Whose Blind Ambition

post from Talking Points Memo on 18 August 2008 09:49:00 AM. © Talking Points Memo

McCain, in speech this morning: Obama wants to lose in Iraq because of his "ambition."[...]

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McCain: ‘I’m proud’ of
adviser’s lobbying connection.

post from Think Progress on 18 August 2008 09:47:00 AM. © Think Progress

In an interview with USA Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said he had no problem with his senior adviser Randy Scheunemann’s close lobbying ties to the Republic of Georgia:

“I’m proud to have supported them,” McCain said of Georgia in an interview on the campaign plane. “And I’m so proud that so many of my friends have done so, who also believe in freedom and democracy.”

Scheunemann had been employed as a lobbyist for Georgia at the same time he was providing foreign policy advice to McCain, lobbying McCain himself nearly 50 times between 2004 and 2007.

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Consumer Confidence

post from Jutia Group on 18 August 2008 09:15:34 AM. © Jutia Group

Confidence Game

Cruising along at 30,000 feet, you peer out the window. Nothing to see here. Just limitless pale blue sky and the glare of the all-too-close sun hitting your eyes. The in-flight movie is silently playing out in front of…

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The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John
McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous"

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 18 August 2008 09:15:00 AM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

In fact, the "former prisoner of war," after his release, cheated on his wife, and cheated during the Keating Five Scandal. I know, it's not "nice" to mention these things, but where does the McCain campaign come off claiming that John McCain's POW status makes him exempt from "cheating" when he has cheated repeatedly since the time of his POW experience? Is this what we have to look forward to for the next 3 months? Every time someone has a tough question for John McCain, he's going to invoke his POW years to effectively shut down the question, even when the question has nothing to do with national security? And will the corporate media call McCain on this?

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John McCains Cross In the Dirt: Faith Of Someone
Elses Father

post from Firedoglake on 18 August 2008 09:10:19 AM. © Firedoglake

As Andrew Sullivan notes this morning, if McCain's "turning moment" came during his "cross in the dirt" moment with a North Vietnamese prison guard, why did he leave it out of his 1973 biography?[...]

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Dana Perino: Not Cut Out For Hard-Hitting
Journalism

post from FOX Attacks on 18 August 2008 09:03:55 AM. © FOX Attacks

video details and more

No Joke. In this sound bite from Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino states that she is not cut out for hard hitting journalism. No? Really? Who woulda thunk it.

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Who Are We

post from Taylor Marsh on 18 August 2008 09:01:53 AM. © Taylor Marsh

BY TAYLOR MARSH "I will win," is confidence you need when running for the leader of the free world. But this type of talk gives me the creeps. Via Ben Smith: He was warmly received by[...]

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Today Progressive States Network devotes its
e-newsletter to "Election Integrity," and reports a dramatic swing back to paper ballots

post from DownWithTyranny! on 18 August 2008 09:00:00 AM. © DownWithTyranny!

Did you know that this November a majority of U.S. voters will use paper ballots?

by Ken

The Progressive States Network puts out a twice-weekly e-mail newsletter, which

chronicles the victories and setbacks of the progressive movements in America's states; shine a light on the best practices and the worst schemes; and help legislators, activists, and journalists across the country connect what is happening in their own backyard and across the country.

Today's edition is likely to be of interest to a lot of DWT readers concerned about the growing threat of election-stealing. It's devoted entirely to the broad subject: Election Integrity ? How We Lost It and How States are Getting It Back, also the title of Christian Smith-Socaris's lead article. In addition, there are articles on:

* Protecting Ballot Integrity

* Post-Election Audits That Work

* Stopping the Privatization of Elections

Along the way imagine my surprise to learn, for example, that:

(a) The writers consider paper ballots "the only true secure option," judging the problems with VVPATs (electronic voting machines with ?voter verified paper audit trails?) too serious to be solvable; and --

(b) Instead of moving toward fancier and fancier electronic equipment, as everyone assumed would be the case with reforms paid for in part by the Help America Vote Act, the country is actually moving back to paper ballots.

This November, for the first time, a majority of voters in the country will cast a paper ballot on election day and just 36% will use electronic machines, marking movement in the direction of more secure paper-based elections. At least one state is also trying to recover funds spent on problem plagued machines, contending that machine companies have not fulfilled their contractual obligations to supply reliable voting equipment. Diebold, the most prominent manufacturer of voting systems has changed the name of its voting technology subsidiary so that voting machine problems don?t effect the reputation of the entire company.

Clearly the move away from electronic voting machines is a tremendous victory for voters and a boon for fair elections. However, other clear threats to the integrity of our elections remain. The controversy over electronic voting machines motivated many to look more closely at the safeguards that protect our election systems from fraud and manipulation, and what has been found is troubling. Paper ballots are clearly not enough to make our elections secure; we also need a reliable way to verify election results. Recognition of this fact has moved the election integrity debate forward into two additional areas: post-election audits and publicly controlled elections.

If you go to the above link to view this issue of Stateside Dispatch, you can also sign up to receive it regularly.
#

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ThinkFast: August 18, 2008

Under pressure over impending impeachment charges, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation in a televised address to his nation today. “I don’t want the people of Pakistan to slide deeper and deeper into uncertainty,” he said. Musharraf said he was putting national interest above ?personal bravado.?

Mold infests barracks at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, even though they were set up just “a year ago for wounded soldiers after poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center triggered a systemwide overhaul.” Twenty soldiers who spoke to USA Today said that their” complaints about mold and other problems went unheeded for months, and they were “ordered not speak about the conditions.”

Despite public assurances, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was not in a “cone of silence” on Saturday night while Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) was being interviewed at the Saddleback Church in California by the Rev. Rick Warren. McCain “was in his motorcade on the way to the church” during Obama’s interview. The matter is significant because McCain and Obama were asked virtually the same questions.

McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis is accusing NBC of making “partisan claims in order to undercut John McCain.” Yesterday, Davis asked for a meeting with NBC president Steve Capus, “part of an aggressive effort by McCain to counter news coverage he considers critical,” Politico notes.

On the trail today: Obama will be in Albuquerque, NM where he will host a discussion on equal pay and outline his plan to provide economic security for working women. McCain will speak at the 109th Annual Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Orlando.

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Cheers and Jeers: Monday

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

Got Muck? Part II

More of my interview with Joseph Cummins, author of the fun, trivia-filled book, Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Campaigns (part I from Friday is here):

C&J: What has struck you as the most absurd thing about the 2008 presidential election season so far?
Joseph Cummins: The way politicians both in the primaries and now in the national campaign have been quick to make "going negative" one of their main attacks. As if "going negative" were not what presidential campaigns were all about, way back to the days when Davy Crockett called Martin Van Buren a transvestite and Abraham Lincoln was accused of having smelly feet.

Do dirty tricks really help candidates win campaigns?
I absolutely think they do. No matter how many times people may tell pollsters they hate dirty politics or "negative" advertising, there’s something in dirt that attracts us all. As far back as 1840, the prominent Whig politician Thomas Elder summed it up rather brilliantly in one sentence: "Passion and prejudice properly aroused and directed...do about as well as principle and reason in a party contest."

Look how well Lyndon Johnson’s smears on Barry Goldwater worked. He even had him portrayed in the robes of a Ku Klux Klan member in a children’s coloring book. See how Herbert Hoover was able to paint Al Smith in 1928 as a Papist who would change the way good Protestants worshipped in this country.

All very nasty---all very effective. You don’t believe people will swallow these types of things until you see it in action. Last spring, I was waiting for my daughter at her gymnastics class and overheard two women reassuring each other that if Barack Obama were---by some wild stretch of the imagination---elected president, he would be unable to serve because he could not take the Oath of Office. Why? Because he was a Muslim who would need to be sworn in on a Koran, and the Constitution calls for a Bible. Wrong, wrong, wrong---yet, of course, people believe this stuff.

And these are just the slanderous variety of dirty tricks. The election of 1876 was simply stolen in the South by Republicans altering electoral vote returns. And of course no one can say that in either 1960 or 2000 every vote was counted properly.

Do political blogs like Daily Kos have forerunners in history?
Yeah, in a sense they do, in the 19th century. When people wanted to support their candidates---or, in a day when candidates did not campaign openly, when candidates themselves wanted to create support---they started broadsheets and newspapers more than willing to launch scurrilous attacks---not that Daily Kos is scurrilous, of course)---against their opponents. Early examples being the Republican paper The National Gazette and the Republican rag Gazette of the United States. Lively exchanges of letters were printed in such papers, many of them leading to duels. If you didn’t want to start your own newspaper or write letters, you could pretty cheaply have a pamphlet printed up with a title about a paragraph long. One example being Davy Crockett’s insanely spurious The Life of Martin Van Buren, Heir-Apparent to the 'Government,' and the Appointed Successor of General Andrew Jackson. Containing Every Authentic Particular by Which His Extraordinary Character Has Been Formed. With a Concise History of the Events That Have Occasioned His Unparalleled Elevation; Together with a Review of His Policy as a Statesman, which was probably penned at a local tavern by an ancestor of the same guy who these days might be tapping away on his laptop at Starbucks.

What are some of the politically-oriented blogs you visit on a regular basis?
I like Daily Kos, of course, as well as Politico, Political Wire and The Huffington Post. This is not a blog, but David Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidents has a lot of interesting stats on presidential elections in history.

No waffling here: dogs or cats?
I like a good waffle as much as any presidential politician, but here I don’t have to equivocate: cats all the way. I currently have Mimi, a one year-old orange, white and black calico, who purrs and bites at the same time. Like Laura Bush, or so I’m told.

Joe's blog is here. We thank him for adding some humor and historical perspective as the '08 campaign prepares to rev into high-smear gear. Oh, happy happy joy joy.

Welcome to Monday, my precious zombies. Cheers and Jeers feeds on Republican flesh (warning: it's gamy) in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]