NEWS COMPASS

Tony Blair "signed in blood" with George Bush to Topple Saddam Hussein One Year BEFORE the Iraq War

2009-11-27T13:29:00.003+11:00

by

Andrew Sparrow. Read here in Guardin UK

Sir Christopher Meyer is the most high-profile figure to give evidence so far. A former press secretary to John Major and UK ambassador in Washington from 1997 to 2003, he infuriated the government with his views about the Iraq war in his memoirs. Broadly in favour of the war, he also strongly criticised Tony Blair's failure to get more from the US in return for backing the invasion. Here we examine the key moments of his evidence.

"It has to be emphasised that regime change in Iraq was official US policy. It went back to the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, passed unanimously by the Senate, by an overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives, and signed into law by Bill Clinton in October 1998. So regime change and, to quote the act, "to establish a programme to support a transition to democracy in Iraq", was an official American policy which George Bush inherited from Bill Clinton. The fact that Clinton did not do very much about it is neither here nor there."

Although the decision to invade Iraq is often depicted as one taken solely by Bush adminstration neocons, Meyer said the Bush regime was not an "aberration" and there was "more of a continuum with previous administrations" than either US party was willing to admit. While some blamed "the nutters" in the Bush administration for inventing the regime change policy, this was simply not true, he said.

"Crawford was a meeting at the president's ranch. I took no part in any of the discussions and for a large chunk of that time no adviser was there … when David Manning [Blair's then foreign policy adviser] comes before you he will tell you that he went there with Jonathan Powell [Blair's chief of staff] for a discussion of Arab/Israel and the intifada. It was at that meeting that there was a joint decision between Bush and Blair that Colin Powell should go to the region and get it sorted. I believe that after that the two men were alone in the ranch until dinner on the Saturday night when all the advisers, including myself, turned up. So I'm not entirely clear to this day … what degree of convergence was signed in blood at the Texas ranch."

Blair met Bush at Crawford in April 2002 and we know from a leaked Cabinet Office memo that Blair said "the UK would support military action to bring about regime change, provided that certain conditions were met". The three conditions were: efforts being made to construct an international coalition, the Arab/Israeli conflict being "quiescent", and the UN weapons inspection route being exhausted. But the precise nature of the understanding between the two men has never been revealed, prompting allegations that Blair made commitments in Texas that contradicted what he was saying in public.

"The real problem, which I did draw several times to the attention of London, was that the contingency military timetable had been decided before the UN inspectors went in under Hans Blix. So you found yourself in a situation in the autumn of 2002 where you could not synchronise the military timetable with the inspection timetable … the result of that was to turn resolution 1441 on its head. Because 1441 had been a challenge to Saddam Hussein, agreed unanimously, to prove his innocence. But because you could not synchronise the programmes … you had to short-circuit the inspection process by finding the notorious smoking gun … and we – the Americans, the British – have never really recovered from that, because, of course, there was no smoking gun."

This was one of the most damning points made by Meyer. After the UN security council unanimously passed resolution 1441 in November 2002, the high point of British efforts to secure an international consensus, Hans Blix's weapons inspectors were admitted back into Iraq. But by that stage the US military was preparing for war in January (although the invasion did not start until March). Blix never had time to complete the inspection process and Meyer implies that the process was therefore something of a charade.

"We could have achieved more by playing a tougher role … if, for example, at Crawford Tony Blair had said: "I want to help you, George, on this but I have to say, in all honesty, that I will not be able to take part in any military operation unless we have palpable progress on the peace process and we have absolute clarity on what happens in Iraq if it comes up." I think that would have changed the nature – it would not have led to a rupture – it would have changed the nature of American planning."

Another damning charge. Meyer said that Britain "failed miserably" to use its influence with Bush to achieve any progress in the Middle East. The allegation that post-invasion planning would have been better if Blair had made more of a fuss is particularly serious. "We underestimated the leverage at our disposal," said Meyer.

"I'm not trying to make a party political point here whatsoever, but quite often I think about this – I think what would Margaret Thatcher have done. And she would have insisted – I take her name in vain, for Pete's sake, I may be struck with a thunderbolt – I think she would have insisted on a coherent political and diplomatic strategy and she would have demanded the greatest clarity about what the heck happened if and when you removed Saddam Hussein."

Meyer's comments about Thatcher will revive suspicions among some Labour figures that he's really a Tory.

The day's key moments

Key fact

Sir Christopher Meyer revealed that before Tony Blair visited George Bush at Crawford in March 2002, Blair's foreign policy adviser, David Manning, gave Meyer a "chunky set of instructions" that covered Iraq.

Best quote

Meyer said: "I'm not trying to make a party political point here whatsoever, but quite often I think about this, what would Margaret Thatcher have done … I think she would have insisted on a coherent political and diplomatic strategy and she would have demanded the greatest clarity about what the heck happened if, and when, you removed Saddam Hussein."

Top jargon

1441. That refers to UN security council resolution 1441, the "final warning" passed by the UN in November 2002, saying that Iraq was in breach of previous resolutions relating to WMD and paving the way for the return of weapons inspectors to the country.

Damage rating

It was bad for Blair. Meyer's main complaint was that Blair did not do as much as he could to influence Bush, particularly in relation to the Middle East peace process and post-invasion planning

The Dark Side of the ‘Special Relationship’ between Israel and the US

2009-10-22T13:56:00.001+11:00

The Dark Side of the ‘Special Relationship’ between Israel and the US

by

Justin Raimondo

(Justin Raimondo is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (ISI, 2008), and Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (1996).

He is a contributing editor for The American Conservative, a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute, and an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He writes frequently for Chronicles:A Magazine of American Culture.)

Read here for more

A silent battle has been raging right under our noses, a fierce underground struggle pitting the U.S. against one of its closest allies. For all its newsworthiness, the media has barely noticed the story – except when it surfaces, briefly, like a giant fin jutting above the waves. The aggressor in this war is the state of Israel, with the U.S., its sponsor and protector, playing defense. This is the dark side of the "special relationship" – a battle of spy vs. spy.

Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard – now serving a life sentence – stole secrets so vital that an attempt by the Israelis to get him pardoned was blocked by a massive protest from the intelligence and defense communities. Bill Clinton wanted to trade Pollard for Israeli concessions in the ongoing "peace process," and he was only prevented from doing so by a threat of mass resignations by the top leadership of the intelligence community.

The reason for their intransigence: among the material Pollard had been asked by his Israeli handlers to steal was the U.S. attack plan against the Soviet Union. According to Seymour Hersh, then-CIA director Bill Casey claimed Tel Aviv handed over the information to Moscow in exchange for relaxation of travel restrictions on Soviet Jews, who were then allowed to emigrate to Israel.

The Pollard case is emblematic – but it was just the beginning of a years-long effort by U.S. counterintelligence to rid themselves of the Israeli incubus. Law enforcement was – and presumably still is – convinced Pollard was very far from alone, and that a highly placed "mole" had provided him with key information. In his quest to procure very specific information, Pollard knew precisely which documents to look for – knowledge he couldn’t access without help from someone very high in government circles.

In addition, the National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted a phone conversation between an Israeli intelligence officer and his boss in Tel Aviv, during which they discussed how to get hold of a letter by then-secretary of state Warren Christopher to Yasser Arafat. The Washington spy suggested they use "Mega," but his boss demurred: "This is not something we use Mega for," he averred.

The search for Mega and his underlings continues to this day, as U.S. counterintelligence attempts to rip up what appears to be a vast Israeli spy operation by its very deep roots.

That’s why they went after Ben Ami Kadish, who handed over U.S. secrets to Tel Aviv and shared a handler with Pollard, and why they indicted Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, two top officials of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group.

That’s why they were listening on the other end as Jane Harman promised an Israeli agent to intervene in the Rosen-Weissman case.

And now a new front has been opened up in this subterranean war with the arrest of Stewart David Nozette, a top U.S. scientist who worked for the Pentagon, had access to the most closely guarded nuclear secrets, and was the lead scientist in the search for water on the moon.

Nozette’s case is interesting because of his impressive resume: he held top positions with the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and NASA, and he served on the White House National Space Council under George H.W. Bush.

From 1989 until March 2006, he held "Q" clearance, which means he had access to "critical nuclear weapon design information" and vital information concerning 20 "special access programs" – secrets only a very few top government officials had knowledge of.

In other words, this wasn’t just some mid-level schmuck who wanted to sell out his country for cash: he was one of the big boys – the principal author of the Clementine biostatic radar experiment, which allowed U.S. scientists to discover water on the moon – a kind of J. Robert Oppenheimer figure, whose singular contributions to the U.S. space program and its military applications granted him security clearances available to a very select few.

The affidavit in support of the criminal complaint [.pdf] alleging espionage is terse, vague in parts, and brimming with implication. Taking their cues from the Department of Justice press release, most news reports state, "The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under U.S. laws," leaving out the last three words in the DOJ’s sentence: "in this case."

In this particular case, it’s true, prosecutors are going after Nozette for violations that occurred while they were reeling him in, with a federal agent pretending to be a Mossad officer offering him money (not very much, by the way) in exchange for secrets. The real question, however, is what caused them to zero in on Nozette?

A Washington Times piece cites Kenneth Piernick, a former senior FBI agent, who opined:

“He must have made some kind of attempt, which triggered the FBI’s interest in him. They cut in between him and whoever he was trying to work with and posed as an intelligence officer, agent, or courier to handle the issue, and then when he delivered what he intended to deliver to that person, his contact was likely an undercover FBI agent or [someone from] another U.S. intelligence service.”

Yet Nozette may have made more than a mere "attempt." The affidavit alleges that, from 1998 to 2008, he served as a consultant to "an aerospace company wholly owned by the government of Israel," during which time "approximately once a month representatives of the aerospace company proposed questions, or taskings, to Nozette." He answered these questions, and, in return, received regular payments totaling $250,000.

This indicates the Feds had been on to Nozette for quite some time, and with good cause. The affidavit also notes that, at the beginning of this year, he traveled to "a different foreign country" in possession of two computer "thumb" drives, which seemed to have mysteriously disappeared upon his return some three weeks later. What was on the drives – and who were the recipients?

In 2007, federal authorities raided the offices of Nozette’s nonprofit company, the Alliance for Competitive Technology (ACT), purportedly because ACT, having procured several lucrative government contracts, had defrauded the federal government by overcharging.

The affidavit cites an anonymous colleague of Nozette who recalled the scientist said that if the U.S. government ever tried to put him in jail he would go to Israel or another foreign country and “tell them everything” he knows.

Perhaps the real reason for the raid, however, had to do with the FBI’s growing suspicion – if not certainty – he was funneling U.S. secrets to Tel Aviv. ACT is a curious creation, a "nonprofit" group that nevertheless generated over half a million dollars last year according to documents filed with the IRS, with over $150,000 in salary and benefits paid out to Nozette. But it wasn’t just about money. ACT’s mission statement reads like a spy’s dream come true:

"The Alliance for Competitive Technology … has been created to serve the national and public interest by conducting scientific research and educational activities aimed at expanding the utilization of National and Government Laboratory resources.

The National Laboratories possess significant technology, technologists, and resources, of great potential value to growing U.S. industrial organizations, both small and large. Recent changes in national policy (the Stevenson-Wydler Act of 1986 and the NASA Technology Utilization Program) have sanctioned the pursuit of technology transfer from these organizations. However, the capabilities and resources present in National Laboratories are often difficult to access by small and medium sized organizations with limited resources.

ACT will research the best mechanisms to facilitate this transfer through focused research on technology transfer mechanisms, and educational and instructive programs on technology transfer from National Laboratories.

In addition, ACT will enable U.S. organizations to utilize the resources of National Laboratories through existing established mechanisms (e.g., the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Technology Affiliates Program).Transfer of commercially valuable technology is significantly enhanced by such direct support of private sector efforts."

In short: ACT is all about technology transfer – from the U.S. to Israel. This, as is well-known, is one of the favored activities of the Israeli intelligence services, which regularly pilfer the latest American technology (especially military applications) to such an extent that a General Accounting Office investigation once characterized the effort as "the most aggressive espionage operations against the U.S. of any U.S. ally."

ACT had contracts with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Va., and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. It is hardly a leap of faith to conclude that vital data flowing from these projects was fed directly into the waiting maw of the Mossad.

Nozette was a key figure in developing and promoting the "Star Wars" ballistic missile defense system. His colleague in the "High Frontier" movement – and the official director of ACT – is one Klaus Heiss, like Nozette an enthusiast [.pdf] of space colonization (who also has some strong views on other subjects).

Contacted by an FBI agent masquerading as an Israeli intelligence agent, Nozette didn’t blink when told his lunch companion was from the Mossad: "Good," he said. "Happy to be of assistance." This was well before the issue of money was raised.

Later in the conversation, Nozette boasted of his top-level security clearances and the range and depth of his knowledge of U.S. secrets, adding, "I don’t get recruited by the Mossad every day. By the way, I knew this day would come." Questioned further by the undercover agent, Nozette said, "I thought I was working for you already. I mean, that’s what I always thought [the foreign company] was – just a front."

Which it no doubt was.

Nozette agreed to be a regular "asset," yet he clearly felt his position was increasingly precarious. He inquired about the right of return and raised the possibility that he might go to Israel. He wanted a passport as part of his payment, in addition to the few thousand dollars the FBI was putting in a post office "dead drop" for him on receipt of stolen secrets.

Well, then, so what? Don’t all nations, even allies, spy on each other? What’s the significance of this particular case

On the surface, our relationship with Israel is encompassed by the terms of the "special relationship," which has so far consisted of the U.S. giving unconditional support to Tel Aviv’s every action, no matter how brutal [.pdf] or contrary to our interests – and tolerating, to a large degree, its extensive covert operations on U.S. soil (or, at least, keeping quiet about them). On a deeper level, however, the tensions in this one-way love affair have frayed the specialness of the relationship almost to the breaking point.

This is not just due to the election of Barack Obama, who is widely perceived in Israel as being biased against the Jewish state. These tensions arose during Bush’s second term, when U.S. policy began to perceptibly tilt away from Tel Aviv.

A particularly telling blow to U.S.-Israeli relations was the decision by the U.S. to clamp down on visa requirements for Israelis entering the U.S.: potential visitors from Israel are now required to undergo an interview, restrictions on their length of stay have been extended, and admission to the U.S. is no longer assured.

In the secret world of spooks spying on one another, the U.S.-Israeli relationship is increasingly adversarial, while in the diplomatic-political realm, it has nearly reached the point of open hostilities.

This is thanks to the objective conditions that determine relations among nations: in the post-Cold War world, Israel necessarily became much less of an asset to the U.S. In the post-9/11 world, as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have so trenchantly pointed out, it is an outright liability.

Our self-sacrificial policy of unconditional support for Israel has earned us implacable enemies in the Arab world and granted our adversaries a priceless propaganda prize – and the growing awareness of this disability is something the Israelis no doubt find disturbing. The distortion of our foreign policy by the power of the Israel lobby is also being widely noted, and this is their real Achilles heel.

In this case, too, the Lobby will no doubt rush to exert their influence to downgrade Nozette’s crime and even depict him as an innocent victim of entrapment. Defenders of the AIPAC duo conjured a vast "anti-Semitic" conspiracy within the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI to explain the alleged persecution of Rosen and Weissman, and the same tactics are bound to be trotted out in this instance.

That is nonsense. The FBI didn’t just pick Nozette arbitrarily and conjure his crimes out of thin air. Their target was already deeply involved with the Israelis, and this is what brought him to their attention in the first place.

The nature and extent of Israeli spying in the U.S. is not a subject you’ll see the "mainstream" media very often touch with so much as a 10-foot pole, but when it does the results can be ominously disturbing. I, for one, haven’t forgotten Carl Cameron’s four-part series on Israeli spying in the U.S., broadcast by Fox News in December 2001.

According to Cameron, his sources in law enforcement told him the Israelis had been following the 9/11 hijackers and had foreknowledge of their plans but somehow neglected to tell us. And then there were those dancing Israelis, leaping for joy at the sight of the Twin Towers burning…

This is the dark side of the "special relationship," so dark that hardly anyone wants to acknowledge it, let alone consider its implications.
- Justin Raimondo

Iranian President Mr Ahmadinejad is an Iranian Jew converted to Islam

2009-10-07T11:44:00.002+11:00

By Damien McElroy and Ahmad Vahdat

Read here in Telegraph UK

Ahmadinejad showing papers during election.
It shows that his family's previous name was Jewish
(Photo courtesy of Telegraph UK)

A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia.

The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior.

Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad's track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.

Ali Nourizadeh, of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies, said:

"This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad's background explains a lot about him. Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith."By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections. He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society."

A London-based expert on Iranian Jewry said that "jian" ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews.

"He has changed his name for religious reasons, or at least his parents had," said the Iranian-born Jew living in London. "Sabourjian is well known Jewish name in Iran."

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in London said it would not be drawn on Mr Ahmadinejad's background. "It's not something we'd talk about," said Ron Gidor, a spokesman.

The Iranian leader has not denied his name was changed when his family moved to Tehran in the 1950s. But he has never revealed what it was change from or directly addressed the reason for the switch.

Relatives have previously said a mixture of religious reasons and economic pressures forced his blacksmith father Ahmad to change when Mr Ahmadinejad was aged four.

The Iranian president grew up to be a qualified engineer with a doctorate in traffic management. He served in the Revolutionary Guards militia before going on to make his name in hardline politics in the capital.

During this year's presidential debate on television he was goaded to admit that his name had changed but he ignored the jibe.

However Mehdi Khazali, an internet blogger, who called for an investigation of Mr Ahmadinejad's roots was arrested this summer.

Mr Ahmadinejad has regularly levelled bitter criticism at Israel, questioned its right to exist and denied the Holocaust. British diplomats walked out of a UN meeting last month after the Iranian president denounced Israel's 'genocide, barbarism and racism.'

Mr Ahmadinejad has been consistently outspoken about the Nazi attempt to wipe out the Jewish race. "They have created a myth today that they call the massacre of Jews and they consider it a principle above God, religions and the prophets," he declared at a conference on the holocaust staged in Tehran in 2006.

Neocons Salivate Over the Chance for Another Middle East War with IRAN

2009-06-27T07:11:00.002+10:00

Read here

by

Robert J. Elisberg

"Now is not the time for the president to dig in to a neutral posture," Paul Wolfowitz wrote last week in the Washington Post. "It is time to change course."

Oh, swell. Now he wants to change course.

Mind you, as an architect of the Iraq War, it's not like Mr. Wolfowitz's track record on advice for the Middle East is terribly dazzling.

His opinion here is not terribly surprising, though. The neocon wing of the Republican Party has rarely found a war it doesn't love to start (finishing, optional), most especially if they themselves don't have to risk fighting it. And now, it seems like most conservative Republicans have their trigger finger itching to start yet another Middle East war.

No, thanks. Been there, done that.

In his op-ed, Mr. Wolfowitz chose two comparisons (noting only quietly at the very end that "no two situations are identical.").

The first was the1986 Philippine elections when Ronald Reagan initially made a cautious statement (exactly as President Obama has done...), and only later declared that there had been fraud. Never mind that the Philippines is one of our longtime allies with whom (unlike Iran) we have actual diplomatic ties. And never mind that whatever happened there would not destabilize the entire world - let alone neighboring Mindanao. And never mind what overturned events was that Philippine President Fernando Marcos had two reform leaders arrested, which brought a national protest that forced him to flee the country three days later.

Yes, that's so much like Iran...

His other "comparison" - and one uses that word advisedly - was when George Bush (the first) spoke out against a coup attempt in the Soviet Union in 1991. After he too was initially non-committal and cautious. Exactly like President Obama. Later, Bush took the "bold" step of condemning the coup. Yes, honest, this is the comparison Paul Wolfowitz is trying to draw.

Noteworthy though is that Mr. Wolfowitz stops right there and leaves out the other involvement Mr. Bush 41 also made in 1991. That's when he challenged Iraqis to stage a coup and "to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside." The result of these empty words of false encouragement was that the uprising was defenseless, and Saddam Hussein ordered mass killings that have been estimated in the range of up to 230,000.

Shocking, I know, that Paul Wolfowitz ignored this "comparison" in American presidential intervention. Especially given that as far as comparisons go, Iraq is next door to Iran. It was just an oversight, I'm sure...

Of course, pretty much all the right-wing Republican voices who want the president to involve himself in Iran have ignored this recent history, as well. Instead, they prefer words that will either - 1) be empty with no substance behind them and put millions of Iranians at risk, or 2) get us involved in yet another Middle East war.

It is this very same, empty belligerence that John McCain has been ratcheting, including on his new-found Twitter account. (Republican discovery of Twitter misses the point that when your messages are limited to 140 characters, so is the depth of your thought.)

"Mass peaceful demonstrations in Iran today," he tweeted, "let's support them & stand up for democracy & freedom! President & his Admin should do the same."

Mind you, it's not remotely clear what "standing up" actually would accomplish - or means - but it is an admonition he's fallen in love with. "It's our duty to stand up for people who are struggling for freedom," he quoted to C-Span. "We should stand up for them," he told Fox News. "The way we stood up for the Polish workers in Gdansk, the way we stood up for the people of then Czechoslovakia..."

...and the way we stood up for Iraqis in 1991 with empty, meaningless words before they were mass murdered? But then, John McCain has a record of being reckless here. After all, we can't forget his singing, "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," during his failed presidential candidacy. At least we now know what America avoided by not having his experienced leadership during this time of grave diplomatic delicacy.

This is all the same hubris and ignorance that got us involved in Iraq. That's why Iranian experts have near-unanimously applauded President Obama's handling of the situation - because they actually understand the perspective.

They know that what is happening in Iran right now is far deeper than protesting a vote. It's a political/religious battle that goes back to the Muslim Brotherhood formed in Egypt in 1928 - and to many hundreds of years of conflict. As Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Middle Eastern specialist in the C.I.A., wrote in Sunday's New York Times:

"Yet in the current demonstrations we are witnessing not just the end of the first stage of the Iranian democratic experiment, but the collapse of the structural underpinnings of the entire Islamic approach to modern political self-rule....Westerners would do well to understand the magnitude of what is transpiring in the Islamic Republic."

"Standing up" for the reform candidate Mr. Moussavi would get him painted as an American puppet, a disaster for reformers. It could even be the one thing that unites Iran. Further, despite whatever rigging existed, President Ahmadinejad may still have won the election, just that the rigging guaranteed a bigger margin. And if Ahmadinejad did, indeed, win - or stays in power, regardless - this is the Iranian administration we will need to deal with to lessen their nuclear threat. Most importantly, though, as anyone who understand Iran knows, its president doesn't have authority - that rests with the Supreme Leader. So, imposing ourselves for a figurehead while spiting the actual sovereign is as dangerous and counterproductive as anything imaginable towards an unstable nuclear power.

And President Obama understands all this. And has been widely praised by those who understand the situation. For goodness sake, even George Will called the right-wing criticism, "foolish".

"The people on the streets know full well what the American attitude toward the regime is. And they don't need that reinforced."

And the reality is, that Mr. Obama did speak out early, contrary to the fake-talking points of the neocons and far right Republicans.

"We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust action against the Iranian people," the president stated last week. "The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights." ("Stands"!) "If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion."

That is as blunt a statement as any that Ronald Reagan made towards the Philippines, or George Bush (the first) made towards the Soviet Union. And it was far more diplomatic and thoughtful than what Mr. Bush (the first) said to Iraqis before they got mass murdered.

Yet still the neocons want more, insist the president isn't saying anything, isn't doing anything.

It's irresponsibly dangerous. As when the right-wing Charles Krauthammer wrote in the Washington Post: "And where is our president? Afraid of "meddling."

Amazingly, there is Mr. Krauthammer, in his own words, admonishing the president to actually "meddle." Meddle in a centuries-old religious conflict of a nuclear power. The same meddling that got us mired in the disaster of Iraq.

Meddling! They want meddling! Enough already. We've seen the result of "meddling." Which is why the far right has long-since lost its credibility for giving any advice. But still they give it.

"He's been timid and passive more than I would like," said Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC).

Apparently, more "meddling" would be to Mr. Graham's liking. That belligerent "Bring it on!" swagger than George W. Bush managed so well.

These right-wing voices just love war, as long as they don't have to fight it. Just love sending young Americans to die, to salve their posturing ego and failed politics. Just love the idea to "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran." Perhaps that would be aggressive enough for them all, calling for more active meddling in Iran.

Been there, done that. The results are right across Iran's border in Iraq.

What all these loud, empty, aggressive voices ignore is that a president who measures his public statements thoughtfully is not inherently silent under the surface, which keeps the channels open for creating real change. Any one of these war-mongering voices who thinks that all Barack Obama is doing about Iran is making public statements is either naïve or disingenuous.

And yet Barack Obama makes his public statements - as he did again on Tuesday, strongly. But makes them responsibly. Because words can't be empty when they matter most. A responsible President speaks to improve conditions, not inflame them. Not meddle. Not posture. Not paint us into war.

Happily, there are far more voices who understand this. And understand history, not just posturing for political air time. And happily, these include the more moderate of Republicans, as well.

During the presidential election, Barack Obama was roundly chastised by this same right wing and by Mr. McCain for his supposed "naivety" in saying he'd sit down with Iran without preconditions. Yet now, on Sunday, Republican Richard Lugar, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, one the country's experts, told CNN that the United States and Iran should "sit down." Even amid all the Iranian upheaval, even though the government "is shooting people...beating people," host John King asked, if Iran called tomorrow, should the U.S. "sit down with them?" And Sen. Lugar again repeated his answer - "Yes."

Go figure...

President Carter Says Gaza Palestinians Treated Like Animals by Israells

2009-06-17T08:59:00.001+10:00

GAZA, June 16 (Reuters) - Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are being "treated more like animals than human beings", former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said on Tuesday.

On a visit to the enclave, he condemned Israel's January bombardment of Gaza and its continuing trade blockade, which he said forbids even children's toys.

"I understand that even paper and crayons are treated as a security hazard," he told Gazans at a local United Nations office. "I sought an explanation of this when I met with Israeli officials and I received none, because there is no explanation."

Carter, 84, has spent far more years as a human rights activist than he did in the White House from 1977 to 1981. He is easily the most outspoken former U.S. president on the Middle East conflict, and seen by many Israelis as a harsh critic.

He ignored a U.S. government ban on dealings with Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas and had talks with its leaders.

Israel tightened a blockade on Gaza in 2007 when Hamas took control after routing rival Fatah forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas, who favours a peace deal with Israel. In late December, Israeli forces bombed then invaded Gaza, devastating its already battered infrastructure.

Since then, Israel has blocked imports of steel, cement and other goods to the population of 1.5 million Palestinians, saying Hamas could use many items for military purposes.

Carter, a Democrat, said he had seen for himself there had been almost no reconstruction in Gaza over the past five months.

"Never before in history has a large community like this been savaged by bombs and missiles and then been deprived of the means to repair itself," he said

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama: the transition from rivals to allies

2009-06-11T00:26:00.001+10:00

by
Jon Rapoport (LA Democrat Examiner)

It has been nothing short of remarkable to witness what appears to be a very strong and close relationship between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. These formerly bitter rivals, during the 2008 Democratic Primaries, are now joined at the hip regarding the current administration's foreign relations initiatives. It seems like ancient history, but one only has to recall back to just over a year ago, when things were not quite as chipper between these two very notable figures.

Remember the Clinton Campaign’s use of the infamous “3 a.m.” commercial, which attempted to question the qualification and experience level of then Senator Obama? Or former President Bill Clinton’s controversial remarks regarding Jesse Jackson winning of the '84 and '88 South Carolina Primary, in which Clinton seemingly tried to claim that the victories of both Jackson and Obama were for the same exact reasons.

What about the famous “shame on you” speech delivered by then Senator Clinton regarding a health care mailer distributed by the Obama Campaign shortly before the Ohio Primary? The list goes on and on regarding the bitter sniping that took place throughout the campaign from the Clinton Camp towards the Obama Camp.
For his part, Sen. Obama repeated claims that Sen. Clinton was not always truthful and forthright regarding her record during the campaign. Obama also continually questioned Clinton's explanations regarding her authorization vote for the Iraq War.

“You know I opposed this war in Iraq from the start. But one of my opponents [Clinton] is trying to rewrite history,” said Obama while campaigning in early 2008.

After the bitter and seemingly unending primary, the resolution of the long standing Florida and Michigan Primaries controversy and the conclusion of the pursuit for Superdelegates, Sen. Obama finally came away the winner.

To her credit, Sen. Clinton quickly accepted the defeat and subsequently became a fervent advocate for the future President. Her most stirring and notable speech took place on the second night of the Democratic National Convention last August in Denver. From that point on, Sen. Clinton made it abundantly clear that the proper move for her 18 million supporters was to vote for Sen. Obama in the November election. Many of these supporters were still unhappy because Sen. Obama declined to offer Sen. Clinton the opportunity to be his running mate, instead selecting Sen. Joe Biden.

It turned out that President Obama had another prominent and public role in mind for Sen. Clinton. The role of Secretary of State, the chief international representative and spokesperson for the United States Government.

Sunday, while appearing on ABC's “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Mrs. Clinton explained her rationale for accepting the President's offer.

“Ultimately, it came down to my feeling that, number one, when your president asks you to do something for your country, you really need a good reason not to do it. Number two, if I had won and I had asked him to please help me serve our country, I would have hoped he would say yes. And, finally, I looked around our world and I thought, you know, we are in just so many deep holes that everybody had better grab a shovel and start digging out.”

Since Mrs. Clinton assumed her position, it is quite safe to say that her views have been in lock step with that of the President. The most notable example of this is the administration's belief that Israel should halt further expansion of settlements into the West Bank, while simultaneously articulating the United States unwavering support for the state of Israel.

Mrs. Clinton has also been front and center with President Obama during their recent trip to Egypt and their earlier participation in April's G20 Summit in London. In fact, there's very telling photos of the two receiving a private tour of the Sultan Hassan Mosque in Cairo.

Stateside, there is also a very unique photo of the two of them conversing outdoors at a White House picnic table. Either they are Academy Award winning actors, or they just happen to get along very well despite their past differences.

The brilliance of the President's decision to appoint Mrs. Clinton is twofold:

First, in terms of experience, knowledge of the key issues and relationships with foreign governments, particularly in the Middle East, Mrs. Clinton compares favorably to any other potential candidate for this position.

Second, the union of these two Democratic Party Goliaths has almost completely unified the party and it has eliminated any bitterness associated with the primary campaign.

As for the “3 a.m.” commercial, Mrs. Clinton explained her current feelings regarding if the President is able to handle a “middle of the night” crisis, during Sunday's ABC interview.

“Absolutely, and you know, the President, in his public actions and demeanor, and certainly in private with me and with the national security team, has been strong, thoughtful, decisive. I think he's doing a terrific job. And it's an honor to serve with him.”

Jewish Lobby Gives Obama His Marching Orders

2009-01-29T04:47:00.003+11:00

By Michael Collins Piper

Read here

THE POWERFUL JEWISH LOBBY in Washington is already issuing marching orders to President-elect Barack Obama.

One of the most influential voices of the lobby has published an array of “working papers” designed to tell the president how he must maintain the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel, increase pressure on a variety of Arab and Muslim states that are perceived as dangers to Israel, and generally assure that Israel’s interests will always be first and foremost in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, not only in the Middle East but around the globe.

The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a particularly vocal force in the Jewish lobby, published an entire edition of its Journal of International Security Affairs (dated fall 2008), sending the official word to Obama.

JINSA was founded by one Stephen Bryen who—along with a host of other well known names connected to JINSA—was once investigated by the FBI on charges of espionage for Israel.

A variety of articles in the journal addressing “Middle East Policy and the Next President” and “Iran, Iraq and Beyond,” make it clear that JINSA—best known as a nest of the infamous “neo-conservatives” who misdirected U.S. foreign policy during the outgoing Bush administration, sparking the war in Iraq and continuing to clamor for action against Iran—wants Obama to pursue Bush-style policies.

AIPAC is particularly obsessed with using U.S. military and economic power to force Arab and Muslim nations to “reform” from within. Talk of “democracy” flows freely within AIPAC’s assorted essays, demanding that Israel’s neighbors conform to the Western version of democracy.

But when the Palestinian people voted the Hamas movement into power in the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza strip, AIPAC and other elements in the Jewish lobby immediately began calling for the United States to reject that freely elected government.

Now, of course, Hamas is largely only in control of the beleaguered Gaza—which many refer to as “ghetto”— and the Palestinian statehood movement has been eviscerated, at least for now. This makes AIPAC and the lobby for Israel quite happy, for Israel has long encouraged U.S. policies—and helped create conditions—that have the effect of “divide and conquer” in the Arab and Muslim world.

Israel is not like any other nation in the world, in that it seems to thrive best (and enjoys the benefits of) having its neighbors quarreling among themselves and rent within. Other nations prefer neighbors that are peaceful and internally secure. Israel wants its neighbors in chaos, because this prevents them from waging war against Israel, either individually or united.

And although in the wake of the debacle in Iraq, which led many Israelis and their allies in the United States to suddenly proclaim that the Iraq war should never have been waged, the fact is that Israel and its U.S.-based agents-in-place were the prime movers behind that war and it was Israeli intelligence that was providing what critics now recognize was the “bad intelligence” that led the Bush administration to “mistakenly” conclude that Iraq was working toward an assembly of nuclear weapons to rival that of Israel.

The Israelis and their American spokesmen evidently now believe that if they tell the “big lie” often enough—the lie that Israel’s interests played no part in orchestrating the debacle in Iraq—that it will make Americans forget that Israel was the foremost advocate of the war in the first place.

However, the evisceration of Iraq by the United States is part and parcel of a long-standing Israeli national security policy aimed toward “balkanizing” the Muslim world.

Yet, AIPAC, in its journal, is now working to perpetuate the myth of Iraqi nuclear weapons and suggesting that Iraq’s weapons were transported into Syria, another nation which has been on the “wish list for war” of Israel and its lobby in America. And AIPAC makes it clear that the destruction of Iran’s nuclear development program is a “must.”

AIPAC is not the only Israeli lobby unit sending the message to the new president. Commentary magazine, long affiliated with the American Jewish Committee, has—in recent issues—been trumpeting a similar bellicose refrain directed at Obama.

The editorial director of the Jewish lobby journal is John Podhoretz, a longtime close personal and political associate of the ubiquitous William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard magazine, which is the most infamous voice of the neo-conservative, hard-line pro-Israel elements operating in the media, in the think tanks, and in official policy making and national security and intelligence circles in Washington.

Their fathers, Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, are two of the founding fathers of the neoconservative network, both Trotskyite Marxists who announced their “conversion” to conservatism during the latter days of the Cold War, banging the drum for intensified U.S. support for Israel.

A complete overview of the neo-conservative power structure and its rather bizarre origins in the days when American Jewish communists like Kristol and Podhoretz turned on the Soviet Union when then- Soviet chief Josef Stalin began moving against Jewish and Zionist elements inside Russia can be found in The High Priests of War and The Judas Goats, two works by this author.

Whether President Obama intends real change, as he promised, or whether he will advance the Israeli agenda (which saw its power expand exponentially in the Republican administration of George W. Bush) remains to be seen. But “the lobby” is making its voice heard and Obama knows that he better not ignore it.

Related Article

Thus Sprach Barack: Pouring Acid on Gaza's Wounds

by Chris Floyd

READ HERE

Yesterday, we wrote of our eager anticipation of Barack Obama's long-suppressed opinion on the mass slaughter in Gaza. As we all know, the most eloquent, forthright and morally concerned orator of the age kept a demure silence on this subject for weeks, because, he said, "we have only one president at a time," who alone should speak about foreign policy.

Of course, that didn't keep the morally concerned orator from speaking freely on almost every other aspect of foreign policy -- Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, etc.

But consistency, as they say, is the hobgoblin of small minds, and the brain of the new president -- who has set the world aflame with rhetoric that has never been heard in Washington before, soaring phrases of penetrating uniqueness about freedom, hope, peace, and the enduring greatness of the American people -- is famously large.

Anyway, we have waited, and at last Obama has spoken. Here's what he had to say today, while welcoming Hillary Clinton to the State Department and appointing Establishment grandee George Mitchell as his special envoy to the Middle East:

Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel's security. And we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats. For years, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at innocent Israeli citizens. No democracy can tolerate such danger to its people, nor should the international community, and neither should the Palestinian people themselves, whose interests are only set back by acts of terror.

To be a genuine party to peace, the quartet has made it clear that Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements. Going forward, the outline for a durable cease-fire is clear: Hamas must end its rocket fire; Israel will complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza; the United States and our partners will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime, so that Hamas cannot rearm.

Yesterday I spoke to President Mubarak and expressed my appreciation for the important role that Egypt played in achieving a cease-fire. And we look forward to Egypt's continued leadership and partnership in laying a foundation for a broader peace through a commitment to end smuggling from within its borders."

There you have it. The invasion of Gaza -- which began after Israel broke the ceasefire, launched provocative and deadly raids inside Gaza, and had also tightened its death-grip blockade to a level quite legitimately comparable to the Warsaw Ghetto -- was actually the fault of (wait for it, wait for it).... the Palestinians. Thus sprach Barack.

But do let's be fair. The new president also feels the pain of the Palestinians in Gaza. He feels it so much that he is going to ensure that any reconstruction in Gaza is controlled by the kleptocracy known as the Palestinian Authority -- the same faction that tried -- with American and Israeli backing -- to overthrow the legitimate, democratically elected government of Palestine, instigating a vicious civil war that, lo and behold, left Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation weak and splintered. Now hear the words of the Compassionate One:

Now, just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis is intolerable, so, too, is a future without hope for the Palestinians. I was deeply concerned by the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life in recent days and by the substantial suffering and humanitarian needs in Gaza. Our hearts go out to Palestinian civilians who are in need of immediate food, clean water, and basic medical care, and who've faced suffocating poverty for far too long.

Now we must extend a hand of opportunity to those who seek peace. As part of a lasting cease-fire, Gaza's border crossings should be open to allow the flow of aid and commerce, with an appropriate monitoring regime, with the international and Palestinian Authority participating.

Relief efforts must be able to reach innocent Palestinians who depend on them. The United States will fully support an international donor's conference to seek short-term humanitarian assistance and long-term reconstruction for the Palestinian economy. This assistance will be provided to and guided by the Palestinian Authority.

At every point, the control of the "Palestinian Authority" -- which means, of course, the Israeli government -- is stressed. Even Obama's dramatic call to open the crossings that Israel has imposed on the open-air prison of Gaza, where many thousands of people have been living in refugee camps for 60 years, and where the entire 1.5 million-strong population is kept stateless and imprisoned, is carefully hedged: the crossings will require "an appropriate monitoring regime" -- i.e., the same regime that has been monitoring the crossings for years on end: the Israeli government. Of course, the PA -- the former insurgent group that has turned itself into the Judenrat of the occupation, doing the Israeli government's dirty work for them -- is to be cut in on the action, along with unspecified "international participation." Of course, the recent deadly attack on UN buildings in Gaza has given us yet another in a long string of demonstrations of how Israel treats "international participation" within its domains and targeted territories.

Now we can see why Obama kept silent on Gaza while Bush was still in the White House: because he held precisely the same views as Bush on the subject. There is nothing in Obama's statement that could not have been said -- or was not actually said -- by Bush. You couldn't slide a piece of onion-skin paper between the stances of the two men on Gaza.

Meanwhile, Professor As'ad AbuKhalil, the "Angry Arab," takes an equally dim view of today's developments:

Well, it took two longs days before Obama dispelled any notions of a change in US Middle East policy. For some reasons, many Arabs and many American leftists I know (you know yourselves) have wanted to believe so bad that Obama will deviate from the Zionist path of US foreign policy. I knew that it would be a matter of weeks that he would prove me right, but I did not know that he would prove me right in a matter of hours. His speech on the Middle East today could have easily been written by Benjamin Netanyahu....

Obama's speech was quite something. It was like sprinkling sulfuric acid on the wounds of the children in Gaza--those who survived the Israeli terrorist festival of butchery and massacres. His remarks leave you with the impression that there are two sets of problems in the holy land: that there was terrorism against civilians in "southern Israel" and then there is some undefined civilian suffering in Gaza from some undefined natural disaster--an earthquake or hurricane.... He then followed the Zionist line that all aid should pass through the transparent gangs in Ramallah--but that is important because Fatah has a very long record of integrity, transparency, merit, and high ethical standards--along with collaboration with Israel.

AbuKhalil also points us to this analysis of Obama's chosen partner in Middle East peace, the man who was in fact the first foreign leader the new president called upon taking office: Palestinian "president" Mahmoud Abbas. (The quote are required because Abbas' term has actually ended, but he is still somehow president of a rump Palestinian Authority.) From The National:

The reasons for Abbas’s demise are few, and they predate the Israeli attack on Gaza: he long ago placed all of his eggs in the Israeli-American basket. Acting as if his chickens had already hatched, his inability to deliver any tangible achievement has instead meant they came home to roost with a vengeance.

Key to this is Abbas’s relationship to his people: simply put, it never existed. Arafat saw the Palestinians as the ace in the deck to be played when all else failed, and understood that his leverage with outside actors derived from their conviction that he represented the Palestinian people. If he consistently failed or refused to properly mobilise this primary resource, he at least always held it in reserve.

Abbas has by contrast been an inveterate elitist, who seems to have regarded the Palestinian population as an obstacle to be overcome so that the game of nations could proceed – there are after all only so many seats at the table where great statesmen like George Bush and Ehud Olmert together create the contours of a new Middle East....

Cursed with exceptional self-regard, Abbas has always shown disinterest in the opinions of others. From the moment he convinced himself of the sincerity of Bush’s visions, which put the onus on the Palestinians to prove they qualify for membership in the human race and are worthy of being spoken to by Tsipi Livni and Condoleezza Rice, there was no turning back. Henceforth the Palestinian security forces would point their weapons exclusively at their own people, and only Saeb Erakat would be aimed at Israel. At the United Nations, once a primary arena for the Palestinian struggle, Abbas’s emissary Riad Mansour was too busy drafting a resolution declaring Hamas a terrorist entity to deal with more trivial Palestinian concerns. It was simply impossible to steer Abbas towards a change of course, let alone a national dialogue that could produce a genuine strategy.

By the expiration of his presidency on January 9, his constitutional status had become the least of his problems. Each and every one of his policies had failed. In the West Bank, settlement expansion was proceeding at an unprecedented pace while the Wall neared final completion, rendering talk of a two-state settlement all but moot.

After Hamas triumphed in the 2006 parliamentary elections, Abbas’s ceaseless scheming to remove the Islamists from office and overturn the election’s results – characteristically in active partnership with outside forces rather than the Palestinian electorate – was a veritable carnival of folly and incompetence. When Hamas acted first in 2007, it took the Islamists only several days to dispose of those few forces still prepared to fight for Mohammed Dahlan [the PA's ruthless "security" enforcer and much-beloved Washington favorite].

This then is the broken reed upon which Obama proposes to build "a lasting peace in the Middle East." An unconstitutional, totally compromised puppet leader rejected by his people, whom he disdains.

What, wasn't Ahmad Chalabi available?

Gaza Massacre: Israel Bombed Two UN Schools

2009-01-07T17:08:00.002+11:00

Read here for more on The Guardian (UK) and here and here and here

ISRAEL'S COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT:
CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY
SUPPORTED BY THE UNITED STATES

(THE DEAFENING SILENCE OF PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA)

Did United States or the Western Countries Allow Palestinian people to have fighter-jets to DEFEND their lives against the Israel war-planes ?

While Palestinian Children are being Massacred by US taxpayer-funded Israeli war-planes, Obama is Enjoying Golf in Hawaii

Israel's assault on Gaza has exacted the bloodiest toll of civilian lives yet, when the bombing of UN schools being used as refugee centres and of housing killed more than 50 people, including an entire family of seven young children.

The United States late Saturday BLOCKED approval of a UN Security Council statement calling for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and expressing serious concern at the escalation of violence following Israel’s ground attack in Gaza, council diplomats said.

The UN protested at a "complete absence of accountability" for the escalating number of civilian deaths in Gaza, saying "the rule of the gun" had taken over.

The death toll resulted from Israel's attacks has reached 363, including at least 59 children and 18 women. This figure is expected to rise.

Obama Gagged by the Powerful Israeli-Jewish Lobby Groups and Staff Within his Transition Team

(Note: Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Israel Emanuel, is an Israeli and holds a dual citizenship) -read here and here for more

THE refusal of the US president-elect, Barack Obama, to comment on the Gaza conflict had disappointed Arab leaders, the Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister, Riyad al-Maliki, said yesterday. Mr Maliki said that Mr Obama's silence on Gaza contrasted with his willingness to comment on the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November.

Israel rejects stationing of international monitors at border crossing as also any international force in the area.

UN General Assembly chief Miguel d'Escoto has criticized the Security Council for its inability to curb Israel's "monstrosity" in Gaza. D'escoto criticized the UN Security Council for not showing enough tenacity in ending Gazans suffering in the wake of the weeklong Israeli offensive in the coastal strip.

Doctors in Gaza said more than 40 people died, including children, in what appears to be the biggest single loss of life of the campaign when Israeli bombs hit al-Fakhora school, in Jabaliya refugee camp, while it was packed with hundreds of people who had fled the fighting.

Most of those killed were in the school playground and in the street, and the dead and injured lay in pools of blood. Pictures on Palestinian TV showed walls heavily marked by shrapnel and bloodstains, and shoes and shredded clothes scattered on the ground. Windows were blown out.

Hours before, three young men who were cousins died when the Israelis bombed Asma elementary school in Gaza City. They were among 400 people who had sought shelter there after fleeing their homes in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza.

Abed Sultan, 20, a student, and his cousins, Rawhi and Hussein Sultan, labourers aged 22, died.

Abed Sultan's father, Samir, said the bodies were so mangled that he could not tell his son from the cousins. "We came to the school when the Israelis warned us to leave," he said. "We hoped it would be safe. We were 20 in one room. We had no electricity, no blankets, no food. Suddenly we heard a bomb that shook the school. Windows smashed. Children started to scream. A relative came and told me one of my sons was killed. I found my son's body with his two cousins. They were cut into pieces by the shell."

The UN was particularly incensed over targeting of the schools, because Israeli forces knew they were packed with families as they had ordered them to get out of their homes with leaflet drops and loudspeakers. It said it had identified the schools as refugee centres to the Israeli military and provided GPS coordinates.

Israel accused Hamas of using civilians as cover, and said the Islamist group could stop the assault on Gaza by ending its rocket attacks on Israel.

The Palestinian authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, last night delivered an impassioned plea to the UN security council to act immediately to stop the Israeli operation, which he described as a "catastrophe" for his people. Israel has agreed a "humanitarian corridor" to allow Palestinians to get essential goods.

The rising casualty toll, more than 640 Palestinians killed since the assault began 12 days ago, gave fresh impetus to diplomatic efforts. The White House offered its first hint of concern at Israel's actions by calling on it to avoid civilian deaths. The president-elect, Barack Obama, broke his silence by saying he was "deeply concerned" about civilian casualties on both sides. He said he would have "plenty to say" about the crisis after his swearing in.

Gordon Brown said the Middle East was facing its "darkest moment yet" but hoped a ceasefire could be arranged soon.

The head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency, John Ging, said three shells landed at the perimeter of the school. "It was entirely inevitable if artillery shells landed in that area there would be a high number of casualties," he said.

He said UN staff vetted those Palestinians who sought shelter at the school. "So far we've NOT had violations by militants of our facilities," he said, though responding to questions he accepted there had been clashes between Hamas and the Israeli army in the area.

Earlier in the day, Ging visited Gaza's hospital and was shocked at the scale of civilian casualties. "What you have in this hospital is the consequences of political failure and the complete absence of any accountability for actions that are being taken. It's the rule of the gun now, and it has to stop," he said.

At least 12 of one family, seven children aged from one to 12, three women and two men, were killed in an air strike on their house in Gaza City. Nine others were believed trapped.

Rejecting Israeli claims there is no humanitarian crisis, Christopher Gunness, spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), asserted, "The idea there is not a humanitarian crisis is absurd . . . it is appalling for anyone to say there is not."

UNRWA closed 20 health centres, although its staff are doing their best to aid the injured. UNRWA and the World Food Programme have suspended ration distribution, leaving 1.1 million people without basic foodstuffs. Mr Gunness criticised the Security Council for not adopting a ceasefire resolution. "Innocent people in Gaza have suffered enough."

President-Elect Obama Enjoying Golf While Palestinian CHILDREN are Being Killed by Israelis

2009-01-02T14:36:00.005+11:00

Read here for more in The Huffington Post

US President-Elect Barack Obama (who campaigned to change the world and the US ) Played Golf in Hawaii, While Israeli Planes are Killing Palestinian Children

( AND.. Emperor Nero Played the Fiddle, While Rome Burned)

"The evil only exists because the good remain silent."

President-Elect Obama Golfing in his Deafing Silence in Hawaii ....

Meanwhile in Gaza

Related articles:

EGYPT Complicit in the Bombing of Gaza: As the Palestinian death toll approaches 400, much of popular anger throughout the Arab world has been directed at Egypt – seen by many as complicit in the Israeli campaign."Israel would not have hit Gaza like this without a green light from Egypt," Hamdi Hassan, MP for the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition movement, told IPS. "The Egyptian government allowed this assault on Gaza in hopes of finishing off Hamas." Read here for more
United States President George W. Bush supports Israel's operation in Gaza. During the conversation, Bush backed Israel's demand that a ceasefire with Hamas take effect only after the rocket fire at Israeli communities end. Read here for more
As the war in the Gaza Strip rages on, protests continue all across the world. In the United States alone, over 100 protests have already been organized against the attacks, from a small rally in Salt Lake City to much larger rallies along the east coast. Among the largest was in Dearborn, Michigan, where thousands of protesters braved freezing cold temperatures in a rally organized by the Congress of Arab-American Organizations. As has been the case since the war began, the real President-elect (Barack Obama) has remained silent on the situation. What was he doing today instead of commenting on the hundreds of people killed in the Gaza Strip? According to the Associated Press, he was getting his picture taken with a nine-month-old. Read here for more
President-elect Obama conveniently remains silent on the current hostilities (for now) and has thus deferred to President Bush. Earlier this summer he endorsed Israel's right to defend itself against Qassam rockets by stating, "If someone were sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do anything to stop it." One wonders, however, if President elect Obama's principles of safety, dignity and self defense apply to Palestinians as well? If Obama and President Bush's daughters were forced to suspend their emergency hospital operations due to fuel shortages, beg for 300 essential medicines, drink contaminated water that causes malnutrition and anemia in children, eat bread made of animal feed, and renounce electricity because their main power plant was forced to shut down, what would they do? By continuing to vocally defend Israel as the only advocate and partner of peace while perpetually blaming Palestinians as the sole aggressor, the United States recklessly obfuscates the reality of an Israeli blitzkrieg that repeatedly bombards a beleaguered Palestinian refugee population with an inordinately superior and sophisticated military might. Read here for more
As Israel nails shut the coffin that is Gaza under a siege that has lasted nearly three years, steadily intensifying so that malnutrition rates rival those of sub-Saharan Africa, sewage runs raw in the streets and pollutes the ocean, homes are still being bulldozed to super-add collective punishment upon collective punishment; men, women and children are still being sniped at and killed; children are deafened by continuing sonic booms, the vast majority of them suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and many of that majority have no ambition other than becoming “martyrs,” Israel in mid-December denied entry to Richard Falk, UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the occupied territories. It is Dr. Falk's responsibility to report to the UN on conditions in the occupied territories. Israel is blocking him from carrying out this job. He not only describes Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, but calls for immediate protective action “to offset the persisting and wide-ranging violations of the fundamental human right to life.” He also calls for an International Criminal Court investigation to “determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.” Many others, Jewish and not Jewish (including Israeli Jews ) have charged Israel with violations of international law and war crimes in Gaza. As Falk himself noted in his statement about Gaza to the UN, the Secretary General of the UN, the President of the General Assembly, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have all condemned Israel for its monstrous siege. Christopher Hedges writes that Falk told him Israel’s siege has unleashed “an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million [population] Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive . . . This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 per cent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 per cent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders… Over 50 per cent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live." Read here for more
Hamas missiles could reach Israel's nuclear facility at Dimona. Rocket attacks from Gaza have forced Israelis to flee in ever greater numbers and military chiefs have been shaken by the size and sophistication of the militant group’s arsenal. the rockets fired by Hamas in the current fighting have flown farther and been more accurate than weapons used by the group in the past, the officials said. Some have flown nearly two dozen miles, destroying buildings in the southern Israeli cities of Ashdod and Beersheba. Read here for more

QUOTE: "..There is another reason why this attack has beenallowed to occur:
The complicity and silence of the international community.
Israel cannot and would not act against the will of its economic allies in Europe or its military allies in the US.

Israel may be pulling the trigger ending hundreds, perhaps even thousands of lives this week, but it is the apathy of the world and the inhumane tolerance of Palestinian suffering which allows this to occur.
'The evil only exists because the good remain silent'
- Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi
by

Mustafa Barghouthi
Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative
29 December 2008

The Israeli campaign of 'death from above' began around 11 am, on Saturday morning, the 27th of December, and stretched straight through the night into this morning.

The massacre continues Sunday as I write these words.

The bloodiest single day in Palestine since the War of 1967 is far from over following on Israel's promised that this is 'only the beginning' of their campaign of state terror.

At least 290 people have been murdered thus far, but the body count continues to rise at a dramatic pace as more mutilated bodies are pulled from the rubble, previous victims succumb to their wounds and new casualties are created by the minute.

What has and is occurring is nothing short of a war crime, yet the Israeli public relations machine is in full-swing, churning out lies by the minute.

Once and for all it is time to expose the myths that they have created.

1. Israelis have claimed to have ended the occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005.
While Israel has indeed removed the settlements from the tiny coastal Strip, they have in no way ended the occupation. They remained in control of the borders, the airspace and the waterways of Gaza, and have carried out frequent raids and targeted assassinations since the disengagement.

Furthermore, since 2006 Israel has imposed a comprehensive siege on the Strip.

For over two years, Gazans have lived on the edge of starvation and without the most basic necessities of human life, such as cooking or heating oil and basic medications.

This siege has already caused a humanitarian catastrophe which has only been exacerbated by the dramatic increase in Israeli military aggression.
2. Israel claims that Hamas violated the cease-fire and pulled out of it unilaterally.
Hamas indeed respected their side of the ceasefire, except on those occasions early on when Israel carried out major offensives in the West Bank.

In the last two months, the ceasefire broke down with Israelis killing several Palestinians and resulting in the response of Hamas. In other words, Hamas has not carried out an unprovoked attack throughout the period of the cease-fire.

Israel, however, did not live up to any of its obligations of ending the siege and allowing vital humanitarian aid to resume in Gaza. Rather than the average of 450 trucks per day being allowed across the border, on the best days, only eighty have been allowed in - with the border remaining hermetically sealed 70% of the time.

Throughout the supposed 'cease-fire' Gazans have been forced to live like animals, with a total of 262 dying due to the inaccessibility of proper medical care.

Now after hundreds dead and counting, it is Israel who refuses to re-enter talks over a cease-fire. They are not intent on securing peace as they claim; it is more and more clear that they are seeking regime change - whatever the cost.
3. Israel claims to be pursuing peace with 'peaceful Palestinians'.

Before the on-going massacre in the Gaza Strip, and throughout the entirety of the Annapolis Peace Process, Israel has continued and even intensified its occupation of the West Bank. In 2008, settlement expansion increased by a factor of 38, a further 4,950 Palestinians were arrested - mostly from the West Bank, and checkpoints rose from 521 to 699.

Furthermore, since the onset of the peace talks, Israel has killed 546 Palestinians, among them 76 children. These gruesome statistics are set to rise dramatically now, but previous Israeli transgressions should not be forgotten amidst this most recent horror.

Only this morning, Israel shot and killed a young peaceful protester in the West Bank village of Nihlin, and has injured dozens more over the last few hours. It is certain that they will continue to employ deadly force at non-violent demonstrations and we expect a sizable body count in the West Bank as a result. If Israel is in fact pursuing peace with 'good Palestinians', who are they talking about?
4. Israel is acting in self-defense.
It is difficult to claim self defense in a confrontation which they themselves have sparked, but they are doing it anyway. Self-defense is reactionary, while the actions of Israel over the last two days have been clearly premeditated.

Not only did the Israeli press widely report the ongoing public relations campaign being undertaken by Israel to prepare Israeli and international public opinion for the attack, but Israel has also reportedly tried to convince the Palestinians that an attack was not coming by briefly opening crossings and reporting future meetings on the topic.

They did so to insure that casualties would be maximized and that the citizens of Gaza would be unprepared for their impending slaughter.

It is also misleading to claim self-defense in a conflict with such an overwhelming asymmetry of power.

Israel is the largest military force in the region, and the fifth largest in the world.

Furthermore, they are the fourth largest exporter of arms and have a military industrial complex rivaling that of the United States.

In other words, Israel has always had a comprehensive monopoly over the use of force, and much like its super power ally, Israel uses war as an advertising showcase of its many instruments of death.
5. Israel claims to have struck military targets only.
Even while image after image of dead and mutilated women and children flash across our televisions, Israel brazenly claims that their munitions expertly struck only military installations. We know this to be false as many other civilian sites have been hit by airstrikes including a hospital and mosque.

In the most densely populated area on the planet, tons upon tons of explosives have been dropped. The first estimates of injured are in the thousands. Israel will claim that these are merely 'collateral damage' or accidental deaths. The sheer ridiculousness and inhumanity of such a claim should sicken the world community.
6. Israel claims that it is attacking Hamas and not the Palestinian people.
First and foremost, missiles do not differentiate people by their political affiliation; they simply kill everyone in their path. Israel knows this, and so do Palestinians. What Israel also knows, but is not saying public ally, is how much their recent actions will actually strengthen Hamas - whose message of resistance and revenge is being echoed by the angry and grieving.

The targets of the strike, police and not Hamas militants, give us some clue as to Israel's mistaken intention. They are hoping to create anarchy in the Strip by removing the pillar of law and order.
7. Israel claims that Palestinians are the source of violence.
Let us be clear and unequivocal. The occupation of Palestine since the War of 1967 has been and remains the root of violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

Violence can be ended with the occupation and the granting of Palestine's national and human rights. Hamas does not control the West Bank and yet we remain occupied, our rights violated and our children killed.
With these myths understood, let us ponder the real reasons behind these airstrikes; what we find may be even more disgusting than the act itself.

The leaders Israel are holding press conferences, dressed in black, with sleeves rolled up.

'It's time to fight', they say, 'but it won't be easy.'

To prove just how hard it is, Livni, Olmert and Barak did not even wear make-up to the press conference, and Barak has ended his presidential campaign to focus on the Gaza campaign. What heroes...what leaders...

We all know the truth: the suspension of the electioneering is exactly that - electioneering.

Like John McCain's suspension of his presidential campaign to return to Washington to 'deal with' the financial crisis, this act is little more than a publicity stunt.

The candidates have to appear 'tough enough to lead', and there is seemingly no better way of doing that than bathing in Palestinian blood.

'Look at me,' Livni says in her black suit and unkempt hair, 'I am a warrior. I am strong enough to pull the trigger. Don't you feel more confident about voting for me, now that you know I am as ruthless as Bibi Netanyahu?'

I do not know which is more disturbing, her and Barak, or the constituency they are trying to please.

In the end, this will in no way improve the security of the average Israeli; in fact it can be expected to get much worse in the coming days as the massacre could presumably provoke a new generation of suicide bombers.

It will not undermine Hamas either, and it will not result in the three fools, Barak, Livni and Olmert, looking 'tough'.

Their misguided political venture will likely blow up in their faces as did the brutally similar 2006 invasion of Lebanon.

In closing, there is another reason - beyond the internal politics of Israel - why this attack has been allowed to occur: the complicity and silence of the international community.

Israel cannot and would not act against the will of its economic allies in Europe or its military allies in the US. Israel may be pulling the trigger ending hundreds, perhaps even thousands of lives this week, but it is the apathy of the world and the inhumane tolerance of Palestinian suffering which allows this to occur.

'The evil only exists because the good remain silent'

DECEPTION or FACT: Was Sarah Palin Really Pregnant with Trig? A Lesson in Biology

2008-11-19T23:16:00.006+11:00

Sarah Palin had ridiculed the media for insinuating that Trig (who was born with Down Syndrome) was not her child.

But, she was flying across America and attending a conference after her waters broke. If it is true she was pregnant and at the same time travelling from Texas to Alaska when her waters broke, her action was truly irresponsible and silly.

Blogger Audrey, wrote a long piece (read below) on the facts of a pregnancy.

She concluded that she DOESN'T believe Palin was ever PREGNANT with Trig.

A Biology Lesson

by

Audrey

Excerpts: Read here for more

Childbirth is a biology lesson. It involves a lot of, at times, not particularly appetizing details regarding very private parts of the female anatomy.

One reason, I believe, that some of this "deception" has been allowed to go on for so long is that no one will confront Gov. Palin on some of the "private" details, and just how implausible her story is on the specifics.

The single specific piece of information that we have that has caused the most scrutiny of her birth saga is that she traveled back from Texas to Alaska on April 17th leaking amniotic fluid.

Yet, she has never once been asked pointed questions about the very real specifics of this.

It would be a bit like someone calling in sick at work because he has cut his arm very badly, then never showing any physical signs - like blood, or stitches, or going to the doctor, that it ever happened, yet being defensive about having to "prove" it.

The leaking of amniotic fluid is an indisputable, unmistakable sign of the onset of labor. Flying at eight months of pregnancy is ill-advised. Flying at eight months with leaking amniotic fluid is insane, particularly for a woman who has boasted about her easy (past) births.

According to one obstetric source that I found, a woman with Palin's trouble-free history had about a 66% chance of giving birth WITHIN ten hours from the time her membranes ruptured.

I've stated this before, but it bears repeating:

It was NOT possible that Palin would give birth before she got back to Alaska. It was PROBABLE.

What is amniotic fluid?

Most people know it's what surrounds the baby, but where does it come from? It is not something the mother produces, at least later in pregnancy. By the eighth month, the majority of what makes up amniotic fluid is the by-product of the fetus's urinary system; quite bluntly, it's the baby's pee. By 34 weeks, in a normal pregnancy there is about a quart of amniotic fluid. The quantity diminishes a bit by 40 weeks.

Many labors begin with some leaking (or even a large full-blown rupture) of the amniotic sac. For other women, the sac will rupture at some point during labor. If labor is left to progress fully naturally, sometimes the sac never ruptures and the baby is born still encased in it, though most birth attendants now will artificially rupture the sac before this point. (Being born still in the sac (the caul) traditionally was considered good luck, even magical. Here's article from Wikipedia about it. )

When membranes rupture PRIOR to any other signs of labor, what does this mean? What should be done?

I've read some more extreme comments that membrane rupture is an "emergency," and Gov. Palin should have immediately called an ambulance and rushed to the hospital.

It is considered absolutely mandatory that once membranes have ruptured, within a sensible time frame of an hour or two, someone needs to check the baby's heart tones.

Why? Because as soon as there is any leakage of fluid, additional compression can be put on the umbilical cord. It's possible in rare cases for the cord to actually slip down between the baby's head and the side of the uterus, at times even coming out through the cervix. This IS a MAJOR EMERGENCY, and the only way to rule out cord problems is to check the baby - fairly promptly.

However, it's pretty clear that almost twenty four hours passed from the time that Gov. Palin first has stated that she saw some signs of amniotic fluid until she actually saw a physician.

Where did the story come from that her membranes had ruptured?

Interestingly, it seems to have come from her father, Chuck Heath. Let's do a quick review of a timetable.

April 17th - 4 AM Texas time, 1 AM Alaska time
Gov. Palin calls her doctor to report, "there was AN IDEA there that he might come early." I am not sure exactly what this means.

Did she have a dream that her baby might come early? A vision from above?

Did a little bird whisper it into her ear?

Or did she have some clear physical indications that she might be in labor?
April 17th - Around 11 PM Alaska Time
Palin arrives at Mat-Su Hospital AFTER remaining in Texas to give a luncheon speech then taking TWO separateFOUR hour flights, and having a TWO hour layover in Seattle.
April 18th - 6:30 A.M.
Trig is born at Mat-Su Regional Hospital in Palmer.
April 18th - Afternoon
KTUU (Anchorage NBC Affiliate) goes to Mat-Su in Palmer and does an interview with Sarah Palin's PARENTS. It was at THIS interview that apprently Gov. Palin's FATHER states that her water broke in Texas. So while it seems that Gov. Palin might have wished to be a bit more discreet about the details, her father was not so reticent.
April 19th
The Palins leave the hospital with Trig.
April 21st
The Palins, at Sarah's office in Anchorage, give an interview. (This was not published until the NEXT day, the 22nd.)

It was during this interview, that Palin was asked specifically about her water breaking, and was told that her FATHER had said that. She clearly does not want to discuss it, but she DOESN'T deny it.

Why? Because it's true? Or because it is the story that she gave her parents for why she left Texas early, and now can't backpedal or THEY will get suspicious?

Here's the exact quote from the Palin interview:

Reporter:
So did your water break?

Palin:
Well, if you must know more of those type of details, but, um…

Reporter:
Well, your dad said that and I saw him say it so that’s why I asked.

Palin:
Well that was again if, if I must get personal, technical about this at the same time, um, it was one, it was a sign that I knew, um, could lead to uh, labor being uh kind of kicked in there was any kind of, um, amniotic leaking, amniotic fluid leaking, so when, when that happened we decided OK let’s call her.

So, we have it, in Gov. Palin's own (convoluted) words, that her amniotic fluid began leaking at 4 AM in Texas, and they called her doctor.

As has been stated so many other places, it is incomprehensible that a doctor would not have told Gov. Palin to go to a hospital immediately and get checked out.

And it's also interesting to note that Dr. Cathy Baldwin Johnson has NEVER confirmed that the Palins called her at this time. In fact, she stated that that "things" (a precise medical term if I ever heard one) had already "settled down," (more precision) by the time the Palins called. (Or, as my physician husband has quipped: "I must have missed that day in medical school.")

So... someone is lying.

Amniotic fluid "leaking"

What does this mean to the layperson? What it means is that they probably don't want to think about it.

What does it mean to a birth attendant? It means, frankly, a rather untidy mess.

When we would attend a home birth, we would set up in the birthing room a full-sized trash can. (Not the kitchen size, your standard outdoor size.) By the time wee-one came along, it was almost always full.)

Sarah Palin at the Governor's Conference in Texas

How did Gov. Palin handle this mess?
How did she protect the hotel furniture and bedding, and her business suit DURING her speech?
Did Todd promptly call a cab or the hotel car, rush out to the nearest CVS, and buy hospital grade sanitary pads and/or some Surecare or Chux bed underpads at 4 A.M?

When I was still a home birth "helper," we would sit the mom on disposable pads (no panties, and certainly nothing in the vagina like tampons, since that would increase the chances of infection) which were changed scrupulously every half an hour or so.

And once membranes rupture, it's not just a drop or two of clear fluid. Women who are going into labor start losing mucous, also known as "the mucous plug" which has sealed up the cervix. What does this look like? For lack of a better description, it looks like bloody snot.

So, morning in Texas, April 17th, we have the Governor of Alaska, with small gushes of fetal urine and bloody snot leaking out of her vagina putting on her business suit (including pantyhose?) preparing to give a speech... which by all reports, she DID.

(Good God, does anybody still believe this story?)

(And don't forget, this was a conference! Not only was there a luncheon speech, but I imagine there were panels or discussions or workshops during the "morning session."

Never has it been indicated that Palin did not participate... it would have caused comment if she had not. My guess is that she DID participate.

We don't have direct proof for that, but we do have the Governor of Hawaii's statement that “Nobody knew a thing. I only found out from my security detail on the way home that she had gone into labor and that she had gone home to Alaska.”

Only the Governor of Texas suspected that something was up (probably where the rumors later heard by Lingle's security detail came from), and that was only because the Palins had rushed off so quickly after her speech, refusing to confirm either way whether she was in labor.)

And how would she have handled it if the "leak" had become a full-fledged rupture DURING the speech or while sitting in some workshop? "OOOPS. Sorry. My bad."

This has personally happened to me. (Not during a speech at a Governors' Converence, of course.) But I had some leaking which all of a sudden turned into a flood. I "popped." And if you don't think a quart of fluid is a lot, I suggest you all get up from your computers right now, take a quart of water, and dump it on the floor between your legs.

Now picture that happening up on a podium in front of the other Governors. It would have been the most memorable Republican Governor speech on record, I promise you that.

That anyone would have taken this risk is so implausible it is ludicrous. But no one really wants to "go there" in terms of confronting Palin. (Not that anyone has really been given the chance!)

No one really wants to confront her with questions like:

How DID you protect your clothing, Gov. Palin?
What WOULD you have done had you started leaking a lot of fluid on the floor during the speech?
Did you need to call housekeeping and have your bed changed in the middle of the night?

Birth is not a tidy process.

Gov. Palin has given, as "proof" of her labor, information that she was in the midst of one of the more untidy parts, yet has given no indication that she behaved in such a way that would support her own contention. And, because it's "private," we're not allowed to ask.

Sarah Palin on the Air Plane Returning to Alaska

But... of course... the adventure is just beginning, because we are now supposed to believe that she sat on airplane seats for EIGHT additional hours, all the while the flight attendants NOT noticing anything out of order.

People in Alaska knew she was pregnant. The flight attendants certainly should have been aware of it, though they may not have realized the exact due date.

If Gov. Palin had been getting up and going to the bathroom every few minutes (clutching her carry-on bag, because of course she would have needed her bag to carry into the restroom the hospital grade sanitary pads she should have been changing), you don't think the flight attendants would have noticed?

They would not only have noticed, they would have been worried. But no one observed anything unusual in her behavior during TWO four hour flights.

This is completely inconsistent with someone whose "membranes are leaking."

Precautions Against "Infection" After Membrane Rupture

And a note about infection: once it's been determined that there's no compression of the umbillical cord after membrane rupture, the next worry is infection, that because the sterile sac is now compromised, bacteria can enter and begin to grow.

It's why most midwives in a home birth setting will not even do an internal exam on a woman whose membranes are leaking until labor is well-established; you do not want to do anything to risk introducing infection. You don't bathe (you shower) and observe very careful hygiene while using the bathroom. You keep everything as clean and dry as possible.

(Now... think about airplane toilets.)

Or Was It Urine, Not Amniotic Fluid

I've read other places that perhaps the logical explanation was that it was not amniotic fluid at all; it was just a bit of urine. We should leave Gov. Palin alone because none of us know for sure. Certainly urine leakage can happen. You sit a six plus pound kicking baby on top of a woman's bladder and, yeah, you betchya, there can be "mishaps."

But there are several arguments against this.

First, Trig Palin was born at 6:30 a.m.(MORNING) on April 18th. (Sarah Palin returned from Texas on April 17th) If Gov. Palin had arrived at Mat-Su with no signs of labor (considering that she was just 35-36 weeks) they would have sent her home.

There are easy tests that can detect the presence of amniotic fluid in the vagina. The physician would have performed the test and if none had been detected, they would have sent her home.

The fact that a baby was born the NEXT morning indicates that someone was in labor that night.
The second thing is that she DIDN'T deny it. She was asked specifically about the "water breaking" on 4/21 and she confirmed her story.

She could have told the interviewer on April 21st that her impression in Texas that she was leaking fluid turned out to be wrong; that she'd been mistaken. But she didn't.

That she was leaking amniotic fluid in Texas is HER story and she is sticking by it. This is not something "bloggers" have fabricated out of nowhere.

So what do we conclude from all this?

IF Palin's story is COMPLETELY true, if she is Trig's mother, and everything happened the way she has claimed, she took utterly unacceptable medical risks with her infant's life.
She did not have him checked when her membranes ruptured, to rule out the possibility of cord prolapse.
She would have had to be dressed and to comport herself in a way that would have increased the chances of infection for almost 24 hours.
She risked having to give birth with no medical assistance in the aisle of an airplane.
She risked disrupting the travel plans of hundreds of other people.
And, if Palin's story is completely true, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson should lose her medical license.

If Palin's story is PARTIALLY true, what parts are a LIE?

My guess would be that she had NO contact at all with Baldwin-Johnson, at least prior to their layover in Seattle. It's a complete fabrication that she called her doctor from Texas. She took utterly reckless chances with her baby's safety as well as the comfort of everyone else on the airplane... and she beat the odds. And THIS is why Cathy Baldwin Johnson has appeared to cut off most contact with Palin and her crazy birth story... because Palin's lies have actually jeopardized Balwin-Johnson's professional reputation. She can't come clean about the birth without telling the world that Palin is a liar. She's reluctant to do that. While I admire loyalty, in this case I would say it's misplaced.

If Palin's story is ENTIRELY a lie, and the physical realities of membrane rupture which I have seen and dealt with countless times make me lean very strongly in that direction, then the only answer is she was NEVER pregnant at all.

Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli Citizen as Obama's Chief of Staff: Middle East Conflict Will Not be Resolved

2008-11-10T12:16:00.000+11:00

Read here article by John Whitbeck and here by Alexander Cockburn for more

Excerpts:

In the first major appointment of his administration, President-elect Barack Obama has named as his chief of staff Congressman Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli citizen and Israeli army veteran. This is the man who arranges the President's schedule, staffs out the agenda, includes, excludes.

Rahm Emanuel volunteered to serve in Israel in 1991 and who made brisk millions in Wall Street. He is a super-Likudnik hawk, whose father was in the fascist Irgun in the late Forties, responsible for cold-blooded massacres of Palestinians.

Emanuel's father’s unreconstructed ethnic outlook has been memorably embodied in his recent remark to the Ma’ariv newspaper that

"Obviously he [Rahm] will influence the president to be pro-Israel… Why wouldn't he be [influential]?
What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House."

He favored the war in Iraq, and when he was chairing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006 he made great efforts to knock out antiwar Democratic candidates

Emanuel's father, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was a member of Menachem Begin's Irgun forces during the Nakba.

He named his son after "a Lehi combatant who was killed" -- i.e., a member of Yitzhak Shamir's terrorist Stern Gang, responsible for, in addition to other atrocities against Palestinians, the more famous bombing of the King David Hotel and assassination of the UN peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte.

The editorial in the next day's Arab News (Jeddah) was entitled "Don't pin much hope on Obama -- Emanuel is his chief of staff and that sends a message". This editorial referred to the Irgun as a "terror organization" (a judgment call) and concluded:

"Far from challenging Israel, the new (Obama) team may turn out to be as pro-Israel as the one it is replacing."

Obama repeatedly pledged unconditional allegiance to Israel during his campaign, most memorably in an address to the AIPAC national convention which Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery characterized as "a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning", and America's electing a black president has always been more easily imagined than any American president's declaring his country's independence from Israeli domination.

Why would Obama, a man of unquested brilliance, have chosen to send such a contemptuous message to the Muslim world with his first major appointment?

Why would he wish to disabuse the Muslim world of its hopes (however modest) and slap it across the face at the ealiest opportunity?

A further contemptuous message is widely rumored to be forthcoming -- the naming as "Special Envoy for Middle East Peace" of Dennis Ross, the notorious Israel-Firster who, throughout the 12 years of the Bush the First and Clinton administrations, ensured that American policy toward the Palestinians did not deviate one millimeter from Israeli policy and that no progress toward peace could be made and who has since headed the AIPAC spin-off "think tank", the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
For decades, the Palestinian leadership has been "waiting for Godot" -- waiting for the U.S. Government to finally do the right thing (if only in its own obvious self-interest) and to force Israel to comply with international law and UN Resolutions and permit them to have a decent mini-state on a tiny portion of the land that once was theirs.

This was never a realistic hope. It has not happened, and it will never happen.

So it may well be salutary not to waste eight more days (let alone eight more years) playing along and playing the fool while more Palestinian lands are confiscated and more Jewish colonies and Jews-only bypass roads are built on them, clinging to the delusion that the charming Mr. Obama, admirable though he may be in so many other respects, will eventually (if only in a second term, when he no longer has to worry about reelection) see the light and do the right thing.

It is long overdue for the Palestinians themselves to seize the initiative, to reset the agenda and to declare a new "only game in town".

No American president -- least of all Barack Obama -- could easily support racism and apartheid and oppose democracy and equal rights, particularly if democracy and equal rights were being pursued by nonviolent means.

No one anywhere could easily do so. The writing would be on the wall, and the clock would be running out on the tired game of using a perpetual "peace process" as an excuse to delay decisions (while building more "facts on the ground") forever.

Democracy and equal rights would not come quickly or easily.

Forty years passed between when, on the night before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King cried out that he had been to the mountain top and had seen the promised land and when Barack Obama was elected as president of the United States. (The Bible suggests a similar waiting period in the wilderness for Moses.)

Forty-six years passed between the installation of a formal apartheid regime in South Africa and the election of Nelson Mandela as president of a fully democratic and nonracist "rainbow nation".
While it may be be hoped that the transformation would be significantly quicker in Israel/Palestine, it is clear that many who already qualify as "senior citizens" will not live to see the promised land.

However, if the promised land of a democratic state with equal rights for all is correctly and clearly perceived and persistently and peacefully pursued, there is ample reason for confidence that Israel/Palestine will one day experience the tearful exaltation of a "Mandela Moment" or an "Obama Moment", restoring hope in the moral potential both of a nation and of mankind, and that the Jews, Muslims and Christians who live there will finally reach their promised land.

Rahm Emanuel - Background
Read here for more

Rahm Israel Emanuel (Hebrew: רם ישראל עמנואל‎) was born in Chicago, Illinois. His first name, Rahm, means "high" or "lofty" in Hebrew, while his last name, Emanuel, means "God is with us."
According to his father, his son is the namesake of Rahamim, a Lehi paramilitary group combatant who was killed. Rahm’s surname was adopted by his family in 1933, after Rahm’s paternal uncle, Emanuel Auerbach, was killed in a skirmish with Arabs in Jerusalem.

Emanuel's father, Benjamin M. Emanuel, is a pediatrician who was born in Jerusalem and was a member of the Irgun, a Jewish militia which operated from 1931 to 1948 during the British Mandate of Palestine.
His mother, Martha Smulevitz, worked as an X-ray technician and was the daughter of a local union organizer. She became a civil rights activist; she was also once the owner of a Chicago-area rock and roll club. The two met in Chicago in the 1950s.
Emanuel's older brother, Ezekiel, is an oncologist and bioethicist, and his brother Ari is a talent agent in Los Angeles who inspired Jeremy Piven's character Ari Gold on the HBO series Entourage. Emanuel himself is the inspiration for the character Josh Lyman on The West Wing. Emanuel is a first cousin of Howard Stern Show writer Benjy Bronk. Emanuel also has a younger adopted sister named Shoshanna, 14 years his junior.

When his family lived in Chicago, Emanuel attended Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School, a Jewish day school. After his family moved to Wilmette, he attended public school: Romona School, Wilmette Junior High School, and New Trier West High School.
He and his brothers attended summer camp in Israel. At some point during his high school years, while working at an Arby's restaurant, Emanuel severely cut his right middle finger. He sought medical attention only after suffering severe infection as a result of the wound, resulting in the partial amputation of the finger. The story of this event has changed over time - it was once rumored that he lost it in combat for the Israeli army, when it was blown off by a Syrian tank.

He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1981, and went on to receive a master's degree in Speech and Communication from Northwestern University in 1985. While still an undergraduate, he joined the congressional campaign of David Robinson of Chicago.

Emanuel was a civilian volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, repairing truck brakes in one of Israel's northern bases.

Emanuel's wife, Amy Rule, converted to Judaism shortly before her wedding.They are members of Anshe Sholom B'nai Israel, a Modern Orthodox congregation in Chicago.They have three children, son Zachariah and daughters Ilana and Leah.

Emanuel is a close friend of fellow Chicagoan David Axelrod, Chief Strategist for the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign. Axelrod signed the ketuba, a Jewish marriage contract, at Emanuel's wedding, an honor that goes to a family friend or distant relative.

Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Anshe Sholom B'nai Israel Congregation is quoted as saying: "It's a very involved Jewish family"; "Amy was one of the teachers for a class for children during the High Holidays two years ago."
Emanuel has said of his Judaism: "I am proud of my heritage and treasure the values it has taught me." Emanuel's family lives on the North Side of Chicago, in the North Center neighborhood.

RELATED ARTICLE

A Plea from Israel :Come, Obama, Change My Life

by

Edna Canetti

(Edna Canetti wrote this for MachsomWatch. The piece was translated from Hebrew by George Malent)

Read here

Obama my dear, they tell me that you are going to change the world. Do me a favor, come and change my life personally.

Come to Israel, grab its stupid leadership by the throat and take its foot off the neck of another people. Come and force us to do what is clear, and written, and fitting, and necessary, come and get us out of the Territories, if necessary do it with a smile that reveals million-dollar teeth. If necessary bare your teeth and force us to do it.

Make it so that I don’t have to get up in the morning – I who hate to get up early, to go to the checkpoints, to watch and to weep. Make it so I will not have to see 19-year-old children who have been duped into believing that they are defending the home front by pointing rifles at five-year-old children.

Make it so that when my daughters take a shower for half an hour I don’t have to think about Ayad’s family from Awarta that puts buckets under all the washbasins in order to reuse the water which is more precious than gold. Because the settlements need the West Bank’s water more than the Palestinians do.

Make it so that when I sit in a traffic jam I don’t have to think about the vast numbers of cars that are standing at the entrance to Tul Karem while each one is checked by soldiers and dogs because there has been a warning that they’re about to blow up Tul Karem.

Make it so that when my sister urgently rushes to the hospital to give birth and when I rush my husband to the hospital practically with red lights flashing, I don’t have to think about the women giving birth and the heart patients and the wounded people who are stopped at the entrance to Nablus because their vehicle has no permit to enter.

Make it so that when I see a soldier in uniform on the street I do not wonder what he did last night. What house he entered in a “Straw Widow procedure”,* what boy he beat up in the alleys of Hawara because he smiled the wrong way.

Make it so that in the morning I don’t hear the satisfaction in the voice of the radio newsreader who relates that the IDF has killed six terrorists.

Obama my dear, this autumn I did not go to the olive harvest. It didn’t work out. Please make it so that I will not suffer from pangs of conscience because I am not doing enough. That I am living my own good life, pursuing my career, while for the other people just to get home safely is a career in itself.

Please relieve me of this pain that I have all the time deep in my belly. It never lets up, I can never really enjoy life, children, friends or work, because my mind is preoccupied with the image of the shepherd in Baq’a standing by the locked gate and shivering with cold because the redhead with the key has not showed up, and the bound blindfolded boy, and the three-year-old girl who got hit on the head by the carousel at the checkpoint, and the barriers of dirt and the concrete blocks that stop the lives of so many people from flowing smoothly.

Come, Obama, come and save us from ourselves.

And if that is what they mean when they say you are not a friend of Israel, then don’t be a friend. We have already had friends who arm us and justify every horror we carry out and save us from the international courts. Be a true friend. Save us from ourselves. And don’t do it for the world, do it only for me, so I can have peace. You owe it to me. I do not believe in God but still I prayed for you.
-Edna Canetti

Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama

2008-11-09T08:56:00.000+11:00

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The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.

The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.

But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.

The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.

Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"

The revelations, contained in a Newsweek history of the campaign, are likely to further damage Mrs Palin's credentials as a future presidential candidate. She is already a frontrunner, with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, to take on Mr Obama in four years time.

Details of the spike in threats to Mr Obama come as a report last week by security and intelligence analysts Stratfor, warned that he is a high risk target for racist gunmen. It concluded: "Two plots to assassinate Obama were broken up during the campaign season, and several more remain under investigation. We would expect federal authorities to uncover many more plots to attack the president that have been hatched by white supremacist ideologues."

Irate John McCain aides, who blame Mrs Palin for losing the election, claim Mrs Palin took it upon herself to question Mr Obama's patriotism, before the line of attack had been cleared by Mr McCain.

That claim is part of a campaign of targeted leaks designed to torpedo her ambitions, with claims that she did not know that Africawas a continent rather than a country.

The advisers have branded her a "diva" and a "whack job" and claimed that she did not know which other countries are in the North American Free Trade Area, (Canada and Mexico). They say she spent more than $150,000 on designer clothes, including $40,000 on her husband Todd and that she refused to prepare for the disastrous series of interviews with CBS's Katie Couric.

In a bid to salvage her reputation Mrs Palin came out firing in an interview with CNN, dismissing the anonymous leakers in unpresidential language as "jerks" who had taken "questions or comments I made in debate prep out of context."

She said: "I consider it cowardly. It's not true. That's cruel, it's mean-spirited, it's immature, it's unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news that's not fair and not right."

She was not asked about her incendiary rhetoric against Mr Obama. But she did deny the spending spree claims, saying the clothes in question had been returned to the Republican National Committee. "Those are the RNC's clothes, they're not my clothes. I asked for anything more than maybe a diet Dr Pepper once in a while. These are false allegations."

Speaking as she returned to her native Alaska, Mrs Palin claimed to be baffled by what she claims was sexism on the national stage. "Here in Alaska that double standard isn't applied because these guys know that Alaskan women are pretty tough, on a par with the men in terms of being outdoors, working hard," she said.

"They're commercial fishermen, they're pilots, they're working up on the North slopein the oil fields. You see equality in Alaska. I think that was a bit of as surprise on the national level."

Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff to Play Bad Cop to Obama as Good Cop

2008-11-06T22:04:00.000+11:00

Rep. Rahm Emanuel might not appear to be the obvious choice for White House chief of staff for a president-elect who speaks eloquently of setting aside partisan differences and bringing the country together.

The Illinois congressman, after all, is best known as something of a Democratic political assassin. From his days as a top aide to President Clinton to his recent role leading the Democrats to a House majority, Emanuel has relentlessly attacked his foes and gone ruthlessly after anyone who stood in his way.

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Perhaps precisely because Obama seems likely to adopt a unifying posture as president, Obama may need someone practiced in the art of political hardball.

Republican strategist John Feehery -- who worked for former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and former House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel as well as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay -- said Emanuel could help prevent House Democrats from overreaching.

"He understands that if Obama goes too far to the left, it's not going to be good for the Democrats," Feehery said. "I think he's the kind of guy who can knock some heads and help Obama guide the Congress toward the middle. . . . You will need a bad cop to Obama's good cop, and Rahm will fill that role quite nicely."

Emanuel's policies, unlike his politics, have always been centrist, in the Bill Clinton mold. In addition, a different Emanuel has emerged in recent years, one who has forged friendships with Republicans and shown an ability to work with them on occasion.

Emanuel was born in Chicago and kicked off his political career working for such powerhouses as Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and former Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois before joining Clinton's 1992 presidential run.

Along the way, Emanuel earned a reputation for a colorful intensity unusual even in the hard-hitting world of politics. His profanity is legendary and seems designed in part to throw his interlocutors off-balance.

Emanuel excelled at fundraising, sometimes screaming and shouting at donors until they agreed to contribute -- generously -- to his candidate. He threatened to tear up checks if he considered them too small.

"Congressional Republicans respect what he has been able to do," Feehery said. "They think he's a formidable opponent. They think he works his butt off. They won't particularly love him, but if he's smart, they will respect him."

Revealed: Sarah Palin is Ignorant, Annoying and Tantrum-Prone

2008-11-06T20:09:00.001+11:00

Tensions between McCain and Palin camps

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Sarah Palin left the national stage Wednesday, but the controversy over her role on the ticket flared as aides to John McCain disclosed new details about her expensive wardrobe purchases and revealed that a Republican Party lawyer would be dispatched to Alaska to inventory and retrieve the clothes still in her possession.

Tensions have simmered for much of the last month between aides loyal to McCain and those loyal to Palin, but they boiled over after the Republican nominee's defeat, as both sides spoke freely -- though anonymously -- about the wardrobe controversy and other conflicts.

Two aides to McCain and two to Palin discussed the tensions but asked that their names not be revealed, saying they were not comfortable speaking openly about internal operations.

The miscommunication and quarrels between the two camps lasted into Tuesday night, said McCain aides familiar with the situation. Palin arrived at the Arizona Biltmore planning to deliver a speech before McCain's concession speech, they said, but was told by senior McCain aides Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter that it would not be appropriate.

Fox News reported Wednesday that Palin's lack of knowledge on some topics also strained relations. Carl Cameron reported that campaign sources told him Palin had resisted coaching before her faltering Katie Couric interviews; did not understand that Africa was a continent rather than a country; and could not name the three nations that are part of the North American Free Trade Agreement -- the United States, Canada and Mexico.

For weeks, the McCain-Palin campaign has dealt with the fallout from the disclosure that the Republican National Committee was billed for $150,000 in wardrobe purchases for the Palin family -- a discovery that was widely ridiculed and undercut Palin's hockey mom appeal.

Several McCain aides said they had recently discovered that Palin's traveling staff had used personal credit cards to spend as much as $20,000 to $30,000 on additional wardrobe items for Palin.

Palin and her press aides were traveling back to Alaska on Wednesday and could not be reached for comment. But one aide earlier told Newsweek: "Gov. Palin was not directing staffers to put anything on their personal credit cards, and anything that staffers put on their credit cards has been reimbursed, like an expense."

The original $150,000 in purchases was revealed in late October after the release of the September and October Federal Election Commission filings by the Republican National Committee. Those reports revealed that more than $75,062.63 was spent at Neiman Marcus, $49,425.74 at Saks Fifth Avenue and $5,102.71 at Bloomingdale's around the time of the Republican National Convention in early September.

The campaign has said that many of those clothes were returned.

But McCain aides said Wednesday that spending on Palin's wardrobe continued well after the convention, with one custom-made outfit showing up around the time of her "Saturday Night Live" appearance on Oct. 18.

As first reported by Newsweek on Wednesday, McCain aides said some of that money was spent on clothing for Palin's children and husband, Todd, who may have received between $20,000 and $40,000 in wardrobe purchases. The money also included thousands of dollars in shoes. Several aides also said the items included jewelry, but a Palin aide disputed that.

Top McCain aides Schmidt, Rick Davis and Nicolle Wallace were flabbergasted by the magnitude of the spending as the receipts began trickling into the Republican National Committee, aides said.

Wallace had arranged for a stylist to shop for Palin before the convention because the Alaska governor did not have a chance to return home after she was selected as McCain's running mate.

Aides familiar with the campaign's internal discussions said Wallace and other top aides authorized the purchase of three outfits for Palin to wear during convention week and three ensembles for the campaign trail. But cost was to be kept to no more than $25,000 to $35,000.

When Schmidt learned that Palin's staff was putting clothing purchases on personal credit cards, aides said he called them to stop it.

Palin aides tell a different story. Several close to the governor said Wednesday that Palin was outraged by the amount of money being spent on her clothing and that she was naive about what the clothes cost.

"The very first day of shopping, there was a $14,000 price tag and . . . she was absolutely shocked," one of the Palin aides said.

Palin was not pleased by what had been selected for her, the aide said, adding that "a lot of that stuff that was purchased was never worn by her -- that was by her choice."

When the shopping spree hit the press, she appeared frustrated, telling audiences that she wears a lot of her own clothing and hadn't asked for the lavish purchases.

Resentments had started to brew earlier. Palin was not comfortable with the team of handlers sent by party headquarters to manage her appearances, and there were frequent conflicts between the staff at headquarters and her traveling staff. Palin felt constrained by the fact that she had little decision-making power, and questioned the directions being given to her by the campaign, an aide said.

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Palin denied that there were tensions with the McCain camp. But that is at odds with accounts from aides on both sides. The strain worsened, the aides said, after Palin was recorded talking to a Canadian comedian who pretended to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Campaign staffers said McCain's top aides were blindsided by the call, which they said was approved by Palin foreign policy aide Steve Biegun.

McCain aides said the Palin camp did notify McCain's senior staff or the State Department about the supposed contact. Outraged, Schmidt organized a conference call. He demanded to know who had arranged the call, and questioned why anyone would have agreed to such an unusual request and then failed to clear it with top staff, McCain aides said.

Biegun immediately took responsibility. In an interview Wednesday, he said some aides at McCain headquarters were in fact aware of the call, and that it had been on the schedule for "a couple days."

"I was fooled," he said. "No one's going to beat me up more than I beat myself up for setting up the governor like that."

The World Sighs With Relief: Barack Obama Elected 44th President

2008-11-06T08:31:00.001+11:00

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The United States has seen the biggest transformation in its standing in the world since the election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in November 1960.

The world's expectations of an Obama administration are high

This is a country which has habitually, sometimes irritatingly, regarded itself as young and vibrant, the envy of the world. Often this is merely hype. But there are times when it is entirely true.

With Barack Obama's victory, one of these moments has arrived.

The US has never been so unpopular, so derided, and so dismissed by the outside world as it has in the latter stages of George W Bush's presidency. The other day I asked Madeleine Albright, President Clinton's formidable secretary of state, if she could remember a time when people hated America so much.

Expectations abroad

"Not in my lifetime," she answered. "I feel very strongly about this country, and what an exceptional, amazing country it is. But I honestly think this is about as bad as I've seen it."

Opinion polls around the world have confirmed America's unpopularity. And the chance that a young, apparently pleasant and modest black man might become its president was greeted favourably everywhere.

Last summer a poll for the BBC World Service, conducted in 22 countries, indicated that people preferred Barack Obama to John McCain by four to one. Almost half said that if Senator Obama were elected, it would change their view of the United States completely.

America is no longer the power it was. It can still lead, but it is no longer in a position to dictate to the wider world

For eight years the word that people around the world have used again and again to describe the approach of George W Bush's presidency is "arrogance". The tone in Washington seemed to be one of superiority amounting almost to contempt.

Think of the speeches by men like Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz or Paul Bremer. All were closely concerned with the occupation of Iraq, which was carried out in defiance of opinion in most of the rest of the world.

Why did the US invade Iraq? "Because we are America," said another leading figure in the enterprise, famously. "We can."

Outside this country, most people would probably agree with Madeleine Albright's judgement when she spoke to me: "I think Iraq will go down in history as the greatest disaster of American foreign policy - worse than Vietnam."

In the rush to war in 2003, when many American politicians were frightened to stand out against the crowd, Barack Obama condemned the invasion loudly and publicly.

No guarantee

The fact that he has been elected president is his reward for that. And everyone around the world who felt that the Iraq war was wrong will feel that America has now chosen a different path - a path that leads away from extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, waterboarding and all the rest of it.

America is no longer the power it was. Without meaning to, President Bush demonstrated that. It can still lead, but it is no longer in a position to dictate to the wider world.

A black family in the White House will change America's image abroad.

Barack Obama clearly understands this. As an African-American (literally, since his father was from Kenya) his background is not one of privilege and superiority. He will be open to the world in a way President Bush never was. And he will show once again the value of the American dream.

This is no guarantee that he will be a success as president. Jimmy Carter understood the US's reduced position in the post-Vietnam world, and he refused to dictate to the world. Nowadays most Americans regard him as a failure.

But the outside world is set to be delighted by Barack Obama's victory. And its view of America will change accordingly.

Howard Dean: DON'T BLOW IT ! GO OUT AND VOTE

2008-11-05T02:23:00.000+11:00

New York Daily News says: Vote for Obama & Seismic Change

2008-11-04T21:19:00.000+11:00

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Tuesday, November 4th 2008

Let us make history today.

Let us vote for seismic change. Let us choose as President a man who holds great promise to restore America's stride.

Let us vote for Barack Obama.

The most expensive, most closely followed presidential campaign is done. Fully 633 grueling days have passed since Obama - then 45, now 47 - began a candidacy remarkable in the annals of U.S. politics.

He and the country have come a long way on a trail marked by the unpredictable - and never more so than with the eruption of a global financial crisis and the hobbling of the economy. The nation reaches the end of the contest facing challenges of a very different nature than it did when prosperity seemed secure, the war in Afghanistan appeared on track and violence raged in Iraq.

The dislocations in the waning days of the race confirmed that Obama must be the choice over John McCain, a terrific public servant but not the man for this hour of lost jobs, lost savings and lost homes.

Obama's bent toward the working and middle classes would rebuild confidence that the White House has the public's interests at heart as a new government gets to work repairing awful wreckage left by the old.

The cool he displayed while leading a nearly flawless campaign signals that he would bring to the Oval Office a steadiness under pressure far greater than might be expected of a leader of his limited seasoning.

And there is no question that he would set standards for communicating with the country and the world, no small gift.

With polls showing that 90% of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, Obama is harvesting justified anger at the failures of President Bush. But now his all-too-effective indictment of the Bush record is of no further use. Come tomorrow, it would be the Obama record that counts.

He has advanced proposals that stretch from the conduct of two wars to energy independence to universal health coverage to an overhaul of the tax code that shifts breaks from the wealthy to those at the bottom and in the middle.

Each has merits and demerits, but collectively they represent an agenda devised under very different circumstances.

Substantial adjustments will be necessary.

If Obama is elected, he must apply clear-eyed pragmatism to pressing issues that demand action. Promises that have been overtaken by new realities must give way to results-oriented governing. Political dogma must bow to the truth that ideology will not spur job creation or stabilize housing prices.

There is a world of difference, for example, in marching through Iowa and New Hampshire as an armchair general and serving as commander in chief. There is no position on this planet in which facts matter more.

Obama's vow to bring combat troops home from Iraq within 16 months is, in the most favorable light, a best guess at a plan - utterly divorced from the strategic analysis that produced the troop surge he opposed.

Starting tomorrow, best guesses will not suffice, nor will holding to a timetable that risks a rise in violence with the consequences of empowering Iran to meddle in Iraq's internal affairs, alienating Sunni-led countries of the Mideast and undermining America's credibility in Afghanistan.

A President Obama will have to keep combat forces in Iraq until the Iraqis are fully prepared to stand on their own.

Similarly, Obama's signature plan for the home front - tax cuts for 95% of families - is about to crash into a recession and a deficit that has grown from huge to astronomical. The plan can't survive the concussions.

The revenue gained from rescinding Bush's excessive breaks for the wealthy would be better spent on infrastructure projects, like mass transit, that stimulate the economy than on benefits for those in the lowest brackets. And raising capital-gains taxes now would impede recovery, nowhere more so than in New York.

In sum, as we said in endorsing him two weeks ago, Obama will need wisdom and flexibility to repair a damaged economy, restore faith in government and return competence to the White House.

While winding down the war in Iraq, developing strategies for Afghanistan and preventing a recurrence of terror.

But there are good grounds to believe that the hopes of millions of Americans have not been misplaced in rallying to the flag of a man likely to break a racial barrier that most expected to last for generations more.

Obama is a person of high intellect and political perception. He would not be approaching the pinnacle of power with but 12 years in government under his belt without these qualities.

He has shown the sense to assemble smart advisers - of which he will need more - and he appears to have the even greater sense to take their counsel. And, of top importance, he has promised to return bipartisanship to Washington.

So, let us make history today.

Let us vote for Barack Obama.

Sarah Palin implies Democrats like terrorists

2008-11-04T11:09:00.000+11:00

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Stumping in bellwether Missouri on Monday, Sarah Palin implied that a vote for Barack Obama would support terrorists.

What a desperate and reprehensible ploy.

“Do they think that terrorists have all of a sudden become the good guys?” she said in Jefferson City, according to CNN.

Palin continued: "No, the terrorists still seek to destroy America and her allies and all that it is that we stand for: freedom, tolerance, equality. The terrorists have not changed their minds.”

Obama's grandmother dies of cancer in Hawaii

2008-11-04T09:57:00.000+11:00

Obama with his maternal grandparents
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's grandmother died of cancer, he said in a statement on Monday, a little more than a week after he interrupted the White House campaign to say goodbye to her in Hawaii.

"It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer," Obama said in a joint statement with his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. "She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength and humility."

Dunham, 86, helped raise Obama from the age of 10 while his mother was working in Indonesia, and Obama took an emotional 22-hour trip to Hawaii to visit her on October 23 and 24.

Obama said afterward his grandmother had been flooded with cards, flowers and well-wishes from around the country, and he regularly thanked crowds at his campaign rallies for their prayers.

"Our family wants to thank all of those who sent flowers, cards, well-wishes and prayers during this difficult time," the statement said.

"It brought our grandmother and us great comfort. Our grandmother was a private woman, and we will respect her wish for a small private ceremony to be held at a later date," the statement said.

Dunham had followed Obama's presidential bid with great interest, and her death comes one day before U.S. voters will render their verdict in the race between Obama and Republican John McCain.

Obama affectionately called her "Toot" -- short for "tutu," the Hawaiian word for grandmother -- and frequently spoke of her on the campaign trail.

Dunham had recently broken her hip but the campaign had refused to comment on reports she was suffering from cancer.

A Vote for McCain is a Vote for Palin

2008-11-03T16:15:00.000+11:00

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Most people chosen to run and serve as Vice President cannot expect to be the next President in the succeeding election. Even in the corporate world, a long-serving VP cannot think for one moment that she is next in line for the highest position in the company.

The U.S. Vice-President is simply that – to take over in case the President is incapacitated, dies or cannot further serve.

Sarah Palin as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate is a very different political animal.

It would seem that voting for John McCain this Tuesday is voting for Palin in 2012.

Of course, there is no absolute certainty of this happening. But the great likelihood of this should send shivers or at least create some hesitation in voters.

Assuming McCain wins, to believe that Palin will sit idly by and perform traditional vice presidential functions of supporting the President in a wait-and-see attitude is naïve.

Palin will most likely promote herself as the next Commander in Chief, especially if McCain fumbles. She is using this election, win or lose, as an ultimate play for an even greater election in the coming years.

Women voters who might have felt disenfranchised or betrayed when the Democrats chose Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton may have initially jumped with joy when a woman was tasked to run for Vice President. As a class they may have felt elated, justified and vindicated that a lady governor was picked by McCain to run by his side. This was the trick in the McCain’s sleeve to woe Hillary Democrats.

The truth is that Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton – not by a very long mile.

To say that, if one can’t vote for Hillary because the Democrats chose Obama, then just vote for McCain since Palin is his VP pick, is totally absurd. Clinton is in a league of her own; Palin is an untested, media-dodging and seemingly vindictive political leader from the isolated state of Alaska.

It cannot be denied that when Palin hit the political scene two months ago, Hillary loyalists were presented with an amazing opportunity. To dramatize their point that Hillary should have been chosen by the party over Obama, they could side with McCain since he chose a female running mate. This is what McCain had been hoping for. The choice of Palin indeed brought a sense of uneasiness in the Obama political camp.

But after the political dust had settled, Hillary loyalists didn’t see much of Clinton in Palin.

She wasn’t the exact opposite but there were many issues on which they strongly differed. Sure, they’re both women but the comparison seems to end there. Palin was seen as ultra-conservative, a fanatic gun supporter, and with a drill-baby-drill philosophy. She’s starkly different from Hillary in terms of attitude, political experience, and fundamental beliefs.

In the weeks that followed her grand entry into mainstream politics, media cut Palin down and exposed her for who she truly is. From the tall image she initially projected as a reformer, foe of the status quo and independent-minded maverick, she was trimmed down to size. Media exposed her flaws, her vindictive side in the Troopergate scandal, her being an anti-maverick, and recently her wardrobe affairs.

It seems that being the “hottest governor from the coldest state” wasn’t good enough. In the Katie Couric interview she was discovered to be unprepared, unfit and uneducated about foreign policy and world affairs. In two other interviews she appeared strong on energy and on children with disabilities, but weak on other important topics like the economy and Wall Street meltdown, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Twice in a row, she misrepresented the official duties of the Vice President. She has been caught exaggerating claims on Obama such as his alleged “palling around with terrorists” and mouthing rhetoric without factual or substantial basis. She was found by the Alaska legislature to have dealt an unethical hand in the firing of the State Trooper. She was a prior supporter of the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ before it became the object of a national lampoon, and is convinced that drilling Alaska's protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil is a great idea.

Palin is now both media’s darling and its favorite castaway. She successfully used the media by to launch her as a future Presidential prospect; it was also media that exposed her lack of experience and vulnerability. Tina Fey can make a good living impersonating her every week and talk show hosts can make constant headlines by interviewing her on important political matters that she hardly knows about.

Media made her an overnight star; the same media is trying to undo her now. That may be difficult. She can use the spotlight and celebrity glow she has attained anytime, anywhere. If Obama wins this Tuesday, perhaps media can cast her away and treat her as a one-hit wonder. But the star power she has initially drawn may still turn some heads.

There’s an age factor to consider when voting for McCain. At 72 he will be the oldest American to be sworn in as President if he wins. Assuming he is able to finish a four-year term given his health and ripe age, it’s possible that he will either not run for reelection in 2012 or the Republican Party might anoint Palin as the party’s standard bearer.

That’s a frightening possibility.

There’s a rumor in the media that the McCain and Palin camps are arguing and blaming each other. McCain’s camp, it is said, has tried to mold and manage Palin to make her more appealing to the voters and help the Republican ticket. Palin’s camp has argued that she was mismanaged, quartered off from the media, and pigeonholed. McCain’s camp denies this, saying that it’s hard to oversee a candidate clearly unprepared for the White House, who acts like a diva to boot.

Whatever the truth, there’s friction within the Republican Party today. If McCain wins, there would even be more friction in the White House. McCain is the strong, domineering type of leader who tells people what to do. Palin is the free-spirited youthful voice whose exuberance and smile always catch attention. She is also someone who can’t be told to just sit down and listen. She is indubitably ambitious and is ably making her own play for a future election.

Given the friction in the last few days to election, it would be an all-out war from 2009 until 2012 between McCain and Palin if the Republicans win. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Palin seeks the party’s nomination in 2012. And it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if the Republicans handily give her that nomination, whether McCain is still strong, polls well, or wants to run for a second term.

Thus, a vote for McCain now is a vote for Palin in 2012. Given how media was able to expose her for what she truly represents, Republican diehards and McCain enthusiasts, even Hillary Democrats, should think long and hard before Tuesday’s election where a lot is at stake.

War Monger Dick Cheney Endorses John McCain and Sarah Palin

2008-11-03T12:42:00.004+11:00

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Barack Obama Congratulates John McCain
on Cheney's Endorsement of McCain and Palin

Dick Cheney flew to his home state, Wyoming, to speak at the Laramie rally in support of the Republican ticket.

Dick Cheney told a rally in Laramie on Saturday:

"He's a man who has looked into the face of evil and not flinched, he's a man who is comfortable with responsibility, and has been since he joined the armed forces at the age of 17.
He has earned our support and confidence, and the time is now to make him commander in chief.

I'm pleased that he has chosen a running mate (Sarah Palin) with executive talent, toughness and common sense."

The endorsement may help McCain among loyal Republicans, but not with Americans disenchanted with the Bush-Cheney administration, or among independents angry over the stewardship of the past eight years.

McCain has been at pains to distance himself from the administration, pointedly saying in the final presidential debate that he was not Bush.

Obama's team, whose campaign theme is that McCain would represent a continuation of the Bush-Cheney administration, put out an ad within 90 minutes of Cheney's endorsement, as well as placing a clip of Cheney's speech on YouTube. The 30-second ad says:

"Barack Obama. Endorsed by Warren Buffett and Colin Powell. And John McCain's latest endorsement?"

Cheney had announced his endorsement for McCain before, but, like Bush, had been largely absent from the campaign trail during the past two months. His decision to participate in the Laramie rally at the weekend was prompted partly by a desire to speak on behalf of Republican congressional candidates and to deliver what amounted to an emotional look back on his career. He will retire from politics on inauguration day, January 20.

The Triumph of Ignorance: How Morons Succeed in U.S. Politics

2008-11-02T18:15:00.000+11:00

Read here article by George Monbiot or here

by

George Monbiot

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books Heat: how to stop the planet burning; The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain; as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man’s Land. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper.

He has held visiting fellowships or professorships at the universities of Oxford (environmental policy), Bristol (philosophy), Keele (politics), Oxford Brookes (planning) and East London (environmental science). He has honorary doctorates from the University of St Andrews and the University of Essex and an Honorary Fellowship from Cardiff University. In 1995 Nelson Mandela presented him with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement. He has also won the Lloyds National Screenwriting Prize for his screenplay The Norwegian, a Sony Award for radio production, the Sir Peter Kent Award and the OneWorld National Press Award.

McCain Supporter REFUSES Halloween
Treats To Kids Supporting Obama

How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind’s closest living relative to spend two terms as president?

How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are?

How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama is a Muslim and a terrorist? (1)

Like most people on this side of the Atlantic I have spent my adult life mystified by American politics. The US has the world’s best universities and attracts the world’s finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.

There have been exceptions over the past century: Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy and Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived; but Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as members of a cerebral elite (as if this were not a qualification for the presidency).

Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan’s response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter - stumbling a little, using long words - carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said “there you go again” (2). His own health programme would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks.

It wasn’t always like this. The founding fathers of the republic - men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton - were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W Bush and Sarah Palin?

On one level this is easy to answer. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people.

US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth:

one adult in five believes the sun revolves around the earth;
only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection;
two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map;
two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government;
the maths skills of 15 year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD (3).

But this merely extends the mystery:

How did so many US citizens become so dumb, and so suspicious of intelligence?

Susan Jacoby’s book The Age of American Unreason provides the fullest explanation I have read so far. She shows that the degradation of US politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies.

One theme is both familiar and clear: RELIGION - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you STUPID.

The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing. Jacoby shows that there was once a certain logic to its anti-rationalism.

During the first few decades after the publication of The Origin of Species, for example, Americans had good reason to reject the theory of natural selection and to treat public intellectuals with suspicion. From the beginning, Darwin’s theory was mixed up in the US with the brutal philosophy - now known as Social Darwinism - of the British writer Herbert Spencer. Spencer’s doctrine, promoted in the popular press with the help of funding from Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Thomas Edison, suggested that millionaires stood at the top of a scala natura established by evolution. By preventing unfit people from being weeded out, government intervention weakened the nation. Gross economic inequalities were both justifiable and necessary (4).

Darwinism, in other words, became indistinguishable to the public from the most bestial form of laissez-faire economics. Many Christians responded with revulsion. It is profoundly ironic that the doctrine rejected a century ago by such prominent fundamentalists as William Jennings Bryan is now central to the economic thinking of the Christian right. Modern fundamentalists reject the science of Darwinian evolution and accept the pseudoscience of Social Darwinism.

But there were other, more powerful, reasons for the intellectual isolation of the fundamentalists. The US is peculiar in devolving the control of education to local authorities. Teaching in the southern states was dominated by the views of an ignorant aristocracy of planters, and a great educational gulf opened up. “In the South”, Jacoby writes, “what can only be described as an intellectual blockade was imposed in order to keep out any ideas that might threaten the social order.” (5)

The Southern Baptist Convention, now the biggest Protestant denomination in the US, was to slavery and segregation what the Dutch Reformed Church was to apartheid in South Africa. It has done more than any other force to keep the South stupid. In the 1960s it tried to stave off desegregation by establishing a system of private Christian schools and universities. A student can now progress from kindergarten to a higher degree without any exposure to secular teaching. Southern Baptist beliefs pass intact through the public school system as well. A survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that one in four of the state’s public school biology teachers believed that humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time(6).

This tragedy has been assisted by the American fetishisation of self-education. Though he greatly regretted his lack of formal teaching, Abraham Lincoln’s career is repeatedly cited as evidence that good education, provided by the state, is unnecessary: all that is required to succeed is determination and rugged individualism. This might have served people well when genuine self-education movements, like the one built around the Little Blue Books in the first half of the 20th century, were in vogue. In the age of infotainment it is a recipe for confusion.

Besides fundamentalist religion, perhaps the most potent reason why intellectuals struggle in elections is that intellectualism has been equated with subversion. The brief flirtation of some thinkers with communism a long time ago has been used to create an impression in the public mind that all intellectuals are communists.

Almost every day men like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly rage against the “liberal elites” destroying America. The spectre of pointy-headed alien subversives was crucial to the election of Reagan and Bush. A genuine intellectual elite - like the neocons (some of them former communists) surrounding Bush - has managed to pitch the political conflict as a battle between ordinary Americans and an over-educated pinko establishment. Any attempt to challenge the ideas of the rightwing elite has been successfully branded as elitism.

Obama has a good deal to offer America, but none of this will come to an end if he wins.

Until the great failures of the US education system are reversed or religious fundamentalism withers there will be political opportunities for people, like Bush and Palin, who flaunt their ignorance.

References:

1. For a staggering display of ignorance and bigotry, see HERE

2. You can see this exchange at HERE

3. All these facts are contained in Susan Jacoby, 2008. The Age of American Unreason: dumbing down and the future of democracy. Old Street Publishing, London.

4. Susan Jacoby, ibid. Chapter 3.

5. Susan Jacoby, ibid. Page 57.

6. Susan Jacoby, ibid. Page 25.

An Interview with General Colin Powell

2008-11-02T15:35:00.002+11:00

Associate Editor of Jamaican Gleaner News, Byron Buckley last week interviewed former United States (US) Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has Jamaican roots, about his views on the US presidential election.

Barack Obama has commander-in-chief quality, says Powell

Read here
by

Byron Buckley

To what extent is your endorsement of presidential candidate Barack Obama likely to encourage active military personnel or veterans to vote for him?

Because I was a soldier, military personnel and veterans will take my view into account, but I find that so many of our soldiers now are exceptionally well informed through the Internet and television that they can make informed judgements. I hope they will look at my judgement and compare it to the judgement of others and make an informed choice. I cannot tell you how many people I may have influenced or caused to move in the other direction, but I am confident that our soldiers are dedicated citizens and they will examine both candidates and make an informed judgement.

How do you respond to the view that your endorsement of Senator Obama has shored up his image as commander-in-chief while undercutting that image of your Republican and military colleague John McCain?

I don't think I have undercut John McCain, who, as I said, is a distinguished American individual in both war and peace. He certainly is qualified to be commander-in-chief, so I don't think I have undercut that. But, at the same time, I think my endorsement of Senator Obama says that I believe he has demonstrated in this campaign that he understands the issues that we face and he brings the leadership and organisational abilities that one needs to be a good commander-in-chief. If you look at the campaign that he has run, it has been almost perfect, and it has been run almost like a military operation. So, I believe he has the leadership and management skills as well as the substance and the style, frankly, to be a good commander-in-chief and a good leader of foreign policy for the American people.

You opted out of running for the US presidency in the past. So, why do you think a young, black and politically inexperienced Barack Obama can now be successful in his bid to become president of the USA?

I don't know that there is any reason to compare my experience with his experience. I opted out because I did not wish to run for political office. I didn't think it was the right thing for me and I didn't have the kind of passion one needs. Now, 13 years later, a young, black man has come along, who has been passionate and who has demonstrated to the American people that he has the gifts necessary to be a successful president. Why do I think he can do it? Well look what he has done so far. He has pushed aside all his competitors to win the Democratic Party's nomination. And now as we enter into the last few days of the campaign, he is ahead in most of the polls. So, it is not so much a comparison to what I was thinking of 13 years ago, but it's the way in which he has presented himself to the American people, and he has won their support.

Now it's still a close race and we don't know who will prevail, but you have to say the American people have given Mr Obama a great deal of support and Mr McCain is receiving a great deal of support too. We will know next Tuesday which of them had the greatest support of the American people.

And so we should be very proud of what we have done in this campaign - brought along two candidates from two different parties with two philosophies, both of them as dedicated, committed Americans who will reach out to the international community, and it is now up to the American people to make their choice.

Former Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga says regardless of who assumes the US presidency, there is unlikely to be any real change in US-Jamaica relations. As a former US secretary of state, do you agree?

I agree with what my good friend Mr Seaga has said. There is no reason to believe there will be any change. We have good relations with Jamaica; we want to help Jamaica. There is a very active diaspora here in the United States, starting with me, and some of the other Jamaican Americans. There is no reason to believe that either one of the two candidates would fundamentally change the relationship we have with Jamaica.

Do you agree with Senators Obama's proposal to hold talks with Cuba's Raúl Castro without conditions?

I don't know if he has said that directly. I think what he has said is let's examine each of those situations where we haven't been talking to people. That includes places like Syria, Iran and Cuba.

Let me rephrase. Regardless of who wins, what will US-Cuba relations be like going forward?

I don't know that there is going to be significant change until there is a change in the leadership in Cuba. There are still strong political feelings in the United States about the kind of regime that Mr Castro has led for many decades. So, I would not expect a significant change until there is a change in the political leadership in Cuba.

In your view, how would an Obama or McCain victory impact race relations and immigration issues in the USA?

I think if Mr Obama wins it will be a very exciting thing here in the United States, and around the world as well, with respect to race relations. If Mr McCain wins, I know him very well, I know that his heart is in the right place and there isn't anything the slightest bit discriminatory about him. So, I think he would be a leader who would try to improve race relations as well, although clearly, Mr Obama, because he is African American, might have the most immediate effect. But things aren't going to deteriorate because Mr McCain is president; I know the man well.

With respect to immigration, I think both of them have forward-leaning policies and perspectives. America is an immigrant country; we touch every nation, every nation touches us. Immigration has kept us alive and well and inspiring over these many years. We have a problem right now, that in the aftermath of 9/11, the American people wanted to make sure our borders were secure. So, we spend a lot of time on increasing the strength of the border along our southern boundary; and we have done a lot of things with respect to visas and access to the country, because the American people wanted to make sure that they were being protected, which is the first responsibility of a government.

But at the same time, we have to encourage immigration. We have to encourage people to come to the United States, and we have to do something about all of those individuals in the United States who are undocumented, mostly Mexicans. As they are contributing to our economy we have to find a way to regularise them; in other words, bring them out of this undocumented status to some kind of documented status, even though they may have to be penalised in some way for being undocumented, but let's bring them out. That was the position of President Bush, but the political difficulties that came into play after 9/11 made it hard to pursue that goal, and I hope that either Mr McCain or Mr Obama would pursue that goal. Senator McCain has been very strong on this issue in previous years.

Which of the two candidates' economic policies do you believe will get America through this current financial crisis faster?

It's hard to say right now because I don't know what our economic situation would be like on January 20 next year. Things are moving so rapidly and changing right now, with the actions of the current administration and the actions of our Federal Reserve banks and (Treasury Secretary Henry) Paulson, that I would really have to demure and say we have a president now and we will have to see where the country is on January 21 to see which of the economic policies (of Obama or McCain) are most useful. However, I am more inclined to the economic policies of Senator Obama.

Which of the two candidates' policies do you think is more realistic in addressing the war on terror being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan?

With respect to Iraq, the policy is norma-lising. The Iraqis have said that they are increasingly capable of handling security and they are going through their political reconciliation. And so it is the Iraqis who are setting timelines as to when we should leave. I think that whoever becomes president will be faced with the need to continue the troop drawdown because the Iraqis have indicated they wish the drawdown to continue.

The challenge is going to be in Afghanistan. I think both candidates realise that is going to be the major theatre of action and they will have to figure out whether more troops should be added, and if so, how many, what we should do about the drug problem in Afghanistan and how to shore up the government so it does a better job.

Do you think it is fair for Obama's opponents to use his relations with Rev Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers against him on the campaign trail?

This is politics and people always try to use these kinds of arguments. I think they are flawed arguments, both Jeremiah Wright and Mr Ayers. But politics isn't always fair. I just don't think these tactics will work on the American people. We will see on Tuesday whether I am right or whether I am wrong.

Sarah Palin Duped by Prank Call: How Could She and her Aides be So Naive and Stupid!!!

2008-11-02T15:23:00.001+11:00

Read here

By CHARMAINE NORONHA

TORONTO (AP) — Sarah Palin unwittingly took a prank call Saturday from a Canadian comedian posing as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and telling her she would make a good president someday.

"Maybe in eight years," replies a laughing Palin.

The Republican vice presidential nominee discusses politics, the perils of hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney, and Sarkozy's "beautiful wife," in a recording of the six-minute call released Saturday and set to air Monday on a Quebec radio station.

Palin campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt confirmed she had received the prank call.

"Governor Palin was mildly amused to learn that she had joined the ranks of heads of state, including President Sarkozy and other celebrities, in being targeted by these pranksters. C'est la vie," she said.

The call was made by a well-known Montreal comedy duo Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel. Known as the Masked Avengers, the two are notorious for prank calls to celebrities and heads of state.

Audette, posing as Sarkozy, speaks in an exaggerated French accent and drops ample hints that the conversation is a joke. But Palin seemingly does NOT pick up on them.

He tells Palin one of his favorite pastimes is hunting, also a passion of the 44-year-old Alaska governor.

"I just love killing those animals. Mmm, mmm, take away life, that is so fun," the fake Sarkozy says.

He proposes they go hunting together by helicopter, something he says he has never done.

"Well, I think we could have a lot of fun together while we're getting work done," Palin counters. "We can kill two birds with one stone that way."

The comedian jokes that they shouldn't bring Cheney along on the hunt, referring to the 2006 incident in which the vice-president shot and injured a friend while hunting quail.

"I'll be a careful shot," responds Palin.

Playing off the governor's much-mocked comment in an early television interview that she had insights into foreign policy because "you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska," the caller tells her: "You know we have a lot in common also, because ... from my house I can see Belgium."

She replies: "Well, see, we're right next door to different countries that we all need to be working with, yes."

When Audette refers to Canadian singer Steph Carse as Canada's prime minister, Palin replies: "Well, he's doing fine and yeah, when you come into a position underestimated it gives you an opportunity to prove the pundits and the critics wrong. You work that much harder."

Canada's prime minister is Stephen Harper.

Palin praises Sarkozy throughout the call and also mentions his wife Carla Bruni, a model-turned-songwriter.

"You know, I look forward to working with you and getting to meet you personally and your beautiful wife," Palin says. "Oh my goodness, you've added a lot of energy to your country with that beautiful family of yours."

The Sarkozy impersonator tells Palin his wife is "so hot in bed" and then informs her that Bruni has written a song for her about Joe the Plumber entitled "Du rouge a levres sur une cochonne" — which translates as "Lipstick on a Pig."

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama derided his Republican challenger John McCain's call for change in Washington as "lipstick on a pig," days after Palin made a lipstick joke at the Republican convention. The McCain-Palin campaign then released an ad implying Obama was calling Palin a pig with that remark.

The caller asks Palin if Joe the Plumber is her husband and adds: "We have the equivalent of Joe the Plumber in France. It's called Marcel, the guy with bread under his armpit."

He also tells the Alaska governor that he loved the "documentary" made about her and referred to a pornographic film with a Palin look-alike made by Hustler founder Larry Flynt.

She answers tentatively, "Ohh, good, thank you, yes."

The callers then reveal the prank and identify themselves and their radio station.

"Ohhh, have we been pranked?" Palin asks before handing the phone to an aide who ends the call.

Obama's campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs, commenting on the prank, said: "I'm glad we check out our calls before we hand the phone to Barack Obama."

John McCain Made Himself a Question Mark

2008-11-02T13:28:00.000+11:00

Read here

Who's The Question Mark?

By

MAUREEN DOWD

In the final moments of the most gripping campaign in modern history, John McCain is still trying to costume Barack Obama as a dangerous enigma.

But, in an odd and remarkable reversal, it is McCain who is the enigma, even though he entered the race with one of the best brands in American politics.

And it is Obama, who sashayed onto the trail two years ago as an aloof and exotic mystery man with a slim record and a strange name, now coming across as the steadier brand.

The McCain campaign specializes in erratica, while the Obama campaign continues to avoid any dramatica.

McCain pals around with Joe the Plumber and leaves Tito the Builder to Sarah Palin, exactly the kind of inane campaign silliness that the McCain formerly known as Maverick would have mocked mercilessly.

He’s getting a little traction on taxes, as he latches on to every possible scary image about Obama — except the suggestion that the Democrat’s gray Hart Schaffner Marx suits are red.

Before he was bubbled by Bushies, McCain was one of the most known and knowable quantities in American politics. For most of his long public career, he prided himself on his openness with the press — he even allowed some reporters to watch the results of January’s New Hampshire primary in his hotel suite in Nashua. He relished spending all day being challenged by voters and reporters.

Last summer, tapped out and unable to afford a paid staff of political professionals, he talked freely, telling reporters he would have a White House that would be the polar opposite of the secretive and dismissive Bush-Cheney operation.

He imagined weekly press conferences and talked of subjecting himself to a version of British question time in Congress. While acknowledging he was a tech tyro, he promised to try “a Google,” as he called searching the Web, to put government spending online so citizens could bird-dog it.

He even went so far as to spin a dream of a West Wing in which he would cut back on his Secret Service so he wouldn’t feel so constrained.

In the end, “The Bullet,” or “Sarge,” as McCain calls his replacement campaign manager Steve Schmidt, was the one who did the shackling, turning the vibrant and respected McCain into a shell of his former self.

Schmidt abruptly cut off the oxygen supply to McCain’s brain.

No more of the oldest established, permanent floating crap game of press confabs. No more audiences that weren’t vetted for friendliness. No more of McCain’s trademark insouciant mocking the process even as he participated in it.

Whether it was the five years he spent in a hole in Hanoi or just his gregarious makeup, McCain seemed to feed off of the company of people who interested him, be it reporters, voters or the pols in his posse, like Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham.

Unlike Obama, He Who Walks Alone, McCain always rejected the solitary in favor of the social. But ever since Sergeant Schmidt put Captain McCain into a sterile brig on the trail, the candidate has become a question mark.

Why would he repeat that oblivious line about the fundamentals of the economy being strong, saying it once in August and again in September?
Why would he threaten to not show up for a debate (after denouncing Obama for not rising to the challenge of joint town halls) so that he could go to Washington and play the shining knight if he had no plan and no prospect for success?
Why did he allow his campaign to become a host body for a Bush virus looking for someplace to infect? After working so hard to erase the image of what Senate aides called “the Bush hug,” McCain inexplicably hugged Bushies, surrounding himself with mercenaries trained in the same Rovian tactics that tore up his family — and tore apart his campaign — in 2000.
Why did a politician who once knew how to play the game so well, who was once so beloved by people of very different political stripes, allow his campaign to get whiny, angry, vengeful and bitter?
Why Palin? (Her latest instant classics came Friday, when she entered a rally in York, Pa., to the tune of “Thriller” and when a conservative radio station broadcast an interview in which she accused reporters of threatening her First Amendment rights by attacking her for negative campaigning that she feels justifiably calls out Obama “on his associations.”)
Why did he allow his staff to put Palin on a couture catwalk in a tin-cup economy and then, when the price tags were exposed, trash her as a “diva” and “whack job,” thus becoming the rare Republican campaign devoured by Democratic-style vicious infighting?

The ultimate riddle is this:

Why doesn’t McCain question why he has become a question mark?

Republican Rule Is Dangerous and Authoritarian

2008-11-02T01:56:00.002+11:00

Read here

by

John Dean

Republicans rule, rather than govern, when they are in power by imposing their authoritarian conservative philosophy on everyone, as their answer for everything. This works for them because their interest is in power, and in what it can do for those who think as they do.

Ruling, of course, must be distinguished from governing, which is a more nuanced process that entails give-and-take and the kind of compromises that are often necessary to find a consensus and solutions that will best serve the interests of all Americans.

Republicans' authoritarian rule can also be characterized by its striking incivility and intolerance toward those who do not view the world as Republicans do. Their insufferable attitude is not dangerous in itself, but it is employed to accomplish what they want, which it to take care of themselves and those who work to keep them in power.

Authoritarian conservatives are primarily anti-government, except where they believe the government can be useful to impose moral or social order (for example, with respect to matters like abortion, prayer in schools, or prohibiting sexually-explicit information from public view). Similarly, Republicans' limited-government attitude does not apply regarding national security, where they feel there can never be too much government activity - nor are the rights and liberties of individuals respected when national security is involved. Authoritarian Republicans do oppose the government interfering with markets and the economy, however -- and generally oppose the government's doing anything to help anyone they feel should be able to help themselves.

In my book Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches, I set forth the facts regarding the consequences of the Republicans' controlling government for too many years. No Republican -- nor anyone else, for that matter -- has refuted these facts, and for good reason: They are irrefutable.

The McCain/Palin Ticket Perfectly Fits the Authoritarian Conservative Mold

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican candidates, have shown themselves to be unapologetic and archetypical authoritarian conservatives. Indeed, their campaign has warmed the hearts of fellow authoritarians, who applaud them for their negativity, nastiness, and dishonest ploys and only criticize them for not offering more of the same.

The McCain/Palin campaign has assumed a typical authoritarian posture: The candidates provide no true, specific proposals to address America's needs. Rather, they simply ask voters to "trust us" and suggest that their opponents - Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden - are not "real Americans" like McCain, Palin, and the voters they are seeking to court.

Accordingly, McCain and Plain have called Obama "a socialist," "a redistributionist," "a Marxist," and "a communist" - without a shred of evidence to support their name-calling, for these terms are pejorative, rather than in any manner descriptive. This is the way authoritarian leaders operate.

In my book Conservatives Without Conscience, I set forth the traits of authoritarian leaders and followers, which have been distilled from a half-century of empirical research, during which thousands of people have voluntarily been interviewed by social scientists.

The touch points in these somewhat-overlapping lists of character traits provide a clear picture of the characters of both John McCain and Sarah Palin.

McCain, especially, fits perfectly as an authoritarian leader. Such leaders possess most, if not all, of these traits:

* dominating

* opposes equality

* desirous of personal power

* amoral

* intimidating and bullying

* faintly hedonistic

* vengeful

* pitiless

* exploitive

* manipulative

* dishonest

* cheats to win

* highly prejudiced (racist, sexist, homophobic)

* mean-spirited

* militant

* nationalistic

* tells others what they want to hear

* takes advantage of "suckers"

* specializes in creating false images to sell self

* may or may not be religious

* usually politically and economically conservative/Republican

Incidentally, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney also can be described by these well-defined and typical traits -- which is why a McCain presidency is so likely to be nearly identical to a Bush presidency.

Clearly, Sarah Palin also has some qualities typical of authoritarian leaders, not to mention almost all of the traits found among authoritarian followers. Specifically, such followers can be described as follows:

* submissive to authority

* aggressive on behalf of authority

* highly conventional in their behavior

* highly religious

* possessing moderate to little education

* trusting of untrustworthy authorities

* prejudiced (particularly against homosexuals and followers of religions other than their own)

* mean-spirited

* narrow-minded

* intolerant

* bullying

* zealous

* dogmatic

* uncritical toward chosen authority

* hypocritical

* inconsistent and contradictory

* prone to panic easily

* highly self-righteous

* moralistic

* strict disciplinarians

* severely punitive

* demanding loyalty and returning it

* possessing little self-awareness

* usually politically and economically conservative/Republican

The leading authority on right-wing authoritarianism, a man who devoted his career to developing hard empirical data about these people and their beliefs, is Robert Altemeyer. Altemeyer, a social scientist based in Canada, flushed out these typical character traits in decades of testing.

Altemeyer believes about 25 percent of the adult population in the United States is solidly authoritarian (with that group mostly composed of followers, and a small percentage of potential leaders). It is in these ranks of some 70 million that we find the core of the McCain/Palin supporters. They are people who are, in Altemeyer's words, are "so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds."

The Problem with Electing Authoritarian Conservatives

What is wrong with being an authoritarian conservative?

Well, if you want to take the country where they do, nothing. "They would march America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had improved as a result,"

Altemeyer told me. "The problem is that these authoritarian followers are much more active than the rest of the country. They have the mentality of 'old-time religion' on a crusade, and they generously give money, time and effort to the cause. They proselytize; they lick stamps; they put pressure on loved ones; and they revel in being loyal to a cohesive group of like thinkers. And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going to go away."

I would nominate McCain's "Joe the Plumber" as a new poster-boy of the authoritarian followers. He is a believer, and he has signed on. On November 4, 2008, we will learn how many more Americans will join the ranks of the authoritarians.

Frankly, the fact that the pre-election polls are close - after eight years of authoritarian leadership from Bush and Cheney, and given its disastrous results -- shows that many Americans either do not realize where a McCain/Palin presidency might take us, or they are happy to go there.

Frankly, it scares the hell out of me, for there is only one way to deal with these conservative zealots: Keep them out of power.

This election should be a slam dunk for Barack Obama, who has run a masterful campaign. It was no small undertaking winning the nomination from Hillary Clinton, and in doing so, he has shown without any doubt (in my mind anyway) that he is not only qualified to be president, but that he might be a once-in-a-lifetime leader who can forever change the nation and the world for the better.

If Obama is rejected on November 4th for another authoritarian conservative like McCain, I must ask if Americans are sufficiently intelligent to competently govern themselves. I can understand authoritarian conservatives voting for McCain, for they know no better.

It is well-understood that most everyone votes with his or her heart, not his or her head. Polls show that 81 percent of Americans "feel" (in their hearts and their heads) that our country is going the wrong way.

How could anyone with such thoughts and feelings vote for more authoritarian conservatism, which has done so much to take the nation in the wrong direction?

We will all find out on (or about) November 5th.

Khalidi: The Republicans' Latest Smear Against Obama

2008-11-01T22:48:00.000+11:00

Read here article by Stephen Zune
Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and Middle East editor of Foreign Policy in Focus. He is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism

The smear campaign by John McCain, Sarah Palin and their supporters reached a new low this past week with their attacks on Democratic nominee Barack Obama for his former ties with Palestinian American scholar Rashid Khalidi.

This is just one of a series of desperate guilt-by-association tactics by the Republicans to make the staunchly pro-Israel Obama appear to be anti-Israel and may be designed less to harm the Democratic nominee's chances of election as to limit politically his options for addressing urgent matters of Israeli-Palestinian peace upon becoming president.

Unlike education professor and former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, Obama and Khalidi and their wives actually did have a social relationship back when they both taught at the University of Chicago and their kids attended the same lab school.

It is ironic that Khalidi -- a U.S.-born graduate of Yale and Oxford who formerly served as president of the Middle East Studies Association -- has become the focal point of these attacks, however.

Indeed, the political orientation of this highly regarded scholar, who currently has an endowed chair at Columbia University, has been absurdly mischaracterized.

Curiously, however, neither Obama nor his campaign has been willing to come to his defense.

Slandering a Noted Scholar

Both McCain and Palin have referred to Khalidi as a former "spokesman" for the Palestine Liberation Organization, citing his time in Beirut during the late 1970s and early 1980s when the then-exiled PLO was based there and some of its armed factions were still engaged in terrorism.

Khalidi was NEVER a spokesman for the organization, however, instead serving during that period as a fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies and as a professor at the American University in Beirut. (I first met Khalidi in the Lebanese capital back in 1981 and recall him as someone who clearly embraced an independent and moderate nationalist perspective.)

Later, he served in an advisory capacity for the non-PLO Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid peace talks.

Campaigning on Wednesday, Palin referred to Khalidi as "another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years." Fox News and scores of other pro-Republican news outlets have similarly accused Khalidi of being an "extremist" and a "supporter of terrorism."

In reality, rather than allying himself with anti-Israeli extremists, Khalidi is far more closely identified with Palestinian moderates and the Israeli peace camp. For example, he serves on the national advisory committee of the U.S. Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East, a highly regarded interfaith group advocating dialogue, education and peace advocacy.

Furthermore, while recognizing the international legal right for a people to resist uniformed foreign occupation forces, Khalidi has opposed terrorism and has explicitly stated that killing Israeli civilians is a "war crime" and "a violation of international law."

The apparent source of many of these misrepresentations of Khalidi come from a 2004 Washington Times article written by Asaf Romirowsky and by Jonathan Calt Harris of the right-wing Middle East Forum, which falsely accused Khalidi of "shilling for terrorists."

In addition, despite Khalidi's well-known criticism of former Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, the article was headlined "Arafat Minion as Professor." Neither the mainstream media nor the Obama campaign have bothered to cite Harris' notorious history of demonstrably false reporting and mischaracterizations of Khalidi and other Middle East scholars who have dared question Bush administration policy in the Middle East. (That same year, Harris wrote a widely circulated article for the National Review Online -- another source of a series false claims against Khalidi -- in which he manufactured an anti-Semitic remark that he claimed I had made as a speaker on a panel at the National Press Club in Washington sponsored by the American Committee on Jerusalem, a group for which Khalidi once served as president. Fortunately, the event was taped, so I succeeded in getting NRO to drop the fabricated quote from the article when I threatened legal action.)

Unfortunately, the Obama campaign has yet to defend Khalidi from any of the demonstrably false mischaracterizations of Khalidi's political positions, simply claiming that Obama "does not share Khalidi's views."

For example, when McCain demanded that the Los Angeles Times release a tape -- which it received on the condition that it not be made public -- of a social event Obama attended in honor of Khalidi, McCain declared, "If there was a tape of John McCain in a neo-Nazi outfit, I think the treatment of the issue would be slightly different." Regretfully, the Obama campaign has yet to challenge the Republican nominee's unconscionable comparison of this respected Arab American scholar to neo-Nazis.

Indeed, instead of coming to Khalidi's defense against these and other racist and transparently false attacks against him, the Obama campaign has instead launched a counterattack, pointing out that the International Republican Institute, a government-funded foundation nominally headed by McCain, funded a project founded by Khalidi known as the Center for Palestine Research and Studies.

The IRI has provided more than $800,000 to the group, which engages in polling and other survey research on Palestinian sociopolitical attitudes. It is unclear, however, what the Democrats find so objectionable about the center's work.

Both campaigns, then, are effectively buying into this myth that there are these far left academics who are unduly influencing our policy makers and/or squandering our tax dollars. In doing so, both McCain and Obama are thereby contributing to the growing anti-intellectualism and ongoing threats to academic freedom in this country.Read here for more

THE "PALIN EFFECT" CONTINUES TO DIVE AND DIVIDE

2008-11-01T16:26:00.000+11:00

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An increasing number of Americans have concluded that Senator John McCain´s running mate, Governor Sarah Palin is not knowledgeable enough nor qualified to be a US vice president and she has continued to bring down the GOP´s effort over the final weeks and days of the campaign.

This has once again been confirmed by the latest opinion poll of CBS and the New York Times.

Based on this latest poll, 59 percent of voters surveyed have said Ms. Palin was not even remotely qualified or capable of being the President of the United States if something were to happen to a sitting President McCain. This is a 9% increase since a poll taken on October 1st.

The person that saved McCain´s "bacon" at the Republican Convention, and that put his campaign in the lead, just prior to the financial debacle of the mortgage bankers and Wall Street, is now back to an even worse position than where they were prior to their convention.

As of today, nearly 1/3rd of the polled voters stated that for the first time, the vice-presidential selection would be a major factor in their determination of who they would vote for next Tuesday. Senator Barack Obama was by far the favorite for those that felt that Governor Palin was way out of her league as the GOP candidate for vice president.

Some of the comments about Governor Palin during a number of recent polls have been very telling with regards to how Ms. Palin is negatively regarded by many potential voters from both parties.

Some of those comments included:

>>> "Palin´s pitiful performance on even her staged ´softball interviews´ was embarrassing to all Americans. Apparently, John McCain, for his choice for a VP candidate, once again went to the craps table and threw the dice for the big one, just based on his gut. Is that how he would act when making his decisions as an American president?"

>>> "It´s one thing to make an occasional ´slip-of-the-tongue´, but for Sarah Palin to ´blow-it´ time after time and still be running is totally bizarre.

>>> "This woman calls Obama a "socialist", while she is the one that took the money from the oil companies and then divided it amongst the citizens of Alaska. That´s much more "socialistic" than Obama´s plan to cut the tax on wealthy people and to give the middle class a tax break."

>>> "If the governor is so capable and qualified as is stated by Senator McCain, why can´t reporters talk to her without his presences or ask her questions like any other candidate. She´s being programmed, scheduled and protected all the way to election day. Now just why is that?"

>>> "Does Sarah Palin have any answers beyond repeating the memorized Republican talking points? She really does sound like the bimbo teen beauty contestant that was on YouTube some months ago."

>>> "It is frightening to think that she could be in the #2 position behind a 72 year old cancer survivor. What was McCain thinking?"

>>> "I can see why a wealthy Republican Senator might pick someone with a background like Governor Palin. She came from a small Alaskan town and worked herself up to being the state's governor. Unfortunately, she´s not qualified to run the county, and then they went out and bought over $100,000 worth of clothes and jewelry which took away her ´I´m just an ordinary American woman´ status. Now how stupid is that?"

>>> "My God, first it´s a ditz like Sarah Palin, then we´re given ´Joe-the-Plumber´. Fortunately the election is next week.

And just look at Joe. He doesn´t even have a license or a certificate as a real plumber. He did not have any money, and he was not really trying to buy the company he was working for, as he had said he was. He even still owes back taxes to the state.

Now Joe´s gone out and gotten a real publicist/PR representative, he´s looking for a book deal and he also wants to do a country and western album. On top of it all, any real ´Joe-the-Plumber´ would do much better under the Obama´s tax plan than the McCain plan. You can´t make-up stuff like this."

There is now no doubt that the choice of Ms. Palin has hurt McCain´s campaign and his so called "maverick" image. The polled voters have said that after McCain chose Governor Palin, they had much more confidence in Barack Obama to pick qualified people for his administration than they did in John McCain.

The following are the conclusions according to the New York Times/CBS poll:

>>> Obama is maintaining his lead, with 51 percent of likely voters supporting him and 40 percent supporting McCain in a head-to-head matchup.

>>> Some perceptions of race are changing, with a marked increase in the number of people who say they believe that white and black people have an equal chance of getting ahead in America today.

>>> Eighty-nine percent of people view the economy negatively, and 85 percent think the country is on the wrong track.

>>> Obama continues to have a significant advantage on key issues like the economy, health care and the war in Iraq.

The survey found that opinions of Obama and McCain had hardened considerably, as 9 out of 10 voters who said they had settled on a candidate said their minds were made up, and a growing number of them called it "extremely important" that their candidate win the election.

Roughly half of each candidate´s supporters said they were "scared" of what the other candidate would do if elected. Just 4 percent of voters were undecided, and when they were pressed to say whom they leaned toward, the shape of the race remained essentially the same.

Bolstered by the fiscal crisis and deep concerns about the direction of the country, Obama has seemed to solidify the support he has gained in recent months.

When likely voters were asked whom they would vote for in an expanded field that included several third-party candidates, Obama got the support of 52 percent of them, McCain 39 percent, Bob Barr 1 percent, and Ralph Nader 2 percent.

The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Saturday through Wednesday with 1,439 adults nationwide, including 1,308 registered voters. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

The poll was conducted as a wide range of state polls have shown Obama, of Illinois, ahead or tied in several crucial contested states, including some traditionally Republican states that McCain, of Arizona, must carry to win the election.

With just days until Americans choose a new president, the survey found them deeply uneasy about the state of their country. Eight-five percent of respondents said the country was pretty seriously off on the wrong track, near the record high recorded earlier this month. A majority said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. And President Bush´s approval rating remains at 22 percent, tied for the lowest presidential approval rating on record (which was President Harry S. Truman´s rating, recorded by the Gallup Poll in 1952).

McCain´s renewed efforts to cast himself as the candidate of change have apparently faltered. Sixty-four percent of voters polled said Obama would bring about real change if elected, while only 39 percent said McCain would. And despite McCain´s increased efforts to distance himself from President Bush, a majority still said he would generally continue Bush´s policies.

Dixie Cromwell, a 36-year-old cosmetologist from Shelby, N.C., who is a Republican, said in a follow-up interview that she had already voted for Mr. Obama.

"I generally vote Republican, but this year I voted Democrat," she said. "I just don´t feel we can go through any more of the same old thing that we´ve been going through with the Republican Party."

Obama´s policies were seen as much more likely to improve the economy, provide health insurance to more people, and scale back military involvement in Iraq than McCain´s were. But McCain enjoyed an advantage when it came to questions about which candidate would make a better commander in chief: 47 percent of voters said McCain was very likely to be an effective commander in chief, compared with 33 percent who said Obama would be.

While a majority viewed Governor Palin as unqualified for the vice presidency, roughly three-quarters of voters saw Obama´s running mate, Senator Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, as qualified for the job.

The increase in the number of voters who said Palin was not prepared was driven almost entirely by Republicans and independents.

Over all, views of Governor Palin were apparently shaped more by ideology and party than by gender. Palin was viewed as unprepared for the job by about 6 in 10 men and women alike. But 8 in 10 Democrats viewed her as unprepared, as well as more than 6 in 10 independents and 3 in 10 Republicans.

Sarah Silverman: THE SCHLEP - Appeal to Jewish Grandparents for Obama

2008-11-01T12:28:00.000+11:00

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SARAH SILVERMAN:
The Great Schlep

READ HERE COMPARING MCCAIN VS OBAMA

Why is Obama winning? Just ask the pie man

2008-11-01T11:52:00.000+11:00

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By

Chris Stephen

THERE are many complex reasons why Barack Obama is expected to win the US presidency next Tuesday – and one very simple one.

He expounded on it at a campaign rally a couple of weeks ago, telling his characteristically exuberant audience that he had stopped at a pie shop the day before and met the owner who told him he would vote Republican. "I said, 'Fine. How's business?'"

Nothing more was said, because nothing more needed to be said.

The audience, recognising that Mr Obama had, in a very simple way, highlighted the perilous state of the economy, burst into a noise somewhere between laughter and howling.

Looking back, you can see a pattern in the behaviour of both Mr Obama and John McCain when that first $700 billion bank bail-out was proposed in September. Mr McCain's reaction was to announce he was suspending his campaign, would not make that Friday's presidential debate and was flying to Washington to push it through Congress.

His rival was, meanwhile, cool and collected, refusing even to comment on the plan because "I haven't read it".

Hours later, the bail-out plan failed, Mr McCain looked ridiculous, and tried to save face by un-suspending his campaign to scuttle back to the scheduled debate, where he lost on points to a better-prepared Mr Obama.

If the Democrat has looked cool, and his Republican opponent flustered, ever since, then you can thank the meltdown.

For this is no ordinary recession, but rather a crisis of confidence in the very idea of capitalism. Until approximately six and a half weeks ago, Americans lived and breathed the mantra that the market was always right. Not any more. From Wall Street to Main Street, Adam Smith is suddenly dead. And Mr McCain, once a champion of deregulation, is left looking stupid.

Until shortly before the meltdown, and indeed ever since he nominated Sarah Palin as his running mate, Mr McCain had had a modest lead.

But that evaporated with the banking crisis. Mr Obama, has seen his ratings rise incrementally, and remorselessly, driven on by a five-million strong army of backers whose $20 internet contributions will net him at least $700 million, more than the combined spending of both sides in the 2004 election – Mr McCain, thanks to his decision to opt for public financing, has a budget of only $84 million.

That great iconoclastic journalist Hunter S Thompson once observed, reviewing the chaos of Watergate, that Americans had decided it was no longer cool not to care about politics. The same mood has infected the nation now.

With ordinary Americans caught in the vice of job cuts, falling house prices and rising medical insurance bills, there is simply too much at stake not to care. Television ratings for campaign speeches are at record levels. TV channels have, for the first time in history, run out of advertising slots to offer the candidates – in the past month, Mr McCain has screened 60,000 adverts across America's maze of TV stations, and Mr Obama an astonishing 145,000.

Even states that are considered "safe" – such as Texas and Tennessee for the Republicans, California and New York for the Democrats – are hives of activity. Each weekend, convoys of cars head into neighbouring battleground states, carrying squadrons of Republican evangelicals to do battle with the million-strong Democrat grass-roots organisation Moveon.org.

Young Jewish Democrats in New York are "schlepping out the vote" – speed dialling retired relatives in Florida and urging them to "Barack your world".

Meanwhile, right-wing talk radio stations have gone into overdrive, issuing dire warnings of holy apocalypse and End of Days should Mr Obama attain power.

Perhaps the best summation of the election among the tens of thousands bouncing around the internet is a cartoon depicting the candidates as railway engines: Mr Obama is a silver bullet train, fast, cool and maybe a little too slick; his sidekick, Joe Biden, is a big trusty diesel; Mr McCain, the oldest first-time candidate in US history, is a rattling old steam locomotive, while Sarah Palin is a toy train – and one that has jumped its plastic tracks.

Pity John McCain: try as he may to cast himself as a "maverick", the fact is he is a Republican trying to play follow-on to the most inept, bungling president the US has seen since Nixon.

While his nemesis moves seamlessly along gleaming rails, following a campaign plan that is said to have been crafted two years ago, Mr McCain stumbles from one blunder to the next.

The fault is to be found amid the demoralisation of a Republican Party that once stood for fiscal discipline and competence but has been knocked sideways by the failures of Iraq and Hurricane Katrina, to say nothing of the banking crisis. One result is that Karl Rove, the arch priest of electioneering who oversaw Mr Bush's two victories, was considered too toxic to pilot Mr McCain's bid. Instead, the Arizona senator turned to a group of former lobbyists who have proved inept, even at the dark art of negative campaigning.

Taking their advice, Mr McCain has concentrated on trying to undermine Mr Obama by highlighting his links to dodgy financier Tony Rezko, former urban terrorist Bill Ayers, wacky priest Jeremiah Wright and, most recently, PLO-supporting professor Rashid Khalidi. But in each case, the connection proved too tangential to stick, leaving Mr McCain with egg on his face.

And then there is Sarah Palin. To his credit, Mr McCain's original plan was to pick a centrist running mate, such as Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge, to appeal to swing voters. But the Republican evangelists, the only part of the party not demoralised by the Bush years, vetoed that, so Mr McCain went to the right with Ms Palin and her "God, guns and anti-abortion" trinity. Yes, she has galvanised the conservative wing of his party but, as Mr McCain must know, they were planning to vote Republican anyway.

Ms Palin's abject failure to learn her lines saw her ratings dip, and her fall from grace was accelerated by revelations party aides splashed out an incredible $150,000 for her clothes, including campaign-friendly romper suits for her baby.

Going into the final week of campaigning, Mr McCain tried to stabilise things by accusing his rival of planning to raise taxes. But thanks to Mr Obama's advertising blitz, most Americans know he wants to raise taxes only for the wealthy. The press is full of reports of how, in the Bush years, regular Americans' income has fallen by 1 per cent, while the top 10 per cent have seen theirs rise by 32 per cent.

Then came the death blow – leaks from the McCain camp of rows and splits between him and Ms Palin, the latter described by one adviser as a "diva" more interested in positioning herself for a future career as a chat-show host than helping her boss win the White House.

"To win an election campaign, a candidate needs the three Ms – message, momentum and money. And in each category, it's a slam dunk for Obama."says Democratic expert Phil Noble.

Philip Klein of the American Spectator is more charitable: "Considering the obstacles, it's a tribute to McCain that he's still in touch in the race."

Yet this is a race Mr McCain seems destined to lose. Each day this week, the maps on the websites of CNN and the New York Times have plotted a growing sea of blue, as state after state, including some notable Republican strongholds, turns blue.

To win, he now needs a "game changer" to hammer Mr Obama in the Democrats' heartlands. And so far, he has failed to find an effective response to that simple Obama refrain: "How's business?"

The expert's insight: Obama and Kennedy are kindred spirits

by

William McPherson - Pulitzer-prize winning author

THE last time America saw someone like Barack Obama was with Jack Kennedy.

I remember it was the same kind of movement. Like Mr Obama, Kennedy was young, and was running against someone old – well, Richard Nixon was not that old, but he seemed old.

Kennedy drew the same kind of crowds, and they had the same kind of enthusiasm. Like Mr Obama he was very self-assured, without being the least bit arrogant, he was witty and intelligent, and he had charm. And Mr Obama, like Kennedy, looks like a man in control.

Which came first, the situation or Mr Obama? Its one of those chicken-and-egg things. The country was obviously ready for a change – we've got two awful wars and now the economy is in meltdown – and Mr Obama has become the avatar of that change.

You need to remember that he has been campaigning now for nearly two years and the situation is working to his advantage. As to what kind of a president he will make, who can say?

President Kennedy took a lot of criticism early on for the Bay of Pigs, the failed CIA invasion of Cuba in April 1961, but he gained stature with his handling of the Cuban missile crisis late in 1962.

Kennedy had this quality which was that people liked him, they looked up to him, they respected him, and Mr Obama has that same quality.

The insider's view: 'The mood's electric, but nervous electric'

by

Phil Noble founder, Politics Online consultancy, South Carolina

I noticed the new mood among the Democrats last week. I was to give a speech at an Obama support event in Charleston, and when I got on stage I noticed that all the speakers were white, but the audience was mostly black. I turned to the organiser, who was African American, and said 'Kerry, all the speakers are white.' He smiled and said 'that don't matter no more, we got the top guy'.

That's the mood we have down here. It's electric. But it's nervous electric. The Democrats have won only three of the last ten presidential elections. The party has been scared, we've been so close so many times, there's no complacency.

From my own point of view, having worked on dozens of election campaigns, I can't see any way for Obama to lose, short of an Act of God or invasion from outer space. To win an election campaign a candidate needs the three Ms – Message, Momentum and Money, and in each category it's a slam dunk for Obama.

What is different this time is this: Over the years, over and over again, we've said of our election candidate, 'well, he's the best we can do, he's a bum but he's our bum'. It was that way with Kerry, it was that way with Gore, Dukakis. Clinton was better, but even with him everyone understood that he was a flawed vessel, with all the stories of the bimbos and the women. This time we have a genuinely inspiring candidate. From my perspective Obama's the whole deal.

Sarah Palin: John McCain's Curse on the Republican party

2008-11-01T01:39:00.000+11:00

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John McCain appears to be headed for a defeat, with only a residual hope of a re-run of the great Dewey versus Truman upset in 1948 to sustain him.

But in his reckless choice of running mate he has ensured that attempts to rebuild the Republican party in the event of defeat will be hampered by the soaring ambitions and dead weight of Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin has done more for Barack Obama than John McCain

Palin is making it clear that she is not going to go away if McCain loses and it is clear she will try to run in 2012 for the nomination.

That is a calamity for her party.

She has proved herself in recent months not fit to be Vice President, never mind President, confusing stubbornness with principles .

Palin appears to have a very limited capacity for growth or even basic understanding on economic or foreign policy.

But she has become talismanic for the portion of the Republican right which is gearing itself up to suggest that a vast liberal conspiracy, involving the media and what she might refer to stupidly as the anti-American parts of America, has somehow imposed a government of occupation headed by Barack Obama.

She is likely to be the figurehead of that faction, whether a great many people find her ridiculous or not. That will make it even more difficult for the Republicans to set about rebuilding an electoral coalition, involving centrist and independent voters, as she will be off-putting to the people the party needs to persuade.

Yes, Bush and Karl Rove motivated the base brilliantly but they piled other kinds of voters on top of it too.

The Republicans seem on the verge, if McCain loses, of making the classic mistake made by losing parties down the ages: they head for the comfort zone of the so-called core vote and old tunes that only a large minority enjoy. It is never enough.

Bill Clinton understood that the Democrats had made just that mistake since the tail-end of the 1960s and campaigned and governed accordingly.

Palin-style politics doesn't work but if he loses, it is John McCain's last gift to his party.

PS
Even worse is thought that if McCain pulls off a win he will have Palin at his shoulder.

In that event, the world had simply best hope we do not wake one awful morning to discover that McCain did not.

His slipping away would leave us with the horror of a President Palin.

Fact Check: Saah Palin's Alaska Spreads its Wealth

2008-11-01T00:25:00.000+11:00

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Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin summon antidemocratic images of a communist state to attack Democrat Barack Obama's tax plan and his comment about spreading the wealth around.

But in her home state, Palin embraces Alaska's own version of doing just that.

Palin and McCain seized on a comment Obama made to Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher, who asked about his tax plans.

Obama wants to raise taxes on families earning $250,000 to pay for cutting taxes for the 95 percent of workers and their families making less than $200,000. "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," he told Wurzelbacher.

McCain said that sounds "a lot like socialism" to many Americans. Palin has derided the Illinois senator as "Barack the Wealth Spreader."

But in Alaska, Palin is the envy of governors nationwide for the annual checks the state doles out to nearly every resident, dividends from the state's investment of its oil royalties.

She raised taxes on oil last year which, along with escalating oil prices, helped her to boost the checks this year.

McCain campaign spokesman Taylor Griffin said Thursday that spreading wealth through Obama's tax plan and doing it through Alaska's oil-profit distribution are not comparable because Alaska requires the state's resource wealth to be shared with residents, but it's not taxing personal income.

"It's how the revenue is shared between the oil companies and the state."

Alaska's state revenue Commissioner Pat Galvin added, "It's not a matter of taking something that's earned by someone and giving it to someone else."

A look at Palin's and McCain's comments and the record in Alaska:

THE SPIN:

"Barack Obama calls it spreading the wealth. Joe Biden calls higher taxes patriotic," Palin told a crowd in Roswell, N.M., and elsewhere. "But Joe the Plumber and Ed the Dairyman, I believe they think it sounds more like socialism. Friends, now is no time to experiment with socialism."
In Ohio, she asked, "Are there any Joe the Plumbers in the house?" To cheers, she said, "It doesn't sound like you're supporting Barack the Wealth Spreader."

McCain told a radio audience that Obama's plan "would convert the IRS into a giant welfare agency, redistributing massive amounts of wealth at the direction of politicians in Washington."

"Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it's just another government giveaway."

THE FACTS:

In Alaska, residents pay NO income tax or state sales tax.

They receive a yearly dividend check from a $30 billion state investment account built largely from royalties on its oil.

Palin raised taxes on big oil last year. With oil prices soaring this year, she was able to increase the checks by $1,200 to help residents hit by higher home fuel and gas costs. Thus every eligible man, woman and child got a record $3,269 this fall.

She also suspended the 8-cent tax on gas.

"We can afford to share resource wealth with Alaskans and to temporarily suspend the state fuel tax," she said at the time.

Much as Obama explains his tax hike on the rich as a way to help people who are struggling, Palin's statement talked about the energy costs burdening Alaskans:

"While the unique fiscal circumstances the state finds itself in at the end of this fiscal year warrant a special one-time payment to share some of the state's wealth, the payment comes at a time when Alaskans are facing rising energy prices. High prices for oil are a double-edged sword for Alaskans. While public coffers fill, prices for heating fuel and gasoline have skyrocketed over the last six months and are now running into the $5-to $9-a-gallon range for heating fuel and gasoline across several areas of the state."

In an interview with The New Yorker last summer Palin explained that she would make demands of a new gas pipeline "to maximize benefits for Alaskans":

"And Alaska we're set up, unlike other states in the union, where it's collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we SHARE in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs."

John McCain's Chances Destroyed by Sarah Palin Selection as Vice President Candidate

2008-10-31T22:29:00.000+11:00

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A growing number of voters have concluded that Senator John McCain's running mate, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, is NOT qualified to be vice president, weighing down the Republican ticket in the last days of the campaign, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

All told, 59 percent of voters surveyed said Palin was not prepared for the job, up nine percentage points since the beginning of the month.

Nearly a third of voters polled said the vice-presidential selection would be a major factor influencing their vote for president, and those voters broadly favor Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee.

And in a possible indication that the choice of Palin has hurt McCain's image, voters said they had much more confidence in Obama to pick qualified people for his administration than they did in McCain.

After nearly two years of campaigning, a pair of hotly contested nominating battles, a series of debates and an avalanche of advertisements, the nationwide poll found the contours of the race hardening in the last days before the election on Tuesday.

Twelve percent of the voters surveyed said they had already voted. These were among the findings:

* Some perceptions of race are changing, with a marked increase in the number of people who say they believe that white and black people have an equal chance of getting ahead in America today.

* McCain's focus on taxes, including his talk about Joe the Plumber, seems to be having some effect, as a growing number of voters now say McCain would not raise their taxes.

* Eighty-nine percent of people view the economy negatively, and 85 percent think the country is on the wrong track.

* Obama continues to have a significant advantage on key issues like the economy, health care and the war in Iraq.

The survey found that opinions of Obama and McCain had hardened considerably, as 9 out of 10 voters who said they had settled on a candidate said their minds were made up, and a growing number of them called it "extremely important" that their candidate win the election. Roughly half of each candidate's supporters said they were "scared" of what the other candidate would do if elected. Just 4 percent of voters were undecided, and when they were pressed to say whom they leaned toward, the shape of the race remained essentially the same.

Bolstered by the fiscal crisis and deep concerns about the direction of the country, Obama has seemed to solidify the support he has gained in recent months. When likely voters were asked whom they would vote for in an expanded field that included several third-party candidates, Obama got the support of 52 percent of them, McCain 39 percent, Bob Barr 1 percent, and Ralph Nader 2 percent.

The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Saturday through Wednesday with 1,439 adults nationwide, including 1,308 registered voters. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

The poll was conducted as a wide range of state polls have shown Obama, of Illinois, ahead or tied in several crucial contested states, including some traditionally Republican states that McCain, of Arizona, must carry to win the election.

The survey suggested that Obama's candidacy — if elected, he would be the first black president — has changed some perceptions of race in America. Nearly two-thirds of those polled said whites and blacks have an equal chance of getting ahead in today's society, up from the half who said they thought so in July. And while 14 percent still said most people they knew would not vote for a black presidential candidate, the number has dropped considerably since the campaign began.

McCain's heavy focus on taxes in the final weeks of the campaign seems to be having some effect, the poll found. Forty-seven percent of voters said McCain would not raise taxes on people like them, up from just 38 percent who said so two weeks ago. (And 50 percent said they thought Obama would raise taxes on people like them, while 44 percent said he would not; both numbers are similar to two weeks ago.)

With just days until Americans choose a new president, the survey found them deeply uneasy about the state of their country. Eight-five percent of respondents said the country was pretty seriously off on the wrong track, near the record high recorded earlier this month. A majority said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. And President George W. Bush's approval rating remains at 22 percent, tied for the lowest presidential approval rating on record (which was President Harry S. Truman's rating, recorded by the Gallup Poll in 1952).

McCain's renewed efforts to cast himself as the candidate of change have apparently faltered. Sixty-four percent of voters polled said Obama would bring about real change if elected, while only 39 percent said McCain would. And despite McCain's increased efforts to distance himself from Bush, a majority still said he would generally continue Bush's policies.

Dixie Cromwell, a 36-year-old cosmetologist from Shelby, North Carolina, who is a Republican, said in a follow-up interview that she had already voted for Obama.

"I generally vote Republican, but this year I voted Democrat," she said. "I just don't feel we can go through any more of the same old thing that we've been going through with the Republican Party."

Obama's policies were seen as much more likely to improve the economy, provide health insurance to more people, and scale back military involvement in Iraq than McCain's were. But McCain enjoyed an advantage when it came to questions about which candidate would make a better commander in chief: 47 percent of voters said McCain was very likely to be an effective commander in chief, compared with 33 percent who said Obama would be.

While a majority viewed Palin as unqualified for the vice presidency, roughly three-quarters of voters saw Obama's running mate, Senator Joseph Biden Jr. of Delaware, as qualified for the job.

The increase in the number of voters who said Palin was not prepared was driven almost entirely by Republicans and independents.

Over all, views of Palin were apparently shaped more by ideology and party than by gender.

Palin was viewed as unprepared for the job by about 6 in 10 men and women alike.

But 8 in 10 Democrats viewed her as unprepared, as well as more than 6 in 10 independents and 3 in 10 Republicans.

Don't cha know Sarah Palin is annoyin'

2008-10-31T16:20:00.000+11:00

Read here article by Karen Swain

It seems as though this election frenzy is centered around vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
From the Saturday Night Live clips of Tina Fey's impersonations and the Katie Couric interview, it was hard to tell the difference between the comedy and a legitimate interview. Was it all a joke or is Palin seriously stupid?

As a feminist, I have a good idea why Sarah Palin was chosen as John McCain's vice presidential pick. Was it the fact that she was a former beauty pagaent contestant and runner up?

Perhaps her beauty will make up for her lack of experience in the realms of foreign policy and economic theory. A recent poll showed her popularity among male voters and one cannot help but question if her looks have gotten her this far.

I think the answer relies on the fact that McCain believes women in this country are ignorant enough to vote for an obviously incompetent candidate simply because she is a woman.

As a feminist, political science major, and a person who takes the time to research the issues, I find this offensive. After watching her Katie Couric interview, I found it comical that she didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was.

I learned about the Bush Doctrine here at Chabot in my international relations course.

To know that our possible future vice president doesn't know what I learned at community college, is frightening.

According to the latest poll, Sen. John McCain's attempt to appeal to women voters has backfired in his face. A recent poll showed women falling out of favor with McCain 7 percent and Barack Obama comfortably ahead with a 10 percent lead in many battleground states.

McCain's attempt to appeal to disgruntled Hillary Clinton voters is a complete failure.

To compare Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton is ridiculous. Palin represents the anti-Hillary and stands against everything Hillary worked for as a First Lady and senator.

Palin was a governor of Alaska for less than two years and mayor of Wasilla, the meth capital of Alaska. With 41 meth labs found in a single year, I believe her record is nothing to be proud of.

As governor, she also allowed rape victims in Alaska to pay for the forensic analysis of the crime and rape kits which can cost thousands of dollars.

Is she a champion of woman's rights? I think not, in fact she doesn't take any stances on woman's health issues and concerns whereas Senator Barack Obama has enough respect for women in this country to take a stance on woman's issues.

If it weren't for liberal women, Sarah Palin would not have the right to vote, let alone run for vice president.

It was progressively minded women who fought for the women's suffrage movement.

Perhaps Palin should take the time to actually pick up a history book and learn about the history of women in this country.

While she is at it, she should Google "Bush Doctrine." "maverick," and 'idiot.'

Editorial: The Standard Endorses Obama

2008-10-31T14:08:00.001+11:00

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The world stands on the threshold of an historic change as the people of the United States elect a new President in a few days. Tuesday’s election, as this paper pointed out when Democrat Barack Obama secured his party’s nomination, is a major opportunity for change in America’s engagement with the world.

Whether Obama or his main rival, Republican John McCain, triumphs, we and much of the world will be hoping for a departure from the policies of George W Bush to what we called "a more thoughtful superpower, less infatuated with its military might and open to diplomacy’s potential to bring about change".

As many citizens of the world will attest, their countries have experienced from America "the example of its power", to use the words of former US President Bill Clinton.

The Middle East, no doubt, provides the most illuminating signpost of the failures of the Bush administration and its "first-strike doctrine".

The question that lingers, and what the Bush successor shall be compelled to answer, is whether the world is safer than the American President found it. Bush’s eight-year reign ends in domestic failure, epitomised in an economic meltdown that threatens to subsume world economies. That, too, will take years to fix.

The world’s excitement over the US election is further informed by its elevated status as the only superpower - the "indispensable nation". Whether America has displayed its might with responsibility is a question that elicits much debate.

One other factor has the world hypnotised by the US race - the presence of an unusual candidate who reflects America’s broad heritage and has demonstrated passion, thoughtful calm and grace under pressure.

Barack Obama, who traces his roots to this country, briefly lived in Indonesia and was raised in Hawaii, represents the best of America and its values. As US newspaper editors endorsing his candidacy have agreed: "He is no lone rider. He is a consensus builder, a leader."

In the country’s sometimes painful history, an empire built on slave labour, its complicated legacy of racism has placed barriers that have proved insurmountable for some. On that account Obama’s presidential run is a milestone in history, a huge first step, according to some, towards the "end of racism."

It has been a long journey and, from those familiar with his story, a hard road to travel, for his track was paved with gravel.

It’s a major source of joy for many African-Americans who reckon that Obama’s personal feat is a culmination of a long process, going generations back, reaping from the labours of committed activists in the civil rights movement. Obama’s eloquence is often equated with that of Martin Luther King, Jnr, who was felled by an assassin’s bullet in 1968. Others see him as the reincarnation of former US President John F Kennedy, who was similarly assassinated in 1963.

That some elements in the American society have been exposed plotting to kill Obama on account of race, call to mind the prophecy of African-American author and thinker WEB Dubois who predicted that the problem of the 20th century would be race. The bright side of this is that Obama’s presidency, if it does materialise, would change race relations significantly. Beyond quashing Afro-pessimism, the hackneyed thesis that presents Africa as a backward, hopeless continent, it would inspire humanity to confirm skin colour has nothing to do with ability.

Fittingly, Obama’s rallying call is hope. Our endorsement of Obama for President, which we present unequivocally, is because we believe he is the right man for the job.

In these troubled times of America’s diminished influence over the world, he presents the best chance to fix the mess that the US has put itself, and in turn, the world.

His character and temperament in the gruelling campaigns have impressed all. As for the ideas and values he articulates, we are proud to have heard first-hand of his support for Press freedoms when he visited the Standard Group’s offices in 2006, not long after an illegal police raid.

Obama’s complex heritage offers him a perspective bereft of the baggage that has burdened and blighted his opponent’s campaign.

Judging from the way he has run for office, Obama has displayed the knowledge and the wisdom that would avert many worries for the world, the sort that Bush has plunged it into.

The Iraq debacle, preceded by the one in Afghanistan, convey the senseless plunder that has made the world poorer, indelibly scarred and increasingly dangerous. Its legacy is a loss in the trust in the US to act responsibly in global affairs.

With uncertainty and crisis spreading across the globe, the return of an America more tolerant and respectful of the international community is keenly awaited. The American people deserve some relief as do the rest of the world.

Still, the most abiding motif that Obama would represent is encapsulated in the Latin expression: ‘Ex Africa semper aliquid novi!’ which means, ‘something new always comes out of Africa’.

President of Penn State University SNUBBED by McCain/Palin Campaign

2008-10-31T00:39:00.001+11:00

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McCain-Palin campaign official snubbed the president of Penn State University who inquired about attending a campus speech Tuesday by Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, university officials told ABCNews.com.

A McCain-Palin campaign official snubbed the president of Penn State University who inquired about attending a campus speech Tuesday by Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, university officials told ABCNews.com."He's a big Democrat. Why would he want to meet Palin?" campaign aide Russ Bermel allegedly asked a school employee who was hoping to make arrangements for president Graham B. Spanier to meet Palin, according to Spanier's office.

The McCain-Palin campaign has been working overtime to become competitive in Pennsylvania, where the Obama-Biden campaign has enjoyed a double-digit lead in the polls.

Some might say that makes it an odd time to snub the president of the state's largest university. The school enrolls 40,000 students and counts a quarter-million alumni living in Pennsylvania alone.

"I welcome eminent visitors to our campus everyday, including lots of Republicans, but [the McCain-Palin campaign] didn't want me to greet her or even attend the event," said Spanier.

Read here for more

Barack Obama's 30-minute Informercial Telecast

2008-10-30T13:05:00.000+11:00

Sarah Palin Too Ambitious for John McCain and the Republican Party's Own Good

2008-10-30T12:13:00.000+11:00

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Plenty of Republicans have already given up the ship, conducting premature post mortems and musing about 2012.

But you can generally count on the candidates themselves to put on a brave face -- at least until the polls close.

Apparently Sarah Palin didn't get that memo. She committed a cardinal political sin in an interview with ABC when she played along with questions that began with the premise "If you lose on Tuesday ..."

I generally applaud frankness from politicians. But any candidate who wants to motivate people to vote for her ticket would offer some variation of "Right now, I'm just focused on a McCain-Palin victory on Tuesday ... " and quickly shut down such loser talk. But Palin not only went along with it, she also offered up some ideas about her political future.

She declared that she would not head home to Alaska, as she still wants a spot on the national stage in 2012. "I'm NOT doing this for naught," she added.

Apparently she's not doing this to get John McCain elected, either.

The Organizational Brilliance of the Obama Campaign: Networking

2008-10-30T09:28:00.000+11:00

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With ten million early ballots already cast, the United States seems to be heading for its highest election turnout since the 1960s. If so, it will be because of unprecedented levels of enthusiasm from young people and minorities, who normally stay at home.

This is not down to chance. Headlines may have focused on Barack Obama's fundraising prowess (he has raised well over half a billion dollars), but that was part of a ground-breaking political network that defeated the mighty Clinton machine, and now looks poised to capture the White House.

Mr Obama has amassed an army of volunteers, many of whom have never before been politically active.

He has achieved this by making it easy for supporters to get involved through his http://www.my.barackobama.com website, or MyBO as it has become known. This looks and feels like Facebook, which is unsurprising as one of the social networking site's founders, Chris Hughes, is a senior Obama adviser. Once someone has logged in, they can meet supporters in their area, organise their own fundraising drive, or publish comments and suggestions. As with Facebook, users can invite friends to sign up, so recruitment for the campaign proliferates at local level. Peers recruit peers in their own language.

During the primaries, Mr Obama used a database called the Donkey (a reference to the Democratic Party's symbolic animal and also a nod to the nature of campaigning work) to manage volunteers. The system allows the campaign team to record the preferences and efforts of every regional co-ordinator, field director and individual volunteer. This was extremely effective in identifying and rewarding the most dedicated volunteers.

The first task for Mr Obama's volunteer army was to register new voters from underrepresented groups, such as under-25s or Hispanics. In Virginia - a state no Democrat has won since 1964 - Mr Obama's team vastly exceeded its target of 300,000 new registrations.

The second task is to “get out the vote”. For the past few weekends, supporters have been using sophisticated computer models to identify households where citizens are either swing voters or sporadic Democrats. On election day, national productivity will plummet as thousands of volunteers take the day off work to make sure that these people get to the polls.

This sort of campaigning can be decisive. Research by Donald Green and Alan Gerber, of Yale University, shows that face-to-face contact can increase turnout by 5 to 10 per cent.

In Woodbridge, Virginia, a town of just over 30,000 people, I was part of a small team that knocked on 100 doors and spoke to about 50 people. When we got back to the local headquarters we found that about 7,000 other doors had been knocked on in the area on that day alone. A similar effort was taking place in 40 locations across the state.

To tackle the tricky problem of locating young people who are rarely at home, Mr Obama had a couple of tricks up his sleeve. First volunteers targeted campuses, coffee shops and bars. Then in the weeks before the vice-presidential nomination, supporters were told that if they sent a text message to “Obama” (62262) they would get the news of the nomination before the media.

This appealed to the instant-gratification generation who signed up in their droves. In the end the news leaked out, but the campaign had amassed phone numbers that can be used on election day.

All this may seem daunting to British political parties. But it need not. They do not need to imagine hundreds of thousands of supporters turning up at a rally to hear Gordon Brown or David Cameron to emulate Mr Obama's successes. First, political parties have to learn to let go and follow Mr Obama's lead by trusting the YouTube generation to take control of their own role in the campaign.

Structures that require volunteers to work through local party hierarchies must be consigned to the past; young people will only get involved if they can participate in a manner of their choosing at a time that reflects the hours they keep.

Having run a top-down campaign, Hillary Clinton learnt this after her mini-revival in March and had the better of the remaining contests.

Likewise, British parties must also go beyond the traditional idea that only paid-up party members should be involved in campaigning. E-mail addresses and mobile phone numbers should be collected from all those who interact with a party. They can then be used to develop a deeper relationship with supporters, encouraging participation and activism.

The best political operatives throughout history have known that organisation is the key to power. For Mr Obama, victory in a 21st-century democracy requires a combination of technology and trust. Only by letting go will political parties achieve lasting success.

The Obama Presidency: Getting Up to Speed for the Challenges

2008-10-30T08:28:00.000+11:00

Read here in Financial Times

Washington’s best-kept secret is that Barack Obama has the largest and most disciplined presidential transition team anyone can recall. Headed by John Podesta, former chief of staff in Bill Clinton’s White House, it started work well before the financial meltdown hit in September but has been swamped by its implications ever since.

Transition insiders, who are under strict orders from the Obama campaign not to talk to the media to avoid giving the impression Mr Obama thinks he has won already, contrast it particularly with Mr Clinton’s transition in 1992, which was based in Little Rock, Arkansas, and turned into an extended symposium on every subject under the sun.

Clinton’s transition didn’t really begin until after he’d won the election,” said someone who is helping Mr Obama’s transition and worked on Mr Clinton’s. “But the scale of the challenges facing a potential Obama administration means that it is much, much more important to be prepared this time round than it would have been in 1992.”

One of Mr Obama’s main motivations is to avoid the mistakes attributed to Mr Clinton, whose first 100 days in office turned into a nightmare from which it took years to recover and which helped bring about the Republican landslide in the 1994 mid-term elections.

Mr Clinton spent his first few weeks choosing a diverse cabinet that “looked like America”, which ate up time that could have been spent deciding on legislative priorities and appointing the main White House staff who ensure an administration runs smoothly.

In contrast, Mr Obama, who would instantly be faced with questions about how and whether to interact with the global financial crisis summit that George W. Bush has convened for the week after the election, is focusing on the “nitty gritty” of how things should work, says another person involved with the transition.

The Democratic nominee has already reached an agreement with Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader, to speed up the often painstakingly slow Senate confirmation process for the hundreds of appointees who would populate an Obama administration. Many of Mr Clinton’s appointments were still to be confirmed a year after he took office.

Mr Obama has also already had conversations with “blue dog Democrats” – fiscal conservatives – about the potentially painful budgetary decisions he would have to make well before taking office on January 20.

“The level of detail that the Obama transition team is getting into is extraordinary – they are leaving no stone unturned,” said a senior former Clinton administration official who has been consulted. “I have been getting calls that you’d expect in previous transitions to get maybe in December, or never at all.”

Were he to be elected, Mr Obama would face four immediate problems of a magnitude that would put previous transition efforts into the shade. The first is when to push Congress to enact a second fiscal stimulus to shore up the economy, and whether to shoehorn Mr Obama’s promised long-term investments in healthcare, energy, education and infrastructure into that package.

In 1992, the Clinton team was consumed by a battle between Bob Reich, future Labour secretary, who argued for redeeming the campaign’s spending promises, and Bob Rubin, future Treasury secretary, who argued for deficit reduction. Mr Rubin won. A similar debate is now taking place within the large universe of Obama policy advisers. “No decisions have been taken on anything yet,” said one.

The second is how to redeem Mr Obama’s promise of a rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq. This could be complicated by the stalemate in negotiations between Baghdad and Washington over the “status of forces agreement”. Robert Gates, who many believe would be asked by Mr Obama to stay on as Pentagon chief, has sounded the alarm about the negotiations.

“President-elect Obama could be faced with a situation on New Year’s Eve where US troops are not permitted to leave their barracks because there is no legal basis for their presence in Iraq,” says Bill Galston, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, who was involved in Mr Clinton’s transition effort. “To game out all these scenarios – the financial crisis, Iraq, the fiscal stimulus, etc – will require an unprecedented degree of planning for a transition effort.”

The third and fourth decisions would be how to handle the financial meltdown and prepare the first budget, to be launched in February. With a projected budget deficit next year of $900bn, according to the transition team’s internal numbers, the Rubin-Reich battle could be replayed on a far grander scale.

“Even a few weeks ago nobody anticipated how much we would be swamped by the financial crisis,” says another insider. “It trains the mind on what our priorities should be.”

Mr Obama would be expected to announce his top three or four names, including a chief of staff, within days of being elected. “There would be no time for drift,” says Mr Galston.

The Obama Presidency: Getting Up to Speed for the Challenges

2008-10-30T08:21:00.000+11:00

Read here in Financial Times

Washington’s best-kept secret is that Barack Obama has the largest and most disciplined presidential transition team anyone can recall.

Headed by John Podesta, former chief of staff in Bill Clinton’s White House, it started work well before the financial meltdown hit in September but has been swamped by its implications ever since.

Transition insiders, who are under strict orders from the Obama campaign not to talk to the media to avoid giving the impression Mr Obama thinks he has won already, contrast it particularly with Mr Clinton’s transition in 1992, which was based in Little Rock, Arkansas, and turned into an extended symposium on every subject under the sun.

“Clinton’s transition didn’t really begin until after he’d won the election,” said someone who is helping Mr Obama’s transition and worked on Mr Clinton’s. “But the scale of the challenges facing a potential Obama administration means that it is much, much more important to be prepared this time round than it would have been in 1992.”

One of Mr Obama’s main motivations is to avoid the mistakes attributed to Mr Clinton, whose first 100 days in office turned into a nightmare from which it took years to recover and which helped bring about the Republican landslide in the 1994 mid-term elections.

Mr Clinton spent his first few weeks choosing a diverse cabinet that “looked like America”, which ate up time that could have been spent deciding on legislative priorities and appointing the main White House staff who ensure an administration runs smoothly.

In contrast, Mr Obama, who would instantly be faced with questions about how and whether to interact with the global financial crisis summit that George W. Bush has convened for the week after the election, is focusing on the “nitty gritty” of how things should work, says another person involved with the transition.

The Democratic nominee has already reached an agreement with Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader, to speed up the often painstakingly slow Senate confirmation process for the hundreds of appointees who would populate an Obama administration. Many of Mr Clinton’s appointments were still to be confirmed a year after he took office.

Mr Obama has also already had conversations with “blue dog Democrats” – fiscal conservatives – about the potentially painful budgetary decisions he would have to make well before taking office on January 20.

“The level of detail that the Obama transition team is getting into is extraordinary – they are leaving no stone unturned,” said a senior former Clinton administration official who has been consulted. “I have been getting calls that you’d expect in previous transitions to get maybe in December, or never at all.”

Were he to be elected, Mr Obama would face four immediate problems of a magnitude that would put previous transition efforts into the shade. The first is when to push Congress to enact a second fiscal stimulus to shore up the economy, and whether to shoehorn Mr Obama’s promised long-term investments in healthcare, energy, education and infrastructure into that package.

In 1992, the Clinton team was consumed by a battle between Bob Reich, future Labour secretary, who argued for redeeming the campaign’s spending promises, and Bob Rubin, future Treasury secretary, who argued for deficit reduction. Mr Rubin won. A similar debate is now taking place within the large universe of Obama policy advisers. “No decisions have been taken on anything yet,” said one.

The second is how to redeem Mr Obama’s promise of a rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq. This could be complicated by the stalemate in negotiations between Baghdad and Washington over the “status of forces agreement”. Robert Gates, who many believe would be asked by Mr Obama to stay on as Pentagon chief, has sounded the alarm about the negotiations.

“President-elect Obama could be faced with a situation on New Year’s Eve where US troops are not permitted to leave their barracks because there is no legal basis for their presence in Iraq,” says Bill Galston, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, who was involved in Mr Clinton’s transition effort. “To game out all these scenarios – the financial crisis, Iraq, the fiscal stimulus, etc – will require an unprecedented degree of planning for a transition effort.”

The third and fourth decisions would be how to handle the financial meltdown and prepare the first budget, to be launched in February. With a projected budget deficit next year of $900bn, according to the transition team’s internal numbers, the Rubin-Reich battle could be replayed on a far grander scale.

“Even a few weeks ago nobody anticipated how much we would be swamped by the financial crisis,” says another insider. “It trains the mind on what our priorities should be.”

Mr Obama would be expected to announce his top three or four names, including a chief of staff, within days of being elected. “There would be no time for drift,” says Mr Galston.

Obama Ads Question McCain's Choice of Palin

2008-10-30T01:04:00.000+11:00

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“The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should,” reads one quote, cited from a Dec. 2007 Boston Globe story. The ad then notes McCain’s comment from a Republican primary debate last November that he “might have to rely on a vice president I select” as a backstop on economic policy.

The screen then flashes to the words “His Choice?” and then cuts to a slow motion image of Palin giving her signature wink to the camera during the vice presidential debate earlier this month.
The 30-second ad will air in battleground states.

It is the first time Obama’s campaign has called into question McCain’s judgment selecting Palin as his vice president in a television ad.

As The Wall Street Journal reports today, Palin will be campaigning in Toledo, Ohio, to give a speech on energy policy.

The McCain-Palin campaign has been dogged in recent days by multiple reports of a growing rift between the staff and the running mates over the campaign’s direction, as well as pointing fingers over who is to blame for recent gaffes including Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe expenses.

Unnamed McCain advisers have referred to Palin as a “diva” to CNN and a “whack job” to Politico.

John McCain Should Save and Protect His Legacy Than to Win the Election At ALL Costs

2008-10-29T11:40:00.002+11:00

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Tension between John McCain and Sarah Palin

Speaking about the Republican campaign at a rally in Pennsylvania he said "when two mavericks join up, we don't agree on everything, but that's a lot of fun".

The presidential candidate gave one of his now trademark awkward grins as he made the remark standing in front of her at a joint appearance.

The comments followed days of proxy war carried out by aides through the media.

Accusations between McCain advisers and those close to Sarah Palin, the vice-presidential nominee, have become very heated.

A senior McCain adviser was quoted as describing Mrs Palin as "a whack job". Others called her a "diva" and complained she had been "going rogue".

Mrs Palin has made clear she believes she was the victim of a botched "roll out" plan in which the McCain campaign initially kept her cosseted from the media.

To the anger of senior McCain staff, she recently went off script to point out that she had not chosen the $150,000 (£95,000) of designer clothes.

She privately blames the Republican National Committee for damaging her down-to-earth image.

Though Mr McCain has in the past talked about their public disagreements on issues such as drilling for oil and gas in the Alaska wilderness, there was no doubting that the comments in Pennsylvania referred to damaging acrimony in the campaign.

Their disagreements have been anything but "fun" for Republicans competing for Congressional seats and looking to the presidential ticket to improve their prospects.

Many senior Republicans now fear a historic landslide by Barack Obama and have begun to adopt a strategy to limit the party's losses.

He added that the internal wrangling between the McCain and Palin camps sent "a bad message to voters" and lead to an even bigger Republican loss. "The sniping is unforgivable."

Mr Bush's legacy — unfinished wars, a tainted reputation for competence, record high spending, a global economic crisis and the effective nationalisation of the financial system — have shaken loose the ideological cement that once bound the Republican party together.

Threatened with open revolt if he picked the independent Democrat Joe Lieberman as his running-mate, Mr McCain hoped to galvanise his party by choosing Sarah Palin.

The result has been a dysfunctional campaign.

Some of his own advisers say that she is more intent on positioning herself for the next presidential race than fighting this one. Her defenders point out that it is she who pulls the crowds, not him, and suggest that Mrs Palin has been ill-served - even betrayed — by Mr McCain's team.

She is increasingly giving voice to the dissent in Republican ranks, criticising the decisions to pull the campaign out of Michigan and to avoid making racially combustible attacks on Barack Obama over his links with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

When she went to Iowa at the weekend, it may well have been significant that she hinted at support for ethanol subsidies which are opposed by Mr McCain but will put her in good stead when the state kicks off the presidential nominating process in 2012.

There is little doubt that as a populist pitbull champion of culturally conservative issues she excites core Republicans in a way that Mr McCain cannot, not least because the party has moved decisively to the Right over the past two decades. Mrs Palin is also coming to symbolise a fresh rift in the party between the base and the Establishment.

The list of Republicans backing Mr Obama includes not only centrist figures such as General Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State, but also Ken Adelman — a leading neocon who advised Donald Rumsfeld on Iraq and introduced Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, to Paul Wolfowitz, the hawkish former Deputy Defence Secretary.

Mr Adelman admits to being startled at finding himself in Democrat ranks, attributing his defection to doubts about Mr McCain's temperament and his “appalling lack of judgment” in picking Mrs Palin. He told The New Yorker magazine: “I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency.”

Christopher Buckley, whose father helped to found the modern conservative movement, has also swallowed his right-wing principles to back Mr Obama, contrasting the Democrat's “first-class intellect” with Mr McCain's decision to pluck Mrs Palin from the Alaskan wilderness. “What on Earth can he have been thinking?” he asked.

Mrs Palin promises to eschew the traditional hierachy even as she hints at having a very big part in the Republicans' future. “I would love to promote the party ideals if we're going to live out the ideals and maybe allow other American voters to understand what the principles of the party are,” she told The Weekly Standard magazine. “We've got to be assured we have enough people in the party who will live out those ideals and it's not just rhetoric. Otherwise, I'd be wasting my time.”

At one recent rally she said:

“We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, DC. We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation.”

Her problem is that with polls suggesting that North Carolina, Virginia and tracts of the Rocky Mountain West are heading into Mr Obama's columns, “real America” may no longer be big enough to elect a Republican president.

Political Halloween: McCain's message is "Be afraid of Obama. Be very afraid."

2008-10-29T00:55:00.000+11:00

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Who says John McCain doesn't have a tight campaign message?

At his rally here Monday, the message was clear and pithy:

Boo.

In three acts, McCain presented the Obama Horror Show. If Obama is elected, your taxes will go up, you'll be unsafe from foreign threats, and, especially if Congress goes Democratic, you will be forced to endure an era of unchecked liberalism.Obama aides have long argued that their candidate offers hope while McCain offers fear.

Judging by the balance of messages both candidates are giving voters before Election Day, it's hard to disagree.

The minute McCain took the stage at a high-school gymnasium in Dayton, he unspooled the chain of nightmares Obama would unleash after the inauguration.

McCain heralded "Joe the Plumber," as he has for the last two weeks, to make the case that Obama's tax policies were aimed at redistributing wealth.

He also pointed to a 2001 interview in which (so the McCain campaign says) Obama claimed one of the tragedies of the civil rights era was that it failed to redistribute wealth. "That is what change means for Barack the Redistributor," he told a crowd of about 2,000, which didn't fill the gym. "It means taking your money and giving it to someone else."

Since McCain has been labeling Obama a redistributor, it was certainly convenient that Obama used a version of that word in a sentence in an interview seven years ago.

But it's hard to see how the new attack is going to change the bleak political landscape for McCain.

One reason his attacks are not effective is that Obama's remarks are simply not very subversive.

Reading them in context, and trying to keep from napping, it's clear that when Obama talks about redistribution, he's NOT talking about taxing the rich to give handouts—as McCain would have us think.

Obama's talking about the Supreme Court's reluctance to force school districts to spend money to provide equality in schools. Later in the same interview, when Obama again discusses redistribution, he also talks about the complexities of school funding after Brown v. Board of Education.

With so little time left, McCain needs clear and effective critiques.

So far, his tax attacks have been ineffective.

Polls show that, over the last month, voters nationally and in key states like Virginia have come to trust Obama more on the question of taxes.

Making hay of a seven-year-old quote about the civil rights struggles of a previous generation is not going to change the dynamic.

In Dayton, McCain also questioned Obama's readiness to face a foreign crisis, as he did last week, and raised the specter of Democrats controlling the White House and Congress. "Can you imagine an Obama, Reid, Pelosi combination?" he said to scattered boos.

Though the central thrust of McCain's argument is about the danger of an Obama presidency, the McCain pitch is not all negative (just as Obama's "closing argument" of hope for the future uses the McCain-Bush boogeyman).

McCain makes an affirmative case for his policies—promising to cut taxes, reduce spending, and buy up mortgages to keep people in their homes.

His closing oration is a call to restore America's greatness that is generally positive. It's even rousing, especially by McCain standards. When McCain says, "I'm an American, and I choose to fight," it sparks the crowd. He's just got to hope that the mix of fight and fright does enough to help him come from behind.
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Acknowledging Obama the Grandson

2008-10-28T17:23:00.000+11:00

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by

Bob Geiger

When I heard last week that Barack Obama would be leaving the campaign trail on Thursday and Friday to visit his gravely ill grandmother in Hawaii, I have to admit that my first thoughts were not of Obama and his family, but of the political consequences of the candidate removing himself from the mix while so deep in the homestretch.

I should have thought better.

Like Obama, I was raised for much of my childhood by a strong-willed single mother and had a maternal grandmother who was also a powerful influence on my early development. I've often said that I learned more about being a man from my mother and grandmother than I ever did from any male figures in my life and I suspect Senator Obama may feel much the same way.

And as I watched Obama get back to work over the weekend and jump right back into his manic schedule of rallies and speeches, I considered how devastated I had been by my grandmother's passing when I was out at sea as a young U.S. Navy man and the deep pain and loss I experienced when I lost my mother to cancer when she was only 57 years old.

So I felt ashamed for letting political calculation be my first thoughts upon hearing that Obama was going to visit his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, on a short trip that may have been the last time he sees the woman who's been so instrumental in his life, before she passes away.

"Without going through the details too much, she's gravely ill. We weren't sure, and I'm still not sure whether she makes it to Election Day," Obama said Friday on ABC's Good Morning America when speaking of his grandmother, who turned 86 on Sunday. "We're all praying and we hope she does, but one of the things I want to make sure of is I had a chance to sit down with her and to talk to her. She's still alert and she's still got all her faculties. And I want to make sure that I don't miss that opportunity."

"She's really been one of the cornerstones of my life -- she's a remarkable woman."

Seeing interviews in which Obama has spoken movingly about his relationship with his grandmother, while also reflecting on my own background, has made me think a lot about the difficulty Obama faces in the coming days and weeks -- not as the charismatic, larger-than-life man we have watched campaign for president for almost two years, but as a human being.

No matter how long Madelyn Dunham's longevity remains in doubt, Barack Obama will ultimately experience a depth of feelings and of loss that will be unique to him and that he will have to handle during a most extraordinarily public time in his life. This intellectual dynamo that so many of us hope will become the next president will need to be temporarily far more to himself, his wife and his family than he is with us as the man on whose shoulders so many of us have placed our hopes for America's future.

He will simply be a man, mourning a deeply-personal loss right when he is hitting the zenith of his potential.

And, as one who has been there with the deaths of a mother and a grandmother so central to my life, I know that when he loses this woman -- of whom he said last week "whatever strength and discipline that I have, it comes from her" -- he will, for whatever moments he allows himself, not be the presidential candidate, the husband or even the father.

He will, in grieving such a profound personal loss, be transported back in time and will be for however many moments, a young boy remembering the encouraging words, the skinned knees fixed, the hot chocolate and cookies made and the warm embraces that helped nurture him to what he has become.

He will grieve at a time when he has so little privacy and in a large way that only he will know. And those of us who look to him for so much may be inclined to forget that as we consider the enormity of this election and the impact it will have on our lives.

"This election isn't about me, it's about you," Obama has so often said in the course of this presidential election cycle and I don't think that for one minute he expects millions of Americans to drop thoughts of the big picture and of deep concerns we each have about our country and our future.

But whenever Madelyn Dunham leaves this world, we should at least take a moment to consider Barack Obama the man -- a human being who will have just absorbed a terrible loss of a woman who he believes shares so much credit for where he is today and who he is today.

And we should give him the same privacy, sympathy and respect we would give to any relative, friend or coworker under the same circumstances.

For if we fail if only for a moment, to consider Barack Obama just one private person with hopes, fears, joy and, yes, pain and grief, we deny him his essential humanity and in doing so, lose just a bit of our own.

Bill Maher and Guests Discuss Sarah Palin

2008-10-28T11:07:00.000+11:00

BILL MAHER AND GUESTS

Related Article

Struggle for soul of Republican Party degenerates into civil war

by

RUPERT CORNWELL

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The election hasn't even been lost yet. But as John McCain slides towards likely defeat, the sniping between Republican factions has degenerated into something close to outright civil war -- one that presages a wrenching struggle for the future of the party.

In the past few days, the feuding has reached to the very top of the campaign, with the McCain camp accusing Sarah Palin, his own vice-presidential running mate, of acting like a "rogue" candidate, going her own way and defying the instructions of her boss' top advisers.

"She's a diva," one unidentified McCain aide told CNN. "She takes no advice from anyone ... she does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else."

Mutual recrimination is the norm in a losing presidential campaign, as aides position themselves for the blame game after defeat. A week before the election, the McCain campaign seems headed in that direction, trailing Barack Obama by between 7 and 10 points in most national polls, and behind in the major swing states that will decide the outcome. But the backbiting this time is of rare ferocity.

"How did we get into this mess?" Newt Gingrich, former House speaker and a driving force behind the Republican dominance for most of the past 20 years, says of the disarray. "It's not where we should be and it's not where we had to be. This was not bad luck."

For the second time this month, William Kristol, a leading voice on the party's conservative wing, used his column in The New York Times Monday to urge the struggling candidate to throw his advisers to the winds. "He might as well muzzle the campaign," Kristol wrote. Senior McCain staffers were now "spending more time criticizing one another than Obama, and more time defending their own reputations than pursuing a McCain-Palin victory."

As Kristol would be the first to admit, 2008 was never going to be easy for Republicans. To win, McCain had to unite and energies the party and, in effect, run against the Republican president of the past eight years, more unpopular over an extended period than any U.S. leader in half a century.

In some ways, the Republican predicament mirrors that of the Tories at the 1997 election -- in power for too long and exhausted of ideas. Complicating matters have been McCain's fragile relations with the social conservative Republican base, with which he has clashed frequently in the past.

Another problem has been his age. At 72, he would be the oldest incoming president in history (a factor that weighs more heavily with voters, pollsters have found, than Obama's skin color). If he loses, McCain will never run for the White House again. The leadership of the party is up for grabs -- not a situation that lends itself to harmony.

Finally, he has been unable to find a consistent message. One moment, strategists complain, he has presented himself as hero and patriot with experience, unlike his untested "celebrity" opponent. Then he metamorphosed into an agent of radical change, in improbable contrast to "insider" Obama.

Next, the man who made a virtue of playing clean politics waded in, low and dirty, against the Illinois senator. Finally, it was a ticket of "two mavericks" to overturn Washington politics. Unfortunately the mavericks -- or their teams -- are criticizing not so much Obama as each other.

The lightning rod is Palin. As initial excitement at her nomination subsided, party elders began to criticize the choice. The Alaska governor was too inexperienced, they complained, her conservative views would alienate independents. As the debacle of her interview with Katie Couric proved, McCain had blundered in picking her. To which the Palin camp responds that the McCain team made a mess of her "roll-out" and had not "let Sarah be Sarah." Now she is increasingly speaking out for herself.

Hence the whispers that she is a "rogue" candidate.

But the dispute also reflects a struggle for the future. Palin is an emblem of the social conservatives, of how that base can be mobilized to win elections, as George W. Bush did in 2004.

"She is playing for her own future," the unnamed McCain aide added, "she sees herself as the next leader of the party."

At his most effective, McCain has taken the opposite tack, as a unifier who appeals across party lines. The battle lines have been drawn.

Steven Edwards: McCain's Palin problems make Romney look better all the time

2008-10-28T09:40:00.000+11:00

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They say rats are the first to leave a sinking ship, and to that we might add a pit bull with lipstick and a $150,000 makeover.

Sarah Palin is in revolt, it’s reported, angry that John McCain’s handlers forced her to wear haute couture; that she’s not been able to be herself before the media; and that Republican campaign strategy -- like the decision to give up on Michigan -- is askew.

Party handlers have shot back, saying they didn’t hear a peep from her when she was being fitted for the designer clothes, and calling her a “diva.”

Anyone who watched Katie Couric’s interview with the vice-presidential candidate could see she had trouble thinking on her feet when confronted with such challenging questions as: “What magazines do you read?”

And while she may have a point about rolling over in Michigan, one of the states hardest hit by the economic downturn, it’s also one that George W. Bush never won, as well as being home to a large African-American population almost universally behind Barack Obama, dire economy or not.

On balance, the Alaska governor’s public performances have rendered her a greater boon to Tina Fey’s career than to McCain’s.

So how is it that Palin, perhaps better known across Canada’s North than in the Lower 48 states and Hawaii until a few weeks ago, can be so brazen as to challenge the man who rocketed her to the national scene?

It's all about the political makeover of the Republican Party’s new great hope.

For many senior Republicans, Obama appears sure to prevail Nov. 4 – and there may even be a serious increase in the Democratic majorities in Congress. Hence, with eyes already fixed on 2012, Palin needs to be distanced from the expected 2008 debacle.

Advice is already incoming: She should at all costs avoid running for Congress, writes Ron Bonjean, former communications director for House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate majority leader Trent Lott.

“If Palin ran for the Senate, she quickly becomes part of the establishment,” he says, advising her to return to Alaska where she can remain politically active as its chief executive, yet still build on her new-found fame.

He also suggests party chiefs should surround Palin with “the brightest people,” meaning they “cannot be friends or neighbours with questionable qualifications.”

In what would mark a strategic shift in the way the party promotes its 2012 candidate, Bonjean says Palin should lead a recruitment drive among people serving in local, city and state offices who could spread the “Palin Change” message across America.

As for this election, McCain’s folly at not having picked Mitt Romney as his running mate is now all too apparent as the economy dives.

The Republican presidential candidate’s turn southward in the polls mirrored the mid-September shock to the world financial markets, which propelled the economy and its future to the number one concern of U.S. voters.

McCain’s campaign could have used the benefit of Romney’s business experience and acumen to reassure a public daily bombarded with predictions the sky is falling. Indeed, but for America’s insistence on mixing church and politics, the successful investment banker and consultant -- who also saved the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City from financial ruin and ran Massachusetts as governor -- might even have been in McCain’s place as the party nominee.

Though there are no statistics to prove Romney didn’t win because, as a Mormon, he is a member of a controversial church, the fact he had to address the issue during his campaign underlines the level of concern it raised.

How ironic that the U.S. Constitution bans mixing church and state, but religious matters thread through American politics more than they do through the politics of just about any other Western country.

The need for an economic wizard on the current ticket didn’t seem pressing when McCain was casting about for a running mate just before the financial crisis burst into the open. It appeared Palin would address other shortcomings within McCain’s campaign, like the career-long centrism that has long infuriated the party’s conservative wing, allowing him to focus on his specialty: security.

While Palin is a social conservative, Romney could have filled that void. His social values are equally anchored in conservatism, and the fact he masked them to win election in the liberal bastion of Massachusetts only attests to his astuteness in knowing how to play to all constituencies.

The McCain campaign says the Arizona senator will spend the last week before the election focusing on Obama’s statement to the Ohio journeyman “Joe the Plumber” that he believes in “spreading the wealth.” A 2001 radio interview with Obama that emerged over the weekend reveals he believes the goal can be achieved legislatively. There’ll be nothing to stop him if he wins the White House with big Congressional Democratic majorities behind him.

But while McCain is right in saying it’s an inherently un-American concept that will inhibit innovation, his ticket just doesn’t have the economic credibility to make the message sufficiently register in voters’ minds before they go to the polls.

Still uppermost in the public perception is his admission that economics is not his strong point, and his recent lurching from one economic remedy to another.

Both the party base and Palin believe they've seen the writing on the wall and are already bailing.

As former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich remarked on the state of the McCain campaign: "It's not where we should be and it's not where we had to be. This was not bad luck."

White Supremacists Tried to Assassinate Obama

2008-10-28T09:23:00.001+11:00

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Law enforcement arrested two men in Tennessee who had plans to rob a gun dealer to shoot Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and "as many non-Caucasians" as possible, an official said on Monday.

An official from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said police found the men in the Jackson, Tennessee area with a number of guns, including a sawed-off shotgun, in their car.

"They wanted to go to a place where they could shoot as many non-Caucasian as they could," the official said, noting that the men first planned to rob a gun dealer. "They also had a plot to assassinate Sen. Obama."

Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, is leading Republican John McCain in opinion polls ahead of the November 4 election.

Palin's Alaskan Pal Convicted of Corruption

2008-10-28T09:19:00.000+11:00

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Sarah Palin's pal Ted Stevens has been found guilty on all seven counts of failing to report gifts on Senate forms.

Remember the story we were fed about Palin being anti-establishment and going up against her own party in Alaska?

This video shows her this summer making it very clear that she has always respected Ted Stevens, now a convicted felon.

I wonder if she'll answer questions about whether he should continue to serve in the Senate. ... It's easy to understand why she had been reluctant early on.

After all, he is the dean of the old-boys club in Alaska, and, as she has said, she has always respected him.

How to Watch Out Republican's Dirty Tricks to Steal the Election

2008-10-28T00:38:00.000+11:00

MUST WATCH VIDEO CLIP:

Bill Maher discusses with Allen Raymond
who was convicted for dirty tricks in the 2002 election

Sarah Palin: Sarah Palin: the Character Question Should Rule Her Out

2008-10-27T19:36:00.000+11:00

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by

Iain Martin

In Christine Toomey's profile of Sarah Palin there is a short passage which gets to the heart of the doubts so many have about the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate.

"There is a high body count of people who have dared to disagree with Sarah Palin, shown a reluctance to do her bidding or, in her eyes, failed to support her wholeheartedly – among them some who say they too have been hunted, carved up and cast aside along her path to power.
These people warn, as do even her closest friends and family, that in Palin’s eyes there are no grey areas, no room for doubt.
There is only right or wrong, black or white, “good or evil”.
Her father Chuck’s word for it is “stubborn”. One of her friends calls her “dogged”.
If Palin believes something to be true, it is – no amount of evidence to the contrary will sway her, and everybody else had better believe it too."

That section - "If Palin believes something to be true, it is – no amount of evidence to the contrary will sway her, and everybody else had better believe it too" - is damning.

All the evidence suggests she lacks any curiosity about ideas, others and the outside world.

In these dislocated times, of economic crisis and multiple threats on the foreign policy front, that is the LAST kind of potential leader America or the West needs.

Margaret Thatcher, to whom some Republicans want to compare Palin, was intellectually curious, otherwise she would not have made the journey from the fairly bland small c conservatism which she advocated in the 1950s, 1960s and first half of the 1970s. She was open to new thinking. She became stubborn, or too dogged, only AFTER she had turned around her country's economy and altered its standing in the world - not before.

In contrast to Palin, one of Barack Obama's most attractive traits, alongside his sense of calm, is his flexibility, his adaptability and his willingness to consider his options and learn.

That's going to be of more use in the difficult years ahead than a politician who cannot be swayed by rational arguments or evidence.

John McCain-the-Man was Smitten by Sarah Palin-the-Woman under the Sycamore Tree

2008-10-27T16:52:00.008+11:00

By

KATHLEEN PARKER

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A brilliant, 75-year-old scholar and raconteur confessed to me over wine:

“I’m sexually attracted to her (Sarah Palin). I don’t care that she knows nothing.”

Finally, writer Robert Draper closed the file on the Sarah Palin mystery with a devastating article in The New York Times Magazine: “The Making (and Remaking) of McCain.”

McCain didn’t know her. He didn’t vet her. His campaign team had barely an impression.

In a bar one night, Draper asked one of McCain’s senior advisers: “Leaving aside her actual experience, do you know how informed Governor Palin is about the issues of the day?”

The adviser thought a moment and replied: “No, I don’t know.”

Blame the sycamore tree.

McCain had met Palin only once — in February, at the governors’ convention in Washington, D.C.— before the day he selected her as his running mate.

The second time was at his Sedona, Ariz., ranch just four days before the GOP convention.

As Draper tells it, McCain took Palin to his favorite coffee-drinking spot down by a creek and a sycamore tree.

They talked for more than an hour, and, as Napoleon whispered to Josephine, “Voila.”

One does not have to be a psychoanalyst to reckon that McCain was smitten.

By no means am I suggesting anything untoward between McCain and his running mate. Palin is a governor, after all. She does have an executive resume, if a thin one. And she’s a natural politician who connects with people.

But there can be no denying that McCain’s selection of her over others FAR MORE qualified — and his mind-boggling lack of attention to details that matter — suggests other factors at work.

McCain's Clouded Judgement to Assess the Future

His judgment may have been clouded by ... WHAT? Science provides clues.

A study in Canada, published in New Scientist in 2003, found that PRETTY women foil MEN's ability to assess the future. “Discounting the future,” as the condition is called, means preferring IMMEDIATE, LESSER rewards to greater rewards in the future.

That MEN are at a disadvantage when ATTRACTIVE women are present is a fact upon which women have banked for centuries. Ignoring it now profits only FOOLS.

McCain spokesmen have said that he was attracted to Palin’s maverickness, that she reminded him of himself.

Recognizing oneself in a member of the opposite sex (or the same sex, as the case may be) is a powerful invitation to bonding.

Narcissus fell in love with his own image reflected in the river, imagining it to be his deceased and beloved sister’s.

In McCain’s case, it doesn’t hurt that his reflection is spiked with feminine approval.

As my husband observed early on, McCain the mortal couldn’t mind having an attractive woman all but singing arias to his greatness.

Cameras frequently capture McCain beaming like a gold-starred schoolboy while Palin tells crowds that he is “exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief.”

This, notes Draper, “seemed to confer not only valor but virility on a 72-year-old politician who only weeks ago barely registered with the party faithful.”

It is entirely possible that no one could have beaten the political force known as Barack Obama — under any circumstances.

And though it isn’t over yet, it seems clear that McCain made a tragic, if familiar, error under that sycamore tree.

Will he join the pantheon of men who, intoxicated by a woman’s power, made the wrong call?

If McCain, rightful heir to the presidency, loses to Obama, history undoubtedly will note that he was defeated at least in part by his own besotted impulse to discount the future.

If he wins, then he must be credited with having correctly calculated nature’s power to befuddle.

Globe poll: Obama Has Big Lead in New Hampshire

2008-10-27T00:58:00.000+11:00

Read here
By
Lisa Wangsness

Barack Obama has vaulted to a 15-point lead over John McCain in New Hampshire, according to a new Boston Globe poll, a significant gap in a state that McCain considers his second political home and has long been a swing state in the race for the White House.

Financial distress has clearly driven voters from McCain to Obama, who was trailing his Republican rival by 2 percentage points in September - a 17-point swing in just one month.

Nearly half of those surveyed cited the economy and jobs as their top concerns, and they overwhelmingly saw Obama as the candidate best equipped to address them.

"McCain certainly has his back to the wall in New Hampshire," said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, which conducted the poll. "The economic crisis in September and October has changed the mood of voters in New Hampshire, who are now solidly backing Obama as the candidate best able to deal with economic issues."

The poll also found that the Arizona senator is being dragged down by a deeply troubled Bush administration, an increasingly unpopular running mate, Sarah Palin, and the perceived negativity of his campaign. Three-quarters of those surveyed said Obama has the best chance to win, which Smith said could depress turnout for McCain.

Obama's edge in New Hampshire is fresh evidence that the state is shedding its identity as the last refuge for Yankee conservatives.

The survey of 725 likely voters, conducted from Oct. 18 to Oct. 22, had Obama leading 54 to 39 percent, with 6 percent undecided and a sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

In a sign of how all-important the economy has become in this election, Obama has seized a commanding lead even though voters saw McCain as better able to take on terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and Iraq.

When it came to who would be better at handling the economy and the financial system, the Illinois senator trounced his rival.

Harry Nelson, a 79-year-old retired Wall Street money manager who participated in the poll and agreed to speak with a reporter afterward, said the next president will enter the White House under conditions similar to those that faced Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Obama, he said, has "some of the same stuff" as Roosevelt and could be a "transformational leader."

"If you look at the way he runs his campaign, it's been brilliant," said Nelson, an undeclared voter who lives in Hanover. "I don't think he's an economic expert, but he doesn't have to be - he picks good people. . . . That's what management is all about, isn't it?"

Most voters - 66 percent - considered McCain the more experienced of the two candidates.

But, in a sign that McCain has failed to cast himself as a reformer and to dissociate himself from Bush, twice as many respondents said Obama was the candidate most likely to bring change.

While an equal number of voters rated McCain and Obama as the stronger leader, the poll found that Obama has established himself as the candidate voters can most relate to and trust.

A significant majority said Obama has better judgment, and a majority said he is more trustworthy and most reflects their values.

Misty Foote, a 37-year-old independent voter from Rochester, said she decided to vote for Obama in the last couple of weeks.

"I think he's down to earth and he's one of us," said Foote, who is disabled and lives on Social Security. "I just think McCain is going to be just like Bush. He's going to keep everything the same, and that would be fine if we had a good economy, but we don't."

On financial issues, 15 percent said they were "very" or "somewhat" worried about losing their jobs, and a similar number - mostly younger and lower-income voters - were deeply concerned about losing their homes. But more than two-thirds of those polled said they were "very" or "somewhat" worried about a secure retirement, and 42 percent said the same about college costs.

The bailout plan was unpopular in New Hampshire among voters in both parties, according to the poll; 55 percent said they disapproved of it strongly or somewhat.

The poll found widespread support for tax cuts for the middle class; Republicans were more likely to favor cuts for small businesses.

New Hampshire, a battleground state in both of the last two presidential election cycles, has been growing steadily more liberal in recent years because of significant population churn. Smith said nearly one-third of potential voters did not live in the state or were too young to vote in 2000.

Three other factors besides the economy appear to have damaged McCain in the Granite State.

By a nearly 3-to-1 margin, voters said McCain's campaign was the most negative, and over the last month, the Republican nominee's favorability ratings have plummeted while Obama's have climbed.

"The John McCain I see right now is not the John McCain I saw in 2000," said Kevin Clancy, a 47-year-old undeclared voter from Manchester who had considered voting for McCain after Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic nomination. "I just can't stand the lies and the smears that are coming from the Republican Party."
McCain is also being dragged down in New Hampshire by a hugely unpopular White House, the poll found. Twenty percent of voters surveyed had a favorable opinion of the president and 71 percent had an unfavorable opinion of him; last month, the numbers were 24 percent and 66 percent, respectively.
A third handicap for McCain is Palin. The poll found that more voters now have an unfavorable opinion of her than a favorable one, a reversal of the situation a month ago; Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden's popularity, on the other hand, has steadily grown. Thirty-nine percent this month said they had a favorable opinion of Palin; 48 percent said they had an unfavorable opinion of her. Fifty-four percent had a favorable opinion of Biden, 27 percent had an unfavorable opinion of him.

Linda Comeau, 55, an independent voter from Stratham who supported Clinton in the primary, said she was "very open" to McCain until he picked Palin. "She is not prepared to be vice president," she said. "She is uninformed, she doesn't know what she is saying, she is inexperienced, and compared to Barack Obama her intellect is minimal."

Still, many McCain supporters preferred him for his experience, especially on national security issues.

Betsy Manchester , a 58-year-old school nurse's assistant who lives in Nottingham, said she thought McCain had an edge over Obama on national security issues.

"He is a veteran; he has served his country; he was a POW," she said. "I think he's seen it all and he knows basically what to expect and how to react." On Iraq, she added, McCain is closer to her view that "we've just got to stick it out - unfortunately."

A central question is whether polls accurately reflect the effect of race and racism in a campaign where Obama is the first African-American nominee of a major party.

The Globe poll found that 22 percent of New Hampshire voters said they had heard a friend, family member, or co-worker say they would NOT vote for Obama because he is black, but only 9 percent said they thought many people would not vote for him because of his race, and 6 percent thought many people would support him because of it.

Smith said that together, the results suggest that while some voters have heard chatter about race, it is isolated or coming from people who would be unlikely to vote for Obama anyway.

Geoff Gilbertson, a machinist from Peterborough, said one person he knows wouldn't vote for Obama because of his race, but it was "someone who has absolutely no interest in voting."

LA Times:Palin appointed friends and donors to key posts in Alaska, records show

2008-10-26T17:35:00.000+11:00

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By

Charles Piller,
LA Times writer

100-plus jobs went to campaign donors or their relatives, sometimes without apparent regard to qualifications.
Several donors got state-subsidized loans for business ventures of dubious public value.

Reporting from Anchorage:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, plucked from relative obscurity in part for her reform credentials, has been eager to tout them in her vice presidential campaign.

"I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau when I stood up to the special interests and the lobbyists and the big oil companies and the good old boys,"

Palin told the Republican National Convention in her acceptance speech. She said that as a new governor she

"shook things up, and in short order we put the government of our state back on the side of the people."

By midway through her first term, she had signed an ethics reform bill, increased oil profit taxes and tweaked Big Oil again by awarding a gas pipeline contract to a Canadian company.

In some other respects, a Los Angeles Times examination of state records shows, her approach to government was business as usual.

Take, for example, the tradition of patronage.

Some of Palin's most controversial appointments involved donors, records show. Among The Times' findings:

More than 100 appointments to state posts -- nearly 1 in 4 -- went to campaign contributors or their relatives, sometimes without apparent regard to qualifications.
Palin filled 16 state offices with appointees from families that donated $2,000 to $5,600 and were among her top political patrons.
Several of Palin's leading campaign donors received state-subsidized industrial development loans of up to $3.6 million for business ventures of questionable public value.
Palin picked a donor to replace the public safety commissioner she fired. But the new top cop had to resign days later under an ethics cloud.

And Palin drew a formal ethics complaint still pending against her and several aides for allegedly helping another donor and fundraiser land a state job.

Most new governors install friends and supporters in state jobs.

But Alaska historians say some of Palin's appointees were less qualified than those of her Republican and Democratic predecessors.

University of Alaska historian Steve Haycox said Palin has been a reformer.

But he said she has a penchant for placing supporters, many of them ill-prepared, in high posts. He called it "cronyism" far beyond what previous governors have done and a contradiction of her high-minded philosophy.

Terrence Cole, an Alaska political historian, said Palin had in some cases shown "a disrespect for experience."

Administration officials disputed such criticism. They said campaign contributions were not a factor in state appointments. Frank Bailey, the state's directorof boards and commissions, in speaking for Palin, who was not available to answer inquiries from The Times, said, "We are always seeking the best-qualified folks."

In a little-noted sequel to Palin's controversial dismissal of her public safety commissioner, the governor replaced Walt Monegan with former small-town Police Chief Charles Kopp of Kenai.

The appointment unraveled almost immediately in what Cole called a vetting catastrophe.

A previous sexual harassment complaint came to light and Kopp had to resign two weeks after taking over. Alaska paid him $10,000 in severance.

After another of Palin's campaign donors and fundraisers landed a civil service job with the state department of transportation, GOP activist Andree McLeod filed an ethics complaint against the governor and several aides, alleging that improper pressure was used to help Tom Lamal.

Lamal, a public school teacher in Fairbanks until he retired in 2006, was hired as a right-of-way agent despite reports of internal conflicts over whether he was qualified under state law.

E-mail messages between Palin aides, obtained by McLeod under the state public records act, indicate that the hiring was pushed "through the roadblocks" by a deputy to one of Palin's appointees.

And Palin aide Bailey sent Lamal a congratulatory note saying, in part, "Well now your foot's back in the door and maybe we can tap you for other things."

Lamal declined to be interviewed for this article.

Palin spokesman William McAllister declined to comment because of an ongoing state personnel board inquiry.

Palin told the Anchorage Daily News in August that her office merely worked to fix a "glitch" that prevented Lamal's hiring because of outdated job requirements, and that no favors were given.

In other state appointments, records show that all five Palin selections for the powerful Natural Gas Development Authority, which oversees a proposed gas pipeline project, were DONORS . They included Kathryn Lamal, wife of Tom Lamal.

She appointed Kristan Cole, a school friend and a campaign donor, to the Board of Agriculture and Conservation, a farm regulatory position that by state law must go to people with strong business experience. Cole is a real estate agent.

All three appointees to the Board of Public Accountancy, which oversees the accounting industry, gave to her campaign for governor, as did all three appointees to the Local Boundary Commission, which regulates contentious land annexations by local governments.

Palin reappointed donor Steve Frank to the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp., which manages Alaska's $29-billion oil revenue nest egg.

Frank, a former Republican legislator, is married to another leading donor, Linda Anderson, a lobbyist for power and tourism companies, among others.

The Permanent Fund position earns a $400-a-day honorarium. Most other board and commission appointees receive per diem and travel expenses. Regardless of compensation, experts said, such appointments are coveted for their power and prestige, or as a political stepping stone.

Palin spokesman McAllister said that most Cabinet-level officials she appointed were not donors. In every state, he added, people who "apply to serve in a voluntary role are typically supporters of the governor."

Records show that Palin donors obtained state-subsidized business loans from the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, or AIDEA, whose mission is to encourage "economic growth and diversification of the state, including expansion of small businesses."

In one case, Jae G. Lee, a former Los Angeles businessman who is the proprietor of Party Time, a rundown grocery store and bottle shop in Anchorage, sought a $2.7-million state loan to buy an aging strip mall in midtown Anchorage. It was on the market because of a glut of similar malls in the area, all of them losing customers to big-box stores.

Lee and his wife, who had contributed $3,000 worth of office space to Palin's 2006 campaign, won the low-interest, state-backed mortgage although it was unclear how the old mall would add jobs. Lee said he did nothing to improve his acquisition, but with the cheap loan his profits have been robust.

Lee said he did not seek Palin's help to obtain the loan.

Two other state-backed loans with favorable terms and questionable development benefits went to Palin contributor and local dentist Scott Laudon and his partners. The investors got $1.2 million to refinance debt on Northern Lights Village -- a gritty collection of shops including massage and tattoo parlors, a secondhand-clothing store and a video arcade. Its neighbors along a 1 1/2 -mile stretch of Northern Lights Boulevard in midtown Anchorage include a dozen strip malls.

Laudon and other partners also received $3.6 million to buy two automated car washes in Anchorage. The benefit to Alaska, according to the approval documents, was the retention of five jobs -- which would have remained without the subsidy. Laudon declined to comment.

The Times requested documentation on the Lee and Laudon loans, including interest rates, from AIDEA on Sept. 25, but the agency has not released the materials and has declined to discuss details.

The agency "probably looked at it this way: 'This is a good loan that will be paid back,' " said Bob Poe, former AIDEA chief. "That helps them produce income to make other loans, much like a bank." As economic development, however, both loans sound questionable, he said.

Three Palin appointees to the AIDEA board also gave to her campaign for governor.

This year the board picked Palin donor Ted Leonard as chief executive of the $1.2-billion agency. His principal credential was having been financial manager of tiny Wasilla, Alaska. Palin appointed him to the city post when she was mayor.

Agency spokesman Karsten Rodvik said that Palin was not directly involved in the selection and that Leonard was the top applicant because of his long and diverse experience in finance and economic development. He also said that AIDEA managers were "not aware" of any influence by Palin or her aides on any loans.

Some of Palin's other appointments have been controversial.

Franci Havemeister, one of several of Palin's childhood friends tapped for leadership jobs, heads the state agriculture division. A former real estate agent, she was ridiculed in Alaska after it was reported that she had cited among her qualifications for the job a childhood love of cows.

And Palin's choice for attorney general, Talis Colberg, stirred considerable puzzlement:

He was virtually unknown beyond her circle near Wasilla. Colberg, who had a solo
law practice and little management experience, now oversees 500 professionals.

Colberg was criticized by both Republican and Democratic legislators for his handling of the recent investigation of Palin's actions in a controversy involving her ex-brother-in-law -- a state trooper -- and Monegan.

A Superior Court judge overruled Colberg's move to quash investigative subpoenas in the case.

The Anchorage Daily News, Alaska's Biggest Paper Endorses OBAMA

2008-10-26T17:16:00.000+11:00

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Alaska's biggest paper, The Anchorage Daily News, has endorsed Barack Obama for president, despite -- or at least partly because of -- its state governor's presence on the opposing ticket.

While praising Palin's energy and bright future, the paper's editorial adds,

"... Yet despite her formidable gifts, FEW who have worked closely with the governor would argue she is truly ready to assume command of the most important, powerful nation on earth.
To step in and juggle the demands of an economic meltdown, two deadly wars and a deteriorating climate crisis would stretch the governor beyond her range.
Like picking Sen. McCain for president, putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time."

The paper has drawn national attention with many hard-hitting probes of the governor's background and tenures in elected office.

Here is an excerpt of the EDITORIAL in the Anchorage Daily News.

"....Alaska's founders were optimistic people, but even the most farsighted might have been stretched to imagine this scenario.
No matter the outcome in November, this election will mark a signal moment in the history of the 49th state. Many Alaskans are proud to see their governor, and their state, so prominent on the national stage.

Gov. Palin's nomination clearly alters the landscape for Alaskans as we survey this race for the presidency -- but it does not overwhelm all other judgment.
The election, after all is said and done, is not about Sarah Palin, and our sober view is that her running mate, Sen. John McCain, is the wrong choice for president at this critical time for our nation.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, brings far more promise to the office. In a time of grave economic crisis, he displays thoughtful analysis, enlists wise counsel and operates with a cool, steady hand. The same cannot be said of Sen. McCain.

Since his early acknowledgement that economic policy is not his strong suit, Sen. McCain has stumbled and fumbled badly in dealing with the accelerating crisis as it emerged. He declared that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" at 9 a.m. one day and by 11 a.m. was describing an economy in crisis. He is both a longtime advocate of less market regulation and a supporter of the huge taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailout.
His behavior in this crisis -- erratic is a kind description -- shows him to be ill-equipped to lead the essential effort of reining in a runaway financial system and setting an anxious nation on course to economic recovery.

Sen. Obama warned regulators and the nation 19 months ago that the subprime lending crisis was a disaster in the making. Sen. McCain backed tighter rules for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but didn't do much to advance that legislation.
Of the two candidates, Sen. Obama better understands the mortgage meltdown's root causes and has the judgment and intelligence to shape a solution, as well as the leadership to rally the country behind it.
It is easy to look at Sen. Obama and see a return to the smart, bipartisan economic policies of the last Democratic administration in Washington, which left the country with the momentum of growth and a budget surplus that President George Bush has squandered.

On the most important issue of the day, Sen. Obama is a clear choice.

Joe Biden was Right, but that Does NOT Mean John McCain is Right

2008-10-26T16:52:00.000+11:00

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by

Clive Leviev-Sawyer

The John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign is running attack ads against Barack Obama on the basis of Joe Biden’s prediction that there could be a “generated crisis” internationally to exploit Obama’s apparent vulnerability as a newly-elected president.

The trouble for the Republican camp is that their angle could prove either a backfire or a misfire.

Biden drew the parallel with John F Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis, on the grounds of JFK having been a senator in his 40s with no foreign policy experience to speak of, but it equally could be mentioned that less than a year in office, former Texas governor George Bush faced 9/11.

For that matter, in the first half of George HW Bush’s single-term presidency came the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the end of the Cold War –neither taking into account that the elder Bush had plenty of foreign policy experience, as a former vice president, a former US ambassador to the UN, a former US envoy to China and for that matter, a former director of the CIA.

The end of the Cold War was no “generated crisis” but the invasion of Kuwait may have been a gamble by Saddam Hussein, who did not let himself be held back by the 41st president’s CV.

Foreign and international crises, including the unpredictable and the “generated”, are a matter of inevitability for every US president, and for that matter, any leader of any country that matters.

Biden, in the remarks on which the Republicans have fallen with glee, mentioned the Middle East and Russia as the places from which “generated” crises might emanate.

He was correct, however inconvenient this might be for the Obama camp, but incorrect not to make a longer list.

He has had some help from the McCain-Palin camp, which in the ad currently being broadcast waves the bogeymen of Venezuela and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Republicans are not wrong either, except in trying to use the “risk” principle to try to bring down Obama because – more of this below – McCain would be equally vulnerable. Al-Qaeda has committed terrorist attacks during the times of Democratic and Republican administrations:

9/11 happened on the second Bush’s watch.

The list of trouble spots is a long one.

It has certain themes in common, apart from terrorist groups and in most cases, Islamic fundamentalists who favour terrorism.

One is oil.

To follow Biden’s apparent point about Russia, the story of Russia at the moment cannot be separated from the story of energy and oil in particular. The importance, and the risks, related to oil pipeline projects related to Russia and Caucasus cannot be underestimated. The story of oil cannot be separated from potential trouble spots or countries that are or include frozen conflicts zones, a list including Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus and Turkmenistan. Further, it is to be hoped that the extremely lengthy Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is and will be well-secured.

Not only has its Georgia venture shown that Moscow stops for, and at, nothing to secure what it sees as its interests, in Moscow one is dealing with a society underpinned by oil, as is evident by the current impact on its economy by falling oil prices. Russia-related risks are twofold – a strong Russia that does not hesitate to roll out the tanks; and a Russia whose economy is troubled by underperforming oil prices and thus may be at risk of instability, if not at the centre, then at the periphery.

The Middle East is a well-canvassed subject and for its very unpredictability certain to in the frame of whoever sits in the Oval Office.
Iran remains an unresolved issue and is likely to remain so for years and will continue, just like North Korea, to remain the focus of US intelligence and diplomatic efforts. Whoever becomes president, if he is surprised by something emanating from Iran or North Korea, he would have been seriously let down by Washington’s intelligence and diplomatic networks. The latter scenario, of course, not one that is without precedent.
The Republicans were correct to mention Venezuela. Not only are the policies being pursued there unlikely, to put this mildly, to work out well for that country in the long term, it similarly is vulnerable to the vagaries of the world oil market. Of course, in the long term, it would be vulnerable to the potential successes of an Obama or a McCain White House, provided that either of the putative senators-turned-presidents could carry out their energy independence promises and serve two terms. But that is a scenario much more long-term than the current debate, if the bogeyman-waving can be called that.

There are other areas less well-canvassed than the Middle East in US political debate or, for that matter, media coverage that contain the potential for an unpleasant surprise for a president Obama or president McCain.
Africa encompasses many. The list of trouble spots includes, but is not limited to, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad, the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville) and Burundi, to say nothing of the risk of a spectacular escalation – perhaps through the intervention of a terrorist group – in the Sudan.

The US not only does not have a good track record in Africa, but that continent is a subject regarded gingerly by Washington, especially after Somalia. Not only is militant Islam on the march, of which the embassy bombings are just one example, but partly outside the ideological framework of terrorists, kidnappings are something of an industry – including in the Niger Delta, where militants are active, and again the story is largely about oil.

Then there is the “perfect storm” scenario in which serious trouble flares up on more than continent or region at once.
It cannot be forgotten that, apart from problems simmering in the Caucasus, in the Middle East, in Pakistan and Afghanistan specifically (although it should be fair to take outright war zones as read), in Africa and South America, there are problems brewing everywhere from the Phillipines to, yes, even Europe.
Less dramatically than in the less developed world, Europe faces everything from reduced growth expectations in the eurozone and thus fewer opportunities for those in the lower reaches of the economy such as immigrants, but also the move by Europe to shore itself up against unskilled immigration – however understandable – is certain to be a source of tensions, especially among those who would seek to (mis)interpret a Europe keener on stricter immigration rules as essentially anti-Islamic and anti-African, and thus, in the world view of such people, liable to further terrorist attacks.

Part of what Biden said in the remarks on which the Republicans have fallen on was that, in the event of an international crisis in the first phase of his presidency, the fact that Obama has a “spine of steel” would become apparent.

While this may have been a selling point against the McCain-Palin point that harps on about Obama being willing to have “unconditional” engagements with hostile regimes, it is also a reminder that McCain-Palin promise a tough line in foreign policy, McCain’s “league of democracy” against the rest of the world, a confrontational, hard-line approach against all enemies and rivals.

The fact is that even if McCain manages to reverse Obama’s current nine/10/14 point national lead (pick your favourite poll, but none now has McCain in the lead) and in less than 11 days, win the White House, he would have his vulnerabilities too – precisely those of his age and health, and the fact that, should he longer be able to carry out his duties, the Oval Office would be occupied by Palin.

Hence the risk of backfire of the anti-Obama message, that similar arguments could be raised to portray a McCain-Palin White House as one that would have weaknesses open to exploitation.

And, as mentioned, Al-Qaeda terrorists have struck against the US and its allies irrespective of the party affiliation of the president, and with no heed to how many states are coloured blue or red.

John McCain Loses Temper

2008-10-26T16:33:00.000+11:00

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Excerpts

In heated exchanges, John Mcain made clear that he will not tolerate the blame game that some of his aides have engaged in over the last week as Barack Obama retains a comfortable lead in national and swing state polls.

The friend, who often travels with Mr McCain, said the candidate lost his temper:
"There were raised voices. John's whole life has been about the fight. He won't tolerate those who won't fight. He showed his irritation at some of the pessimism in typical John style."

It was a measure of Mr McCain's weakness that a week before the election he was campaigning in Colorado, what was once a Republican state but now shows Mr Obama with a firm lead. On Saturday he was heading to New Mexico, another Western state that is slipping away.

The friend offered a sober assessment: "This thing is closer than the Obama people think. They are not going to win all the swing states where they are leading now but our problem is that we've got to run the board. The state polls are not good. John is going to have to roll sixes in every state."

Senior figures in the party believe that Mr McCain has only a short time to turn around the polls.

David Gergen, who has advised three Republican presidents, as well as Bill Clinton, said: "This campaign is slipping away from John McCain, that he only has three or four days to turn the momentum around in his favour."

Dick Morris, another former White House strategist, said he thinks Mr McCain's Joe the Plumber adverts, touting his support for small businesses, will begin to show up in polls after the weekend:

"On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of this week, we should see a gradual
tightening of this race. If we don't, McCain is cooked."

Sarah Palin Blames George Bush for Problems facing the Republican Campaign

2008-10-26T16:06:00.000+11:00

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Sarah Palin said in an interview airing Friday,President Bush’s unpopularity is the No. 1 problem for the Republican presidential ticket, breaking sharply with the president as the campaign enters its final days.

Palin made her remarks in an interview Wednesday with Brian Williams, anchor of “NBC Nightly News.”

Beginning with that interview and continuing in newspaper interviews and campaign speeches, Palin and Republican presidential nominee John McCain have made it clear that they are determined to disassociate themselves from the president, who registered only a 22 percent approval rating in a New York Times poll released this week.

“We’re up against a lot,” said Palin, the governor of Alaska. “We’re up against a very unpopular president, Bush’s administration right now, and those who want to link us to that administration.”

Palin’s comments were a major shot in what has become a campaign against Bush almost as much as one against the Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

Not since 1968, when Vice President Hubert Humphrey disavowed the Vietnam War policies of President Lyndon Johnson, has a campaign so clearly repudiated the sitting president of its own party.

In an interview Thursday with The Washington Times, McCain spoke of Bush in tones bordering on contempt, ticking off a litany of what he said were the president’s failures.

“Spending, the conduct of the war in Iraq for years, growth in the size of government — larger than any time since the Great Society, laying a $10 trillion debt on future generations of America — owing $500 billion to China, obviously, failure to both enforce and modernize the [financial] regulatory agencies that were designed for the 1930s and certainly not for the 21st century, failure to address the issue of climate change seriously,” McCain told the newspaper.

“We just let things get completely out of hand,” he said of the past eight years of Republican rule.

Friday, McCain extended the theme in an address at a campaign rally in Denver.

“We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: hoping for our luck to change at home and abroad,” he said. “We have to act. We need a new direction, and we have to fight for it.”

Obama’s vice presidential running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, called the new Republican strategy “crazy” Friday.

“John McCain is now attacking the Bush budget and Bush fiscal policies, which he voted for, I might add,” Biden said at a rally in Charleston, W.Va.

“Folks, this is as crazy as, you know, Butch Cassidy attacking the Sundance Kid. I mean, that’s a team.”

For Palin, the strategic shift could have long-term implications, in victory or defeat.

In recent weeks, political analysts have suggested that should she and McCain lose, Palin, who is highly popular with Christian conservatives, would immediately become a front-runner for the 2012 Republican nomination.

Palin dismissed such speculation in the interview Wednesday with NBC News.

Palin, only the second woman to be nominated for vice president by a major party, has become a focus of unusually heavy attention for a No. 2 candidate, occasionally overshadowing McCain and leading some analysts to suggest that she has been a drag on the Republican ticket.

In the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, released Tuesday, 55 percent of respondents said they believed Palin was NOT qualified to serve as president if the need arose. Palin’s qualifications were the No. 1 concern voters had about McCain’s candidacy, ahead of the economy and the war in Iraq.

For the first time, more voters had a NEGATIVE opinion of her than a positive one.

In the survey, 47 percent viewed her negatively to 38 percent who saw her in a positive light, a striking shift since McCain chose her as his running mate in early September, when she held a 47 percent-to-27 percent positive rating.

But she said Wednesday that she paid no attention to such polls, insisting that “I stay up because I know that it’s a positive message that we have, and I stay up also recognizing that, as an underdog, that’s OK. That motivates us. It makes us work that much harder.”

Unlike McCain, Obama and Biden, Palin was virtually unknown to most of the country as recently as two months ago, prompting news organizations to send scores of reporters to Alaska to dig into her background.

What they have found has led many Democrats and some Republicans to question her qualifications.

Critics said she had NO international credentials to speak of as the first-term governor of a state with fewer then a million residents. Palin responded that she had foreign policy experience because Alaska was close to Russia, a contention that Democrats have widely mocked.

She was also criticized for claiming repeatedly that she had opposed federal spending of $398 million on construction of the “Bridge to Nowhere,” linking Ketchikan to the city's airport on Gravina Island, population 50, even though she actively supported the project as governor and did not return the approipriation to the federal government.

Other controversies have followed Palin on the campaign trail.

Palin is the subject of two ethics investigations reviewing allegations that she dismissed Alaska’s public safety director because he would not fire her former brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper. Palin gave a deposition in the case Friday.

Palin’s expense records have also been questioned.

When the Legislature is not in session in the state capital, Juneau, Palin lives at home in Wasilla and conducts state business from nearby Anchorage. Since taking office, she has received nearly $17,000 in per diem expenses and has charged the state more than $21,000 for commercial flights and hotel rooms for her children.

The Associated Press, which reported the children’s expenses, found that the state paid for the children’s travel even on trips on which they had not been invited and had no official function.

More recently, financial disclosure forms filed by the Republican National Committee showed that — at a time when McCain and Palin were focusing their campaign on the struggles of middle-class voters — the party spent about $150,000 on clothes, hairstyling, makeup and “campaign accessories” after Palin joined the ticket.

“With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it’s remarkable that we’re spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses,” said Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the campaign, who said the clothing would be donated to charity after the election.

"PRESIDENT PALIN ?" Its a Chilling Idea !

2008-10-26T15:43:00.000+11:00

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I see a lot of McCain-Palin signs around town. Here's a question for these people:

Are you OK with the odds that Sarah Palin may become president?

Even if John McCain were a healthy 60-year-old, that chance CANNOT be ignored.

The report of the "Troopergate" investigation revealed an executive with a fixation on dealing with a fellow citizen as an enemy. Do we want another president with an enemies list?

The report concludes that the action was a violation of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act, not the kind of ethics we need in our president.

She has been judged by a number of respected Republican pundits as utterly unqualified to be president, which of course is the No. 1 issue for a vice president.

Particularly now, with a Depression-era-type financial crisis, two ongoing wars and looming trouble with Russia, this is no time to have an unqualified person in the White House.

The idea of her as commander-in-chief is chilling.

Those who are not comfortable with the idea of a President Palin should NOT vote for McCain.

He rolled the dice on choosing her, thinking of his chances to win the presidency rather than the best interests of the country.

The proper response is to send them packing.

Newsweek: The Palin Problem for John McCain

2008-10-26T15:32:00.000+11:00

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by
Jonathan Darman of NEWSWEEK

John McCain's defeat will be a lonely one.

The old soldier has always taken pride in proving no one owns him—not his party, not its leaders and, for damn sure, not the ideological purity police of the right. So if the polls prove right, and McCain loses to Barack Obama next Tuesday, no one but him will own his defeat.

Already, from every corner of the conservative coalition, the same refrain is rising: nasty, obstinate old fool, he should have listened to me.

Will Sarah Palin join that chorus?

The answer, if Palin has big ambitions (and every piece of her life story suggests she does), is almost certainly yes.

Even now she is dropping hints of unhappiness with her running mate's way of doing things—saying,

if she had her way, the McCain campaign would skip the robo-calls,
go after Obama's association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and
continue to pour resources into Michigan.

It's easy to imagine her amped-up post-election critique:

they dressed me in their fancy clothes,
they fed me to their elite media friends,
they even made me bow and scrape to "Saturday Night Live," but they still couldn't change me.
I'm still Sarah from Wasilla and I'm ready to take Real America back.

Democrats, having witnessed Palin's wobbly 2008 performance (31 percent of registered voters in the new NEWSWEEK poll say Palin makes them less likely to vote for McCain), will no doubt relish the prospect of Palin lingering on the national stage.

They should be careful what they wish for. For all her problems now, Palin has the biography, the ideological sympathies and the charisma to be what the Republican Party lacks: a populist, far-right politician with intense celebrity appeal.

This has less to do with Palin than with the one group most essential to the Republican Party's long-term survival: America's WHITE working class.

In brighter days, Karl Rove and his disciples dreamed of a conservative majority that cut deep into traditional Democratic demographic groups like Hispanics and culturally conservative African-Americans.

Those fantasy targets are gone.

African-Americans will almost certainly remain solidly Democratic in the Obama era, as will Hispanics given the realities of immigration politics in the GOP.

A public fight concerning Roe v. Wade (an Obama first term might see three Supreme Court vacancies) will preclude major GOP gains with affluent coastal moderates.

The one remaining target is low-education white voters, Reagan Democrats, the last group to join Obama's coalition, and thus the first group Republicans should try to snatch away.

How would they do that?

For several years, conservative intellectuals have argued that, to survive, the party needs to adapt its economic message to address the insecurities of the culturally conservative working class.

This populist GOP, they argue, would offer more than just the pro-life, anti-tax party. It would offer a vision of how limited government can promote strong families and grow the middle class.

The intelligentsia look at Republican governors such as Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty—thoughtful conservatives who have a touch with the common man—and see reasons for hope.

But what the intellectuals have not always acknowledged is that there is an easier, if less utopian, way to speak to the anxieties of working America: full-fledged culture war.

There are, in fact, wedge issues the Republican Party has yet to fully exploit.

Rather than expose the divide between McCain and the base of his party on immigration (the nominee takes a moderate stance; party activists are filled with close-the-border zeal), the Republicans have taken the issue off the table in 2008.

But any politician who thinks millions of middle- and working-class white Americans have stopped caring about it is delusional. It is only a matter of time before a candidate with A-list name recognition decides to make it a pet issue.

Why not Palin?

Unlike most top-tier Republican candidates, she owes VERY LITTLE to the party's business wing and thus would have little to lose by taking an anti-immigration stand. Since joining McCain's ticket, she has echoed his moderate position on the issue.

But she could turn this into a virtue: yet another McCain mistake she had to grin and bear. She could use the issue as a jumping-off point to break the party from business altogether on things like trade, making a protectionist argument from the right.

The inexperience that has dogged her this year could help her in the future; without a record of party fealty, she could easily dispose of any party orthodoxy that kept her from marrying pitchfork populism with the ideals of the Christian right.

No telegenic Republican has tried this since Pat Buchanan in the 1990s. No superstar Republican has tried it in history.

In Palin's hands, this strategy could spawn a movement.

In the event of a Republican embarrassment on Election Day, the real story won't be John McCain licking the wounds from his lonely defeat. It may be Sarah Palin reinventing the Republican Party—not from the middle, but from the right.