Egad!

In a shocking display of political gamesmanship, the Alien has switched his allegiance from Obama to McCain. I think that like McCain, The Alien has underestimated the power of early voting. It's too late!

Weekly World News: OCTOBER SURPRISE: UFO ALIEN NOW ENDORSES McCAIN!

I must acquire this issue to add to my "Dewey Defeats Truman" collection. And for the Photoshops. The hottub is the best.


Uncovered photos suggest that in a last ditch effort to help her husband’s failing campaign, Cindy McCain seduced and then blackmailed the Alien for his endorsement.

Miscellany

yahoo: A sculpture is photographed by a visitor at Sydney's Tamarama Beach in Australia Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2008. Sculpture by the Sea is Australia's largest annual outdoor exhibition of sculpture, free to the public. The 2008 exhibition will feature over 100 sculptures from seven different countries and will run for three weeks.
(AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Interview with one of my favorite authors, E. Annie Proulx, in the LATimes.

This dailykos diary has clips from the Bill Maher show from HBO last night.

Jere from A Red Sox Fan From Pinstripe Territory has many photos and videos from the Red Sox amazing Game 6 5 comeback win [Freudian slip, there].

While ACORN is being excoriated for voter registration fraud for having workers fill out bogus registration forms, then flagging them as bogus before sending them in to the states, Republicans hired a firm to deliberately defraud voters into changing their registration from Democrat to Republican. Read this LATimes article on the firm hired by the California Republican Party -- Young Political Majors, or YPM -- which has a long, documented history of voter registration fraud. In California, they duped people into changing their registration to Republican by telling them they were signing petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. That's fraud with intent to commit fraud.

Obama is racking up the endorsements.

The McCain campaign finally released a 2-page summary of Cindy McCain's tax returns (pdf file); she's clearly middle class as she makes only $4.2 million per year, not $5 mill.

It's The Economy, Stupid

PDF file, Phoenix Sunday Gazette, September 13, 1993
Charles Keating III and McCain, than a member of the U.S. House, celebrate their August birthdays [McCain's 51st] at the Keatings' beachside estate at
Cat Cay in the Bahamas [1987 photo]

Obama takes the gloves off and launches a new website: KeatingEconomics.com: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis. The website will have a 13-minute documentary on McCain and the Keating Five, available at noon tomorrow. Can't wait.

McCain is trying to smear Obama with guilt by association.

McCain and Charles Keating is guilt by guilt. Charles Keating gave John McCain over $100,000 in campaign contributions between 1982 and 1988, went into business with Cindy McCain, wined and dined the McCains in the Bahamas: and John McCain tried to keep his friend and benefector from being stopped by federal regulators. American taxpayers ultimately lost at least $130 billion in the 1980s S&L scandal.

And John McCain has heedlessly championed deregulation ever since. This time it's going to cost taxpayers a trillion dollars.

Here's a preview:

McCain's Economic Plan For Nation: ‘Everyone Marry A Beer Heiress’

McCain’s Economic Plan For Nation: 'Everyone Marry A Beer Heiress'

Cindy McCain Drug Abuse Story Up on WaPo

Murky.

Editor & Publisher: UPDATE: The Case of the Missing 'Post' Posting (Probably) Solved!

It looked like 1) just a technical glitch or hacking 2) the usual case of a news outlet pulling back a story to do more checking 3) someone pushed a button too early on a story being held for a later date 4) a bombshell report was killed because of pressure from a presidential campaign 5) none of the above.

We still don't know for certain, but The Washington Post says it had something to do with an unedited caption to a video that should not have gone up. But what about the video itself? And a separate documents file?

WaPo: A Tangled Story of Addiction
Consequences of Cindy McCain's Drug Abuse Were More Complex Than She Has Portrayed

You Won't Read This Story In the Washington Post Today

It's been scrubbed. (Of course, their IBM Selectric tech team couldn't figure out that if you were going to pull the article, you needed to pull all the places where the article got archived, like The Google [right now it's the last result on page 1, and that will change as more blogs cover this story] and Yahoo Buzz!. And their own website, which still has an active link to the scrubbed story, which people have been leaving comments on.)

What story, you ask? Tom Gosinski, the former director of government and international affairs for the American Voluntary Medical Team, a nonprofit organization headed by Cindy Hensley McCain, gave a videotaped interview (two excerpts from YouTube are at the end of this post) to the press yesterday alleging that John McCain used his Senate staff and position to cover up his wife's drug use, and that he intervened with the Drug Enforcement Agency to prevent her being prosecuted.

Basically, Cindy McCain was stealing pain medication that was supposed to be going to the children her charity served. She had a huge painkiller addiction (taking 30 to 50 pills a day) and started forging prescriptions on the prescription pads of doctors who volunteered for the charity, and because she was taking so many, used the names of her employees to get even more pills. Gosinski found out she had forged his name on a prescription, complained and got fired.

McCain has always claimed he didn't know about Cindy's drug abuse, but Gosinski says this is nonsense as he picked her up from the hospital in 1991 after she overdosed. Gosinski also says McCain through his Senate office got Cindy McCain a diplomatic passport, which allowed her to pass through Customs without having her bags searched. After Gosinski got fired, McCain got a political buddy of his, Maricipa County Attorney Rick Romley, to open an investigation into Gosinski. So Gosinski, the man whose name was forged onto prescriptions so Cindy McCain could get drugs illegally, he gets investigated; John McCain used his position and influence to shut down the investigation of his wife, the actual criminal. If she hadn't been married to a Senator, she would have gone to jail, as Arizona has some of the harshest mandatory minimum sentences for drug use in the country.

Not exactly the rosy picture the Republicans painted of the McCains at their disgusting convention last week.

And it looks like McCain is still wielding his powerful position to keep the truth about his wife's abuse out of the public eye.


Matt Stoller, OpenLeft: Did McCain Tamper with the Drug Enforcement Agency to Protect His Career?

dailykos: Whistleblower Says McCain Hid Wife's Drug Abuse

Republican Convention Condensed

Down to 1 minute 38 seconds:



If they put in all the "John McCain was a POW" stories, it would be 10 minutes longer.

Not Pat Nixon's Republican Cloth Coat

Vanity Fair: Cindy McCain's $300,000 Outfit

One of the persistent memes in the Republican line of attack against Barack Obama is the notion that he is an elitist, whereas the G.O.P. represent real working Americans like Levi “F-in’ Redneck” Johnston.

It caught our attention, then, when First Lady Laura Bush and would-be First Lady Cindy McCain took the stage Tuesday night wearing some rather fancy designer clothes. So we asked our fashion department to price out their outfits.

Laura Bush
Oscar de la Renta suit: $2,500
Stuart Weitzman heels: $325
Pearl stud earrings: $600–$1,500
Total: Between $3,425 and $4,325

Cindy McCain
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100

Politics 8/25/08

McCain = Bush
Busy today so a linky-linky post.

Uncle Ted, my favorite senator, is going to be at the Democratic convention.

Despite McCain's noun, verb, POW claim that his military record qualifies him to be President, the fact remains that John McCain was a lousy soldier. The man lost five planes, for crying out loud. That's a qualification? Kind of like Bush's record of driving businesses into the ground, and we all know how that worked out.

Back in the 1990s Cindy McCain just claimed to have adopted a baby from an orphanage in Calcutta. In 2007 she suddenly started claiming that Mother Theresa had asked her to adopt the baby. When those claims were called into question, the McCain website was scrubbed. Lies you might believe in: McCain 2008.

No time to read all the papers? You should be reading the Abbreviated Pundit Roundup, daily at dailykos.

Margaret Thatcher has dementia, as did her old pal Ronald Reagan.

McCain: People with Subprime Mortgages Need to Work a Second Job, Skip a Vacation

Coronado Shores

It is truly unbelievable how out of touch John McMansions is with the problems of ordinary Americans.

TPM: McCains Bought Second Beach Condo At Around Time McCain Said Struggling Homeowners Needed To Skip Vacations

Here's the speech he gave chastising Americans, while he was buying (or his rich heiress wife was buying) his 10th, or 11th, or 12th house.

TRANSCRIPT:
JOHN MCCAIN: A sustained period of rising home prices made many home lenders complacent, giving them a false sense of security and causing them to lower their lending standards. They stopped asking basic questions of their borrowers like "can you afford this home? Can you put a reasonable amount of money down?" Lenders ended up violating the basic rule of banking: don't lend people money who can't pay it back. Some Americans bought homes they couldn't afford, betting that rising prices would make it easier to refinance later at more affordable rates. There are 80 million family homes in America and those homeowners are now facing the reality that the bubble has burst and prices go down as well as up.

Of those 80 million homeowners, only 55 million have a mortgage at all, and 51 million are doing what is necessary -- working a second job, skipping a vacation, and managing their budgets -- to make their payments on time. That leaves us with a puzzling situation: how could 4 million mortgages cause this much trouble for us all?

What's wrong with all those poor people? Couldn't they just marry up and let their rich spouse buy them another house?

John McCain Doesn't Know What Kind of Car He Drives!

I'd have a hard time forgetting if I drove one of these.

And the hits just keep on coming.

dailykos: Ok, Now McCain does not know what car he drives!

In our news interview, he was asked what kind of car he drove, he could simply not answer. As with Politico’s question about home ownership, he didn’t know and had to ask a nearby aide. "A Cadillac CTS," she told him.

What the hell is his carbon footprint, anyway? The guy has to be generating 100 times more carbon into the atmosphere than me, with all his (I mean hers) houses, and cars, and private planes.

Private Plane McCain, planet killer. Who doesn't know how many houses he owns, what car he drives, or the difference between Sunni and Shia.

More Help for McCain's Memory

This intrepid college student helps John McCain count his houses -- there are 10!



Nice job Aaron Walker!

This Will Jog John McCain's Memory

Maybe one of McCain's children or staffers can get him on the internet so he can watch this video, a GoogleEarth tour of his 10 houses worth more than $13,000,000, from the JedReport:



John McCain is fighting back, with his well-used line of attack "A noun, a verb, POW!"

"This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison," spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post.

And a Hanoi Hilton to you!

A Week In John McCain's $520 Ferragamo Shoes

Hilarious. Go to HuffPo for all the pictures. What a man of the people.

Isabel Wilkinson, HuffPo: A Week In John McCain's Shoes — His $520 Ferragamo Loafers, That Is

What better way to show his American pride than to tour the country in Italian leather?

Completely Random

New York Public Library: 5 varities of pears and a half-cut pear,
from Traité des arbres et arbustes que l'on cultive en France en pleine terre / par Duhamel. (published [1801-1819])

Things that interested or amused me today, in no particular order:

McCain's gaffes are piling up.

John McCain imagines a baseball game.

Jews don't like Lieberman; they like Obama much better. I don't like Irish music but I love sushi!

Barack Obama won yesterday's war of images by a country mile. I particularly enjoy the picture of McCain with Bush 41, and the ridiculous sign on the golf cart. Grumpy old men.

While the media obediently reported that Phil Gramm was "out" of the McCain campaign, he just lost his title. He'll still be advising McCain, and he still shaped McCain's economic policies. And you knew he would never really be out if you saw these pictures of him blowing kisses to Cindy. Double ewwww.

Hullabaloo warns Obama against getting bogged down in the quicksand deathtrap that is Afghanistan. No one ever wins in Afghanistan. Ask the Soviets.

Not An Actual Magazine Cover

Carton from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that you will never see on any real magazine cover. Can't make fun of McLame! Hero! Hanoi Hilton!

The New Yorker Jumps The Shark

This is the cover of the New Yorker this week. Thankfully I discontinued my subscription a few years ago, so my money didn't go into making this monstrosity.

It's every rightwing email in one loathesome caricature. Obama as a Muslim, certainly a foreigner, perhaps Osama himself; Michelle Obama as Angela Davis, or a Black Panther, or a member of Osama's bodyguards; the terrorist fistjab (thank you E.D. Hill for that turn of phrase), Osama bin Laden in the picture on the wall, the American flag burning merrily in the fireplace, all set in the Oval Office.

I look forward to their companion cover on McCain. A caricature of him in a pair of Depends underwear, holding out his empty wallet, to his wife encrusted with diamonds, asking for a little more?

A cartoon of McCain depicted as a canary, singing "Vietnam Rules, America Drools" at the Hanoi Hilton?

Or a cartoon showing McCain kicking his first wife and kids to the curb, her cane and their little baseball caps flying, as he holds onto Cindy McCain's miniskirt made of $100 bills?

Or just a naked McCain, from behind, his wrinkled white ass as he screws Uncle Sam (us)?

Hey, it's satire, right, and all's fair in modern journamalism. Wes Clark couldn't tell the truth, that being shot down and held captive don't qualify you to be President. The media attacked him like he'd said John McCain wears a G-string and pasties under his suit. But "journalists" and "publishers" and "the media" can put out complete and utter garbage like this cover and will hide under their handy First Amendment umbrella. Free press! Free press!

How free is a press that, like Chatty Cathy on steroids, regurgitates conservative propaganda every time the string is pulled?

The hitjob piece it illustrates can be read here, but don't miss the soft wet kiss the same writer, Ryan Lizza, wrote about McCain in February in the very same magazine. Or save yourself the time. Shorter Ryan Lizza: Obama bad, McCain good.

Lizza has a long, sad history of advancing right-wing memes, as it was he who named the Democratic plan for withdrawing our troops from Iraq "the slow-bleed plan", a phrase which was eagerly adopted by Fox News and their Republican overlords.

Journalism is dead. Long live the rotting press corpse.

Saturday Reading

Or did I want birth control? I can't remember.
dailykos via laughing squid

Carol Kreck, the librarian kicked out of a McCain event, speaks: McCain = Bush

McCain called the way Social Security has worked for over 70 years to keep American seniors out of poverty "A disgrace. An absolute disgrace." But it's unlikely that the television-watching public knows that, as none of the three networks covered that stunning statement. Make sure to tell your friends, because the media isn't doing their job. BBQ with sprinkles, anyone?

Guinness is becoming less popular in Ireland; the piece has this priceless description of a pub conversation:

At Davy Byrnes [pub], the conversation has moved on to whether John McCain inappropriately placated his Vietnamese captors ("He sang like a canary," Winter declares); the mass suicide and massacre of Jews in York in 1190; Stalin's execution of top army officers in the run-up to World War II; and a song by the Waterboys on a similar subject. Someone tries to remember how it goes. An argument ensues over whether the Waterboys ought to be considered an Irish band, or Scottish, or English.

KBR (the Halliburton subsidiary) electrocuted American soldiers through its grossly negligent profit-seeking behavior. Have a nice day, Dick Cheney.

Former White House Press Secretary and Fox News host Tony Snow and famed heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey have died.

The Many Lies of John McCain

My friend, there are more where that came from! (nudge nudge, wink wink)

See the linked posts below to read about McCain's 50 policy flipflops, his 10 gaffes this week, and get this, he lied about the dates of his divorce and his second marriage (to cover up his infidelity and the stunning betrayal of his first wife) in his own autobiography. The Rethugs have got a brass-plated liar for their candidate. Read the entire posts for all the gory details. McCain is not a nice man.

Oh, must add my favorite lie of the day. Yesterday in Pennsylvania, after 30 years of saying that while in the Hanoi prison camp he gave his captors the names of the Green Bay Packers as his squadron mates, yesterday he claimed he named the Pittsburgh Steelers. How convenient while campaigning in Pennsylvania! Will he name a different NFL team in every state he campaigns in? College teams in states that don't have NFL teams? Huggy PanderBear strikes again. Will the media pull their heads out of the BBQ trough to notice? Spread the word about the lies of John McCain, because you must do the media's job.

dailykos: 50 Flip Flops Of John McCain

Privatizing Social Security, Iraq Troop Withdrawal, Tax Cuts, Judges, Torture, Negotiating With Hamas, Bush Third Term, Agents Of Intolerance, 527s, Gramm's Whiner Comments, Economic Expertise, Illegal Wiretapping, Habeas Corpus, Everglades Restoration, Gay Couple Legal Contracts, GI Bill, Military Service Exploitation, Roe v. Wade, States Rights On Abortion, ANWR, Offshore Drilling, Role of States in Drilling, MLK Holiday, Windfall Profits Tax, Filibustering of Judges, Confederate Flag, Civil Unions, Constitutional Ban On Gay Marriage, Yucca Mountain, Undue Lobbyist Influence, Abortion Exceptions, Defense Cuts, Waterboarding Mandatory Caps, Citizenship for Immigrants, Flying the Confederate Flag, Bush Tax Policies, South African Divestment, Alternative Minimum Tax, Estate Tax Repeal, NOrth Korea Negotiations, Iraq + Stay The Course, Creationism, Time of Offshore Drilling, Campaign Finance Reform, Immigration Act, Fidel Castro, Pakistan, Bush's Pioneers, Occupying Muslim Lands.

HuffPost: The Week That Should Have Ended McCain's Presidential Hopes

1. McCain unambiguously called Social Security "an absolute disgrace."

2. McCain's top economic policy adviser calls Americans a bunch of "whiners" for being worried about the slumping economy.

3. Iraqi leaders call for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, McCain gets caught in a bizarre denial and flip flop.

4. McCain's economic plan to cut the deficit has no details and is simply not believable.

5. McCain's deficit plan includes bringing the troops home represents a major Iraq flip-flop.

6. McCain campaign misled about economists support. I

7. McCain makes a joke about killing Iranians.

8. McCain denies, flatly, that he ever said that he is not an expert in economics.

9. McCain distorts his record on veterans benefits in response to a question from Vietnam Veteran, who then proceeds to call McCain out on it.

10. McCain demonstrates he knows nothing about Afghanistan and Pakistan.

LATimes: McCain's broken marriage and fractured Reagan friendship

In his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," McCain wrote that he had separated from Carol before he began dating Hensley.

"I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow," McCain wrote. "I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980."

An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.

Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.

Yahoo Photos
I see buyer's remorse and a lot of plastic surgery (note the widely stretched joker mouth).

Google Earth Tour of McCain's Residences

hat tip to Americablog