The Midnight Hour
The words:
Senator McCain just doesn’t get it.
He doesn’t understand that the storm hitting Wall Street hit Main Street long ago.
That’s why his first response to the greatest financial meltdown in generations was a Katrina-like response.
Sort of stood there.
Said the fundamentals of the economy are strong.
That’s why he’s been shifting positions these last two weeks, looking for photo ops, trying to figure out what to say and what to do.
Sen. Barack Obama, in this ad, reads the situation right. He should set an alternative path to whatever Bush and McCain are proposing. The plan Bush has and what the crowd in Washington want to do is exactly the kind of plans Obama should run away from:
Mr. Nichols reads the situation just right. An excerpt:
The question Obama must ask himself is this: If Hoover had tried to get Franklin Roosevelt to help him advance a flawed plan to bail out the bankers who made the mess, would Roosevelt have rushed to Washington for a show of unity. Or would the Democrat who gave us that New Deal have said: “Let the Republicans appear with Hoover. I’m going to keep talking about taking the nation in a completely different direction.”
There is no mystery as to why Bush and McCain want Obama to join them in the Rose Garden. They want him to be a part of their process–as opposed to an alternative to it.
Of course, appearing with Bush and McCain Thursday may help Obama to appear presidential.
But, after eight years of George Bush, America does not need the appearance of a president.
America needs a president. Bush’s agonizing address reminded a nation that long ago lost faith in his leadership that he is not up to the task. McCain’s deer-in-the-headlights dodge of trying to freeze the campaign and avoid the debates confirms that he has nothing more to offer than Bush.
Of course, they want Barack Obama to stand with them on Thursday.
Herbert Hoover would have loved to have Franklin Roosevelt at his side, instead of proposing sounder solutions.
Bush is Hoover. McCain is Hoover on steroids.
Obama, at this critical moment, should not lower himself to their level. He should be Roosevelt.
Wanda Sykes
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SYKES: Well, you know, I watched the convention. you know, watching the Democratic Convention, it felt like America. You know, it looked like America. It was hopeful and it was positive and, you know, everybody holding hands. And then I watched the Republican Convention. It was like watching a meeting in Dr. Evil’s lair.
LENO: Wow.
SYKES: It was like all of the evil people got together, and they were having an evil board meeting.
LENO: Really?
SYKES: And each of them, you know, at the board meeting all got up, and each one would tell their plan of how they’re gonna, what they’re going to do with the evil. and it was just so tense and scary. ‘Cause you know those Dr. Evil board meetings, somebody gets it. You know, they usually —
LENO: Oh, they press the button and —
SYKES: Press the button and —
LENO: Go through the floor.
SYKES: You go into a pile of alligators or something.
LENO: Right, right.
SYKES: And I was tense. and it’s usually the weakest one. And I figured that’s why Bush didn’t show up. he was — Bush is, like, “I’m doing this via satellite,” ’cause, you know, he was scared. He was like, next thing you know, Giuliani runs up behind him with a baseball bat.
LENO: Wow, wow.
SYKES: He walks out on the — you know, walks out on that stage, and he’s like, “Why is this plastic on the floor? what’s going on?” Like the scene from Goodfellas.
LENO: Wow, you seem to know all these moves. Now, what are you expecting on the debate Friday? You gonna watch? It should be interesting.
Should not live in glass houses
John McCain was Chuck Keating’s cabana boy
How could McCain, a man with his background, try to falsely tie Sen. Barack Obama to former Fannie Mae Chairman Frank Raines? McCain, corrupt and out of his depth, is beginning to show he has no plan, no scruples, and that he would do anything that his sludge merchants of Republican campaign advisors tell him to do.
Other than that, like Obama, Raines is black, the connection between the two men is tenuous, at best.
He should not have put his name to slime. McCain’s connection to corrupt people–Keating, Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina–is well established.
Biden: The Case for Change
Transcript:
Eight years ago, a man ran for President who claimed he was different, not
a typical Republican. He called himself, you remember, he called himself a reformer. He admitted that his Party, the Republican Party, had been wrong about a number of things in times past. He promised us, if you remember, it was a major selling point, that he would work with Democrats. He said he’d been working with Democrats for a long time in Texas.That candidate was George W. Bush. Remember those promises? Remember the promise to reach across the aisle? To change the way things were done in Washington. To change the tone? To restore honor and dignity to the White House?
You know, we saw how that story ends. A record number of home foreclosures. Home values, tumbling. And the disturbing news that the crisis that you’ve been facing on Main Street is now hitting Wall Street, taking down Lehman Brothers and threatening other large financial institutions.
By Michael D. Shear, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, September 17, 2008; A01
A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.
Now, as the Bush administration scrambles to prevent the collapse of the American International Group (AIG), the nation’s largest insurance company, and stabilize a tumultuous Wall Street, the Republican presidential nominee is scrambling to recast himself as a champion of regulation to end “reckless conduct, corruption and unbridled greed” on Wall Street.
“Government has a clear responsibility to act in defense of the public interest, and that’s exactly what I intend to do,” a fiery McCain said at a rally in Tampa yesterday. “In my administration, we’re going to hold people on Wall Street responsible. And we’re going to enact and enforce reforms to make sure that these outrages never happen in the first place.”
McCain hopes to tap into anger among voters who are looking for someone to blame for the economic meltdown that threatens their home values, bank accounts and 401(k) plans. But his past support of congressional deregulation efforts and his arguments against “government interference” in the free market by federal, state and local officials have given Sen. Barack Obama an opening to press the advantage Democrats traditionally have in times of economic trouble.
“Plan for Change” Ad
Transcript:
In the past few weeks, Wall Street’s been rocked as banks closed and markets tumbled.
But for many of you — the people I’ve met in town halls, backyards and diners across America — our troubled economy isn’t news. 600,000 Americans have lost their jobs since January. Paychecks are flat and home values are falling. It’s hard to pay for gas and groceries and if you put it on a credit card they’ve probably raised your rates.
You’re paying more than ever for health insurance that covers less and less.
This isn’t just a string of bad luck. The truth is that while you’ve been living up to your responsibilities, Washington has not.
That’s why we need change. Real change. This is no ordinary time and it shouldn’t be an ordinary election.
But much of this campaign has been consumed by petty attacks and distractions that have nothing to do with you or how we get America back on track.
Here’s what I believe we need to do:
* Reform our tax system to give a $1,000 tax break to the middle class instead of showering more on oil companies and corporations that outsource our jobs.
* End the “anything goes” culture on Wall Street with real regulation that protects your investments and pensions.
* Fast track a plan for energy ‘made-in-America’ that will free us from our dependence on mid-east oil in 10 years and put millions of Americans to work.
* Crack down on lobbyists – once and for all — so their back-room deal-making no longer drowns out the voices of the middle class and undermines our common interests as Americans.
* And yes, bring a responsible end to this war in Iraq so we stop spending billions each month rebuilding their country when we should be rebuilding ours.
Doing these things won’t be easy.
But we’re Americans. We’ve met tough challenges before. And we can again.
I’m Barack Obama. I hope you’ll read my economic plan. I approved this message because bitter, partisan fights and outworn ideas of the left and the right won’t solve the problems we face today. But a new spirit of unity and shared responsibility will.
John McCain, King of Lies
If, unlike me, you don’t believe John McCain is a bad man, you have to be saddened by what has become of his campaign for the presidency.
McCain, at least at one time, gave lip service to high ideals and some principles. He talked about decency.
But that was then, this is now.
His current campaign has devolved into an avalanche of lies, innuendos and cynicism and he not only acknowledges them, he is threatening to continue spewing these shameful diatribes unless Sen. Barack Obama agrees to debate him in his preferred format, a town hall style debate.
From Thomas B. Edsall’s McGamble at HuffPo:
The McCain campaign, in running TV ads which defy prior political standards, is gambling that the traditional rules governing what is permissible in presidential contests — as defined by the mainstream media — can safely be discarded this year.
The normally cautious and even-handed Associated Press on Thursday declared, “Even in a political culture accustomed to truth-stretching, McCain’s skirting of facts has stood out this week.” The controversies have surrounded McCain television commercials and stump speeches asserting that Barack Obama “supports” comprehensive sex education in kindergarten, that Obama called Sarah Palin a “pig in lipstick,” and that Palin stood firmly against the “bridge to nowhere” — despite videotape evidence that the Alaskan governor provided support for the earmark before she opposed it.
So far, based on polling over the past two weeks, McCain’s roll of the dice has paid off. Not only has McCain made substantial gains, pulling modestly ahead in most national polls, but his assaults on Obama appear to have damaged the Democratic Party as well, raising Republican hopes of minimizing House and Senate losses.
There was a time when I would actually rejoice in this, thinking the country would see through this.
But, McCain’s lies are working because they’re damaging Obama and helping McCain. These lies are not inconsequential. The McCain who spoke to that craven lot in Minnesota, the “Drill here, drill now; drill! drill! drill” crowd, was startled each time the horde applauded his lies. It was as if he could not believe that he was saying these things, but that these people were actually applauding him for it.
I mean, McCain came out at this convention and proclaimed himself an agent of change, jettisoning his earlier trope about being more experienced than Obama, and no one laughed at him. They cheered him instead and the press congratulated him.
This is the same McCain who took bribes to shield a savings and loans operator, Charles Keating, from regulators. The tax payers were left holding the bag when Keating’s bank went belly up. Was McCain disgraced? No. He emerged from this debacle with his reputation gleaming. Yeah, so why shouldn’t he come up to the Twin City and proclaim himself an agent of change?
The thing is, McCain may not have believed what he was saying but the collection of zealots and greed merchants who packed that St. Paul hall are believers and they’ll hold McCain to every one of his false promises.
But, how do you tell people one day that you want to end partisan rancor and then sow bitterness with lies the next day?
Obama spokesperson Bill Burton today released the following statement:
“We will take no lectures from John McCain who is cynically running the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern Presidential campaign history. His discredited ads with disgusting lies are running all over the country today. He runs a campaign not worthy of the office he is seeking,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.
John McCain would rather lose his integrity than lose an election. Politico’s Johnathan Martin explains why. Money quote:
McCain seems to have made a choice that many politicians succumb to but that he had always promised to avoid — he appears ready to do whatever it takes to win, even it if soils his reputation.
“We recognize it’s not going to be 2000 again,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said, alluding to the media’s swooning coverage of McCain’s ill-fated crusade against then-Gov. George W. Bush and the GOP establishment. “But he lost then. We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.”
Rogers, who hung tough with McCain through the dark days of the primary and has lived through every high and low of this turbulent and unpredictable race, argues that they tried to run a high-ground campaign and sought to keep the candidate in front of the media in the fashion he enjoys. His point: No one paid any attention.
“We ran a different kind of campaign and nobody cared about us. They didn’t cover John McCain. So now you’ve got to be forward-leaning in everything,” he said.
I don’t fault McCain for being negative — even nasty — if he thinks it’s what he needs to do to win. But there’s an ethical way to go negative and an unethical way to go negative. It’s not clear yet which works better, but it’s clear which one McCain has chosen.
Cross-posted from Facebook.
There’s this new political advertisement out from the McCain-Palin presidential campaign that again tries to stoke the anger of those Hillary Clinton supporters, you know, “white,” “working-class” and “women” voters still mad at Sen. Barack Obama about the alleged disrespectful treatment of Mrs. Clinton during the primaries.
In the McCain campaign’s calculation, Gov. Sarah Palin is interchangeable with Sen. Clinton and any criticism of Mrs. Palin is another slap at women.
ANNOUNCER:
He was the world’s biggest celebrity, but his star’s fading.
So they lashed out at Sarah Palin.
Dismissed her as “good looking.”
That backfired, so they said she was doing, “what she was told.”
Then desperately called Sarah Palin a liar.
How disrespectful.
And how Governor Sarah Palin proves them wrong, every day.
JOHN MCCAIN: I’m John McCain and I approved this message.
This is a despicably racist political advertisement and here’s why:
The ad takes up the “uppity” angle because of the sensitivity of women, especially white women, to being criticized by black men. But let’s put aside, for now, the historical clash between the struggles for the civil rights of women and people of color in this country and let us focus, instead, on the code words employed in this political advertisement.
The word “disrespectful” in this context is so loaded, especially when you consider our nation’s history and culture. In this ad, it is not just a man disrespecting a woman, or men disrespecting women. It is a black man, Obama, disrespecting a white woman, Sarah Palin. And he has a history of doing this. Remember Hillary Clinton, the ad, without saying so (it doesn’t have to), reminds viewers.
But Obama’s crime here, whether he was the one who said the actual words or not, is more egregious: He dismissed Palin as “good looking.”
Noticing a white woman throughout the history of this nation got black men lynched and murdered.
The whole rationale for McCain’s candidacy in hinging on this: Don’t let this uppity black man violate our cherished White House.
I won’t ask how long Sen. McCain will continue putting his name to these disgusting, underhanded and shameful campaign advertisements. I have never labored under the illusion that McCain was an honorable man. This unscrupulous campaign is exactly who John McCain is, a corrupt, craven politicians who will use anything, including racist codes, to get elected.
McCain says he’ll stop this gutter politics only if Sen. Obama agrees to go on a barnstorming nationwide tour of town hall style debates with him. The “I’ll stop sliming you if you debate me” strategy? How do you define Chutzpah?
McCain does not want a debate. He is doing exactly what he wants. Obama should call his bluff and agree to appear on stage with him.