Meghan McCain co-hosted The View today and in the process, caused the explosion of wingnut heads everywhere by using a web ad put out by the Democratic Party to tell Karl Rove and Dick Cheney "You had eight years - go away."
From Meghan McCain's The View appearance today:
Here's the DNC video to which Meghan McCain is referring in the video.
Awesome, no?
But it all hit a peak when Diana West came on and said this, in discussing how someone like Obama could be ahead at this juncture:
WEST: I find it amazing. I think that a lot of our traditional beliefs about the way people think and act are being shattered in this election. One of whom would be in a time of economic crisis, I am amazed that Americans seem to be turning to one, the one, Senator Obama of course, who is someone who embraces what I would increasingly describe as socialist policies. He spoke about it this week in terms of spreading wealth around.
We kept hearing John McCain deride Obama during the debate for saying he wants to "spread the wealth". It's starting to sound like the "Obama is a socialist" meme is just about all they have left. (That may also explain why it's on the tongues of the entire wingnutosphere.)
Of course, West went on to advise McCain to go on the attack last night over Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.
No wonder she thinks Civilization As We Know It Is Ending (because of Latinos, naturally, which makes her a Dobbs favorite and regular). It's being overrun by nonwhite socialists, after all.
I'm really hoping that the coming election sends a message -- not just to the Republican right, but to the poobahs in charge of our media -- that the public is fed up with this bullshit. And guys like Dobbs and West are relegated to the dungheaps of media history whence they crawled.
Look at these two screen shots from David Gregory's show "Race to the White House" today (Tuesday 10/15). Notice something strange? The Virgina poll is over two weeks old, and the North Carolina poll is nine days old. And what do you know, both show McCain with a small lead! Why rely on old data? Maybe because the newer ones conflict with the McCain "Comeback" storyline?
Here are the current trends in Virginia:
And North Carolina:
By almost any accounting, the past few days have been calamitous for John McCain. But not according to Roger Simon of the Politico. While McCain's transparently cynical ploy to play hero in the Wall Street bailout drama was widely derided as a stunt, Simon on Thursday insisted "it isn't as dumb or as desperate as it looks." Then as polls revealed American voters saw Barack Obama as the clear winner of Friday's generally even debate, Simon instead announced "the Mac is back."
Simon's hagiographic treatment of McCain didn't start this week. After the Republican convention earlier this month, Simon regurgitated the talking points emanating from McCain Central:
John McCain is a maverick who has now done what mavericks almost never do: win. And now he must lead a party while maintaining his independence from it.
It's a dilemma, but McCain attempted to resolve it by facing it head on. "I don't work for a party," he said. "I don't work for a special interest. I don't work for myself. I work for you."
Then as the economic crisis threatened to undermine the Republican's campaign, Simon praised McCain for "shooting craps" in trying to appropriate the Wall Street meltdown for his own political purposes:
John McCain is now shooting craps with his presidential campaign. It is high risk. But all he needs is a little luck to pull off his current gamble.
McCain has suspended his campaign to work on a solution for the nation's financial meltdown, and he has threatened to pull out of the first presidential debate scheduled for Friday unless Congress takes action by then.
McCain has been attacked from all sides for doing this, but it isn't as dumb or as desperate as it looks.
Then came Friday's debate.
Eric Boehlert thinks the bloom is off the rose...
Did you hear the media are mad? According to Howard Kurtz at The Washington Post, the press is angry at McCain for his patently untrue lipstick attack ("It's false. It's ridiculous"), and they're seething over how Sarah Palin keeps telling her demonstrably false Bridge to Nowhere tale even after members of the media pointed out her stump-speech applause line was a lie. (A "whopper.")
During the past week, virtually every major news outlet has produced welcomed, hard-edged fact-checking pieces about how the Republican ticket goes far beyond bending the truth and just plain snaps it out on the campaign trail.
In the past, that kind of truth-telling would have embarrassed campaigns and likely caused a dramatic change in the rhetoric. But what do McCain and Palin do in response? They pretty much ignore the press and its critiques.
Writing on The New Republic's website, Eve Fairbanks spelled out the conundrum, capturing the dumbfounded realization that spread through the press corps. It's like that scene in a movie when the superhero realizes his unique power (for the press, it's collective indignation) has suddenly been rendered useless:
Sean Hannity. Not making that up, and really, does anyone wonder if Hannity will question Ms. Palin's readiness to be Commander-in-Chief, the way he regularly does with Obama? And one wonders if the rest of her fall schedule is booked with O'Reilly, Brit Hume, and the gang from Fox and Friends. (h/t Oliver Willis)
John McCain on doughnuts and sprinkles.
"This is our latest health program."
OK, here's the deal. The media wants to make presidential elections about personalities alone, a clash between individuals instead of two people that represent certain policies they want to install in the country. But we're supposed to be voting on a candidate that expresses a desire to pass legislation that will help the country. We're voting on principles plain and simple. McCain represents the almost eight years of probably the worst presidency in the history of the US. It's "The Bush years," ladies and gentlemen. We nearly just had a depression with the Bear Stearns fiasco, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being taken over by the government, almost 50 million people have no health insurance, two wars are raging with no end in sight and China's holding the paper on it.
The government is wiretapping our phones and emails although they would never use any of the gathered information for purposes other than combating terrorism. Yea, right. Bush admitted he approved of torture which is now up there with apple pie as part of the American way. Rumsfeld tells the troops that they should STFU because you go to war with what you have. Screw you and your MRAPS. McCain doesn't want to expand services for the troops because he says they may leave the service then. Isn't that a funny way of showing one's support for the military?
Remember when we found a Canadian coin in our pocket and laughed about it saying "how the heck did it get there?" Not anymore.
You remember the idiotic question that infatuated the kool kidz back in the 2000 election, the one that asked the very serious "Who would you rather have a beer with George Bush or Al Gore?
According to a just-released Sam Adams/Roper Starch poll, more people would rather sit down to drink a beer with George Bush than Al Gore. Although some 24% of people are still undecided, tonight's debate could sway these swing voters. The Sam Adams' poll gives Bush a 3-point advantage (40% vs. 37%) even though the candidates are practically in a "dead heat" in all other polls. Could it be that Bush is just that much more likable? Or, has Al Gore's boasting gotten the best of him? Even so, Gore wouldn't be the first to tell tall tales in a bar, now would he? The fact remains though that the people's pick for a quick visit over a beer is Bush
Are you still drunk or drinking now? Outside of the Supreme Court's interference, Bush got the job because the media elites made that election about who you thought was your friend and drinking buddy. Not about our well being. They screamed about who invented the Internets and inspired Love Story and things that don't mean a damn to any of us except the people that don't have to worry about their next meal. The millionaire, rich kid---fanboys that populate the elite media and want to control the system. That's very important to our political system and the well being of our families.
When I'm writing a check to my health insurance company that just raised my rates again, I wonder and say---Yea, the cost just went up again, but if I could only have a cold one with John McCain at this moment everything would be alright. Bush and I could share a few chuckles over that one too. Good times for sure.
This election is about restoring some order to our country. Here's a memo to the media: Do some segments about POLICY! It matters when we're actually trying to get jobs, pay bills and feed our families. I can't make it any clearer than that.
A vote for McCain equals more War.
A vote for McCain equals No universal health care.
A vote for McCain equals a continued collapsing economy.
A vote for McCain equals higher gas prices.
A vote for McCain equals no help for the housing market.
A vote for McCain equals a further erosion of woman's rights.
A vote for McCain equals ideologue judges being placed throughout the country.
Please add to the list. You see my point. John McCain knows this so he covers up his complicity in "The Bush Years" and support of failed policies with doughnuts so the media will be soft on him. And that has worked all too well. .That's it for now. Have a beer, go to a soccer game, but make sure you vote to improve THIS Country. Vote Obama.
David Sanger at the NY Times is one of those top-level reporters who often willingly carries water for the Bush administration - promulgating "unofficially official" leaks, for instance - in order to preserve his precious access. It appears that he's willing to do the same for the McCain campaign.
Hidden from view during much of the Republican convention here, a fierce struggle has been under way for the foreign policy heart of John McCain.
It centers on the deep schism inside the Republican Party over how to engage with the rest of the world, a running debate that has consumed different wings of the party and the Bush White House for the past seven and a half years. All week here, it was an undercurrent running just beneath the message of party unity and experience that Mr. McCain emphasized in his acceptance speech on Thursday night.
On Thursday night, Republicans here got few hints about whether Mr. McCain will appeal to the base by leaning toward the more confrontational, go-it-alone approach of President Bush’s first term, or whether he will adopt the somewhat chastened, let’s-negotiate tone of the second term, which has driven may of the hawks to despair.
Umm...bulls**t. It's been clear to most for some time now that the neocons won the battle. His chief foreign policy advisor is Randy Scheunemann ferchissakes!
Scheunemann told the New York Sun that despite a number of “realists” such as Brent Scowcroft among McCain’s other foreign policy advisors, his own influence, as well as that of other like-minded advisers like William Kristol and Robert Kagan, has been paramount. "I don't think, given where John has been for the last four or five years on the Iraq War and foreign policy issues, anyone would mistake Scowcroft for a close adviser," Scheunemann said, adding that even if Scowcroft were close, McCain "was not taking the advice.”
And alongside Randy stand his fellow PNACers R. James Woolsey, William Kristol and Robert Kagan.
I know that Sanger is just a channel - and that Mccain's messagers want the elecorate to be uncertain about whether he's a neoconservative warmonger himself (after his "Bomb iran" musical venture) - but this passes beyond suspension of disbelief.
If you needed another hint:
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman is among several national security experts helping brief Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on foreign policy issues as she prepares to hit the campaign trail while cramming for a debate with her Democratic opponent...The McCain campaign has tapped Stephen E. Biegun, the national security adviser to then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), to be Palin's principal foreign policy adviser.
Biegun is admittedly what passes for a "realist" in McCain's camp - he was until recently vice president of International Governmental Affairs for Ford Motor Company (nice bit of revolving-door back scratching, there) and was Executive Secretary of Rice's National Security Council in the two years leading up to the invasion of Iraq. A dove, he isn't. And Palin just doesn't strike me as the "realist" sort.
But Lieberman does say Palin will be neocon-ready if the ageing McCain should fail to see out a whole term.
(Previously published in a slightly different form at Newshoggers)
On the same day Barack Obama met with the conservative water carrier Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, the McCain campaign made it clear that Sarah Palin won't be talking to any of the media any time soon.
In a jaw-dropping appearance on MSNBC Thursday, McCain aide Nicole Wallace told Time's Jay Carney that the press wouldn't get a chance to take shots at the hockey mom turned McCain running mate.
According to Nicole Wallace of the McCain campaign, the American people don't care whether Sarah Palin can answer specific questions about foreign and domestic policy. According to Wallace -- in an appearance I did with her this morning on Joe Scarborough's show -- the American people will learn all they need to know (and all they deserve to know) from Palin's scripted speeches and choreographed appearances on the campaign trail and in campaign ads.
Given the highly combustible mixture that is Palin's reed-thin resume, radical right-wing agenda and mushrooming portfolio of scandals, Team McCain's effort to field the first stealth vice presidential candidate in history comes as no surprise.
But for conservatives so found of countdowns and ticking clocks, the question now is: when will "Disappearing Palin" meet the press? Apparently, "Sarahcoulda," but won't talk to the media.
The clock is ticking.
Quite possibly Quote of The Day in a Wednesday full of good quotes, including Noonan's naughty word, comes from Ted Anthony of the Associated Press:
The Republican message about the Palin offspring comes across as contradictory: Hey, media, leave those kids alone — so we can use them as we see fit.
If you doubt this scenario, consider this: On Wednesday morning, a teenage boy from Alaska stood in a receiving line on an airport tarmac, being glad-handed by the potential next president of the United States — because he got his girlfriend pregnant. TV cameras were lined up in advance. The mind boggles.
It seems even the McFourniers at AP have had enough of the McCain campaign's bullying.
Joe Klein is calling the McCain campaign's assault on the media "insidious", "bullying" and "not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme."
The story of the day out here in Minneapolis is the McCain campaign's war against the press ... So what's going on here? Two things. McCain is just plain angry at us. By the evidence presented in the utterly revealing Time interview, he's ballistic. This is a politician who needs to see himself as the man on the white horse, boldly traversing a muddy field...any intimations that he's gotten muddied in the process, or has decided to throw mud, are intolerable. The second thing is more insidious: Steve Schmidt has decided, for tactical reasons, to slime the press. He wants the public to believe that there is an unfair--sexist (you gotta love it)--personal assault going on against Palin and her family. This is a smokescreen, intended to divert attention from the fact the very real and responsible vetting that is taking place in the media--about the substance of Palin's record as mayor and governor. ...There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.
So, the set up will be complete after she gives her speech tonight. With all the hoopla about her views and family, the pundits have already been saying that McCain bet the farm, or ranch or whatever by naming her to the ticket. Well, I expect her speech to be a big hit with the crowd and the punditry class will all swoon over it. All she has to do is be likable (no policy required) and she will be. Case closed.
McCain’s Media will blame the evil libruls for attacking her even though that's not the case and will praise her performance as the game changer for McCain. She'll become the "it" girl after tomorrow just long enough to make it through the election, just wait and see.
Q: What do rightwing blogger John Hawkins and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann have in common?
A: Both have been bumped from covering the Republican convention.
Hawkins didn't get his application for media credentials approved, he says because of critical posts he has written which irritated the McCain campaign, particularly on immigration. AP reports that Olbermann has been re-assigned.
Keith Olbermann was pulled from St. Paul to anchor MSNBC's storm coverage from New York, with his seat beside Chris Matthews filled by David Gregory. Capus said political considerations had nothing to do with that move; Olbermann has been sharply critical of the GOP.
You believe that, right? Sounds to me like the McCain campaign only wants McFournier types in attendance.
Noel Sheppard at the rightwing News Busters site is oh-so disappointed about Olbermann's absence. So just to cheer him up here's some classic Keith from January -
Download | play 
Download | play (h/t Heather)
Cindy McCain says that Obama's attacks on her man for not knowing how many houses he owns have "offended" her.
ABC News' George Stephanopoulos reports: Democrats' attacks on her family's wealth are unfair and offensive, Cindy McCain said today in an interview airing tomorrow on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."
For nearly two weeks, Democrats have repeatedly hit Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for saying he is unaware of how many houses he owns, calling the presumptive Republican presidential nominee out of touch with everyday Americans. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention on Thursday, Democratic nominee Barack Obama turned up the heat on McCain, saying he "doesn't know" about the lives of middle-class Americans.
"I'm offended by Barack Obama saying that about my husband," said McCain's wife Cindy.
When asked if Obama went too far in his criticism of McCain, Cindy responded, "I do. I do. I really do."
Boo freaking Hoo! John McCain was born the son and grandson of Admirals but couldn't hack it as a military man. He finished almost the last in his class, crashed more than he was shot down and set fire to a carrier. Then he went into politics and dumped his crippled wife for a rich one to finance that move. As that rich woman's husband, he thinks that $5 million makes you "middle class and thinks poor folks are just "whiners". Criticisms of him as out of touch, elitist and uncaring are absolutely fair game for a politician of his background seeking to be president -especially when he's done the same and worse to a man who really did come up from humble roots. He's not just a celebrity who is entitled to personal space - he's seeking to be the people's top employee and his attitudes matter.
Oh, and Cindy? When you agreed to let John send you off on his own mini-foreign policy jaunt to Georgia (hey John, only one president at a time, remember?), you stepped over that line between rich celebrity and political servant of the people too. That means that when you defend your husband's third hand wealth - he got it from you, who got it from your father - then talking about the American Dream might not be the best idea. Unless, of course, your version of the American Dream involves illegal trafficking (bootlegging), corruption and the Mob.
As ThinkProgress reported, CNN on Tuesday showed a deceptive chart which wrongly suggests that John McCain's tax plan provides more Americans with greater savings than that offered by Barack Obama. But CNN's upper-crust income brackets, which start at $161,000 and represent only 5% of taxpayers, conceal the inescapable truth that Barack Obama's proposals offer working and middle class Americans steeper tax benefits at every income level up to $110,000. And according to a new Gallup poll released this week, that truth isn't lost on American voters.
By 48% to 43%, Americans surveyed by Gallup say Obama would better handle the issue of taxes than John McCain. And with good reason. As the Washington Post detailed, an analysis by the Tax Policy Center showed:
"Obama's plan gives the biggest cuts to those who make the least, while McCain would give the largest cuts to the very wealthy."
