A view from Main Street America by a congenital Democrat and truth-seeking attorney. Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community. Posting on the Internets since 2004.
Showing posts with label Republican Incompetence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Republican Incompetence. Show all posts
Charles Fried, Ronald Reagan's Solicitor General, former Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, current Harvard Law Professor and, until this week, McCain adviser.
More on Charles Fried's endorsement of Barack Obama by the conservative legal scholar and former McCain advisor. It's all about Palin.
In a letter to the McCain campaign, he asked that his name be removed from their legal advisory committee, explaining that the key reason "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."
I asked Professor Fried to elaborate on what, if anything, this says about Obama and abortion. He responded to me with this email:
"There are many issues facing the country that are more important than what the President says or believes about abortion. I suspect that there are a great many things that Obama believes and will do with which I will disagree -- starting with his judicial nominees, but in a time of economic and foreign policy crisis I found the risk of promoting to the presidency a person as ignorant and inexperienced as Sarah Palin -- natural political talent though she is -- unacceptable."
There's not enough lipstick in the world to cover up vast ignorance and inexperience.
She makes George W. Clusterfuck look like Einstein. Well, maybe that's giving Bush too much credit. She makes George W. Bush look smart. To be stupider than Bush, now there's an achievement.
I love the combination of attacking McCain's {crappy) healthcare plan with reminding the voters that McCain is a gambler -- electing him would be a crapshoot.
The third in the series of videos by the Wasilla Project. Here's how they describe this one:
On the heels of the final, historic 2008 presidential debate, the Wasilla Project releases Part 3 of our series, where we examine Palins record as a fiscal conservative. Clearly, the economy has emerged as the dominant issue of the 2008 presidential campaign and we hope that this video will be a useful contribution in understanding some of the history of Palins public service in Alaska.
After 8 years of a Republican White House, there still seems to be a reality distortion field around the concept of Fiscal Conservative. Governor Palin presents herself as a fiscal conservative who has a record of helping taxpayers in her state. The reality has often been quite different.
Its surprising that someone who came into office as mayor to cut wasteful spending and lower property taxes, actually left office with Wasilla over $20 million in debt, when records show that she entered office with city debt at one million or less.
Some $14-15 million of that debt was due to a hockey rink she built while in office, land for which Wasilla negotiated the purchase for $145,000. They eventually paid out nearly $1.5 million for the land, not counting legal fees, due to Palin moving forward on the project before the city had clear title to the land. This echoes in significant ways Palins later negotiations as governor on the Alaskan pipeline, where she committed $500 million in taxpayer money, without assurances that a Canadian company would even build the pipeline.
As the economy worsens in the United States, markets around the world are crashing and people are losing their homes and pensions, its irresponsible not to question the economic positions and records of the candidates. In the case of Palin, her record has been extremely troubling and reflects part of the reason that she has lost credibility with so many Alaskans in recent weeks.
Jobs making thread for American flags outsourced to Asia.
McCain called "Buy American" laws "Disgraceful"
This is the North Carolina version of the ad, which I just saw on Fox during the Dodgers-Phillies game with "America" substituted for "North Carolina" at the end.
How does John McCain plan to pay for his horrible, no good health care plan? By making huge cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, according to this article in today's Wall Street Journal.
John McCain would pay for his health plan with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, a top aide said, in a move that independent analysts estimate could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs.
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...Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Sen. McCain's senior policy adviser, said Sunday that the campaign has always planned to fund the tax credits, in part, with savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Those government health-care programs serve seniors, poor families and the disabled. Medicare spending for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 is estimated at $457.5 billion.
In other words, John McCain, wealthy beyond belief, plans to balance the budget by slashing medical care for elderly, poor and disabled Americans.
Millionaire guts medical care for peopole who can afford it the least. Who in their right mind would vote for this guy?
yahoo: A protester holds a sign outside of a fundraiser for Republican vice presidential Nominee Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in Dallas, Texas October 3, 2008. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi (UNITED STATES) US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN 2008 (USA)
In a stampede to come clean, seven state employees who failed to appear for testimony after being subpoenaed in the Troopergate investigation in Alaska had a change of heart after a judge rejected their challenge to the subpoena. Now they've agreed to testify in the investigation into Sarah Palin's firing of the state's popular Public Safety Commissioner.
You want to talk about associations? 20 years ago while John McCain was palling around with his soon-to-be-a-felon BFF Charles Keating, Barack Obama was in an airport giving a complete stranger enough money to be able to take all her bags to Norway. A leader's character is revealed in everyday situations.
At the Republican National Convention this summer, the family came together to celebrate McCain's triumphant moment. "Everyone," says McCain's old friend and lawyer Bud Day, "was there and jovial."
Everyone except Carol. She declined to join her children and her ex-husband.
It was probably just as well. The buildup to McCain's acceptance speech included an eight-minute video that celebrated his life, work and family. At its conclusion, delegates in the convention hall erupted in applause.
Carol McCain, the woman who stood beside McCain through triumph and tragedy, was never mentioned.
Three crashes early in his career led Navy officials to question or fault his judgment. A Times review of his record suggests he was cocky, occasionally cavalier and prone to testing limits.
Mr. McCain [] wants to blow up the current system, by eliminating the tax break for employer-provided insurance. And he doesn’t offer a workable alternative.
Without the tax break, many employers would drop their current health plans. Several recent nonpartisan studies estimate that under the McCain plan around 20 million Americans currently covered by their employers would lose their health insurance.
As compensation, the McCain plan would give people a tax credit — $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family — that could be used to buy health insurance in the individual market. At the same time, Mr. McCain would deregulate insurance, leaving insurance companies free to deny coverage to those with health problems — and his proposal for a “high-risk pool” for hard cases would provide little help.
So what would happen?
The good news, such as it is, is that more people would buy individual insurance. Indeed, the total number of uninsured Americans might decline marginally under the McCain plan — although many more Americans would be without insurance than under the Obama plan.
But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).
Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.
And in the process of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, the McCain plan would also lead to a huge, expensive increase in bureaucracy: insurers selling individual health plans spend 29 percent of the premiums they receive on administration, largely because they employ so many people to screen applicants. This compares with costs of 12 percent for group plans and just 3 percent for Medicare.
In short, the McCain plan makes no sense at all....the McCain plan would do for health care what deregulation has done for banking. And I’m terrified.
This is a great issue to attack John McCain on. His health care plan is a joke, a gift to the greedy health insurance industry. How does a $2,500 tax credit help me, paying over $5,000 for health insurance this year (probably over $6,000 next year)? And he's going to tax what benefit I do get from my employer as income. And if he taxes benefits, taking away the tax benefit employers get for providing health insurance, that is the death knell of employer-provided health insurance.
If you have been watching the Katie Couric interview with Sarah Palin, you must know that she is not very bright, has no background in national or international issues, and is completely unqualified to be POTUS. Reportedly CBS has more Palin clips to release today -- and they are even worse.
There will be no vice presidential debate. At least, Sarah Palin will not participate in a vice presidential debate. There will be some excuse. Some crisis. Either national (economy? Russia?) or personal (kid with flu? projection vomiting? the preggo daughter goes into premature labor? moose on the loose in the governor's mansion? something.). Ed Schultz the radio host has this on his site today:
McCain Camp insiders say Palin "clueless" Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin. The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as "disastrous." One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, "What are we going to do?" The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is "clueless."
There's no way they let her get whacked around for an hour and half on her own. There will be no debate, because she will never be ready for one. It is painful to watch her struggle to answer questions that she had to know were coming.
Not much love for the not-ready-for-prime-time governor of Alaska around the web.
Ms. Palin's recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.
[I]t wasn’t a reassuring performance....[I]t may be hard for Mr. McCain’s running mate to recoup. It wasn’t her first interview on national television, but in some ways it was the worst.
Her third nationally televised interview, with CBS anchor Katie Couric, found Palin rambling, marginally responsive and even more adrift than during her network debut with ABC’s Charles Gibson.
Palin is living, breathing proof that John McCain lies when he claims to put this country first over politics. She makes Dan Quayle look like Albert Einstein with a better haircut.
Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric provided further proof that she is a clear and present danger to the nation.
The only people who can still say with utter sincerity that she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency are those who actually haven't a clue about what a president does. Once Palin gets sidetracked from repeating her simplistic talking points about being a maverick and cleaning up Washington and not ever, ever blinking in the face of a foreign threat, she quickly reveals the shocking shallowness in her knowledge of issues a candidate for high office should have contemplated long and hard.
I don't think she's stupid, I think she is much like George W. Bush -- incurious. She really hasn't thought about this stuff. Palin insults the intelligence of the nation when she makes claims about her qualifications that are patently ridiculous....
Ultimately, it is a good thing that it's all out on the table before the election, but really, media? The guy has been a MISERABLE FAILURE since Day 1. Nice of you to notice.
A Tale of Two McCains, a video by Jed Lewison showing McCain's all-over-the-map statements over the last week. Hilarious. Every time I see one of these things where McCain takes totally diametric positions, all I can think of is Spy Versus Spy from Mad magazine -- with John McCain as both spies. Fundamentals sound! Economy at risk! POW!
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