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“McCain has made little headway in his attempts to convince voters that Obama is too ‘risky’ or too ‘liberal.’ Rather, recent strategic shifts may have hurt the Republican nominee, who now has higher negative ratings than his rival and is seen as mostly attacking his opponent rather than addressing the issues that voters care about. ” [Link]
“‘Sen. John McCain, Gov. Sarah Palin and the leadership of the Republican party have a fundamental moral responsibility to denounce the violent rhetoric that has pervaded recent McCain and Palin political rallies,’ said John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, which has endorsed Obama. ‘When rally attendees shout out such attacks as ‘terrorist’ or ‘kill him’ about Sen. Barack Obama, when they are cheered on by crowds incited by McCain-Palin rhetoric — it is chilling that McCain and Palin do nothing to object. ” [Link]
“Is the Palin administration shockingly amateurish? Yes, it is. Disturbingly so. The 263 pages of the report show a co-ordinated application of pressure on Monegan so transparent and ham-handed that it was almost certain to end in public embarrassment for the governor. The only surprise is that Troopergate is national news, not just a sorry piece of political gristle to be chewed on by Alaska politicos over steaks at Anchorage’s Club Paris. ” [Link]
“The defeat reflects poorly on Sen. John McCain — who made a dramatic return to Washington last week in the hopes of salvaging a deal that ultimately collapsed — as well as the Democratic-controlled Congress, which looks powerless in the face of crisis. ‘It’s ugly,’ said Whit Ayres, a Republican political consultant. ‘It makes the Congress look pretty irresponsible. But the more negative the current environment, the higher the hill McCain has to climb.’” [Link]
“Today, during an interview on ABC’s This Week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) finally admitted that his health care tax credits would not cover the costs of a comprehensive health insurance plan” [Link]
“Attacking the New York Times — and the media generally — is a smart strategic move when it comes to uniting the Republican base behind McCain. While that base has never felt warmly toward McCain, they feel even less warmly toward the media in general, and the New York Times in particular. It’s the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ argument and it has worked extremely well for the McCain campaign to date.” [Link]
“Today Newsweek reported that John McCain owns 13 cars – and that contrary to what McCain said in a recent TV interview, the fleet includes three foreign cars. The report shows that McCain wasn’t being honest with voters during a recent interview with WXYZ TV in Detroit when he said: ‘I’ve bought American literally all my life, and I’m proud.’ ” [Link]
“‘There are very, very few lawyers in the country that are better at exploiting campaign finance loopholes than Trevor Potter,’ said Bradley A. Smith, a former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission. ‘Of course, that’s one of the odd things about the McCain campaign: ‘Here’s the rules we want, but we’ll play by the rules that are here.’ ’” [Link]
“‘The last straw,’ her lawyer argued, came when he planned a trip to Washington, D.C., to seek federal funds for an aggressive anti-sexual-violence program. The project, expected to cost from $10 million to $20 million a year for five years, would have been the first of its kind in Alaska, which leads the nation in reported forcible rape. The McCain-Palin campaign echoed the charge in a press release it distributed Monday, concurrent with Palin’s legal filing. ‘Mr. Monegan persisted in planning to make the unauthorized lobbying trip to D.C.,’ the release stated. But the governor’s staff authorized the trip, according to an internal travel document from the Department of Public Safety, released Friday in response to an open records request. ” [Link]
“Before a loud Republican crowd in the gym of Grand Rapids Community College, McCain and Palin fielded questions from a former Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter who now backs McCain; another woman who asked for advice on recruiting Hispanic supporters for the ticket; and a Vietnam veteran who told McCain, ‘May the grace of God be with you always, sir.’ Hardball, it was not. ” [Link]
“McCain’s lies have ranged from the annoying to the sleazy, and the problem is in both degree and kind. His campaign has been a ceaseless assault on his opponent’s character and policies, featuring a consistent—and witting—disdain for the truth. Even after 38 million Americans heard Obama say in his speech at the Democratic National Convention that he was open to offshore oil-drilling and building new nuclear-power plants, McCain flatly said in his acceptance speech that Obama opposed both.” [Link]
“Obama is calling out McCain in ads that say the GOP nominee takes an ‘extreme position on choice’ and ‘will make abortion illegal.’ He is spreading his message through low-profile radio ads and campaign mailings, though, hoping to avoid being tagged as too liberal on a woman’s right to choose to end a pregnancy.” [Link]
“An aide to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said in Anchorage Monday that Palin will not cooperate with a legislative investigation into alleged abuse of power. The Republican vice presidential nominee is being investigated for allegedly pressuring the public safety commissioner to fire a state trooper who was going through a custody dispute with Palin’s sister. Palin eventually fired the commissioner.” [Link]
“Sarah Palin did not visit troops in Iraq, a spokesperson for the Republican vice presidential nominee confirmed Saturday, as new details emerged about the extent of the Alaska governor’s foreign travel. Gov. Sarah Palin’s aide confirmed to CNN details of her foreign travel Saturday. In July of last year, Palin left North America for the first time to visit Alaskan troops stationed in Kuwait. Palin officials originally said her itinerary included U.S. military installations or outposts in Germany and Kuwait, and that she had visited Ireland. ” [Link]
“The three-part report begins with an executive summary outlining McCain’s ties to special interests and their disastrous implications for Americans on everything from the economy to foreign policy. A ‘By the Numbers’ section quantifies McCain’s ties to lobbyists (177 lobbyists advising him or fundraising for the campaign), McCain’s lobbyists’ earnings (more than $930 million), and campaign contributions to McCain from his lobbyists’ clients (nearly $12 million). ” [Link]
Sarah Palin picture
“The Alaska governor repeated her claim to have killed the now-famous ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ which her running mate, Arizona Sen. John McCain, has derided as wasteful pork. Palin first approved of the project. She turned against it only after it proved to be a political embarrassment.” [Link]
Army Future Combat Systems picture
“On Sept. 8, the Republican presidential candidate told a rally crowd in Lee’s Summit, Mo., about an Obama video message to a liberal advocacy group. ‘He promised them he would, quote, ‘slow our development of Future Combat Systems,’’ McCain said, according to wire reports. ‘This is not a time to slow our development of Future Combat Systems.’ Flashback to July, however, when his campaign furnished McCain’s economic plan to The Washington Post, declaring that ‘there are lots of procurements — Airborne Laser, [C-17] Globemaster, Future Combat System [sic] — that should be ended and the entire Pentagon budget should be scrubbed.’” [Link]
“Palin told Charles Gibson of ABC News that she’d favor including Georgia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics, in NATO despite opposition by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Asked whether the United States would have to go to war with Russia if it invaded Georgia, and the country was part of NATO, Palin said: ‘Perhaps so.’” [Link]
“More than 40 million people tuned in last week to listen to the speech from Palin, the 44-year-old first-term governor whom McCain announced as his surprise vice presidential pick just days before. Since then, that basic script is all anyone has heard from her publicly, and her only interaction with the media was a brief conversation with a small group of reporters on her plane Monday — off the record at her handlers’ insistence. Associated Press reporters were not on the plane, but an aide told the journalists on board that all Palin flights would be off the record unless the media were told otherwise. At least one reporter objected. Two people on the flight said the Palins greeted the media and they chatted about who had been to Alaska, but little else was said.” [Link]
“‘Our kids and our country can’t afford four more years of neglect and indifference. At this defining moment in our history, America faces few more urgent challenges than preparing our children to compete in a global economy,’ Obama said at a campaign event in Riverside, Ohio. Obama also charged that Sen. John McCain hasn’t done ‘one thing’ to improve public education. ” [Link]
“Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin billed the state for per diem allowances for 312 nights spent in her home, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. Palin, who is paid $125,000 a year, collected allowances intended to pay for meals and incidental expenses incurred during travel on state business, the newspaper said, citing an analysis of her travel documents. She billed taxpayers for travel expenses involved in taking her children on official missions and her husband, Todd Palin, billed the state for expenses for travel on official business with the governor.” [Link]
Barack Obama
“It was in St. Paul last week that Palin drew raucous cheers when she delivered this put-down of Obama: ‘Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.’ Obama had a few problems with that. ‘First of all, you don’t even get to read them their rights until you catch ‘em,’ Obama said here, drawing laughs from 1,500 supporters in a high school gymnasium. ‘They should spend more time trying to catch Osama bin Laden and we can worry about the next steps later.’ If the plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks are in the government’s sights, Obama went on, they should be targeted and killed. ‘My position has always been clear: If you’ve got a terrorist, take him out,’ Obama said. ‘Anybody who was involved in 9/11, take ‘em out.’” [Link]
Karl Rove & George W. Bush
“Though former Bush political guru Karl Rove insistently denies that he has a working relationship with Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign, the evidence that he is an informal adviser continues to mount. Last week, Time magazine described how ‘Rove speaks regularly with the McCain campaign.’ Today, the Hill quotes a GOP operative who says ‘Rove has had a consistent, ‘medium’-sized role with the McCain campaign’” [Link]
