Republican Senate leaders — terrified by the prospect of losing five or more seats in November — have freed their members to vote however they need to vote to get reelected, even if that means bucking the president or the party’s leadership....
It’s unusual for rank-and-file members to get a green light to blow off their party leaders. But these are unusual times for Republicans. They are genuinely worried they could get their clocks cleaned in November. The prevailing attitude: It is better to lose some big votes now than big races in November.
This helps explain why so many Senate Republicans are taking flight from President Bush and their own leaders — and doing it loudly and proudly.
Surprise. Though it does make you wonder if McCain has any accomplishments post-1972 that he's proud of.
“Now Salter has one last chance to write a great convention speech for his boss. He is headed to his summer cottage in Maine--purchased with his share of the book royalties he splits with McCain (who gives his half to charity)--to focus on a task fellow McCainiacs acknowledge will be critical. ‘It's a big moment,’ says Mark McKinnon. ‘The convention is a big damn deal.’ Salter hints the speech will spotlight McCain's moments of self-sacrifice, as when he refused early release from captivity in Vietnam or challenged his own party over campaign finance reform. The contrast, he says, will be the ‘selfishness’ of ‘self-interested’ political partisans--i.e. Obama--who, he argues, have risked nothing of substance in their lives."
I'm getting a bit tired of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative, Bush-loving party trying to interfere with our upcoming presidential elections. When Merkel decided to weigh in against Obama giving a speech before Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, I suspected she might be doing Bush's and McCain's dirty work, but I cut her some slack. But now that Obama has agreed to speak at another site, and a member of Merkel's own party is criticizing that location too, it's looking increasingly like Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party is trying to give Obama a hard time because he's a Democrat. Merkel and her party should get their noses out of our presidential campaign - we can pick our own president without their help, thank you very much.
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Great move by Obama. Nice catch by Crooks and Liars. The big dog from Fox, Chris Wallace, wasn't invited on the overseas trip.
Fox isn't a news network, as Netroots Nation made clear, it's opinion media.
It's good to see the Obama campaign treat Fox the way the network and its overtly Republican pundits deserve to be treated. MoveOn makes it easy to give Obama a shout out for saying No to Fox.
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Jason Linkins cracks me up. Consistently. His latest post, "GOP 'Love' Ad Furthers the Pot-Kettle Dialectic," nails the absurdity of McCain complaining about favorable media coverage of Obama:
Senator John McCain is running a pair of ads that say -- get this - that the media is "in love" with Barack Obama. I know, I know...take a moment to cradle your poor head tenderly in your hands and note the attendant irony of the candidate best known for courting the press, straight up, as his "base," complaining bitterly about this. The press' great affinity for John McCain is well-known. There's a book about it. Even an RSS feed.
Yes, Obama is getting some great coverage on the trip that McCain pushed and pushed. But, lest we forget, it was McCain who got the Dunkin Donuts with sprinkles (his favorites) from AP's Liz Sidoti and Ron Fournier. That incident alone negates any complaining by McCain -- ever.
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This is predictable but still a bad sign for the economy. The tough times are spreading even to wealthier Americans.
Late Monday, New York-based American Express reported a 38% drop in second-quarter earnings and warned that it won't be able to meet long-term financial targets until the economy improves.
American Express shares, which are part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell to $37.12 in morning trading.
The company said that even its most creditworthy, long-standing customers felt the effects of the economic slowdown currently sweeping the U.S.
Without giving specifics, AmEx said it plans to cut staff and reduce other costs, noting that the resulting charges will hit results in the second half of 2008. "With bad debt occurring even in the superprime card segment, AmEx's earnings clearly show that the credit crisis is going upscale, which does not bode well for the U.S. economy," Red Gillen, senior analyst at consulting firm Celent, commented via email.
Barack Obama's press conference this morning in Amman, Jordan, was a major moment -- perhaps the major moment -- of the Illinois senator's much-ballyhooed trip abroad this week.
All eyes were on Obama to see how he would perform on a world stage with every political reporter of any consequence either on the trip with him or watching closely on television.
And, as he has done before in the course of the campaign, Obama seemed to be up to the moment -- sensing the need to convey gravitas and bipartisanship while also strongly defending his own beliefs about America's role in Iraq and the broader Middle East.
Gone were the jokes and "rah rah" language that won over many Obama partisans but left many undecided voters wondering whether there was any there there when it came to the Illinois senator. Instead, we saw a serious explication of his position on removing combat troops in Iraq, a position bolstered in recent days by repeated calls by the Iraqi government to remove U.S. military forces from the country by 2010.
"Regardless of who becomes next president we are going to have to strip away ideology, strip away the politics," Obama said when asked the proper future course for Iraq. "The next president is going to have to make a series of very difficult judgments." ...
Obama cleared a crucial bar in today's press conference. He looked and sounded presidential at a moment when the eyes of the world were on him.
Maybe the reason Obama is getting better press coverage than McCain, if it's true at all, is that Obama is doing better than McCain, and the media is simply reporting the facts.
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2:30 PM UPDATE: The video is now working....again...finally.
UPDATE: The video was uploaded a few minutes ago, so if you're getting an error trying to view it, give it a few minutes and come back.
Today, in what has to be one of the more desperate, unfounded and outrageous claims coming from McCain, he just said on national television that "it seems to me that Senator Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." Watch the video -- and watch McCain's creepy smirk at the end. He knows what he said is brutal -- a brutal lie:
Pure desperation. In fact, the McCain camp said the same thing a week ago, with nary a word from the corporate media. Republicans always do something, then accuse Democrats of doing the same thing. In 2002, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove started playing politics with national security and led the United States into the Iraq war. John McCain played right along.
NOTE FROM JOHN: John McCain just questioned Barack Obama's patriotism. He did it probably on the advice of Karl Rove, who has been advising him for months. Rove's usual tactic is to say something like this in order to get a rise out of the left, and help us make the story. That's part of what this is about - getting the theme out there that Obama is un-American (aka "muslim"). But also, McCain is simply desperate to change the topic from Obama's wildly successful trip to the Middle East. When are Mrs. Greenspan, Bob Schieffer, and the rest of the corporate media going to hold John McCain to the same standard they hold Barack Obama? John McCain basically just accused Barack Obama of treason. Had we done that to McCain, just imagine the fireworks. Will the media report how outrageous and desperate McCain has become, or will they do their usual he-said-she-said and present McCain's "argument" as something worthy of honest debate?
One last thing. I can imagine some Democrats saying "oh no, don't respond or you'll make it a story just like Karl Rove wants you to." Well, yeah, we could follow that advice. Or we could ask ourselves "what would Karl Rove do?" Karl Rove would do what McCain did to Wesley Clark. He would so quickly, so publicly eviscerate us that we would never again have the nerve to question his good patriotic heart. That's what Karl Rove would do. Democrats, however, sit back, shut up, and take it, hoping it'll go away. Yeah, how's that working for us, now that we're in our third decade of being called un-American and weak on defense?
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It's not easy being a Republican Senator these days. By their own actions, they're becoming an endangered species. The Politico reports today that Republican Senators are on their own when it comes to voting for the rest of the year. They can choose Bush or they can finally vote in the interests of their constituents.
Even better. Harry Reid is giving Republican Senators a choice, too. They can vote with chief obstructionist Tom Coburn or vote to pass some key legislation:
Most lawmakers dream of getting their names linked to legislation. That won't be so when the Senate takes up what is unofficially being called the "Coburn Omnibus."
It's a package of about 40 bills that have in many cases been single-handedly stalled by one of the Senate's more conservative members, Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.
The package constitutes a showdown between Coburn, known for putting "holds" on legislation to slow their passage, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who is increasingly frustrated by GOP delaying tactics.
Republicans will have a choice, Reid said Monday on the Senate floor, to join the side of the American people "or continue to stand beside a colleague or two intent on blocking virtually everything."
Reid is expected to try to bring the package to the Senate floor later this week, setting up a possible vote on beginning debate in a rare Saturday session.
Coburn got himself into the ring with Reid. He better be careful. Reid's a boxer and Coburn's on his turf now. For example, here are the bills that Reid has included in the Coburn package:
Reid said the package will include the Emmitt Till Unsolved Crime Act, aimed at investigating unsolved civil rights era crimes; the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act, a runaway and homeless youth bill; a bill to combat child exploitation by pornographers, and a measure to create a database for Lou Gehrig's disease. Many have Republican cosponsors.
Yes, McCain's latest "I'm the underdog, look how mean everyone is to me" whine is that the New York Times had the audacity to suggest some edits on an op ed he submitted. McCain is saying that the request for edits shows the NYT's, and the media's, liberal bias against him.
The media needs to call McCain out for this kind of thing. I don't need to explain that it's standard practice for newspapers to ask for edits on all their content, including op eds. McCain is trying to use a lie to convince voters that he's the underdog, and the media should be calling him out on his lie. If Barack Obama whined about being asked for edits, Mrs. Greenspan would be all over him, asking if he's up to the challenge of being commander in chief if he can't even handle some requested edits to an article.
So here's the story. Obama penned an op ed for the Times, it got published, so McCain's people asked for the Times to publish a McCain op ed too. A mere two hours after McCain submitted his draft op ed to the Times, the paper's opinion editor wrote the campaign back and said they'd be happy to publish the piece with a few edits. That's it. That's what prompted McCain and his people to launch into their latest whine.
It's a manufactured controversy. Basically, McCain is (again) lying to the American people. We'll be waiting for Mrs. Greenspan, Bob Schieffer, and the rest of the McCain sycophants to call McCain on this lie.
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Well, that was fast and easy. It only took 14 weeks to determine that the salmonella outbreak was probably related to jalapeno peppers from Mexico. Probably. Of course others are still saying tomatoes could also be involved. Maybe. All clear now?
Among top questions: Did the farm, packing house and distributors all use clean water? What fertilizer was used, and when? Given this distributor's small size, who else distributed contaminated supply — or could there have been cross contamination with other products?
While health officials were cautiously excited at finally finding a firm clue, lawmakers decried the probe's slow pace.
"The fact that it has taken over 14 weeks to identify the source of the contamination is simply unacceptable," said Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., who is pushing for stronger requirements to help trace tainted produce. "Much like (the) tomato industry, the result is a blanket warning that will decimate the entire industry and further depress consumer confidence when only a tiny fraction of peppers may be contaminated."
Yesterday was, of course, just one day in a very long campaign. But, it comes at a crucial time as Americans are getting to really know the Democratic nominee. This paragraph from today's NY Times succinctly captures July 20, 2008:
For a day, at least, the images of the two presidential candidates offered a sharp contrast. In an interview on “Good Morning America” on ABC, Mr. McCain talked about securing the “Iraq-Pakistan border,” a momentary misstatement of geography. (American forces are pursuing terrorists along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border; Iraq does not border Pakistan.) His aides staged an event where he was seen riding in a golf cart in Maine with the first President George Bush, while Mr. Obama flew over Iraq in a helicopter with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American military commander.
Combine the images from yesterday with the substance of Obama's Iraq policy, which is now consistent with the Iraqi government's position, and you start to really understand why the Republicans are entering panic mode. They don't want to give up the power. Keep in mind, it was McCain and the RNC who kept saying Obama had to visit Iraq. Well, he did. Not quite the outcome they were hoping for.
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Given the results of the first part of Obama's trip, I'd say the GOPers are getting into panic mode. When will the House and Senate candidates start ditching their hero, John McCain?
Also, isn't it becoming more clear that McCain just makes things up? It's like he really doesn't know his own record -- or what he stands for. He's been able to slide along all these years because no one really paid such close attention.
I may not have any love for short sellers on Wall Street, but really, where was this interest in propping up bad stocks during the last recession or any other recession? Like many investors I was picked to pieces by short sellers in 2001 and surprise, surprise, no SEC, no Treasury Department, nobody stepped in to stop it. Now that our precious banks are getting their comeuppance everybody is stepping up to protect them. I'm getting tired of hearing the old "we can't let the banks fail" routine, especially from the free market phonies who could never stop talking about the benefits of the free market. Fine, let the free market work for banks just as it has done for other industries. Let bankers tell us about the virtues of limited unemployment benefits when it's bankers who are unemployed and losing their houses.
Step back and look at what's going on here and who is getting a helping hand versus a kick in the butt. Rewarding greedy bankers who have already made record profits (and record bonuses, which they still own) courtesy of selling worthless loans is no better than rewarding greedy individuals who were flipping houses though look at who is getting the VIP treatment. Political leadership in Washington can't move quickly enough to rescue those least in need. For home buyers who were bamboozled by Big Finance, good luck. The NY Times has a late, but still great article on the credit crisis. It's abundantly clear by recent actions (and inactions) that unless you're a bank, you're a chump.
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After so many years I wondered if he would ever be arrested and brought to justice.
Former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, accused architect of massacres and the politician considered most responsible for the deadly siege of Sarajevo, was arrested Monday evening in a Serbian police raid ending his 13 years as the world's most-wanted war crimes fugitive.
His alleged partner in the persecution and "cleansing" of tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats, former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, remained at large.
A psychiatrist turned diehard Serbian nationalist politician, Karadzic is the suspected mastermind of mass killings that the U.N. war crimes tribunal described as "scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history." They include the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, Europe's worst slaughter since World War II.
Fashion designers now seem clairvoyant. This summer's collections - shown last October, when the stocks were still riding high on a bull market - were filled with long skirts. From classic Chanel to cool Christopher Kane, dresses were long and languorous or a waterfall of frills - but always scraping the floor. Fashion had turned its back on the Paris Hilton girlie glitz: short, sheer dresses; sequinned sparkles; and any-color-as-long-as-it-is-pink.
Why wasn't Wall Street noting the sartorial changes? Although designers always dismiss the correlation between skirt lengths and financial markets as a fashion historian's fantasy, the parallels are striking. Up went hemlines to dizzying heights in the financial and social whirl of the roaring 1920s - revealing women's legs for the first time in recorded history. Then came the bear market and bare was out - except for low backs on the floor-length gowns that dropped hemlines just before the 1929 Wall Street crash.
