Sarah's Media Blitz

Joe the Republican's irresponsible nomination of Governor Sarah Palin as the Vice President of the United States of America just screams a loud and cynical rebel yell of "Country First."

"Country First" indeed. After carefully viewing Mrs. Palin's current media blitz, it's absolutely scary that 57 million Americans voted for her to be one heartbeat away from the Presidency. The end of the Bush years has left the country embroiled in two-foreign wars, an economic meltdown, Republican led nationalization of the finance industry, joblessness rates rising, home values plumeting and an epic level of forclosures. With this in mind the Country Firsters voted to put Sarah Palin in the second highest office in the land.

From the Great State of Alabama that voted overwelmingly for the McCain Palin ticket, the Crimson White's article by Spencer White blasts McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

In his article, Mr. White asserts: "The woman [Sarah Palin] who thought Africa was a country, who stated the bailout benefited health-care reform, couldn’t name the member nations of NAFTA or a Supreme Court case other than Roe v. Wade and who called Columbia University and pro-Palestinian Middle Eastern professor Rashid Khalidi a terrorist was not ready to be a clerk for a senator, much less a 72 year-old cancer survivor’s heartbeat away from holding the highest office in the most powerful country in the world." Your judgment, Sen. McCain, was seriously to be questioned, as well as the true motives of a man who, according to his campaign slogan, put 'Country First.'"

GOP: Thwart the Vote

Bob Herbert from the New York Times writes:
It never ends. The Republican Party never gets tired of spraying its poison across the American political landscape.

So there was a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann, telling Chris Matthews on MSNBC that the press should start investigating members of the House and Senate to determine which ones are “pro-America or anti-America.”

Can a rancid Congressional committee be far behind? Leave it to a right-wing Republican to long for those sunny, bygone days of political witch-hunting.

Ms. Bachmann’s demented desire (“I would love to see an exposé like that”) is of a piece with the G.O.P.’s unrelenting effort to demonize its opponents, to characterize them as beyond the pale, different from ordinary patriotic Americans — and not just different, but dangerous, and even evil.

But the party is not content to stop there. Even better than demonizing opponents is the more powerful and direct act of taking the vote away from their opponents’ supporters. The Republican Party has made strenuous efforts in recent years to prevent Democrats from voting, and to prevent their votes from being properly counted once they’ve been cast.

Which brings me to the phony Acorn scandal.

John McCain, who placed his principles in a blind trust once the presidential race heated up, warned the country during the presidential debate last week that Acorn, which has been registering people to vote by the hundreds of thousands, was “on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history.”

It turns out that a tiny percentage of these new registrations are bogus, with some of them carrying ludicrous names like Mickey Mouse. Republicans have tried to turn this into a mighty oak of a scandal, with Mr. McCain thundering at the debate that it “may be destroying the fabric of democracy.”

Please. The Times put the matter in perspective when it said in an editorial that Acorn needs to be more careful with some aspects of its voter-registration process. It needs to do a better job selecting canvassers, among other things.

“But,” the editorial added, “for all of the McCain campaign’s manufactured fury about vote theft (and similar claims from the Republican Party over the years) there is virtually no evidence — anywhere in the country, going back many elections — of people showing up at the polls and voting when they are not entitled to.”

Two important points need to be made here. First, the reckless attempt by Senator McCain, Sarah Palin and others to fan this into a major scandal has made Acorn the target of vandals and a wave of hate calls and e-mail. Acorn staff members have been threatened and sickening, murderous comments have been made about supporters of Barack Obama. (Senator Obama had nothing to do with Acorn’s voter-registration drives.)

Second, when it comes to voting, the real threat to democracy is the nonstop campaign by the G.O.P. and its supporters to disenfranchise American citizens who have every right to cast a ballot. We saw this in 2000. We saw it in 2004. And we’re seeing it again now.

In Montana, the Republican Party challenged the registrations of thousands of legitimate voters based on change-of-address information available from the Post Office. These specious challenges were made — surprise, surprise — in Democratic districts. Answering the challenges would have been a wholly unnecessary hardship for the voters, many of whom were students or members of the armed forces.

In the face of widespread public criticism (even the Republican lieutenant governor weighed in), the party backed off.

That sort of thing is widespread. In one politically crucial state after another — in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, you name it — the G.O.P. has unleashed foot soldiers whose insidious mission is to make the voting process as difficult as possible — or, better yet, impossible — for citizens who are believed to favor Democrats.

For Senator McCain to flip reality on its head and point to an overwhelmingly legitimate voter-registration effort as a “threat to the fabric of democracy” is a breathtaking exercise in absurdity.

Read the entire New York Times Op-Ed writer Bob Herbert's article "The Real Scandal" here.

GOP Voter Supression

Salon Magazine's article, "Behind the GOP's voter fraud hysteria: As Republicans warn of catastrophe at the polls, an expert on election fraud explains the real partisan hoax -- the suppression of Democratic votes":

Warnings about voter fraud prior to a U.S. presidential election are nothing new. But to listen to conservative Republicans lately, you might expect Nov. 4 to bring a voting catastrophe of epic proportions. Writing in the New York Post in early October, Ken Blackwell -- yes, the former Ohio secretary of state of 2004 election infamy -- warned about "the kind of chaos you expect from a category-five hurricane -- with radical groups sending the nation into a protracted legal battle even worse than the mess back in 2000."

"To prevent it," Blackwell urged, "we must act now." Many Republicans, including operatives from the McCain campaign, have indeed been raising the specter of voter fraud across battleground states, from Nevada to Michigan to Pennsylvania, and pushing for action by government authorities.

But according to Lori Minnite, a professor of political science at Barnard College, who has spent the last eight years studying the role of fraud in U.S. elections, the Republican crusade against voter fraud is a strategic ruse. Rather than protecting the election process from voter fraud -- a problem that barely exists -- Minnite says the true aim of Republican efforts appears to be voter suppression across the partisan divide. According to Minnite, investigating voter fraud has become a Republican cottage industry over the last 20 years because it justifies questioning the eligibility of thousands of would-be voters -- often targeting poor and minority citizens in urban areas that lean Democratic. Playing the role of vigilant watchdog gives GOP bureaucrats a pretext for obstructing the path of marginalized and first-time voters headed for the polls.

On Sept. 10, the 240,000 Wisconsin voters who had registered by mail since 2006 found their voting status up in the air as the state's attorney general, J.B. Van Hollen -- a McCain campaign co-chair -- sued the state’s Government Accountability Board. In Michigan that same week, Macomb County GOP party chairman James Carabelli told a reporter that he would use publicly available lists of foreclosed home addresses to “make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses.” In early October, the Montana Republican Party challenged the eligibility of 6,000 voters in university towns and heavily Native American counties.

And last week, Nevada officials raided a Las Vegas office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a 38-year-old grass-roots political group known as ACORN that advocates on behalf of low-income Americans. News of the raid, following allegations that ACORN workers had submitted fraudulent voter registrations, prompted cheers from many on the right and objections from many on the left -- as did an announcement last Friday, by ACORN itself, that 2,100 of 5,000 registrations forms submitted by ACORN workers in Lake County, Ind., were invalid.

But Minnite says that the latest Republican uproar over ACORN is part of "a far broader effort to corrode public confidence in the electoral process." Minnite is a co-author of the forthcoming book “Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters" and a research fellow at Demos, a public policy think tank based in New York. She predicts that as Nov. 4 approaches, Republican allegations about voter fraud are certain to continue. Minnite spoke with Salon by phone recently from her office in Manhattan.

Do you believe that voter fraud poses a threat to the validity of American elections? 

No. No threat.

The statistics bear me out. From 2002 to 2005 only one person was found guilty of registration fraud. Twenty people were found guilty of voting while ineligible and five people were found guilty of voting more than once. That’s 26 criminal voters -- voters who vote twice, impersonate other people, vote without being a resident -- the voters that Republicans warn about. Meanwhile thousands of people are getting turned away at the polls.

Read the entire article, "Behind the GOP's voter fraud hysteria," here.

Remember the Political Hit on Eliot Spitzer

Former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer pulled the cover off of the whole sub-prime lending mess. The Republicans in the Bush Administration used the full power of the federal government to wiretap and trap Spitzer. Since Spitzer was the governor who knew too much, the Republicans had to take him down with a sex scandal.......as if he were the ONLY politician that paid for sex. But with Spitzer it wasn't about the sex. Read Eliot Spitzer's article "Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime," published by the Washington Post on Thursday 14 February 2008, which happened to be the day after Spitzer was busted. This excerpt was found it on Truthout, but it has also been cited on the Daily Kos.

How the Bush administration stopped the states from stepping in to help consumers.

Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers' ability to repay, making loans with deceptive "teaser" rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.

Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers."...

...When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers."

Read the complete article here on Truthout.org.

Palin the Propaganda Pitbull Unmuzzled

From Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "Say It Ain't So, Sarah: Palin Smears Obama With Year-Old Discredited Attack"

When the comment was first made, Republicans were eager to mold it into an electoral liability. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and the RNC called it disrespectful and unbecoming of a presidential aspirant.

But within a day, objective observers were knifing through the faux-outrage. The AP fact-checked the claim by pointing out that none other than President Bush himself had bemoaned the excessive loss of innocent Afghani lives and the setback such casualties caused for U.S. military efforts there.

And yet, the GOP couldn't and wouldn't let the canard die. One year after Obama's initial remark, the McCain campaign marked the anniversary by randomly raising it in the form of a biting press release. That charge didn't create many waves. (The Huffington Post wrote an article examining that attack as well.) But the McCain campaign kept at it.

On Thursday night, Palin brought it up directly in the vice presidential debate, and actually intensified the smear. Rather than painting the remark as a gaffe borne of inexperience, as Republicans claimed last year, Palin implied that Obama was slandering U.S. forces as little more than murderers.

Read the entire Sam Stein Huffingon Post story here.

The youtube clip was posted by Veracifier on August 16, 2007. The info tag that accompanies the clip states: "Mitt Romney recently attacked Barack Obama over his comments regarding the war in Afghanistan and the need for more troops on the ground, so as to reduce the reliance on air raids that have often resulted in Afghan civilian casualties. Romney called Obama's comments "outrageous" and "a suggestion that somehow our troops are not noble and dignified." But even a quick glance at the realities of the situation in Afghanistan shows that Romney has remarkably little understanding of the facts."

Josh Marshall from TPMv:

America's Big Gamble: Nixon, Bush, Palin

From Richard Cohen's New York Times article entitled "Nixon, Bush, Palin":

A closer look at the Bush gamble is merited because the first person to reprice risk on the basis it no longer existed was the president. Now, that’s leading by example.

The gamble involved going to war in Iraq at an estimated cost to date of about $700 billion (does that figure sound familiar?), while opting not to raise taxes but to lower them. It involved going into that war, and another in Afghanistan, while asking not for shared sacrifice but a great collective maxing-out in the service of: shopping.

At the same time, Bush, who often seemed to need directions to the Treasury, opted to allow an opaque derivatives market to grow into the trillions without supervision, regulation or information. The market knew best. Turns out that what the market knew best was how to turn capitalism into a pyramid scheme for trading worthless paper.

The cost is now clear. But we should be grateful for small mercies. Remember Bush wanted to throw Social Security into the casino, too, by privatizing it!

Continue reading Richard Cohen's "Nixon, Bush, Palin" here.

GOP Truth

Presidential Politics? US Senate to Vote on Bailout Plan

To make Republican Senator John McCain look good, the House Republicans threw their vote to humiliate Nancy Pelosi and push for a Senate vote. That way, Republican John McCain can look like he actually DID something. So, in a highly unusual manoeuvre, Senate leaders agreed last night to vote this evening on the package before the lower house has passed it. Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate leader received unanimous consent for a vote on the bail-out.

It's the same Republican dirty tricks, and the Democrats as well as the American people keep voting these greedy money changers into office.

The McCain campaign needed to do something before the Vice Presidential Gaff-off on Thrusday.

GOP Political Hit on Speaker Pelosi

The Republicans orchestrated a political hit against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the highest ranking female in the United States of America. The Republicans coordinated an event that would publicly humiliate Speaker Pelosi. In front of the American people as the television newscasts broadcasts the failed vote in the US House for the proposed Republican Bush Administration proposed massive Bailout Bill.

The Republicans had their talking points and mouthpieces in place. Senator John McCain flopped all around the country suspending and un-suspending his campaign. Never once did he go on the record to support the Republican President's Bailout Proposal.

The Republicans played politics with the American economic system. They NEVER had the votes necessary for the Bailout Bill. Once again they just lied through their teeth and tricked Speaker Pelosi into calling for a vote of one of the most unpopular legislations ($700 billion bailout), by the most unpopular president (Bush), for the most unpopular group of people (rich, Wall Street fat-cats). The Republicans lied and cheated, they assumed ABSOLUTELY no responsibility or accountability in the making of this housing bubble and the deregulation of the derivative markets.

The Republicans pretend they are as innocent as newborn babies. The Republicans have held all three branches of government for 6 out of 8 years. The Republican fingerprints are all over the looted US treasury, yet they tarred and feathered Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

They blame Jimmy Carter, they blame President Clinton. They think we're stupid! They think the American people don't know that total Republican Tyrannical control over ever lever of the government caused this unbridled orgy of deregulation and corporate greed.

Now the Emperor Caligula McCain is blaming Senator Obama and Speaker Pelosi for the market meltdown and financial crisis. Speaker Pelosi was hoodwinked and bamboozled by those GOP Crooks and Liars that will do any cheap trick to keep their grubby hands in the government till. Country first my ass.

The Sarah Palin Pity Party

Salon's Rebecca Traister writes in her column "The Sarah Palin Pity Party":

I guess I'm one cold dame, because while Palin provokes many unpleasant emotions in me, I just can't seem to summon pity, affection or remorse.

Don't get me wrong, I'm just like all of the rest of you, part of the bipartisan jumble of viewers that keeps one hand poised above the mute button and the other over my eyes during Palin's disastrous interviews. Like everyone else, I can barely take the waves of embarrassment that come with watching someone do something so badly. Roseanne Barr singing the national anthem, Sofia Coppola acting in "The Godfather: Part III," Sarah Palin talking about Russia -- they all create the same level of eyeball-squinching discomfort.

....

Sarah Palin is no wilting flower. She is a politician who took the national stage and sneered at the work of community activists. She boldly tries to pass off incuriosity and lassitude as regular-people qualities, thereby doing a disservice to all those Americans who also work two jobs and do not come from families that hand out passports and backpacking trips, yet still manage to pick up a paper and read about their government and seek out experience and knowledge.

When you stage a train wreck of this magnitude -- trying to pass one underqualified chick off as another highly qualified chick with the lame hope that no one will notice -- well, then, I don't feel bad for you.

When you treat women as your toys, as gullible and insensate pawns in your Big Fat Presidential Bid -- or in Palin's case, in your Big Fat Chance to Be the First Woman Vice President Thanks to

All the Cracks Hillary Put in the Ceiling -- I don't feel bad for you.

When you don't take your own career and reputation seriously enough to pause before striding onto a national stage and lying about your record of opposing a Bridge to Nowhere or using your special-needs child to garner the support of Americans in need of healthcare reform you don't support, I don't feel bad for you.

When you don't have enough regard for your country or its politics to cram effectively for the test -- a test that helps determine whether or not you get to run that country and participate in its politics -- I don't feel bad for you.

When your project is reliant on gaining the support of women whose reproductive rights you would limit, whose access to birth control and sex education you would curtail, whose healthcare options you would decrease, whose civil liberties you would take away and whose children and husbands and brothers (and sisters and daughters and friends) you would send to war in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and wherever else you saw fit without actually understanding international relations, I don't feel bad for you.

Read the entire column "The Sarah Palin Pity Party" here.

Politics Over Prosecutors

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post's article "Politics Over Prosecutors" states: With Wall Street's fate hanging in the balance, and with Sarah Palin's incoherence sparking interest in Thursday's vice presidential debate, it was easy to overlook a major story that got less attention than it deserved yesterday. The Justice Department released a nearly 400-page report with this jaw-dropping bottom line:

"Our investigation found significant evidence that political partisan considerations were an important factor in the removal of several . . . U.S. attorneys."

Remember the controversy over the sudden dismissals of nine U.S. attorneys? Remember the allegation that the Bush administration had sullied the long-held principle that justice should be administered in an impartial, nonpartisan way? Remember the questions about what then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales knew and when he knew it? Remember Kyle Sampson, the Gonzales aide who played a key role in the firings? Remember Monica Goodling, the Justice Department's liaison to the White House, who went so far as to ask prospective Justice appointees to wax eloquent about why they wanted to "serve" George W. Bush?

The Justice Department conducted as thorough an investigation as it could, and it concluded that there was evidence of White House political meddling in "at least three of the removals." The joint probe by the department's Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility recommended further investigation to determine "whether the totality of the evidence demonstrates that any criminal offense was committed."

The investigators reported being stonewalled by the White House, saying they were unable to look at all the evidence "because of the refusal by certain key witnesses to be interviewed by us, as well as by the White House's decision not to provide internal White House documents to us."
In other words, as far as the team of investigators could determine from the limited evidence they were allowed to uncover, what we suspected and feared seems to have been true. The Bush administration seems to have removed at least three federal prosecutors -- who are supposed to be even-handed and apolitical in the way they do their jobs -- for partisan political reasons.

Read the entire Eugene Robinson article "Politics Over Prosecutors" here.

Bailout Bill Defeated: Wall Street in Freefall

As of this post, the Dow is down 780 points! Wall Street is in virtual free fall from this defeated bill. Poor Speaker Pelosi. She gave a speech on the floor of the House and it hurt the Republican's wittle feelings. Check her out on this MSNBC clip. Dang! Speaker Pelosi looks tired, haggard, overworked, and under appreciated. She looks like she needs a nap and some chamomile tea to calm her nerves.

The GOP fell apart. What happened to their RNC Convention mantra "country first." Well, these country firsters decided it was more important to perserve their Republican Brand than to preserve the American Republic.

So, what did the Speaker say that offended the GOP soooo much that caused the House Republicans to act like small childeren and blame Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the failed bailout vote. The House Republicans claimed that she made a partisan speech. Let's take a look at an excerpt fo Nancy Pelosi's speech:

"[W]hen was the last time someone asked you for $700bn? It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush administration's failed economic policies — policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything-goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system."

"Democrats believe in the free market, which can and does create jobs, wealth, and capital, but left to its own devices it has created chaos."

"Democrats insisted that legislation responding to this crisis must protect the American people and Main Street from the meltdown on Wall Street. The American people did not decide to dangerously weaken our regulatory and oversight policies. They did not make unwise and risky financial deals. They did not jeopardise the economic security of the nation. And they must not pay the cost of this emergency recovery and stabilisation bill."

"Today we will act to avert this crisis, but informed by our experience of the past eight years with the failed economic leadership … We choose a different path. In the new year, with a new Congress and a new president, we will break free with a failed past and take America in a new direction to a better future."

Representatives Barney Franks and Rahm Emmanuel talkling to about the crisis on.

Here’s the story. There’s a terrible crisis affecting the American economy. We have come together on a bill to alleviate the crisis. And because somebody hurt their feelings, they decide to punish the country. I mean, I would not have imputed that degree of pettiness and hypersensitivity.

We also have — as the leader will tell you, who’s been working with them — don’t believe they had the votes, and I believe they’re covering up the embarrassment of not having the votes. But think about this. Somebody hurt my feelings, so I will punish the country. That’s hardly plausible. And there are 12 Republican members who were ready to stand up for the economic interest of America, but not if anybody insulted them.

I’ll make an offer. Give me those 12 people’s names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them and tell them what wonderful people they are and maybe they’ll now think about the country.

Wall Street Bailout Game

Let's play the Wall Street bailout game. From the Republican Party that brought the US decades of deregulated markets that shouted from the mountain tops that "government is the problem," "free markets," "privatization," and "personal responsibility" are caterwauling and groveling at the doors of big government for a bailout. The American people are hurting from the poor choices and crappy stewardship of total Republican tyranny. This is the GOP that lead the USA into not one, but two wars abroad. The GOP that looted the national treasury for 7 years. The same repugnant Republican Bush Administration that cried wolf and used scare tactics to rob the American taxpayers of their liberties, freedoms and now they've got their grubby hands in our pocketbooks. ENOUGH!

Rep. Kaptur's (D-OH) Statement on Economic Turmoil:

The American people are extremely concerned about recent turmoil in the nation’s economy, including the dramatic events of last week.

1. Congress must not adjourn until it addresses this situation.

2. Due Diligence: we must protect the hard-earned assets of the American public.

3. Prudence: No reforms = no money for the bailout.

4. Help families fight off foreclosure.

5. Wrongdoers must be held responsible.

I do not believe that the people who helped bring about this situation should be allowed to profit from it. Therefore, I will insist on measures that hold responsible anyone whose actions helped bring us to this extraordinary moment where the American people are being called upon to save the financial system.

McCain Wants to Delay Friday's Debate at Ole Miss

Senator John McCain wants to delay Friday's debate at Ole Miss and suspend his campaign. It just begs the question: I say, I say......did that pitbull in lipstick eat your homework boy?

John McCain proves that he doesn't care about the little guys over at Ole Miss who have been planning to host Friday's first Presidential debate. This means losses for the vendors, hotels, retailers, restaurants, etc. Money's too tight to mention, so the proposed losses for Small Town USA is staggering.

Mr. McCain should just level-up and say, I'm unprepared and I don't know jack about the economy, foreign policy, or anything else of consequence.

According to ABC News "Ole Miss Official Says Debate Cancellation Would be 'Devastating'":

ABC News' Tahman Bradley Reports: A senior University of Mississippi official reacted Wednesday to the news that Sen. John McCain R-Ariz., wants to postpone Friday's presidential debate, saying that such a move would be "devastating" for the university which has already invested millions in preparation for the debate.

Andrew Mullins, special assistant to university Chancellor Robert Khayat, told ABC News that the Ole Miss campus has been transformed to accommodate the candidates and the press. Road blocks are in place on campus and in the community and the debate set for the candidates has already been constructed. He said the university has spent roughly $5.5 million getting ready for the debate.

Mullins also noted that if the Commission on Presidential Debates asks the campus to hold the debate at a later date, he is not sure the university would be able to accommodate them.
"It's huge. You cannot just say that you're not going to do this thing," Mullins said. "I don't have any idea whether we do the debate" at a later date. (We) probably wouldn't do it."

For now, Mullins, says the university is proceeding like they're still having the debate until the commission makes a decision. The university was instructed by the commission on Wednesday to move forward as though the debate is still going to happen, Mullins said.

Sen. McCain, who suspended his campaign activity Wednesday, called for the debate to be postponed so that he could focus on congressional negotiations of a $700 billion Wall Street bail out deal.

Palin Propaganda Edward Bernays-style

Governor Sarah Palin is to American women's freedoms and liberties, what breaking the gender taboo on cigarette and tobacco usage to women's health. Equally as deadly and deathly marketed. In the sweet name of Jesus during the Easter Parade commemorating the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, Edward Bernays persuaded women to smoke. George Hill, the president of the American Tobacco Company, to gain half of the market share to sell cigarette smoking to women. Much like the Republican Party's selling of Sarah Palin, the myth and the narrative. She gets women excited and gins up support amongst the Republican base. Beware, Mrs. Palin is just as toxic and deadly as the cigarettes that the manufacturers sold American women for decades. They dressed-up tobacco in a pretty package with lipstick and pretty face. Behind the facade, however, lies the biggest health risk of tobacco addiction and the loss of millions of women's lives, slowly over time. It's all about packaging and marketing, substance and consequences be dammed.

Edward Bernays even called cigarettes as "torches of freedom" for women. They symbolized little penises and now with smoking, women could control and have their own. This image and symbolism sold to women for years, Virginia Slims devised a cleaver campaign to coincide with the Women's Movement by saying "You've got Virginia Slims now baby, you've come a long long way." They even used vintage photos of oppressed women juxtaposed with glamorous models.

Unfortunately, American women are gullible and will fall for this marketing prestidigitation..........and poof! Up pops Sarah Palin, moose hunter and hockey mom. Like the debutantes that Bernays brazenly displayed smoking cigarettes, Palin supports teenage pregnancy, no time off with a special needs infant, no health care for mothers and infants......Sarah Palin is against EVERYTHING that the Women's Movement worked so hard for.

According to Noam Chomsky, Edward Bernays was one of the early founders, gurus, of the public relations industry...It was understood, both in Britain and the U.S., that people have won too much freedom for the state to repress them by violence, and therefore, both in Britain and the U.S., the two most democratic countries, there was a growth of the public relations industry, to try to control attitudes and beliefs, since you can’t control people by force. And Bernays was a leading figure.

Bernays' first great achievement: A public relations campaign trying to get women to smoke. So he had models walking down Fifth Avenue smoking cigarettes and showing how it makes you beautiful and slim. We can’t estimate how many tens of millions of people he managed to kill by that, but a substantial number. And that put him on the map.

From Smokey Imagery and the 7 Deadly Myths by Liz Jones: For as long as any of us can remember, the deep-pocketed tobacco industry has bought and sold the imagery of cigarette smoking. Image one: the independent, tough, leather-skinned cowboy. Image two: the thin, liberated woman enjoying an active, love-filled life. In fact, the tobacco and public relations industries have been instrumental in defining how females perceive smoking and how society perceives women who smoke.

The 1929 Easter Parade in New York City marked a magnificent triumph for the tobacco industry in its ability to manipulate women and foster their addiction to a deadly habit. Promoted as a publicity stunt for "female emancipation" in these post-suffrage days, the parade featured a contingent of New York debutantes marching down Fifth Avenue while openly lighting and smoking cigarettes. It was the first time most Americans had witnessed any woman who wasn't a prostitute smoking in public.

What the bold debutantes didn't know was that their expression of "freedom and equality" was orchestrated by George Washington Hill of American Tobacco and Edward L. Bernays, public relations mastermind and nephew of Sigmund Freud. In addition to boosting sales for American Tobacco's Lucky Strikes, the demonstration succeeded in breaking the taboo of women's smoking.

Often cited as one of the most ingenious and effective PR stunts of all time, the parade is viewed by some as a coup that launched a distinctly new American industry and further reinforced the deceptive power of PR flackery.

Palingate

"Team McCain and the Trooper: Nominee's ally moves to curb probe of Palin"

by: Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball

Key Alaska allies of John McCain are trying to derail a politically charged investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner in order to prevent a so-called "October surprise" that would produce embarrassing information about the vice presidential candidate on the eve of the election.


In a move endorsed by the McCain campaign Friday, John Coghill, the GOP chairman of the state House Rules Committee, wrote a letter seeking a meeting of Alaska's bipartisan Legislative Council in order to remove the Democratic state senator in charge of the so-called "troopergate" investigation.


Coghill charged that the senator, Hollis French, had "politicized" the probe by making a number of public comments in recent days, including telling ABC News that Palin had a "credibility problem" and that the investigation into the firing of public safety commissioner Walter


Monegan was "likely to be damaging to the administration" and could be an "October surprise." Wrote Coghill: "The investigation appears to be lacking in fairness, neutrality and due process."
The investigation, authorized by the Legislative Council last July, revolves around charges that Palin abused her power by embroiling the governor's office in a bitter family feud involving her ex-brother in law, a state trooper named Mike Wooten. Specifically, the council is investigating whether Palin fired Monegan when he refused to dismiss Wooten (who at the time was involved in an ugly custody battle with Palin's sister) after getting repeated complaints about him from the governor and her husband, Todd Palin. (Among the allegations that were raised against Wooten by Palin's sister: he had Tasered his ten-year-old stepson and shot a moose without a permit.) Palin has denied wrongdoing; Monegan has said he believes his firing was connected to his refusal to fire Wooten.


Read the entire article by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball in Newsweek.

McCain and the Zigzag Express

From Johnathan Alter's "McCain and the Zigzag Express" from Newsweek:

John McCain's whole campaign is based on the idea that Barack Obama is risky, untested and can't be trusted to protect the nation in a crisis. But this week it was McCain who seemed unpresidential, as his Zigzag Express swerved back and forth across the median strip. His approach to the greatest financial crisis since 1933 was erratic and off-key. Would his presidency be any different?

McCain's first reaction to the climactic events of Sunday, Sept. 14, when Lehman Brothers fell, Merrill Lynch was sold and AIG began to totter, was to repeat his longstanding sound bite that "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." When Obama predictably leapt on this clueless comment with a TV ad, McCain quickly backtracked by saying that he was merely talking about the strength of "the American worker" and anyone who disagreed obviously had a problem understanding the importance of working people. He told the morning shows that he was a Republican in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt, though his true views on free-market economics are more in tune with Herbert Hoover.

Read the entire Newsweek article, "McCain and the Zinzag Express" by Johnathan Alter here.

Tom Toles captures the whole Wall Street mess so well. We are such fans of Tom Toles artistry. It's amazing to see how an artist draws pictures that encapsulates the whole bloody scene of the Wall Street financial fiasco. Dan Froomkin has been singing Mr. Toles praises for quite a while.

Chris Matthews Plays Hardball with McCain's Spokesperson

Chris Matthews talks with Republican Nancy Pfotenhauer, spokesperson for the McCain campaign. What a joke. This woman is barking mad. The McCain campaign is scared to death of real reporters asking real questions. The Republicans just want you to focus in on the narrative and forget the reality of total Republican governance and Republican rule.

It all makes sense now, why the McCain campaign was so hell bent in ousting Chris Matthews from questioning the candidates. They can't answer any serious questions. The McCain campaign simply has nothing to offer except negrophobia and fear mongering. After 8 years of the Republican economic policy, Senator McCain hearkens back to the good old days of President Hoover. We live in serious times and the elephants in the room have left a stench in the nostrils of the American people.

Worse Than Bush

If the campaign of McCain and Palin are any indication of how corrupt and decietful their administratiion would be, then McCain/Palin would be worse than Bush. New York Times columnist, Paul Kurgman states the same sentiment from his article, "Blizzard of Lies." from the 12 Septemeber 2008 issue of the New York Times. Kurgman asserts, "I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse."

Read Krugman's entire column here.
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