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She just had to go there. During an exchange on Late Edition Oct. 26, 2008, Heather Wilson could just not resist taking a cheap shot at Biden for his hair transplants and compares the money spent by the RNC on Palin's clothing to what Obama spends on his ties as well. Since the Republicans have tried to paint Palin as a Washington outsider, a maverick and reformer---this clothing spree certainly shattered that image.

Let us remember how the Republicans went wild over John Edwards 400.00 hair cut. Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee used it as laugh lines at one of the Republican Primary debates.

CNN:

BLITZER: Heather Wilson, are you embarrassed that the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 buying designer outfits for Sarah Palin at Saks and Neiman-Marcus, another $20,000 for make-up in the first two weeks of October alone, $10,000 for hair? Is this what a hockey mom should be getting?

WILSON: Well, that sounds like there are some staffers at the RNC who need a little education on how to shop at Wal-Mart and Ross Direct. But it does concern me in the last 10 days of an election campaign we're talking about those things.

WILSON: And we could talk about Barack Obama's ties or the vice president's hair transplants or something like that.

WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: Barack Obama doesn't spend that kind of money on ties. He buys them himself.

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From Late Edition Oct. 26, 2008. After discussing whether Jon Kyl was comfortable with McCain trying to separate himself from Bush, the conversation between Evan Bayh and Jon Kyl moves here.

Bayh: Well we can all cite our studies but I think the American people understand Wolf that when, the price that John McCain had to pay, and I like John McCain, but the price he had to pay to win his party's nomination was to embrace the Bush policies, back when he was running for the nomination....

Kly: What policies!

Bayh: Back when he was running for the nomination he said he agreed with President Bush on virtually every major issue. That's a direct quote. He voted with him 90% of the time, so (crosstalk). Excuse me that's just a fact. So if you like the way things are. If you think the economy is going well. If you think the policies of President Bush have succeeded you should vote for John McCain. (crosstalk).. we need a change you should support Barack Obama.

Kyl: What policies of the Bush administration created the problem that we're in today? The problem started with the fact that we didn't have enough regulation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Something Republicans and the Bush administration were pushing for and your Democratic colleagues opposed. That was the beginning of the problem of the housing bubble. George Bush doesn’t run the economy. He didn’t create this problem. His tax rates being lower actually helped for six years to create the second largest economic growth that we’ve had in the history of the country in recent years. So uh...

Bayh: It sounds like you're agreeing that uh, with John McCain when he says that economics and running the economy is not his strong suit. Apparently it wasn't George Bush's strong suit either Jon because according to you the President doesn't have much to do with the economy. So we shouldn't even be talking about taxes and spending and jobs because according to you the chief executive of the country doesn't have much to do with that. We have a different point of view. We think the President should lead on economic policy. You create jobs, foster investment and business expansion. The policies of the last eight years have not done very well.

Kyl: The Bush tax cuts created this growth coming out of a recession. Creating six years of economic growth. Do you want those tax rates which have been responsible for this economic growth and job creation to go back up?

Bayh: Wolf there in lies the fundamental difference. John McCain says he thinks the fundamentals of the economy are sound. That we've made "great progress" these last eight years. My friend Jon Kyl apparently believes that as well. I think we can do better. And I think the American people believe we can do better and that's what Barack Obama stands for.

Blitzer: Alright Sen. Kyl very quickly I'll give you the last word.

Kly: Not by raising taxes. Particularly not in a time of recession. Don't raise taxes on the small businesses because that create 80% of the jobs in the country. Keep taxes where they are.

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From Late Edition Oct. 19, 2008 David Gergen gives the Democrats some advice on how they should respond to being called socialists.

Gergen: If you go back to the distribution of wealth in 1979, thirty years ago versus today the people in the bottom eighty percent are losing compared to back then six hundred billion dollars a year. The top one percent of the population is gaining six hundred billion dollars a year compared to back then. We have had a redistribution of wealth in this country, up, and that has been aided by government policies.

Blitzer: But what the McCain people are suggesting and even Sen. McCain yesterday in his radio address suggested this is almost socialism.

Gergen: We just had a Republican government that has put a hundred and fifty billion dollars in the banks. They have injected the government more fully into the banking system, the financial system than any time in history. And so it's a hollow argument. (crosstalk) It's a hollow argument. I mean, I think the Republicans, the Democrats, if they want to join this argument they can. This is, there are very strong arguments to say "You guys are accusing us of socialism when you've just spent a hundred and fifty billion dollars as a down payment on a seven hundred billion dollar bailout."

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Bless my soul, they actually talked about the Georgian/Russian conflict on Late Edition this morning!  ** Nobody can claim that CNN is not on top of the issues of the day.  As Jerome a Paris, who wrote this great article, put it in an email to me:

Neocons are people that see danger everywhere and seem to crave military solutions in all cases. They endlessly blather about how we need to stand firm against bullies or other threats (Russia being near the top of the list), and protect our brave allies on the front lines, and along with them, democracy, freedom and our honor. They mock cowardly Europeans who think appeasement (read - any diplomacy) might have a chance. They fuel conflicts and perpetually tout military options.

And yet, whenever given the opportunity to stand up to their words (and sent other people to fight, of course, they don't do that themselves), the results are surprisingly poor.

Case in point, Sen John Cornyn, who had to wrestle with some serious pretzel logic on McCain's position to kick Russia out of the G8.

BLITZER: Do you agree with Sen. McCain, Sen. Cornyn, that Russia should be kicked out of the G8?

CORNYN: Well, I think, you know, we're not at that point, uh, yet. I think certainly - not over this incident, but I do think we need to recognize Russia for what it is and of course it was the Soviet Union that invaded Afghanistan back in the late 70s that has created so much hardship for the Afghan people, so much lack of stability in that area, so I think, you know, Russia is a superpower. They have the responsibilities of a superpower and they cannot claim that they are on any kind of equal basis or really legitimately threatened by Georgia from a military standpoint. But we do need to...we do need a resolution here, and lest this thing spin out of control.

Um, Sen. Cornyn? Have you heard of Iraq?   I hate to be pedantic about this, but by your standards, the US should be kicked out of the G8.   You really want to go down this road?

For more about the Georgian/Russian conflict, see this article: The warmongers have lost yet another war.

** Correction: I initially lambasted CNN for their coverage of the conflict, but it has been brought to my attention that they did spend a significant portion of their program on it this morning.  My apologies to CNN for the incorrect characterization.

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You gotta love the predictability of the framing from McCain's Media.  John McCain challenges Barack Obama to go to Iraq, and so he goes.  Then he makes the exact same courtesy calls with other heads of state with whom he would be in close contact should he win the presidency that John McCain made just a couple of months ago, but according to Suzanne Malveaux on CNN's Late Edition, "some people" are worried that Obama is just a little audacious for making this trip.  Riiiiigggghhhhttt.  Just who would be these people, Malveaux?  Would they be those same GOP/RNC types that have been whispering these ridiculous slurs because Obama's trip was so successful and made their candidate look like an intemperate, ill-prepared and out of touch amateur?

Senator, I want to use a word that you love to use, "audacity." A lot of people looked at the trip and they saw the palaces, the world leaders, the 200,000 that were gathered in Berlin, and they said, "The audacity of this trip, it looks like he is running for president of the world."

Are we quoting Krauthammer and Brooks again on another media outlet?  It appears so.  The question goes out to McCain's Media yet again: by what standard have these two chuckleheads--who have yet to be right on anything, mind you--earned the privilege of framing the debate of this race?

Kudos to Obama for responding the only way you should to these intelligence-insulting media narratives.

OBAMA: Well, let me make a couple points. First of all, I basically met with the same folks that John McCain met with after he won the nomination. He met with all these leaders. He also added a trip to Mexico, a trip to Canada, a trip to Colombia, and nobody suggested that that was "audacious."

I think people assumed that what he was doing was to talk to world leaders who we may have deal with should we become president. That's part of the job that I'm applying for.

And so -- so I was puzzled by this notion that somehow what we were doing was in any way different from what Senator McCain or a lot of presidential candidates have done in the past.

Transcripts below the fold

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On Sunday's Late Edition Rep, Roy Blunt (R-MO), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee who reliably votes in favor of the Oil & Gas industry and against renewable energy bills and has been rewarded in return, joined the month-long chorus of Republicans including McCain that have been making the demonstrably false claim that there weren’t any major spills caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

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Blunt: If there was ever a test of this system it's in the one place that we do drill which is the gulf - 4,000 platforms in the gulf - thank God we've got them. 238 of them were injured by either Katrina or Rita. There was really no oil loss of any appreciable kind at any of those. Less oil was lost than used to seep up out of the gulf floor."

In fact, as we continue to note each time a new version of this claim has been made, there were at least 124 oil spills as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The website Skytruth.org even has posted satellite images of the spills as seen from space. Blunt added to his false assertion a repeat of what must be the new talking point on this issue that was offered on Thursday by McCain’s policy adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer (an energy lobbyist) after she was called out by MSNBC's David Schuster after trying to claim that "hurricanes Rita and Katrina and did not spill a drop” of oil, a downplaying of the spills by comparing them to the amount of oil that naturally seeps into the ocean floor.

As ThinkProgress notes, “the effects of seeps and spills differ hugely” in their environmental impact. It's an apples and oranges comparison, as seeps are natural, thus not preventable, and they have very little adverse ecological impact due to the fact that they result in a much lower rate of release over time over a larger area, while the effects of spills on the surface can be devastating.

Rep. Blunt also attacked Speaker Pelosi's calling for a release of 10% of the oil in the strategic oil reserve and her pointing out many of the same facts I had written about a month ago that the oil industry has yet drilled in just 19 percent of the more than 40 million acres they already can that are not covered by the current ban — 40 million acres that represent 79 percent of America’s technically recoverable offshore oil reserves. Using generous estimates from the latest analysis from Bush’s own Department of Energy, allowing for unlimited drilling both offshore and in ANWR “would lower the price at the pump by less than 6 cents" a gal. by 2025.

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  Who knew Nancy Pelosi was such a straight-shooter? When Wolf Blitzer tries to pin part of the blame for the current energy crisis on the Democratic Congress, Pelosi shoots back by saying her House did everything it could to institute a sensible energy policy, only to have "run into a brick wall" in the form of Senate Republicans -- you know, the ones who broke the filibuster record for a full term last year.

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"The price of oil is... is attributed to two oil men in the White House and their protectors in the United States Senate."

While it might be easy (and typically accurate) to blame everything on President Bush and Vice President Cheney, I don't think it's unreasonable to lay the current crisis at the White House's doorstep. Sure, there are some uncontrollable market forces at work, but both Cheney and Bush are oil patch guys; it would be the height of naivete to assume that they would have an energy policy that didn't benefit Big Oil.

From Day One, Dick Cheney was plotting how to take over Iraq oil fields. Before the war, it was obvious to everyone that the invasion or Iraq, and the instability it would caused in the region, would only drive prices up further. For all the lip service President Bush pays to his commitment to renewable energy, the fact is spending has been on the stagnant since the mid-1990's.

What we really need is a leader with the wisdom to acknowledge the magnitude of the problem and the courage to tackle it head on. "Green Screen" John McCain is clearly not that leader.

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It's actually amazing in the divisive political climate in which we live that we can find consensus on subjects. Maybe it's a testament to exactly how bad the housing market is that there is no attempt at spin by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) to dismiss or diminish how bad it is and to congratulate Chris Dodd on his legislation to get things on track. But that's not to say there isn't hackery afoot. Kyl says that the Bush administration is not to blame for the crisis, but it's Congress' fault for not taking a tighter leash in regulations to the mortgage industry.

BLITZER:(H)ow much of the blame does the Bush administration deserve for allowing this kind of situation to deteriorate, as it has?

KYL: Virtually none.

BLITZER: Why?

KYL: We've been predicting for years that this problem would come along. When I was chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, we wrote papers on it.

BLITZER: But isn't the federal government responsible for making sure this kind of situation doesn't happen?

KYL: The problem is, there is very little regulatory authority. That's why this legislation that Senator Dodd has been working on, the one good feature of it is additional regulation. But we should have had that regulation four years ago.

Um, who was in charge of Congress four years ago? Oh that's right, the Republicans. Can you imagine Tom Delay 'hammering' tighter mortage regulations through the House four years ago? Me neither. But Kyl claims they were predicting it would happen. Hmmmm....

Funnily enough, you know who was in office more than four years ago who did lay the foundation for this situation with the legislation he pushed through the Senate? Phil Gramm. Remind me again, what's he been up to lately? And before we absolve the Bush administration completely, it would be appropriate to remember that the watch-dogs to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen is the SEC. Who appoints the SEC panel? That would be the Failure in Chief. Just sayin'.

Transcripts below the fold

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  During a 10 year tribute to his show "Late Edition" this morning, Wolf Blitzer opened up the CNN vaults to revisit some of the most deceptive things Bush administration officials have said to him throughout the years about Iraq and the reasons for the invasion. Oh, memories...

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Cheney in Jan 2007: You can go back and argue the whole thing all over again, Wolf, but what we did in Iraq in taking down Saddam Hussein was exactly the right thing to do.

Full transcript below the fold:

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CNN's Late Edition dug from their archives this clip of John McCain in August of 1999:

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McCain: I think that we must go back to the party platform of 1980 and 1984 - we include people who have specific disagreements who share our same goals. Ultimately, I would like to see the repeal of Roe v. Wade, but to do it immediately, I think, would condemn young women to dangerous and illegal operations.

See, back in 1999, McCain was walking a tightrope by calling himself pro-life on a personal level while at the same time assuring pro-choice voters for pragmatic reasons that “in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade.” Yet, today, McCain says bluntly right on his website that "John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned."

It's really hard to overstate the audacity of those in the media who tried to make Obama's recent decision to opt out of public campaign financing out to be some colossal flip-flop without even mentioning the fact that McCain has now flip-flopped a gazillion times on almost every issue under the sun. To summarize just a few of Steve Benen's list of McCain flip-flops:

• McCain was against the repeal of Roe v. Wade before he was for it.
• McCain was against torture before he was for it. Really for it.
• McCain was against crazy right-wing preachers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson before he was for them.
• McCain was against Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy before he was for them.
• McCain was against shady Bush "Pioneer" Texas billionaire swift-boat financiers before he was for them.
• McCain was for the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law before he was against it and began breaking it.
• McCain was against Grover Norquist, whom he called "corrupt, a shill for dictators" before he was for him.
• McCain was against BJU because of its "hateful," "racist and cruel" policies before he was for it.
• McCain was against ethanol before he was for ethanol and then he was against it again.
• McCain was against a Martin Luther King holiday before he was for it. ...

And that's not all. There's many many more. In fact, here's an even longer list. McCain has reversed his former positions to fall more in line with the Bush administration so many times now it's really hard to tell Bush and McCain apart (can you beat my 3 out of 5 on the first try?). It might actually be easier to list the issue(s) McCain hasn't (yet) flip-flopped on, although I can't think of a single one right offhand.

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Seymour Hersh has been writing about the Bush administration's aggressive stance against Iran for years now.  His latest article for The New Yorker, "Preparing the Battlefield", Hersh claims that the Bush administration has been carrying out clandestine operations in Iran for some time now, with the funding and cooperation of the Democratic leadership in Congress. 

HERSH:  I think this is another example of putting an awful lot of pressure on the Iranian government. There's been a dramatic increase in kinetic events and chaos inside of Iran. Almost every other day, there's another story in the Iranian press -- I write about this in the article, too -- about things blowing up, et cetera, et cetera. It looks like things are falling apart, a little bit. And the central government certainly has more trouble.

And I think the goal of this operation, this incredible operation, with all this money -- and, by the way, it's the Democrats in Congress who basically looked the other way and said, take the money and run. They did not stop this money, the leadership that I'm talking about, the Democratic leadership.

So, basically, my guess is that -- I don't think we can safely say that any military action is off the table, no matter what happens. And that's -- as I say, I wish I'm going to be wrong about all that, but this is really, sort of, an amazing development.

CROWLEY: Absolutely. I want to read a graph out of your book because it goes to the oversight of the Democrats you just mentioned. [snip] "'The oversight process has not kept pace -- it's been co-opted by the administration,' the person familiar with the contents of the findings said. 'The process is broken and this is dangerous stuff we're authorizing.'"

Tell me, first, what your sources say is so dangerous about this?

HERSH: The president has to give a finding on covert action, any action that's covert. In other words, when CIA goes in some place, if they get caught, there could be spies.

So he has to tell the Congress about it. And the military simply is -- the president, since 9/11, has decided anything we do militarily, we don't have to tell anybody in Congress about.

Guest host Candy Crowley brings on Iraq Ambassador Ryan Crocker to officially deny that any cross border operations have taken place, but Hersh points out that Crocker may not be in the loop--plausible deniability being the operative word.

That is simply a reality, that when you run secret operations, if you're not telling the commander, the military commander of the Central Command, who is supposedly running the country -- you may not tell the ambassador everything. Sometimes it's better not to have the ambassador know. 

Full transcripts below the fold:

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This morning on Late Edition, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) debate the issue of taxes, and Republican presumptive presidential nominee John McCain's attacks on Barack Obama's tax platform. Hutchinson's feckless attempts to promote the status quo are quickly drowned out, as DiFi lays out the reality of the disaster the Bush/McCain tax policies have created for our economy.

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McCain says Obama would spend more money on social programs which he claims would hurt our economy, but Feinstein quickly debunks that notion and points out that he has supported the President's Iraq debacle, which has not been paid for and has been wholly funded off budget -- and has lead to a bloated national deficit and skyrocketing interest on that debt that has to be paid for somehow.

Feinstein:"...So I think, in terms of tax policy, this constant cut, cut, cut, no matter what the debt, no matter what the deficit, just puts this nation in jeopardy in terms of its future."

There was a strange moment at the end of the segment where DiFi and Hutchinson give each other one of those terrorist fist jabs. (pictured above, right) Now, I'm all for ending the partisan bickering in Washington D.C., but this was a rather odd moment. WTF?

Bless his little heart, let's have House Minority Whip Roy Blunt on every week to talk up John McCain's candidacy!  Talk about living within a bubble, Blunt thinks nothing of touting the McSame presidency as a Bush third term, despite the record disapproval rating for the man and the vast majority of the country believing that the country is going in the wrong direction under his leadership.  Apparently, Blunt didn't get the memo that McCain is trying to distance himself from Bush and as Rep. Chris Van Hollen points out, on the two most important issues to the American people, McCain absolutely equals Bush.  And Roy, that's not such a good thing.

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BLITZER: When it comes to domestic economic issues, what is the major difference between President Bush's policies, what he wants to do, and what John McCain would do if he were president?

BLUNT: Well, I think what John McCain wants to do is continue these pro-growth tax policies that our friends on the other side have been talking for sixteen months now…

BLITZER: But that's what President Bush wants to do too.

BLUNT: And there is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with that.

BLITZER: So it would be in effect a third Bush term when it came to pro-growth tax policies?

BLUNT: It would be. I think it would be. And I think that's a good thing. You can't go out in the country anywhere and find people who believe that doubling the capital gains rate is a good thing, that raising the highest rate on every small business in America is a good thing, that eliminating those bottom brackets, that mean that people at the lower levels of tax pay less taxes than they would otherwise. In fact, I think one of the reasons that the economy has slowed down the way it has is the fact that there's great uncertainty about how those tax policies move forward.

ThinkProgress:  

(I)t’s nice to see Blunt conceding the point. McCain is promising more of Bush’s economic agenda — unaffordable massive tax cuts for the rich that offer no help for the average family.

The McCain economic agenda includes: $1.7 trillion tax cut for corporations, $300 billion a year in tax cuts that aren’t paid for, and a plan that delivers 58 percent of the benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers and only 9 percent to the bottom 80 percent.

Full transcript below the fold

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With even Republicans admitting that things are not going well in the country (don't pay attention to the fact that it's their policies that got us in this predicament) and Bush suffering from the highest disapproval ratings of any President in the history of the country, the only thing that John McCain can run on is that his presidency would not be the equivalent of a third Bush term. Of course, given that his strategy in Iraq matches Bush's, his economic policies are not predicted to work any better than Bush's has, and that he is woefully behind the curve on issues that really matter to Americans, that might be a tough sell.

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But don't tell that to Sen. Lindsey Graham, who appeared on Late Edition on Sunday to tell us that it won't be John McSame. Really. He swears.

BLITZER: In our new CNN Opinion Research Corporation poll that came out this week, “Right Track/Wrong Track”, President Bush’s job approval numbers—as far as his disapproval numbers—it was a record 71% of the American public, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, say they disapprove of President Bush’s job performance. That’s even a higher number than Richard Nixon had at the height of Watergate when he was on the verge of being impeached. Are you surprised that so many Americans disapprove of President Bush’s record over these past eight years?

GRAHAM: It’s frustrating times. You have uh, you have fuel prices going up, food prices going up, you’ve got a war in Iraq that was mismanaged for four years, so there is a very frustrating time in which we live. I’m confident of this, that Sen. McCain is doing well because of what he’s done over his life, over the policies he’s pursued, over his efforts to create bipartisan solutions to hard problems and his Commander in Chief credentials I think trump everybody running for President now and he understood the problems in Iraq better than anyone and calls for a change in strategy and that change has paid dividends, so I understand the frustrations people have. It’s tough being president. I think I know why Sen. McCain is doing much better than the Republican brand name because of the way he’s lived his life and politics and his personal desire to lead in this country and he really is an American hero.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->Of course, the reason Graham knows this? Because after seeing a DNC ad discussing McCain's economic policies, all that matters to him is that McCain won't raise taxes. Crippling deficit, bleeding money (literally) hand over fist in Iraq, but God forbid we raise taxes to fund the country's interests.

UPDATE: Very interesting.  This campaign tactic of trying to distinguish McCain from the Bush policies (no matter how virtually identical they are) for which Graham and Fiorina were on the front lines came about after the McCain campaign got it signed off by the White House to criticize Bush.  Can't risk bringing the wrath of the neo-con machine upon him again.

UPDATE: I'll be on with Sam Seder at 2:05 PST)

Of course the media never critiques the Republicans over their relationship (should I call it a marriage?) to the extreme religious right in the same fashion as they do all Democratic politicians. There's an incredibly tough double standard in play here. We've tried to get them to do it, but they even ignore McCain's new relationship with Pastor Hagee for the most part. Should we produce commercials about that? McCain's Media is going to be a force to reckon with in the fall. And Rangel is a Clinton supporter if any of you are concerned with that fact.

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Blitzer: The criticism of Barack Obama is that what Jeremiah Wright said at the National Press Club, Congressman Rangel, was no different than what he's been saying for some time, and he should have known that these controversial remarks would be made. Is this explanation that Senator Obama is making good enough for you?

Rangel: It's disgraceful that he has to make any explanation for anything. The intrusion of the media and Republicans into the sacred relationship that worshipers have with their spiritual leaders I think is going to come back to haunt us. To think that we have to go into the lives and the beliefs of Rabbis and Priests and ministers and Imams is absolutely ridiculous. We've got a war on. We've got an economy that's splintered. I think the media should be more responsible and start dealing with those issues. I don't think many people care what reverend Wright thinks and I don't see why any candidate should have to explain what ..

Blitzer: But Congressman, even Senator Obama last Sunday said this was a legitimate issue given the nature of -- He wants to be President of the United States. If there's a right wing politician, let's say a Republican politician that has an extraordinarily close relationship with a pastor who is making outrageous statements has been a member of that church for 20 years. Wouldn't that be fair game?

Rangel: Of course not. Of course he's a candidate. He doesn't want to take all of you on and I'm probably over the hill but the truth is that you guys know that his beliefs have nothing to do with someone that went to the church, and if we've got to get into the Jerry Falwell's and into the Robertson's and to the number of people who have what appears to other religions to be bizarre beliefs we'll never get to the issues that Americans were concerned about. I know that every American is more concerned with who is going to be a better Presidential candidate and a better President more than they are on anything that happens in the church that Senator Obama went to.

The Republicans have made it their mission to pander to extremists in religion so with Wolf's logic why then hasn't Blitzer ever gone after all the Republicans who are aligned with them? Because of a terrible double standard in the media. McCain's Media strikes again.

billw made the videos and says: Even though the media is still trying to fixate on Obama's pastor, there are already plenty of signs Rep Rangel is right. A recent NBC-WSJ poll indicated that voters are much more concerned with McCain's close ties to the Bush administration and its policies, and the cash-strapped NRCC just spent more than $53,000 running attack ads trying to link Obama and Rev Wright to Don Cazayoux (D-LA), who won in a special election Sat in a solidly Republican district they had held since 1974, with the outgoing Rep. Richard Baker (R) having won with more than 70% of the vote in 2004, the last year he had a challenger.