McCain votes against Sotomayor; White House makes idiotic response

This is so silly. John McCain votes against Obama's nominee and Obama is "disappointed" by his "partisanship". Oh, yeah... that John McCain—a real Republican's Republican, he.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs criticized McCain, President Barack Obama's opponent last year, saying that Sotomayor is qualified to sit on the bench.

"It's disappointing that Sen. McCain came to a different conclusion a day after talking about bipartisanship," Gibbs told reporters in his West Wing office.

But lest we forget....

While a senator, Obama voted against former President George W. Bush's nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito. The future president also voted in favor of filibustering Alito.

Short memory or the standard but-not-for-thee of the left?

Here's the beef: "McCain said on the Senate floor Monday that Sotomayor is 'an immensely qualified candidate,' but she does not share his belief in judicial restraint. 'There is no doubt that Judge Sotomayor has the professional background and qualifications that one hopes for in a Supreme Court nominee,' McCain said, before adding: 'However, an excellent resume and an inspiring life story are not enough to qualify one for a lifetime of service on the Supreme Court.'" This is a sensible statement with which all conservatives and even many Obama supporters would agree.

McCain has gotten panned for being a "moderate" in the past and too bipartisan for the blood of the most respected conservatives. However even Rick Santorum has recently recanted some of his wilder McCain bashing episodes. But my main point: despite the dreams and delusions of many of Obama's independent voters and supporters, neither of the adjectives bipartisan nor moderate can be used accurately to describe Barack Obama. If you need a good descriptive term, try ideological on for size.

BTW, here's an excerpt from the informative Santorum piece.

So I wrote without a doubt that McCain would not only work with Obama on the issues they agreed on, but would also "forge common ground on a long list of initiatives that go far beyond where he has gone before, including the stimulus package."

Wrong! McCain did not only oppose Obama on the stimulus package; he led the fight against the $800 billion addition to our national debt, labeling it "an act of generational theft."

McCain also opposed Obama's next major legislative initiative, an omnibus appropriations bill that was 8 percent larger than last year's and loaded with congressional earmarks, which McCain tried to kill.

McCain voted against almost all of Obama's controversial executive appointments as well.

Obama's climate-change plan? McCain called it an "irresponsible, ill-conceived, and distorted version of a cap-and-trade system" and "a giant government slush fund that will further burden our businesses and consumers."

Health-care reform? McCain said last month that a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the plan "should be a wake-up call for all of us to scrap the current bill and start over ... in a true bipartisan fashion."

Even on Gitmo, McCain said Obama was making a "terrible mistake" because he didn't have a plan for what to do with the prisoners. "I'm for closing Guantanamo," McCain said. "But I'm for a comprehensive solution. ..." In recent weeks, he's also blasted Obama's response to the Iranian election and the Honduran coup.

With allies like McCain, Obama hardly needs adversaries.

Our Flag Speaks

H/T

Barack Obama lies about Social Security privitization

Or maybe he didn't do his homework. Factcheck.org confirms the inaccuracy of Senator Obama's statements in Florida.

In Daytona Beach, Obama said that "if my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would've had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week." He referred to "elderly women" at risk of poverty, and said families would be scrambling to support "grandmothers and grandfathers."

That's not true. The plan proposed by President Bush and supported by McCain in 2005 would not have allowed anyone born before 1950 to invest any part of their Social Security taxes in private accounts. All current retirees would be covered by the same benefits they are now.

Obama would have been correct to say that many workers under age 58 would have had some portion of their Social Security benefits affected by the current market turmoil – if they had chosen to participate. And market drops would be a worry for those who retire in future decades. But current retirees would not have been affected.

ABC Quiz: Who do you support?

This quiz was interesting, albeit somewhat manipulative. The idea is that you select which candidate you prefer on issues based on short soundbite-style quotes. I chose Obama's position twice; one was global warming and I think the other was a vague one on the economy -- they don't tell you even at the end.

I think the overall message is "Hey, look at how close these doods are, man!" and to accomplish that, they choose quotes accordingly. Of course, try as they might, they can't pull it off on the abortion question. But it's still a fun quiz, if not merely for the silly "big head" Pythonesque animation.

OODA Thunk It?

Who would have thought that John McCain could use skills learned as a fighter pilot to undermine the Obama campaign? Michael Barone explains the OODA strategy here.

That term was the invention of the great fighter pilot and military strategist John Boyd. It's an acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

"The key to victory is operating at a faster tempo than the enemy," Boyd's biographer Robert Coram writes. "The key thing to understand about Boyd's version is not the mechanical cycle itself, but rather the need to execute the cycle in such a fashion as to get inside the mind and decision cycle of the adversary."

For a fighter pilot, that means honing in above and behind the adversary so you can shoot him out of the sky. For a political candidate, it means acting in such a way that the opponent's responses again and again reinforce the points you are trying to make and undermine his own position.

The whole thing is short; I highly recommend reading. The election isn't over, Obama hasn't been "shot out of the sky", but it's hard to see how all his George Bush talk is going to help him. I suppose I'm not one to ask since I don't loathe Bush like so many, and I can't shake the contrast between Cheney and Palin out of my head. I stand by my earlier remark, that I'd rather go fishing with Sarah Palin than hunting with Dick Cheney.

Paglia on Palin

It's a four-pager, but I guarantee Camille Paglia's latest piece to be great reading. If you can't stand McCain she'll provide you with some devastating descriptions of that "hoary, barnacle-encrusted tub". But she saves her greatest invectives for the Dems, the media and the "closed club" of angry feminism. And as an Obama supporter, her unmatched praise of Palin is bound to cause more squirming among the lefty Palin haters who couldn't write an interesting sentence if the survival of endangered whales depending on it. Here are some highlights:

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

In the U.S., the ultimate glass ceiling has been fiendishly complicated for women by the unique peculiarity that our president must also serve as commander in chief of the armed forces. Women have risen to the top in other countries by securing the leadership of their parties and then being routinely promoted to prime minister when that party won at the polls. But a woman candidate for president of the U.S. must show a potential capacity for military affairs and decision-making. Our president also symbolically represents the entire history of the nation -- a half-mystical role often filled elsewhere by a revered if politically powerless monarch.

As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women's studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances.

...and then...

Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics -- which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama's campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don't see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.

Plus... her performances are boffo!

It is certainly premature to predict how the Palin saga will go. I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin's boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn't worth a warm bucket of spit.

And who else isn't worth a warm bucket of spit?

Now that's the Sarah Palin brand of can-do, no-excuses, moose-hunting feminism -- a world away from the whining, sniping, wearily ironic mode of the establishment feminism represented by Gloria Steinem, a Hillary Clinton supporter whose shameless Democratic partisanship over the past four decades has severely limited American feminism and not allowed it to become the big tent it can and should be. Sarah Palin, if her reputation survives the punishing next two months, may be breaking down those barriers. Feminism, which should be about equal rights and equal opportunity, should not be a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership.

Hear, hear! And now.... the SMACK DOWN.

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.
...
But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.

Well, I hope that "changing social circumstances" is code for a regaining of sanity in the wake of boomer-created chaos. Read the whole article, it's worth it.

Jonah Goldberg on "McPalin"

Heh.

Obama's idea of ethics reform is to mandate clean sheets in the brothel. Palin's is to tear it down.

And Jonah came up with my favorite phrase to date which sums up Joe Biden, "limitless gasbaggery":

And let's not forget Biden, whose gaffes are the unavoidable byproduct of his limitless gasbaggery. Biden could shout on "Meet the Press," "Get these squirrels off of me!" and the collective response would be, "There goes Joe again." But if Palin flubs the name of the deputy agriculture minister of Kyrgyzstan, the media will blow their whistles saying she's unprepared for the job.

Poll: McCain & Obama Tied

From CBS.

(CBS) The presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain is now even at 42 percent, according to a new CBS News poll conducted Monday-Wednesday of this week. Twelve percent are undecided according to the poll, and one percent said they wouldn't vote.

Uh-oh... Anyone's community need to be organized?

Hey, Obama Campaign, Remember a guy named Dan Rather?

Here's a tip for Barack Obama and his campaign: if you are going to smear Sarah Palin as being a supporter of gay rights, hire a third-party net-savvy hitman. Otherwise you'll get busted by LGF.

Suddenly appearing among the Google search results for “sarah palin gay,” a web site titled: Sarah Palin Supports Gay Rights.

Sarah Palin (GOV-Alaska-Republican), supports gay rights, says Anchorage Daily News.

Quote "Gov. Sarah Palin vetoed a bill Thursday that sought to block the state from giving public employee benefits such as health insurance to same-sex couples."
Quote "It is the Governor’s intention to work with the legislature and to give the people of Alaska an opportunity to express their wishes and intentions whether these benefits should continue," the statement from Palin’s administration said.

Coghill said he’s interested in a new plan that would allow state employees to designate one person — maybe a same-sex partner, but also possibly a family member or roommate — who would be eligible for state-paid benefits. But the employee would have to pay to add that person to his or her benefits."

Sarah Palin’s veto gave gays the same rights as married couples in Alaska.

A vote for McCain/Palin is a vote for gay marriage.

Interesting. There’s nothing else on the page. This sure looks like the work of the dastardly right-wing anti-gay attack machine, doesn’t it?

But look who’s really behind this.

In the Linux console, if you enter the following commands, you can learn the secrets of a political dirty trick. First, look up the host of ‘sarahpalingayrights.com’ to get the site’s IP address.

host sarahpalingayrights.com
sarahpalingayrights.com has address 74.208.74.232

Then use the same command to look up the domain name pointer of that IP address.

host 74.208.74.232
232.74.208.74.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer obamadefense.com

Well, well. “Obamadefense.com,” eh?

And what happens if you enter obamadefense.com on your browser’s address line?

Why, you’re redirected to none other than FightTheSmears.com, the official Barack Obama site that’s supposed to be defending him against smears.

Looks like they may have a second purpose: to generate a few smears of their own.

(Hat tip: sk.)

UPDATE at 8/30/08 11:14:12 am:

Here's another site that traces back to obamadefense.com: ObamaTaxCut.com.

Politicians lie, computers don't. So, Democrats who said McCain's pick of Governor Palin showed he was desperate: who's acting desperate here?

H/T: Susan B @ Lilac Rose

McCain Picks Sarah Palin

From The Hill.



Well, I think I'd rather go fishing with Sarah Palin than hunting with Dick Cheney.



But seriously, I have no problem with McCain's choice, and all yous guys out there better not either or ya better go see the eye doctor.

The New "Catholics for McCain" Brochure

You can download it here (WARNING: large file, 2.6 megabytes). Sure, it's propaganda, what'd you expect?

It was only a matter of time

I was happy to hear Medved announce around 5pm today that basically the whole Hagee controversy is over. Here's Donohue:

After weeks of meeting with various Catholic leaders, and accessing scholarly literature on Catholic-Jewish relations, Pastor John Hagee has demonstrated an improved understanding of the Catholic Church and its history. In his letter to me, Hagee says, ‘I want to express my deep regret for any comments that Catholics have found hurtful.’ He specifically cites his emphasis of ‘the darkest chapters in the history of Catholic and Protestant relations with the Jews,’ and has pledged to provide a more complete and balanced portrayal going forward that will not reinforce mischaracterizations of the Catholic Church. And while he stresses that his invocation of terms like ‘apostate church’ and the ‘great whore’ were never meant by him to describe the Catholic Church, he acknowledges that anti-Catholics have long employed such language.

Who knows, those Ursuline nuns in San Antonio who were helped by Hagee's denomination might pray his butt into the Catholic church yet. He'd have to drop that 7-year rapture dreck, though, and that only comes out by prayer and fasting, believe me.

Ironic Juxtaposition

Over at a site called Libertarianism is compassionate there is a post with the fraudulent headline "Ron Paul Supports Mary Ruwart for President". For the 99.9% of you who are clueless as to who Mary Ruwart is, she is a published writer seeking the chance to be the latest Libertarian candidate to not be elected President in November.

If I were on the Ron Paul campaign, I'd be a little miffed at this projected endorsement even though Paul knows her and has endorsed her book. Ron Paul has served in congress for years and has long since left the Mickey Mouse Club. He has spurred serious interest, raised serious cash and is currently running as a major Presidential candidate in a major party.

However, the author of this post, "Fred", then states something even worse about the supporters of Ron Paul when he writes the following:

I know many Paul supporters are hoping John McCain chokes (literally or metaphorically) before the Republican convention and Paul ends up with the nomination.

Literally? Really? Immediately after reading this I looked up at the title assertion again, Libertarianism is compassionate. Yeah, OK, sure. But we'll obviously have to take your word for it, Fred. Actually I don't know any Ron Paul-ers who wish ill on John McCain. I'm sure there are probably some. If he "knows many", that reality no doubt goes along with the territory of the small circles in which he travels.

But I think it's more likely that this is pure projection on his part. One of the positive results of the Ron Paul campaign's successes will hopefully be to mainstream Dr. Paul's good ideas while pushing out the more angry parts of what Mr. Compassion calls the "liberty movement" off the Bircher cliff. Metaphorically, of course.

Disputations Tom will have to let us know whether this is ironic or funny or both.

Huckabee Concedes

And is expected to endorse McCain within minutes.

Go clean the erasers

I was strongly reminded of this exchange from Get Shorty between Chili Palmer (played by Travolta) and Martin Ferrero's character, Tommy Carlo.

Carlo: Where the hell are you?
Palmer: I'm in LA now.
Carlo: What are you doin' out there?
Palmer: I'm going into the movie business - producing.
Carlo: What do you know about makin' movies?
Palmer: Producers don't have to know much.

Well, after reading this piece on crossover voters, I'm thinking of a new profession, too: Political Science Teacher. They obviously don't have to know much either. Tell me this Tony Campbell guy is ready for prime time:

Campbell, who claims to be pro-life, said he is not bothered by Obama's stance on the issue, because he doesn't think either candidate will change the status of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme decision that legalized the procedure nationwide.

"If abortion is such an issue with Republicans, why haven't Republican presidents over the past 30 years done something about it?" Campbell said. "Is it fair to ask a Democrat to do what the Republicans haven't done?"

So the appointments of Alito and Roberts don't count as doing anything about it. Or Thomas -- he did say 30 years. Oh, yeah... there was also the Bork-ing of Bork. But that had nothing to do with abortion How about Bush signing the Partial Birth Abortion ban? Clinton vetoed it twice. No difference?

Wow, you sure can learn a lot from teachers. Actually I heard that Laura Ingraham was going to have this guy on this morning, but I didn't catch the interview, so I don't know how many pieces she cut him into. But I googled his name to find these remarks. I'm sure he sounds convincing to those ignorant of recent political history.

I can see the point that many in the pro-life movement are always making that they wish that Reagan, Bush and Bush had done more for the cause, but to dismiss any contributions since 1978 should get anyone paying attention to scratch their heads, not to mention many hard-core NARAL types who continually make abortion an issue every four years. Honestly, the guy doesn't sound like any sane Republican I know, even a pro-choice one.

The other guy the article mentions, Peter Wehner from the Ethics and Public Policy Center, was making more sense.

"(Obama) is completely an orthodox liberal," Wehner said, adding that most of Obama's speeches don't reveal much about his ideology. "I don't think it's well known where he stands."

and

Wehner predicts that by the time the 2008 election rolls around, it will be business as usual.

"I think the uplifting, airy appeal of Obama is going to dissipate, and it's going to become a more traditional campaign," he said.

Senator McCain Visits Pauli Country

Dianne Mueller reports on McCain's stop in Rocky River, OH.

I noticed today during both his opening remarks and the question-and-answer period afterward that there's something quite endearing about a guy who's not afraid to tell you things you might not want to hear.

McCain talked about the "transcendent" threat of our time (radical Muslim extremists), keeping the tax cuts, treating our war veterans to a more efficient way to get their health conditions treated, fuel concerns - from having to get our oil from country's unfriendly to the U.S. - to the need for nuclear energy development. (I think I was the only one in the room who clapped when he brought up the advantages of nuclear energy.)

Well, I wish I had been there now to back Dianne up. Yes, as you might have guessed, I am a shameless solo clapper and God has gifted me with a pair of really loud hands. It's ridiculous that we don't have nuke power all over this great nation. It's safe, clean, powerful and plentiful. People who don't realize this have been watching too much TV; furthermore they probably think the people inside the television can see them. Wake up, morons.

As far as I know, McCain is the candidate who has made the biggest pitch for nuclear energy on stops. Both Huckabee and Paul are pro-nuclear and mention it on their sites. I didn't check Rudy's site or Romney's since those campaigns are basically spent fuel rods at this point.

Of course, Obama and Clinton don't mention the word "nuclear" on their energy pages. Their potential voters probably think they could get radiation poisoning from reading that word on the internets.

MKH on the "Reverse Pyramid"

She's such a great writer. Excerpt:

This doesn't reflect badly on anyone but the Times, as far as I'm concerned. The innuendo and full-on craptastic nature of the lede alone is enough to damn any actual facts that follow, which are few and far between.

I'm not even going to pull the passage for further circulation, but unnamed sources think there might have been a sex scandal but aren't really sure, which may or may not have been connected to an ethics scandal that they're not even sure existed, the evidence for which all comes from eight years ago, and which naturally warrants dredging up the details of an actual ethics scandal for which McCain was punished and has duly apologized and seen-the-light for incessantly since it happened, ahem, 20 years ago.

Cats Chase Mice, Cute Blonds Make Headlines

That's my statement on the Vicki Iseman thing. It's kind of detailed here, although with a long interruption in the middle going over the Keating Five snooze rehash to pad the story. Whenever a newspaper has to make a "scandal collage" it to make a story seem substantial, especially if there's a pretty blond involved, you have to ask if there's really a smoking gun. The "evidence" of McCain and Iseman alleged involvement is presented mostly in the form of staffers trying to keep her away from the Senator on the campaign trail and earlier in the senate office.

The article is mainly accusing McCain of hypocrisy which is somewhat akin to accusing him of having vocal chords. Each is almost universally found in humans, but both are more annoying when their presences are noticed in a politician.

It looks like desperate smear material to me. A posed picture of Iseman and Bush is appearing on Wonkette, Huffington, etc., most likely because a photo of her with McCain wearing sunglasses at a hotel piano bar at 2:30am was not available. Her bio has reportedly been pulled from her firm's website which I won't doubt has probably been suffering many bandwidth limit related issues. So we'll have to wait and see what develops. At this point it seems as likely as that loser white guy who said he had a gay relationship with Obama. Dream on, honky.

Here's the official response from the McCain campaign:

It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career.

Romney Endorses McCain

From the Hill.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Thursday endorsed John McCain, his one-time rival for the Republican nomination, praising the Arizona senator’s position on national security.

Romney’s endorsement follows a trend of Republican leaders coalescing around McCain, who by all counts appears to be the presumptive nominee.

The former governor was perhaps McCain’s most bitter foe in the primaries as the two battled fiercely in the early states, especially Florida. The former governor repeatedly questioned the senator's conservative credentials, and their last debate together was anything but friendly.

Yeah, I agree

From Deal Hudson. Excerpt:

It may be that the McCain candidacy is the best thing that could happen to the GOP at the present moment -- it will allow some fresh air to blow through the party, and the conservatives in it, so that we will be forced to take notice of how we sound to the world at large.

I'm not so sure that we conservatives have been sounding very congenial or, more importantly, convincing.

As we enter the season of the general election we are facing a man who sounds the note of hope, a man who does not use anger as a rhetorical weapon: Barack Obama.

If we make conservatism synonymous with angry denunciation, rather than reasoned and optimistic encouragement, we will lose the White House, and lose the battle for the protection of unborn life.

This is what some callers to Medved's show have recently pointed out. All the radio heads shouting "Reagan!!" are lacking in Reagan's optimism.

Fire when ready.