The government can give millions of dollars to CEO’s from the failed Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac and yet, cannot give a second stimulus checks to American citizens in these hard economic times?

Republicans say No to a second stimulus while the Democrats say Yes to a second stimulus!

Is the Republican Congress working for CEO’s or are they working for you, the people?

And yes, politicans who lie to the public is engaged in a betrayal of the public trust and it should be unethical.

Until we see movement in the polls indicating the public is punishing McCain/Palin for lying, I bet they continue doing what they have been doing.

Is this Kinsley guy aware that former POW John McCain is a former POW? How dare he question the honor and integrity of a former POW? Doesn't Kinsley know that a recent executive order spells out that unless a former POW intends to inflict untruths on his listeners, he is merely lying to save his country? If his true intent is to save his country, rather than to subvert the truth and deceive the nation, then he cannot be held accountable for lying. Right?

Maybe add Mike Huckabee as a probationary member. See the Wash Times this morning for his scolding on the tone of the campaign.

McCain lost all honor when the far-right forced him under duress, to pick Palin. And she's a proven to be a practiced and shameless liar, the kind only the Republicans can breed.

She lied in her first speech to the nation, lying brazenly and repeatedly, and cut off anyone who called her on it with sharp complaints of "harassment" and "sexism".

It's just pitiful. First McCain can't run his campaign the way publicly said he wanted to. And now he's the number 2 draw on his own party ticket. Pathetic.

i think we're on the road to change here. i watched the nightly news on both abc and cbs last night (yeah, i know......) and both of them came right out and called this whole episode for what it was. they said flat out that it was obvious that obama wasn't talking about palin, they showed repeated clips of mccain using the same expression (even showed one of cheney) and jake tapper even commented on how ridiculous this all is. and from some of charlie gibson's remarks, i'm curious about what might happen when he interviews palin.

i may be disappointed once again, but things may be turning around here. we can only hope.

orange

Hey, what's the controversy?

If McCain wants to wear lipstick, who are liberals to tell him 'no'?

After all, he wasn't able to wear lipstick as a POW in vietnam. Well, maybe they did let him, but it was only ugly, commie colors, which didn't flatter his complexion.

At least McCain isn't considering wearing lip-gloss, because that would be just wrong.

Rumor has it that McCain will be trying out a 'new' look: he's going to blue-rinse his hair. Both of them! Now, that's change you can depend on!

call me skeptical on whether the MSM has really converted to goodness and light.

i may be unduly cynical because i've only had one cup of coffee so far this morning, but i figure the MSM saw McCain's bounce and was afraid it looked big enough to take the closeness out of the election. close elections are good for business, so they immediately took steps to try and reel McCain back in. If they overdid it and Obama jumps back ahead, they will go back to giving Mr. Sprinkles a pass and beating on the black guy.

they'll have to prove themselves over a much longer period of time before i do anything other than assume this is self-serving on their part.

Snarki,

The Republican dream ticket: Palin & McCain's love child.

Lipstick and testosterone go together at the GOP.

"They lean over backwards to give liars the benefit of the doubt, even when there is no doubt."

This is not always the case. Take, for instance, the period from March of 1999 through October of 2000. This condistion most decidedly did not apply. Kinsley has given us half a loaf, as usual.

But the routine acceptance of obvious lies now corrodes our politics as much as the money...

Too narrow a focus. It doesn't just corrode politics. It corrodes the integrity of the country as a whole.

The perverted lies used to destroy Barack's decency comes with a price. You don't get something for nothing in this universe. Everything has side effects. None of us know the depth and the width of the rends McCain is inflicting on our body politic. But if you have your ears tuned, you can hear the horrible sounds of social ripping. What was it Lincoln said? A country divided will not stand.

We have now had 12 years of Rovian divide and conquer politics. Our American DNA will not survive these devastating mutations. I don't know what country McCain thinks he will govern should he win with these tactics, but it will not be the one he actually inherits.

"forced McCain under dress?"

Is that some kind of sexist remark?

What koreyel said.

Now that the McCain campaign is being scripted by Paddy Chayefsky, it may be proper to ask if in fact it is still an actual presidential campaign.

Is it possible that the numbers have been run and there is no hope that Howard Beale, sorry, John McCain can be elected?

If so, we may be watching a local campaign with a national market--that they are trying to win state elections for state reps, govs, mayors or county execs by using Palin to mobilize the base to turn out to at least win some local contests.

Wake me up when Broder gets over his man-crush on McCain. Although that could qualify as a sign of the end times.

How many more lies can our nation take?

This should be the new Obama Campaign slogan. It sums up the problems of both the Bush administration and the sleazy McCain campaign. Plus it puts a powerful meme before the press. They're bound to run endless segments dissecting the question and looking for what lies he could possibly be talking about.

It's simple:
How many more lies can our nation take?

Alternately:
Our nation just can't take anymore lies

.

Reposted (and expanded) from last night -

Let's finish the "Lipstick on a Pig" ordeal:
Y'all are too adult about this crap, go waaay back and remember:

Those who smelt it, dealt it! If the Republicans think that Palin is a pig, who are we to argue?

However, since John McCain used this same phrase about Hillary's work with the healthcare issue, we all now expect an apology from him. We know now why McCain thought that "How can we beat the bitch?" was a good question.

If you respond that a grade-school taunt is unbecoming of a presidential campaign, I agree, and I assert that this is symbolic of why Republicans suck at running the government. No issues, just change the subject & put their opponents on the defensive. This is about war and our children's future, nor American Idol.

[Trolling deleted.]

SJRSM: It appears that pissing off liberals is the only thing that actually matters to republicans now. They're down to a tribal howl. We're appalled by Palin because she is an extremist with ethical problems with a track record of abuse of power. She didn't rise because of her advocacy of any national issue; she didn't have a track record at all outside of Alaska; and a campaign which allegedly stressed experience and scorned celebrity just pulled a 180.
This would matter in a sane world; we'll see how sane this world is.

Yesterday, in a interview with Telemundo, McCain said he regrets the negative tone of the campaign but it would not have happened had Obama agreed to town hall meetings.
It's like he saying when a girl turns you down on a date that gives you the right to call her a slut.
The man has the moral faculty of a hookworm.

McCain's Honor: Those who have honor don't talk about it. Those who always talk about honor don't have any.

What's the difference between an Alaskan hockey mom and a pitbull?

The pitbull won't bite your balls off if you ask it to be your running mate.

"They lean over backwards to give liars the benefit of the doubt, even when there is no doubt."

That's a lie. It's only true for Republicans. They call all Democrats liars all the time.

IOKIYAR

"Steve you are trying to tell me that whole list of "major media professionals" were ever seriously considering NOT voting for Obama?

"That's disingenuous. The Washington Post?!? Left leaners getting fed up with a Republican is not news.

"You can put lipstick on Kinsley but he is still a liberal."
Posted by: Orwell on September 11, 2008 at 9:05 AM | PERMALINK

Orwell, I have just one question for you: Does the check for your trolling work come directly from the McSame campaign, or from the RNC?

I wish that we could begin to define the lying coming out of McCain's campaign as corrupt and tie it into the culture of corruption that the GOP has created in this country. When viewed in this light, it is more evidence that John McCain will continue the same old GOP culture of corruption. The dishonest ranting about earmarks is an attempt to obscure that fact.

The Piglin controversy is clearly an opportunity for Obama. Obama's surrogates, or possibly even Obama himself, should start calling McCain a crybaby. Suggest that the stress of the campaign is clearly getting to him, and that he should get off the campaign trail and stay at a rest home for a while.

If the shoe were on the other foot, this is how the Republicans would respond.

While it's nice the "Enough Club" has some notable names in it, it doesn't mean a damn thing in the overall dynamic of the campaign, because your average independent and/or low-info voter doesn't have any idea who or what Sebastian Mallaby is, never reads Herbert in the NYT, and would think Andrew Sullivan a goofball if he ever heard of him. Unless and until some idiot on FoxNews joins the club, this is all irrelevant, unfortunately.

I say this in part because the Democratic candidate for President seemingly has no clue about the reality of running for the office. I had just made a donation to the Obama campaign this morning when my sister down in Little Rock sent this email to me:

"As I was coming into work just now, I heard a guy at an Obama gathering ask the candidate what he was going to do about this now apparent Rovian onslaught, and Obama just said, "We are going to beat the drum about the facts which should speak for themselves."

How any adult in his position could think for one second that the facts are going to "speak for themselves" is amazing. That's just polspeak for "I have no clue how to persuade people I'm the right choice. And anyway, I shouldn't have to persuade people, because that's beneath my dignity. They should come to that conclusion by their own free will, through logic and reason."

This also indicates that he's relying on the media to do its job. You might as well rely on a crack-addict prostitute to safeguard your wallet. It ain't gonna happen, and no sane person should have thought for one minute it's gonna happen. In this toxic media environment, with a useless cadre of "journalists" happy to use the crap right off Ron Fournier's AP wire as their "reporting," it's the CANDIDATE'S job to make the facts speak, and to make the case for himself. And to fight back when necessary.

Barack Obama is the living, breathing embodiment of the stereotypically hapless Democratic Presidential candidate: a good man who would make a good President, but with no idea how to get there against the Republicans. The only thing that's going to get beaten like a drum in this election is Obama himself.

My worry now is that Obama will be a drag on the downticket races. I had figured that the Dems would extend and consolidate their control of the House and Senate regardless of what happened in the Pres race, but I'm not confident of that now. It wouldn't surprise me one bit to see the GOP take control of the Senate again, with all the enthusiasm being generated by Sarah Barracuda. And we know what that means for the Supreme Court.

SJRSM,

Didn't you hear the news? Salon.com is a hollow shell of its former self. No self-respecting progressive would ever consider that site anything more than a freakshow to gawk at.

Take it from me, a Salon.com survivor, that site is literally redefining the meaning of sensationalism (although to be fair, today there's only 3 articles devoted to Palin, instead of the 6-8 they've been churning out for a week and a half)

So, yeah, it comes as no suprise that the absurdly tone-deaf sensationalistic articles you reference are from Salon.com - that's all they peddle in these days.

I can envision a new ad campaign for Obama, or maybe from the DNC. Snippets comparing Senator McCain with Candidate McCain, like Biden did in his acceptance speech. I want to see McCain giving lip service to running a high-road campaign, contrasted with the actual campaign he is running. Speaking out against lobbyists, contrasted with pix of the guys running the campaign. Most of all, I want the focus back on McCain, and his honor, right where it belongs. Is there video of that Time interview where he couldn't define honor? I want to see that in the commercial too.

Regarding the town hall meetings that aren't being held, I am wondering if the Obama campaign does now regret not holding them. At least someone would be asking McCain some questions. My guess is that were they being held, it would be McCain who would be wishing he had never made the suggestion.

"a hyperconservative, fuckable, Type A, antiabortion, Christian Stepford wife in a 'sexy librarian' costume" (Salon)

"No self-respecting progressive would ever consider that site anything more than a freakshow to gawk at." Posted by: neilt at 9:42 AM

Thanks for your concern, junior, but you can speak for your own retarded self. Any "self respecting progressive" with a coupla active neurons will see the articles at Salon as right on the money, calling the current Republican "freakshow" for exactly what it is. So sorry that your pwecious widdle sensibiwities are alllll offended. Perhaps a rereading of "My Pet Goat" would be more appropriate for your grade level.

Bluestatedon:

Have you stopped to consider that Obama might just be saying "We are going to beat the drum about the facts which should speak for themselves" to keep his image as above the fray and about New Politics, but has every intention of fighting back as hard as he can?

I mean, he can't very well say "we're going rip the fckers a new one" now can he? I mean wouldn't they jump all over him as not being able to stand the heat and all that crap?

Don't worry, he's doing what needs to be done. They're overplaying their minor advantage right now. I'd be VERY surprised if we didn't see a major speech tomorrow decrying the gutter politics that McCain is engaging in. (not today, it's truce day)

Conrad's Ghost:

dude, wtf?!?

Get another coffee man, and take off your pissy pants this morning.

jeebus man, relax!

Neilt, I (sadly) have to agree with you--and I just renewed my Salon.com subscription about four months ago! I followed Steve over to The Carpetbagger Report after he subbed for Alex Koppelman, and now I'm here. I go over to salon for Glenn, but that's about it now.

it's also worth remembering that the Republcans' constant lying is an admission that they can't win this election without lying -- about McCain, Palin and Obama.

Along with McCain's concession that this election is about change, all this lying is clearly a desperation move -- if it doesn't work (and it looks like the press may not go along with it this time), McCain is toast.

Michigoose,

I did the same thing as you! Except I only go there for King now.

The Carpetbagger Report was like a day spent in a posh spa after the grime and the muck of War Room. Washington Monthly is more of the same (even if the format blows, the analysis is tops). I'm a full-bore convert now to the Church of Benen :D

cheers!

It is beyond obvious that the McCain welcomes--in fact, craves--the opprobrium of every single member of the mainstream media they can get. But one has to wonder...what if they win? Will they really be able to govern with such a disdainful press? Will there be any honeymoon at all if the press is truly aware of the ways they've been castrated and humiliated? Or will they just line back up as the McCain hero worshipers?

neilt, I think Conrad's Ghost is actually the ghost of Sidney Blumenthal.

You are so right. Salon is an f-word swamp. Used to be the virtual equivalent of my morning coffee, but I have really slowed down on my reading there. The other day with the dominatrix thing I decided not to renew (you can't actually cancel, it turns out...just 149 more days!). After all the lip service in column after column by Joan Walsh about sexism against Hillary, for her to allow that composite through the filter was completely and hypocritically trashy. A bit of a wake-up call for me. I like it over here with the grownups just fine. I only go back for Glenn.

Neilt, I would consider the possibility of Obama fighting back as hard as he can if I saw any evidence of his knowing how to do so effectively. A month ago I was reading confident comments from Obama supporters saying, "Oh, just wait, this is a rope-a-dope by Barack, he's waiting to really go after McCain for the moment when McCain runs out of steam." Well, we're still all waiting, and McCain, far from running out of steam, has dramatically increased his energy. Sad to say, comparisons between Barack Obama and Muhammad Ali are really, really silly.

For one thing, Obama's TV advertising is awful. It's soft, slow-paced, totally unimaginative, and completely uncompelling. The Daily Show creates far more damaging stuff on a nightly basis about McCain than the grossly-overpaid stiffs Axelrod uses. McCain's TV ads, by contrast, are faster-paced, make better use of "information" from media sources, and are far more direct and aggressive. The key voters in this election aren't you and I; we're already persuaded. The key voters are the independent/low-info/moderate Repubs/conservative Dems, and I would bet every dollar I have that this group of voters would react exactly the same way I do to Obama's and McCain's ads. That McCain's are all horseshit is unfortunately irrelevant.

For months I've been complaining about the unfocused, unaggressive, and very slow-to-react media & communications produced by the Obama campaign, and nothing has changed. The Obama campaign had four or five days to themselves from the time Palin was announced to her appearance at the convention. During that time she was sequestered prepping for the speech, and the GOP was preoccupied with the convention. A great deal of information was already available within two days of the Palin announcement selection that could have been the basis of a hard-hitting ad campaign to destroy the narrative of Palin as reformer and maverick BEFORE IT GOT ESTABLISHED IN THE VOTER'S MINDS. It would not have been a hard thing technically to produce; the imagery was easily available, the copywriting would be a piece of cake, and the technology exists to produce it virtually overnight. No, the Obama campaign DID NOTHING in that critical time period, and once Palin did her thing at the GOP convention, it was too late. The narrative had been set, and the media, as anyone could have predicted, happily helped it to develop. Apparently the Obama campaign has specifically decided to NOT go after Palin, which is stunning it its obtuseness. She is the ONLY thing McCain has going for him; if she is brought back to earth, then the GOP's chances are greatly harmed. Not going after Palin is like storming the beaches at Normandy without the naval and aerial assault beforehand.

The Obama campaign had from May until July to plan the media assault on McCain, and as soon as he clinched the nomination in June the ads should have started in earnest, to break down the narrative of McCain as the maverick reformer. It wasn't until July that we really saw much, at least here in Michigan. What the hell were they doing in all that time? Where have the ads been tying John McCain to the mind-boggling GOP corruption over the last eight years? Obama isn't just running against John McCain, he's also running against the Republican party, which is has declined greatly in voter party preference over the last 8 years. To have squandered this ammunition borders on criminal.

And to top it off, Obama unilaterally disarms the 527s, which could have been valuable allies in the war that needed to be waged. For all the talk about how the Obama campaign was so media-savvy, I guarantee this decision will be puzzled over by the political historians already planning their post-mortems on 2008. The GOP comprises one of the most target-rich environments imaginable, and it's simply astounding to me that the Obama "brain trust" refused to acknowledge that 527s could have played a key role in the communications strategy. Oh wait, I forgot, the Obama campaign had to control everything itself.

A college marketing & communications major could have devised a more effective communications plan.

As far as the vaunted Obama "ground game" in 50 states, I'm not buying the hype. In fact, I expect the Obama campaign to quietly begin withdrawing staff from red states that were brashly considered "in play" just a short while ago. Having a well-organized field operation is great, but first you have to persuade people to vote for you. That's where the shortcomings of the campaign, and especially Barack himself, lie.

Every organization takes on the character and personality of its leader, and Obama is just ill-suited by personality to waging a campaign against the aggressive thugs who infest the GOP.

It's not just me. This op-ed is by a guy down in Little Rock who has covered Arkansas politics for years, and believe me, he's no friend of the GOP. He was one of the main antagonists of Mike Huckabee during his tenure as governor.

This is from the Arkansas News Bureau website:

"He's Kerry; she's Reagan
Thursday, Sep 11, 2008

By John Brummett

Barack Obama has turned into Michael Dukakis, John Kerry and Al Gore. Sarah Palin has turned into Ronald Reagan.

Thus the electoral map looks fairly typically red where it counts and blue where it doesn't.

Ohio and Florida show up red, which, unless Colorado and Nevada and New Mexico flip en masse from red to blue and are bigger than I think, pretty much means the old ball game.

Democrats win the cities. John McCain and the moose-hunter take all that space in between.

For all the talk of newness and history-making, we've seen this presidential race before.

Democrats are burdened with a mealy-mouthed, message-conflicted, reactive, apologizing, conflict-averse nominee. He goes into a prevent defense on Labor Day, at which point the Republicans commence traipsing up and down the field hitting wide-open receivers.

For their part, Republicans suddenly are all fired up again about those supposedly outsider and right-wing reforms they incessantly talk about but never actually get done, such as fiscal responsibility and an end to abortion and the deployment of military that makes quick work of any and all adversaries.

As things appear today, Palin, of whom we'd heard nothing two weeks ago, stands to be a septuagenarian heartbeat from the Oval Office.

Let's start with Obama's ineptitude, so profound lately that we can surely look for him to show up any minute helmeted in a tank or wind-surfing or smother-kissing his spine-crushed wife.

One thing Democrats stand for - or so we thought - is raising taxes on these relatively few persons with extreme high incomes. After all, these wealthy elite reaped inordinate personal benefits from the across-the-board Republican tax cuts, which, in turn, have exploded the deficit that Bill Clinton erased and replaced with a surplus.

So now Obama says he may not immediately let those high-income tax cuts expire, owing to the troubled economy and all.

One thing Democrats stand for - or we thought - is ending the war in Iraq. So now Obama says the surge is working.

One thing Democrats stand for - or so we thought - was a well-articulated position to protect a woman's right to choose abortion. So now Obama says the morality of the abortion issue is "above my pay grade." Then he says he doesn't like the way he put that.

Please - somebody send for Hillary, quick.

On the Republican side comes this vice presidential nominee who, excepting two years as governor of a remote, sparsely populated state, owes her political experience to rezoning issues as mayor of an Alaskan village of fewer than 10,000.

Remarkably, she has, in those two weeks, single-handedly reassembled the decisive Reagan coalition.

That conservative coalition forged under Reagan had been destroyed by the blundering of George W. Bush. Fiscal conservatives didn't like the exploding deficits and the wasteful spending. Religious conservatives liked the Supreme Court nominees, but doubted whether George W. and Karl Rove were altogether genuine. Defense conservatives couldn't much cotton to a woefully misbegotten invasion of Iraq.

Thus dissipated, the conservative movement found itself forced to live with the Republican presidential nomination, in McCain, of a moderate and maverick who'd never been one of them. Republicans were disconnected, uninspired, depressed, bound for defeat, maybe even irrelevance.

Then McCain chose as his running mate a tough-talking Assembly of God woman from Alaska who shoots guns and asserts, albeit dishonestly, that she has opposed wasteful pork-barrel spending in her state.

Conservatives thought they were dead. Now they've been brought back to life by what looks and acts like Reagan's daughter, or, actually, granddaughter."

You have no idea how fervently I hope I'm completely wrong in my view of things. It's just that I've seen this movie before too many times. I was happy to see Obama get the nomination; he deserved it fair and square, and I was completely disgusted with the campaign Hillary ran against him, and with the ridiculous arguments made by her campaign towards the end. Having said that, and in full recognition of her negatives, I've concluded that she would still have run a more effective campaign against McCain, who is after all, a really lousy candidate himself. The critical difference is that Hillary isn't too cool or reserved to really go after it with an open and easily-seen fire and passion and will that Obama just isn't able to communicate. If Barack Obama had a tenth of Bill Clinton's communications abilities and instincts, this election would already be over.

Willie Horton, Swiftboats, and now,,,drum roll, please...LIPSTICK. Deciding issues for the fate of this country. Is this a great country or what?

bluestatedon:
Your continual intense negativity almost makes me think you are a plant, a concern troll, sent to divide us -- but it's just 'almost.' You probably are as sincere as you are wrong.

But let's assume you are right, that poor dumb Obama is so messing up that his campaign is in trouble, that his brilliant campaign against Hillary was some sort of weird fluke, that even though he knows McCain better than any one of us -- because he's been working with him in the Senate for three years -- he's still so totally mindless that he's falling for all these traps, that he was 'vacationing on Mars' during the Kerry and Gore campaigns, and that he is so incredibly 'high-minded' that he had no idea that the Republicans would actually LIE about him.

Let's assume every piece of this nonsense. Still, to quote Mark Kleiman:

While we wait to see how this comes out, let me make a plea to all friends of decency and Constitutional government. Do not allow McCain's Rovian tactics to divide us. Whether or not Obama, and the Obama campaign, are handling this well, he's the candidate we've got. If we allow ourselves to be come angry and frustrated with him, or his managers, or one another, we're just doing McCain's work for him.

If you're really mad, tell everyone you meet for the next sixty days what a disgusting liar John McCain is and what a disgrace he is to the office he holds, the office he seeks, and the uniform he used to wear. Send money to the Obama campaign. Make phone calls. Get your friends to do the same. This is not a time for panic, but for redoubling our efforts.

But of course you are wrong. Obama has shown himself to know just what he is doing. Yes, McCain has taken a piece of Alaskan bubble gum and blown himself a mighty big bubble, but it is going to explode in a nasty, sticky mess all over his face. (The bubble is already leaking air, but let him keep working on it.) We've been talking about Palin so much we forget it was less than eight days since she gave her one and only speech, only thirteen days since she was picked.

Give Obama time, he has all the weapons he needs to make people realize how disastrous a pick she will be, and plenty of time to do it.

Meanwhile McCain is already throwing the kitchen sink, but those 'low-information voters' (who, I'd remind you, are so stupid that they inadvertently gave the Democrats majorities in both houses -- by accident, of course, like the LIVs in those deep red districts who gave Democrats majorities in the three off-elections) aren't paying that much attention yet. There are pennant races happening, and college football starting, and the new tv season warming up. But they are hearing the media, a little.

And that MSM that is so much in McCain's pocket somehow keeps going off script, and telling people how much he has been lying, have been pointing out things about Palin, and haven't been giving any reason for voting for McCain except the 'mavrick' thing, and Obama knows how to knock holes in that, and will.

No, his campaign hasn't been perfect -- I think he should have used a lot more about the corruption in the Bush Administration than he has -- but it has been and will be very effective. Particularly by not getting into a mud-fight with a couple of pigs.

But then, unlike too many of you, I believe Obama means what he says, both about wanting to, and being able to, transform the very nature of politics, in the process of being elected.

Somehow the second paragraph from Mark Kleiman fell out of the blockquote. Both are from
http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/09/has_mccain_gone_a_bridge_too_far.php