John McCain: Sick?? Go to Walmart!

Emergency room care you'll die for.

I suppose this is what the free market ideologues mean by privatized health care. Walmart medical clinics?

Daddy can get his prostate exam while you eat at McDonald's. YUM!!!

Obama Ad: "Parachute"

The latest campaign ad takes on the issue of executive compensation and golden parachutes.

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, Part 2

Obama Clear Winner

Polls show Obama to be the clear winner in last night's debate.

CNN poll

CBS poll

Fox News focus group:

McCain Unconcerned With Middle Class

Zero is the number of times McCain mentioned the middle class in last night's debate.

Barack Obama's tax plan is much stronger in terms of helping the middle class.

CNN's Cafferty Tells It Like It Is About Palin

Jack Cafferty lets it all hang out and tells us what he really thinks about Sarah Palin.

The Great Schlep

Sarah Silverman wants Jews to get their butts down to Florida for The Great Schlep.


The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

Head of Skate: The Sarah Palin Story

Wake me when the insanity is over.

The promo reads: "An Alaskan hockey mom becomes Vice President in the wackiest family comedy of the year... sound familiar?"

I only wish the real Sarah Palin were as articulate as the character in this trailer.

Sarah Palin: Putin Comes Into the Airspace

More from the cringeworthy Katie Couric interview. Sarah "Flash in the Pan" Palin shares her views on foreign policy.

(I agree with Olbermann that Palin actually speaks in MadLibs.)

When will this charade end?

It's so bad that even the conservatives are bailing.

National Review columnist and former Palin fan Kathleen Parker concedes that Palin should be off the ticket.

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.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I've been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I've also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there's not much content there.

Here's a transcript from the Palin interview:

COURIC: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?


PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land-- boundary that we have with-- Canada. It-- it's funny that a comment like that was-- kind of made to-- cari-- I don't know, you know? Reporters--

COURIC: Mock?

PALIN: Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah.

COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our-- our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia--

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state.

Colbert: Sarah Palin Is a Dude!

Sarah Palin: Not Ready for Prime Time

Katie Couric sounds like she's explaining things to a third grader. Sarah is obviously struggling. Those all-night cram sessions haven't worked.

UPDATE: Click here to watch Part 2 of the interview. I call this one "Sarah speaks in MadLibs."

David Letterman Reacts to John McCain Suspending Campaign

What a completely punk-assed move by John McCain. How in the hell do you go and suspend your campaign, not allow your vice presidential pick to do interviews, and move to delay the debates. What are you afraid of... DEMOCRACY?

Here's Barack's response from the New York Times:

...Senator Barack Obama appeared at a hastily called news conference in Clearwater, Fla., and said he agreed “there are times for politics and there are times to rise above politics and do what’s right.” But he said he saw no need to cancel the debate, scheduled for Friday night at the University of Mississippi.“This is exactly the time when people need to hear from the candidates,” Mr. Obama said.

He added: “Part of the president’s job is to deal with more than one thing at once. In my mind it’s more important than ever.”

Following up with a bit of humor from David Letterman.

Live Today on Barackobama.com

From the campaign:

Below is a list of events that will be streamed live today on http://www.barackobama.com/live.

Our live streams let you watch major campaign events as they happen -- without interruptions.

Please forward this email to anyone you know who would like to watch Barack Obama and Joe Biden's events live online.

Today's events (start times appear as scheduled but may be subject to delay):

Community Gathering with Joe Biden
Greensburg, PA
10:30 a.m. EDT

Community Gathering with Joe Biden
Wilkes-Barre, PA
2:15 p.m. EDT

Watch now: http://www.barackobama.com/live

Obama Closes McCain's Lead With White Women Voters

From the latest ABC News-Washington Post poll:

Two weeks ago, McCain held a substantial advantage among white voters, including newfound strength with white women. In the face of bad economic news, the two candidates now run about evenly among white women, and Obama has narrowed the overall gap among white voters to five percentage points.

Much of the movement has come among college-educated whites. Whites without college degrees favor McCain by 17 points, while those with college degrees support Obama by 9 points. No Democrat has carried white, college-educated voters in presidential elections dating back to 1980, but they were a key part of Obama's coalition in the primaries.

The political climate is rapidly changing along with the twists and turns on Wall Street, and it remains unclear whether recent shifts in public opinion will fundamentally alter the highly competitive battle between McCain and Obama. About two in 10 voters are either undecided or remain "movable" and open to veering to another candidate. Nevertheless, the close relationship between voters' focus on the economy and their overall support for the Democratic nominee has boosted Obama.

Among white voters, economic anxiety translates into greater support for Obama. He is favored by 54 percent of whites who said they are concerned about the direction of the economy, but by just 10 percent of those who are less worried.

The survey also found that the strong initial public reaction to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate, has cooled somewhat. Overall, her unfavorable rating has gone up by 10 points in the past two weeks, from 28 percent to 38 percent.

She remains broadly popular -- 52 percent of voters view her positively -- but there have been some notable declines. Over the past two weeks, the percentage of independents with favorable views of Palin dropped from 60 percent to 48 percent. Among independent women, the decline was particularly sharp, going from 65 percent to 43 percent. Her favorable rating among whites without college degrees remained largely steady, but among those with college degrees, it dropped nearly 20 percentage points.

Read more here

Campbell Brown Rips McCain Camp for Sexism

McCain Camp Whines

McCain adviser Steve Schmidt stamps his little feet and throws a temper tantrum.

George Will on McCain's Temperament

Conservative columnist George Will takes a critical view on John McCain's ability to lead this country in times of crisis.

From Washington Post:

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

Read more here

Regarding the issue of who is the better leader, Bloomberg News columnist Albert Hunt wrote that it was Obama, not McCain who showed leadership and a steady hand during the roller coaster events of the past week.

Barack Obama's Plan for the Economy

I just listened to an NPR piece on Japan and how they've managed to survive their economic meltdown. They were able to keep their unemployment rate below 6 percent and maintained the same GDP with government spending to stimulate the economy. They invested in infrastructure like roads to create jobs. It helped them avoid a complete economic collapse, and they are just now coming out on the other side.

It seems counterintuitive to spend your way out of debt, but the government can't allow massive amounts of Americans to become unemployed, stop spending, and slow the economy down even further.

A news commentator called our current economic crisis "privatized investment with socialized bailout."

The free market and deregulation ideologues have had their way, and this is why we're trying to avoid economic catastrophe.

The maddening thing to me is that despite the fact that Barack Obama has maintained a clear economic path out of this mess from Day One, that the race is still as close as it is. Also, the latest news shows that Obama could lose six percentage points because of racial prejudice, which shows how incredibly backward some people can be.

Here's someone offering this country a real solution, and some folks won't take it because of bigotry. I guess these same people, if they were on a sinking ship, wouldn't take the hand of a Coast Guard rescuer if he were black? They'd prefer to drown.

That just makes me sick. The fact that there are large numbers of American people who would prefer to drown in their own ignorance than vote for a black (actually biracial) man.

Can I secede from the union if Barack doesn't win this?

Me and my family are going to be okay (I think). We're college educated in industries that will be fine...for now. It's the people who will suffer the most, and who are the most vulnerable who won't take the economic opportunity that Barack can give them.

I think part of Barack's "problem" is that he is actually ahead of the curve in both foreign and economic policy. It takes the country time to catch up to him.

Obama, Not McCain, Shows Steady Hand in Crisis

Commentary from Bloomberg News:

When it comes to governance, and either Democrat Obama or Republican McCain will inherit this miserable financial mess, the best guide is who they talked to, what they said, where they've been, and how knowledgeable they are.

Obama's record and earlier speeches belie some of his more populist rhetoric. Yet they also suggest, as do his advisers, a much more activist government role than is likely under a McCain-Palin administration.

Comfortable With Subject

Obama called for the overhaul of the financial-regulatory system and tougher enforcement well before this past week's traumas.

Detached observers who watched him last week, especially in a Bloomberg Television interview, were taken by how conversant and comfortable he was on the subject, despite his thin record. Few detached observers came away with that impression watching the Arizona senator.

Much of the re-regulatory fever focuses on the Federal Reserve and any new agencies created to clean up the fiasco. Central, however, will be a more vigorous Securities and Exchange Commission, or whatever holds that investor-protection function.

McCain displayed a sudden interest in the SEC last week when he demanded that Chairman Chris Cox be fired. When his campaign was asked if the senator had ever criticized the current commission's performance before, they failed to respond.

All For Obama

Tellingly, three former SEC chairmen, a Democrat, Arthur Levitt, and two Republicans, David Ruder and Bill Donaldson, have endorsed Obama. Levitt is a board member of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

Donaldson, who was tapped by Bush to head the SEC, says Obama called him last year about the financial-regulatory problems. He has never heard from McCain.

``Obama has been talking about the need for better financial regulation well before this crisis hit and has done some real thinking about it,'' says Donaldson, a lifelong Republican. ``McCain comes across as someone who suddenly realized changes have to be made.''

Read more here

In Praise of Sarah Palin

Here in my local Democratic headquarters, Sarah Palin has been GREAT for business. Obama T-shirt and bumper sticker sales have gone through the roof.

I have had so many women come up to me and tell me that they want to get involved with the Obama campaign... after Palin was put on the ticket.

One lady came up to me and told me that she was a die-hard Hillary supporter. She is just heartbroken that Hillary is not the nominee. She is not really an Obama supporter, her perspective is that Obama should have waited and Hillary is the smartest girl in the room. I happen to disagree with the "Obama should have waited" part since we live in a democracy, but fair enough, that's her perspective.

She was considering voting for John McCain as a protest vote. But this woman is now volunteering for the Barack Obama campaign... why? The Palin effect.

The lady is Jewish, and she told me "Sarah Palin offends me as a woman...as a mother of two daughters...and as a Jew."

I spoke with another woman yesterday who called me and told me that she is a lifelong Republican who is NOT voting for John McCain...because of Sarah Palin, and that she had many friends who feel likewise. Her tipping point was the fact that Sarah Palin wants women to respect her daughter's choice to have a baby, but would deny other women the right to make choices about their reproductive rights.

The former Republican is the one who sent me the following email, which is making the viral rounds:

A great way to speak up for what we care about.

Does the thought of Sarah Palin as Vice President of the United States make you sick?

Since Palin gave her speech accepting the Republican nomination
for the Vice Presidency, Obama's campaign has raised more than $10 million. You may already be supporting the Obama campaign financially, but even if you can't, may I suggest a fiendishly effective alternative?

Make a $5 minimum donation to Planned Parenthood. In Sarah Palin's name.

A Planned Parenthood donation is tax deductible, while a political donation isn't.

And when you make that Planned Parenthood donation in Palin's name, they'll send her a card noting that the donation was given in her name.

Here's the link to the Planned Parenthood website

https://secure.ga0.org/02/pp10000_inhonor

Fill in the address to let Planned Parenthood know where to send the "in Sarah Palin's honor" card. Use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters:

McCain for President/Sarah Palin
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington, VA 22202

Feel free to send this along to all your women friends as well as your men friends and urge them to do the same.

Venetian Gondoliers for Obama

McCain's McLobbyists

The Obama campaign has created a new website aimed at exposing the special-interest lobbyists embedded in the McCain campaign. It's called McLobbyists. Check out the ad from the site.



From the Obama Action Wire:

Now that John McCain has realized this campaign will be about change, he's claiming he'll take on the 'old boys' network in Washington.

There's only one problem.

With seven of the most powerful Washington lobbyists running his campaign from the top, taking on the old boys network isn't a fight -- it's a staff meeting.

All told, at least 177 Washington lobbyists have come through the revolving door of John McCain's campaign -- raising money and setting his strategy.

While the middle class suffers under disastrous Bush-McCain economic policies, you can bet the McLobbyists aren't working to put themselves out of business.

Barack had some harsh words yesterday for John McCain about his McLobbyists and the economy.

Check out Barack's comments, then send the video to your friends:

Watch this video and share it with your friends

http://my.barackobama.com/mclobbyist

With so many vital issues at stake, can we really expect McCain to put American families first?

Keep fighting the good fight,

Obama Action Wire

Sarah Palin Is a Secret Muslim

A humor break from an email I received.

That's right! Fellow Republicans, we must make sure that the TRUTH is known. Consider the evidence:

* She comes from Alaska, which is the "Land of the Midnight Sun," an obvious reference to the fact that, when it is midnight in Alaska, the sun is out in Iran.

* She has never publicly denied being a Muslim.

* "Sarah Palin" is an anagram of "Iran has Pal" and "Sharia Plan." Coincidence?

* She often speaks about "God," which, as we all know, is just the western word for "Allah."

* That beehive hairdo is actually a hijab, but she wears a wig over the top of it to fool people.

* I know this guy who told me that he got an e-mail once from this other guy who heard someone on the radio who talked to some people in Egypt who were Muslims, and they said that she was a Muslim, and wouldn't they know?

* When she was sworn in as Governor of Alaska, she was sworn in on a Koran. Seriously. I know someone who was there.

* Then, right after she was sworn in, she shouted: "Death to America! Death to Israel! God is Great!" and fired a Kalashnikov rifle into the air. The press, of course, did not report anything about this because the media is controlled by LIBERALS, who don't want the REAL Americans to know who she is because they like it when REAL Americans get deceived. They just do.

* She favors restricting all sex education to abstinence-only sex education, just like the Taliban did in Afghanistan.

* She also favors the death penalty. So does Iran.

* The LIBERAL media says that she is not a Muslim, therefore she is.

* She recently traveled to Mecca for the Hajj. A lot of people don't know that. Also, I didn't just make that up right now. Why would I say it if it isn't true? I heard it from a veteran. You wouldn't second-guess a veteran, would you? What do you have against veterans?

* Alaska has oil. So does Saudi Arabia. In fact, that's part of the plan. Yeah, that's it. If she ever becomes president, she's going to give all of our oil to Saudi Arabia for some reason.

Now, forward this e-mail to everyone you know because it's REALLY important that people know about this.

I want to make perfectly clear that no one is trying to exploit the prejudices of gullible bigoted people here. Nope.

No one is implying in any way that there's anything wrong with her being a Muslim. Seriously. Some of our best friends are Muslim. It's just that the TRUTH needs to be exposed, and there is no better way to expose the truth than the tried-and-true method of beginning with a conclusion and then seeking out evidence that supports it while disregarding evidence that doesn't. It's how we Republicans get ALL of our information and make ALL of our decisions.

Palin's Ratings Slide 10 Points in Three Days

Over the course of three days, Palin's favorability ratings have slipped 10 points. She has gone from being the most favorable White House hopeful to the least.

She's like a sugar rush... tastes great, really fun, but nothing of substance. The high is over, it's time for the crash.

Life in a Battleground State

An interesting perspective from an Obama supporter in Michigan. (Click here if you want to see Barack's strategy for WINNING the battleground states.):

Life in "a battleground state"

I'm sick of getting daily computer-generated calls on my cell phone stating "this is an important message from your union and Senator John McCain......"

First off, I don't belong to a union. I haven't belonged to a union since I worked in a Local 1199 hospital in New York before my 15-year-old was born. I didn't own a cell phone then.

My husband belongs to a union but our cell account is not in his name, it's in mine.

I hope Obama knows how to campaign in Michigan. You can't send black campaign workers to white neighborhoods or white campaign workers to black neighborhoods because black people and white people don't socialize with (listen to) one another in Michigan.

I hope he doesn't talk about people feeling self-empowered to co-create a new and viable economy because people in Michigan have quite the rescue fantasy: They are waiting for a single industry to come sweeping into the state creating tens of thousands of jobs for people who never finished high school to make upwards of $70,000/year, just like the automobile industry did.

I hope Obama doesn't talk about Energy independence, conservation, alternative energy sources or alternative means of transportation, because people in Michigan want to drive huge pick up trucks, to go 10 blocks to church, or 20+ miles to the corporate big-box depository for CAFO end-products and cheap, potentially poisonous Chinese imports.

I hope Obama doesn't talk about global climate change because people in Michigan don't believe it's real, and if they do, they believe that "they will figure something out" and it won't turn out to be the big hairy scary thing that Nobel Prize-winning scientists around the world want them to believe.

I hope he doesn't talk about immigration reform because people in Michigan just want to kick all of the foreigners out even if immigrant labor makes their way of life possible (and literally puts the pork on their table).

I hope he doesn't talk about health care reform because MI has one of the highest obesity rates in the country, leads all 50 states in the rate of poverty rise, and since 68% of all personal bankruptcies nationally are a direct result of medical expenses with people who do have insurance, Michigan feels that single-payer govt-provided health insurance would be a very bad thing.

It's probaby okay if Obama talks about his hunting skills, or maybe just straight from the hip talk about how much he enjoys killing animals.......people in Michigan enjoy killing animals, too.

Maybe Obama should just start a campaign of cell phone harassment..........glad I got rid of the TV.

Carla D.

McCain Against Deregulation Before He Was For It

From Washington Post:

A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.

Now, as the Bush administration scrambles to prevent the collapse of the American International Group (AIG), the nation's largest insurance company, and stabilize a tumultuous Wall Street, the Republican presidential nominee is scrambling to recast himself as a champion of regulation to end "reckless conduct, corruption and unbridled greed" on Wall Street.

Read more here

McCain Would Grant Tax Breaks to Rogue CEOs

While he has dodged any plan to deal with the financial meltdown, one thing is certain. John McCain's tax plan would reward those responsible!

Richard Fuld of Lehman Bros., Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns, Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide, Daniel Mudd of Fannie Mae, Richard Syron of Freddie Mac and Martin Sullivan of AIG each ran their companies into the ground at a potential cost to taxpayers of hundreds of billions. In a McCain presidency, each would qualify for tax cuts on $10 million or more they made annually.

Barack would at least force these fat cats to pay more for taxes on salary and bonuses – income that can't be taken away even though it was obtained by gaming the financial markets.

Barack Obama's Plan to Fix Our Broken Economy

A new 2-minute ad that will be running in battleground states as well as nationally.



Click here to read Barack's economic plan.

Here's the transcript:

In the past few weeks, Wall Street’s been rocked as banks closed and markets tumbled. But for many of you – the people I’ve met in town halls, backyards and diners across America – our troubled economy isn’t news. 600,000 Americans have lost their jobs since January. Paychecks are flat and home values are falling. It’s hard to pay for gas and groceries and if you put it on a credit card they’ve probably raised your rates. You’re paying more than ever for health insurance that covers less and less. This isn’t just a string of bad luck. The truth is that while you’ve been living up to your responsibilities Washington has not. That’s why we need change. Real change. This is no ordinary time and it shouldn’t be an ordinary election. But much of this campaign has been consumed by petty attacks and distractions that have nothing to do with you or how we get America back on track. Here’s what I believe we need to do. Reform our tax system to give a $1,000 tax break to the middle class instead of showering more on oil companies and corporations that outsource our jobs. End the “anything goes” culture on Wall Street with real regulation that protects your investments and pensions. Fast track a plan for energy ‘made-in-America’ that will free us from our dependence on mid-east oil in 10 years and put millions of Americans to work. Crack down on lobbyists – once and for all -- so their back-room deal-making no longer drowns out the voices of the middle class and undermines our common interests as Americans. And yes, bring a responsible end to this war in Iraq so we stop spending billions each month rebuilding their country when we should be rebuilding ours. Doing these things won’t be easy. But we’re Americans. We’ve met tough challenges before. And we can again. I’m Barack Obama. I hope you’ll read my economic plan. I approved this message because bitter, partisan fights and outworn ideas of the left and the right won’t solve the problems we face today. But a new spirit of unity and shared responsibility will.

McCain Campaign Trying to Stop People From Voting

The McCain campaign is trying to stop people whose homes are in foreclosure from voting:

From ABC News:

ABC News' Karen Travers and Arnab Datta report: The Obama campaign and DNC have filed an injunction in federal court as an effort to challenge what they deem as illegal voter suppression of people whose houses are in foreclosure.

The injunction is in response to the comments last week from the Macomb County (MI) Republican Party chairman, James Carabelli, who allegedly said: "We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses."

On a conference call with reporters, Bob Bauer, general counsel for the Obama campaign, said this practice is illegal and would be used to intimidate and prevent people from going to the polls.

Read more here

McCain's Lies

There are about 52 documented lies being pushed by the McCain campaign. The Democratic Party has written a list, along with fact check verification. Here's just a few:

Washington Post Fact Checker: 4 Pinocchios for McCain Earmark Claim. "John McCain is trying to claim that black is white when he argues that his running mate, Sarah Palin, has not accepted earmarks as Governor of Alaska. While it is true that she has sought fewer earmarks than her predecessor, Governor Frank Murkowski, Alaska still leads the nation in terms of per capita spending on earmarks, according to Citizens Against Government Waste. ...I will give Governor Palin a pass this week, to mark her inaugural media outing. Four Pinocchios for McCain for his clumsy attempt to rewrite history." [Washington Post, 9/13/08: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/09/weekend_edition.html]

FactCheck.org: McCain Energy Claim "Not true. Not even close." Palin says Alaska supplies 20 percent of U.S. energy. Not true. Not even close. "Palin claims Alaska 'produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.' That's not true.... It's simply untrue that Alaska produces anything close to 20 percent of the U.S. 'energy supply,' a term that is generally defined as energy consumed. That category includes power produced in the U.S. by nuclear, coal, hydroelectric dams and other means -- as well as all the oil imported into the country. ...Sen. John McCain has also has used this inflated, incorrect figure. On Sept. 3, McCain told ABC News' Gibson: 'McCain: Well, I think Americans are going to be very, very, very pleased. This is a very dynamic person. [Palin's] been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply.' McCain repeated the false figure more recently, in a September 11 interview with Portland, Maine, news station WCSH6." [FactCheck.org, 9/12/08: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/energetically_wrong.html]

New York Times: "Disrespectful" Ad Resorts to "Dubious Disregard for the Facts. "The advertisement is the latest in a number that resort to a dubious disregard for the facts. The nonpartisan political analysis group FactCheck.org has already criticized 'Disrespectful' as 'particularly egregious,' saying that it 'goes down new paths of deception,' and is 'peddling false quotes.' Even the title is troublesome. 'Disrespectful' is one of those words that is loaded with racial and class connotations that many people consider offensive." [New York Times, 9/13/08: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/us/politics/13madbox.html]

Five Ohio Papers: McCain 'maverick' ad inconsistent with facts. Palin was originally for the Alaskan "Bridge to Nowhere" while running for governor -- before she was against spending federal money to build it. She opposed the bridge only after it had become an embarrassment to the state and after $233 million in federal money earmarked for the bridge was diverted to other transportation projects in Alaska. In six of his 25 years in Congress, McCain voted for spending bills that included 12,763 pork-barrel earmarks worth more than $144.4 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Campaign finance reports also show Palin received significant support from oil industry executives, lobbyists or their wives during her 2006 election as governor and 2002 race for lieutenant governor. Her husband, Todd, is an oil fields production operator. [2]

Click here to read more.

Probably the ad that I find most personally offensive is the one that says that Obama wants to teach sex education to kindergartners. There's an image of Obama on the ad looks like he's leering.

Barack Obama is a father with two young daughters. How disgusting to try to paint him as a quasi pedophile. The legislation that Obama proposed was age-appropriate and aimed at teaching young children how to identify inappropriate touches. Its purpose was to help save children from pedophiles, not to expose them to graphic sexual education demonstrations using cucumbers and condoms!

But I guess when you want to avoid discussing the issues, you resort to desperate measures.

McCain's campaign has even pushed Fox News too far about the McCain campaign claim that Obama would raise taxes on the middle class:




Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen takes the "Ugly New McCain" to task:

Following his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain did something extraordinary: He confessed to lying about how he felt about the Confederate battle flag, which he actually abhorred. "I broke my promise to always tell the truth," McCain said. Now he has broken that promise so completely that the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised.

The precise moment of McCain's abasement came, would you believe, not at some news conference or on one of the Sunday shows but on "The View," the daytime TV show created by Barbara Walters. Last week, one of the co-hosts, Joy Behar, took McCain to task for some of the ads his campaign has been running. [Click here to watch the clip.] One deliberately mischaracterized what Barack Obama had said about putting lipstick on a pig -- an Americanism that McCain himself has used. The other asserted that Obama supported teaching sex education to kindergarteners.

"We know that those two ads are untrue," Behar said. "They are lies."

Freeze. Close in on McCain. This was the moment. He has largely been avoiding the press. The Straight Talk Express is now just a brand, an ad slogan like "Home Cooking" or "We Will Not Be Undersold." Until then, it was possible for McCain to say that he had not really known about the ads, that the formulation "I approve this message" was just boilerplate. But he didn't.

"Actually, they are not lies," he said.

Actually, they are.

Read more here

Hillary Clinton on the Economy and Palin

Alan Greenspan: "We Can't Afford McCain's Tax Plan"

America, let me break it down in real simple terms.

All these bailouts we're reading about, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are costing the U.S. government money. A lot of these companies are folding because of a lack of oversight by the Bush administration over industries like the mortgage industry. Speculators ran wild and made a lot of money selling things like bad mortgages that did not add up on paper.

McCain says he won't raise your taxes, not even for the richest Americans. Fair enough, but these bailouts have to be paid for... and where is the money coming from?

Well, it's not coming from anywhere because we're not raising the money to pay for these bailouts. It's just contributing to our growing deficit.

Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan takes McCain's economic plan to task:

From Associated Press:

Alan Greenspan says the country can't afford tax cuts of the magnitude proposed by Republican presidential contender John McCain — at least not without a corresponding reduction in government spending.

"Unless we cut spending, no," the former Federal Reserve chairman said Friday when asked about McCain's proposed tax cuts, pegged in some estimates at $3.3 trillion.

"I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money," Greenspan said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. "I always have tied tax cuts to spending."

Read more here

Click here to watch Greenspan's interview on ABC News.

Folks, we are teetering on Great Depression time, here. We need an FDR-type of presidency where we are helping create jobs for the American people otherwise we're going to see those soup kitchen lines they saw in the 1930s.

It's going to take massive spending to create American jobs. Spending like repairing our crumbling infrastructure, roads and bridges.

Spending like giving tax incentives to companies that would create AMERICAN jobs. Spending like Obama's plan for new green economy and retraining workers in this economy.

The manufacturing jobs we shipped off to China are never going to come back. We can't fight the force of globalism and the low wages those manufacturers can pay in the Third World. Once China has run its course, those companies will move to Africa, Latin America... wherever there are people willing to work for $1 a day. (Hey, maybe some day those jobs WILL come back, when Americans are working for $1 a day, too!)

Capital can move across borders, but people cannot.

People also need to understand that those who are calling themselves "fiscal conservatives" are in reality anything but.

People don't want their taxes to go toward "helping" the poor, or investing in good schools or healthcare.

But we end up paying MORE in the long run. It's like a house that keeps deferring maintenance, deferring maintence, deferring maintenance.

So we don't pay for schools, but we pay for prisons. We don't pay for healthcare, but citizens who are uninsured end up in the emergency rooms for routine care, which drives up your and my healthcare costs AND even shuts down hospitals in our communities.

You pay on the front end, or you pay on the back end... but you still pay!

What the government can't cover in revenue, it just goes into the deficit... to be paid at a later date?? When?... How?

Here's Obama's statement:

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said Monday the upheaval on Wall Street was "the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression" and blamed it on policies that he said Republican rival John McCain supports.

"This country can't afford another four years of this failed philosophy," Obama said after the shock-wave announcements that financial giant Lehman Brothers was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy while titan Merrill Lynch was being bought by Bank of America for about $50 billion.

Obama's statement, issued as he prepared to fly to Colorado to begin a swing through contested Western states, was intended to serve two purposes: to link McCain with the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush and to express sympathy with the anxiety of most Americans who say the economy is issue No. 1 in the election.

"The challenges facing our financial system today are more evidence that too many folks in Washington and on Wall Street weren't minding the store," Obama said in a statement. "Eight years of policies that have shredded consumer protections, loosened oversight and regulation, and encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs while ignoring middle-class Americans have brought us to the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression."

Read more here

Palin Values "Loyalty and Secrecy"

The New York Times reports on Palin's management style as both mayor and governor.

Here's what we can expect from Palin based on her past behavior:

She will hire her friends with no qualifications:

Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

She is retaliatory. Anyone who disagrees with her is called a "hater."

...An examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.

She values loyalty and secrecy. Hmmm... sounds familiar? Dick Cheney in lipstick? Richard Nixon in lipstick?

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process.

When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.

“Their secrecy is off the charts,” Mr. Steiner said.

She has an "interest" in banning books that her constituency deems offensive.

The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.

“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”

Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.

But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”

“I’m still proud of Sarah,” she added, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”

Read more here

Now we all know the right wing will try to spin this as the "liberal media" going after Sarah Palin, when in fact all the New York Times is doing its job in reporting the truth.

And this worn-out canard about the "liberal media" doesn't fly because Barack has been held to standard by the media that the other candidates have not.

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on SNL

Palin Interview: Parts 1, 2 & 3

Click here to see all three parts of Sarah Palin's interview on ABC along with transcripts.

Part 1: experience, God, national security, Russia, Iran and Israel, and the Bush Doctrine.

Part 2: climate change and drilling in the Arctic National Refuge.

Part 3: reform, congressional spending and the Bridge to Nowhere, Hillary Clinton, abortion rights, social issues, sexism, banning books, Troopergate and economic policy.

On Palin Not Knowing the Bush Doctrine

The latest Republican spin is that Palin did the right thing by questioning Gibson about what the Bush Doctrine is, because there are many policies that can be called the Bush Doctrine.

However this line of argument does not hold water, because in her answer to Gibson, Palin's first instinct is to defend the Bush foreign policy agenda. (How can McCain/Palin be running on a "Change" platform when Palin can't even articulate three things that she disagrees with President Bush on?)

Any civilian can go to Wikipedia and look up the Bush Doctrine.

Any person who had a rudimentary knowledge of the Bush Doctrine would have answered something like, "Are you referring to before or after 9/11?" or something with specificity that indicated an awareness of the term and the issues it contains.

Palin did none of the above, and in her struggle to define the Bush Doctrine revealed her lack of knowledge about something so basic for someone who is a Bush foreign policy apologist.

How dare John McCain make such a reckless choice, a person who quite possibly become president of the United States who lacks the tools to do the basic research on her foreign policy platform. Palin was a cynical choice for McCain based solely on ginning up votes in the Western states.

What this shows me about McCain's judgment is that he puts "Politics First" and not "Country First."

Charles Gibson for VP

He's better prepared than Sarah Palin. Truly, her interview is cringeworthy, she is babbling on and not answering questions directly, trying to find an anchor talking point to rely on.

Click here to watch Gibson interview Palin on domestic policy.

After a while, Gibson just gives up on getting a straight answer and moves on with the questions. He did allow her to dodge on the single most important campaign issue: How can you run as the "Change" candidate, as McCain and Palin are trying to do, when you agree with everything in the Bush administration? Where, exactly, is the change coming from?

It's so bad, it would be funny were we not witnessing a person who could possibly become President of the United States. Her garbled syntax and rote repetition of irrelevant talking points remind me of that movie Idiocracy, where an average American is transported 500 years into the future and wakes up in a country so dumbed-down that he is the smartest person on the planet.

The New York Times skewers McCain's lack of judgment and lack of respect for this country in choosing Palin as his running mate:

As we watched Sarah Palin on TV the last couple of days, we kept wondering what on earth John McCain was thinking.

If he seriously thought this first-term governor — with less than two years in office — was qualified to be president, if necessary, at such a dangerous time, it raises profound questions about his judgment. If the choice was, as we suspect, a tactical move, then it was shockingly irresponsible.

It was bad enough that Ms. Palin’s performance in the first televised interviews she has done since she joined the Republican ticket was so visibly scripted and lacking in awareness.

What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Ms. Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, but by denigrating experience, judgment and qualifications.

The idea that Americans want leaders who have none of those things — who are so blindly certain of what Ms. Palin calls “the mission” that they won’t even pause for reflection — shows a contempt for voters and raises frightening questions about how Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin plan to run this country.

Read more here

Op-ed columnist Bob Herbert puts it bluntly: "She's not ready."

While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.

How is it that this woman could have been selected to be the vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket? How is it that so much of the mainstream media has dropped all pretense of seriousness to hop aboard the bandwagon and go along for the giddy ride?

For those who haven’t noticed, we’re electing a president and vice president, not selecting a winner on “American Idol.”

Ms. Palin may be a perfectly competent and reasonably intelligent woman (however troubling her views on evolution and global warming may be), but she is not ready to be vice president.

With most candidates for high public office, the question is whether one agrees with them on the major issues of the day. With Ms. Palin, it’s not about agreeing or disagreeing. She doesn’t appear to understand some of the most important issues.

Read more here

Gibson Schools Palin on Foreign Policy

Ok, this is painful to watch.

Palin blunders about trying to stick to one of the talking points she's been given, but then realizes she's in over her head and that she doesn't know what "The Bush Doctrine" is, and tries to cover up with more talking points to lead the question into a different area.

I call this her "Miss South Carolina" moment: "Like the Iraq and everywhere!"

Now, truth be told, I wouldn't know what the Bush doctrine is either...but I'm not running for vice president of the United States and sharing the ticket with a 72-year-old man with recurring skin cancer.

I do empathize, though. Sarah Palin is just like us... she doesn't know crap about foreign policy.

McCain Sweats on "The View"

The ladies on The View ask McCain some tough questions.

They're a lot tougher than most TV news reporters, who have enabled the Republicans to distract the American people from the fact that our economy is in the dumps, thanks to the Bush/Cheney administration.

Remember the days of Watergate, when the news media actually did some REPORTING?

Right now on TV news, we've got a bunch of beauty queens and poseurs who call themselves "commentators" regurgitating and spinning recycled headlines. They assume that all Americans have a sixth-grade education and can only process watered-down spam.

Welcome to Guest Bloggers

The OBlogger is finding it challenging to keep up with the onslaught of news as we head into the finish line of this election.

For this reason, I am inviting some guest bloggers to post on this site. The first one is Samurai Patriot.

I am inviting folks who are Obama supporters but who have a range of voices. I am not asking bloggers here because I endorse their point of view, but because I think that they have something provocative and interesting to say.

I leave both positive and negative comments on this blog (unless I deem them offensive) because I believe in the right of freedom of speech and actually value dialogue between differing parties, even if things get heated.

This is a passionate election, but as Barack said in his acceptance speech, "We ALL love this country."

Part of my love for this country is the freedom for all of us to speak our minds, and even make mistakes in what we say and to learn from them.

Barack Oblogger

Under Palin, Wasilla Billed Victims for Rape Kits

This literally makes me sick to my stomach. Charging a woman who has already been traumatized the expense of purchasing the medical kit necessary to prove the crime has been committed?

Wasilla was the only town in Alaska to engage in such practices. Was this Sarah Palin's way of paying down the $20 million in debt she ran up as mayor?

From WBALTV:

When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, the city billed sexual assault victims and their insurance companies for the cost of rape kits and forensic examinations.

Palin had been in office for four years when the practice of charging rape victims got the attention of state lawmakers in 2000, who passed a bill to stop the practice.

Former Democratic Rep. Eric Croft, who sponsored that bill, said he was disappointed that simply asking the Wasilla Police Department to stop didn't work. Croft said he doubts she was unaware of the practice.

...Alaska routinely has the nation's highest rate of sexual assault.

Lawmakers became involved in 2000 when reports began coming in that police departments were charging sexual assault victims for the kits and the forensic exams, which cost from $300 to $1,200 at the time. The kit, a package of sample containers, swabs and other medical supplies, is used to collect evidence from women after they are attacked.

Then-Gov. Tony Knowles said Thursday that Wasilla was unique in the state in charging rape victims for the cost of doing the law enforcement necessary for solving the crime.

Read more here

"Perhaps So"

Are John McCain, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin willing to start WWIII over Georgia?

"Perhaps so."

...as "Darth Vader in Training" Sarah Palin said in her first-ever national interview with Charlie Gibson last night.

She then remarked how she's spoken to the President of Georgia recently about it, making Mikheil Saakashvili the only world leader Palin has ever spoken with.

Period.

How did Sarah Palin, a little-known Alaska governor with no formal channel of communications to Saakashvili get ahold of him? Did she shout across the ocean from that little Alaska island she's busy defending the just-close-enough-to-touch Evil Empire from?

No.

She got the number from neocon Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's senior national security advisor, who until recently worked as a lobbyist for Georgia and other former Soviet bloc countries. Scheunemann was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to accomplish one goal: get Georgia into NATO.

...aka, give John McCain a fast-track to Georgia and its sweet oil deal.

Scheunemann is the right-hand man with John McCain's ear, and the reason that the "maverick" put his beta tape of Top Gun on pause long enough to scream about Russian aggression even before the invasion ink was dry in print.

Make no mistake. Once again, this is all about oil. Georgia has it, and Dick Cheney wants it. He's been there in Georgia this last week y'know, "assessing the situation."

...aka, the oil pipeline.

Karl Rove met with President Saakashvili in Malta about two weeks before Georgia invaded. No doubt Rove gave Saakashvili the go-ahead to strike those pesky breakaway republics and kill six or seven thousand Russians living there whilst the neocons were still able to spin it so it would favor McCain's campaign.

Even Putin said Georgia was created by the Karl Rove neocons to influence the U.S. presidential campaign, but even Putin neglected to mention the "oil pipeline" part, well... because he wants it too.

Of course, Rove would never think of manipulating weak, greedy politicians into another cold war sheerly for short term political gain and some tasty oil rights, would he?

Sarah Palin would never start WWIII over it, would she?

"Perhaps so."

Best,

The Samurai Patriot.

samuraipatriot.blogspot.com

Register to Vote...NOW!!!

From the campaign:

You'd be surprised by how many people you know who aren't registered to vote.

Registration deadlines are coming up soon, and we need every single vote we can get to win this election.

Tell your friends, family, and neighbors to check out our new one-stop voter registration website.

Just forward this message.

VoteforChange.com makes it easier than ever to register. Instead of tracking down the right forms, all you need to do is answer a few basic questions and you'll be ready to vote. You can also:

* Confirm your existing registration
* Apply to vote absentee
* Find your polling place

If you don't know your own registration status or you'd like to learn more, take a minute to visit the site right now.

This race is too close and too important to stay home on Election Day.

If you take the time to register and vote -- and make sure everyone you know is registered as well -- we'll be able to turn the tide of the past eight years.

It's people just like you who will transform this nation.

Thanks,

Barack

McCain Half Truths and Lies

John McCain is running a very slimy campaign. This is from the fellow who is supposed to have broken away from the pack as a "maverick."

Here are links to news stories calling foul on McCain's tactics:


Time: McCain "Responsible For One Of The Sleaziest Ads I've Ever Seen"

Washington Post: "Untrue Accusations and Rumors Have Started to Swirl ... They Become Regarded as Fact"

MSNBC: "Evidence Palin, McCain Not Telling Truth about Bridge to Nowhere"

AP: Fact Check... McCain Ad About Palin Is Misleading...

Who's the Real Sexist?

The latest GOP attack against Obama is to try to paint him as a sexist because of a remark he made about lipstick on a pig.

Such an easy slur to sling, so difficult to prove.

Those Republicans are always trying to distort reality to suit their own agenda.

Rather than the rhetoric, let's look at the record to see who is REALLY a strong supporter of women's rights.

Barack Obama has always stood up for the rights of women. Click here to see his legislative record.

John McCain's wretched policies on women's rights issues show who the real sexist is.

Click here to see his abysmal record.

And as Gloria Steinem herself wrote, Sarah Palin is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

Both McCain and Palin promote a sexist agenda.

Palin's Pastor Agrees God Punishes Jews Who Don't Convert

Some pretty scary stuff here about Palin's church. Very radical right-wing beliefs starting with the notion that Alaska is ordained to become the only place to survive in the upcoming nuclear war, that it is to become a refuge for humanity.

Also, Palin's current pastor agrees with a visiting Jews for Jesus representative that violence against Jews in Israel is a result of God's judgment against them for not converting to Christianity.

Palin, herself, was in attendance at that very same sermon. This church and Palin's courting of the Alaskan secessionist party makes her far outside the mainstream of America.

From CNN (NOTE: at the end of the CNN clip, there is some additional footage from Countdown that pre-dates Sarah Palin as VP candidate):

The Story of Two Obama Books

This video is about the good Obama book. Throw the bad Obama book in the trash where it belongs!

Obama vs. McCain Tax Plans

CBS News has written an easy-to-understand comparison of Obama's and McCain's tax plans.

So, can those of you spouting inanities like "Obama's gonna raise taxes" please read this and educate yourselves?

Palin Not Ready for Prime Time

More GOP dirty tricks. Palin is ducking interviews. The McCain campaign said they won't let her be interviewed until she is shown the proper "deference and respect."

Excuse me, why on earth should I show her deference? As E.J. Dionne writes in the Washington Post, deference is for monarchs, kings, not elected officials.

Should we approach her on bended knee as well?

From E.J. Dionne's Washington Post op-ed:

John McCain's campaign acknowledged this weekend that Sarah Palin is unprepared to be vice president or president of the United States.

Of course, McCain's people said no such thing. But their actions told you all you needed to know.

McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all subjected themselves to tough questioning on the regular Sunday news programs. Palin was the only no-show. And it's not just the Sunday interviews. She has not opened herself to any serious questioning since McCain picked her to be next in line for the presidency.

McCain's advisers clearly don't trust Palin to answer questions about policy and don't want her to answer many of the questions that have been raised about her tenure as governor of Alaska.

Read more here

How Do Pro Lifers Plan to Legislate?

I read all kinds of comments from all types of points of view on the Internet. I read comments from people who consider themselves to be "pro life" and their arguments invariably rest on an ethical/moral issue. Many of these arguments are very compelling.

However, not one "pro lifer" has ever been able to articulate for me how they envision legislating their pro-life agenda.

John McCain has stated that he would be a "pro life" candidate and would pursue a "pro life" agenda.

I want to know what "pro life" legislation" looks like and how it would be implemented in our society.


How are you going to legislate forcing a woman to carry a baby in her body that she does not want? Are you going to strap her down to make sure she carries it to term?

Why should a woman be penalized for having sex with a man if the condom breaks? It's not her "fault" she got pregnant.

Are we penalizing women for having pre-marital sex?

Many of them state that this issue should be decided by the states.

Please explain WHY?

We had states' rights regarding segregation and look how well that worked out.

Why should a woman in Georgia who gets pregnant and wants an abortion be treated any differently than a woman in California?

A wealthy woman in Georgia who wants an abortion will fly to California. A poor woman will stay in Georgia and get an illegal, back-alley abortion.

Also, if we agree with McCain's assertion that life begins at conception, then millions of women who use contraception like IUDs have had abortions and did not know it.

And some interesting facts to consider...

Illegal abortions rampant in Latin America:

Lidia Casas, a lawyer and professor at Chile's Diego Portales University, in Santiago, says during the 1980s, Chile began a policy of prosecuting women. Between 250 and 300 cases go into the justice system per year, she says, and in 2001, around 50 people were convicted for having an abortion.

"It's mostly poor women who end up going to the hospitals for their complications of an illegal backstreet abortion and some of the doctors or the midwives working in the maternity wards used to report the women to the police right there," says Casas. The maximum penalty is five years in prison.

But despite such legal risks, Latin America continues to experience abortion rates that are much higher than most countries where it is legal.

There are an estimated 4 million abortions every year across the region. Up to 200,000 clandestine abortions take place in Chile every year--twice as many as in Canada, which has 100,000 a year--and Chile has half the population.

"The political elite, or the people who have money, happen to have access to abortions under optimal conditions, a doctor, a clinic, anesthesia . . . or they can even go to Miami to a clinic, so it's not an issue for them. Poor women risk their lives."

And the number of abortions tend to be higher in countries where IT IS ILLEGAL

"While it may seem paradoxical, a country's abortion rate is not closely correlated with whether abortion is legal there. For example, abortion levels are quite high in Latin American countries, where abortion is highly restricted. (In fact, 20 million of the 46 million abortions performed annually worldwide occur in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws.) At the same time, abortion rates are quite low throughout Western Europe, where the procedure is legal and widely available. Also, Eastern and Western Europe have the world's highest and lowest abortion rates, respectively, yet abortion is generally legal throughout the Continent."

...By legalizing abortion, countries can help reduce or eliminate the need for unsafe abortion. This, in turn, will significantly lessen the number of deaths related to abortion, reduce the likelihood of complications and improve women's subsequent health. For example, when Romania legalized abortion in 1990, its abortion-related mortality rate fell to one-third of its peak level—reached only one year before—of 142 deaths for every 100,000 live births.

So these "right to lifers" want to be more like Chile and Afghanistan and less like Norway?

Basically, where their logic leads us to a society where we are prosecuting women who would have illegal abortions for murder.

I don't know where the line stops because that's a legal slippery slope. Every miscarriage has to be examined... was it natural or induced?

Next step is that we'll have to start monitoring pregnancies. Is the mother putting the fetus at risk for being "murdered."

Beyond that, we'll have to have state-ordered regular pregnancy tests to ensure that someone isn't pregnant and if they are, they would need to be monitored.

Are you going to lock up all these women leading to an American Taliban?

Where does the line end? How will society work if we outlaw and criminalize abortion?

Ed Koch Backs Obama, Calls Palin "Scary"

I think the more that is known about Palin, the more you're going to see defections. And then eventually, she'll only appeal to the far-right religious conservatives. Right now, she plays the role of an attractive, shiny figurine that they're moving on and off the stage in highly scripted environments. She's just a Trojan Moose, created to hide the legions of Bush/Cheney minions waiting to keep 8 more years of power and control.

The real Sarah Palin and her extreme agenda will reveal itself.

From Politico:

Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who endorsed and worked for George W. Bush in 2004, is endorsing Obama today, NY1 first reported.

I asked Koch just now what prompted the move.

"The designation of Palin to be vice president," he said. "She's scary."

Read more here.

Also, below is Koch's full endorsement:

When I made my decision four years ago and supported the reelection of George W. Bush, I said at the time the overwhelming issue for me was international Islamic terrorism, including al-Qaeda. The goal of Islamic terrorists was and still is to reestablish the Caliphate encompassing most of the Muslims living in a host of nations from Spain to Indonesia and placing them under a single religious leader with full authority over the civil affairs of the countries, in the style of Iran. That goal includes the deaths or forced conversions of Christians and Jews as infidels or the payment by them of tribute, and the elimination of the State of Israel.

In 2004, I concluded that the one person running for president who understood that danger best and was prepared to fight it and defend America and its allies was George W. Bush. Even though he is now at a low ebb in popularity, I have no regrets for having campaigned and voted for him. I said at the time I didn’t agree with him on a single domestic issue and so far as I can currently see that is still true with the exception of drilling for oil off our coasts and building nuclear energy plants.

I believe that Bush and Tony Blair, Bush’s main international ally with regard to the war in Iraq and against Islamic terrorism, will be redeemed by history. President Harry Truman was reviled when he left office, but is now honored for his courage and vision.

Now, once again, I have to make a decision to either endorse the Democratic ticket of Obama and Biden or support the Republican ticket of McCain and Palin. I am 83 years old. If I am lucky, I may yet vote not only in this election, but in the presidential election of 2012 and perhaps, if luckier, even in that of 2016. I believe I must vote my conscience, and that means for the presidential candidate who in my estimation will best protect the U.S. over the next four years.

I personally know two of those running: Joe Biden and John McCain. I like and admire them both. John McCain is a genuine war hero and patriot. Joe Biden is a friend well versed in foreign and domestic affairs, who had made judgment calls on domestic and foreign policy and legislation that I agree with. I do not personally really know the Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, having spoken to him only once and briefly, or the Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.

One foreign policy issue that particularly concerned me in 2004 was the security of Israel. I thought in 2004 that issue was better left to President George W. Bush, and I believe I was right. President Bush understood the need to support the security of Israel and did so. I did not feel that way about Senator John Kerry.

That is not an issue in this election. Both parties and their candidates have made clear, before and during this election campaign their understanding of the need to support Israel and oppose acts of terrorism waged against it by Hamas and other Muslim supporters of terrorism.

So the issue for me is who will best protect and defend America.

I have concluded that the country is safer in the hands of Barack Obama, leader of the Democratic Party and protector of the philosophy of that party. Protecting and defending the U.S. means more than defending us from foreign attacks. It includes defending the public with respect to their civil rights, civil liberties and other needs, e.g., national health insurance, the right of abortion, the continuation of Social Security, gay rights, other rights of privacy, fair progressive taxation and a host of other needs and rights.

If the vice president were ever called on to lead the country, there is no question in my mind that the experience and demonstrated judgment of Joe Biden is superior to that of Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is a plucky, exciting candidate, but when her record is examined, she fails miserably with respect to her views on the domestic issues that are so important to the people of the U.S., and to me. Frankly, it would scare me if she were to succeed John McCain in the presidency.

I reiterate the question each of us must answer in making our choice, who will best protect and defend America, domestically and with respect to the literal defense of the country? I hope I’ve made the right decision but only time will tell.

Whoever wins should and, I hope, will, following the election, receive the support of all Americans, no matter how they voted, especially in these perilous times. God Bless America and the next president and vice president of the U.S.