The Debate Last Night

An example of art imitating life...

Planet McCain

One of the better videos that I have seen on McSame lately.

Check Out "That One" 08

You knew it was coming...

McCain on Obama- 'That One'

Here is McCain's 'Dean Scream' moment last night

The Presidential Debate in Nashville

Here is a good preview of what we should expect to see tonight.

If Senator John McCain is in fact trying to shift the focus of attention away from his ability to deal with the economy, it should show up tonight on the debate stage.

Mr. McCain meets Senator Barack Obama at Belmont University in Nashville in the second of three presidential debates.

The event starts at 9 p.m. Eastern and runs for 90 minutes. You can see it on the networks, most of the cable shows, all over the Internet and, of course, right here, live. We will also be live blogging the debate as it unfolds and fact-checking along the way. And tonight we have asked members of the U.S. military to watch the debate along with us and share their thoughts.

The debate comes just a month before Election Day, a time when undecided voters — are there really any left? — traditionally start making up their minds. It affords Mr. Obama a chance to “seal the deal,” since most opinion polls show him leading Mr. McCain.

This should make for a riveting encounter. Mr. McCain needs to do something dramatic to halt his slide. He and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, have taken a sharply negative turn on the campaign trail, and he may well continue that tone tonight.

John McCain and The Making of a Financial Crisis

This video from the Obama campaign highlights the 'maverick' John McCain and his role in the Keating Five.

The Keating Five Returns

John McCain has been around Washington too long and has the skeletons in his closet to prove it.

John McCain is once again trying to dress the political wound that never heals: his role in a 1980s banking scandal that is featured in a new Barack Obama attack video.

McCain's campaign quickly moved to limit any damage from Obama dredging up the Keating Five scandal of nearly two decades ago.

The Republican senator's lawyer in the case, John Dowd, told reporters in a conference call Monday that McCain had been the victim of "a political smear job" by Senate Democrats.

When a reporter noted that McCain himself has spoken contritely about his role, Dowd responded, "I'm his lawyer and I have a different view of it."

McCain said his reputation was so tarnished by the Keating case that he compared his ordeal — in some ways — to the torture he suffered as a prisoner of war.

"I faced in Vietnam, at times, very real threats to life and limb," McCain told The Associated Press in a written statement last March. "But while my sense of honor was tested in prison, it was not questioned. During the Keating inquiry, it was, and I regretted that very much."

Homer Simpson Tries to Vote for Obama

A good example of where art imitates life...

Palin Remains Mute as Supporter Advocates Violence

The Palin/McCain campaign have resorted to lies and hatred to win this election at any cost. This, however, crosses the line and has thrust the election into utter madness.

Okay, so Florida, you know that you're going to have to hang onto your hats," Sarah Palin told a rally of a few thousand here this morning, "because from now until Election Day it may get kind of rough."

You betcha. And the person dishing out the roughest stuff at the moment is Sarah Palin.

"I was reading my copy of the New York Times the other day," she said.

"Booooo!" replied the crowd.

"I knew you guys would react that way, okay," she continued. "So I was reading the New York Times and I was really interested to read about Barack's friends from Chicago."

It was time to revive the allegation, made over the weekend, that Obama "pals around" with terrorists, in this case Bill Ayers, late of the Weather Underground. Many independent observers say Palin's allegations are a stretch; Obama served on a Chicago charitable board with Ayers, now an education professor, and has condemned his past activities.

"Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," Palin said.

"Boooo!" said the crowd.

"And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued.

"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Lieberman endorses McCain

This is really no surprise.

The Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000 endorsed Republican John McCain for president on Monday, scandalizing Democrats in Washington and giving the GOP hopeful a much-needed boost in New Hampshire where independents outnumber Republicans and Democrats.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said he chose his longtime Senate colleague because he has the best shot of breaking partisan gridlock in Washington. Both men also are strong and vocal supporters of the war in Iraq.

"On all the issues, you're never going to do anything about them unless you have a leader who can break through the partisan gridlock," said Lieberman, who was Al Gore's running mate seven years ago. "The status quo in Washington is not working."

The status quo? This coming from Joe Lieberman who has been in the Senate since 1988. John McCain has been in the Senate since 1986. It is almost laughable for anyone that has practically taken root in a Senate chair to mention status quo.

Partisan gridlock? This has become the slogan of Joe Lieberman. Any discussion about issues in Washington are somehow 'partisan' in his view, and should be avoided. I don't suppose his weekly jaunts over to Fox News to do his weekly Democratic bash session is in any way 'partisan'?

John McCain and the Torture Issue

The New York Times has a piece out this morning highlighting McCain's opposition to torture in the primaries. I am no big fan of John McCain, but I do admire the fact that he is the only Republican willing to say in this campaign that torture does not work and is wrong. According to the Times,

On a bitterly cold morning last week, diners at the Whistle Stop Cafe in Boone, Iowa, were just sitting down for their morning coffee when Senator John McCain entered. Within minutes, Mr. McCain turned to a hot-button topic for which he literally serves as the living embodiment: the subject of torture.

“One of the things that kept us going when I was in prison in North Vietnam was that we knew that if the situation were reversed, that we would not be doing to our captors what they were doing to us,” he said.

When Mr. McCain brings up the issue of torture, he is often met by a complex response. Many of the Republican voters he courts do not agree with his opposition to aggressive interrogation techniques that many have condemned as torture. But they are often captivated by his discussion of the issue, in some cases even moved to tears, as was the case in Boone.

On the campaign trail, Mr. McCain does not dwell on the personal details of his five and a half years as a prisoner of war, the “torture ropes” in which he was bound day and night, or the beatings he endured. But as he speaks, the physical reminders of his wounds are there for all to see, from the stiffness of his arms, which to this day he can only painfully raise above his head, to the shortness of his stride, a result of injury and subsequent beatings.

Mr. McCain has been speaking out more forcefully about the issue as it has bubbled up recently on the campaign trail and in debates.


“I know how evil this enemy is,” Mr. McCain told the Boone audience. But the issue is about more than one technique, he said. “This is really fundamentally about what kind of nation the United States of America is.”

But Milt Mattson, standing outside the cafe after Mr. McCain left, said he thought the United States needed to take any measure it deemed necessary.

“This is a war for our life,” Mr. Mattson said. “These are people that chop heads off. I don’t care what we have to do to stop them.”

First of all, the New York Times should lay off of the 'aggressive interrogation techniques' buzzwords and call it what it is-- torture. Secondly, I find it incredible that some Republican voters find the torture issue a 'complex' issue. Never in my life did I believe that this would be a topic of any presidential campaign by either party in our country in the 21st century. If we as a country had acted like this during the Cold War, I guess we would have chained any suspected Communists naked to a wall and beat them to their senses. Scream democracy, boy!

We wonder why our moral standing as a nation has declined and are stunned to find out that we are not the most popular kid on the block anymore. We act in outrage when our fellow citizens speak out against any of these policies or the politicians responsible for implementing them. I am frankly tired of seeing some of our citizens willing to throw away the many rights and freedoms many brave citizens have fought for in our history. Moral values be damn. They think that the only way to fight extremism is to act like an extremist, torture and all. Their talk of the current situation being 'the war for our life' is cheap and only serves to fear monger people into believing that this is a 'anything goes' kind of war.

As a side note, maybe this Mr. Mattson who so strongly believes in torture because 'these are people who chop heads off' needs to talk with our pals in Saudi Arabia. They have doubled their beheading count for the year.

John McCain and Religion

Take a look at this interview in which John McCain speaks of politics and religion. I found this interesting:

Question: A recent poll found that 55 percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. What do you think?

McCain responds: "I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn't say, “I only welcome Christians.” We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles."

Wow, I never knew!