A walk down memory lane w/Cindy McCain

Just thought I'd remind all of you Cindy McCain's hilarious lie from a Today Show interview back in May, when she said with a straight face, "If there's any negative campaigning, it won't come from our side." I said it was b.s. then, and it certainly came to pass.

I'm no Nostradomus, but the record will reflect that it was McLame's surrogates who decided to start throwing mud pies, not Obama's. Viewed from that angle, I guess it does make sense; after all, it's McCain who's tanking in the polls, not Obama.

I'm still waiting for that "honorable campaign" we were promised, Senator McCain.

Romney's Today comments high comedy

I saw Mitt Romney on the Today show on Friday, and I was pretty surprised at the ineptitude of his appearance. First, it's a GOP talking point (that of course Lauer let Romney get away with saying) that Obama "determined his policies in Afghanistan and Iraq before going there." In essence, yes, but John McCain has done the same thing regarding Afghanistan, as Media Matters has thoroughly documented. But, that inconvenient fact hasn't stopped people like Romney, Rudy Giuliani (remember him?) and McCain himself from repeating, over and over, how Obama shouldn't have laid out much of his Iraq policy before going there.

Quite frankly, it doesn't take a trip to Iraq to determine that we need to withdraw from the country as soon as humanly possible. What's more, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has in most ways endorsed Obama's plan to withdraw in 16 months upon taking office. If Obama is elected, of course that plan could always change, depending on developments on the ground, but it sure beats McCain's plan of staying in Iraq for up to 100 years through his first term, oh, I don't know what his position is this week.

Anyway, more on Obama's Iraq and Afghanistan plans in a minute.

What I found really telling in this interview is when Lauer asked Romney about McCain and the differences the two had in January. Romney just laughed and shrugged it off, and Lauer let him get away with it.

Is it just me, or is the media making considerably less of a big deal about McCain's differences with his former opponents like Romney, Giuliani and Mike Huckabee who all now support him than it's making about Barack Obama's differences with Hillary Clinton? The differences in media coverage are stark, and telling.

I do get tired of hearing the same old trite media bias debate over and over and over, but the more I see in the mass media, the more I'm convinced that our corporate media is going to pull out the stop to try and cause a John McCain victory in November.

Oh, and about the coverage of Obama stating his Iraqi plan before going there? Again, McCain has done the same thing, but not according to our corporate media. From Lou Dobbs, late last week:

Above is video of John McCain during an appearance in New Mexico last week, openly mocking Obama's plans for Afghanistan and Iraq. Again, McCain's hypocrisy knows no bounds - as mentioned above, he's done the same thing regarding Afghanistan, a country he hasn't visited since 2006, yet he's laying out all sort of proposals for "victory" in that country.

(Quick aside: It's painfully obvious that our political leaders learned nothing from our national tragedy in Vietnam and from the Soviet Union's disaster in Afghanistan that our presidential candidates (McCain, mostly) are talking about victory in either country. It's just plain preposterous.)

One other quick note, however. I laughed quite hard when McCain said in the video above, "I know how to win wars." Um, exactly when have you won a war, Senator? We certainly didn't win in Vietnam, an experience that I'm certain he didn't enjoy (but never misses an opportunity to remind us about). What annoys me even more than McCain saying "he knows how to win wars" is that the media lets him get away with such "straight talk."

Way to hold 'em accountable, Lou Dobbs - I would expect nothing more.

As for the Faux News channel's coverage of Barack Obama at the end of the clip above, I'd also expect nothing more. (Soon Brit Hume will be gone, what a sad day that'll be.) I'd love for FNC to devote its highly powered flip-flop microscope to McCain's record, but I know it'll never happen. That's okay, liberal bloggers are only too happy to highlight McCain's multiple positions on a multitude of issues. With BIG assists from both Crooks & Liars and Keith Olbermann, I blogged about McCain's many issue changes earlier this month - take a look.

Olbermann savages McCain about the troops

This is an excellent, spot on Special Comment by Keith Olbermann last week that I forgot to post, but it's still as apropos as ever. (Heck, it could have been last night and it would still be appropriate - better yet, maybe he should just keep replaying it.) In it, Olbermann takes on McCain's absurd comment that it "doesn't really matter" when the troops come home.

To his credit, Olbermann provides plenty of context for McCain's comments, too, including many of his asinine statements in the past about how quickly we were going to achieve victory in Iraq, and a myriad of other statements regarding the war, very few of which have proven to be true.

Recently, Olbermann has stumbled a bit at times, and I've been critical of him. After all, I'm not slavishly devoted to any commentator, liberal or (gasp!) conservative, but it's comments like these where Olbermann is at his very best, and, dare I risk hyperbole, he's doing an important service for his country. His show is still "can't miss TV" every single night. I hope he keeps the heat on McCain and Bush, as he's been doing for the last five years.

It's my hope that people who believe McCain is the strongest candidate when it comes to foreign policy are paying attention to all of his misstatements and inaccurate predictions about Iraq. There's a lot to choose from.

What's more, it's important to remember all of his war mongering about Iran, too. I almost spit up when I saw McCain's ad (below), which paints him as a man of peace, or something. Take a look...

The first seven seconds are all you need to realize how utterly inconceivable this ad is. "Only a fool or fraud talks tough or romantically about war..." Is he joking? He's been talking tough about Iraq for years, and recently, Iran.

McCain must think most Americans are pretty stupid, or indifferent. Does he think that we haven't been paying attention for the past eight years? What other conclusion could you draw? I guess he thinks a packaged, slick advertisement will be a good deodorant for the stench of dead Americans and Iraqis in the Middle East that he has whole-heartedly supported and endorsed for over five years.

Again, I sure hope that Americans remember this stuff in the voting booth.

Luke Russert remembers his dad

I haven't commented on Tim Russert's death until now, because, quite frankly, I didn't really know what to write, which is pretty rare for me. I hate to pull out clichés when something awful like this happens, but sometimes we really don't realize what we have until it's gone. And the media and world really will miss Tim Russert. And so will I.

This morning on Today, Russerts's son Tim paid homage to his dad with a very moving interview with Matt Lauer, and I came away very moved by how Luke conducted himself throughout what must have been a very emotionally wrenching interview to give.

Later on this morning, it really hit me as sat in my chair to listen to the Meet the Press podcast, as is my habit every Monday morning. (I usually do it in my car when I'm commuting to my teaching job during the school year.) Anyway, not hearing Russert's voice booming, "Our issues this Sunday..." really was a downer. The longest running show in television history will never be the same, no matter who NBC picks to replace him.

Just hearing the music to begin the show always gets my political juices flowing & gets me in the political mood. I have many, many memories of MTP since Russert has been the moderator - the '92 election, the '00 election, the '04 election and especially the '06 election, when he made an otherwise dull and hot summer a very, very interesting one by highlighting many of the Senate races in battleground states.

I loved it that he never let any of his guests filibuster, no matter where they came from on the political spectrum. Russert was a genuine, affable guy who wore his emotions on his sleeve. I remember on MTP just days before the '06 election, when the insufferable Sen. Elizabeth Dole said Democrats were "content with losing" the War in Iraq, Russert became very short and had to play referee. Later on in the show, when Dole was filibustering by pimping every candidate that Republicans were running for the U.S. Senate, an exasperated Russert finally blurted out, "We get it, you like your candidates."

That's what I loved about Russert - he was always prepared, and he wasn't subservient or deferential to any of his guests simply because of their status. He was always respectful and fair, but he was firm and prepared.

Talking Points Memo put together a pretty nice montage of Russert's moments below - take a look...

Rare is the person in the world of journalism that everyone from all of the networks will be deferential toward when that person passes - Russert was given tribute on all the networks over the weekend, and he deserved all of it.

My favorite moments from the montage above were Bob Schiffer's words about Russert: "News programs are about the news, they are not about the newscasters." That's high praise from a seasoned pro like Schieffer, who's another throwback journalist who knows how to get a story without becoming part of the story.

I loved how he was always willing to show his Buffalo pride, and how he never missed an opportunity to express his love and affection for his son, Luke.

Russert is no doubt smiling down on all of us, wishing he could be a part of the action that will be the 2008 election. It won't be the same without him. Rest in peace, Tim.

McCain's Today debacle

A few days ago, John McCain appeared on NBC's Today, and I don't even know where to start to comment about it. During his 7+ minute appearance, he turned into a virtual gaffe machine.

First, his plastic, creepy smile is enough to give me the chills, but his words made up for my skeeviness, because I was belly laughing in no time.

It's so blatantly obvious that he's doing whatever he can to appeal to the GOP's base, especially the people who remain in la-la land, who believe that cutting taxes is the answer to our significant economic ills.

Enter McCain's proposed "gas tax holiday," which is a complete joke. I just don't know how else to describe it.

When asked by Matt Lauer what he or Barack Obama could do about gas prices, McCain lamely responds, "We could give them [American consumers] a break." Does anyone, and I do mean ANYONE with half a brain, honestly believe that if the federal government stops collecting the gas tax, that prices would go down at all?!? You don't have to be an economist to conclude that Big Oil would simply take up the slack by raising prices by the same amount or more (not to mention OPEC). Another highly undesirable result of suspending the gas tax - the federal government's deficit, which has already reached astronomical heights, would have another huge hole blown in it by another unaffordable tax cut. Not to mention our crumbling infrastructure (which, thus far, neither candidate has addressed in any significant way), which is already underfunded by Congress, would crumble even more. (The gas tax largely funds highway and infrastructure improvements.)

However, my favorite part of the segment above is when Matt Lauer asked McCain what he thought we would be paying for gas by election day. To be fair, it's a "Gotchya Question" (Nice job, Matt, and I don't say that often), but McCain handled it about as bad as he could have...

I'm not sure, because I think part of it depends on how we are making advances in alternate energy.

Lauer came right back at him with, "In that short amount of time?" It was great watching McCain hem and haw after that, saying we could come up with "a battery that could take a car 100 miles or more." Gimme a break. In six months?!? I sure hope I'm wrong and he's right. And those batteries? They've already been invented, senator, but thus far, automakers haven't been putting them in cars in significant numbers. (For those of you who are interested, see the movie Who Killed the Electric Car? for loads of more insight.)

More kudos to Lauer (!) for mentioning the Tax Policy Center, a non-partisan tax group, which has analyzed both candidates' tax plans, and has concluded that 80 percent of McCain's tax proposals would go to those Americans who need it least. Draw your own conclusions there. It is worth noting that McCain was very disingenuous when he talked about "millions of Americans" being affected by raising the Social Security income cap. Yes, that's true, but those affected by raising the cap, according to Obama's proposal, would be well into six figures, NOT lower income Americans. The same goes for capital gains taxes. However, most outrageous of all is how McCain wants to lower the corporate tax rate. Obama should use that as a political cudgel for the rest of this campaign, period.

McCain really was at his "best" when questioned about Iraq...

LAUER: Do you have a better estimate on when the troops can come home in Iraq?

McCAIN: That's not what's important. What is important is the casualties in Iraq.

Really? It's not important when Americans can come home? He's gotta be kidding. I can only hope that any family with a soldier in Iraq heard that comment (and soldiers in the field as well), and I hope they remember it in November. Of course, now that there's an uproar, McCain will undoubtedly reverse himself, but that reversal will be merely out of political necessity and not a reflection of his true feelings. Remember, McCain is the guy who said that we could be in Iraq for the next 100 years. (He later shortened it by saying that troops could be coming home by the end of his first term - how reassuring.)

I also tire of people like McCain citing Korea, Japan and Germany as examples of our troops being permanently being stationed overseas. A substantive political discussion of our military can never be had without a World War II reference. Too bad that those three examples are from the Cold War, something that ended long ago. Comparing the so-called War on Terrorism and the Cold War is like comparing the NFL to Pop Warner football. The two are simply not analogous.

I also found it interesting that McCain mentioned that General Petraeus is going to testify to Congress next month about when we can begin drawing down our troops. I've got a Benjamin that says he'll testify "another six months" or something similar, which is testimony he has repeatedly given Congress since he took over command in Iraq. I've written it before many times, and it bears repeating - it's foolhardy to ask a military general when troops should be withdrawn from the field of battle, because no general is ever going to say, "You know what, committee? What I'm doing in Iraq is a miserable failure. Bring those boys home." It's setting the system up for failure. The last time I checked, our military leaders take orders from civilians elected by the American people in this country, not the other way around. I've little doubt that our command structure in Iraq and elsewhere have the best of intentions at heart and that they do a terrific service to our country, but these repeated Congressional bull sessions where commanders are asked whether they are failing or not are simply ridiculous - it's a broken record every time.

Our corporate media gives a lot of credence to the fact that McCain knows a great deal about foreign policy. I think the man's clueless. And let's not even get started on the economic issues here at home. (Which, by the way, polls say is the most important issue this election season.)

I just don't see how anyone but the most rabid Republican partisan can possibly cast a vote for this guy.

Grillary Clinton raked over coals, again

This is a Today Showinterview with Carl Bernstein, author of the new book A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I will probably read the book, because I'd like to get a better picture of who Hillary Clinton is, and because I respect Carl Bernstein as a journalist, but I'm not so sure about this book going in. It seems to be a rehash of old news about the Clinton's marriage.

Frankly, I find it amazing that the Clinton marriage still gets this type of scrutiny, when people like Rudy Giuliani and John McCain have had multiple marriages. I guess it's that liberal bias in the media again, right?

I find it distasteful that candidates' private lives are discussed at all in the media, but that's the reality of the press in today's presidential campaigns. What I have a big problem with is that anything and everything about Hillary is fair game, but the press handles Giuliani, McCain and Fred Thompson with what can only be described as adoration on most days. (More on Thompson and Giuliani a bit later today.)

I don't suspect this trend will change much leading up to the primaries and the 2008 general election, either.

Anyway, Bernstein's book is probably worth a read; I'll get to it before the end of the year, but I'm lukewarm on it at best.

A Woman in Charge goes on sale tomorrow.

Blood-soaked pandering makes me sick

I wonder if I'm the only one sickened and disgusted by all of the pandering by the news networks and politicians from both parties in light of yesterday's Virginia Tech Massacre?

Most mornings, my day begins with NBC's Today Show. This morning, there were Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira, on the campus of Virginia Tech, doing pointless and ridiculous interviews. We flipped around the channels, and all of the other morning shows, including Good Morning America and CBS This Morning, were broadcasting from the campus as well.

It amazes me that the networks rush to the scene of a major news story (as they should), yet conduct the dullest of dull interviews while replaying the same footage over and over and over again. It's getting to the point where I no longer watch any television news. I get my news mostly from the Internet, and not always from media outlets in this country. Most of our news coverage (sans Fox News, with its always-reliable right-wing talking points) is the same, and I can only take watching the same thing over and over for so long before I go crazy and change the channel. When I do, I'm not missing anything.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, left, and President Bush sign a memorial on the drill field at Virginia Tech University after attending a convocation ceremony where they both spoke to grieving students, parents, and staff. (AP Photo/The Roanoke Times, Josh Meltzer)

Of course, President Bush, who never misses an opportunity for a cheap photo-op, rushed to Blacksburg for a memorial at Virginia Tech's campus. I wouldn't be nearly so critical if he had reacted in a similar fashion to events with much less attractive photo-op possibilities, most notably Hurricane Katrina. Above, an overflow crowd watches as President Bush speaks on a screen in VT's football stadium. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Bush's speech was eloquent and unremarkable. Above, an overhead shot of the overflow crowd watching President Bush on the scoreboard screen of Lane Stadium. Bush spoke at Cassell Coliseum, behind the screen to the left, during a convocation to honor the victims of a shooting rampage at the school. (AP Photo/The Roanoke Times, Matt Gentry) Quite frankly, the only thing I found amazing about Bush's speech after reading it was the fact that he didn't mention Democrats not sending him a clean bill to "adequately fund the troops" for the War in Iraq.

He sure found time on Monday to do just that, delivering his "give me my money" boilerplate for the fourth time in nine days, demanding that Democrats send him the bill he wants, or he'll veto it. (Above, Bush speaks in the East Room of the White House with soldiers' families.) I'd say "we get it - you're going to veto the bill!" but then I'd be as redundant as he is by criss-crossing the country, whining about not getting his rubber stamp war supplemental bills that he grew accustomed to under a Republican-controlled Congress. My only guess here is that Bush is feeling the heat about war funding, so he's intensifying the PR effort because Repubes may be wavering on supporting the funding. We'll see.

Anyway, two other quick notables surrounding the Virginia Tech Massacre. I found it quite amazing that politicians, mostly on the Republican side, were so quick to come out and defend the Second Amendment, saying in so many words that guns aren't the problem. I don't have time right now, but I will be blogging about this quite a bit tomorrow.

However, for now, I'll say this - McCain, Bush and the rest who felt the need to discuss friggin' gun laws less than 24 hours after 32 people were executed on a college campus smacks of political pandering of the worst kind. (To be fair, the press deserves its fair share of the blame too for even asking these questions in the first place.)

I'll give Bush more of a pass here than McCain, because naturally Bush, as president, is going to issue public comments about the incident and reporters queried him about it. But even Bush could have said, "Now is the time to grieve and mourn - I'll be more than happy to deal with your questions on that in the coming days." Just like McCain should have. But, Judas John never misses an opportunity to pander to the far right (in this case, the we-should-all-have-machine-guns extremists) by saying at an airport yesterday that he fully supports the Second Amendment. Again, you can't defer on those questions for a few days?

The NRA's silence was deafening today. What a surprise. Anyone expecting anything other than the usual boilerplate to come out of this radical group has got another thing coming. Earlier today, this statement appeared on the NRA's Website:

The National Rifle Association joins the entire country in expressing our deepest condolences to the families of Virginia Tech University and everyone else affected by this horrible tragedy.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the families.

We will not have further comment until all the facts are known.

Andrew Arulanandam
Director of Public Affairs
National Rifle Association

(Read: We need time to spin this as a Second Amendment issue.) The NRA's reaction following the Columbine High School Massacre in 1999 was to fight any attempt by the Clinton administration or Congress to modify gun laws and to make it more difficult for criminals to get assault weapons.

Bush hasn't done squat to curb gun violence during his entire administration. In fact, the Bush White House and the NRA have been engaged in a passionate, six-year love affair. Think I'm using hyperbole? Take a look at this video, from 2000. It's footage of Kayne Robinson delivering a speech while he was a vice president of the NRA and the chairman of the Iowa Republican Party.



To be clear, I'm NOT in favor of national gun registration and never will be, nor do I think that the government should ever, EVER take away our right to bear arms. But, clearly the existing laws are either not being enforced or they don't work, because young people and violent criminals can get just about any gun, any time they want to. That needs to change, or we'll continue to have more massacres like those at Columbine and Virginia Tech.

And that's the greatest tragedy of all.

I hope President Bush and NRA President Sandra Froman sleep tight tonight.