Women voters choosing Obama

post from Daily Kos on 17 June 2008 01:40:09 PM. © Daily Kos

Despite the bizarre machinations of a handful of fringe (and oftentimes racist) dead enders, the fact is that mainstream Clinton supporters are coming together with their party to defeat the regressive (and terribly anti-woman) John McCain this fall.

DemFromCt discussed this trend Sunday. Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times piles on.

Now that the Democratic marathon is over, Clinton supporters like Authenreith are siding heavily with Obama over McCain, polls show. And Obama has taken a wide lead among female voters, belying months of political chatter and polls of primary voters suggesting that disappointment over Clinton's defeat might block the Illinois senator from enjoying his party's historic edge among women.

Never fear! McCain is fighting back, with a strategy of 1) saying he "respects Clinton" (forgetting this, apparently), and 2) promoting -- I kid you not -- more war:

Aides suggested that McCain's support for a gas tax holiday, a hawkish foreign policy and steps against climate change would appeal to many women.

Apparently, McCain thinks women want their kids shipped off to die in foreign lands. Bizarre.

Given the continued ineptitude and tone deafness of the McCain campaign, it's no wonder that Obama has opened up a massive lead with women, even though many still are unaware of McCain's anti-choice views.

But while the McCain campaign apparently believes that women are easy marks for its latent feminist cross-dressing, a reality check suggests that most women can instantly identify any man who’s hitting on them for selfish ends. New polls show Mr. Obama opening up a huge lead among female voters — beating Mr. McCain by 13 percentage points in the Gallup and Rasmussen polls and by 19 points in the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News survey.

How huge is a 13- to 19-percentage-point lead? John Kerry won women by only 3 points, Al Gore by 11.

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Kristol asserted that "anyone arrested in" the
U.S. has habeas rights -- but not under law he supports

post from Media Matters for America on 17 June 2008 01:38:10 PM. © Media Matters for America

Duringthe June 15 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, WeeklyStandard editor and New YorkTimes columnist William Kristol criticized the Supreme Court'sdecision in Boumediene v. Bush, in which the court struck downportions of the Military Commissions Actof 2006 (MCA), and asserted that, in passing the MCA, Congress had"tried to do the right thing." He then suggested thatfears about that law's denial of the writ of habeascorpus were overblown because "American citizens ... and[...]

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Does McCain Agree With His Blogger Who Doesnt
‘Care’ If Bush Policies Are Increasing Terrorist Recruitment

post from Think Progress on 17 June 2008 01:38:00 PM. © Think Progress

In an interview with ABC News’s Jake Tapper yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) argued that “we can crack down on threats against the United States” while staying “within the constraints of our Constitution.” He added that the Bush administration’s approach has “given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, ‘Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims.’”

Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign is now trying to attack Obama over a reference to the first World Trade Center attack in the interview, accusing him of embracing a “mindset” that “contributed to the tragedy of September 11th.” On the McCain campaign blog, Michael Goldfarb takes issue with Obama’s “gall” for suggesting that Bush policies have helped “terrorist recruitment“:

Obama wants to take us back to the bad old days of going after terrorists with prosecutors rather than predators. And he even has the gall to blame the Bush administration’s methods as having been a boon to terrorist recruitment. With all the international credibility the Clinton administration earned, and the international terrorists they incapacitated, one wonders how bin Laden even recruited 19 men to attack this country on September 11.

This is a curious line of argument coming from Goldfarb. Soon before he was “detailed” to the McCain campaign, Goldfarb declared on the Weekly Standard blog, “As to whether Bush is a recruiting tool for terrorists — who cares?”

What’s more, Bush’s policies have actually helped terrorist recruitment. Just today, staunch McCain ally Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) noted during a Senate Armed Services hearing that Abu Ghraib had inspired people to “join al Qaeda in Iraq.” Watch it:

video details and more

An April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate found that “the Iraq War has become the ?cause celebre? for jihadists…and is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives.” A McClatchy investigation published today “found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them” by “inspiring a deep hatred of the United States” in “men with no allegiance to radical Islam.”

Marcy Wheeler and Spencer Ackerman are liveblogging the Senate Armed Services hearing.

Transcript:

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TAIWAN'S SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM.

post from Ezra Klein on 17 June 2008 01:36:00 PM. © Ezra Klein

Via Merrill Goozner, CQ has a nice article on Taiwan, who decided, in 1995, to rebuild their whole health care system. They studied about a dozen systems worldwide and eventually settled on a unique version of single payer that preserved a lot of room[...]

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=taiwans_single_payer_system

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MSNBC's Hardball again falsely suggested McCain
holds statistically significant lead over Obama among white suburban women

post from Media Matters for America on 17 June 2008 01:29:21 PM. © Media Matters for America

On the June 16 Hardball, MSNBC host Chris Matthews again airedan on-screen graphic, based on an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted June 6-9,that falsely suggested that Sen. John McCain's lead of 44 percent to 38 percentover Sen. Barack Obama among white suburban women was statistically significant. Specifically, a chart that appearedon-screen provided only the margin of error for the survey as a whole -- 3.1percentage points -- and not the margin of error of 9.34 percentage points[...]

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The Dream of the Proud

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 17 June 2008 01:26:16 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

The Dream of the Proud. It's the belief in American exceptionalism, it's the conviction that America possesses inherent moral superiority, it's the assurance that we are a special nation blessed by God and are thus above reproach. The Dream[...]

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TX-Sen: "Big Joooohn! Big John!"

post from Daily Kos on 17 June 2008 01:25:11 PM. © Daily Kos

There are no words.

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Damn it, McCain, stop making it so easy

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 17 June 2008 01:24:00 PM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

(More here.)

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Safavian Conviction in Abramoff Scandal
Overturned

Former Bush Administration official David Safavian has had his conviction on perjury and obstruction charges overturned. The charges related to his dealings with Jack Abramoff. He had been sentenced to 18 months in prison and was free on bond pending appeal.

His conviction was based on statements he made to Senate investigators, GSA ethics officials and the agency's inspector general. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out the charges related to ethics officials and the inspector general and ordered a new trial on the other charges.

The court unanimously agreed that when Safavian asked whether he could ethically travel to Scotland for a golf trip with Abramoff, he was not required to tell ethics officials that he'd been providing Abramoff information about government-owned properties.

[More...]

The government contended that once Safavian asked for the ethics opinion and once he began speaking with the inspector general, he was required to disclose all the information, even beyond what was asked. The court disagreed. "The government essentially asks us to hold that once an individual starts talking, he cannot stop," the appeals court wrote. "No case stands for that proposition."

Safavian had been chief of staff of the General Services Administration as well as a former Abramoff lobbying associate.

The Government alleged he concealed that Abramoff was seeking to do business with GSA when Safavian joined him on a golf trip to Scotland in 2002.

All of TalkLeft's coverage of Safavian is accessible here.

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Dear Chuck Todd and NBC: Iraq Matters

Chuck Todd calls Moveon's latest ad, featuring a mother asking McCain not to kill her child with[...]

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