John McCain has picked Alaskan governor Sarah Palin as his running mate - which at least is interesting. But how is he going to justify attacking Obama on his inexperience now? Palin, if McCain wins, would be the VP to a 72 year old man with a medical history of four different cancer battles. The chances of her becoming President would, I have to say, be rather higher than those of Joe Biden. There’s nothing at all in Palin’s record to suggest she has the experience to run America or to be Commander in Chief.
In an interview just a month ago, she dissed the job, saying it didn’t seem “productive.”
… Larry Kudlow of CNBC’s “Kudlow & Co.” asked her about the possibility of becoming McCain’s ticket mate.
Palin replied: “As for that VP talk all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day? I’m used to being very productive and working real hard in an administration. We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the U.S., before I can even start addressing that question.”
I’m still reeling with emotion from watching the whole thing. How amazing it will be to have a president that inspires such high feelings, instead of inspiring cringes. We’ll get more up later, but this is the first 16 minutes for you.
UPDATE: If you’d like to see the whole thing again, here you go.
Obama campaign chief of staff Jim Messina has some tough words for John McCain while detailing the campaign’s strategy during a meeting with Iowa Democrats.
In an op-ed at Murdoch’s London Times, associate editor Anatole Kalestsky writes that America must give the Republicans “a good kicking” to reassert the most important facet of democracy - not just to elect good governance but to get rid of bad governance. It’s an op-ed that is highly critical of the Democratic party’s choice - Murdoch’s UK papers preferred Clinton - and of Dem tactics to date. But it really gets the message across on McCain and the GOP.
Whether or not Mr McCain would continue the policies of President Bush (and much of the evidence suggests that his would be a Bush presidency on steroids), he would keep in power the coalition of interests that the Republican Party represents: the energy and military-industrial lobbies, the religious conservatives, the anti-environment interests and the neoconservative think-tanks. These groups - which have gained enormous influence, both financially and intellectually, under President Bush - are as responsible for the blunders of the Bush Administration as Mr Bush himself, arguably more so, given the President’s notorious lack of interest in the details of any of his own policies.
If a Republican is again elected president, these same centres of power will continue to dominate Washington. However many wars they encouraged, however high the price of oil rose, however many tax dollars were redistributed in their favour, the neoconservatives and Pentagon contractors and religious fundamentalists and oil and Wall Street lobbies would conclude that there would be no political price to pay for failure. They would be justified in concluding that there is no longer any democratic check on their ambitions.
It is only by ejecting the Republicans from the White House that American voters can send the message that they are still in charge of their country and that gross government incompetence will not go unpunished. Accountability - not personality or rhetoric or colour or age or gender - should be the overriding issue in this election.
That’s exactly right - and it’s great to see Bill Clinton, Biden and Kerry all do so very effectively rather than trying to keep the brand pristine. (Even the Right is admitting they did good - albeit with weasel words.) I’m a bit of an outside observer on US elections, being a “furriner’ and all, and it has disappointed me until now that the Dem campaign after the primaries had seemed rather flat. That’s changed, and while the Dems are still sticking to the moral high ground by not descending to the kind of lies and smears of McCain’s campaign, they’re now obviously in no mood to let the Republicans have the field to themselves. As my pal Kyle Moore writes, if the Dems had pulled out these kinds of performances four years ago the Dems would be working on Kerry’s re-election. More of this, please.
In an incredibly unifying and symbolic moment during the New York state delegate roll call, Senator Hillary Clinton asks for a suspension of the vote and requests the nomination of Barack Obama by acclamation. RIP “Democratic Disunity” meme.
“With eyes firmly fixed on the future, in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory, with faith in our party and our country, let’s declare together, in one voice, right here, right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our President. Madame Secretary, I move that the convention suspend the procedural rules and suspend the further conduct of the roll cal vote — all votes cast by the delegates will be counted — and I move Senator Barack Obama of Illinois be sleceted by this convetion by acclamation as the nominee of the democtaric party for president of the United States.”
Biden said U.S. President George W. Bush’s two conservative appointees — Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito — have pushed the nation’s highest court far to the right.
This, Biden charged, has threatened civil liberties and set back efforts to desegregate schools and obtain equal pay for women.
“Other than ending the war in Iraq, the single most significant thing that Barack Obama can do — and I hope I’ll be able to he help him — will be to determine who the next members of the Supreme Court are going to be.”
… During the next four years, Biden said, citing life expectancy estimates, there may be as many as three vacancies on the nine-member court.
“It’s not merely the woman’s right to choose (to have an abortion) which is at stake,” Biden told a mostly female crowd of several hundred people.
“It’s whether or not you are going to be able to have a fair shot at a fair wage,” Biden said. “It’s whether or not you are going to able to demand that you are treated equally in every aspect of your life.”
Those PUMAs who have said they’ll support McCain would do well to reflect on Biden’s words and McCains.
When National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru asked McCain whether he admires any Supreme Court justice in particular, he answered “of course, Antonin Scalia…I admire how articulate he is, but I also from everything I’ve seen admire Roberts as well.”
The Washington Post yet again manages to produce an op-ed only fit to wrap fish in, as neocon Michael Rubin - ex of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, the Office of the Secretary of Defense as an advisor to Rummie, political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority and unpaid hack for propaganda articles produced by the Pentagon’s PR firm, the Lincoln Group - blames Joe Biden for eight years of Bush administration foreign policy failure in a desperate attempt to label Biden as “Iran’s favorite Senator”.
Rubin makes a convoluted and nonsensical argument that A. Joe Biden supported engagement with the reformist Khatami government of Iran during the late 1990s and first half of this decade. That B. During that time trade between Iran and the EU increased. That C. A National Intelligence Estimate found that Iran had stopped working on its nuclear weapons program in 2003. From this he deduces that it’s Biden’s fault that Iran has moved ahead on its nuclear weapons program because it used increased trade with Europe to fund a nuclear weapons program. What???
… Rubin basically takes a bunch of unrelated facts and uses them to conclude that Iran must have spent 2000 to 2003 working furiously on its nuclear weapons program and that it did it with money from Europe that somehow Joe Biden was responsible for. Yup, putting those rigorous analytical skills that he learned that the Office of Special Plans to work.
Rubin also forgets to mention little details. Like the fact that under this Administration trade with Iran has actually increased ten-fold and is at its highest levels since before the Iranian revolution. Or the fact that the 2007 NIE concluded that Iran did in fact stop working on its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and was still years away from building a bomb.
Rubin then claims that Biden’s vote against Kyl-Lieberman was partisan politics because Biden said that he didn’t trust this Administration. Ummm…. Trying to prevent war with Iran is not exactly a partisan activity. It’s not partisan to fear that an administration that has a track record of escalating conflict and misleading the American public might do it again. That is in fact the exact opposite of partisan if you believe that war with Iran is against America’s interests.
Remember this interview with Katie Couric? We were all so focused on McCain’s inability to count property that a fairly large whopper of a lie went for the most part unnoticed:
Couric: Are you sorry about the way you answered the question about how many homes you own?
McCain: Well, I’ll continue to say I’m blessed, and very proud, that Jim Hensley, a war hero, a man barely able to graduate from high school was able to pass on to his daughter a…what he had struggled for and saved for. That’s the ambition all of us have for our children and our grandchildren. And if someone wants to disparage that, they’re free to do that.
So it’s natural to ask: how was the Hensley fortune built? According to a 2000 investigation in the Phoenix New Times,
The Hensley saga… swirls with bygone accounts of illicit booze, gambling, horse racing, deceit and crime.
The story by investigative reporters Amy Silverman and John Dougherty is riveting - and remarkably untouched by the Corporate Media, even though it involves the car-bomb murder of a top reporter at the Arizona Republic named Don Bolles.
So Jim Hensley had dirty fingers in enough juicy pies of bootlegging, mafia, racketeering and even murder — while being defended by future Supreme Court Chief William Rehnquist, mind you — to even make a right wing hack like Corsi sit up and take notice? That’s some good stuff the media is completely ignoring.
And for the record, McCain, that’s not at all the kind of ambition I hope for my kids and grandkids.
Cindy McCain, wife of Sen. John McCain, is headed to the Republic of Georgia, where tensions between the government and Russia have sparked international concern and have become an issue on the presidential campaign trail.
McCain announced to a group of fundraisers in Sacramento that his wife was headed to the country, but the campaign did not provide any details about the trip.
McCain has been very aggressive in his condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Georgia, and his campaign has been critical of Obama’s more measured response when Russian tanks first pushed into the country.
McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker confirmed Cindy McCain is enroute to the nation and said she is visiting as part of the World Food Program. She said she will meet with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and visit with wounded Georgian soldiers. Read on…
Can you imagine the absolute outrage from the right and John McCain if Michelle Obama was going on a trip to another country at war to meet with their wounded soldiers? John McCain has already used the U.S. military as political fodder, and now he’s sending his wife Cindy to exploit unwitting Georgian soldiers too. I guess having a campaign adviser who also lobbies for Georgia sure has paid off.
CBS4 has learned at least four people are under arrest in connection with a possible plot to kill Barack Obama at his Thursday night acceptance speech in Denver. All are being held on either drug or weapons charges.
CBS4 Investigator Brian Maass reported one of the suspects told authorities they were “going to shoot Obama from a high vantage point using a … rifle … sighted at 750 yards.”
Law enforcement sources tell Maass that one of the suspects “was directly asked if they had come to Denver to kill Obama. He responded in the affirmative.”
The story began emerging Sunday morning when Aurora police arrested 28-year-old Tharin Gartrell. He was driving a rented pickup truck in an erratic manner according to sources.
Sources told CBS4 police found two high-powered, scoped rifles in the car along with camouflage clothing, walkie-talkies, wigs, a bulletproof vest, a spotting scope, licenses in the names of other people and 44 grams of methamphetamine. One of the rifles is listed as stolen from Kansas.
However, almost as quickly as news began to spread of this alleged assassination plot, the Feds came in and dismissed it.
Federal officials said verbal threats against Obama were made, but were not considered credible.
“This is a methamphetamine and firearms case that arose from a traffic stop made by an Aurora Police officer,” said Paul Bresson, an FBI national spokesman assigned to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this week. “Firearms and methamphetamine were seized and a number of individuals are in state custody. The matter continues to be under investigation. We’ll provide more information as it becomes available.”
“It could also turn out that these were nothing but a bunch of knuckleheads, meth heads,” a U.S. government official said.
Undeterred by his ongoing treatment for brain cancer, Senator Ted Kennedy walked on to the stage tonight at the Democratic National Convention and gave one hell of a speech. As the crowd chanted “Teddy!” he inspired and captivated the audience with all the fire and passion we’ve come to expect from him over the years.
“…Nothing - nothing is going to keep me away from this special gathering tonight! I have come here tonight to stand with you to change America, to restore it’s future, to rise to our best ideals and to elect Barack Obama President of the United States. As I look ahead I am strengthened by family and friendship. So many of you have been with me in the happiest days and the hardest days. Together we have known success and seen setbacks, victory and defeat, but we have never lost our belief that we are all called to a better country and a newer world. And I pledge to you that I will be there next January on the floor of the United States Senate…”
The Glasgow Herald’s veteran political correspondent Iain McWhirter wonders wtf is wrong with America, that John McCain is actually level with Obama in the polls. A lot of Europeans are wondering the same thing.
It seems incredible, but as the Democrats gather in Denver to anoint Barack Obama, America could be on course to re-elect a Republican as their President. Not just any Republican either, but a belligerent 71-year-old who can’t remember how many houses he owns, would happily nuke Iran and whose answer to global warming is to drill for oil in environmentally sensitive areas off the coast of America which don’t even have much oil. But according to the polls, John McCain is drawing level with Barack Obama, and even pulling ahead.
Really, America is a strange, strange country. After a disastrous and illegal war, in which 4000 American soldiers have died, in the middle of an economic crisis largely caused by the investment houses that finance the Republican party, you would have thought it almost inconceivable that the Republicans could be re-elected. Could any political brand be more toxic? Has any party in history deserved to be thrown out at an election more than the Republicans in 2008?
… Yet enough American voters believe that John McCain might have the answers for him to become a serious contender. Which is scary. McCain is not an unknown quantity - he is a highly excitable politician with a notoriously short temper, who would bring his impetuous and confrontational style into American foreign policy. With the world entering a global economic slump, and old enmities raging in Europe, John McCain as President would be like a flamethrower in a fireworks factory.
It is scary - and Obama has to take a fair chunk of the blame. He’s seemed flat since the exhausting primary race (here’s hoping he does better at the convention) and although his campaign actually has a decent set of detailed policies, he’s been awful at articulating them. Good on the inspirational rhetoric, crap on getting down in the weeds and it’s left him looking like, as the right likes to put it, an “empty suit”. Maybe Biden will help there - even when I’ve disagreed with him on policy, Joe’s been adept at putting detailed policies into easy to swallow forms that don’t obscure that there is detail there.
But McWhirter points to the major reason a McCain presidency is scary:
I got an insight into the McCain worldview last week at the Edinburgh Book Festival in a session I did with Robert Kagan, McCain’s leading foreign affairs adviser, and author of The Return of History and the End of Dreams. The good news is that the war against terror is past tense, it seems, because he didn’t mention al Qaeda once. The bad news is that America might be about to revisit, not the cold war, but the era of nineteenth-century great power rivalry, which is how Kagan characterised the current state of international affairs.
He believes the great faultline is between America and an axis of authoritarianism represented by China and Russia. There is a new era of geopolitical confrontation, according to Kagan, as Russia re-arms and China builds the biggest army in the world. America has to step up.“The future international order will be shaped,” he says, “by those who have the power and the collective will to shape it.” No prizes for guessing whether John McCain is up to the military challenge. Europe, which Kagan dismissed as an irrelevant entity in the new world of hard power, would get trampled in the rush.
That’s basically an admission from Kagan that a McCain foreign policy would consist entirely of looking for reasons to fight with Russia and China.
The neocons finally have their wet dream. No longer do they have to hype up a bunch of ragtag misfits hanging out in Pakistan’s wilds or an “existential threat” from Iran that is anything but. They’ve got an enemy worthy of their ideology, their notion that America shows itself best when in a war for its very existence. They want to take on the two largest rival military powers in the world, both at once. And they don’t want to do it by diplomacy, containment or any of that other pantywaist stuff. Oh no - they’re want to use “hard power’ - that’s a euphemism for war, folks - and they believe McCain is just the angry old duffer they can lead by the nose into providing it.
“Scary” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Completely batshit insane would be better. In case anyone doesn’t remember, the era of nineteenth-century great power rivalry led directly to the Great War and WW2, the first of which began over a tiny incident that lit the fuse on the powderkeg. How comforting is it to know that, under a McCain presidency, the neocons would actively go looking for a new spark?
John McCain has picked Alaskan governor Sarah Palin as his running mate - which at least is interesting. But how is he going to justify attacking Obama on his inexperience now? Palin, if McCain wins, would be the VP to a 72 year old man with a medical history of four different cancer battles. The chances of her becoming President would, I have to say, be rather higher than those of Joe Biden. There’s nothing at all in Palin’s record to suggest she has the experience to run America or to be Commander in Chief.
Obama campaign chief of staff Jim Messina has some 
In an incredibly unifying and symbolic moment during the New York state delegate roll call, Senator Hillary Clinton asks for a suspension of the vote and requests the nomination of Barack Obama by acclamation. RIP “Democratic Disunity” meme.
