McCain - Palin

I wasn't in Grant Park the night Barack Obama won the election, which is a pity as it seemed like a joyous and life affirming event. But I've been in Grant Park with tens of thousands of others, the last time 40 years ago. There was tear gas everywhere, students and others being clubbed to the ground by berserker Chicago police and people running in terror and fury. Grant Park was full of anger and violence. So it was with wonder and a full heart that I looked on images of Grant Park Tuesday night: "Look at these people -- old, young, black and white -- I've never seen anything like it, "…

Tuesday, November 4, marks the end of a long Presidential election season in the United States. I will be voting for Barack Obama. I will also be voting against John McCain. There are many reasons, but Josh Marshall pinpoints one of the main ones: McCainism For my own part, obviously, I hope Barack Obama can pull off a victory on Tuesday. But more than that, I hope the result of the election can be a rebuke, a closing of the book on McCainism and the moral filth it has come to represent. I'm under no illusion that negative or even nasty campaigning will come to an end in the USA. I don't…

No one who knows me would ever consider me a domestic terrorist. I am, in fact, a pacifist. You may think that's naive, but it would be a real stretch to consider my pacifism to be the same as terrorism, even if you think it helps terrorism (in which case I strenuously disagree). I'm a doctor and take the responsibility to heal pretty seriously. Barack Obama is being accused of "palling around with terrorists" because he has had an association with people the McCain campaign decided they want to call domestic terrorists purely for the purpose of inferring guilt -- guilt, literally, by…

While Barack Obama continues to draw huge crowds (tens of thousands, sometimes over 100,000), John McCain's are more modest. Yesterday he had an estimated 6000 in Ohio. Never mind that 4,000 were bused in from local school districts, including the aptly named 2500 Defiance School District. I'm sure they were most interested. One person who apparently was too busy to make it, though, was Joe the Plumber. I guess he forgot to RSVP: hat tip Robert Arena, AmericaBlog and DailyKos This might be hopeful economic news, however. The first sign of a recession is when you can get your plumber to come…

The Obama campaign has made much of the McCain campaign's "erratic" performance but there are some things he has been steady and consistent about. Like reproductive rights. He's against them. Steadily. Consistently. You surely know McCain wants to make abortion illegal again in the US. But he's not content to stop there: McCain opposed spending $100 million to prevent unintended and teen pregnancies. In 2005, McCain voted NO to allocate $100 million to expand access to preventive health care services that reduce the numbers of unintended and teen pregnancies and reduce the number of…

Governor Palin's "fruitfly moment" was a display of her utter contempt and disregard for modern science, perhaps even more emblematic than her belief that dinosaurs and humans coexisted. But John McCain has his own moments where we can see his true self: "It has to be safe, environment, blah, blah, blah"? Translation: "I don't really care about whether nuclear power is safe for people and the environment. It's drill, drill, drill those nuclei." How does he know it's safe? McCain suggested nuclear power is a safe energy resource because "we've been sailing Navy ships around the world for 50…

A number of people, including here at Science Blogs, have noted, with the contempt it deserves, Governor Palin's comments about fruit flies the other day. In case you haven't seen it (where have you been?), here it is again: I'll make this a lot shorter just by incorporating by reference and associating myself with remarks made by PZ and BarbinMD at DailyKos, as well as the meta comments by tristero at digby's place and Steve Novella at Neurologica. But I want to add my own little post script. Governor Palin either knows or doesn't know that fruit flies are one of the major animal models in…

Superbowl commercials are a thing unto themselves. Some people watch just for the commercials. The famous Apple "1984" ad only ran once, during the 1984 Superbowl, although it has been seen online hundreds of thousands of times since. Another famous ad was the 1999 Budweiser "Whassup" ad. If you've never seen it, here it is: John McCain's wealth is from his wife's family's Budweiser Distributership. Which brings us to the election-appropriate hilarious sequel, Whassup 2008:

John McCain chose Governor Palin as a nod to the Republican base and they love her. But it's not just the base. Her neighbors also love her:

OK, so Governor Palin spent $150,000 in two months on clothes and accessories. Big deal. It wasn't illegal. And it wasn't taxpayer money. It was campaign money. Money donated to the Republican Party by people who trusted Republican officials to be good stewards of their (possibly) honestly earned dollars. Yes, there are people who are grossed out by the profligacy. My own Mrs. R., upon viewing slide #5 in this slideshow of Palin wardrobe and shoes was aghast at the Louis Vuiton bag being weilded by 7 year old Piper. But there will always be curmudgeons. Or this guy: Mr. McCAIN. Madam…

If an al-Qaeda website had endorsed Barack Obama I think we know what the McCain campaign would do with it. It would be absolutely ridiculous, but we know they'd be trumpeting it from small town to small town in "the real America." Now that the shoe is on the other foot, with an al-Qaeda website saying a McCain presidency would be just the ticket for them, it will be interesting to see how they spin it. It is quite obvious that McCain is not an al-Qaeda sympathizer, no matter what he might feel free to say about his opponent. Dishonorable and incompetent, perhaps. Which gets us closer to the…

Dishonest John McCain may be a distinguished veteran, but he isn't the favorite of veteran's groups. Not that you'd know it to listen to him. He has consistently lied about this, blatantly and brazenly. Like when he responded to a veteran's question about why his voting record on funding the VA is so abysmal: Q: I know you voted for lesser increases, and sometimes they were so much less, and our VA desperately needs the money. Can you tell me why you would vote for less money for the VA when there's a war going on? M: Well of course I have not and I'm afraid I've been endorsed by the VFW in…

I'm not a fan of Colin Powell. He was there and helped start this catastrophic war. Maybe he tried to resist it in private but in public he shouldered the weight of selling it. He bears responsibility for it. He knew better but he was, as always, the good soldier. So now Powell has broken with his party (he is a longtime Republican and has served as an aparatchik in Republican administrations). He has endorsed Barack Obama for President. The usual suspects are already calling him a racist and a suggestion he is a secret Muslim can't be far behind. I don't know if Powell's nod will have any…

The pundits keep telling us that a particular problem for Barack Obama are older, white Catholics. Like this woman? Sister Cecilia has lived in the convent in Rome for 50 years. A 106-year-old American nun living in a convent in Rome could well be one of the oldest voters to cast a ballot in the 2008 US Presidential election. Sister Cecilia Gaudette, who last voted for President Eisenhower in 1952, has registered to vote and says she will vote for Democrat Barack Obama. Although hard of hearing, she keeps herself informed by reading newspapers and watching TV at the convent. "I'm encouraged…

Living on a big ranch outside a city in a state with wide open spaces can be wonderful but it can also be a problem if you depend on modern telecommunications systems like cell phone service. If you are the only one around for miles and miles, it isn't that likely you will be supplied with a cell phone base station. Unless you are a presidential candidate and powerful Senator and senior member of a Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over telecommunications policy. Then even telecom giants are more than happy to accommodate you. Free of charge: Early in 2007, just as her husband launched…

By now everyone knows that Sarah Palin abused her power as Governor of Alaska in trying to settle a personal score with her ex-brother-in-law. Despite the fact that the official bipartisan legislative investigation cited chapter and verse of her unethical conduct and violation of Alaskan ethics statutes she has brazenly trumpeted her version that the reported absolved her of all guilt. Black is white. War is Peace. And this is 1984. There's a persistent pattern of hypocrisy and lying worthy of the present Vice President. Even her accusations against the brother-in-law now are in question.…

It's become a campaign issue that one of the Presidential candidates has been close with a domestic terrorist. So let's look at the facts. G. Gordon Liddy is a convicted burglar and domestic terrorist. He was also the host, in his home, for a 1998 fundraiser for John McCain's Senate re-election campaign. McCain was on Liddy's radio show in May 2007, where he praised Liddy's values and proclaimed himself proud of Liddy and his "adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great": During the same period that Bill Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, Gordon Liddy…

The fatuousness of the McCain-Palin campaign's attack on ACORN, a national organization that fights for the rights of low income citizens is matched only by its hypocrisy. McCain has been a past supporter of ACORN and McCain was a keynoter at a recent ACORN sponsored conference. McCain has no quarrel with ACORN. It is just another tactic in his desperate battle to win the election and he doesn't care who gets hurt as long as he gains. Classic McCain. Unprincipled, dishonest and dishonorable. Not new but a pattern that goes back to his youth. For years, including years when McCain was an…

This weekend we passed a milestone. George W. Bush, the current incumbent of the White House, has less than 100 days left in his ill-starred Presidency. In 22 days we'll find out if we will have to suffer through four more years of the same thing under a McCain-Palin (or Palin - ?) administration. Heaven forbid (just a saying, not a religious statement). Bush is near historic approval lows in the Gallup poll (25%) and has been below 30% longer than any President in Presidential polling history. He is irrelevant to most people and has turned the government over to President Paulson. Notice…

A lot of pundits seem dismayed and surprised at the moral depths to which Dishonest John McCain's campaign has sunk in the last week. I have to disagree. There is nothing surprising about it. This is his MO: do whatever he thinks is necessary. McCain has a long history of lack of principle and probity, whether it is in his personal life (a vile and abusive temper, disloyalty to his first wife) or his public life (corrupt behavior in the Savings and Loan scandal, chicanery on behalf of gaming interests and much more). Where I do agree with his new found critics is the frightening nature of his…