked: "I think someone's putting something in his Metamucil."

"He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sarah Palin. Where is she?"

"What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"
NIGHT TWO: Letterman still hurt
David Letterman kept up his barrage vs. McCain. He is usually apolitical, but news reports had Letterman still upset. Letterman said that he felt like an "ugly date" because McCain still him up:

The comic was unhappy when McCain sat for an interview with Katie Couric instead of him Wednesday — and even more perturbed to learn that McCain didn't leave New York until Thursday.

He said he felt like a "patriot" to let McCain off his commitment to deal with the economy and "now I'm feeling like an ugly date."

"That's what I feel like, I feel like an ugly date," he said. "I feel used. I feel cheap. I feel sullied."